Salad Days

1

The hotel pool room was pure Picasso. The wall paper was a rose and cream decal. The carpet was red, as was the felt on the four pool tables. There was a juke box in the corner, Bob Seger was singing I Feel Like a Number.

I was with some mates, drinking, chatting, playing pool.

It was my shout. On the way to the bar I passed her. She was wearing blue jeans and black ankle-high boots. Her blue eyes sat in a round face. Her hair was cut to a number four.  She wore a black leather biker’s jacket over a grey t-shirt and smiled as we passed.

I returned with the round and there she was standing near my table. We talked as The Steve Miller Band sang The Joker.  

We played pool together and won.

Two grey suited detectives walked into the room and started asking questions, recording the replies in their flip top note books. 

Suddenly there was a fracas. A guy wearing an Eastern Suburbs rugby league jersey came running into the room, screaming loudly. He leapt on to one of the pool tables, stomped around the top of the table, his vocal chords strained as he leaned forward and screamed obscenities at everyone in the room.   Deep Purple, Space Truckin’, blasted from the duke box.

Suddenly the doors to the main bar burst open. A dozen people fell through the doors and into the pool room. An all in brawl had erupted.

The detectives reacted quickly, jamming their notebooks into their inside coat pockets and moving urgently to the nearest exit.

The guy shouting from the pool table leapt to the floor, landing nimbly on the red carpet, running into the melee in the front bar, disappearing into the ruckus.

She took me by the hand and we ran from the pool room together, her leading the way. I had no idea why or where we were running, yet I followed.

Hand in hand we ran up the hill from the pub, stopping in the darkness of the doorway of a shop, gasping for breath, sirens sounding in the distance. It sounded like police cars were in every street.

We huddled close together in the door way of the shop. I put my hand on her cheek and felt the warmth of her face in my palm. We kissed as the noise of the sirens washed over us. She took my hand and, as the sirens faded into the distance, we ran up the hill.

Soon we came to her apartment. It was above a shop. There was a double bed, a kitchenette and a disused fireplace with a brick and tile mantelpiece all in one room.  A radio sat on the mantelpiece.

We removed our jackets and she turned on the radio. She took two glasses from a cupboard in the kitchenette and poured two rums. She offered me one of the rums, sat on the bed and removed her boots.

She rose to her feet, walked towards me. We embraced and kissed.

We fell into her bed and when I entered her I felt the meaning of connection for the first time.  Warm Ride played on the radio. 

I slept like I’d never slept before. 

When I woke, I was bathing in the warmth of the light that poured through the windows of her flat. We were lying in her bed, her head in the crook of my right arm. I watched her eyes flutter as she woke. She looked at me, put her arm around my neck and pulled me close. We kissed. “I’m headin’ up the coast, wanna come?” she asked.

“When?” I replied.

“Now,” she said, pushing me away and getting out of bed.

I watched her bare arse as she walked into the bathroom. While she was showering I made scrambled eggs on toast. We ate and I did the washing-up while she gathered her stuff together. I had nothing but the clothes on my back as I followed her onto a bus to Central. 

From Central we caught a train to Hornsby, where we started hitching north.

2

We caught a ride with some hippies in a blue Kombi. She and I lay on a mattress in the back. The hippies passed around a joint. She took a tote and then placed the joint in my mouth. I took a deep draw.  She handed the joint back to the hippies and we kissed. We expelled each other’s smoke into each other’s mouths, breathing each other’s breath.

She pinned my arms to the floor of the van.  Her face leaned down and we kissed. I closed my eyes and when I opened them I looked into hers and smiled. She smiled back. 

Every now and again, as the van travelled up the coast, people would leave and people would join the clan. Cuddled together in the back of the van we enjoyed each other’s company.

After a few days the van stopped at a deserted beach. She and I decided it was time to wave the hippies goodbye. We disembarked, walking to the beach as the van pulled away. She and I held hands as we ran onto the deserted sands. We stripped each other naked and ran hand in hand to the surf, embracing skin to skin. 

We stayed on the beach all day, making love and diving in the waves.  

Mid-afternoon we took a walk along the beach, coming upon a fisherman. We talked and after a while the fisherman opened his Esky and offered us a cold beer. We accepted the fisherman’s offer and talked to him for hours while he fished.

It was getting dark when the fisherman said, “Fish are about to run,” and he put a cork reel in my hand. He pointed up the beach and said, “Find a fishing spot.”

She and I walked up the beach until we could no longer see the fisherman. When we stopped I unravelled several metres of line from the cork reel, swung it like a lasso and let it go. That first throw found the water at the back of the waves.  Hook, line and sinker were swallowed straight away.

