fiction | Neil Boyack

THE SKIPPER BUTTERFLY

On the freeway the smell of Vegemite from the Kraft factory fades as we climb the Westgate Bridge. There is a sense of real elevation and there is affluence and postcards in the rear-view mirror and smoke and pipes in the sky ahead above the flat west. The young man in the passenger seat is gazing through the window at the roofs of refineries and the different greens of cricket grounds in between. There is a Southern Cross of cigarette burns on his inner wrist and it takes me from the road for a good few seconds, where I imagine his immense tolerance for pain. He is only a young bloke, out of the lock-up, and we are heading to the You Yangs, volunteering, to weed the bush there.

I found him the other morning in a squat. I imagined everyone in the world at work somewhere, and here I was rubbing my hands together keeping warm and tiptoeing through this old war service home. I had been looking for him a good few hours. Pornography, star signs, celebrities, all together on the floor amidst the debris of the homeless. Swords of winter light came through the holey wood covering window frames, illuminating bludgeoned holes in the floor. I found him under his blanket in the stained bath.

In the car, he reads the road signs aloud. It is hard to know what is going on in his mind, impossible to picture the things that have made his life the way it is, a different normal. When I ask, he tells me his family is in Adelaide. He reminds me that we could keep driving along this road all night and see them, but he is joking of course. He hates his family, and the members that are still alive hate him, he says. He will not tell his life story to another worker, too many workers have come and gone with his secrets, a hallmark of the industry. Tens of honeymoon periods with new workers who are green with ethics. New workers extend gifts and friendly understanding tones as they require rapport in order to work heroics. Non-stop junk food and football and gifts and warm feelings.

He reads the sign to Altona and tells me of the Skipper Butterfly and how it is found only in Altona, and nowhere else in the world.

I ask him where he gets his information.

He says he reads newspapers from bins and on trains and rolling in the wind.

Cockatoos, white and new, sit on freeway signs. Crows are pepper in the sky and give an authenticity to the day as new housing estates creep either side of us, just beyond the overgrown residential buffer zones where developers are realising golf courses. The few gum trees are thin and bend easily in the wind that has kept the land flat here. Our community work fills in our days together. I am his worker and he is my client.

I tell him that Matthew Flinders strode this ground, and that we are in Wathaurong territory as we cross the Werribee River. He looks at me confused. He only knows one Matthew, who is in the lock-up. Soon he is frozen with admiration looking at a Commodore that sits alongside us.

When we turn off for Little River the boy squirms in his seat. We shrink as the You Yangs become real, and the boy is scared of being recognised by other volunteers until he sees the group of older people under the barbecue shelter, which is the designated meeting place. There are people in sunhats waiting for the volunteer coordinator. A white-moustached man who smells of sunblock offers sandwiches from a large container, telling us he made them himself. He says the thing he likes most about native flora is that, if it looks dead, it’s probably alive. Without warning or relevance he starts a war story. We all listen in hopeless captivity, waiting for the volunteer coordinator to arrive. The boy knows something of the art of war. He is infatuated with the wrinkled and smudged tattoos on the forearms of the storyteller. The boy is concerned as he listens to stories of silent bare feet on the jungle floor, and machine-gun fire at trees full of monkeys who fall to the ground confused. The man with the white moustache puts his hand on the young bloke’s shoulder to emphasise something, like he knows pain or demons. I look at the boy who is alive with attention and surprised by the stranger’s honesty. The bad things in his life are gone. I check my watch to see how long it lasts.