scot gardner has been a counsellor, masseur and hypnotherapist education consultant, landscape
designer and builder, didgeridoo player and author. He lives in a
solar-powered barn in the bush with his wife and three mischievous sprites. He likes bamboo. One Dead Seagull is his first but not his last novel.

Teacher’s notes for ONE DEAD SEAGULL are available at www.scotgardner.com

Cover model: Shane Henry

First published
2001 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia
Pty Limited

Reprinted 2002

This edition
©2013

Karijan Enterprises

P.O. Box 8 Churchill Vic 3842

Copyright © Karijan Enterprises 2001

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Australia
cataloguing-in-publication data:

Gardner, Scot.
One dead seagull.

ISBN 0 330
36273 9.

I. Title. A828.3

Typeset in 11/14 pt New Baskerville by Midland Typesetters

Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

All characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.

for robyn

Mum has always harassed me about brushing
my teeth. I thought it was stupid
when I was little, now it’s a major
pain. Every morning before I bolt out the door she stops me,
kisses me, and if she can’t smell toothpaste, sends me back to brush them. She’s the reason I’m late for school almost every morning.
She gets me into a lot of trouble. I wish
she would just ease up on the tooth
thing. If she leaves before me I usually
go without doing
my teeth. As if she would find out. One morning when she left early I
went into the bathroom, put toothpaste on my
toothbrush then thought:
‘Bugger it—Mum will never know’, and
washed the toothpaste off again. She goes on and on about
my jocks too. Asks me if I’ve changed them every morning (I always say yes). Sometimes they stink
but mostly they’re fine. By Thursday
she’ll corner me: ‘There
were only three pairs of your undies in the wash, Wayne,
and it’s been a week since I last washed. You’ve got to look after
yourself.’ Then she’ll go on about how when I leave
home I won’t have learnt how to stay clean and healthy
and all that. Mum’s a nurse—well she used to be, now she works in the office at the Chisholm Hospital.
She likes to look
after me. I can look after myself.

I love the smell of Lynx ‘Aztec’ deodorant: it’s cool and I always smell clean when I put it on. Sometimes
I skip the shower in the
morning so I can sleep in an extra half hour and all I need to do is give myself a good spray under the armpits and a bit around my bum and I’m right for the
day. Mum likes it. So does Mandy Masterson—she sniffed
me once and
said I smelled nice. She always smells nice. I am amazed Mum
can
smell anything at all; she’s been
smoking since she was my age (or so she says) and it burns out your smell glands
or whatever you call them. She smokes a pack and a half of Holiday Extras a day. She
smokes so much
that she doesn’t notice if I nick a few from a pack that’s open. I took a whole pack once—fifty
smokes—and she told herself off for smoking
too much! She’d kill
me
if she knew
I smoked. I smoke a bit. Like,
maybe four or five ciggies
a day or something
like that. I get pissed
off with myself for it most mornings. Run late for
school and pedal like crazy so Mrs Leavey won’t crack, and I puff and wheeze and cough up big blobs of phlegm and spit.
Am I fifteen or fifty?
Got to give up the
smokes...

As usual, I was late. I had dumped my bike in the shed and made it to the sliding door of the breezeway
just as Dennis’s bus pulled up. They knew they were late and all the sucks that sit up the front
of the bus ran down the ramp and inside. Except Dennis. He sits in the front seat behind
the driver but always manages to be
the last one off. I reckon he likes
to watch the girls’ bums as they’re jumping down the stairs. Mandy catches his
bus.
I watched her coming down the stairs. She smiled hello as she walked past me and I could smell her. She wears
vanilla. I was waiting for it to hit me and there it was. The smell does funny things to my insides. I wish I could get a bottle of that stuff and spray my room with it. That
would be hot.

‘I saw you ogling her. You’re a perv.’

Dennis had crept out of the bus
and scared the shit out of
me. I hope my ogling is not as obvious to Mandy. He told me what he did at Venturers
the night before and I nodded.
He tells me the same stuff every Wednesday. I
don’t know what he sees in it. To me it looks like a bunch
of little kids who don’t
have a life. Maybe they have trouble talking to girls. Den is
not
really in either
category—the girls love him and he’s got plenty of other
stuff to do. Like I said, I don’t know.

I dragged him by the arm so we could walk behind Mandy and Cheryl Bickerton. Past the bins in front of the science block and the bald patch of dirt where Mr Davis
chucked the bomb that Shane Grizotto lit in class. Smoke
bomb. Filled the whole quadrangle with thick smoke and
set off the alarms. We got to spend a few hours on the oval and
Griz got to spend three days at home. Wanker.

Cheryl and Mandy did a
quick right into their homeroom
and old Mrs Kneebone glared at us as we pretended to follow them inside. Some teachers have names
that are so silly you can’t twist them into anything. Kneebone. She gets heaps from
some kids about her moustache of thick, soft black hair. She’s not really that old,
just hairy. I had her for English
last year and she gave me
some fun jobs after I’d breezed through all the set work.
Den and I backed out of the room and hurried off to
face Mrs Leavey.

‘Sorry Miss, the bus was late,’
Dennis said flatly and
headed to his seat.

‘What’s your excuse, Wayne?’

‘Sorry Miss,’ I said. I batted my eyelids and shrugged
before I sat down. She glared at me and finished reading the message bulletin.

‘Special assembly at lunchtime today—listen
for the announcement just before the bell for fifth period.’

‘What for?’
Janine Cleary was annoyed
her lunchtime would be cut short.

‘I don’t know, Janine.
Best we all just trot along and find
out.’

My guess? Another drug bust. Last year, kids got caught
buying speed from a bloke in a yellow Escort.
The bloke finally got busted
and a whole group of kids—six year tens—got expelled. There was a joke going around
at Chisholm Catholic College that our school, Chisholm High, produced the finest drug dealers in the state. Yeah,
could be a drug bust. Could be another award for that blind chick in year eight. She’s as smart as.

Mr Richards spoke
to us first and told us he was leaving. That doesn’t sound so wild when I say it like that.
How about . . . Richo, the bloke who has been the principal of this
school since before
I was born, the real gentleman
(the bloke who dated my mum when she was still Sylvia Kirkwood) was throwing in the towel.
He stood there in
the same grey suit that he always wore and a boring
tie in blue with little gold stars. He looked smaller.

Then Mr Johnson took the microphone and shouted into it like the idiot he is. Said he was sorry to see Richo
go. Yeah,
yeah. And as the assistant, he will step into Richo’s spot until another principal
is appointed. Everyone hates Johnson,
the sleazy pig. Last week he
suspended Greg for having smokes
in his pencil case.

Mum couldn’t believe it either. She stopped
chewing her mouthful of lamb chop like someone had pressed her pause button. She put her plate on the arm of the couch and
picked up the phone. I thought she was going to call my
Auntie Pat to spread the news.

‘Hello, Gilbert?’ she said and then groaned—she hates answering machines. She knew Richo’s phone number by heart.

