Like a Fire in the sun.
The light of the early morning spilled orange and yellow into a deep, purple sky. It had rained in the night and water was on the ground and the leaves of the gumtrees made little sound in the breeze, for they were tired and heavy with the fat raindrops that hung around their edges. Sitting in the tree, a bird with brown feathers, crouched and puffed up against the cold; the long, dagger beak tucked in the feathers. A grey, wrinkled eyelid slightly parted. A rueful, staring eye squeezed shut. A flutter, and the water drops leaped off like fireworks and they fell down and landed on the wet road, and they made little shadows on the water where they fell and the ripples spread across the water and they were red and gold and purple like the sky. Beside the road, the street lamps stood in a row, and all at once they switched off, and the eastern glow of the morning seemed to swell upon the retreating night, and the glow loomed above the edge as though at any moment the sky would burst into flame.
A car turned onto the road. A workers car, single cab, toolbox on the back. At a driveway the car pulled in and stopped. There was a boom gate and a button, and the driver of the car rolled down the window and reached out and pushed the button.
“Yee-ello?” Said the button.
“It’s Jacob.”
There was a click and a beep, and the boom gate went up. A rhythmic patter of droplets on the windshield as Jacob drove under the boom gate, and the whooshing sound of car tires on wet bitumen.
Jacob got out of the car and stepped up onto the curb and walked around to the back of the car. He took a short ladder off a shelf and a small toolbox from a box in the back. From a hook inside the cab he took a yellow lanyard that dangled some keys and a tatty sleeve with a contractor ID card with his smiling face on one side and the abbreviated "cont" written in black text beneath his picture. The sleeve was splotted with plaster, and one of the splots had covered the upper portion of the letter "o" on the card. Jacob looked at the card and he scratched at the plaster with his finger, testing it’s resolve. The plaster stayed there and Jacob hung the lanyard around his neck.
He looked like a skinny boy in adult clothes. He was tall and straight and he had a forward leaning stance that made him look like he might run off at any minute. He wore denim pants and a dark denim shirt and the belt that held his pants up made his outfit look squeezed in the middle. The pants were ballooned around the pockets and squeezed in and bunched around the waist, and the shirt ballooned and overflowed excessively above the pants. He could have been made of old fence posts, splayed and skinny and looped with wire at the joints, and with clothes pulled over that were all too big. He had a friendly face, with pale blue, steady eyes and a smile that looked like he was up to something. The hair was a convenient length for someone who paid it no attention and his skin was smooth and without oil and fit snuggly to the angular bones of his face. He turned and faced the east, and he squinted into the sun. The corners of his eyes were creased and the skin around his eyes drew up the cheeks and the corners of the mouth, and for a moment as the passing clouds made way, the red sun lit him up like an effigy.
The carpark backed onto the side of a long brick building and a raised path ran the length of the building. Jacob walked along the path and at the end of the path there was a door and a little black speaker next to the door and a button and a scanner. Jacob swiped his lanyard on the scanner and there was a beep and a pause, and then a click from the door-jam and with both hands Jacob pushed the door open and walked into the building.
Inside was a hall with many doors. Jacob walked down the hall until he came to a door that had the word FACILITIES written on it in big black letters. The door was ajar and Jacob pushed it open and stood in the doorway looking in. Inside was a big room filled with desks and computers. All the desks were butted up to the walls, and each butted up to the other, all the way around the room. Each desk had a computer with a keyboard, askew or overturned, and a mouse strewn about somewhere, or hanging off the edge of the desk, or wrapped around the keyboard, or upside down, or stuck in a penholder. The screens all askew and crooked. A printer in the corner with an unopened sheaf sitting in an open draw, and documents printed over the top of other documents, overflowing onto the floor, and there are blackened light-bulbs sitting in the feeder tray. Standing in the corner, a bookcase with tools on it, dishevelled piles of paper, pens with no ink and pencils with broken points. Piles of old batteries. Power adaptors, extension cords, pointless bits of wire, dirty cups, a dinner plate with crumbs and a fork. Near the entry door stood a desk with a kettle, and a cheap looking toaster and a sandwich press and an old dusty radio and three stainless steel tins with lids on them, with teaspoons on the lids. Tea bags and sprinkles of instant coffee, and a big glass jar filled with biscuits. In the far corner of the room, a desk stood a small distance from the wall and a smartly dressed man with a round head and little round ears sat behind the desk, sitting smartly upright with his back against the wall. He had short white hair, all the same length, and all sticking out; neat, like he’d buzzed it that day. The eyes were round and blinking, the eyebrows high on the forehead, the mouth parted slightly in a frowning half moon and he sat there, peering across the room at Jacob with a cartoon look of bewildered anticipation.
