The Life by Malcolm Knox

Author:Malcolm Knox
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2011-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

Been a week and I haven’t asked Mo to take me out in her car. No more surfing buddies.

She shouldn’t of got me The Thing.

Can’t touch it can’t look at it.

The diagonals in the living rooms of retirement village units are all screwy. I go with Mo to watch her play bingo with her mates. I listen to the radio while she has arf-tea. She shows you off in the dining hall, like there’s some part of the last thirty years that got skipped by the record needle of her brain and she thinks her old biddies are meeting the best surfer in the world, her pride and joy.

Instead of what they’re seeing.

But retirement villages are all about magic.

Illusions.

I’m the rabbit in Mo’s hat.

Then it’s home up the rail (don’t grab it) and in the living room where The Thing is waiting for me and I make for the bedroom and listen to me radio.

The things in my bedroom, I try to look at them and forget about the other Thing.

Shelves of books. I dig books. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The Fountainhead. The Dice Man. The Doors of Perception. Steppenwolf. The I Ching. Hopscotch. The Betsy. Van Loon’s Lives. The Warrior’s Way.

Don’t you call me an uneducated man. It come late, it come with a curse, but by hell and damnation it did come.

No tables or chairs, just throw pillows and throw rugs, Indian fabrics, incense stinkers, ratty seagrass mat on the floor.

Colour TV.

Clock radio.

Shortwave radio.

Stereophonic record turntable, Sennheiser headphones.

Me posters.

Me trophies.

Bear trap outside the window.

A portable motion-detector alarm aimed at the door.

Don’t you call me an uneducated man.

Can’t stop thinking about it.

It won’t fit in the Sandman. Sorry Mo.

Roof racks?

Everyone’ll know. They’ll see DK’s panel van with a Thing on the roof. Sorry Mo.

Trailer?

Ditto.

Walk it down to Rainbow Bay? It’s nice for learners there.

Ha fricken ha.

But:

Can’t stop thinking about it.

In the slop, down the secret spot, windiest mushiest dirtiest days, when nobody else will be anywhere, the only days I’m game to go:

The Thing’s the only board that’ll ride.

That’s why they invented Things.

For fatsos and beginners.

Fatso beginners.

It’s the only thing that’ll go. Only thing that’ll bear my weight. Only thing that’ll give me a ride.

The Thing.

Must of cost Mo six pension cheques.

Them Things cost a thousand bucks and this one looks new.

Sorry, Mo.

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