The Raffle
episode 3
Barrelling
Realising he still clutched in his left hand the black knob of the one-armed bandit, Wanto pulled his twenty-twenty eyeballs away from the horizon, where the floating car transporter steamed south toward the harbour entrance, the name of the line, Wallenius Wilhelmsen, in white letters still legible to him, despite the huge distance and harsh morning glare (he took pleasure in reading difficult-to-see words). He scowled at the poker machine. A lemon, an orange, and a pair of plums. Fuck it. Not that the ancient pokie was set up to pay out, or Wanto had any use for cash in the nursing home, but it seemed to whisper ominously of his coming luck in the raffle.
For the first time he wondered . . . if he won -- could he change his mind? What could Green Room do? Could taking the drop still be "voluntary", as was required by law, if they forced him to do it? Yes -- because he had signed a contract, in sound mind, five years before. And on the same page, he recalled with a wince, he had signed over twenty percent of his estate to the nursing home chain. But what if he said he was staying in the line up, so to speak, another few years? No one had done this before. Should he go to BigMog right now, tell him he wanted his name out of the draw? What would it cost him -- his family -- in penalties? What would the other residents say, when they learned he had piked? Could he continue living here?
Because he liked his life, despite the drawbacks to ageing, and the pain in his back and legs. He wasn't bored yet. He enjoyed his perfect eyesight, he liked reading, the view from the sunroom, waiting for visits from Collette or his sons. They didn't come often, but this showed they weren't burdened by him. He was no Eric. His painting was getting better in Diversional Therapy, and he made the residents laugh with his jokes. He had their respect, from his many victories in surf comps. He was not demented. That's what the doctor said.
Aww fuck. He smiled as if giving himself encouragement, and spun the fruit again, the reels clunking softly on their lubricated cams. He would be OK. There were twenty residents in the draw. He never won anything, anyway. Never even a scratchy.
. . . Three peaches.
Fuck ! He let the lever spring back and shuffled through the solarium toward the verandah, then pulled up suddenly before the double doors at the hardwood deck. His heart sank as he heard Baldric, the hulking ex-property developer and Green Room's latest admission, bragging. Wanto pictured the arrogant man, in Wanto's chair, talking himself up, his low voice booming from the shaded corner beside the potted monsteriosa. Probably spraying more of his half-coherent putdowns at the residents, as he had for the past week. They would be plonked, stultified, on the bbq furniture, probably a half-dozen -- Spoon, Rockin' Ron and the others, not knowing what to do -- submerged in their geriatric fog.
Wanto cocked his head to listen. Something was going on out there. Someone was shouting, the voice was Johnno's, then Baldric yelling back, Hup! and a thudding sound as something heavy hit the deck. This was followed by raucous laughter, a cheer from Baldric, applause, and, over it all, the clink of beer stubbies. What was up? Wanto sucked down on his teeth, then careful not to overbalance inched to the verandah where the broad eves of the old building overlooked a native garden and a wisteria pergola.
The beer, he knew, had been laid on by the home for Squid's passing. The image of his mate's final departure in the mortuary van flashed through his mind -- though of course Squid had left them the day before, had chosen the "Psychotropic Gateway" as his exit route, a finely calibrated, doctor-supervised drug faze that climaxed in jaw-grinding ecstasy and produced, claimed some residents, a shimmering white fireball -- the flight of the soul -- spiralling from the victim's head on his death. Though Wanto had not observed this, the previous afternoon, when he stood barefoot on the seagrass matting watching, as Squid took the drop. Propped among silk cushions in the dim light of the Pharmaceutical Lounge, the shrunken old mollusc had smiled, and sipped his cocktail. His book fell to the floor when he died.
Squid had been Wanto's mate, though the former optometrist got on with everyone, but felt since Baldric's admission somehow excluded, as if there was a joke, and he didn't get it. Baldric was an expansive personality; Wanto was intense. With his background in real estate Baldric was a blagger; Wanto dealt in details. He wondered if he had lost his sense of humour, or the world had overtaken him. Where were his children? Would they visit today?
He turned the corner past the big rosemary hedge in its rectangular planter and looked to far end of the verandah where he saw Baldric, lying face down about two metres from the bbq furniture suite. On the curved, slatted benches sat Rockin' Ron, Johnno, The Kalakau Kid, Larry, and Filthbarrel. Beside them, on a cracked, faded vinyl sofa lined against the wall under Chonie's window, sat Chonie and Spoon. She was the only woman at Green Room, and held Spoon's hand as she grinned through puckered lips, heavily lipsticked, and Wanto groaned to notice she had again neglected to put her teeth in. Not that the men were groomed; they dressed identically in boardshorts and T-shirts, the same every day until one of the carer's smell thresholds drove him or her to do laundry.
Johnno clapped his hands and shouted. "Coming, coming, coming," he said. The chubby, silver haired ex-software writer was craning stiffly over the dozen empty Cooper's stubbies arranged over the table, smiling broadly, looking down at the floor where Baldric, in white boardshorts and an oversized, mustard-coloured surf-label T-shirt, was now pretending to paddle, twisting his neck as if to size up a wave behind him.
"Coming, coming, coming," said Johnno with rising urgency, then swigged from his beer. "Looks like a left."
