Westpoint Tales
by Kiwi
Entangled Tales - 3 - Peter & Jay
The short day drew to a close as the swollen orb of the sun slowly sank into the sea. Pale, blue sky became a uniform pink over the west. The few puffy clouds turned from grays to rich, flaming shades of gold, slowly darkening and fading as day turned into night.
The small town of Westpoint, pop.3800, settled down to another winter's evening. Hundreds of homes fired smoke up their chimneys, mostly pale, inoffensive wood-smoke but still more than a few plumes of dirtier, hotter, coal-smoke. It was still largely a coal mining town after all.
The smoke plumes found a level in the still air and spread out, merging into a thin, ineffective, communal blanket, as if trying to retain the fading warmth of the day.
Hundreds of street-lights flickered on. In their various colors and concentrations, they defined the backstreets and the main thoroughfares through the square grid of the town. Westpoint lay parallel to the north-bank of its wide river, a couple of kilometers back from the battling beaches along the western front.
In the open doorway of the tree house cradled high in the branches of an old pine tree, a dreamy, melancholic boy sat. Black jeans, black T shirt, and black hair. He sighed, uncoiled his limbs and stretched his long legs out towards the child-built ladder below. His bare foot touched something unexpected down there. Something hard, round and alive!
He jerked his shocked feet back up and underneath him and peered down from his safe perch.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, Dee! What the hell are you doing sneaking up on me? You scared the fucking life out of me."
"Hey Dreamy," she replied. "Nice way to talk to a lady and the oldest friend you've got. I'm not sneaking up on you. I just saw you sitting up here and came over to join you. You stood on my head, Buster!"
"You ain't no lady, Dee. I barely touched your head, and," (looking down past her), "where's this old friend you're talking about?"
"You know what I mean, Dipshit. Move over so that I can come up there already."
Dee Jamieson pulled herself up on to the platform, pushing Jay's long legs back out of the way. "Cosy up here isn't it? I haven't been up here in ages. I remember it being much bigger than this. It must have shrunk in the rain or something."
"No, Neighbor, it hasn't gotten smaller. You've got bigger, much bigger."
"Watch it, Boy. I'll push you out again. Remember that? Ten years old and you screamed like a girl, and you hit the ground with such a thump! I thought I'd friggen killed you. Man! I was SO sorry."
"So you've said, about a million times already. Anyway, there was no great harm done, apart from a fractured wrist. That's when I started playing the drums, for therapy - exercise for my wrist."
"Yes, and you're still at it. Drumming away, thump, thump, thump, crash-bang, thump. All day long and half the friggen night too, and about four meters away from my bedroom window. Nice of your parents really, moving your bedroom out of the house and down to the sleepout in the back of the garage. They got peace and quiet and I got five years of drumbeats right across the fence from my room."
"That's payback for you. But, really though, I didn't realise that it was annoying you. You should've said."
"Oh, shut up, Jay. It's not that bad really. I don't mind, I'm used to it now. It's sort of like a background noise, like waves on a beach. It would worry me now if it stopped. Sometimes, when our radios are both on and you're playing along, it's pretty cool. It's like the music is coming from next-door."
"Well it is isn't it? Drums make the music."
"That's not music - thump, thump, thump."
"That is music. The drums are the heart of it. The beat is the base that everything else is built on. You've gotta have the drums."
"Not always. Folk music, you know - a singer and a guitar, they don't have drums."
"Well, they should. Orchestras, brass bands, bagpipe bands, they all have drums and rock groups always, always, always have the drums. The heart of Rock and Roll is the beat, somebody said."
"Yeah. That'd probably be you."
"No. It's a line from a song."
"I wouldn't know. I like music well enough but I'm not obsessed like you are."
"Obsessed? I'm not obsessed, I just like music, that's all."
"Jay, you're fifteen. You should be out hooning around in cars, getting drunk and chasing girls, not just sitting in your room all day bang-banging on your drums."
"Wouldn't catch many girls if I was drunk would I? Anyway, I just love the music. Okay, maybe I am obsessed, a little bit."
"A little bit? A bloody big bit if you ask me. It's all you do. You go to school, come home, and play your drums and sleep sometimes. You need to get a life, Boy."
