PAM BAILEY
Old Age isn’t a gradual process. It doesn’t set itself on
you hour by hour, or even day by day. It arrives suddenly. And in big pieces.
Something like an earthquake. It sort of builds up quietly without you noticing
it, and then WHAM! – one day the ground under your feet lets go and you get a
lump all at once.
That’s what Mozza believes.
Not that he’s ever really thought about it much.
Not till a few days ago when he was topping up his ute at
Bailey’s Roadhouse, and Pam Bailey was chatting to him about the footy while he
served himself from the pump.
It was his usual Monday morning, on the way to the tip,
because Monday was the best day to check out the town rubbish dump as most of
the locals chucked stuff out on the weekend, but it was always about Wednesday
before the Council bloke came with the dozer and buried it. Mozza hadn’t had to
buy a piece of timber or a lump of steel or a nut and bolt for as long as he
could remember. He always reckoned it was ridiculous what people threw away.
Pam Bailey was a bit of a funny kid to most people, but
Mozza got on well with her, and other than the girl’s mum, he was about the
only person who called her Pam. Even her dad and her three brothers called her
“Thumper”, or just “Thump” mostly.
Pam was a little on the – sort of - masculine side. Well,
not masculine really, kind of - not feminine - if taken at a glance. She’d
helped her parents and one brother run their truck stop out on the highway ever
since she was fifteen, wore overalls a lot, was damn handy with a spanner. She
was also unstoppable in the country tennis association and was known to raise
bruises with her serve, although she told Mozza once she only played tennis
because the bastards wouldn’t let her on the footy team. She was only half
joking.
It wasn’t as if Pam was all that big or anything, she was
just - athletic. She worked out with her brother’s weights, so her breasts were
all chest and her shoulders were - shoulders! And she kept her hair cropped
spiky and she wore one plain gold ring in her left ear as a kind of token
gesture to her gender, but that only tended to emphasise her air of uni-sexness
if anything, Mozza thought.
Mozza might’ve been one of the few people who could be
called a close friend of Pam Bailey, but it’d be hard to place their
relationship, their fifty-odd year age difference tending to put him in the Old
Uncle or even Grandfather bracket at best. It was probably just a matter of two
fairly hard cases finding some mutual support in each other’s company. He was a
tough old widower with a bad hip and an independent attitude and she had a
defensive perimeter that most people wrongly interpreted as aggressiveness. And
they both preferred uncomplicated people who never spoke a word of bullshit.
So, it was probably more that they simply had an
instinctive understanding of the other, and trusted each other with anything
that particularly needed saying. They chatted often over a Friday night beer,
and Mozza’s Monday morning fill up.
The new police sergeant pulled into the driveway, parked
the pickup van at an untidy angle, nodded a regulation “G’morning” to both of
them and brisked inside to see the girl’s dad.
“Met him yet Pam?”
She made a hint of a smile.
“Yeah, beat him six-love six-one at a friendly up at the
Wungarri church do last Sunday. Plays like a bloody girl!”
They both had a good laugh at the Sergeant’s expense, who
turned at the door and fastened both of them for a second with an official
frown. He was out of word-shot but had a fair guess at the conversation.
“And he doesn’t have a sense of humour either.”
“Wonder how long it’ll take us to break this one in?”
New station sergeants fresh from the city were always
something of a trial till they got the hang of a country town. Then when it was
time to move on most of them hated being transferred.
They went on talking for a while, Mozza relating a story
or two about a few sergeants from the Sixties, tough old buggers that had to BE
law and order. And Mozza thought he preferred them - you always knew exactly
where you stood, they’d shout you a beer or punch you in the head, depending on
which you needed most at the time, straight-forward stuff, hard and fair.
A snappy looking ute rolled up to a pump opposite them,
with “Kultaby Krash” zapped all over its side in showy metallic duco. A chunky
young buck stepped out, and right before Mozza’s eyes a hint of colour rose in
Pam’s cheeks and her whole easy manner seemed to suddenly come to pieces and
start falling over itself. She stuffed her wiper cloth into her overalls
pocket, but then didn’t know what to do with her hands, then changed her stance
three times in five seconds, and totally lost the thread of their conversation.
Mozza wasn’t the most observant person in the world but he
was onto this one, as Pam’s underlying femininity started doing its best to
break loose, but with no idea how. Which just made Mozza feel self-conscious,
also didn’t quite know where to put his feet.
