White Gums, Alice Springs

A few moments in time from Alice Springs…

She sits alone in a simple chair. She is outside her home, a grey aluminium oblong with the word ATCO in faded grey letters on the side. It’s raised from the ground by some bricks on each corner. Paint chips away. She has tried to soften the severe right-angled edges of the box by adding little touches, like strings of lights that sparkle in the evening, although some are dead. There are some plants in pots and a cheap metal arbour that has a skeletal shrub struggling to get over it.  When the wind blows, chimes hidden from view sing a quiet song.

Beside her is a table, with a glass, a bottle of wine and another bottle with some sort of pinkish liquid in it. She tops her glass and sips, and then settles back and stares into the mid-distance at nothing obvious. She is smiling and her face has an almost serene look, except the expression barely changes, so the effect is unsettling. She seems alone in an ongoing dream.

In Alice Springs at the moment, the day shifts quickly from warm sunshine to a cold gloaming that adds to that atmosphere of melancholy that can invade the senses as the shadows lengthen. Added to this is the towering red wall of the MacDonnell Ranges that soar behind, a huge pointed curtain that changes from caramel to red to black as the sun descends. The evening settles and she moves a worn blue blanket across her chest, ready for the descending layer of cold. She has sat here before.

Eventually, after dark, she moves inside and turns on the television. It’s muted tones, audience laughter and squarkish advertisement’s can be heard until after midnight and into the early morning. At some point she must turn it off, because as daybreaks and the first shafts of orange yellow sun pushes across the dry creek bed beside which she lives, all is quiet.

He stands in a line in a bottle shop, just after the doors have opened. He has one of those old fashioned trolleys in front of him, with chipped paint on the metal handles and a faded grey vinyl carrier, torn in places. On top of the basket, the purpose of his visit, two bottles of port. They lie side by side like bodies ready for burial.

He is wearing a loose t-shirt, stained tracksuit pants and pair of worn thongs that barely keep shrivelled toes and cracked, blackened heels off the ground. He has the unmistakable smell of those whose soul has been gripped by the talons of booze. It’s a sodden mixture of urine and body grime, a floating miasma. It triggers images of shadows in a kitchen, empty fridges, fly’s floating in fat soaked water, worn carpets and televisions on, but with no sound.

The claws have grabbed and not let go.

Still, his hair has been tended to. It’s white and thinning, although still shoulder length. The white transforms into a tobacco yellow at the end. It has been slicked back over his ears with some sort of liquid that leaves visible furrows from the teeth of his comb.

He chats to people, making jokes he has said before about their drink choices and snorting a throaty, husky laugh. People smile and nod. He hopes he’s a character. At least that’s something. At some point, he gave up and handed over his life to this routine. He walks to the counter, pays with a shaky hand and hobbles off into his never ending tomorrow.