‘Hi Gil, it’s
Sylvia Armond here, I was ... Wayne just told me you were leaving the school. I ...I hope everything is okay. Give me a call when you get the chance. Yes,
give me a call.’

She almost hung up then said, ‘Sylvia Kirkwood. Did I say that? Anyway, give me a call. Bye.’

She put the phone down and burst into a coughing
fit that lasted half a minute.
Sometimes when she’s coughing she sounds like the Velos’ tabby bringing up a fur ball.
Disgusting. She wiped her mouth on the towel she keeps near
the remote and continued her tea. Sale of the Century
started and she turned up the volume.
I scoffed the last
mouthful of my potato and half-kissed, half-wiped my mouth on her hair as I bolted for the door.

Halfway to Game Zone I decided
Den would have to
wait. The sun had just disappeared and everything was
orange. As I pedalled up to the war memorial
I wished I had
a camera. The glow from the sunset had painted
half of the digger’s face, half of his concrete
coat and exactly half of his rifle,
which was propped
with the butt on the marble pedestal. The rest of him was in silhouette. I sat
and watched him do absolutely nothing for a minute or
so. Statues do that so well. This bloke looked
tired and proud. When I
was little I reckoned statues were people
who had been turned to stone. There’s no way a person could carve anything that real looking from rock. No way. I sat back on the seat of my bike and lit up one of the Peter
Jackson 12s that I’d botted
off Dennis, out of respect for
the weary stone soldier.

When I got to Game Zone, Dennis was waiting out the
front. He was nervously puffing
on
the last of a smoke and
I could tell it was him from the corner of Howard Avenue.
His body is
long
and he always
wears black— black tracksuit pants,
black shirt and a black leather bikie’s vest he must wear to bed. His skin is pale and his hair
is black, straight and shiny. Mandy reckons he’s spooky-looking. Den loves it. He told me once that he
could shapeshift into different animals—I don’t think
I believe him.

‘Where have you been?’

I puffed harder than I needed
to. ‘Oh. Sorry
mate. Had to finish my tea.’ Puff puff.

To anyone else that would sound like a limp
excuse but to Den it was okay. He and his family
have tea together every night. At the table. They don’t
have a telly in the house.

‘C’mon,’ he said, ‘let’s go to the library.’

‘I thought we were going to have a game?’

‘Maybe later.’

Griz and his mate Otto were standing in the glare
of the Terminator screen making
short work of the animated terrorists popping up from
behind the boxes and cars. Griz is younger than Den and me but he’s a
freak. He’s bigger than
my
dad. And more hairy. He
smells like Lincoln’s Service Station mixed with a month-old
ashtray. I bumped into Otto as I backed away from the machine.
He shoved me and told me to watch it. I apologised. Otto is a bull terrier. He must be twenty but he looks younger
than Dennis. Wisps of hair stretch down the side of his face.
A patch of blond fluff sticks out from his chin and his moustache
looks like velvet if you get close to him. He wears a Saints beanie pulled down so it half covers his eyes.
Makes him look even younger and dimmer than he is. I think he goes to the gym because
his arms are the size of Den’s thighs and covered in tattoos. He’s lost his licence twice already for driving like an idiot.

‘Why don’t we wait until they’re
finished?’

‘Nah. Come on. We’ll come back later,’ Den said and jumped up to sit on the handlebar of my bike. He flicked the butt of his cigarette at the rubbish bin and jiggled so I
had to move to keep balance.

Den’s sister Kerry was
at the library with Carly and Rebecca. They’re all a year younger
than Dennis and me.
Carly’s a redhead with big boobs and Rebecca
is sort of weird and black like Dennis.
She reminds me of Morticia from The Addams Family. Dennis could be Gomez and kiss
her up and down the arms and stuff except he doesn’t
seem to be interested in girls like that. We chatted
for a while then Kerry started talking
about periods and tampons like she does when she wants us to gross out and nick
off. It works—she started using
that tactic before she had
her first period. God, I remember that, Kerry walking like a
cowboy and explaining to everyone who had to stop for
a minute all the little details
of her first bleed. Den threatened to get a T-shirt printed with a big tampon on it that read ‘I am menstruating—come ask me how’. She takes no
notice of his sick jokes.

Den seemed a lot more relaxed when we got back to Game Zone. Dennis and I go there whenever. What I
really wanted to say was that
Game Zone is our ‘home
away from home’. It’s our place and Griz might have been
in our bedroom when he was playing
Terminator. I tore open the Velcro on my wallet and gave him a five-dollar note. He chatted with Maru for a few minutes and came
back with a handful of coins.

I had a sense
that we were in
trouble before it happened—not just danger but real trouble. It’s weird how that feeling can take hold of me sometimes.

Den and I both emptied our chambers on the same shot and in the split
second it takes us to reload,
the terrorists were on to us. Four of them with SA-80’s showering the ground at our feet.
I was hit. Everything went red and two seconds later Den was on the ground beside me, billowing cyber blood. It was the shortest life I have ever
lived and I couldn’t believe I was dead. Den cursed
and reached forward to file more coins in the slot. A huge
greasy hand slapped across the console. The large skull ring made a sound
like a gunshot as it struck the coin slot.

‘Game over, boys,’ Griz said with a yellow-toothed grin. My face
flushed and my skin prickled.

Den looked over at Maru then at me. ‘We’re just going to have one more game, then we’ll leave you to it,’ he said.

For a second there was a tiger in Griz’s head.

‘Come on Dennis,
we’ll come back later,’ I mumbled. Griz lifted his hand from the slot and smiled. ‘Okay.’

He backed
away from the machine and Den sent the coins rattling down the slot. I wanted to run. I didn’t want to
play another stupid game but I wasn’t going to pike out.
Den looked
over,
his eyes dark
like sea caves, and motioned for me to join him. I grabbed
the gun and shot the ‘Two Player’
selection then the icon for the part
where we start called ‘Dockside’. We were in that void between ‘press to start’ and the first actual
shot when I heard Griz whisper, ‘Now!’

Otto grabbed me around
the waist and hoisted me from
the front of the console.
I was ready to run so I let
the gun go and did. Griz had Dennis under
the arms and was holding him off the ground and shaking him.
Dennis let go of the gun and kicked
back at Griz. The heel of his boot
connected with Griz’s zipper. Bent him in half. He dropped Den roughly on his feet and grabbed for the gun. A kick in the nuts couldn’t stop him from collecting
a free game. He reached
out a gorilla-arm and slapped Den on the side of the head. Den’s hair shot straight
up and he bucked
away from the blow.

‘We’ll just have this game and then you guys can have it,
okay?’ Griz chuckled.

When Den saw Griz’s bike lying like it had been abandoned
on the footpath outside, he sniffed back a ball of snot
and then spat it on the seat. Then he lunged onto the
front of my bike and I rode like wildfire
down Garrison Street to Fairleigh. It wasn’t until we’d cut across the library lawn that I slowed down.

‘I thought he was going to have a go at you,’ I panted.
Den laughed. ‘Good shot, huh?’