The young panel-beater had only been in town a week or
two, but Mozza’d had a few beers with him one night and had helped him break
the ice with some of the locals. He was an open-faced kid, full of bounce and
goodwill and a ready laugh. But not overly bright.
“G’day Mozza.”
“G’day Doug.”
Mozza wasn’t sure if Pam had met him or not and hesitated
a second, waiting for a cue from one of them, but Doug beat him to it. He
absently nodded at Pam. In her overalls. Hair short and spiky. Grease smudge on
her cheek.
“G’day mate – how’s it goin’?”
Pam looked completely stung. She pulled herself up, and
stiffly, her eyes going watery and her face setting hard.
“G’day”, she snapped, and grabbed the twenty dollars out
of Mozza’s hand and stomped off, as the young guy went on filling up and
dah-dah-dah-ing to his radio mumbling in the background, every now and then
orchestrating little movements to the beat and totally oblivious to the finer
points of the world at large.
Mozza simply wanted to be somewhere else. Sometimes the
whole human drama left him flat footed and just a touch pissed off. And when it
did all he wanted to do was get away on his own and as fast as possible.
He dragged his crook hip into his ute, swung out and
around the pump, and KRUMP! - took off the front corner of the sergeant’s paddy
wagon with his roo bar. Bits of busted plastic and bent metal and things fell
about and stood up at odd angles.
Pam and her dad and the sergeant were suddenly alongside
as Mozza and his bad leg hauled themselves out and contemplated the damage, at
a loss for something reasonable to offer.
“Geez - sorry ‘bout that mate - didn’t realise you was so
far - I just pulled around...”
The sergeant was obviously less than happy and seemed to
take an inordinate interest in the way Mozza had to do his unique little
sidestep twostep to get out. But all that did was make Mozza defensive.
“Well the bloody thing was hanging out in the drive a
mile! - where’d they teach you to park?!” Possibly not the smartest thing in
the world to say at that point, but the sergeant still managed to go on
silently weighing up the pieces of the situation - the paperwork, the PR, the
van off the road, take official action or not...
“Got your driver’s licence on you...”, but keeping to the
neutral ground somewhere between “...mate?” and “...sir?”.
Doug sauntered over, wiped his hands, and with the
faintest hint of a smile whipped a business card out of his top pocket and
poked it between the copper’s clenched fingers.
“Happy to give you a quote Sarge.”
The Sergeant’s mouth pulled up tight as he stuffed the
card ungraciously back in the kid’s pocket.
“Buzz off sport and let me get on with this will you!” and
he started taking details from Mozza’s licence.
For a few days after that Mozza felt a little –
disconcerted - as if his confidence in something important had been shaken. Not
just because he’d bent the copper’s van, but that he’d simply had an accident.
He wasn’t the sort of bloke who ran into things. But he hadn’t heard any more
about it and he’d started to put it out of his mind.
The station constable was at Mozza’s back door, and the
feeling was back.
“G’day Tony.”
“How are y’ Mozza.”
“Yeah, good mate. What can we do for y’? Wanna cup of tea?
Just made a fresh one.”
“Nah, can’t stop thanks. Ah - why not. Okay.”
He followed Mozza in and sat down at the kitchen table and
waited while the old man poured an extra cup and had settled back to his own.
“Mozza, the Sarge wants you in for a – um - driving test.”
“What?”
Mozza was looking at him like he hadn’t heard him right,
cup frozen at his lip.
“Sorry mate. I told him you probably hadn’t had an
accident or a ticket for a million years but your little bingle down the
roadhouse and – well, you know these new blokes...”
“A driving test?”
He set his tea back down and the teaspoon rattled in the
saucer.
“A bloody DRIVING TEST?! I haven’t had a prang in fifty
bloody years! I’ve driven everything from a Mini Minor to a bloody Cat D400
Dumper and never even run over anyone’s bloody foot! Now some pumped-up copper
parks his van everywhere and I bend it a bit and he wants ME to take a drivin’
test!!”
“HEY! - listen, Mozza - you ARE seventy-five after all,
and you know you have trouble with your crook leg. One day you won’t get the
brake fast enough and you’ll run into someone. I know you’re careful and all
that but you’re lucky you haven’t been stuck with this before now. Wouldn’t be
so bad if you drove an automatic...”