And they just looked at one another across the room. And the sound of many computers seemed to resonate for a moment and the sound harmonized and warbled in and out of phase. Finally Jacob said: "What?"
The round headed man continued to sit there and stare. He blinked and frowned. The eyebrows came down and his head tilted slowly backward.
"Doug?" Said Jacob.
Doug's face had become that of abject terror. The lips at one side were drawn back to reveal his teeth, the eyes, wide and staring. "Wha-- wha-- " he stammered, "what are you doing here!?"
Jacob took a deep breath and shrugged his shoulders, he blew air out his nose and made a painful smile, he shook his head and closed his eyes and said "I don't know what you're talking about."
For a moment Doug’s expression intensified. He looked like he might be about to scream. And then he lost it. He laughed. Jacob just nodded at him politely, he made a gesture of fair play with his hands and the corners of his eyes creased. Doug kept laughing, there was nothing natural about it. It came in short, phonetic bursts: "Ha!- Ha!- He!- Ha!-" and he leaned back in his chair and he stretched his arms up and over his head and laced his fingers together and leaned back as far as he could go. One leg came up and he crossed the ankle across the knee of his other leg. "Ha!- Ha!- Ha!- -" he said, and he leaned back just a little too far. Suddenly his arms and legs all shot out straight. For a moment he was splayed out like a starfish and then he bent forward sharply at the waist and his hands came over and his legs lifted from the ground and his eyes bulged out like golf balls. His final Ha! became a Ha-AHH!! and his hands smacked down on the desk and the fingers were spread out and he leaned forward over his hands. "Fuck," he said with a serious look. "Almost fell off my chair!"
"Would have served you right", said Jacob.
Doug sat forward and drew his lips to one side. He drew the length of his index finger along the crease of his chin and he considered this with his complete attention. "Prob'ly right", he said. "What are you doing here? Thought you were in Collie".
"I was in Collie. Got back last night."
"Cold?"
"Absolutely freezing,” said Jacob.
Doug shivered. “Too cold for me,” he said.
“Too cold for anybody,” said Jacob. “There was a guy there — yesterday, actually, in Collie — yelled out on the street that he didn’t know what they’d do without the sun.”
“The sun,” said Doug.
“Yeah. ‘what would we do without the fuck’n sun?’ I think were his exact words”.
Doug frowned.
A large visitors book sat on the table beside the entryway door and Jacob pulled it toward him and picked up the pen from in the little valley made by the open pages. He clicked the pen and ran his palm across the page and held it flat and with a slow, deliberate scrawl he filled the empty spaces. Name - Jacob. Date - the fifth of October. Reason for visit — . He hesitated.
“Was he trolleyed?” said Doug.
Jacob lifted his head slowly, eyebrows low, his mouth partly opened. “Huh?” he said.
“Trolleyed!” said Doug. “Half that whole place is off it’s tits isn’t it?”
“Ha!” said Jacob. “That’s true, I guess.” He pushed the visitors book back across the desk and stood up. He smiled, but he kept his eyes to himself. “That whole place is trolleyed.” He looked at Doug and said, “you know, it is a pretty funny place. I was working at the bank there, you know. Fittin' out the new office there. In the bank.” He was straight upright now, he had a confident stance and he took on the pleased and jovial aspect of a person who believes he is telling an incredible story. Doug was nodding.
“Anyway,” Jacob continued, “people were coming in there every day — the bank is still open all the while. No reason to close on my accord. So people are coming in, staff, locals, you know, all kinds of people — and absolutely every one of them is going on about the weather.”
