Eight Things to Do Before You Die, Chapter Two

2- Todd – A Strange Kind of Fate1

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in airy-fairy things like ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’ and deja… whatever the fuck it is. That’s always been Sheryl’s forte, and not mine. Sheryl, my wife, that is, spends her Saturdays flipping through Woman’s Day and Take 5, reading her stars and stories of utter bullshit about true love. I don’t put much stock in any of that. Stars are, according to a documentary I saw on Discovery a few weeks ago, big balls of gas so far away that they have probably ceased to exist by the time their light reaches us. Love at first sight is almost always lust at first sight, and, my personal biggest peeve, there’s no such thing as fucking ghosts who come back from the grave to tell people the winning lottery numbers.2

No, I don’t believe in all of that stuff. But, the day I got a call about Nathan, I guess that’s just about the closest to understanding fate or destiny I ever will. It was a boring day, a Tuesday, and I’d called in ‘sick’ from the council depot. I’m sure we’ve all done it before. Your missus is feeling a little bit frisky, and she’s looking particularly good on a cold winter morning. Even though it’s been years since you shagged more than once in a day, you get it into your head that today will be different. Today, you’ll both be as horny as you were for those first few weeks or months after your wedding. Seems to me, the biggest turn off in the world, are the words ‘I do’. We’d had a pretty good time of it, but maybe ten minutes later, she was pulling on her cotton nightie and wandering out into the kitchen. I joined her a few minutes later, wrapping my arms around her and planting a kiss on her neck. Not one of those soft ‘I love you’ kisses, but one that, when accentuated with a bit of pressure from the groin, tells her you’re up for it again.
“Oh, not now Todd, I’ve got to clean up the kitchen before Jodi and Marie get here”. Nothing deflates a man’s ego (and his penis) like being spurned in favour of a pair of saggy-titted, loud mouthed scrags like Marie and Jodi.
“Turned down for those bitches? I’m wounded” I’d said sarcastically, and she’d shushed me and reminded me that they were her oldest friends. She’d pushed me away then, and gone back to washing the dishes.3

I guess her talking about her ‘oldest friends’ got me thinking, and with fuck all else to do, I found myself in the shed not long after. At first I just farted around at my workbench, tossing up between fixing up Sheryl’s herb rack or maybe getting a head start on the train table I’d promised to make my nephew, Jacob for his birthday. This is the bit that Sheryl would call fate, but I’d just call coincidence. As I pulled a beer from my bar fridge and decided that I’d play a few games of solitaire, a box fell somewhere at the back of the shed. Now, a man’s shed is his pride and joy, and I’d spent many a year accumulating things in this particular one. I stepped over a few rolls of cable, kicked aside one of Sheryl’s chipped garden gnomes I’d promised to fix, and pushed aside the piece of curtain I’d pinned up to separate my ‘shed’ from my ‘office’. Office is a bit of a rich expression, I guess. My ‘office’ is a desk, a comfortable old grey armchair, and a stash of faded Playboys from my younger days. 4

Lying in the middle of the floor, cracked open like a dropped egg, was a boxed marked ‘Todd’s high school stuff’. The black felt tip writing was my mother’s hand-writing, and I marvelled at the fact something this old had survived this long. I’m not a sentimental bloke, but curiousity got the better of me, and after I’d scooped the spilled papers up, I tossed them onto my desk and began to leaf through them. An old marking sheet from a woodwork assessment, a few scribbled notes on Alexander the Great… nothing special. The kind of stuff that must have seemed important when I was packing up to leave home, but in the light of marriage and a job, meant about as much as a one legged man in an arse kicking contest. I was preparing to take the lot out to the incinerator when I spotted a photograph. I saw my red hair first, spilling down past my shoulders, and then took in the other faces. There was Carl, the guy who’d suddenly become too ‘cool’ for us in Year 9 and ditched us. Standing next to him, squat and fat, was Chris. I’d stayed in contact with Chris for a while after we’d left high school, but he’d kind of lost touch after he got accepted into a law degree. Standing in front of us all, wearing that idiot grin I’d always got a kick out of, was Nathan. Midget of a kid that he was, he was barely up to my shoulder in the picture. His faded green baseball cap, bearing the Canberra Raiders’ logo, barely reached my chin- which was, I noticed, sporting a pathetic crop of hair. Nothing like the beard I was wearing in my wedding photos, or even now. 5

