Doug.

Doug:  The story of a boy and his shovel.

Doug woke up after a restless night's sleep and stared again at the sight that had greeted him every morning for all of his fourteen and a half years.  Along the line of his vision did a shovel's handle protrude.  It was about three foot long and ended in a little handle.  The face of the shovel was embedded in his forehead.  It’s placement caused his head to ache constantly and lately his fevers had been getting worse.

He lay in his bed with his hands behind his head and stared at the pole, his crowded mind ticking over.  The first thing to do is feed the chickens, mum’ll all ready be up checking on the lambs that were born over night I hope no foxes have got to them...I’ll get Roo’s gun one night and go fox shooting...dad’ll still be in bed I’ll go in and try and get him up when I come back from the chook shed I’ll cook him some eggs on toast I feel like eggs on toast... I hope he doesn’t stay in bed all day again there’s nothing any of us can do about Molly...stuff it, I’ll go and visit her today whether she likes it or not I’ll bloody tell her about how she’s making Dad sick if her boyfriend is there I’ll shoot the fucking bastard...          
 
He tried to close his mind against the dull throb of his boyhood pressures.  He took a deep breath and shut his eyes....  It doesn’t make any difference, it’s not going to go away the past few months have been driving me crazy, my headaches are getting worse all the time...  He let out a large sigh and breathed deeply.  ...I hope Penny is at school today... He decided to have a wank in the hope it would ease the pressure of his febrile mind.  He thought of what sex with Penny would be like and masturbated vigorously and as he did so the handle of his shovel quivered about above him.  With a groan he rode a wave of fleeting joy and ejaculated.  He gave out a relieving sigh and relaxed. His balls tingled and the pressure behind his eyes receded. 

Getting out of bed and keeping his head to one side so the shovel was in line with his shoulder, he opened the curtains to reveal a sunny morning.  He threw on some clothes; no t-shirts or jumpers, only button shirts, cardigans and jackets for obvious reasons; and went out into the brisk spring morning and followed his handle to the chicken coop.  He threw them some grain, topped up their water containers and then left the chooks scratching through the feed.  He strolled back to the house and on the way scanned the nearest paddock for any lambs born overnight.  He delighted in watching the little woolly balls romp through the pasture, playing and head butting each other and nuzzling their mother’s bellies for a teat to suck. 

Of course, later on they would be mulesed and docked and shorn and slaughtered but that was the way things were.  They couldn’t help their fate just as he couldn’t help his.  Doug usually avoided those chores on account of his shovel hindering the work more than he could help.  Though as a roustabout in the fast moving pace of the shearing shed; gathering up the fresh shorn wool from under the shearers feet, throwing it in the correct manner onto the sorting table, sweeping up dags and the like; he had developed a personal working method that was efficient enough for him to be an integral component of the whole operation.  That was until he knocked out Shirty Prawn the best shearer they had ever employed. With an ill timed turn of his head, Doug had sent his shovel’s handle sweeping into Shirty’s jaw.  The impact contained so much force it broke The Prawn’s jaw in three places.  The poor bugger was reduced to sucking vitamised meals through a straw for months.

Doug had felt terrible and he still kicked himself over it, even though Shirty Prawn had forgiven him and said that it couldn’t be helped and that these things happened.    The unfortunate event though, added to his long suffering father's woes.  He worried constantly about how Doug was going to survive in the world.  In this day and age of litigation, amid stringent occupational health and safety laws, what employer, he wondered, would be willing to take on a walking liability such as Doug?  Doug worried about it too. 

He got to the back door of the house, faced downward to reach the door handle and went inside.  It was after eight o’clock and his dad wasn't up yet, unusual for an owner of a farm but usual for Doug's father these days, his 'chronic fatigue' being the condition his doctor diagnosed that allowed him to indulge in the woe brought on by his children's conditions.  Doug made his dad a cup of tea and took it in to him.  “Daad,” he said softly as he used the handle of his shovel to nudge open the bedroom door.  “I’ve made you a cup of tea,” he said.  The curtains were half open and he could see his father lying in bed looking out of the window.  “Thanks Doug,” he said and rolled over to face him.  “I just thought I’d have a lie in this morning.  Are there any more lambs?” he asked.  Putting his cup of tea on the bedside table Doug said, “I dunno, mum’s still out in the paddocks.  I’m making eggs on toast, do you want some?”
“No thanks mate, I’ll be right.”
“Come on Dad, I’ll make you some anyway you’ve gotta eat.” And he went out, being careful not to hit anything as he turned.