It felt like a big fish the way it grabbed the line and ran. Yet I knew I had its measure.

By the time I reeled in the fish my hands were sore and bleeding. I could hardly move my fingers. She put her arms around my neck and we kissed.

We took the fish to the fisherman. He smiled. “Trevally,” he said. “Nice catch.”

We spent that night on the beach with the fisherman. We built a small fire in the sand and cooked and ate the Trevally. We slept in the sand a few metres from the fire. When we woke, wrapped around each other, the fire was dead. The fisherman was gone. 

3

The sky was overcast and dark, looking like it was going to open at any moment. We ran, hand in hand from the beach to the road and started hitching, hoping to beat the storm.

We hit the highway and a few minutes later we were in luck. A truck pulled over, the cab door opened and we climbed in. We were met by a broad white smile in a black face. 

Lightning struck as we got into the cab and thunder burst overhead. The rain came down hard, quickly turning to hail, bouncing off the bonnet of the truck.  “Where’re you guys headed?” asked the driver.

“North,” she said.

“You chose the right side of the road,” said the driver, laughing. Steppenwolf, Magic Carpet Ride, played on the radio as the truck accelerated on to the road.

We drove non-stop for hours, through heavy rain, into a cloudless, star-filled sky. The sound of the truck’s motor out did the tinny radio. She and I fell asleep to the constant throb of the engine.

Suddenly the motor stopped and we woke, parked on the side of the road. 

“Where are we?” I asked. 

“Don’t know,” said the driver.  He reached across me, opened the glove box and took out a plastic bag.  He tossed the plastic bag to me. “It’ll be a while before the others catch up.” 

I caught the plastic bag and opened it. From it I rolled the biggest joint I’d ever rolled. It was six papers big! It was a masterpiece. The cab filled with smoke as the three of us toked on that huge joint.   We wound down the windows to let in the fresh air and were met by all sorts of night noises. In the distance I could hear a voice, whispering, “Lemonade, lemonade, lemonade….” The voice slowly got louder, “Lemonade, lemonade, lemonade….” It became a shout, “Lemonade, lemonade, lemonade!!!”

I woke suddenly, as a train passed close beside us.

Lemonade, lemonade, lemonade, rattled the train’s wheels over the tracks.

As the sun rose there was a barrage of horns tooting and suddenly everyone was awake. Two trucks pulled up next to us. Several people got out of the trucks and approached us. They were carnies, part of the same mob.

She and I looked at each other. “We’re heading off,” she said to the driver. 

She put her arm around me. “It’s time to say goodbye,” she said. We got out of the truck and walked hand in hand for hours along sugarcane lined-roads.

4

The day was hot and it grew hotter as we walked. Around midday, sore, dirty and tired, we walked into a ramshackle roadhouse, a wooden building, with a bar, a pool table, a coke fridge and a juke box. We each opened a coke and guzzled it. 

“I’ve got beer, if you want one,” said the guy behind the counter. 

“We’ll have two of those,” she said, putting her arm around my neck. We kissed, JJ Cale, After Midnight, played on the duke box.

“You guys need a room,” said the barman.  “We’ve got a caravan out back, you can have it,” he said, throwing the key our way. She caught the key and we took our beers to the van.

Once inside the van we embraced and fell upon the bunk. The bunk was narrow and uncomfortable, but we made do. I pealed her top away as she stripped me of my jeans. I felt her hot breath on my skin. 

We left the van at sunrise the next day.

We walked for hours, hitching as we went.  A purple, vintage, convertible pulled up and we hopped aboard. The walk had been hot and draining, but sitting in back of the purple convertible, sailing down the highway, was fresh and cool. Gerry Rafferty, Baker Street, played on the radio.

The driver was affable and talkative.  He was European and smelled wealthy.  He and I conversed while she slept, her head on my shoulder.

Kilometre after kilometre passed and we stopped for fuel. We bought a coke while the driver paid for the petrol. I lost count of the hours after we hit the road again. She and I lay in the back seat of the car, talking and sleeping.

It was dark when the convertible stopped outside a bar. The driver got out of the car and we followed him inside. The bar was upmarket from our usual digs. People were dancing in the dim light, Gloria Gaynor, I Will Survive, pumping from the speakers. 

I went to the bar and bought a round while she led him to a table.  She appeared alongside me at the bar, her hand on my shoulder. “I thought I’d give you a heads up,” she said. “He and I are heading west. You’re welcome if you want to come.”

“I think we’ve come as far as we needed to come,” I said. I smiled and kissed her on the cheek.  

She put her arms around my neck and we kissed. \

I never saw her again and I’ve missed her ever since.