mustn’t have ever really given that much of a shit about me if he didn’t want to take me home with him in my darkest hour. Slim, of all people, who I woulda thought knew what it felt like to be rag-dolled by life and unwanted and unwished.
My right Dunlop is stomping now. Bits of Styrofoam scatter across the thunderbox floor, falling into shapes on the sawdust ground like disconnected countries on a world map. And what’s this shit in my eyes, this bullshit liquid that betrays me every single time? It floods my eyes and my face and I struggle to breathe there’s that much of it coming out of me. Yeah, that’s it. That’s how I’ll go. I’ll cry myself to death. I’ll cry so hard I’ll die of water loss right here in this shithole. A shithole end to a shithole existence. Caitlyn Spies can write my story up in the South-West Star.
The body of thirteen-year-old hospital escapee Eli Bell, who had been missing for eight weeks, was found yesterday at the bottom of a backyard shithole. He had apparently destroyed the box he’d hoped would save the life of the only man he ever really loved. His only relative available for comment, older brother August Bell, said nothing.
Caitlyn Spies. I fall to the ground in exhaustion. I drop my bony arse into the sawdust and exhale as I rest my back on the rough wood wall of the thunderbox hole. Close your eyes. Breathe. And sleep. Sleep. I turn the torch off and rest it in my waist. It’s warm in this shithole. It’s cosy. Sleep now. Sleep.
I can see Caitlyn Spies. I can see her. She’s walking in the sunset on Bribie Island beach. There are thousands of purple soldier crabs before her but they part for her, they map out a footpath of perfect Queensland beach sand and she paces down it slowly, acknowledging the hardworking soldier crabs with her open palms. She has dark brown hair and it blows in the sea breeze and I can see her face even though I’ve never seen her face. Her eyes are deep and green and knowing and she smiles because she knows me the same way she knows everything about everything. The soldier crabs at her feet and the sun falling in the sky and her top lip that curls a little when she smiles like that. Caitlyn Spies. The most beautiful girl I’ve never seen. She wants to tell me something. ‘Come closer. Come closer,’ she says, ‘and I’ll whisper it.’ Her lips move and her words are familiar. ‘Boy swallows universe,’ she says.
And she turns her head and she casts her eyes across what was once the Pacific Ocean but is now a vast galaxy of stars and planets and supernovas and a thousand astronomical events occurring in unison. Explosions of pink and purple. Combustive moments in bright orange and green and yellow and all those glittery stars against the eternal black canvas of space. We are standing at the edge of the universe and the universe stops and starts here with us. And Saturn is within arm’s reach. And its rings begin to vibrate. Buzz. Buzz. And its vibrating rings sound like a telephone. Ring, ring.
‘Are you going to get that?’ asks Caitlyn Spies.
A telephone. I open my eyes. The sound of a telephone. Ring, ring. Back through the secret tunnel, back in the secret room. Lyle’s secret red telephone is ringing.
I crawl back through the tunnel. Damp dirt under my bruised kneecaps and my grazed elbows. This call is so important. This call is so perfectly timed. I mean, how about them odds? Me being down here and the phone ringing while I’m down here? I reach the other end of the tunnel and clamber into the secret room and the phone is still ringing. You just wouldn’t credit it. Good ol’ Eli Bell, the lucky Johnny on the Spot once again, right secret place, right unknown time. I reach out to take the secret red phone handset off the secret red push button base. Wait. Think about this remarkable coincidence. Me down here just as the phone rings. Extraordinarily well timed if you don’t know I’m down here. Not so extraordinary, however, if you saw me trying to climb in through the kitchen window. Not so extraordinary if Gene Crimmins has boarded the Tytus Broz gravy train and he was actually foxin’ me with all that windowsill kindness. Not so