48

It’s late April, autumn is feeling its power and the pinoaks that line the road to Deakin are becoming as red as the fires of January. Under each of the pinoaks lies a little brass plate inscribed with the name and rank of a man who died in the First and Second World Wars and this is where Emmett goes to talk. He’s long given up on God so now he goes to have a yak to the dead soldiers. Reckons his own disappeared old man might even be one of them. Took off when he was a baby. Would you believe, on the night of the baby show too. The night when he’d won most beautiful baby in the whole bloody show; just shows the worth of a pretty bloody face. He laughs and takes a sip from his stubby.

He’s sitting in the little striped aluminum chair he brings down here and Clancy’s running around chasing myxo bunnies while he talks to the old boys and you know what, he doesn’t bignote at all to them, not like he used to with God. No need these days. When he first heard the news about the workings of his brain, it felt like something he’d known, something from way back. Had to be. And it didn’t surprise him because life works that way (you pay for every single bloody thing).

It was not long after the ride on the fire truck, a day when he was truly happy, that he got the news that he had a form of dementia that is rapid and irreversible. He’d suspected for a while that something was going on upstairs. He knew he was losing his brains. And he reckoned he deserved it. Served him right. Abso-bloody-lutely.

He’s stilled by terror as they slide him like a tadpole into the mouth of the imaging machine. He doesn’t even hear the technician telling him not to move. He is not connected to his body, he’s entered limbo. His left eye twitches. He’d rather be in a pub brawl any bloody day. That Emmett’s brain is not normal is not a surprise to any member of the family. But it’s a while before anyone explains precisely how bad things are.

Another test in Ballarat reveals more but he must wait to see the specialist in Melbourne. That is the day he knows with perfect certainty that he’s departing. He walks away from the hospital hoping a bus will run him over, but he has no luck and he smiles to himself that truly he was never a lucky bastard.

How fast will it be? he wonders, cracking the windows to let the heat out of the car. He drives past the red trees and feels tears pushing at him. On the way home he buys a slab of light beer as a gesture to wellness.

It turns out that Emmett’s brain is a sieve of leaking blood vessels. He’s had too many small strokes to count. His memory is draining away even as they speak to him. The brain is largely scar tissue. This will be a fast decline. It won’t be long before he won’t know himself. And yet, for one precious month, he tells no one but the soldiers.

By winter, his chooks have been eaten by foxes and Mrs Thompson the cat has shot through, he hopes to a better place. Clancy was not so lucky, he was run over and a neighbour brought his body back to Emmett and they buried him under the lilac.

He looks at his budgie, Hooley Dooley in the little cage, and decides the time has come so he takes him out to the paddock swinging in his wire cage and releases the little bird. It’s one of his last deliberate acts. He watches the small blue speckled wings rising into the blueness with a kind of tearing pain. And though he will never remember it, at the time he believes he’s going with Hooley to live in a corner of the sky.

Still, he starts a new diary because he reckons it might save him. ‘Diaries give you a new start,’ he says aloud to himself. He’s always believed in the power of words, and in the diary he asks questions he can read to Anne when she rings to check on him each night. One of them is, ‘What is the name of that island where Pete worked? It’s shaped like a ... you know.’ He draws a diamond but can’t say what shape it is. Anne tells him it’s Tasmania. By the time he reads the questions out, he’s lost interest in the answers.