Making Laws for Clouds by Nick Earls Page B

of us, the lights blurring with the rain washing all over the windscreen, parked cars passing below us to the left and the dull shapes of boats on the water beyond them.
    I’m leaning forward and I think I can smell her hair, the fragrance from her shampoo with new rain mixed in. Ill remember that tonight, later. There’s a lot not to forget. Harbo, the
Stormy Deluxe
, the things I didn’t know about life. My life and his. And sometimes you get to know things slowly – they take weeks or months – then other times they come in bunches, fast, almost too fast. Onto you like this rain. Harbo and the shadow on his lung, his past with Sabine and the pirates and the ultimate piracy of his best mate. But sometimes those things happen. My father leaving all those years ago. Tanika Bell, turning up last year, doing the nativity play, telling me it wasn’t over and meaning it.
    I keep leaning forward, listening to it all, watching it all, remembering everything from then and now. Glimpses of other times and this, the deafening sound of water pounding steel, Tanika’s white hands on thewheel when the lights catch them, working the bus through the streets of Mooloolaba and onto the Nicklin Way, into the mad face of this thrashing pounding storm, the worst of the summer.
    She shouts something out to me, something about the storm and how wet I’d be if I was out there on my bike. And I don’t mind being wet, I don’t mind storms so much, but I tell her, This’ll do me.’ And she doesn’t hear any of it. ‘You, me and rain on a tin roof. That’ll do.’
    And the words don’t seem to make a sound, but we don’t really need them to. Not now.

making laws for clouds
(february)

part two: friday evening
    Fridays we do takeaway when we can, and tonight we definitely can. And I’ve gone the full family-size takeaway deal, first time ever – three large pizzas, two bottles of Coke plus garlic bread for twenty-four ninety-five (more for home delivery).
    When I’m stopped at the lights I can lean over and breathe in the aroma of Meatosaurus pizza, but I hold myself back from eating. Not even the end piece of garlic bread between now and home.
    It’s bought for sharing – for Mum, Wayne and me to eat what we want and as much as we want because we can. Not every night, but tonight we can because I’ve been bumped up to a level two at work and it means a bit more money. So, just this once, I’ve pushed the dinner budget up ten bucks to let us celebrate.
    It’s for Wayne, partly. Wayne always wants to do all-you-can-eat, but it costs a lot and it only ever works out financially if you want to eat a lot of those baconbits. And Wayne only ever really wants to eat pizza anyway so this should be ideal. We’ve never done all-you-can-eat, not since I was a kid. Maybe we’ll do it when I get to level three. That’ll happen one day.
    They’ve left the outside light off at home, as always, but it’s only just getting dark and it’s not as if I don’t know the front steps pretty well by now. I park the bike under the house and I pile dinner in my arms and I find myself singing the old Domino’s ad about having the hots for what’s in the box with the dots. There were some pretty cute girls on that ad. Student girls in a city somewhere, probably down south.
    Upstairs there’s TV noise, the six o’clock ‘Simpsons’ repeat, and heavy footsteps heading down the hall. Slow, heavy footsteps, a door shutting with a bang it didn’t need. Mum’s already been at the rum, obviously, and that makes her a bit unco.
    I duck under the beams and past the broken lattice and the creeper that’s sending skinny wavy tendrils out across the steps. She’s talking to herself down the back of the house, probably in the bathroom. I can hear her. She talks a lot when she’s been drinking – about things gone