For a moment Jacob stood silent. Doug, with hands still planted on the desk, sat forward and looked up at Jacob and a look of expectant incredulity spread slowly across his face. He said, “an — ”
“And it was incredible!” said Jacob. “It was like nobody in the whole town could believe how cold it was. Everyone just kept coming in and talking about how cold they were. How bloody cold is it? Can you believe how cold it is? It’s freezing out there! I’m cold! Are you cold? It’s cold! Cold! Cold! Cold!” Doug was nodding patiently. “Cold,” said Jacob. “So cold, you know, that when I finally walked out of there, after three or so days of this— I walked out into the main street of Collie, and I saw a cow wearing big fluffy woollen jacket!”
A silent beat passed between them. Doug sat perfectly still. Jacob’s gleeful face resolved into distracted complacency and he stepped back into a more relaxed stance, he tilted at the shoulder and seemed to lean on some invisible crutch. He looked down and discovered that he still had the pen he’d picked up from the visitors book, and he tossed it casually back into the crease of the book where it landed levelly and it stayed there and he appeared to be satisfied by this.
“What are you talking about a cow wearing a jacket,” said Doug, his eyebrows were low and sceptical, his round blue eyes harbouring a certain crazed intensity.
“You know,” said Jacob, “a cow.” He hunched his shoulders over and barreled his arms in a big round gesture, and he pushed the fat of his tongue out against the inside of his lips and worked his jaw in exaggerated, angular, chomping revolutions. “You know what a cow is, don’t you?”
“You mean, like — moo?”
“Yeah!” said Jacob, straightening, “a moo cow.”
At that, a tiny jolt seemed to pass through Doug’s body; he sat the slightest bit taller in his chair and his round head twitched to an angle and held there, rigid, and he seemed to tremble slightly and the body seemed locked in the containment of an immense physical tension. He released a single, rapid blink and carefully said, “you saw a cow wearing a jacket?”
“Yeah,” said Jacob, “right there in the street.”
“Really?” said Doug, and his mouth hung open.
“Well. No. Not really.”
For a moment they looked across the room at one another and Doug studied Jacob’s bland expression with a look of such severe, aggravated confusion, that Jacob could not help but grin. “Cows don’t wear jackets, Doug. What are you, off your tits or something?”
“Are you fucking serious?” said Doug. “That was a joke? That was fucking bad!” Doug was shaking his head. He looked disgusted. “That was bad. Even for you.”
“Oh, I dunno,” said Jacob, still grinning. He shrugged his shoulders and looked devilishly up into an imaginary sky and with the forefinger and thumb of one hand he stroked his chin. “Cow wearing a jacket,” he said, “pretty funny,” and he squinted his eyes and nodded, thoughtfully.
“Uh-huh,” said Doug, “ remind me please, what are you doing here?”
Suddenly Jacob looked serious, “I thought I was coming to take a look at that trougher on level three.”
“What trougher?”
“The one on level three,” said Jacob. Doug blinked. Jacob said, “the one we took down. The one with the water damage.”
“Oh!” said Doug, “right.” He leaned back in his chair and pointed at a large rectangular light panel that was standing on its end in the corner of the room, next to one of the desks. “That one.”
“Yeah!” said Jacob and he pointed at the light. “That’s the one.”
“You can’t do that one,” said Doug, his eyes went back to the computer screen on his desk and he pulled his chair to a working position under the desk and turned to the computer and began crashing his fingers into the keyboard like they were meteorites. “The roof leaks.”
“Still?”
Doug stopped typing. He thrust his hand out and held the palm out for Jacob to see and said, “don’t — even — get me started.”
“I thought the roof was fixed!”
“Well it’s not.”
“Well — hang on.” Jacob squinted his eyes at Doug, his mouth was slightly opened and his head jutted forward. “You called me!”
“I know! Look. I thought it was fixed. The roof guys were out here last week. They were up there for — fucking — four hours, or something stupid, and they told me they’d fixed it.” Doug waved his hands around above his head as he said this, though he still faced the computer and his eyes did not meet Jacob’s. “Course there’s no way you’d ever know until it rains again.” He put his hands together on the desk and interlocked his fingers and the fingers stuck out straight like spikes and he pressed the pads of his thumbs together and the pads turned white where they were pressed and his hands vibrated as he forced them together. His eyes rolled up and he looked at Jacob. He said “and it rained last night, didn’t it?” waving his hands again, “got here this morning and there’s a fucking waterfall up there.”
