- John's domain
- Annemie
- Secret of the Grain
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John's domain
(Melbourne Times, June 2004)Where did John really live? Once he was gone I started to wonder. I hadn't expected his absence to make me feel so—well, bereft. This time last week he was here, I'd think, to—ing and fro—ing.
He lived in and on our street. But where were John's borders? A crammed terrace over in East Melbourne was definitely one of his outposts, with the grand piano in a front room. Where else? The boarding houses: 'Me old people—what's going to happen to them if they close me down?' The land in the hills where he'd unload stuff. It was filling up, and so was his territory here. No borders really: his huge yellow tray truck plonked out the front had the feel of a residence itself. Years ago he had a trailer with a boat on top; when the street flooded the local kids boarded it and waved proudly.
A false front of rampant pot plants couldn't disguise the stashes around his house. I imagined paths amongst the stoves, steel posts, soda siphons and statuettes.
Mystery was part of it and John fed this. He'd spot you as he was getting down from the truck or contemplating its load. He'd strike a pose halfway between military and camp and think up his hook. If it was just a throwaway you could laugh it off and keep going. If not, your acknowledgement was his cue and he'd move his round frame to his spot. Deliberate. Natty in pinstripe op shop jacket and braces, hair slicked back, rosy cheeks.
'Didn't you know?' His eyes would widen. The voice could boom but John was master of the sudden drop in volume. You remembered his words.
The chronology wasn't clear. The opera: was that before or after the clothing business with his mother? Before he did vaudeville? Surely before they took rock and roll to Tassie. 'We were the first! Took the whole thing over...the guitars, the suits, they went mad.' To ask for explanations wouldn't have done; John would deliver what he would deliver. Another Melbourne spread out before you: fortunes, enterprises, fables. 'It was going to cost him, so he cut it out himself - the melanoma - with a penknife. He showed me the mark on his wrist! Elsa is remembering John, amazed, and maybe admiring.
'Now I don't have anyone to disagree with', the woman from the corner tells me.
Perhaps John matched his stories to his listener. Perhaps from what he let drop you could gather up something that made you more yourself.
'You don't know. You'll never bloody know the half of what John gave me.' It's Peter who does the wrecking, addressing the mourners. 'I haven't got this written down - it's coming straight out of me heart.' He turns to John's coffin.
'John! Why couldn't you do it? Change! I told you - stop collecting. Sell up, live somewhere nice. It's too late now. You've bloody died on me.' He looks at us.
'You'll never see one like him again. We're on the job, it's dark, everyone's gone. I'd say, go home! No, he'd stay. He was strong... even last week, lifting stuff. He had guts too—if someone wouldn't pay me, he'd go em.'
'I'm not a poof, I've got four kids! but I loved that man. The things he's taught me: "Go on, he said, live your life. It's too late for me, but there's more to life than this!" '
I'd been all wrong. John's domain wasn't the street, his houses, his stuff, his outposts; it wasn't even his work wrecking.
It was his words. One of the kids at the funeral stared at the coffin and asked his mother: 'Why doesn't the doctor bring John back down from heaven so he can hear what's going on?'
If only.
© Margaret Jacobs 2004