Doug cracked eggs and toasted bread, filling the room with warm breakfast aromas.  The smell of fresh toast, the sight of steam rising from the kettle and the sizzle of frying eggs reminded him of better days.  Days before Molly left them and dad gave up. 

He cared greatly for both of his parents and it saddened and frightened him immensely to see his father give up.  It was hard enough to function as a family with one member, his drug addled sister, all ready a useless wreck and another liable to inadvertently cause damage and mayhem at any unpredictable moment.  It was as though the household lived nervously with Doug’s presence.  Even though he was dearly loved they never knew when chaos might ensue.  “Good morning son,” said his mother, clomping inside and letting the screen door clang shut behind her just as Doug was transferring the eggs from the pan to the plates of toast.  Her cheery voice and the banging of the door gave him a start and the pan slipped from his fingers.  Momentarily forgetting who he was he lunged down after the pan without turning his head, bringing the shovel’s handle down hard on top of the bench with a jarring crack.  Yelling he toppled to one side, and in the process his handle swept the plates of toast, cutlery, salt and pepper, kettle, milk and sugar bowl clattering and skimming across the floor.  “Fuck,” he swore and stood up, holding his ringing head. “Shit mum, you startled me, bloody hell!” he yelled at her. 

His mothers face went from a smile to a look of great compassion.  How bloody stupid of me, she thought.  “I’m sorry son,” she said, “let me clean it up.”  She hurried over to the mess with a kitchen cloth.  Irritated Doug snapped, “it’s all right, I can do it,” as he bent down to scrape the eggs back into the pot.  Unfortunately his mother in her eagerness to help rectify the mess she felt responsible for, hurried straight into his shovel, knocking the wind out of her belly and sending a jolt of pain through Doug’s already aching head.  “What are you doing?”  he yelled.  “Bloody hell, I said I can do it.  All right then, fuckin’ clean it up yourself,” and he stormed out of the house, leaving his distraught mother behind.

Shit, shit, shit, he thought, this bloody shovel.  Fuck school, I’m not going today.  Fuck Wazza and all those wankers.  He grabbed his push bike from the shed and pedalled away furiously.  In an attempt to out run his mental discord, he found himself heading in the direction of the forest that was situated just a few kilometres from his home.  By the time he got there his pedalling had slowed down and he had expelled the worst of his anger.  The forest road wound into the bush on a gentle slope and Doug coasted along the red scoria of the track, out of the sun and into the shade of the ribbon gums and stringy barks, the pain in his head easing back to its usual dull ache. 

He parked his bike under a stringy bark and plonked his bum on the dirt.  The bush was thick here, this area unburnt for a long time.  The greenery was decorated with the white flowers of the woolly tea tree and the ground was patterned red with running postman.  On the other side of the dirt road was a mess of black wattles sporting dull yellow blossoms above a heap of dropped branches.  An uncle had once given him the names of local orchids and other wild flowers found in this area, a long time ago on a wood cutting afternoon with his dad, but he only retained the memory of the pink fingers, none of which he could see at the moment.  The same uncle had told him that black cockatoos heralded rain and now two flew over head cawing across the valley, their yellow tail ends a pale white in the sun.  The range of their red tailed cousins, a rare bird in this part of the country, began not far to the west. 

His attention was caught by sounds of rustling to his left.  From the undergrowth of tussocks and sedges, a football sized, spiky mass of brown and tan waddled forth, its distinctive snout sniffing the ground in search of tucker.  The echidna stopped every couple of feet, probing the soil with its proboscis like snout, its finely tuned receptors searching out ants and termites.  Its sticky tongue flicked in and out of its protracted mouth lapping up what it could find.  If only my life was as simple as the echidna’s, he thought to himself.  It knows what it’s doing.   

The echidna in its blindness was oblivious to his presence. If only people didn’t notice me either, he thought, remaining still so as not to disturb the spiked animals quiet foraging through the poas and grass trees.  Underneath the yellow flowering kangaroo tails it snuffled through the dirt for its brekky, leaving little pockets of disturbed soil in its wake.  Doug’s meditative gazing was short lived as his thoughts quickly returned to his own conspicuous existence on this planet.  Doug’s mother used to tell him that his striking protrusion was a gift from God, an idea he readily accepted when he was younger.  As he grew older though it was harder and harder to hang onto that idea.  Perhaps if there was somebody else like him out there he would have been more inclined to accept her story, but it was so lonely being the only one.  By the time he was ten years old  he had rejected the notion outright, but for her peace of mind he humoured her, even though it was eating him up inside.   