‘Why didn’t you run?’

He shrugged. ‘The bloke’s a full-time wanker.’

•

We pulled into the driveway
and found Den’s dad Barry mowing the lawn by streetlight.

‘Hey fellas. How are you going?’

Den and I chimed that things were
good, which stretched the truth a bit but wasn’t an outright lie. Barry was dressed in a purple
sarong flecked with gold that danced in the streetlight. His bare feet were covered
in damp grass clippings
and he walked over to shake my hand,
as he does. He smelled
sweaty, fresh and green.
He went back to work with the musical ratchet of the push–
pull mower and that silly little Beatles’
song he whistles. I can’t remember the song but it’s always the same one.

Entering the Humes’ place is like
falling through a Stargate and coming
out somewhere in Indonesia or India. They have a huge collection of teak carvings—a woman with huge boobs and real hair on her head,
and Bilbo, a little
wooden man with shells inlaid for eyes and
a massive wooden stiffy
that reaches higher than his
shoulder. The floors are polished wood but it’s hard to see them for all the coloured rugs. Their place is always clean—not like our flat—but there’s so much
stuff in there that clutter rules.
The Humes have lived there since
before Den and I went
to kindergarten. All that
time there has been a boat sitting under green canvas
tarps in the backyard. Barry reckons he’ll fix it one day. The silence of their
house is a bit freaky sometimes. I wish Den would
leave his radio on or get a TV. Feels more like a church,
with all the incense and stuff, than a home.

Kerry and her mum were sitting at the old wooden kitchen table reading the local rag and they both looked up
when we walked
in. Gracie flew into her long-lost-son
routine that makes me feel embarrassed but welcome and Kerry smiled.
Den filled up a drink bottle with water then we headed for his room. I flopped
onto his bed before he managed to turn the light on. The ceiling
was lined with posters of wild places.

‘Nice ceiling,’ I cooed as he pushed Kerry’s cat off his desk
chair and sat down.

‘Haven’t you noticed that before?
It’s been like that for
years.’

It made me think of the sleepovers we had every other weekend when we were little
and my family lived in Tennyson Street. Recording our farts on
his portable stereo and making up new words to his stupid Play School
tape. I had never noticed
the ceiling.

‘Wouldn’t mind
going to a few of those places.’

‘I’ve been to every one.’

My eyebrows jumped. Even the deep, dark fern gully
creek? Even the huge boulders
by the frantic sea? And the
painted desert with purple storm clouds?

‘Every one.’ He pointed to a huge waterfall that looked like something from a pay TV
documentary. ‘In
the holidays we’re going there.’

‘Africa?’

‘Nah. Just down the road. Well, a few hours’ drive to the
east. Near the New South
Wales border.’

The waterfall looked awesome. I asked if I could come
along. Just as a joke. Mostly as a joke. No, I think I really wanted to go with them and not sit at the flat and watch
telly like I did last year when they went to
central Australia.

‘Yeah! Cool idea. You’d love it,’ he said and
darted out of the room. I stared at the picture
of the waterfall but thought about masturbating. I wondered if Den wanked in
his bed. How gross.

He came back sucking
noisily on his drink
bottle and told me that
his mum and dad had agreed that it
would be okay for me to go with them to Mars Cove.

‘I thought we were going to the waterfall?’

‘Yeah, we drive there from the cove. The beach
is awesome. Huge dunes ... the biggest
in the world I think. Massive. Dad reckons we’re
going to take the boat.’

When I eventually dragged myself home at about eleven
o’clock, Mum was brushing her teeth. She grumped and ordered me to do things. Make my lunch.
Brush my teeth. Have a shower. I told her I’d have a shower in the morning and she told me that Dad had phoned.

‘Your father,’ she said flatly, ‘wants to see if you’d be interested in doing some work with him over the holidays. He’s doing more landscaping for the Thompsons.’ I nodded like I wasn’t excite
but inside I was jumping.
That’d be right. One minute there was nothing
going on in my
life, next minute I’m making choices:
working with the old
man or Mars Cove?

When I turned fifteen, Dad filled
out the paperwork and officially employed me as a part-time labourer, but in the last
lot of holidays Dad didn’t have any
work. I have to be careful about how enthusiastic I am around Mum. Mum and Dad split up when I was seven
and although they still talk to each other I don’t
think they like each other much. No . . . Mum hates Dad’s guts but she’s too polite to get angry most of the time. I think Mum feels a bit off when I
go with Dad but she doesn’t say anything. Just: ‘Be careful. Don’t do anything stupid.
Stay out of the
pub.’ I asked Dad if I could live with him last year and he
explained that he couldn’t look after me. Didn’t have enough work to feed himself, he reckons. Fair enough.
Mum gives me the shits sometimes.

Dad’s a builder
and when I was eight he told me he’d take
me on as an apprentice when I was old enough. When I was eight I thought
that I wanted to be a builder but now I see Dad struggling to get work and I don’t think
that’s the easiest way to make a million bucks. I think I’m going
to go to university like Mum, study biological science and get a job as a park ranger.

Mrs Leavey lost the plot with me again. I told her I got a
flat on my bike, which
was sort of true. My back tyre was a
bit spongy. She said it was a likely
story. I shouted
that it was true. She didn’t like that and she threatened
me with a lunchtime detention. Roll on holidays.

Just before recess—Den still
calls it ‘little play’—I
remembered a dream I’d had. Men dressed in business
suits surrounded me but they had no arms. Their
jacket sleeves were flopping on me as they tried to grab hold. The
ground was slippery and I felt like I couldn’t get away from them. Even though
they couldn’t do much to me, I
still woke up kicking. Den said I should
tell Kerry about
it—his sister is a walking
dream encyclopedia. I tried to find
her at recess but Mr Richards
cornered me and asked
me to help him shift some stuff. He was
an unshaven prickly grey and dressed
in green casual
pants.

His office had been packed into
boxes. The walls were
covered with unfaded blocks of paint where his certificates and photos had been hanging
for a hundred years.

He couldn’t move fast enough. ‘Grab a box Wayne, out to my car.’

I followed his instructions and found his BMW with the
boot open at the edge of the teachers’ car park. Richo dropped his box into the boot.

‘You all right, Sir?’

He shrugged and walked
off. We put the last
boxes into the back seat; it looked like they were the first
things to ever sit in those seats. He went back to the office, mumbled that I should follow
him and when we were
inside he closed the door.

Staring at me, he spoke softly. ‘How much have you
heard?’

I told him that I hadn’t heard anything except that he was
leaving. He nodded slowly.

‘I’m not well, Wayne.
I’ve
got to go in for
an exploratory operation next week.’ His lip was shaking.

I looked at the floor. What do I say? Sorry? Hope
you get better soon? You’ll be right;
they’ll probably cut you
open and find a fart that you hung on to back in 1965 still
stuck in your guts. Those little material
masks won’t save
the surgeons from the smell. I almost
laughed.

He jammed his hands into
his pockets. ‘Thank your mum for the message she left on my machine.
Tell her I’ll call as soon as the shit has settled.’