"I've got a life. I like surfing, well - body-boarding. It's been too bloody cold for that lately, however," (Waving at the fading sunset), "summer's coming."
"Can't be soon enough for me, I hate winter. Wait 'til you see how I can fill out a bikini this summer, you'll have to join the queue."
"I think I'll pass on that, thank you. Anyhow, I hate getting drunk - no fun in that. I'd much rather get high with a bit of pot."
"Yeah, and that's another thing, Jacob Francis Kynnersley. If my father, the policeman, knew what you've got growing behind your garage, he'd have forty fits and you'd be in big trouble, boy!"
"You think? But he wouldn't bust me, would he? I mean, he loves me really. I'm the son he never had."
"He likes you all right, but he is a cop. Maybe he wouldn't arrest you, but he'd kick your arse for sure, big as you are. And, Boy, you have got big haven't you? All long and gangly and sort of floppy, like a calf - like a bull calf. Speaking of which, everything's growing in proportion is it?"
"You'll never know madam. Absolutely none of your business."
"Yes, well. We're a bit old to play doctors and nurses any more. There'd be no room up here anyway. Why did we ever build the treehouse so small?"
"It was big enough back then. Like I said, it hasn't gotten smaller, we've got bigger."
"So, what are you doing sitting up here all alone and mopey? You're not your normal bouncy self are you?"
"I was just watching the sunset. Nobody's happy all the time, that'd be a real pain."
"I don't see why not. What's getting you down then?"
"Oh," (sigh), "I dunno. Maybe I do need to get a life. I mean, I do love the drums and all, but it gets a bit lonely sometimes, just playing by myself."
"Stop that!" she grinned. "You'll go blind."
"Shut up, Dee. I said playing by myself, not with myself. Keep the party clean, Girl."
"Well, I think you need a girlfriend."
"Oh no I do not."
"Boyfriend then?"
"No, Gutterbrain. I'd just sort of like someone to share music with. A real person or two to play along and have some fun with."
"So you want to join a group do you? Do you think you're good enough?"
"Of course I am. I'm pretty hot you know."
"Okay, come down and show me then. I've been hearing you play for years. Five l - o - n - g years, but I've never actually seen you playing. You're always shut away there, in that room all by yourself."
They climbed down from the tree and Jay led the way across the yard and into his room behind the garage.
"Cheese! What a pig-sty. Why are boy's rooms always so messy?"
"Oh? Seen a lot of boy's rooms have you?"
"Yes, hundreds - in movies and stuff. So these are your famous drums. What are they doing sitting up on boxes and things? And all in a line? Surely, you're not making a start on cleaning up your room? Hey, you've got a keyboard too. Doesn't it work? I've never heard you playing that."
"You're a question a minute aren't you, Dee? The keyboard works fine. It was a present from the grandparents; I think that they were trying to wean me off the drums. Didn't work though. I'm not cleaning up the room, I just did that a couple of weeks ago. And, the drums are sitting up like that because that's how I like them."
"But that's not how you're supposed to set up drums and stuff. Even I know that much. They're supposed to be all around you while you sit in the middle."
"Well they're my drums and this is how I like them. You can't dance around if you're sitting down and I like to dance when I'm playing. It's more fun."
"A dancing drummer? This I've got to see. Play on, Little Drummer Boy. Well, Big Drummer boy, I suppose."
Jay put on a CD and located his drumsticks. "You have to keep out of my way, I need lots of room. Why don't you sit over there on the bed?"
"This is not just an evil plot to get me on your bed is it, Jacob?"
"In your dreams! Of course it's not - this was all your idea remember."
He pushed "play" on the stereo, stood at the drums, clicked the sticks together, and nodded his head a couple of times while he caught the beat, and then - he exploded!
His body whirled and danced back and forth in front of the half-circle line of drums, cymbals, and tubular bells. Legs swung his hips to the beat of the loud raucous music and feet flashed forward to the electric pad on the floor that activated the pedal of the big bass drum.
Arms flailed wrists and hands around and the shiny, golden, drumsticks sparkled in the light, vibrating like the wings of a small bird in flight. His head rocked insanely and teeth flashed in the wide grin that threatened to split his face in two.
