Theft: A Love Story

30

When my brother left to suck up to the Japanese, Jackson was my friend and gave me money OFF THE BOOKS. Jackson was not going nowhere, believe him mate. Jackson was here to stay, no worries. Jackson was wired like a generator, so he said, sparks came from his fingers in the night. Once he had been a RAWLEIGH'S MAN, travelling hundreds of miles a day. White dust on the blackberries beside the roads, purveying tonics FOR MAN OR BEAST. He had seen many women with nothing on beneath their dressing gowns a GREAT BIG BUSH between their legs. As a YOUNG BLADE Jackson had bright red hair and even now it was a GOOD THICK CROP which he combed as often as time permitted.

After years of living in an Austin A40 van and many bad frosts especially in the southern highlands he returned to his trade as a FABRICATOR. In the city of Warrnambool, Victoria, Jackson invented the shopping cart for supermarkets. This was the first in the world, and has been proven. Warrnambool is where the famous Fletcher Jones trousers are made in a huge factory i. e. you can get very rich in Warrnambool. The shopping cart was constructed from a FOLDING CHAIR with two wire baskets Jackson borrowed from the bicycles of TWO SPINSTER TEACHERS at the high school. I was Slow Bones, never understanding the possibility of the folding chair although I was SITTING ON A GOLD MINE all those years. When not in use Jackson's carts could be stored against the supermarket wall and the hand baskets were stacked like dishes in the sink.

At this time there were no supermarkets in the so-called LUCKY COUNTRY otherwise he would have been a rich man rather than be gaoled for larceny of two baskets not his own.

Jackson was married twice and has the photos including plaintiffs, bridesmaids and many stories, also snapshots of five dogs including two of them run over by the same truck in different years. At the nursing home Jackson slept in Room Number One and worked from eight o'clock till breakfast, on the SHIT AND WANDER shift. He brought his best racing pigeons to be stroked by patients out of THE GOODNESS OF HIS HEART but there was a complaint about BIRD LICE by people with eyes so bad they would not be able to read their own death notice.

When there were medical emergencies and lost memories, Jackson took MATTERS IN HAND and was not always thanked as he should be. He also made arrangements with the SAFEWAY MANAGER when the patients took those carts down the hill and left them on the lawn outside Jackson's office.

Many is the evening he pushed the long line of carts up the hill on Edgecliff Road, a cruel punishment, he said so often. Fate had spurned him. All God gave him was a big dick FOURTEEN INCHES LONG you would never guess it to look at his skinny freckled arms.

I had my own folding chair and was now EMPLOYED OFF THE BOOKS to push the carts instead of Jackson. I was happy to spare him all that pain. Also, in the parking lot of the Safeway, I was fortunate to come across an abandoned pram, a story too sad to imagine so I blocked it from my mind, the child and mother, who knew where they were?

Just the same, the pram was waterproof in very good condition and I could fill it with crushed ice and then set my Coca-Cola in the ice and my chicken sandwich in the top and in the days after my brother ran away I was not afraid but lived in the lap of luxury in front of the nursing home.

The police came but soon they knew I was a LOCAL CHARACTER and when Jackson found me the PSYCHEDELIC GLASSES then the police liked me even more and soon they would stop for a chat and look at what I had inside the pram which was always dripping. They once bought me a DISPOSABLE DIAPER for my Coke bottle. They knew that I could take a joke.

Edgecliff Road is fast and winding. It might make your electrics fire off like jellyfish stingers through your hair, to see all the cars screaming around the bend and tradesmen's trucks losing bricks off their loads at four pm. I never thought there could be a local character in such a busy place but soon I was that very thing.

What a BLESSED RELIEF it turned out to be so far away from the constant raging about art, and all the world trying to prevent my brother having the publicity to which he was entitled. Strange to say, I never knew such peace as camping on the shore of Edgecliff Road, a river in flood, roaring with rubber tyres and bricks and blasphemies.

I truly hoped my brother was happy eating raw fish and fucking himself stupid. His broken promise was his own to suffer beebop, shee-bop, it hurt me not at all.