must be ten metres all the way up here with my head in the clouds.
The rope is taut and burning my hands. The middle finger on my right hand aches with the stress of working overtime in the absence of his forefinger co-worker.
Two screws rush to stand below me, looking up at me. They sound like Lyle when he used to get angry with me.
‘Are you fucked in the head, kid?’ one calls. ‘Where do ya think yer gonna go?’
‘Come on down from there,’ says the other screw.
But I keep crawling up the wall. Scaling and scaling. Like one of those SAS soldiers in Britain who rescue all those people from terrorist hostage scenarios.
‘Yer gonna kill yourself, you idiot,’ the second screw says. ‘That rope ain’t strong enough to hold you.’
Of course this rope is strong enough. I’ve tested it seventeen times down at the scouts’ centre. Dad’s old rope I found beneath the house, sitting in his rusted wheelbarrow, caked in dust and dirt. Up and up I go. Oh, the air up here. Was this what it felt like for you, Slim? The thrill of it all? The sight of the top? The thought of what waited beyond these walls? The story of the unknown.
‘Come on down now and you won’t get in any more trouble,’ says the first screw. ‘Come on down, mate. Christ Almighty, it’s fuckin’ Christmas Day. Yer mum don’t wanna see you dead on Christmas Day.’
I’m a metre from the top of the wall when I pause to catch my breath, one last air suck before I make my triumphant crawl over the top, before I achieve the impossible, before Merlin pulls his last stunned rabbit from his hat. I take three deep breaths, my legs stiff against the wall. I pull myself higher, so high I can see the hook segments from Dad’s rake pressing against the wall. Straining against the weight but holding fast. The summit. Everest’s lonely tip. I turn my head briefly and look down for a moment at the screws.
‘See you on the flipside, boys,’ I say grandly, a stroke of roguish pluck striking me all this way up here in the thinner air of the wall top. ‘You go tell those fat cats on George Street there ain’t no wall in Australia high enough to hold the Wizard of Boggo Ro—’
A single segment of Dad’s rake handle snaps and I fall backwards through the air. The blue sky and the white cloud reel away from me. My arms flail and my legs kick at nothing and my whole life flashes before my eyes. The universe. The fish swimming through my dreams. Bubble gum. Frisbees. Elephants. The life and works of Joe Cocker. Macaroni. War. Waterslides. Curried egg sandwiches. All the answers. The answers to the questions. And a word I don’t expect spills from my terrified lips.
‘Dad.’
Boy Steals Ocean
The memorial plaque reads: Audrey Bogut, 1912–1983, loving wife of Tom, mother of Therese and David. A life like theirs has left a record sweet for memory to dwell upon.
Seventy-one years for Audrey Bogut to pass.
The memorial plaque next to that one reads: Shona Todd, 1906–1981, beloved daughter of Martin and Mary Todd, sister to Bernice and Phillip. The cup of life with her lips she prest, a taste so sweet she gulped the rest.
Seventy-five years for Shona Todd to pass.
‘C’mon, it’s about to start,’ I say to August.
We walk into a small brick chapel in the centre of the Albany Creek Crematorium. Winter, 1987. Nine months into my great time lapse experiment.
Slim’s right. It’s all just time. Thirty-nine minutes to drive from our house in Bracken Ridge to the Albany Creek Crematorium. Twenty seconds to tighten my shoelace. Three seconds for August to tuck his shirt in. Almost twenty-one months until Mum comes out. I am fast becoming a master manipulator of time. I will make twenty-one months feel like twenty-one weeks. The man in the wood coffin taught me that.
Seventy-seven years it took for Slim to die. He spent the past six months in and out of hospital, cancer creeping in to too many corners of that tall frame of his. I tried to visit him when I could. Between school. Between homework and afternoon TV. Between my growing up and his getting out. His last great escape.
‘CRIME ERA CLOSES’ read the headline in The Telegraph Dad handed me yesterday. ‘A gripping chapter in the Queensland crime annals closed this week with the death in Redcliffe Hospital of