natvella74NV

The Last Days of Franklin I am sixteen when Dad drags Franklin out of the garage. His thick hands grip her towbar, and with a grunt, he pulls her in twists and turns on near-flat tyres down the driveway. The sun beats down on Dad’s bald head as we scramble down the pebbled porch to watch the seven-hundred-kilo pop-top caravan emerge from her slumber.  “Gimme a hand,” Dad shouts, his eyebrows all twisted like the zigzag path he has made along the concrete. We run behind her giant bulk, Jason my younger brother and me, pushing our spindly arms and shoulders against her cold metal – her weight and Dad’s strength no match for us. Mum pokes her head out from the front door security grill to witness the commotion we are making, a slow smile creasing her cheeks. It will all be over soon.  She will no longer have to complain about the worn plaid cushions that gave her a crook neck, or the long hot drives in summer without air-con made worse by the stench of her Eau de Cologne that she daubed on her nose to quell her headaches. But mostly, no more having to sit cooped up in our small caravan and listen to Dad drone on about the good old days of Malta for the millionth time. By our final holiday and the million-and-oneth story, Mum had had enough. The confined space only magnified their cultural differences and traumas of their homeland. Dad was born amidst the dropping bombs of World War Two and somehow managed to survive while Mum carried the guilt of abandoning her ageing parents in Sri Lanka for a ‘better life’ in Australia. Their cultural clash finally spilt out of the tiny caravan door into the neatly erected annexe for all neighbouring holidaymakers to see, ending our final holiday with Franklin. Dad contorts into a backward L as he pulls the caravan further down the driveway. “Get over here and help me, will you?” he shouts to Mum. But she has already slipped back inside, quietly closing the front door in triumph. The Franklin Sunwagon campervan had sat inside our garage, closed up like a snail, waiting patiently for her next holiday that never came. Her aluminium walls, which had housed and fed us for a total of fourteen sleeps over two short holidays, now gathered grime and tools, the flat roof becoming Dad’s temporary workbench. Her bulk, sitting for far too long in the same place, had eventually flattened her tyres. Dad’s knees wobble and with a final grunt, Franklin comes to rest at the end of the driveway. Sweat pours from his forehead as he grabs two chocks of wood and places them behind her wheels. Me and Jason circle her square, smiley form, running our fingers along the 1970s two-tone yellow and brown stripes. “Better than a Jayco,” we whisper, mimicking Dad’s triumphant shout every time he overtook a Jayco on the freeway. Dad unclips her flat top and opens the small door sized for a hobbit to grab the crank. As the trapped air rushes out, I inhale the sea, sunshine and cooking oil for the last time. We stand in silence while Dad places the winder into Franklin’s slot. The sun burns our already sunburnt necks as he winds her up. Click click click go the gears. Thump thump thump goes my heart. Franklin’s flat top rises higher and higher, her canvas crackling as it unfolds until she can almost touch the spotty clouds in the azure blue sky. With her brown canvas walls now taut, we watch her wings grow as Dad slides out the side beds of this beautiful beast.  “Better than a Jayco,” Jason mumbles. Pretending to wipe away a fleck of dust from my eye, I whisper, “Bigger than a Jayco.” I eye Dad like a bat as he unzips the canvas door and steps inside to fix the metal bars of the side beds into place. Franklin’s wings now spread like an eagle. The way we had found her two years ago. My chest heaves. I wish I had never laid eyes on Franklin. *** I was eleven. It had been a scorching summer morning. The hot wind had kept us inside with the blinds down. I was reading when Dad stomped through the house and declared, “We are going for a drive.” I closed Nancy Drew and crawled from my bed, unsticking the Stayfree pad from my inner thigh. We all crawled out from our dark rooms without protest because it was pointless arguing with Dad. The wind whipped at our hair and dried out our mouths as we piled inside Dad’s 1974 Toyota Corona in canary yellow. He loved that car so much that he took photos of himself jumping next to it like in those Toyota ads. We wound down the windows to let the smell of boiled plastic out from the hot stinking car. The heat blew back inside but it was better than nothing. Me and Jason hung our heads out of the window as we were ferried in silence, passing the wog houses with their giant white gates and large lemon trees peeping over their high fences. Endless shades of brown brick and orange brick fascades that faded into a landscape of factories and car repairs. The AM radio crackled with the news but nobody was listening. “Check this out,” Jason whispered and stuck his face out of the window to spit into the hot wind. The goober blew back into his face and I giggled. “Stop that,” Mum shouted as she picked at the garden dirt wedged under the yellow crescents of her split nails. From time to time she would let out a long audible sigh. But Dad barely noticed. His black eyebrows were knitted together in concentration. A sheen of sweat moistened his bald head. We turned off the highway. The market gardens made way to rows of sale yards selling