“Right,” said Jacob.
Doug shrugged. “They’re coming back today, so we’ll see what happens — the roof guys.” He rolled his eyes and turned back to his computer and his fingertips hung, poised above the keys of the keyboard. He squinted at the screen and leaned in, crouching over the desk, then he recoiled slightly and frowned. “Anyway,” he said, “I’m sure there’s plenty else for you to do.”
“Not really,” said Jacob. He looked at the light. His lips were pressed together and they drew down at the corners. He nodded his head for a moment and then he shrugged at the light. His nodding became an exaggerated leaning to and fro, and his bottom lip stuck out and his eyebrows went up. “I guess it’s not an easy thing, to fix a leaky roof,” he said.
“As if,” said Doug, still addressing his computer screen as though he’d never seen it before.
“Once the water gets in, it goes all over the place,” said Jacob. “Runs down a joist or a hanger, gets on a beam, follows the angle, pools on a duct, drips off a cable, who knows? If you see water dripping off the ceiling, you don’t know where its come from. Water may have crossed the whole building and back before you even see it.”
“Yeah — yeah,” said Doug. “That’s what they want you to think.”
“Who wants me to think?”
“The roof guys,” said Doug and he gave Jacob a sharp look, “don’t want to put themselves out of a job.”
“Oh, I see,” said Jacob, rolling his eyes.
“Yeah, well — ” said Doug and he turned up his palms and his head listed and his eyebrows went up, and he looked upwardly at Jacob like he was being quite reasonable, “ — look, I’m sure plenty of tradesmen are perfectly reasonable people,” and his upturned palms began to rise and the arms came up and he stretched them up into a big V. “But some of these guys — they dont always want to finish the whole job. You know.” And for a moment he sat there with his arms stretched out and holding his palms up and with wide eyes and frowning.
“Right,” said Jacob, squinting. “Guess I’m about to find out what roof guys don’t want me to know?”
“Well, how else do you explain it?”
“Well, it’s not that easy to fix a leaky roo— ”
“Course it’s easy!” Doug’s arms were still up, now he flung his hands up and the fingers all stuck out and he looked at Jacob through half closed eyes and his mouth was open and the profile of a smile was around the edges. “Hey!” he said, and he rolled his chair back a few feet from the desk and looked down at the floor with wide, feverish eyes, and he spread his arms out before him in wide arcs like he was standing on a balcony and addressing some expansive vista below. “What’s that on the floor? is that water?” He looked up at Jacob, astounded. “I wonder where that’s coming from!”
“It’s not that easy.”
Doug’s eyes rolled upward and his round head rocked back and his outstretched arms swept up and with his fingers and thumbs all pointing together, he focused everything he had toward a single point on the ceiling above him “Holy shit!”
“That could be coming from anywhere!” Said Jacob, captured.
“That!” said Doug looking back at Jacob, but still pointing at the ceiling with one outstretched hand, “is coming from the roof. That’s everything I know. That is, in fact, everything I care about.” He rolled chair back to his desk. “The roof leaks. When the roof leaks, you call the roof guy, then the roof guy comes, and the roof guy fixes the roof. That’s how it works”
“Apparently not.”
“Yeah — well — no. Apparently not. That’s how it’s supposed to work,” said Doug, “but — if you ask me — that bloody roof guy is worried about putting himself out of a job. Hey!” his eyes opened wide, “why don’t you get up and fix it! You’re the expert — beams runnin’ down hangars and joists and droplets and puddles drippin’ off stuff!”
“Yeah — not really my thing,” said Jacob, making an amicable grimace.
“D’you bring your bucket?”
“Didn’t bring one.”
“What?” Doug smacked his palms on the desk, “no bucket?”
“No,” said Jacob. On another desk beside him, there was a kettle and a toaster and an dirty plate with crumbs. A few cups laying on their sides. A coffee stained spoon. Big jar of biscuits. An old dusty radio on the corner of the desk. Jacob was leaning over to one side, trying to get a better look in one of the cups. “Buckets aren’t really a part of our kit,” he said.