She didn’t have to put up with Wazza, and George and those arseholes at school everyday.  She thought he was strong enough to brush away their taunts and jeers.  At primary school it had been easy, they were only peripheral to his world back then.  His mum and dad and Molly had been his security, and he had carried their love and care wrapped around himself, not letting anything penetrate that cocoon and hurt him.

But as the years went on his world slowly collapsed.  His loving sister, once an integral part of his life, slowly dis-integrated from him. She used to let him sleep with her when he had bad dreams, let him snuggle against her in her warm bed and never complained about the inconvenience of trying to sleep while getting wacked in the face from his shovel as he tossed and turned throughout the night.  Watching her turn into the cold and resentful shell that she now was, Doug was becoming the same.

The stark realities of the world outside the farm gate began to hit home.  First he battled on without giving in to feelings of bitterness and unfairness, but then his dad grew sicker and sicker under the strain of watching the apple of his eye disintegrate.  Doug felt useless as the two anchors in his life unhinged themselves, no longer willing to hold fast in a turbulent ocean.  Doug was still too young to fully comprehend the tides of life no matter how hard he tried.  His frustrations rose as he watched his kin sink.

And all the time this was going on the boys at school grew meaner and meaner exponentially with each year.  His mother’s words couldn’t support him any longer.  He didn’t bother to trouble her with the bullies, she had enough to deal with between a drug addicted daughter, a sick husband and a farm to run.  Besides, the cruelty that these boys possessed was beyond anything she could understand.  She was his mother but she didn’t walk in his shoes.

The only milk bar in town, during the retro arcade games phase, installed a game machine from the eighties called ‘Dig Dug’ for Christ’s sake.  How is a boy supposed to compete with that?  For days they were calling him Dig Dug and making electronic noises every time he was near and Doug had no idea where this new torture they were subjecting him to came from.  Stopping at the milk bar after school one day he found the source.  A great fury rose in him and he fled the store without his bag of mixed lollies.  How could Jim and Anna who ran the store be so thoughtless?  He knew they wouldn’t have done it on purpose but it didn’t matter.  It was an example of the lonely, alternate universe that Doug inhabited.  Other people just had no idea of what life for him was like.  People thought you got used to it, and he would have if they didn’t bloody remind him about it every fucking day.  In a world of Douglass’s he was the only one with a shovel in his head.  He fumed inside. 

The echidna was waddling further away from Doug now and he got up and walked over to it.  It heard his approach, stopped immediately in alarm and hunkered down in the dirt, curling its head underneath itself.  All that was left exposed was a small thicket of spikes.  Its head  and soft underbelly, the echidna’s only vulnerable parts, were well protected.  Doug reached down and carefully stroked it.  Sometimes, if you were lucky, one of the brown and tan spines would come loose under your hand.  He and Molly used to collect them when they were little kids and use them for jewellery.

Feeling his touch, the echidna hunkered further into the shallow depression it had made with its body.  Doug left it alone and took a step back, coveting the wonderful defence that nature had blessed it with.  Now that’s a gift from God, he thought, not like a bloody shovel in the head.  Sensing it was safe, the echidna poked its snout out and sniffed, first to the left and then to the right.  Not smelling any danger, it lifted its head higher and relaxed its body, ready to start foraging again.  Doug stepped towards it and watched it quickly sink back into the dirt, whisking its vulnerable head and extended nose away from sight.

I wish I could protect myself from predators that easily.  A retractable shovel would be some compensation for my misery.  If only I could walk around inconspicuously, even just now and then.  Anger boiled inside Doug.  What am I saying?  It’s not my bloody fault I was born this way.  I am who I am, it’s everyone else who’s got a problem, bloody telling me what I look like as though they’re the normal ones just because they can spot differences and highlight them.  Fucking idiots, I should bloody get Roo’s gun and shoot ‘em all. 

The knowledge that he wouldn’t do something like that only added to his frustrations.  The internal noise that he couldn’t expel was pressurising inside his head.  He jumped back on his bike and cycled to Molly’s place.