I had never heard
him swear before.
Last year Mr Dobson got in big trouble with Richo for ‘taking
the Lord’s name in vain’. Now he said he had to go and he led me
to the door with a hand on my shoulder.

‘See you later, Wayne.’

He closed the door, locking
himself inside the empty
office.

Mr Johnson
was leaning on the reception
desk talking to the office lady, Fay. He
shot me a dagger and I wanted to jog. Yes, Sir. I’m going, Sir. He can make you
feel like an arsehole just by looking
at you. Doesn’t have to do anything.
Doesn’t have to say a word. He’s just
a cranky old ball-bag.
Imagine being his wife or his kid. It’d
be like having one of
those Rottweilers from the car-wrecking yard in your lounge room.

The bell rang and I felt like a losing boxer must at the
end of a round. No more weird Richo and no more
Johnson, just English.

I had been running
so late that morning that I hadn’t eaten
breakfast. I didn’t get a chance
to eat my Milo bar at
recess or in English, so when lunchtime came around I could have eaten
a fried cocky. I grabbed my lunchbox
and bolted for the common room. I had made spaghetti
sandwiches from Tuesday’s
leftovers. The best. I was
stuffing the last bit of my third sandwich into my mouth when a worm of spaghetti escaped
and landed on the back of my hand.
Sucking the worm into my mouth made a lot of noise and Mandy Masterson flopped into the seat opposite
me right in the middle of it.

‘Sounds like you’re enjoying that,’ she said.
My face got hot and I nodded.

‘Piglet,’ she added and laughed.

I laughed too, but I didn’t want to be a piglet.

‘Did you hear about Richo?’

I shook my head. Her dark eyes flashed
and her face shifted into a cheeky smile.

‘You remember
Kylie Simpson?’

I nodded. Kylie left year twelve last year because she was
pregnant. It was another good scandal
at Chisholm High.

‘Wellll,’ she said and wriggled
closer so she could keep her
voice low. Her blonde locks tickled on the back of my
hand. ‘Turns out that she and Richo were having a bit of a... you know... and Richo’s the father of her baby.’

I almost gagged.
What a load of bullshit.

‘Really?’

Mandy nodded.
‘Emma and Cheryl were talking to Fay
in the office and they could hear Mr Johnson on the phone. Got the whole story. Pretty sick, huh?’

Nup. It was like saying this square peg fits in that round hole. Mr Richards just isn’t like that.

‘Yeah. Pretty sick,’
I agreed. The appetising aroma of my
lunch had gone, now that Mandy vanilla
smell was giving
me an erection.
I wanted to freeze the moment.
Then Cheryl, Emma and another
one
of their mates, Cindy Fanshawe, came into the room and the spell was broken.
Mandy shot up like a frightened cat to join them. They sat
around an orange table and shared their lunches.

I found Dennis at the smokers’
corner. I love scaring the shit out of him and the others by pretending I’m hairy Mrs Kneebone come to book them. I shared the last of Den’s smoke and told him the gossip about Richo.

‘What do you reckon?’ Den asked.

‘Well, I think
there are two options. It’s either bullshit
or .
. . it’s bullshit.’

He laughed and agreed. Kerry stuck her head around the
corner of the building
and asked her brother if he had any money. Den dug a handful of coins out of his
pocket and gave them to his sister. She blew him a kiss then
vanished. I thought brothers
and sisters were supposed to hate each other and cause as much pain as
possible? Weirdos.

I remembered my dream and ran after Kerry to tell her
about it. She listened intently and was silent for what seemed like ages standing next to Carly in the canteen
line. She bought a pack of plain
chips and orange juice
then suggested I sit with her on a seat in the quadrangle.

‘It’s like a big authority
issue for you,’ she began. ‘The
men in suits are like authority figures
in your life. I guess they’re pretty harmless . . . armless
... get it?’

I nodded and took a chip.

‘It’s like they are still
in positions of power in your life but
they can’t hurt you. The slippery
mud thing is about you being
out of control. Somehow, it’s saying
you are out of control and the men, the authority
figures in your life,
they’re going to get you. Maybe they were trying to help?’

‘Could have been, but it felt like they were trying to
catch me.’

She shrugged. ‘Maybe
it means something
different.’

I thanked her and grabbed a handful
of chips. She kicked me in the shin before I could get away. The dream still didn’t make any sense.

Dennis shot out of the room like a burning
budgie when the final bell rang. I yelled
after him but he was on a
mission. He was waiting at the bike shed.

‘I’m coming with you,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to wait a
minute though.’

‘What for?’

‘You’ll see . . .’

He flashed me a dark smile and I told him I was going.
He pleaded that I wait for
another minute. He said it
would be worth it, then he jumped on the bars and whispered for me to get going. To Game Zone. So,
gullible me rode up Garrison
Street with my supposed best mate sitting
on the handlebars and the chinstrap of my helmet swinging
in the breeze. Den looked back and urged
me on. I was already pedaling like crazy. He doesn’t realise
how hard it is to ride with him on the bars.

Then they were on us. Griz and his mates, pushing us
and jeering as they rode past at a hundred
k’s per hour. Pic
Hopkins slapped the back of my helmet and it shot off my
head and clattered to the footpath.
I slammed on the
brakes. Den shot off the bars and stumbled, but stayed on his feet.

‘Come on, Wayne. Just to the top of the hill.
We
can watch from there.’

I told him to run but he insisted that I dink him.

‘Look. Look. Watch!’ Den shouted and pointed
to the front of Game Zone. Griz and his mates were just arriving
when suddenly something happened and they became
a pile of bodies
and metal. We could hear the crash from where we were. Griz stood up and his bike was hanging
from his bum like a huge growth stuck to the seat of his pants.

Den exploded into a squeal of
laughter that was so loud Griz
heard it over the traffic
noise. He shook the remains of a crushed packet of cigarettes from out of his shirtsleeve at Den.

‘You die, arsehole.’

Den stopped laughing. ‘Whoops.’

Pic and one of his apes Terry were already back on
their bikes and powering
up the hill towards us.

‘Go! Go!’ Den said and jiggled on the handlebars. I panicked and almost
lost balance as I turned
the bike back down Garrison Street.
There was a break in
the traffic so I crossed over and turned
into Merrimans Creek Road. We were on
the big downhill now and tearing
along. I hoped like hell that we didn’t have
to stop. I shot past the corner of Vincent Drive and headed for the Velos’ place. Their house backs on to our flat and when
we got to the back fence I hit the skids and Den shot off.
I threw my bike over the six foot paling fence. Clear
over. Jumped it in two steps myself.
Den was a bit more graceful.

‘Take it easy, Wayne. They’re
miles back. Something happened to the wheel on Pic’s bike and they stopped at the top of Merrimans.’

My heart was thundering in my head and I felt like my
lungs were going to burst.
My hands shook and I couldn’t
stop them.

‘You bloody idiot,’
I shouted and a spray of spit landed
near Den’s boot.

