Meanwhile that great big nurse stands there, arms folded, smart and smarmy. She’s loving it. She’s tried this before, tried to get me to walk, but what they fail to recognise is that I’m on the inside, I know what’s going on in my own body and I know when I’m ready and when I’m not. The upshot is I finally stood silently in my slippers just to please them and I also chose to grin and bear the discomfort of it all. I figured that as soon as I satisfied them the sooner they’d leave me alone. I was right.
One night Kitty went upstairs early. She’d been sniffing and sneezing all day and just wanted to curl up in a ball until it all passed. That left me and Milo and as always we went to the Office. Even before we sat down on the floorboards Milo said, ‘I’m working on a big theory’.
‘How big?’ I said, casually.
‘Very big.’
‘About the universe?’
‘Bigger than that. Like why it’s all there in the first place.’
‘The Big Bang.’
‘ The Big Bang?’ Milo rocked backwards and I caught a whiff of him. We could all do with a bath.
‘The big pop and fizzle more like it! No more balls than a cork coming out of a bottle of Porphyry Pearl. Think about it. What’s more intellectually rigorous, a sudden explosion that brought time, space, people and bananas into being or a God that conceived and created the Heavens and Earth over a solid bloody week?’
‘You … you believe in God?’
Milo’s burst of laughter bounced off the brickwork and stirred the dust.
‘God, schmod, but it’s just as ballsy a theory as the Big Bang - or Big Bloody Wang some might say.’
Then we sat a long time in silence. Anyone would say it was completely dark and cold, but we didn’t see it that way. We were used to it and our eyes were accustomed to the dimness; we could pick out the pigeons roosting on a far ledge and, below them, the streaks of grey that ran down the wall. Through our eyes we saw the detail: the cobwebs and the wires hanging down, all the light fittings gone, the iron rods that once held ceiling fans.
I had almost forgotten what we were talking about when Milo suddenly said, ‘Let’s put the Big Bang through the wringer - the wringer of known facts. If such a thing were to take place it would have to do it within some pre-existing context, wouldn’t you say? And if it’s going to happen, then it’s a bloody event, and an event has to be incubated in or with something else. Newton says, “no action ever happens of or by itself ” - it’s a simple law of physics. That means the so-called Big Bang has to have been caused by something. You stare at the sky as long as I have and it becomes obvious.’
Milo scratched his beard, a sound as familiar as the creak of leather.
‘Now I don’t say our cosmos doesn’t have some natural origin - just as a mountain or a river does. Just that the dawn of the universe wasn’t the first bloody thing.’
Milo shifted position, stretched his legs out and tucked his blanket around him. I heard him scratch his whiskers again. I too was starting to get quite a bit of strong stubble and found myself mimicking his action.
‘A New Theory of Everything; that’s what’s needed,’ he said at last.
I thought of the planets and my old poster of the Solar System. Milo’s idea excited me. My head fairly buzzed with ideas and in the darkness I could feel my face redden with the thought of it all. Milo had sparked something and a wave of energy passed through me like nothing I’d ever felt.
‘What do you think it is then?’ I said, almost breathlessly.
‘Well now, that’s the bloody question isn’t it? You want my opinion? I think the Big Bang is like the paintings they made of Australia long before the new land was even discovered - a nice idea to exercise the mind while we wait for a better picture of things.’
Suddenly I heard Kitty’s footfalls on the stairs and she came to sit on the floor with us. She was shivering and she said she’d been having the bad dreams again. I pulled her in under my blanket and put my arms around her. It must have been about three in the morning. Milo shifted position and I felt a wave of disappointment. Our moment had passed and even before he spoke I knew there’d be a change in subject.
‘Now listen you two,’ he said. ‘When I die, I want you to do something special for me.’
Kitty and I straightened and looked towards the dark recess where he sat.
‘If you got any balls you’ll drag me down to the big stormwater grate on the corner of McKillop and York and chuck me in. And then the next rain will take me right under the city. I want to be buried under all those bloody buildings, way down there with the Aborigines!’ Then he laughed and we laughed as well and we agreed it was a fitting end for city-dwellers like us. Then, even in that dark void, I saw his face drop like wet newspaper.
‘Don’t want no bloody relatives coming to claim me,’ he said. And we knew exactly what he meant.
One morning about a month later Milo didn’t come out of his room. We heard him arrive the night before, coming up from the cellar as usual. But by lunchtime we were sure something wasn’t right. We went to his room and pushed the door wide open. A piece of blanket was pinned at the window and it hung to the side letting in weak light. Everything he owned was arranged neatly along one wall: a plastic bucket, a little stack of books, a candle and an old wireless hooked up to a 12-volt battery. On the opposite side there was a camp stretcher - where he’d got it is anyone’s guess - and on it Milo lay sprawling with his boots on. His arm was over the side and his palm rested on the floor, his big old knuckles standing up like speed humps. His head lolled off the edge of the bed at a horrible angle. I said, ‘Milo?’ but I knew he was dead.
It was only then that we realised how much we’d grown to like the old man. In fact I don’t even think he was that old, just tired. And he was the sort of man I wouldn’t have minded for a father. I think Kitty felt the same. She walked out of the room and I found her standing at one of the windows. The lower panes were rippled glass covered with a thick film of dust so who knows what she was seeing. I walked up behind her; she turned and put her arms around me. She was as tall as I was but that day she put her face into my neck and made herself small. Then she cried; I felt it in my own chest. I don’t think Kitty had ever cried before - and just two days off her fifteenth birthday.
High above us street noises came through a broken window pane and I heard a big motorbike’s rowdy blatter. Those windows faced McKillop Street and nearby there was a popular bike shop. We were used to the big choppers starting up and then the noisy blattering as they came past our place. Our place: Kitty and me and dead Milo in a big old factory, no power, no water, no anything.
‘Don’t worry Kit,’ I said at last, ‘we got the best thing that anyone could wish for; we got each other and nothing else matters.’
But it hardly soothed her; she just kept on sobbing against my shoulder as though the only thing decent in her life had suddenly been taken away.
‘You still got me,’ I added, though I wasn’t sure about the compensation.
After a while we went into the Office to figure things out.
‘We’ll have to go to the cops,’ I said.
Kitty sat silently and stared at the floor.
‘We’ve got to let them know, Kit.’
‘No we don’t.’ She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘What about what Milo said? What about the promise we made?’
‘We didn’t make a promise.’
‘Yes we did. I