He knew where she had been staying lately.  It was an old weatherboard farmhouse on the edge of town, set amongst the blue gum plantations that were replacing so many of this regions high rainfall pastures.  It had been an unremarkable but neat home at some time, probably one of the many soldier settlement houses built after the war.  It was painted the same green colour, faded now, as so many others around the area.  Everyone for a hundred kilometres must have pitched in to get a bulk discount on the paint, he thought riding up to the house.  He dodged a tired old ute in the drive, dropped his bike amongst the long grass and weeds of the front yard, strode up to the front door and clobbered on it with the end of his shovel.

He looked at his surroundings.  The ute was a Holden, an hz or hk or something, sitting there like an old workhorse that was no longer appreciated, joining the house in its final days of disrepair and decay.  The people staying here certainly weren’t going to alter the course of their own destiny let alone that of a tired old farmhouse and utility.  Eventually they would leave in pursuit of cheaper, more accessible heroin, or get thrown out by the blue gum company.  Till then his dilapidated sibling and her boyfriend, dwelling in self pity, would continue to haunt the house. 

When the door finally creaked open a few inches, a tired and wan face peered out from the dark interior.  Molly opened the door wider and squinted against the sun’s morning rays at her brother.  “What took you so long?  I was beginning to think you’d OD’d or something,”  he grumbled at her.  In reply, Molly sighed and said in a tired voice, “I thought it sounded like your handle banging on the door.  What are you doing here Doug?” 
“I dunno, I felt like coming over,” he mumbled.  “I’ve got a headache.”

Molly leant against the door frame and looked at her brother.  She hadn’t seen him for awhile, her focus had been on other things lately.  His gangly, top heavy frame stood slouched in front of her.  He was wearing a sour face under a mop of dark curls that fell either side of his shovel.  She bent down slightly to peer under the handle and look him in the eye. What she saw were memories of the past; reflections of a world that she’d been avoiding for years, ever since she had said ‘what the hell’ and began dabbling with the poison that was rapidly devouring her from the inside out. 

As she gazed at her sunlit, crown headed brother from the darkened hallway she experienced a junkies epiphany.  What am I doing with my self?  My God, the poor bastard has had that weight on his mind all of his life.  I  used to nurse him through many of his horrendous migraines, offer him solace and security when he awoke from nightmares and defend him from peoples ignorance.  He is my brother and I have forsaken him for this world of self indulgent bullshit.  I’m living among detritus when I used to live with a wonderful soul, my own brother who has carried his cross this far.  He never complains and he works so hard on the farm, helping dad and mum.  What have I been doing? 

Well, that’s it, no more smack.  I’m giving up right now.  This is a sign.  It’s an opportunity to make amends with my family.  When Doug said he has a headache he doesn’t mean it like other people do.  Poor Doug.  Jeez I’ve been a selfish bitch.  I’ll always love you Doug, I’ll throw away the junk and stand by you. 

Her moment of reverence was broken by the words “I wanna taste.” 
“What?”  Molly couldn’t believe her ears.  “I wanna taste.  I just wanna try it.  I want this fucking headache to go for just a while.  If anybody deserves some smack then it’s bloody well me,” he said.  Molly’s heart jumped with joy.  This was just the excuse she needed so she wouldn’t have to follow through with her decision. I’ll give up later, she thought.  “Come in mate,”  she said to her brother.  He stepped past her into the dim interior.

Molly turned on the living room light and Doug looked around at the dimly lit, musty smelling room.  Ordinarily it would be called a living room but it didn’t look like much living took place in it.  Sheets and blankets acted as makeshift drapes blocking out the daylight.  The carpet was a dirty orange colour, there was an old brown couch against one wall, a shabby cloth recliner in a corner, a TV, a play station.  An ancient firebox sat in an old chimney, its blackened soot encrusted exterior an ugly focal point of the room.  Empty orange and white syringe packets decorated the scene. 

It reminded Doug of the kipple infested rooms that Phillip k. Dick’s characters inhabited in his book, ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’  It occurred to him that the girl shuffling about in front of him, clearing away some of the kipple from the recliner so Doug could sit down, might be an android.  It looked like a faded facsimile of his sister.  Her sallow features looked liked Molly’s but now they weren’t displaying her bright zeal.  He remembered her movements as being fluid and relaxed, not stifled and  laggard like this sloth before him.  He imagined the androids in this house didn’t dream at all.

