The big Jesus - Page 3
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 1: Insecurity in the New World Order
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Andrew Belk
Near Toowoomba he started lying down in the back seat as I drove. I would tell him if there was anything interesting to look at or he would ask me if he was missing anything good and I would say yes or no. Once I lied and told him that his favourite model Valiant was coming the other way just so he would sit up. At the next town he bought a copy of a book called Ulysses and started to read it to me out loud as punishment. Sometime during page five he threw it out of the window and asked me what was the point of anything.
At Toowoomba we stopped at the Big Cane Toad. The thing I like about cane toads is you can kill them and not feel guilty. The place was really just a reptile park with a cardboard frog out the front but I wanted to show him a trick a girl from Townsville had taught me.
A cane toad has a hard plate at the back of its head and if you find the right spot you can hold it between your teeth while it does the escape paddle. It really spins people out. I grabbed a toad from a display tank and shoved it in my mouth but I did it wrong and I swallowed some of the cane toad poison. I was off my tits in about 30 seconds. It was great. He didn't believe me when I told him cane toad poison can get you off and how licky dogs get addicted to it all the time. I wiped some of the white foam from the toad's head onto my finger and stuck it in his mouth.
Not many guys would let you do something like that.
He put a fresh toad down his shirt and we bolted. We bought some hot chips and drove up to a place called Picnic Point and ate the chips and got off our faces taking it in turns to lick the toad. We were watching the sunset over the valley and down below some agricultural machine started beeping and I thought about how when he laughed at my corny joke by the fax machine that day he didn't know he was dying.
At Dalby he started to get real sick and I started to believe that we weren't going to find this Jesus and that we were stupid for trusting Women's Weekly. We stayed at a good motel so the bed would be firm and the air-conditioner quiet and so he could have a bath and watch the Discovery channel and so we could make our own toast.
I went out every day trying to find someone who knew this Jesus but by lunchtime I would just end up at the pub. I asked everyone who came in if they knew Jesus. The first day, a guy called Noel tried to save me. The second day, a guy called Brian asked me to save him. On the third day, a guy called Trevor told me he had been saved already and he drew me a map. I was surprised at how close we were.
He was real happy when I told him. He just cried and cried. We didn't go straightaway. We stayed in the motel for a while – he was working on the timing. We ate well and we stopped smoking. We took small walks and sat in the pool and let the spa wash over us. He slept a lot but I hardly slept – I just watched him breathe mostly. One morning he said that we should hit the road.
On the last day I watched him in the rear-view mirror as I drove. He tried to load a new film cartridge into the camera. At first I smiled at what a determined bastard he was. Then I was sad because I started to think about how it was his last photo and then I panicked because I realised we hadn't taken a nice photo of us together and then I remembered there were lots at home.
I started to cry because I realised we hadn't made love for the last time and then I remembered how before all of this he had once said he wanted to die inside me. I panicked because I thought that was maybe what he wanted to do now but then I looked in the mirror and watched him trying to load the camera and I realised he just wanted to take his photo of Jesus and die.
He looked up at me and our eyes met and I could see he was letting go right there and then on the back seat. He asked me if I was sure we were going the right way and I said yes but I didn't tell him I had been this far before.
After Trevor drew me the map I drove straight out here to check that Jesus was in the paddock like he said. I started to think about how bad it would be to get out here and find only a heap of cows or something. Then I panicked too because I thought that if Jesus wasn't in the paddock we would just end up driving around forever so, in the end, I turned around and went back to the motel and didn't say anything.
We came to the end of the road. When I lifted him from the car his lightness offended me. I carried him along the cow track. It was a blue day with a breeze and birds and I said he must be happy at how it all looked like in a movie and he said he couldn't see anymore. I told him the grass was green and that the sky was blue. I told him that when my mum was a little kid she used to stand in cow shit to keep her feet warm.
I carried him a long way before I found the place. I sat us down in the middle of the paddock and held him in front of me. We sat for a while and then I loaded the cartridge into the camera. I held his hands around it and I lifted it up for him. I lined up a nice shot like he'd taught me and I put his finger on the shutter button for him.
He said he would send me a sign from the afterlife and then we pressed the shutter button together.
I held the negative high in the air above us and waved it about the way he liked but it never developed.
It just stayed white.