Blue Skies Read Online Free PDF Page B

father.
    In the town, among the more sophisticated who could think of these things, it was rumoured that he took drugs.
    It was rumoured that he slept with his sister.
    Stories were told of how, at the age of thirteen, he had run away. He went missing one midnight and stayed so for weeks, while his frantic parents had the entire state police force out after him. When he was found in the central highlands sitting in a clearing stark-naked chewing roots, they took him away and talked to him on couches, and gave him electric shocks. It had done no good, it seemed. So much, they said, for modern medicine.
    Crazy Coot.
    They bought his pictures, these town folk. Slowly at first, but as his exploits became more embroidered, the more his pictures sold: a bit of decoration to hang on the wall; a bit of himself; a bit of scandal; a conversation piece.
    Today his wife had left in her battered blue station wagon to teach at the local school. She took their son, who was in the infants’ class. She worked to support the painter, while the painter dreamed of success in the posh private galleries of the mainland, where people are prepared to pay more, being used to that kind of thing.
    But these are all my conclusions. He did not speak of these things to me, but let me dream around them. Sometimes this annoyed him, and sometimes I thought it amused him, but he let it happen either way. I found myself telling stories about him, and I told them to anyone who would listen. I tried to stop it, but could not help it. He said nothing. I knew he knew what I was doing: spinning my life out of his.

    I got off the bus, and Ben collected his mail. We went to the house, an old colonial farmhouse, beautiful and battered. There was a great deal of land attached to it, but Ben didn’t farm the property. It belonged to his sister, and he let bits of it to a neighbouring farmer to graze sheep, while the other bits he left to nature. A creek ran roughly through the middle. In summer it was a canyon with steep, hard, red-earth sides and a few slimy puddles at the bottom; in rainy seasons it flooded. He had channelled some of this creek water into a pond, where he kept ducks for his own amusement.
    We walked around the house to the back door, which led across a small wooden porch straight into the kitchen. There we made tea, and then we sat at the large pine table and rolled cigarettes and smoked them, gazing thoughtfully into each other’s eyes. We wondered why I had come.
    â€˜So,’ he said. ‘Good morning. Let’s go.’
    We went through to the bedroom. It contained twin beds. Once I had taken this to be a sign—a bad marriage: all was not right in the bedroom—where all the problems start, my mother said. But this time my mother and I were wrong. He told me how it was.
    â€˜When you sleep together you naturally cuddle up, right? Nice and cosy. Mmmmmm. Why not? Well, what happens is, it drains you off. All that touching gets to blunt the edges. So you don’t want to fuck so much. Right?’
    â€˜Right.’ He was making speeches. Leaving clues for me to go over later.
    â€˜This way is better. You go to bed together for one reason. When you really want to. It’s good. Very sharp. You have the best times when you feel like that.’
    â€˜Really?’
    â€˜Yes, really. You should try it. Or maybe you wouldn’t like it. Too straightforward for you. You’re too bloody evasive. So soft .’ He said it like a long word, smiling all the way through. ‘Soft at the edges, but hard as rocks somewhere in there. Very nasty.’
    â€˜Put your glasses on,’ he said, ‘and get what you fancy out of the trunk. A bit of old velvet might be nice.’ He went to his bed and pulled it out from the wall into the middle of the room. I took my clothes off. It was terribly hot in there. The windows, blistered shut in some past heat, wouldn’t open. Ben climbed over his bed and disappeared.