She caught him staring at her, the same stare she’d witnessed from countless former acquaintances when she’d happened to inadvertently bump into them somewhere.  Doing the shopping was a nightmare these days, all those looks like the one her brother now gave her.  “What are you staring at shovel head?”  she said with lazy humour. 
Doug giggled and said, “you’ve got a needle sticking out of your head, needle head.”
“I know, very funny ya dag.  I’m giving it up soon.”
“No, I mean you’ve really got a needle sticking out of your head,”  and he indicated behind his ear.  Molly put her hand up and felt amongst her tussled mousy hair behind her left ear, and, lo and behold, she did have a needle in her head.  It was caught up in her knotted tresses and she spent a full minute untangling it.  She finally prised it loose, looked at it to make sure it was empty and then flung it in a darkened corner of the room where a yellow sharps container sat amongst a scattering of used syringes.

Doug sat on the soiled threadbare cloth of the greying recliner and tried to fully adjust to his gloomy surroundings.  The darkened room smelt of mouldy decay, and the stained ceiling seemed to hang precariously above him, waiting for an opportunity to descend on him when his guard was down.  It was nice to see his sister again. 

They began to joke about the past growing up on the sheep farm, and laughed at some of the characters that were their neighbours.  There was the night Frank Poulson had fired his gun to scare off the Johnston’s dog that was sniffing around Franks bitch in heat, but because of his cataracts and the ancient shotgun’s wayward sights he had killed it instead.  And the time the CFA arrived to put out a hay shed fire on their property with an empty tanker.  Old man Mobby had used it to water his acre of apple trees and didn’t refill it. 

A gladness accompanied by an ominous sorrow filled Doug’s heart.  He told her about dad and his sickness, and Molly went into the adjoining kitchen and put the kettle on.  When it had boiled she poured a cup, picked up a clean spoon and returned to the living room, placing them both on the coffee table in front of her as she sat down.  She reached under the couch and extracted an old fashioned chocolate tin, rusted at the corners, with a tarnished floral imprint.  Inside was a little foil of heroin, some unused syringes in their sterile packets, some antiseptic swabs and a cigarette filter.  She placed the tin on the table and took out two syringes, two swabs and the foil. 

She bent the handle of the spoon forming a miniature makeshift dish that sat level on the table.  She unwrapped the foil to reveal a small rock of heroin, enough for a few days, broke off a portion and crumbled it delicately into the spoon.  She unwrapped a syringe, filled it with water from the cup and squirted it gently over the white powder, being sure not to push any out of the shallow receptacle.  Then she lifted the spoon and lit a match underneath it and while the water was still hot she used the plunger end of the syringe to stir the liquid and dissolve the heroin.  She placed it back on the table, tore off a piece of the cigarette filter and dropped it in the cloudy mix. 

Doug watched this procedure with fascination.  He was finally witness to the ritual that ordered Molly’s life.  Her confidence and ceremonial deftness frightened him but he was determined to be baptised into her world.  How else would he understand the forces that she now bowed to? 

Molly used the syringe to extract the concoction through the filter and when it was full she placed it on the coffee table and opened the other syringe packet.  She added water to the spoon telling Doug that the filter she had just used would still contain enough smack to fix his headache and then some.  Doug trusted his sister and with growing anticipation watched her suck the filter dry.  She then handed him the syringe and said, “hold this.”

She grabbed a belt from among the kippled floor, tied it around her meagre bicep, flexed her hand and willed the vein on the inside of her forearm to show itself.  The veins in the crook of her elbows had long since collapsed and her forearms were beginning to show bruises, but for the moment they didn’t let her down.  She pierced her vein and watched with relief as a small amount of blood showed red in the end of the syringe, pumped in by her heart.

She could taste the smack in her mouth even though it hadn’t yet entered her bloodstream.  She savoured this moment for as long as she could.  This syringe represented one less available hit in the future and she knew that not long after she had injected it into her arm that she would be thinking about the next hit.  This worry and constant stock-take nullified any real joy that the heroin could offer. 

Molly thought of the time she was ten years old and the girls at school started to call her a slut.  When her body began to develop breasts and hips, her detractors used it as evidence against her.  Where their hate came from she never knew.  And now the junk eased the pain.  She wanted to share her memories with her brother, a burden shared is a burden halved and all that, but it was easier to shoot up and perhaps, if they were lucky, reach each other through the void. 