‘Come on mate, get a grip. It was a joke.’

He pulled something out of his pocket. An empty tube of Superglue. He’d managed to stick Griz’s arse to
his seat with Superglue.
That was funny. Bloody funny. I lay back
on the long grass and had a good gut laugh.

Dad came over that night in
his grubby jeans with the ripped right knee, smelling of beer and BO—he hasn’t
discovered the joy of Lynx
‘Aztec’ yet. He gave Mum a kiss
and a cuddle like he always did and Mum played along. She rolled her eyes at me over Dad’s shoulder as he was
hugging her. Dad wanted
to talk so we escaped
the telly and Mum by
going into my room. When we lived in Tennyson Street we used to go into Dad’s shed and build stuff. Now we’ve only got one of those stupid little sheds just big enough
for a busted lawnmower. The door’s
falling off and it stinks
like cat’s piss because
the Velos’ tabby uses it as a dunny.

‘I got this job at Thompson’s . . . you know . . . my solicitor? Yeah. He’s an all right bloke. Gives me a beer on a
Friday afternoon, when I work for him. Anyway, he asked if
I could do some brick paving after I finished
replacing the bargeboards on the house and I told
him I could. Would you give me a hand in the holidays?’

I remembered Mars Cove and told him I would work with him anyway. I don’t know why I did that. My knee was jiggling and I couldn’t stop it. I asked Dad about
the sort of work he’d want me to do and he went into one of his long-winded explanations about brick paving:
shifting sand, cutting bricks, and maybe using the brick
saw. It sounded awesome.
I couldn’t imagine what a brick saw
would look like—maybe a circular
saw with really
hard teeth or something
like that. Dad then told me a story about
a fishing trip he went on
with Auntie Pat and Carolyn on Port Phillip Bay. They hired a
boat from Mordialloc and Dad caught about fifty fish—flathead,
snapper and garfish—and Carolyn caught a fishing rod that
had fallen out of someone’s boat. Hooked it off the bottom with her line. They cleaned it up and it works like a new one. Freaky.

Dad hangs out with Pat (she’s not really my auntie) and her
daughter Carolyn more than he hangs out with me. Dad
used to work with Pat’s husband
Robert, but Robert fell in sex with a teenager
he met at the pub. Robert left Chisholm with her and last Dad heard from him he was
living with the girl and managing
a nudist resort in Queensland. Dad never mentioned
her name. So when Dad gets sick of sitting in his caravan watching
pay TV, he goes over to be the ‘man around the house’ for Pat and Carolyn. He reckons there’s nothing
in it but I reckon he
thinks Pat’s fair game. Just wish he’d take me out on a few
of the fishing trips. I get
on all right with Carolyn,
she is in year ten with me at Chisholm
High—Ten Waratah, Mrs Kneebone’s home group. Once you get past all the
acne, she’s got a pretty good personality.

That Friday morning Den informed me that there were
only two weeks of school
left until the September holidays. I love the way the holidays
creep up like that. I don’t have
time to be bored when school is on. I only get bored
during the holidays. Mum goes to work and I eat all the
two-minute noodles in the house and watch telly. Mum
gets angry with me, does the
shopping and the cycle repeats. But these holidays I’ll be busy.

Griz was waiting in the breezeway
for Den and he pushed him hard into the lockers.
My heart jumped
and I wanted to run. Pic kicked me in the ankle as I went to bolt past and I dropped hard on the concrete floor.
My backpack shot up and onto the top of my head. Something hard—maybe my pencil
case—cracked into the bottom of my skull.

‘Ya friggin’ idiot,’
Den growled holding his arm. Griz grabbed him by the front
of his vest and slammed
him into the lockers
again.

‘You owe me,’ he hissed right in Den’s face.

‘What for?’ Den squeaked.

‘You’re the prick
who put glue on my seat. Stuffed
a pair of my best jeans and rooted my seat.’

‘Oi! Break it up you two.’ For the first time in my life, I was happy to hear Mr Johnson’s voice.

‘Two hundred bucks. By next Friday,’ Griz said as he dropped Den on his feet.

‘What’s going on, Shane?’

‘Just a little
disagreement, you know, Mr Johnson. All fixed now.’

‘Both of you in my office.
Now. The rest of you off to
homerooms please.’

Pic kicked me again as he left and Mr Johnson
didn’t see it. It hurt like hell; a corker, in the meat of my left
thigh. I limped off to homeroom and Den appeared
five minutes later. He apologised to Mrs Leavey for being late
and flopped down next to me, smiling.
My skin was still crawling and the stupid bastard was smiling.

‘What happened?’ I whispered.

‘Nothing. Couldn’t do anything to me, he’s shit-scared of Griz. Said to sort out our differences outside
of school hours. That was comforting
. . .’

He must have smoked twenty
smokes that day.

I dinked Den home again that night but we waited until Griz
and the morons he
hangs
out with had left. He was
busting to go to the dunny when we got to his place. Kerry had come home
on the bus but the front door was still
locked. Den banged frantically on the glass panel and yelled but there was no response. He shrugged his bag off his back and hunted for his keys. He was jiggling
on his feet as he searched through his bag and I thought
he was going to have an accident. In one swift motion he’d found the keys, unlocked the
door and
burst through to the toilet. I heard a muffled toilet-fart then a huge sigh.

I walked past Kerry’s bedroom on my way to Den’s and realised why she hadn’t unlocked
the front door. She was
lying on her bed with headphones on and Jesus, her cat, curled up on her stomach. Her thumbs were curled to touch
the tip of her second fingers
and her eyes were
closed. I could smell the sandalwood incense
that she loves and faintly hear the music.
Sounded like waves on
the beach. Weirdo.

‘Hi Wayne,’ she said softly and I jumped. She sighed and opened her eyes.

I apologised for disturbing her and Jesus lifted his head
when I spoke.

‘Oh, I had finished anyway. How are you?’

I told her I was okay and she motioned for me to sit
down at her desk chair. Asked me if I’d
had any more dreams.

‘No. No more poxy dreams,
just sleep.’

There was half a minute of uncomfortable silence
and I thought I had better
go and wait for Den in his room.
She sat up and Jesus jumped onto my lap, pinning
me to the seat and purring like he’d just got a new set of batteries.

‘Did you hear the full story about Mr Richards?’ she asked as she clicked the stop button
on her Walkman.

‘Yeah. Well, no. Mandy Masterson told me one story about
Richo and Kylie Simpson.
She reckons some of her mates
heard Mr Johnson on the phone to somebody telling them all the details.’

‘Heard that story . . . that Richo’s the one who got Kylie
pregnant? Sounds a bit off to me. Mandy is a bonehead.’

I nodded. She might say some stupid things but she isn’t a bonehead.
She gives me a bone in the pants, though.

‘I was mates with Kylie right up until
the week before she left and she didn’t
know she was pregnant. She was
like, four months gone or something
like that. I can’t believe that.’

Must be time to leave. I started patting Jesus a bit roughly hoping
he’d get the hint and jump down. He seemed to like it.

