White Ute Dreaming by Scot Gardner

chest for a while waiting for him to breathe. He didn’t. So that’s what a dead person looks like? Nothing spectacular really. I thought about Kerry and the talks we’d had about death and I got a bit freaked. What if when you die you just step outside your body? What if his spirit was floating around the room watching us? I went and had a shower and by the time I got back into the lounge, he’d gone. They’d loaded him into a fat black hearse and Mum was standing in the drive talking to one of the blokes. It all happened a bit quick.
    I thought we’d pack up and go home. I hoped we would anyway. It’s not much fun living in a dead bloke’s house and Mum always packs shit clothes when she packs for me. Stuff I haven’t worn for ages that she likes and I hate. Turned out the funeral wasn’t going to happen until Wednesday. I moped around the dead man’s house on Sunday and Monday like everyone else, set up Den’s slot car set, smoked Mum’s smokes and got freaked at night.

    On Tuesday, Mum had to go with Uncle Ted to the solicitors and I found the key to the back shed. Didn’t think the old bloke would mind if I had a bit of a look out there. He had an easel set up with blank paper sitting on it. A ratty old armchair, a dusty desk and a single fluoro overhead. He’d drawn all over the desk in pen. Some maths calculations but mostly really fine doodles of people and animals. Must have taken years to do it all. He’d been a clever bloke. I found an old work locker, a tall one for hanging clothes in. It had been laid on its side and attached to the wall so that it made one long shelf with a door on the front. Bookshelf. The locker was packed with stick books. Every edition of Penthouse magazine since 1972. Playboy . Mayfair . The works. What a goldmine. I found an old stale packet of Benson and Hedges in another draw so I sat in the armchair and smoked the old bloke’s smokes and read his stick books. Yep. I remember you.
    Mum came back from the solicitors while I was taking a leak in the backyard. I did a quick tidy-up of the shed and wandered into the house.
    â€˜Ted and I are the executors of his will and they’re going to read it next Tuesday, so I’m going to have to go home and come back or stay here till then. I think I’ll stay. Clean up a bit of this mess.’
    That sounded exciting. I would have been bored shitless of stick books by then. ‘What about me?’
    â€˜I’ll try and get in touch with your dad. Maybe you could stay with him for a couple of days. Do you want to go to the funeral? You don’t have to.’
    I nodded. I’d like to say goodbye to the old bloke. ‘I could go back on the train after that.’

    They didn’t slick his hair right. They dressed him up like a ponce. At least they left his teeth in. I couldn’t see them but I could tell by the way that his cheeks were hanging that they were still in. It wasn’t him. It was his body all right, resting in a shiny coffin on top of a solid timber pedestal, but it looked like a cold lump of meat. Nothing like the cheeky bugger that had lived in it. I wished I hadn’t come. There were about fifty people there. I only knew Mum and Ted and Penny, and Jenelle my thick cousin. Don hadn’t been big on church and they had the funeral at the chapel where they were going to cremate him, but they still had someone come in and rabbit on about God and him. Called him Donald Kirkbride instead of Kirkwood. Dickhead. Probably didn’t even know him. Quite a few of the people in the chapel were Aboriginal. One big lady was bawling her eyes out. Made me wonder if she’d been Don’s woman. He’d always lived by himself, never had a wife or an obvious girlfriend but he’d been happy.
    At the end of the ceremony my floodgates opened. An athletic Aboriginal bloke, about thirty, dressed in a cool-looking suit and barefoot came to