“Well, shit.” Said Doug. “The sparky didn’t bring his bucket. Imagine that. You know what that’s like, don’t you? That’s like a pilot showing up at the airport without any fucking duct-tape!”
“Yes,” said Jacob. “That is exactly like that.” He had picked up one of the cups, he held it up and inspected it closely, he blew into it and inspected it again. With his other hand he lifted the kettle off it’s stand, he tested the weight of it and then he looked around the room. “Where do you fill this up?” he said.
“The pot?” said Doug. “Dunny”
Jacob put his cup down. “ The dunny? Really?”
Doug frowned and his eyebrows bunched up, he looked conflicted, like he’d just said something without thinking. “I don’t like it,” he said. “It’s just — that’s the tap.” His eyes went to the computer and back, “it gets boiled!”
“Doesn’t bother me,” said Jacob. He shrugged with one shoulder and one corner of his mouth was drawn into the cheek. “All gets boiled.” He lifted his head an inch, “you wan' a cup?”
“Yeah go on.”
Jacob took the kettle from the stand and let it hang like a bag of groceries as he walked with it down the hall. As it swung, streams of little droplets dribbled from the spout and made little puddles on the green linoleum floor. He pushed through the bathroom door and at the sink he set the water to run, he pressed a button on the kettle and the lid popped up and he wedged the kettle into the sink and, as the kettle filled with water, he turned to the empty stall behind him and stepped inside. The water in the bowl was yellow, and there were rich yellow droplets on the seat. He frowned at the droplets and he kicked-up the seat, and as he stared into the bowl he had the sense of something dark and ominous in there, silent and heavy, like a nuclear submarine. Something held in the water, the current drifted; something sick. He flushed the toilet and went back to the sink. The kettle was filled and the water was gushing over the edge and over the side into the sink. He pulled the kettle out from the sink and he washed his hands and he carried the kettle back down the hall to the facilities office. And the water dripped from the kettle as he walked and from his wet hands, and the water fell on the green floor as he walked.
“Just you here today, then?” said Jacob as he walked into the facilities office. He walked to the desk with the kettle stand and he put the kettle back on the stand and he pressed the lever with his finger and the light in the lever came on and was blue.
“Huh?” said Doug. Jacob looked over. At length, Doug said “uh.. yeah — so far. Just me.”
“You know,” said Jacob. “You remind me.” He was standing over the desk with the kettle and he reached out and picked up a large jar of coffee with a blue, plastic lid and he unscrewed the lid and let the lid fall on the desk. With his other hand he stood two cups together and he picked up a spoon in his fist and he plunged the spoon into the coffee and shoveled out two spoons of coffee into the cups.
“What?” said Doug.
“You remind me,” said Jacob, shovelling equal parts sugar into the cups. His eyes moved over and he looked at a place above Doug’s head. “You know, speaking of the roof guys.”
Doug coughed. A static white noise stirred in the kettle and it rose.
Jacob smiled. “ You know I just moved?”
“Moved?”
“Moved house,” said Jacob.
“Oh. Yeah. Right. Moved. Yeah,” said Doug.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so,” said Jacob, “the place I moved too has— well — it has a bit of a roach problem”
“I see,” said Doug, and the corner of his eye creased.
“Massive roach problem actually. We’re seeing something like three or four of them a night!” On the desk beside Jacob, the low sound of bubbling water, then a rolling boil and the kettle clicked off and the bubbling subsided. Jacob poured water into one of the cups and then he took the cup and carried it to Doug’s desk and he put it on the desk next to another cup. “Big one ran across the living room floor last night while we were watching tv. Bold you know. Up on its legs you know?” Jacob poured water into the second cup and sat the kettle down on the desk. He leaned over and looked into the jar of biscuits and he reached inside and pulled one out and he held it up like he was playing cards. “You know how they, kind of, lift up a bit when they run? Kinda skim across the ground, legs all blurred out under them? Anyway, I hit pause button on the tv and we all pretty much just sat there for a minute wondering who was going to run away first.”
