The Promise by Tony Birch Page A

a few dollars from the market shoppers. He could really sing too, a few years back – country and western, and some blues – but now his voice was shot, along with his body and he just sort of wailed and grunted. The guitar had seen better days, too. He’d been hit over the head with it more than once, mouthing off on the grog. It was flattened one time when Thin Lizzie, one of the girls who worked Banana Alley, serving high and low rollers out of the casino, slipped from a stool in the front bar of the Blue Oyster and landed tits up on the axe.
    He’d repaired the guitar over and over with some string, electrical tape and a prayer. There wasn’t a musician on earth who could have willed a decent tune out of that guitar after all the abuse it had taken. Except for Curtis. He could get it to weep like a mother who’d lost a newborn. Some say the rock-hard and ruinous life he’d led had destroyed his playing. I reckon it made him better.
    In his younger days there wasn’t a drug known to man that Curtis hadn’t fallen for. He’d survived his suicidal habits and the pals he’d cut loose with over the years – Big Tiny Johnson, Lenny the Leper and Ringo Moss among them. Big Tiny, all twenty stone of him, could sing like a bird. Him and Curtis had travelled the road and played in every country pub from Melbourne to the Gulf and back, making just enough to keep their wild side cared for, until Big Tiny died in his sleep after a three-day bender on the streets of Sydney.
    Curtis had given some of the poison a rest for years but continued his love of the drink. It was an affection we shared. He’d come to terms with some moderation in recent years and had his rules. He never touched a drink on Friday nights and didn’t enjoy his first taste of the weekend until the last shoppers had drifted away from the market on a Saturday.
    We’d meet up on those afternoons behind the doughnut stand. I’d be carrying some cold beers and a bottle of wine from the bottle-shop across from the market. He’d have the guitar slung across his shoulder and would be licking his lips, anxious for a drop. We’d make our way up to the park and sit under one of them big Moreton Bays that some smart fella had planted a hundred years back to keep the sun off. Curtis loved to talk but conversation with him was sometimes hard to follow. The stories he told roamed back and forward over time. Or he’d pluck a moment from the sky and mash it up with some nightmare he’d had months back when he was in the DTs after a big drink.
    â€˜You heard of the Black Elvis, Sammy?’ he asked me one time.
    â€˜Who’s he?’
    â€˜Blackfella from up north who can sing and play like fire. But better than that he came out of a rock in the ground. He was a lizard. And now he’s a human. He was a rock before.’
    â€˜A rock?’
    â€˜Other times the sea.’
    â€˜He comes from the sea?’
    â€˜No. He was the sea.’
    I didn’t believe most of what Curtis said until I got charged up myself and it all made sense.
    I’d tried hard to give up on drink myself. I got a scare one time after this young doctor – said she was from Hong Kong or somewhere – put a picture of my insides against a wall, turned on a light, pointed to my liver and said it was the worst she’d seen in ten years in the business. She stuck another picture on the wall alongside mine.
    â€˜See here, Mr Holt?’ she said, pointing. ‘This is what a healthy liver looks like.’
    It looked fat and well fed. ‘You’re right there, Doc. That’s a very healthy liver.’ I knew then that I was well and truly fucked.
    Poring over the picture of my insides, she screwed up her nose like one of us had farted. ‘Now, take a good look at your own liver, Mr Holt. What do you see?’
    It looked like a dried-up and burnt old lamb chop that had been left for