The Old Man and his best mate had gone to the pub on the foreshore.
The drive down from Port Augusta had been comfortable but monotonous as the two adults sat up front, talking seldom and anyway, you couldn't hear what they were saying really because the long door windows were wound right down to let whatever cool breeze that may have existed in.
The boy liked the car. The Old Man's best mate had bought it brand new: a beautiful gold Valiant Regal two door hardtop. It sounded good somehow, rolling along the highway and the boy couldn't quite put his finger on why he felt proud to be travelling the breadth of Australia in it.
But it sounded good.
The boy liked Port Augusta. He liked the caravan park they stayed at on the water's edge. He remembered being there a couple of years earlier but back then it was just The Old Man, his sister and him and they liked the caravan and they liked the other kids they met and he especially liked annoying his older sister for whatever attention he could get. On that trip too, both of the children loved the hundreds of miles of the Nullarbor Plains' limestone highway punctuated only by treacherous potholes that seemed to forever limit the speed to no more than twenty miles per hour.
But now it was The Old Man and his best mate and him in the Valiant in the endless August stifling heat as they pulled into Ceduna.
"You be right? Grab a bitter lemon from the boot and go sit on the beach for a while. We'll find you.", The Old Man had stretched around in his pale cream bucket seat with a smile that revealed too many wars of the heart's habits, too much debauchery, too many bad decisions.
The boy said nothing. He waited until The Old Man had climbed out of the car, and stood at the back as The Old Man's best mate opened the boot and grabbed two cans of soft drink for the boy. The boy liked The Old Man's best mate. He was handsome in a Hollywood star kind of way and had a powerful build. The kind of grown up face and body that are put together in such a way as to be relaxed with kings or killers.
"You gonna be right?".
The Old Man's best mate gazed at the kid with fractured adult-blue eyes and smiled warmly. The boy couldn't answer that question with any degree of certainty but he nodded his head and looked down silently. A habit he'd picked up very early on.
And they were gone.
The ground was hot beneath the boy's bare feet and the sound of the surf was surprising loud, in spite of the near non-existence of waves. And the sun bleached everything from the blues of the ocean and the sky through to the garish signs above the shops advertising cigarettes and ice creams and Bex headache powder and milkshakes and Emu and Swan and Southwark Ale. Everything looked out of place and unhealthy and inviting and terrifying all at once because of the strange, untempered light.
Already it was burning the boys pale legs and arms but after bouncing around in the back of the car for six hours, the boy didn't mind - it didn't hurt really, in spite of wishing the cans of bitter lemon were cold instead of warmed through to the point of hot to the touch, having been sitting in the boot of the car since leaving Sydney.
The pier seemed to go forever into the sea and shy of the intermittent lazy wavelet lapping the sand, the whole gave the appearance of being subtly crazed glass when the glare eased on the occasional insolent white caps.
The boy put his back against the warm wall and looked out, with no singular idea or image forming in his head other than to out-stare the relentless light, the infinite blue on blue. Finally and for no real reason, a colourful picture of a Whitman pop-up book toucan bird slowly formed, shade by shade, hue by hue, line by dotted line. So abstracted and haphazard was the burgeoning memory, that the boy smiled broadly when he finally realised what it was he was thinking. Seeing himself from outside himself produced a pleasant sensation that refused to terminate in his brain , instead spreading its small joy along every vein, every artery, every capillary, until his every cell was infused with vibrant Toucan.
The bitter lemon tasted... special! in spite of the liquid's temperature. The boy had overheard The Old Man boasting about how he'd stolen cartons of it, together with tin upon tin of Adora Cream Wafer biscuits as well as Smarties and chocolates. After a thousand miles or more of nothing but bitter lemon soft drink, Adora cream wafer biscuits and Smarties, only his enjoyment of the soft drink remained undiminished. The biscuits and chocolate, as heaven-sent as they initially had been, had left him feeling sick and shaky as far back as Renmark.
Somewhere between acknowledging the full joy of the soft drink and the completed portrait of the picture book toucan, the boy became aware of another human being sitting next to him. Distant but close. Added to this, the boy felt the unusual sensation of not feeling at all intimidated in any way. No alarms sounded, no arm hair or neck hair, no amygdaloid release insisting upon his motor skills to make an effort to run or stand and raise his small fists. Only an acknowledgement of other. A living, breathing other that gave no hint of hope nor despair, danger nor joy.
The man was quite old and never once turned to look at the boy. He simply slouched against the wall, much as the boy himself had done, looking straight ahead at the irenic ocean. A warm ghost of a breeze played across the beach lifting minuscule particles of sand in front of them, and abated almost immediately. After weighing up what may or may not have been deep and heavy and worldly thoughts, the boy appeared to make up his mind by deciding it was okay to look at the man and not turn away - even should the man challenge him by looking back.
But the man posed no such threat. And in spite of the greyness of the man's beard and disheveled hair standing in extraordinary contrast to the etched and lined darkness of his skin and the unearthly paleness of the singlet and shorts, all in all, the man appeared to be an unprecedented assemblage of somber and comic. A rousing cheer from the pub into which The Old Man and his best mate had disappeared startled the boy's carefully crafted aged-nine-and-a-half-year-old insights, but the old man's eyes never wavered for an instant.
Thought fireworks, stellar explosions, cascading universes of feelings and words and half-felt impressions intersected, coalesced, exploded and dissipated to dust and memory in the forever silence as they sat there. Unattended seagulls swooped and danced and taunted and fled when neither scraps of food nor irate hand gestures and sounds were forthcoming. Neither the boy nor the man was discomfited by the silence or the gulls. Nor the presence of the other. This dynamic. Merely things alive in what may well be a Drysdale seascape, if Drysdale had ever painted by the sea. Barely discernible things sitting. Barely discernible things thinking. Barely discernible things passing briefly in and out of each others' reach and memory. Barely discernible, different and the same. Old and young. Black and grey and white and sunburned red.
And a too warm can and a half of bitter lemon.
It occurred to the boy with impressive shock that he wanted to stay here like this. He wanted The Old Man and his best mate to stay in that pub and do what all Old Men and their best mates do in pubs forever. And the dark skinned, silent man sitting not a couple of arm lengths away could stay or go as he pleased. But the boy had made up his mind. He himself wanted to stay right here.
If the boy only ever knew one thing with any certainty, it was this.
By and by the boy pushed the unopened can across the sand towards the man and this startled the man for reasons he would never be able to fathom throughout the remainder of his days. At last he turned his full attention to the boy and the boy saw for the first time that the landscape of the man's face - the creases and crags, the blemishes, the sheen and the mattedness, was not of a place so very alien or even old. It was only a world perfectly mirroring the imperious and jealous and merciless sunlight.
And the man smiled, revealing some white and broken teeth and said, "This for me?"
The wide open road.
