When I arrived Joseph was
leaning on the green chicken wire fence around the chook pen, looking at the
chooks. This was strange, because all my life he’d never just looked at shit
unless it was in conjunction with doing. He could shear sheep for hours on end
but got fidgety watching them for two minutes grazing in the paddock. I parked
my car and got out. He saw me and seemed embarrassed, almost surprised, and
kept saying sorry for putting me out. I told him it was okay and we went
inside.
All the blinds in the house
were drawn and it was cold enough for me to notice that it was cold. We walked
through the kitchen to get to the lounge room, emerging with a couple of cold beers
each from the slate archway dividing them. My old man and I had helped Joseph
build that archway. I noticed a slab box full of empties on the kitchen table, and
lot of dirty dishes in and around the sink. There were more stubbies and cans
on the coffee table, and also a Coke bottle bong. I’d never known my brother to
smoke weed at all, not even as a teenager. His place smelt of weed and stale
food and I sat down and pulled out all the stubby tops I could see sandwiched between
the couch cushions. I was going to read the quiz questions on the stubby tops
but couldn’t because they’d had been folded in half really tightly. Next to me on
the couch was a bag of peanuts. I stuck my hand inside but there was nothing
left but the chaff at the bottom.
Joseph sat on the one-seater and
cracked his beer. He wasn’t apologising anymore. He wasn’t really saying
anything. I kept expecting him to launch into an explanation of why I’d come
round, but instead he just put the occasional small-talk type question to me in
that affected tone of voice he got when he was on the piss. As the afternoon
wore on I thought that maybe he was waiting for me to ask what was wrong; a few
times I even sort of sensed that he’d gone quiet for that reason. The problem was
that I was no good at broaching sensitive stuff and neither was he and so I
answered his nothing questions as if nothing was all we had to talk about. The
TV got turned on. I started to think about the car. For the rest of the night we
sat around sinking beers, which I guess was all right. After I’d gone to bed I
could still hear him in the lounge room a while, hear the ping of glass and the
sound of breathing and of a body moving around under clothes.
I stayed with my brother for
three days. I helped him with some of the farm work and told him a few untruths
about how well Rachel and me were getting on. There was never any Optus reception
at Joseph’s and so I didn’t talk to Rachel once, but thought about her a lot. I
told Joseph about the tit incident with mum and he laughed and said that’d be right. Then, as I was about to
leave, he told me not to tell mum that I’d been round. I finally worked up the
courage to ask if he was okay, despite not being able to look into his eyes as
I asked.
“Yeah, mate,” he said. “Always
fine, always fine.”
“Okay.”
“You’re a legend, Andy.”
I didn’t know what to say to
that and just turned and got into my car. I was reversing and had my head out
the window of my car to mind the ditch on the side of the driveway when Joseph
yelled, watch out for that fucking T-Rex, because Jurassic Park was what he called the greenhouse.
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