She pressed on the end of the plunger sending the liquid opiate into her bloodstream.  She loosened the belt around her arm and her heart pumped the drug throughout her body through her network of veins and arteries.  She flung the syringe into the corner with the others, leant back on the soiled couch and shut her eyes.

She was never a slut.  She never used that word against any one else.  The rumours of pregnancies and abortions stung her soul and weakened her spirit.  What was worse were the long delays between the stories of her non existent sexual exploits doing the rounds and then finally reaching her ears.  Who would make up tales of anal sex and STD’s?  Why?  She never found out.  She screwed each story up and buried it in her guts, let it fester and grow a trailing vine of shame, guilt and confusion that choked her mind.  She hid it all from her family, not knowing that it was good practise for when she needed to hide her growing dependence on the junk from them.

But it seeps out the sides.  It can’t be contained, and now an addendum to the story of Molly was passed around.  One that was true, giving her bitter satisfaction.  She was a junkie.  She wasn’t a slut but she was really a junkie.  Like her father she couldn’t believe it either, but she played the part perfectly, in fact there was nothing to it.  Somewhere in the back of her mind she kept a picture of herself, stepping off the stage at the end of the play, maybe even receiving flowers and a hearty cheer for her performance.  It was an act wasn’t it?  She was just role playing right? 

Doug sat there holding his syringe and looking at his sister’s faded form dissolve into the couch.  His headache dominated his senses again as he tried to decipher his feelings.  Before he could break through the code of his inner turmoil, Molly opened her eyes and sidled across the couch towards Doug.  She took the arm nearest to her, wrapped the belt around it and pulled it tight to expose his veins.  Doug just sat there with the febrifuge in his other hand not knowing whether to run or hide and watched his sister examine the crook of his elbow through her hooded eyes.  He watched her reach across him to take the syringe out of his other hand. He noticed a little spittle had formed at the corner of her mouth and then in a deft movement she had inserted the needle into his arm and pulled the trigger.  He felt a wave of giddiness rise through him, followed by a tsunami that knocked him back in his chair. 

He blacked out for a few minutes and was shook awake by his sister.  Through a heavy mist he struggled to open his eyes and raise his head.  It kept toppling forward under the weight of the bloody shovel, his drugged stupor draining his energy.  Molly kept telling him to keep his eyes open and Doug mumbled that he was all right.  He battled with the heaviness of the drug and gathered strength  enough to lift his noggin, turn towards his sister who dodged his handle and smile stupidly at her.  “It’s all right sis,” he whispered with an awkward grin.  “My headaches gone,” he giggled at her.  “Fuuuccckk, this is weird,” and his head drooped forward again with him mumbling, “my heads too bloody heavy,” and then he nodded off.
Molly left him to it and wandered into the bedroom where her boyfriend was sleeping.

A few minutes later Doug woke up again, this time feeling nauseous.  He looked around at his cheerless surroundings.  All ready it seemed the kipple had increased.  He stood up in a  clouded fuzz and decided to take his fuggy experience outside in the hope that he would feel better.  He took two steps towards the front door but the mattress of air he was walking on released a woozy nebula that surrounded him.  He stopped to let it pass away but a wave of heaviness overcame him, he struggled to keep his eyes open and maintain his balance, failed and nodded off again falling face first towards the ground.  The handle of his shovel hit the floor with a thud propping him up at a forty five degree angle, his arms dangling above the floor and a long line of drool reaching to the carpet.

Sometime later Doug woke from his stupor, staring at a cigarette hole in the stained carpet three feet below his face.  Feeling infantile and sick he pushed himself back to an upright position with his prop, a motion that caused his head to ring and flood him with a dizzying nausea.  He stumbled outside and threw up; a dry, pitiful chunder of bile, all that was left of last nights dinner.

He did his best to shake himself into full consciousness and then leant back against the dusty weatherboards.  The sun had moved from the east to the west.  He must have been out for hours.  The car was gone and he assumed Molly and her boyfriend with it.  He didn’t care.  He felt bereft.  Only a naïve kid starting puberty would think he could rescue his sister.  A vengeful ache filled his head.

He looked around at the rows of blue gums, dark avenues that overshadowed any life that wished to vie for attention amongst the monoculture.  They formed a dense and eerie thicket around him, impenetrable, monochrome and lacking stimulus, suppressing the imagination and inspiring nothing..  From deep inside the shadows he heard the mournful and lonely call of a crow.  Swimming through his giddy head a thought surfaced, Roo’ll be home from school by now.  Doug knew what he had to do.