“You must have had a concerned look on your face,” said Doug.
“There may have been a few extra seconds between blinks,” said Jacob, and he stared through the very room as though a vision of his memory hovered in the distance. He took a bite of the biscuit and a piece of it broke away and it fell down the collar of his shirt. He stood up straight and looked down the at the front of his shirt where the crumbs had disappeared and he frowned. With a hand at each side, he lifted his belt at the waist and he tilted his hips and a ripple ran the length of his body and the crumbs spilled out from his pants leg and onto the floor. Without lifting his head, he looked up at Doug — who shrugged at him — his eyes went back to the crumbs and with an immeasurable lift of the eyebrows he carefully kicked the crumbs under the desk. “Anyway,” he said, “there are so many cockroaches in the house, they can’t even hide from us anymore.”
“Or they just don’t care to,” said Doug.
“It isn’t great,” said Jacob, not looking up, “so — anyway — given the roaches — I’ve been trying, for the last couple of weeks, to find a way to kill them all that isn’t going to also kill my dog.”
Doug leaned over and brought the coffee cup to his lips and he took a sip and looked up at Jacob and blinked.
“So I’ve been looking online,” said Jacob, “and there’s quite a bit out there, you know. Little home-made videos and stuff.”
Doug put the coffee cup down.
“And I’ve noticed something — ”
“Uh — huh,” said Doug.
Jacob picked up his cup of coffee and he took a sip and then he looked at Doug. “Do you want to know what every single one of these cockroach killing geniuses thinks about pest control?”
“Is this another cow thing?” said Doug.
“Every single one of them says — ” and Jacob lifted his arms into the air delivered unto thee, “find out what the pest controllers don’t want you to know!” He brought his arms down and then he swung them back up, “everybody thinks this!”
Doug was rocking slightly back and forth on his chair and looking skeptical.
“Everybody making these videos has a little snippet at the beginning or the end where they look into the camera and they tell you ‘look, these profession roach killer pest controllers — they don’t want to kill all the roaches; if they do that, they’ll just put themselves out of a job,’ which is crazy, of course. You can’t kill all the roaches. You can only push them back! And even if you can manage to kill all the roaches — in your house, let’s say — well, you aren’t marching out into the street to take care of their reinforcements are you? All you’re doing if you manage to kill every single local roach — is pushing back the front line, to the street! but the battle goes on! They’ll regroup! They’ll strengthen and recover! You haven’t killed all the roaches. They’re coming back! ”
“Oh my god!” said Doug. He leaned forward over his desk and his head came all the way forward straining the neck and he put his hands down far apart with his palms on the desk and he pressed hard on the desk so that his knuckles turned white and his buttocks lifted slightly out of the seat as he leaned forward. He looked up and Jacob, and he squinted his eyes and his teeth were showing as he said, “would you get to the damn point please?”
“What?” said Jacob. He turned to Doug and a sharp, irritated look flashed across his face and he said in a slow, darkening voice “I believe I am getting to the point.”
“Well did you kill the fucking roaches or not?”
The two men looked across the room at one another and they each furrowed their brow and frowned at the other. The one in his seat, sat back in his chair. The one who was standing drank his coffee until it was gone. Then, he put the empty cup on the desk and he leaned over and flicked-on the old dusty radio on the desk. Bob Dylan was singing: You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last! “Well, not really,” said Jacob, and they looked at each other with the same face.
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast!
Jacob reached for the visitors book and he signed his name and, in the box marked reason for visit, he wrote something clever, and he smiled.
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun!
“Anyway,” said Jacob, and he smiled at Doug. “If you haven’t got anything for me to do, I’m ‘a go.”
“Yep!” said Doug
Crying like a fire in the sun!
They waved and Jacob walked back into the hall and he walked to the exit and stepped out into the morning sun and he walked to his car and the lanyard around his neck swung left and right as he walked.
Look out baby the saints are comin’ through!
And there, in the tree, the bird with brown feathers watched as the man walked down the path. And the shadow of the man passed across the water and the glinting of the plastic flashed at the sun around his neck.
And it’s all over now, baby blue!
SQUAWK! said the bird.
