‘Do you want to buy my jacket?’
He studied the man’s jacket, which was a kind of windcheater made of thin material in vibrant red and black.
‘The Aboriginal flag,’ he explained to Harry, showing him the back of the jacket. ‘My cousin makes them.’
Harry politely refused the offer.
‘What’s your name?’ the Aboriginal man asked.
‘Harry.’
‘That’s an English name. I’ve got an English name, too. It’s Joseph. With a “p” and an “h”. In fact, it’s a Jewish name. The father of Jesus, dig? Joseph Walter Roderigue. My tribal name’s Ngardagha. N-gar-dag-ha.’
‘Spend a lot of time in the park, do you, Joseph?’
‘Yes, a lot.’ Joseph clicked back into his middle-distance look and was gone. He pulled a large juice bottle from his jacket, offered Harry a drink and took a swig himself before screwing on the top. His jacket slid open and Harry saw the tattoos on his chest. ‘Jerry’ was written above a large cross.
‘Fine tattoo you’ve got, Joseph. May I ask who Jerry is?’
‘Jerry’s my son. My son. He’s four.’ Joseph splayed his fingers as he counted up to four.
‘Four. I understand. Where’s Jerry now?’
‘Home.’ Joseph waved his hand in a way to suggest a direction where home was. ‘Home with his mother.’
‘Listen, Joseph. I’m after a man. His name’s Hunter Robertson. He’s white, quite small and doesn’t have much hair. Sometimes he comes to the park. Sometimes he exposes . . . himself. Do you know who I mean? Have you seen him, Joseph?’
‘Yeah, yeah. He’s coming,’ Joseph said, rubbing his nose, as if he considered Harry was talking about an everyday event. ‘Just wait. He’s coming.’
22
Two Flashers
A CHURCH BELL rang in the distance as Harry lit his eighth cigarette and inhaled deep into his lungs. Sis had said he should stop smoking the last time he took her to the cinema. They had seen Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with the worst cast Harry had seen this side of Plan 9 from Outer Space. But it didn’t bother Sis that Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood answered the Sheriff of Nottingham in broad American. In general there was very little that bothered Sis; she squealed with delight when Costner cleaned up Sherwood Forest and sniffled when Marian and Robin finally found each other.
Afterwards they had gone to a cafe where he had bought her a hot chocolate. She had told him how good she felt in her new flat in the Sogn Residential Centre, even though a couple of those living in her corridor were ‘daft in the head’. And she wanted Harry to stop smoking. ‘Ernst says it’s dangerous.’ You can die from it.’
‘Who’s Ernst?’ Harry had asked, but was met with a fit of giggles. Then she turned serious again. ‘You mustn’t smoke, Harald. You mustn’t die, do you hear?’ She had the ‘Harald’ and the ‘do you hear?’ from her mother.
The Christian name Harry was a result of his father getting his way. Olav Hole, a man who usually ceded to his wife in all things, had raised his voice and insisted that the boy should be called after his grandfather who had been a seaman and apparently a fine fellow. His mother had yielded in a moment of weakness, to use her words, which she had regretted bitterly afterwards.
‘Has anyone ever heard of anyone called Harry ever making it in anything?’ she had said. (When Harry’s father was in a teasing mood he had quoted her because of all the anys and evers.)
Anyway, Harry’s mother called him Harald after her uncle but everyone else called him Harry. And, after she had died, Sis had started to call him Harald. Perhaps it was Sis’s way of trying to fill the gap left by her. Harry didn’t know; so many strange things went on in the girl’s head. For example, she had smiled with tears in her eyes and cream on her nose when Harry had promised her he would stop, if not immediately then at least in time.
Now he was sitting and imagining the smoke curling upwards like a huge snake into his body. Bubbur.
Joseph twitched. He had been asleep.
‘My forefathers were Crow people,’ he said without preamble and straightened up. ‘They could fly.’ The sleep seemed to have sobered him up. He rubbed his face with both hands.
‘Wonderful thing, being able to fly. Have you got a tenner?’
Harry had only a twenty-dollar note.
‘That’ll do,’ Joseph said, snaffling it.
As though it had been a temporary break in the weather, the clouds drifted in again across Joseph’s brain and he mumbled on in some unintelligible language redolent of what Andrew had been speaking to Toowoomba. Hadn’t Andrew called it Creole? In the end, the drunken man’s chin had fallen back onto his chest.