"Yay," shouted Larry. A murmur spread through the small group. There was more clinking of stubbies.
"Feathering!" shouted Rockin' Ron. "Eight freakin' foot! And it's a right!"
"Six!" yelled Johnno. "And left. I oughta know."
"Fricken eight!" countered Ron.
"Jaysus!" yelled Baldric in mock exasperation, looking over at them, beaming, then twisting his head to look again at the imaginary peak. "Come on then!" He made as if to paddle harder, raising his chest from the floor, his arms scrabbling in powerful, alternating arcs forward of his head, hands sliding down the planking and lifting at his hips, his legs jerking, kicking, as if trying to squeeze every remnant of planing speed from his board.
"Gonna barrel!" shouted somebody.
"Super hollow!"
"Dry reef!"
"Coming!" yelled Johnno again, then inhaled sharply and over the laughter and the clatter of beer bottles, screamed, "Go!"
What Wanto saw next defied belief. Rooted to his spot beside the solarium doors, he must have blinked. He wanted to watch it again in digital replay, and involuntarily glanced about for a screen. Baldric was too fast. One micro-second he was lying on his fat gut, clowning, the next he had popped up in a perfect crouch, back knee slightly dropped, weight over his front foot, driving down as if into a massive left, rising slightly to let his rocker take over then dropping and twisting backhand into a pig dog, squinting through the foam, grabbing his rail, his left hand in the face, a whooshing sound gushing from his lips; it was the closest in years Wanto had felt to being in the water, it was as if he was hallucinating. What bullshit! But the undeniable fact was that, thanks to the radical ligament surgery, the eighty-three-year-old Baldric was as lithe as a fourteen-year-old. Then he seemed to drop down the wave, which had apparently opened up, and stood in a religious pose basking, in his cavernous hissing tube, then pumped a little more for speed, chose a high line to exit, then glided over the shoulder, dropping his hands to his imaginary rails and his chest to the deck and rolling over and jumping again to his feet. "Yew!" he yelled, raising both hands in a victory sign and whirling in circles on the spot. "Suck my dick!"
There was an eruption of applause, and Baldric stomped to the sofa, still making his "V" signs, and flopped down beside Chonie, on the other side of Spoon. She fluttered her false eyelashes and cooed at her new hero, then released Spoon's hand and nestled into Baldric's underarm, stroking his pectorals with her wrinkly arthritic fingers. Spoon stared straight ahead. He had noticed nothing.
Baldric beamed at the others and hugged the old woman's bony shoulders into his chest, while extending his other arm to take the stubbie placed into his hand by the Kalakau Kid, who had to lean with some effort not to fall from his bbq bench. There was fumbling of the bottle, and Wanto remembered that Baldric was nearly blind, or so BigMog had said, from some eye disease.
Wanto stepped forward, bumping a plastic bucket with his foot.
"Oh, hi mate," said Johnno, and the others looked around. A silence descended. Wanto shifted uneasily.
There was a pause, then Rockin' Ron offered, "Come'n sit down mate."
"Yesh, yesh, come'n mate," said Spoon, deliriously. "Mate-o. Are you? Wanto, want not, what not, wonton, wonton!" he added, rolling his words as if tasting them. "Walk against wonton!" This seemed to make Spoon entirely happy. Chonie's face had now slumped into the lap of Baldric's scuffed boardshorts, and the master of air-surfing was stroking her grey hair as she purred in his crotch.
"Aw, nah, I'll be right," said Wanto.
"Nah, what's up mate," said Johnno.
"Who is it?" said Baldric. "I can't see."
"Wanto," said the Kalakau Kid.
"Who?" said Baldric. "Leave him. If he wants to be a tool."
Wanto thought he heard the group cackle from around the bbq setting.
It was known within the home that Wanto and the new man disliked each other, though the reasons were unclear. Green Room was like that: cliques mysteriously formed, hierarchies sprang up on past lives, often based on where the men had surfed, so many years before. There was the Johnno faction, the Rockin' Ron faction -- these things were not spoken, unless a fight broke out in the dining room, when one of the residents drank directly from the milk jug, for example, or another blew his nose on the cloth serviette. Then one would accuse another of being a gut-slider, or an Eric, and the carers would step in quickly to avert a flailing brawl.
"Fuck you Baldric," said Wanto, moving down the verandah. "You're a fake. Everything you do is a lie."
Baldric looked past Wanto, like a blind man would, then gathered a small ball of spit between his lips, bent his head down, and dropped it into Chonie's ear.
Angry, Wanto quickened his pace down the verandah.
. . . to be continued
Next episode: http://forum.realsurf.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3950
Previous episode: http://forum.realsurf.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3664
Episode One: http://forum.realsurf.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3482
This story is fiction. All events and personal relationships depicted are fictional © Squidink 2005
* The Raffle episode 3
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* The Raffle episode 3
Last edited by Squidink on Thu Apr 27, 2006 8:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"Stay Happy and you'll be Perfectly Fine" - Jack
Good read Squid although you scare me with images of becoming some feaked out old guy who dribbles alot. Which I suppose is not much different from being middle aged and dribbling as I do now.
Al this is gold. "She didn't realise I was fairly high and spent much of the evening trying to figure out why a purple and orange cow wanted me to climb a tree."
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Chonie
great work, thanks Squid
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