Before he set off for Roo’s house he had a go himself.  He planted his feet firmly on the ground, bent himself slightly at the knees and with considered determination he firmly grasped the handle close to his forehead and tugged with all his might.  It didn’t budge.  He tried again.  Nothing.  He moved his hands farther up the handle as far as he could reach and tried to lever it out.  He thought he sensed a shift in his headache? Or maybe it was the after effects of the smack.  He tried again.  He put all his strength into it and with a mighty effort he got nowhere.  He tugged and tugged and tugged till his head spun more than ever before.  It wouldn’t budge.  It only made his headache worse.  But Doug was resolute.  It was time to remove the shovel from his head and he would definitely need Roo’s help to do it.

Without haste Doug made his way over the dirt tracks to Roo's house.  There was no rush.  He meandered along on his bicycle letting his head and neck gently loll about his shoulders.  To one side he saw two ducks sitting amongst the rushes of a water filled ditch.  He lolled his head the other way and watched the trees go by in forest green interspersed with white hakea flowers and the yellow of the pycnantha wattle against it's glossy green leaves... he heard the call of a rainbow parrot behind him and craned his neck around in time to catch the flash of red, blue and green as a pair flew from one side of the road and into the forest on the other... Doug faced forward again and corrected the bike's direction as it teetered on it's path... he looked ahead at the red dirt road and then down at the tyre of his bike as it turned over in the dust, over and over and over just rolling along... I'm just rolling along... I'm just rolling along... no one can stop me I'm just rolling along.. He giggled to himself right before the handle of his shovel caught the spokes in his wheel and flung him over the handle bars.

The sky was a salmon pink in the distance when Roo looked up as Doug pushed his bike into the yard, it's front wheel buckled.  His jeans and jacket were torn and stained red and he had a graze down one side of his face.  He told Roo what was on his mind and asked him for help.  Being the one true friend of his, Roo agreed to help Doug rid himself of what had pained him for so long.

First Roo tried tugging at it.  He put all his weight into it to no avail.  They went out to his dad’s shed and fastened the end of the handle in a vice on the workbench.  With the handle held tight Doug couldn’t move his head or neck.  ‘This feels good Roo, I can’t move my head a millimetre,’ Doug said.  Roo grabbed a hold of him by the waist and tugged and tugged, while Doug tried desperately to dig his feet into the concrete floor and pull away from the vice at the same time.  He could picture his head pulling off the shovel as it remained trapped in the vice, while he toppled backwards onto Roo.  ‘You better get ready mate, I don’t wanna fall on you and hurt you.’ 
‘Okay,’ and Roo braced himself.  He needn’t have.  Doug’s head didn’t budge.

"Hmmm..." thought Roo as he released Doug from the vice.  He pointed to an oil stain on the floor and said, "Stand there and look up." He dragged out the block and tackle that he and his dad used to lift car engines when they worked on them, hung the chain from a rafter and hooked it onto the shovel's handle.  He hooked another chain onto a wall of the shed and gave the other end of the chain to Doug and told him to hold tight.  Roo then winched Doug up while Doug held himself down with the chain in his hands.  ‘Aaaarrgghh,’ he cried as he was slowly tortured as though on some medieval rack.  ‘Aaaarrrgghhh.’  Roo gave up and released the tension on the chain and unhooked him. Doug’s cries were too much for him to bear. 

‘That’s enough Doug.  We’ve tried everything we can.  You’ll only hurt yourself.  I wanna see your shovel removed too, I know how much it means to you, but I’ve never done this before.  I think you need an expert,’  Roo said, ‘maybe a surgeon or something.’

Exasperated, Doug vented at Roo.  ‘You don’t know what it feels like to have a shovel in your head.  Everyday waking up and seeing this thing poking out of your skull.  And when you do forget about it something always happens to remind you it’s there.  You knock over a vase, bash it into the desk when you’re looking in a drawer or some bloody arsehole reminds you of it.  ‘Oooh, look at him.  Hey shovel head,’ they yell at you.  Perfect strangers, people I’ve never seen before in my life feel as though they can be intimate with me.  They think just because I’m different that it’s alright to come up and touch it.  And talk about it while I’m shopping.  I don’t go up to strangers and touch them, I don’t interrupt people walking down the street who are going about their everyday business and question them about their problems.  What!  Why do people think I want to talk about it all the time?’