I’ve said I’m not a sentimental bloke, and I mean that. After I’d spent a few moments reminiscing on high school, I grabbed the box of stuff and made my way through the house towards the incinerator. In the lounge room I passed Jodi and Marie, who cackled like hyenas as I walked past. I heard Jodi mutter something about me putting on weight, the kind of comment that would usually have me swearing in a moment, but let it go. Sheryl always held out of me if I let myself get baited by her friends. Seems like a fairly unfair trade, if you ask me. I get no sex, and those bitches get an extra cup of coffee and the good bickies. 6

“Todd,” Sheryl interrupted me as I fed the last handful of things into the incinerator,
“Someone’s on the phone for you. She says it’s about Nathan”. I dropped the lighter beside the box, and sighed heavily. Fucking Nathan, my boss at work. It should have figured that the cunt wouldn’t let me have a day off. I picked up the phone, already preparing to tell him to call Duncan or Stuart if he wanted extra people. I hadn’t taken a sick day in the better part of two years, and damned if I was giving one up now.
“What do you want, Nathan?” I asked, letting the bastard know I didn’t take kindly to being brought out of my sick bed.
“Hello? Is that Todd Graeme?” It was a woman’s voice, and that threw me right off. The last woman we’d had manning the phones was old Bev Rogers, and she’d retired last year after her husband had had a nasty stroke and needed constant care.
“Yeah, this is he. Can I help you?” My thick head still hadn’t made the link between the name Nathan and the picture I’d been looking at only half an hour ago.
“You knew my brother, Nathan, in school?” What the hell was this, twenty questions?
“Yes, yeah. I knew him. How the fuck is he?”
“He’s… he’s not at all well”.
“Ah, that’s a bitch. Got a cold or something? Poor bugger. Had one of those myself, not too long ago, but the bastards in town wouldn’t let me take the day off. I tell you, I was spitting and hacking like a fucking smoker…”
“Todd, I’ve got some bad news”. She cut me off mid anecdote, and usually I’d have felt offended by that. My anecdotes are the highlight of many a dull day filling potholes or mowing long strips of shitty brown grass. Something in her voice, though, it made me think twice about giving her a bit of lip.
“Oh, sorry love, what is it?”
“Nathan’s very sick. Not just a cold. It’s cancer”. I must have gone white, because Sheryl came out from the kitchen with her concerned face on. The one with big doe eyes and a cute as you like frown.
“Bugger me,” seemed to be as appropriate as any phrase, “That’s pretty damn ordinary. Is there anything I can do?”7

Sure there is, Toddy boy, you can knuckle down and find a cure for cancer. Put aside Jacob’s train table and Sheryl’s herb rack, and get to work.8

“He really needs friends right now”. Sheryl stood beside me, mouthing “What’s wrong?” over and over again. I felt a moment of irritation, but to be fair, she didn’t know just how sad the news was. I’m not a sentimental guy, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel damn awful about Nathan. He’d always been the cheerful one in our group. The guy who, even after getting roughed up by Russell Jones and Alex McLoughlin at the Sports Carnival, still found the courage to run the eight hundred metres.
“Well, I haven’t seen him in a while, but I guess we’re still friends”
“Yes, that’s what he said. Look, I’ll give you his details. If you’re ever in this neck of the woods, he’d love to see you”.9

She ran off an address, which I got Sheryl to scrawl down (once she’d finished gawking at me and waving her arms around like an interpretive dancer). After that we said our goodbyes, and before the phone was down, Sheryl was on me about it.
“Who was that?”
“A friend”
“What kind of friend?”
“One from high school”
“Why would they want to talk to you?”
“Her brother is dying”
That shut her up, as I’d kind of hoped it would. Truth be told, I wasn’t feeling at all well. Nathan was one of my best mates in high school. It was hard to picture that grinning, goofy son-of-a-bitch lying in a bed in some hospital, sick as a dog, and dying. Fuck, Nathan and I had both had our first cigarette together back in year eight. We’d snuck around behind the woodwork building, and I’d said…10