“An orta-bloody-MATIC! - that’d be like walking with a
stick! I’ll give it ALL away before I do that!”
The constable shook his head a little and sipped his tea.
He somehow knew this wasn’t going to be easy. He had a lot of respect for the
crusty old fella, and his own grandad and Mozza had walked a lot of hard miles
together one time or another. But he knew what had to be done. He put on his
best counselling face.
“What can I tell y’ mate - that you’re thirty and you can
still run like a rabbit? I’m sorry - the Sarge is a bit of a pain in the arse
and yes, if you hadn’t bent the van it probably would’ve been at least another
week before he checked you out anyway. It’s not official, but he can do it that
way if he chooses, all right? Do me and yourself a favour and do a run-around
for him in an automatic - you’ll bolt it in and the Sergeant won’t look like a
dill. You can use the wife’s Mazda.”
They both finished their tea in silence and the constable
got up to leave.
“Okay Mozza? Thanks for the tea – but tomorrow morning at
ten, right?”
The old man was staring hard at the middle of the table as
if some answer might be there.
“Uh - oh, yeah – okay Tony - okay - I’ll sleep on it.”
Tony thought about saying some more, but decided against
it and let himself out.
The cat ducked in the door as he left, rubbed itself on
two of the table legs and then sat on the hearth in front of the wood stove.
The old grey tom fixed Mozza with a hey a spot of milk would be nice sort of
look. Mozza shifted his stare to the cat, and felt a small weariness, like
inevitability, creeping up his legs.
“How come you can still run like a rabbit and I can’t, you
bagga bones?” he asked softly. “You must be about a bloody hundred.”
The cat looked aside a fraction as if to say well for
starters I never fell off a TV mast when I was sixty. Mozza nodded and poured
it some milk, sat back down and watched it drink.
It was about right then that it came to Mozza, the thing
about Old Age. How it comes in lumps. One day you’re a driver like anyone else
and the next day you’re too old to be let loose in anything but a lady’s
automatic. One day some bits of you are just like they always were and then
suddenly WHACK! – bad luck and circumstance points out that a whole heap of
years have gone by while you were looking somewhere else.
He packed up the cups and went over to the pub.
Pam Bailey was at the bar, nursing a schooner and studying
herself in the yellowing “Yalumba Fine Wines” mirror on the wall behind the
glasses rack. The place was all but empty save for an old guy over in the
corner on his own, three farmers down the other end discussing fence posts and
the publican tidying up something under the counter.
Mozza eased his wiry frame onto the stool alongside Pam,
got his bad leg comfortable, exchanged a couple of mumbles and a nod with the
publican and got a beer out of Pam’s change. He downed the first half and then
sat silent. He caught her eye in the mirror.
“You got the miseries too uh?”
“Yeah - probably.”
“Yeah – ain’t it a bastard...”, and he filled her in on
the aftermath of his little scrape on her driveway, but getting scratchy all
over again as he talked.
She gave his prickliness some room to move, a prickliness
laced with a touch of something else, she thought - self-pity maybe – self-pity
that didn’t sit well on the old man.
They finished their beers in silence. Mozza got the next
round and that was half down too before he spoke again.
“So - what’s YOUR problem...?”
She didn’t say anything straight off, but started studying
the froth inside her glass, looking for the words.
“Ah – nuthin’...”
“Other than the young bloke from the crash repair - eh?”
God, it was like he’d knocked open a pressure valve. The
pain tumbled out.
“Yeah well HE can get fucked too”, and she sculled the
rest of the glass and set it down on the bar with a bump, holding it tightly
between her thumb and fingertips like it was something dangerous. Mozza could
see the tremor in her wrist, could just about hear her jaw grinding.
“That bad eh?”
They sat in silence some more as Pam took several slow
deep breaths, sniffed once, and rubbed at her face with the palm of her hand.
The world had caught her with her guard down. She instinctively hit back.
“Hey Wal, we’re dying of bloody thirst down here!”
It was louder than it needed to be and just a fraction
belligerent. The three farmers paused in mid-sentence and looked down the bar
and the old fella in the corner’s drink froze half-way. The publican drew two
more beers, took the twenty dollar note from the bar in front of her, returned
the change to the same spot. Everything around them picked up where it left
off.