At the crashing climax to the song, he spun around and thrust one hand, now holding both drumsticks, straight out towards Dee. She jerked back involuntarily and sat there staring at him with her mouth hanging open.
:"Wow! Who'd have ever thought - I'm totally gobsmacked. You've just got to get up on a stage so that I can tell everyone that that's my boy up there. That was great. Only thing is, you need to turn everything around so that I'm looking at your front and not your back."
"There's not enough room in here to do that. So do you think that I'm okay then?"
"Totally. You just danced and danced and you never missed a beat."
"Well maybe a couple. Trouble is, I can play along, but I haven't a clue where to go from here."
"I do. I know exactly where to go from here. Claire's little brother, Peter, he's just what you need. He's a total music freak and he can work wonders with anything electronic. He can take an electric keyboard and make it sound like a whole bloody orchestra."
"But he's just a little kid, isn't he?"
"He's not that little. He's thirteen or fourteen, somewhere around there, but he knows what he's doing."
"He's a geek."
"He is not. He's just a bit of a nerd - a music nerd."
"But he's gay, isn't he?"
"Yeah, so they say, but I don't know what that's got to do with it. Lots of creative people are gay."
"Who do you mean? Like Elton John?"
"Yes, Sir Elton. Or, how about Leonardo Da Vinci? Some people think that the Mona Lisa is actually a painting of a man in drag, and that he was Da Vinci's young, gay, loverboy. Hence the mysterious smile."
"How do you know that?"
"I read it somewhere - Readers' Digest, I think. Anyway, to business - you stay right here and I'll go and get Peter. You need him and I think that he needs you too."
"Right. Off you go then, Miss Bossy-Boots."
Jay busied himself, collecting up clothes for the laundry and generally trying to make some order out of the chaos in his room. Having Dee see his mess was one thing, but having a stranger in here was something else again. Gay people are supposed to be fastidiously neat and fussy aren't they?
Dee vaulted the fence, collected her father's car keys and drove across town to her friend Claire's house. She drove through the early-evening twilight, up Cobham Street, past the small red-brick hospital on the right and the High School on the left, past the smaller Westpoint North School, one of three primary schools dotted around the town.
Both schools were built up close to the road with their playgrounds and sportsfields spread out to the north side.
Out along Williamson Road, one of the newer streets in Westpoint. An oddity after the long, straight streets criss-crossing the square grid of the town, where most of the houses were as old as the town itself. At most, they were the second generation of houses ever to be built on their regular, rectangular sections.
Here, Williamson Road snaked along, skirting the edge of the town and following the tidal estuary of the Williamson River on its north-western side. The houses on the town side were newer, brick, block and concrete homes set well back from the road on their larger, "lifestyle", sections. Flash houses for Westpoint, but they would be unnoticed in any city suburb elsewhere in the country.
Dee pulled into the wide driveway of a long, cream-painted , Mediterranean styled bungalow house, and went up to ring the door-bell. The door swung open and she faced a rather sad looking, white-faced clown.
She stepped back and inspected the sight before her - unbelievably large cartoon-character shoes, oversized and baggy, black, pin-stripe trousers, a tight-fitting black suit jacket, a collarless white shirt, and a rather tatty and battered, black, bowler hat, complete with a drooping and faded artificial flower. The only touch of color in the whole ensemble was the huge, frizzy, red wig that the hat nestled on.
"Hello Claire, nice outfit. Getting ready to go out somewhere are you? Got a heavy date perhaps?"
"Don't laugh too loud, Dee. Mum's still looking for more "volunteers" for the concert party at the old folks' home. Life's never boring when your mother's the only music and performing arts teacher in town. How would you like to be the rear-end of a cow?"
"Oh no, not again. I'll be quiet, very quiet. I'm not stopping anyway; I just came to see Peter. Is he home?"
"Peter? What do you want to see him for? Isn't he a bit young for you? You must be getting really desperate."
"I'm not that desperate, I've just got something to show him. Is he here?"
"Of course he's here, he's always here. Come on in, but I'm warning you - keep an eye out for Mum. If she appears, run!"
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