…“Hey Nathan, want to see something cool?” Nathan nodded enthusiastically as I produced a packet of my Dad’s PJ eights from my pocket. He’d been drunk last night, and had dropped them in the front yard. I figured it wasn’t stealing, since he’d have lost them anyway.
“Where’d you get those?” his eyes were full of amazement. I don’t think anyone else in our year had had a smoke by that time in their lives. I’d see a few of the footy team having them by the bus stop once, but they were at least sixteen.
“Snared ‘em from me Dad” I pulled two from the packet, and stuffed it back into my pocket, “Want one?”
Nathan looked at me dubiously for a moment, but then reached out and took one of the deathsticks I’d offered. He gingerly put it in his mouth, and I lit it for him. He took a tentative puff, looked normal for a minute, and then exploded into a coughing fit. Being the sensitive fucker I was, I just about lost my lunch laughing at him.
“Tastes like arse” he’d joked, but took another drag anyway. This time his coughing fit was considerably less pronounced.
“You’d know what that tastes like, my man” He grinned at me, and then blew smoke into my face.
“You dirty little cunt”
“You kiss your Mum with that mouth?” he’d teased.
“Nah mate, I kiss your mother with this mouth” In year eight, ‘Your Mum’ jokes were the height of wit. Me, Nathan, Chris, and Carl had loved to come to school with one or two new ones to lay on the crew. Everyone always made a big deal of them, like we were actually offended. Nathan was no exception. He did a fake roar, and threw himself at me. His cigarette dropped to the ground as he hit me in a tackle that, had he not been so frigging tiny, might have actually hurt.
“Powerbomb!” I yelled, grabbing him around the waist and making to heft him up in imitation of Kevin Nash’s finisher.
“What are you boys doing over there?” Mr. Woodward, everyone’s least favourite PE teacher, was coming towards us.
“Ditch the fag” I hissed, and Nathan scurried across to where his cigarette had landed, and crushed it into the grass.
“I said, what are you boy’s doing?”
“Nothing sir” I tried my best innocent voice, but when your Dad’s a local troublemaker, that doesn’t exactly add up to much.
“Like hell you are. Get up to the quad like everyone else”. That day had been a good day, probably because Nathan was there. I’d earned detention for less.
“Don’t let me catch you two back here again,” he’d said as we left, “Do you boys want detentions?”11

We'd both shaken our heads and put on our best innocent faces. Nathan's was better than mine because, despite my influence, he was still innocent. Sure, he'd smoke a cigarette with us and could swear a blue streak, but through it all he never lost any of that... I don't know what the word is. There are just people in this world who never seem to get dragged down into the shitty grey that is life. At a time where people were changing to better suit what everyone expected of them, Nathan was the only guy I knew who was content to just be who he was.12

“Are you alright, sweetheart?” Sheryl interrupted my nostalgia by pressing a cup of coffee into my hand. Jodi and Marie even managed to look sympathetic as I sat down on the couch next to them and absent-mindedly sipped at the too-hot coffee. It burned like a bastard, but I didn't mind that. Part of me welcomed the sharp pain that momentarily forced the reality of the situation out of my mind. I had a friend who was dying. Streuth, I wasn't old enough to be dealing with this!13

“Are you alright?” Sheryl asked again sitting down across from me and putting a hand on my knee. At that moment I loved her more than I think I ever had. I may joke about her being selfish or spending more time with the nags she called friends – but there was nothing but love in her eyes as she looked at me.14

I don't know if it was the news of Nathan getting to me or just the way Sheryl looked at me, but I suddenly didn't want to be there anymore. 15

“I'm fine,” I replied as I stood up, placed the coffee cup on the table, and made for the door, “I've just remembered I've got to pick up some nails from Mitre 10”. I didn't really care if Sheryl or the others bought it. Five minutes later I was in my ute and trying to remember what hospital Nathan's sister had said he'd be in. Why the hell hadn't I at least grabbed the note Sheryl had taken?16