‘When I ovulate, right in the middle of my cycle, I get seriously horny and if I haven’t been drinking enough water then I get wicked pains in the guts. I reckon I’d know I was pregnant the month before it actually
happened! Can’t believe that people can be so ignorant
about their bodies.’

I heard the toilet flush. Thank God. I stood up and
Jesus
obligingly dropped to the floor. Kerry
started laughing.

‘You must have needed
the toilet pretty bad, huh

Wayne?’

I looked at my crotch and it was covered with cat hair and
wet spots. My face got hot and I left brushing the hair
and fishy-smelling spit off my pants. Dumb cat.

Dennis closed the door, and put a CD on—The Feral Pigs, title track from their
Nasty Piece of Work album. Slash metal is soothing
to the soul sometimes.

‘Kerry said Rebecca
Hanson’s having a party tonight.
Her mum and dad have gone to Brisbane
or something. I think we should go,’ he shouted over the music.

Den’s not exactly
a party animal. Rebecca’s mates with Mandy
and Cheryl and that group. She might be there.
Mum would probably let me go if Kerry and Den were
going. I asked him if his mum and dad knew about
it.

‘Yeah. Mum’s driving us and picking us up.’

Amazing. Wish my mum was that co-operative. I knew
I’d have a bit of bargaining to do so I told Den I’d see him
around eight o’clock. He nodded
and closed the door behind me as I left. Kerry stormed
past as I came down the
hall and skidded on one of the floor rugs.
She thumped on Den’s door.

‘Hey! Turn it down,’ she screamed.

The music faded from a roar to a yell. She flared her nostrils, smiled and disappeared into her room.

I cleaned up my bedroom.
I know that sounds stupid but I have played this game before. I ask for something and Mum says ‘go and clean
up your room while I think about it’. One step ahead when she gets home.
I found about seventy dirty socks—the things breed under
my desk. I have to admit it felt good when I’d finished.
I sat down to marvel at how easy
it was to turn my mosh
pit back into a bedroom.

‘Hello love,’ Mum wheezed
as she passed the door to
my room. She stopped, stepped
backwards and poked her
head inside my door with a comical
expression on her face.

‘What happened
in here? Did you smell something
rotting?’

‘No. Just thought
I’d clean up a bit.’

‘Oh yeah ... nice job.’
I smiled. ‘Oh, Mum?’

‘Yeahhh?’

‘Could I go to a party with Den and Kerry tonight?’ There was a pause for thought.
‘Where?’

‘At Rebecca Hanson’s place on the other side of Fairleigh.’

‘How are you getting
there?’

‘Gracie’s taking us.’

‘Well, how are you getting home?’

‘Gracie.’

There was another
pause for thought.

‘I’ll think about it.’

My least favourite end to a conversation.

Dennis phoned
as we were sitting down for tea
and asked if I wanted to stay at his place after the party. Mum
had just levered a huge forkful
of lamb chop and potato into her mouth. She nodded slowly. Yes!

‘No drinking,
you
hear? And if there’s any trouble
I want you to start walking. Don’t be a bloody hero. If there’s any trouble you won’t be going out for the rest of the year.’

I was a few minutes late getting
to the Humes’ place but they
weren’t waiting.
I wished I hadn’t pedalled so hard
up the Garrison Street hill and
that I hadn’t had that smoke before I left. Dennis
had just got out of the shower and his hair looked
like it had been
painted on. He reported that the giggling we could hear was Kerry and Carly
getting ready. Carly was staying the night too. Den’s mum crept up behind him and ripped the towel off that had
been covering his lower half.

‘Whoooooo!’ she cooed as she strode
up the hall. She rapped on Kerry’s bedroom
door. ‘Girls! Come on! The
floor show has started.’

Instead of freaking out, like I knew
I would, Den just stood there,
his penis nestled
in curly black pubic hair. It hung
to the right, just like mine. I can’t believe I noticed that. The door of Kerry’s bedroom burst open and Den
bolted to his drawer and grabbed
a pair of jocks. He
looked cleaner and smarter than I
did but he topped it off
with that old leather vest and I felt at home again.

Gracie dropped
us off and said that she would be back
at midnight to pick us up. I had butterflies that got
suddenly stronger as I heard the thumping
bass drum sound leaking from the walls
of the brick house that Kerry
told us was Rebecca’s. Bold
as a fox terrier, Kerry waltzed
in the front door, closely followed
by Carly and me. Den was taking a leak on the lamppost
in the nature strip. I wish I
had thought of that,
my bladder was going to burst.

There were about ten people in the lounge room. Lit by a lamp in one corner, the lounge room was dark and I couldn’t
recognise anyone. Kerry was squinting at someone sitting in a deep armchair perusing
a CD cover.
The
person looked up and returned
the
squint. They recognised
each other and squealed their
delight, hugged and kissed at the air beside each ear. Carly joined in
and they jiggled with excitement. Bizarre. Must have been all of five hours since they were last together. My eyes finally adjusted to the light and I began to recognise
people. Most of them were around our age but I only knew them
as faces mostly from
Chisholm Catholic, where Rebecca went before
she was
expelled for smoking. I recognised the one boy in the room—Gary Reardon, the geeky school brain from Mrs Kneebone’s home group. I moved over to say hello; he looked like his mum had dressed him.

‘G’day Wayne,’ he said
and took his hand out of his pocket to shake mine. Shake hands? What a tosser. I
took his hand anyway. It felt like a dead eel. I asked him where all the lads were and he told me they were there a minute before but had disappeared. He offered me a drink of something yellow in a small Coke bottle.
I regarded it suspiciously and
he assured me
it wasn’t poison. I uncapped the bottle and took a
swig. Warm cough medicine. The type my mum puts herself to sleep with every other night.

‘You like it? Galliano.
Top shelf.’

It wasn’t bad. I had another slug and took a bit into my lungs.
I started coughing
and Gary was slapping
me on the back and laughing.

The side gate was open
and light coming from the garage lit up a rectangle of grass under the clothesline. I found a lemon tree and nipped behind it to unload my bladder. Not a moment too soon. A
shadow moved through the rectangle and I peered
in the window. At first,
I could only see backs but they were people I knew. David Henderson, Shane Lee and Carlson were the three closest
to me—all from my
year at Chisholm. Carlson goes to
Venturers with Den. They were huddled
around, looking at something. Shane leant over and grabbed a lighter
off the bench and nearly hit his head on the single light
bulb dangling from the roof. He’s the tallest kid in school— even bigger than the year twelves.
Mr Davis was talking
about him in Earth Science
the other week, saying
that he was a genetic anomaly
because he was already
a foot taller than his mum and dad. Mr Davis
said he hoped Shane
would be a basketball player. Shane went red. He’s useless
at
basketball. He’s so uncoordinated it’s dangerous. Constantly tripping over his feet. Everyone stays away from him in PE.

There was a flash and the little huddle began to disperse letting clouds
of smoke tumble and fill the space. Den was the centre
of attention, holding a bong
the shape of a skull and sucking frantically on the draw pipe, the contents of the cone glowing bright orange then dark in time with his cheeks.

