Can of words - Recollections

Eddie Stephenson.

Joe does the right thing and springs me a durrie, Winnie Reds but beggars and choosers and whatnot. You can tell a lot about a bloke when you bum a smoke off him. If he doesn’t think twice you know he’s alright but if he makes a song and dance about it you pretty much know he’s a dickhead.

So Joe’s all right, just flips open the top of his pack and offers me one. He’s only got a few left too, that’s extra special. Not bad seeing we only met this morning.

First time we’ve actually met but I’ve been in the same room with him a couple of times. We’re unemployed, the room we’ve been in is at our Job Network something or other. Joe and I have sat across the table from each other filling out naff forms a couple of times. I estimate I’ve filled in three hundred pages of it for them, knowing full well that no one is ever going to read it. I asked them about it one time. Said I didn’t want to fill in any more forms until I’d got some feedback on the ones I’d already done. Network chick was non-plussed then switched to non-committal until I say that we know that no one is actually going to read them. Then she fires up, says well actually they’d been reading through my files last week. I say doubt it because you wouldn’t be smiling if you’d read the silly answers I wrote in there.

Joe lights the durrie for me. We are sitting outside at the plastic tables and chairs at the Blue Haven Lodge retirement home in Ingham. Having smoko from putting up the Christmas decorations about the place, plastic trees and shiny baubles and what not. It’s a volunteer job suggested to us by the Job Network. Didn’t get asked to volunteer, just told that they wanted me to do it. Yeah all right! I couldn’t handle anymore grief from their direction so I just turned up. Plus worthy cause and all that.

Joe and I went at it for an hour or so, just getting up and down the ladder hooking up streamers and baubles and carting a few recliners and mattresses around. Then we had smoko. Joe’s a cheerful bugger. Always whistling or singing something. Got an easy going way about him. Late forties, tall with a cap pulled over bushy dark hair. He’s got a super moustache too. Big drooping handle bar job from jowl to jowl. Got a bit of a ####### about him.

We have a bit of a chat about the magnificent mountains in the background and Joe pointed out, after a couple of goes, which is the Cardwell Range and which is actually Hinchinbrook Island . Hinchinbrook is huge, a mountain coming out of the sea and just looks like part of the range. Which I guess it was at sometime.

We sat and smoked our durries and sipped our coffees and watched an old bloke come slowly out of his apartment on his wheeled stroller thing. Baggy shorts, skinny, couple of grey hairs, must be eighty. Slow but getting along all right. He struggled a bit with his clothes line, one of those rectangular jobs that swing up from the wall, trying to push it up further or something but then gave it up and got his clothes off the line. Un-pegging each article and scrunching it up in a ball and tossing it in his basket. Joe has a chuckle, says. “I like the way he takes his washing in.” I’m chuckling too, and say. “I was just looking at that too mate. Glad to see someone else doing it that way.” Folding has never been one of my strengths.

Washing in, the old bloke sets the wheels of his stroller in our direction and makes his way over, calling as he comes. “You mind if I join you fellers over there?” Joe and I make welcoming noises and I get a plastic chair out ready for him then wait the couple of minutes it takes for him to get there.

Eddie, his name Eddie Stephenson is written in large Nikko letters on a sticker on his stroller, is a funny bugger. Has a few amusing things to say about this and that. Joe asked him what he was doing for Christmas and he told us that he’s going to his twin brother Nicky’s place, at Cordelia or something, I didn’t quite catch it but some little town around Ingham.

Eddie starts talking about the Blue Haven joint and I say. “Seems all right here mate eh? Quite nice.” I meant it, it’s not a great place but it’s in a nice spot. I’ve seen plenty of these types of joints in the city whose only view is the building next door but this place has got a wonderful view, green fields and sugar cane up to the mountains. Beautiful mountains at that, dramatic with saddlebacks and huge rocky outcrops and green like green should be.

I can see these mountains from my back door and I never can stop looking at them.

Eddie says. “Yeah it’s all right. Pretty good.” Then has a bit of a grimace. “The food though.”

“No good?” I say

Eddie doesn’t answer, not right away, just goes into this story about when he was in the war. WW2. He wasn’t specific but I asked him later and he fought in New Guinea and The Solomons. Eddie, I also asked him later whether I should call him Eddie or Mister Stephenson and he laughed me off, told us a story about how they were getting hammered by a machine gun nest and a young “Coloured lad”, I guess that’s some last century thing, had said he could get up close by slithering low through the grass and chuck a grenade in. And he got up there too, Eddie doing the snake motions through the grass with his arms, but something went wrong. I didn’t quite get this bit but somehow the grenade ends up in the blokes own lap and blows him up. Eddie and his mate, who Eddie said died two days later, “It was a hell of a battle,” had to go and get his body. Eddie said his mate had taken the torso and taken off thinking Eddie, with the legs, was coming straight after, only Eddie wasn’t ready yet and the body split in two. Eddie holding the legs and his mate walking off with the torso. Then Eddie had to get a raincoat and scoop up the poor guy’s guts, his intestines. Eddie screwed his lips up in disgust and said. “It was horrible, just like spaghetti it was and I’ve never been able to enjoy spaghetti again.” He shakes his head. “They serve a lot of spaghetti here.”

All I could say was. “Oh.” But I was thinking ‘Holy Hell!’ Eddie goes on to talk about the local black guys coming back from battle and saying. “Look at this Boss.” and then showing them boxes of Japanese ears. “Holy Hell!” I said it out loud this time.

Eddie watches an old dame stroller-ing herself up the walk. Says “Some of them in there can talk to her but I can’t understand a ###### word she says.” Joe and I laugh.

Joe went off somewhere and I helped Eddie click his washing line back in place properly and then he gave me the grand tour of his apartment. It’s not quite an apartment. Just a room really, but homey. Nice bed with pictures on the walls and dresser. Framed ones of Eddie in his army days. Looks twenty, handsome. Couple of stuffed toys a lion and a tiger sitting on the neatly made bed. We talked about the trophies stacked up on the shelf unit in the corner and Eddie told me they are for lawn bowls. I pulled a few out and read the inscriptions and made impressed noises then made my excuses and took my leave, telling Eddie. “I’d better get back into it.” Meaning the Christmas decorations. We shook hands like old mates.

Joe and I knocked the rest of the decorating off in about an hour, maybe less. The women running the joint, Kay the boss and Angela who had showed us what to do, were profuse with their thanks, felt good. I went to say goodbye to Eddie but he was off somewhere. Not in his room. So Joe and I took off. Joe called his Missus to come and pick him up and they gave me a lift into town. Joe in the front seat giving his Missus directions and me in the back seat thinking 'Well, that wasn’t too bad.’ Not a bad way to spend a morning really. Good cause and all that. Plus you don’t get to meet a bloke like Eddie Stephenson everyday.