They looked at each other... "I've got another idea, if it doesn't work nothing will.  We can hold you in the crush and I'll use the tractor to pull it out," said Roo, all the while looking Doug straight in the eye.  Doug nodded.  They left the shed and went around the back to the cattle yards.  Through the center of the yards travelled the run at one end of which was the cattle crush.  When stock are tagged, drenched or castrated Roo and his father herd them into the yards where they are sent single file down the run to have their necks held in a metal brace.  Either Roo or his father will chase them one at a time down the run while the other shuts the crush on the beast's neck as it tries to exit the run.

Doug took a deep breath and entered the yards, walking upon the dried mud and making his way down the run to the crush.  For a moment he empathised with the cattle that had ran and scrambled along this path.  Like cattle, that's how people are fucking treated in this world.

He stopped at the crush, pushed his head through it while looking straight ahead and Roo shut the bars on his neck grimacing at the desperate lengths they were going too.  Doug didn't even wince, he was resigned and resolute. 
"Is that alright mate?"
"Yep."
Once again Roo attached a chain to the shovel.  He tied the other end to the tractor and got in it.  Slowly he pulled away from the crush taking up the slack of the chain, looking in the rear-view mirror for any sign from Doug that it was too much.  Doug watched the chain tighten in front of him, bracing himself for the tugging to begin.  He focused on each rust coloured link as the chain rose from the ground.  Time appeared to slow down as he watched the slack taken up inexorably, the muddy chain tightening along the line of his vision as the tractor moved away.

How will I signal Roo?  He won’t hear me over the engine and my arms are caught up in this crush.  There was a jolt and a searing pain accompanied by a flash of brightness in front of his eyes… He felt his head distend, his forehead stretch and become taut.  Even though he was in agonising pain, Doug laughed uncontrollably at the thought of what they were doing and how it may look to any neighbour that may pass.  He didn’t care, he had been stared at all his life and now he was declaring his freedom – I am not just a boy with a shovel in his head, I AM DOUGLASS!!

There was a bright flash of pinkish light followed by a loud popping sound, and suddenly Doug was outside of himself witnessing the scene from above.  And it was funny.  He was looking down at his limp body lying in the crush, an old red tractor dragging a spade away from it.  He laughed even harder at the ironic understanding of his former predicament.  And he was humble.  And he was great.  With a laugh he travelled the universe but strangely, as through the pupil of an eye and back again in less than an instant.

He saw his former prison weighted down by gravity and clamped tight in the cattle crush.  His empathy and compassion for the cows and steers in the surrounding paddocks moved him.

He shot back to a point somewhere in space where he could marvel at the beautiful play of the earth in the sun’s field of attraction.  He looked further and saw the other planets rushing about their orbits.  He looked in all directions at once and saw similar systems at play throughout the galaxy.  He expanded his awareness and watched galaxies rotate about their orbits and each other.  Stars imploded.  Gases crushed in on themselves until they were massively heavy and dense locations in space and time that then exploded outwards again.

He travelled the far reaches of eternity and felt as though he hadn’t moved an inch.  He observed worlds of beings, he heard the consciousnesses of other forms, shapes and energy.  He felt enormous and joyous and in his joy he laughed.  The laughter travelled the infinite dimensions of the universe.  For a moment he was omnipresent, the next he was omniscient.

Then he was Doug again, floating above the earth and marvelling at the beauty and order of the little solar system as it humbly went about its business.  He saw all the people on earth at once from throughout eternity.  He noticed the moment.  Everything happening at once, a single instant consisting of multiple layers, layers of perception stacked upon each other into infinity.

He laughed at the absurdity of his previous perception of reality, stuck as it was in an infinitesimally small range, far away from the creative and imaginative frequencies of infinite love and humour that he was now experiencing. 

With a single laugh he travelled through the eons and endless dimensions.  He decided to follow a line of hilarity back to its source.  Following its trail led his awareness to collapse in on itself.  There he saw worlds of energetic sub atomic particles in orbit around each other.  He focused on the nuclei of one such world and watched it as it vibrated in and out of existence.  He went in closer and merged with the pulsing field of energy and experienced his self’s eternal humour while the electron field of infinite possibility oscillated from one dimension to the next… 


7,600 words.