Mozza and the girl sipped a while, both now staring into
the depths of the mirror, each looking for what was needed, for themselves and
for the other. Pam finally spoke first.
“You know how I got nicknamed Thumper?”
“Mmm - no, can’t say I ever heard.”
“It was in grade seven. The sports master - Mr Dunn - good
teacher - he put me in one of the cricket teams, reckoned that sport was for
everyone - everybody should be able to have a go at anything. Good bloke.
Anyway, the two Garrett kids - remember Lennie and Rob? - not sure where they
are now - they were pretty much the ring-leaders of everything in primary
school, top sports players but both thick as porridge - and mean little
bastards with it.
“Well, I knew how to bat - Sunday afternoon out the back
with dad and me brothers y’know? - and I wasn’t bad either, but the kids at
school didn’t know that. All the boys, even some of the girls, thought the idea
of a bird playing competition was really stupid - but the Garretts especially
gave me a bad time, talking up big about how they were gunna bodyline me off
the field on a stretcher - break this sappy sheilah’s ribs and all that crap –
and fair enough, they were the star bowlers and they had most of the kids
fairly petrified. A lot of it was bluff but the little buggers knew how to make
a ball rise off the old composite pitch at school. Take y’ bloody head off!
“Anyway, I belted both of them all over the oval that day.
They threw everything at me except the umpire. Really humiliated the pair of
little turds. Only got out in the end showing off trying to go for a big six.
Made about fifty-something. Top score for a primary school match.
“Well, lunch time the next day those two – WITH three of
their mates - they caught me behind the wood-shed, said they were gunna find
out if I was really a girl or not, kept sayin’ I was probably a boy in a dress.
Shit like that. They made a circle round me and God I was scared, but I wasn’t
going to show them little bastards that, so I just kept sayin’ you touch me you
slimy pricks an’ I’ll thump hell out of you! – kept sayin’ it over and over -
and they all started goin’ – ‘Thum-per! Thum-per!’ - y’know - like the mob of
feral dogs they were.
“Then - both of the Garrett boys grabbed me and rode me
down and it was really on. Geez did I fight. But the other three jumped in and
they all held me down...”, and she was looking into her glass still, tears from
the remembering fresh again in her eyes, the shame, the frustration, the anger.
“...and they pulled off my pants and made jokes and all
had a bit of a fiddle...”, she finished quickly, and took a deep breath.
“And the name stuck.”
Pam went quiet again, took a sip of her beer. Mozza knew
there was nothing right to say at that moment, and waited.
“It took me about six months, but one by one I squared up
with that lot. I caught each of ‘em on their own and thumped the absolute
bejesus outa them.”
Only then did she smile, just a little, relishing the
memory.
“Yep, one by one.”
Quietly and simply an understanding came to Pam Bailey,
about herself, about living.
“But – I don’t think I ever really stopped. Thumping
blokes, y’know? - can’t help meself.”
Mozza thought about that, and cast around for something,
something that’d sound a bit like words of wisdom.
“Maybe it’s time to give it away Pam - let go - get on
with being – y’know - the rest of yourself...”
“Yeah. It’d sure raise a big laugh in this town, but...”,
and a certain tenderness crept into her voice, “...I’d - like to have a good
man, bunch of kids, all that...”, and she managed a rueful smile, knew that it
was safe with Mozza, so added - “...but seems like all the local blokes - I’ve
either beat ‘em up or abused ‘em one time or another - to them I’m just Thumper
Bailey. I’ll need to run into someone, from out...”, and she raised one
shoulder.
“Like Mike the panel-beater?”
“Yeah - someone like him.”
“Well - why don’t you give him a chance? Chuck them
overalls away and - and - let your hair grow - get into a dress a bit more
often - all that stuff. You got good legs you know.”
She made out to guffaw and coloured up again with self-consciousness,
and just a touch of pleasure. She nudged him in the ribs.
“Geez MOSS-tyn! - you old perve!”
He hated being called Mostyn. Only Pam ever got away with it.
“Ah - you know what I bloody mean.”
“Yeah - I know. Yet - funny - somehow it feels like -
admitting defeat...”, and she mulled it over a little longer, then pushed one
elbow into his ribs, “...a bit like driving an automatic, eh?”
They both had
a tired sort of a chuckle and finished their beers.