I banged on the steel door and in my deepest,
most adult voice said, ‘Right, what’s going on in here?’

‘Shit. Hide the bong,’ Carlson whispered. He needs to be in Venturers—got no common sense.

I rattled the handle
on the door and then barged
in. They were wide-eyed and panicked.

‘Jeez you’re
an idiot, Wayne,’ Carlson said pulling
at his collar. Den
produced the bong from inside his jacket and giggled as he lit up again.
The skull bubbled
and gurgled as we each took our turn. Apparently it was Carlson’s bong but
I don’t think he’d ever used it. He coughed his guts
up for about a minute
after his first toke. Den looked like he
had just woken up.

Mandy had arrived. She looked like a bloody angel, all smiles and golden hair. I smelt her before I saw her. She was
standing against the space heater talking to a bloke I
didn’t know with a goatee and three earrings in his left eyebrow. Are they
still called earrings
when they’re in your
eyebrow? It looked all right
on him, fitted in with the blond
dreadlocks and the leather bracelets.
He
was nodding as Mandy was speaking to him, nodding
from the shoulders. Sort of head-butting the air. I walked straight
up to Mandy and put my arm around her waist. She jumped and then she
realised it was me and put her arm
around my shoulder. Gave me a peck on the cheek.

‘Wayne, this is Steve, Steve ... Wayne. I go to school with Wayne.’

Her arm dropped from my shoulder at the end of the introduction and I tried not to look obvious as I took my arm from around her waist. I felt like a dork. I didn’t
realise she and
Steve
were, you know,
at the
party together and that. Steve was still head-butting the air and I realised
he wasn’t nodding;
he was dancing. I looked around, trying to find an escape route—someone to talk to or something to do—when Cheryl Bickerton darted
out of the door beside the space heater, checking out her
clothes. She gave Mandy a shove with her
hip and
claimed the front of the heater. Then she grabbed Steve by the front
of his surf pants and dragged him
into a hug. Suddenly they were pashing like Siamese twins
joined at the lips and I didn’t feel like an idiot any more. Then
Mandy looked around for someone else or something to do. There was an empty spot on the couch and I asked her if she wanted to sit down. She shrugged and
started towards the couch so I dived in and patted the seat
next to me but she had already turned
around, miming that she had to get a drink.
Did I
want one? Yeah!

Henderson was off his tree. He was in the corner
showing Kerry and Carly the stupid condom trick. He sniffed the unrolled tip up one nostril then coughed it out
of his mouth. The ring bit hung out his nose and the
floppy tip dangled out of his mouth. He pulled it back and forth and loudly announced that
it’s the best way he knows to clean out his sinuses.
He only does it when he’s really
stoned. I’m sure it’s the only way he’s ever used a
condom.

Felt like she’d been gone a long time. Heaps more
people had arrived and I guessed the kitchen was a bit of a maze like the rest of the house. Den floated across the
room and landed in Mandy’s seat.

‘Someone sitting there, mate,’ I shouted.

‘Wha?’

‘That seat’s taken already.’

‘Wha?’

‘Shift your arse, Mandy’s sitting
there,’ I shouted
right in his ear. There was a dedicated
pause as he thought about what I’d said.

‘Yes thank you. I’ll have two with onion,’
he chuckled. Just for a split second the room fell quiet. There was a gap between
songs on the CD and it was like there was a huge
hole in the party. Everyone stopped talking.
Den had time to look at me in bewilderment before Hendo
broke the silence with a massive burp that made me and a few others laugh. The next track on the album was the Black
Glass song ‘Jungular’ with the fiercely distorted
guitar intro. The very second those guitars started, a flash of
white erupted from
outside and the house fell into
darkness. The guitar sound vanished
with a pop and was replaced by the sound of breaking glass and girls squealing. Den shouted for
everyone to get down. With my
head between my knees I couldn’t tell if anyone else was listening to him. In time, the breaking glass faded to a musical tinkle. I was waiting for the next noise; the next calamity but there was nothing. Hendo was the first one to speak.

‘What the bloody hell was that?’

Gingerly lifting my
head I looked around the room. I
was expecting to see blood and guts everywhere but there were only frightened eyes. Carly started
to cry.

‘Is everyone okay?’ Den shouted. I felt paralysed from the neck
down. Henderson, filled
with bent courage
and too much grog, moved to the front door. I looked
to where the glass had come from and saw a football-sized hole in the lacy curtain and behind it, a shark’s jaw in the glass. A spotlight from outside illuminated the window.

‘Shiiiit.’

‘What is it, Hendo?’

Den moved for the door and I followed
him, hanging on to the back of his leather vest. On the nature strip laid
a crumpled Saab with a wooden lamppost
broken over the bonnet. A cobweb of wires lay on the neighbour’s grass,
fizzing and crackling. The one remaining
headlight of the car
was twisted up and pointing
at the broken front window of Rebecca’s house.

‘Shiiiit.’

‘Rebecca. Ring the ambulance.
Now. And the cops,’
Den barked as he walked briskly to
the
wreck. I was still hanging
on to his vest and being dragged
along until he smacked my hand off. Here I am, I thought, finally going to see my first
real—live—dead person and I’m hanging
on to Den like I’m two years old. I couldn’t believe how confident he was.
Maybe it was the dope. Maybe it was all that bloody first-aid
training at Venturers.
He walked straight up to the busted
car and stopped.
He gingerly brushed the back of his hand
against the door then
grabbed the handle. I had pictures
of heads rolling out when he opened the door. Maybe he did too because he stopped and looked in the tinted window.
After a few frustrated seconds of putting his hand on the glass to try and
stop the
reflection he just ripped the door open.

‘Hey. You okay?’ I heard him say softly.
‘Come on. Let’s get you out of there.’

I was suddenly
aware of the strong smell of petrol.

‘Den. This whole thing could blow up . . .’

‘Too right,
Einstein.’

Part of me wanted to run back inside and part of me wanted
to start running home but by far the biggest
part of me wanted to see the blood.

Den was reaching in to undo the
seatbelt, speaking quietly and reassuringly to whoever
was inside. He pulled himself out
and brought the driver’s hand with him. Long, red fingernails gripped tightly around his palm and
the body inside began to move.

‘Come on. Gently does it.’

‘Den. The phone’s dead,’ Kerry yelled from the doorway.

‘It’s okay, my wife has phoned
the police,’ said a gravelly voice. A man with grey hair and a grey moustache stood watching from the safety of the other side of the road.

Den helped the lady to her feet. She was shaky and very tall. Her long, red hair splashed across the back of Den’s vest as he put his arm around her waist and slipped under her
arm. I moved to her other
side and helped her into the house. Someone
had lit some
candles and set them up on the dining room table. We helped her sit down. She was thanking us and trying to get the hair out of her face. She looked like a model
underneath the running mascara and tears. There was no blood.

‘Are you okay?’ Den asked again and she nodded.

