rear skull. I throw a flurry of uppercut punches at his stomach and chin.
‘You fuckin’ idiot!’ I scream. Then he lifts me up from the waist and throws me with a sweeping hurl on top of the television. The newsreader tips over off Dad’s brown TV stand. The peach-coloured ceramic lamp sitting on top of the TV breaks into eight jagged pieces on the wooden floor. Dad marches out of his bedroom. ‘What the fuck is going on ’ere!’ he barks.
I charge at August again and he drives his left then right fists into my face, and I throw a round of formless punches back as Dad comes between us.
‘Eli,’ he screams. ‘Give it a rest.’
Dad pushes me back and I take a breath.
‘What have you done?’ I scream. ‘You’ve lost your mind, Gus. You’re fuckin’ crazy.’
He scribbles in the air. I’m sorry, Eli. I had to.
‘You’re not special, Gus,’ I say. ‘You’re just fuckin’ nuts. You didn’t get brought back. There’s no more universes than this one and it’s a fuckin’ hole. There’s no more Augusts out there. There’s only one and he’s fucking deranged.’
August smiles. He scribbles in the air.
You were gonna get caught with that money, Eli.
‘Just talk, fuckhead,’ I scream. ‘I’m sick of your fuckin’ scribbles.’
We all catch our breath. The newsreader is still talking out of the television lying face up behind Dad’s TV stand: ‘Well, if that story doesn’t warm your heart I don’t know what will,’ she says.
August and I stare at each other. August talking more than I can in silence. I had to do it, Eli.
The phone rings.
It was no good in our hands, Eli, all that money. No good. Shelly needs it more than us.
‘Mrs Birkbeck was right about you, Gus,’ I say. ‘I reckon you had to make up all that bullshit about the people on the phones because you were damaged. You were so fucked up by reality you ran away into fantasy.’
But you heard them, Eli. You heard them on the phone, too.
‘I was playing along, Gus,’ I say. ‘I bought into the bullshit because I felt sorry for you being such a nutter.’
I’m sorry, Gus. I’m sorry.
‘Well, here’s the reality, Gus,’ I say. I point at Dad. ‘He’s so fuckin’ crazy he tried to drive us into a dam. And you’re just as crazy as him and maybe I’m just as crazy as you.’
I turn to Dad. I don’t know why I say it but I say it. It’s all I want to say. It’s all I want to know.
‘Did you mean to do it?’
‘What?’ he says softly.
He’s lost for words. He’s mute.
‘Everybody mute,’ I scream. ‘Whole world gone mute. Let me rephrase that, because maybe it’s too hard to understand and I understand that because I sure as shit can’t understand why you’d mean to do it, but did you mean to drive us into the dam?’
The phone rings. Dad is momentarily stunned by the question.
‘Teddy says you tried to fuckin’ kill us,’ I shout. ‘Teddy says it wasn’t some panic attack bullshit. Teddy says you’re fuckin’ crazy.’
The phone rings. Dad shakes his head, furious.
‘For fuck’s sake, Eli, you gonna answer the phone?’ Dad asks.
‘Why don’t you answer it?’ I reply.
‘It’s your mum,’ Dad says.
‘Mum?’
‘She called this morning,’ Dad says.
‘You spoke to her?’ I ask.
He spoke to her. Dad spoke to Mum. That’s a phenomenon I’m not familiar with.
‘Yeah, I spoke to her. Some people in this house know how to communicate using their voice box,’ he says.
The phone rings.
‘What did she want?’
‘She didn’t say.’
The phone rings. I pick it up.
‘Mum.’
‘Hey, sweetheart.’
‘Hey.’
Long silence.
‘How are you?’ she asks.
Terrible. Never been worse. Heart like a brick. Hurricane for a head. I woke up hungover from the rum last night and now I’m hungover and missing $49,500.
‘Good,’ I lie, sucking in breaths.
‘You don’t sound too good?’
‘I’m all right, how are you?’
‘Good,’ she says. ‘Be better if you and August dropped round soon.’
Long silence.
‘What do you think?’
‘What do I think about what?’
‘Do you think you might want to come around and see me again?’
‘Not while he’s there, Mum.’
‘He wants to see you boys, Eli,’ she says. ‘He wants to say sorry in person for what he did.’
This again. Mum believing another suburban Queensland male leopard is gonna change his spots.