At fifteen it is still possible to be hurt by almost anything. The protective skin has not grown and the quick response still waits until midnight to assert itself. Too late, the enemy has marched off in triumph and timing. At midnight, or two a.m. only the pillow, now damp with sweat, is more a mockery than a solace; it not only has lumps and hollows, it surrounds your face and thinks of suffocation. It is in the plot, also.
In the other bed, against the fibro partition in the sleepout, Jim is snoring lightly. He means no harm. He is impossible. Jim doesn’t seem to feel anything: Jim is the ultimate frustration.
Mick heaves over to his left side and doubles up the pillow to raise his head, see if that will do any good. He knows already this is a vain exercise. He has tried it before. Through the glass louvres there seems to be the promise of a breeze so slight that it does not even stir the leaves of the Camphorlaurel tree overhanging their side of the house. Mick believes he can feel it, though. He tugs back the damp sheets to let it circulate along his limbs, even though his summer pyjamas stick to him. There is almost a coldness from his eroding sweat, at least for the first minute or two. Both Jim and Mick wear singlets day and night; to absorb the sweat rather than for any protection. Their mother warns them it keeps their white school shirts drier and cleaner. When he unpeels his singlet in the bathroom at night, Mick often senses it is twice as heavy as when he initially tugged it on. Sometimes, this weather, he has to change his singlet in the morning, too.
Tonight he knows he will twist and squirm and finally drag it off, despite warnings about catching a chill or letting his chest be unprotected. It is Jim, over in his bed, who catches colds and who is vulnerable to asthma, not Mick. For all his stoicism, Jim is the one their mother frets about, Mick can see that easily enough, even though she tries to hide it. No wonder he loses his temper at times; wouldn’t anyone? Anyone, except Jim. Mick has already unbuttoned the pyjama top. It, too, is clammy. Summer nights when the humidity does not drop and the breeze refuses to give even some pretence of coolness, are the worst. The top is off now, and Mick shoves it under the sheet, rather than toss it onto the boards. Now he can get rid of the singlet. He feels its wetness but he rubs it over his smooth chest as if that will mop up the dribble of moisture. This garment is tossed over the side.
Mick does allow the night air to wash over the upper part of his body. It is almost a defiance, secretly disobeying Mum’s orders. At school today – yesterday, rather – not only had he failed to win the one hundred metres freestyle but he had let Garth Rasmussen lord it over him in the dressing sheds after, hounding him with a wet towel flick and joking about Mick’s white skin where the sun did not get to it. Rasmussen was brown all over and was always skiting about how he went sunbaking with his cousins in the dam back of their place. His girl cousins.
It had got to Mick, not because of his pallid tummy and rear but because Rasmussen kept calling him girly-white, girly-white. Jim always warned his brother about his ‘Irish temper’ even though it was years. But Mick had very nearly been dead set to front up to Rasmussen there in the sheds even though Rasmussen was a good foot taller and built like a tank. It had taken self-control. Mick was good at self-control these days. It had been years since his last turn and he was just a kid then. That whole afternoon locked in the bathroom. He remembered it all right. Of course he remembered, it wasn’t his fault.
But Rasmussen was something different. He was deliberately trying to get Mick’s dander up. That’s why Mick chose to ignore him. Well, almost.
Some of the others had stepped in; but that was not the reason. And it wasn’t because Jim had warned him, with that won’t-you-ever-learn look of his. The real reason had been that Mick could not think of any retort that would wound Garth Rasmussen.
He had got beyond thrashing out blindly in a temper. He knew in his heart that words were more lethal than hands and arms and going crazy. You must watch that sharp tongue of yours, Mum said. Did she realize that she had made him secretly proud of his wounding way with words? Jim was his first experiment. Well, not experiment exactly; but Jim was always around and that silence of his was always galling. Mick had become the verbal rapier, Dad had said.. He was all too aware of that, but it had not helped him in the dressing sheds today. The wounding words had not come. Where was his famous ‘sharp tongue’ now?
What he really wanted was to brand his enemy with a potent nickname, one that would cling to him like spiderwebs, like his own shadow, to follow him everywhere, long after school, a name that would be so accurate and so cruel Rasmussen would never be allowed to forget it, would never outlive it. One that would replace Garth with a name like Filth, but more clever and more ruthless. It would not matter that nobody might remember who first coined the word, the word itself would take over. There must be such a word.
What was the name that came to him ten minutes ago? Already vanished, now it prods Mick like a finger on his bare chest till he tosses again, and groans, so that Jim over in the other bed raises his head a moment as if awakened, but then collapses back and draws his sheets over his head. He begins snoring lightly, as always, something to do with his nasal cavities Mum said. Mick stays rigid for a few minutes. He knows there is no hope now; the word has vanished.
Jim seems always to need his bedsheets, even blankets in summer. They have different metabolisms.
Mick, though he might be pallid, has some inner body heat that insulates him whereas Jim would not dream of discarding his singlet, even on a hot night like this is. Mick’s chest, though bare now to the air still seems swathed in the surrounding humidity and the dampness swaddles him as if to constrict all volition.
The sheets are tugged right back. He raises his hips and tugs down his pyjama shorts. He looks over to where Jim is sleeping; Jim has turned his face to the wall now and is rumbling quietly; almost with satisfaction, Mick thinks, and feels the usual pang of envy.
Lying naked on the hot bed is to invite the other sensations and Mick knows by this stage he is past caring. He also knows he will feel guilty later, but already the stronger process has begun, and once commenced it has its own inexorability. Does Jim never have these feelings? Mick has never detected any signs. But perhaps Jim is more sly than anything in his character seems to indicate? Perhaps Jim is more subtle? Mick cannot work his brother out though, being always there, perhaps there is nothing to work out. Jim is who Jim seems: silent, practical, pretty unemotional.
the art is inside
