BIG WHITE CAR

IT WAS ANOTHER night with no damn food in the fridge, no money, and the rent four months late. I was staring at the ceiling looking at some cobwebs drift in the breeze. The sun was up because of daylight savings time.

I was thinking about the future and how to get the hell out of dodge. I decided to leave, I decided to move away, pack everything up and not think about where I was going or what I was going to do; if I end up working at a turf farm in the fifty-degree heat then so be it – just so long as I’m out of this apartment and away from this city, I thought. The turf farm was actually a pretty good deal as far as I was concerned, no thinking at the start, dropouts and happy go lucky types working their asses off for minimum wage, ten hour days. It’d last until there was too much time for thinking and then it’d be time to move on again.

I got up and started pulling pictures off the walls and putting them outside on the lawn. I walked back in, grabbed a vase, put it out, grabbed the chest it sat on top of and put that out too.

A woman pulled up in a big white car, her child got out and they started going through the stuff.

“Do you have any toys?” she asked

“Um, maybe, I dunno; I’m a bit something right now”

“Oh”

I walked back in and picked up a bunch of old flowers that had been sitting in the same spot for six years and walked outside again to throw them, and some empty bottles of wine I’d been saving because I liked the labels for some reason (?), in the bin. The woman asked again:

“Any toys?”

“Maybe, I don’t know”

I sat on the couch, smoked a cigarette and looked at a blank wall with no pictures on it and felt a little relief. I’d done something. The more you have, the more it weighs you down so to speak.

I stubbed out the smoke, picked up the ironing board and iron and walked them out.

“Oh, did you find any toys?”

“Not yet”

“We were just sitting at home and my young boy here said we should go and see if anyone is throwing away any hard rubbish and we found you! He loves toys”

“Me too” I replied and walked back inside. I looked at a model of a bird sitting on a little coffee table inside the unit and stared for a while. After six years of living here I couldn’t recall any time I’d looked at a real bird. I’d seen some pigeons eating garbage in the city, but that was about it. I could have done so much here but I hadn’t done a thing.

A man called me.

“Hey, this is Tony, I saw you have a bike for sale, mind if I come over and take a look?”

“Sure”

Ten minutes later he was at my front door. The lady and her son had taken the chest of drawers.

“Here it is” I said

“Wow, she’s a beaut; why are you selling?

“I’m moving”

“Oh, why?”

“If only anyone knew”

“Well, I’ll take it mate” he said “do you want to sell those other two bikes?”

“Yes” the bikes had been sitting there for six years too. Rusted and never ridden around town. We’d brought them here together and after six years, when they were sold, I’d be the only thing left.

“What do you want for ‘em?”

“Whatever offer you make I’ll take it”

“Awe” he said and pulled one bike out and started twisting things and pumping breaks.

“One hundred for three bikes sound ok?” I offered

“Hmmmm” he said and studied the bikes. He looked them all over “well, I’m more interested in this one than the other”

“Ok”

“But” he reached into his pocket and pulled out two fifties “I’ll take them mate”

“Three bikes for a hundred bucks seems like a pretty good deal to me”

His head was bald and his legs were bright white, a fifty year old man wearing cargo shorts cut below the knee. “Yeah” he smiled.

“Need a hand wheeling them out?”

“Nah, I’ll take this one now and come back for the other two”

“Ok”

I went back inside. Something had been done, I’d done something. Moving by yourself is big task, especially when you’ve hoarded a bunch of stuff off the side of the road for six years and furnished your rented apartment with it.

I pulled out things I’d always intended to sell but never had. Now I was putting them back out on the nature strip for somebody else to take home and never sell for six or so years until they found themselves alone and empty.

I stared at the bird again, a big parrot made of plaster. I thought about how long I’d been carrying it around – twenty years, from sharehouse to sharehouses, over and over, and then to this little unit on the other side of the country from where we had begun.

I wondered if it was toy, and whether the lady with the big white car would have considered it so or left it there on the side of the road with everything else.