I suddenly realised that there
might have been other
people in the car so I ran back out. All the seats were empty and an airbag
lay limp like a used condom against the steering wheel. There was another limp airbag on the passenger’s side hanging over the glove box. The lady’s wallet
was on the floor and I reached
in to get it. Outside I heard a loud electrical crack and remembered
the potential bomb that I was in. I hurried
back inside and gave the lady her wallet.

The ambulance
arrived in all its flashing, wailing glory.
Then the police came and soon after that a lumbering
great fire truck that sprayed foam over the fuel and
the
car. The ambulance men were polite
and
gentle. The policemen
were gruff and told everyone to go out the back, shining the
way with bright
torches. Carly was sobbing now and Rebecca
complained that it was her house.
The policeman apologised and escorted her out the back explaining that it was
still dangerous to be in the front of the house.

‘Bloody kids everywhere,’
one of the cops said to Steve. In
a while, a fireman came out through the side gate and told
the cop that everything was
okay. He reflected like a
traffic sign in the cop’s torch and his rubber suit squeaked
and squawked as he walked.

‘Can we go?’ Steve asked the cop.

‘Yes. Let me write down your names and addresses
and you can go.’

Mandy, Cheryl and Steve were the first ones to leave. Steve told the cop his name was David. It was eleven o’clock and we started walking
back to the Humes’ house. Gracie was
getting ready to leave as we got there.
She listened without making
a sound as Kerry and Den took
turns in telling her what had happened.

‘Lucky you guys were there to sort things out,’ she said. I
could hear her talking to Barry for hours
after that.

•

I couldn’t get to sleep. I should have jumped on my bike and
ridden home at three in the morning.
I dozed and woke up twenty
times between that thought and daylight.
I wanted my own bed and the radio.
Eventually daylight came and I got dressed and quietly left to have breakfast
and some decent sleep at the flat.

It was a foggy spring dawn and the
magpies were calling quietly as
I pulled
up.
Magpies, and in the
distance a squawking seagull. Even the
birds
weren’t properly awake. The little alcove at the front door stunk.
Not just that Velo-cat-piss smell, but something burnt
and horrible. In the weak daylight I could see charring on
the fibro and the door like someone had taken to them with a gas torch and the plastic fly-wire had been
melted all over the steel of the busted security door that leant
against the other wall. I pushed through the door and went to Mum’s room. She sat up like a rabbit and asked me what the matter was.

‘What happened to the door?’

‘Oh, we had a visitor during
the night. Some idiots lit a
whole pile of paper and . . . stuff on the porch.
Scared the life out of me. I put it out with water from the kettle and called the police. They were here for about half an hour and
helped me calm down and clean up.’

Her hair looked funny, like her head had exploded during the night. She said that in the middle of the pile of
paper was a turd. Someone
had crapped in it and set it alight. That was sick.

Dennis was a hero at school. The story I heard was that he
had rescued a woman out of the wreck of her car. Saved her life. Gave her mouth-to-mouth
and kept her going until the ambulance arrived.
It was a bit of a laugh really. The
Friday after the accident, the woman
arrived at school. Her name was Katrina and the
police had told her to ask for Dennis at the school.
He’d had lunch with her and
the teachers in the staff room. Afterwards he said it was
a real wank but I think he enjoyed it. He told me that he
thought Katrina was gorgeous.
I had never seen him so
animated about a woman. Ever. She’d said her husband
had just told her that he was having an affair and their
marriage was over.

‘It was like a bloody soap opera. And she was telling me like
I cared.’

I think he did. I would
have given her mouth-to-mouth.

Griz roughed him up
again that afternoon. Den was hurrying to the bus from his locker
and Griz pushed him into
the corner so he dropped
his bag. I shouted at Griz
to leave him alone. Griz told me to shut my hole.

‘Two hundred bucks. Where is it?’

‘I don’t have two
hundred dollars,’ he said,
which was a lie. Den is loaded.

‘That’s not my problem.
Tomorrow.’

Den shrugged and picked up his bag. There was half a
smile on his face. ‘All right. Here. Tomorrow.’

Griz seemed satisfied
until Pic whispered that tomorrow
was Saturday.

‘We won’t be here. Make it Monday,’
Griz said.

Den shrugged again and said that Monday would be
okay.

With that Griz bent down and punched
him in the thigh and bolted out the sliding doors to the bike shed. Den
limped out to the bus.

We didn’t see each other until Tuesday. Den and Kerry
had one of their ‘mental
health days’ when their family goes camping or driving for the weekend and they all take
the Monday off. They have done it about three or four times a year since Den was in kindergarten. Mum doesn’t let me take days off. I go to school
unless, like my last day off
in grade five,
I’m coughing up blood.

I was in the toilets before homeroom and Den rocked in to take a leak. He pushed
me into the urinal mid-stream and I managed
to pee on my runner
and put my hand on the wet stainless steel. Mongrel. He laughed and showed me the bruise that Griz had given him
while I washed my hands. It was yellowing
already and the size of a tennis ball. He said it still hurt. I asked him what he was
going to do about Griz and he grinned.

‘Pay him the money. You’ve got it in the bank,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘That’s not the point.
The pants and seat are worth about twenty dollars
not two hundred. It’s extortion he’s into, not compensation.’

Sometimes
he sounds like his mum.

Mandy was funny that week. She’d been strange since the
party. It was the last day of school
before I got to talk to
her. Sally Thomas’s mum works at a bakery and had
brought in a heap of cakes for our last day. It was like a little
party in the common room.

‘Hey Mandy. How are you going?’

‘Yeah good, Wayne. How are you?’
she said pecking
at the corner of an apple
slice.

‘I’m all right.’

An uncomfortable pause broken
by stupid laughter
as Hendo and Carlson
pretended to ride around the corner
on the big yellow Labrador
that everyone calls ‘Spitball’. They’re really mean to that dog and it annoys the hell out of me. It must be someone’s pet. I knocked on the window and told them to leave the dog alone.

‘How would you like it if someone rode around on your
back?’ Mandy yelled.

Carlson extended his middle
finger and gave me the bird.
Hendo motioned for Mandy to come outside
and get on his back. Mandy
told him to piss off and I laughed.

‘Are you going away for the holidays?’ I asked and she
shook her head.

‘You?’

I nodded and shrugged,
having just stuffed
a creamy slice of sponge in my gob. I chewed
hard and explained that I was working with Dad in the first week and going to
Mars Cove with the Humes after that.

She lit up at the mention of Mars Cove, explaining that her family had been going there for years. She said I’d enjoy
it. Cheryl cut into
the conversation then and I decided it was time to leave.

‘Hey Wayne!’ Mandy called as I walked off. ‘If you’re working over the holidays,
remember it’s my birthday
first week back and I’d love a really
big present.’

I nodded and asked her what date it was. She said that she
liked chocolate and hadn’t got the new Feral Pigs CD. Twenty-second of September. She laughed
it off and continued her conversation with Cheryl but I jotted
it down in my mind. Maybe I could get her something.

Den was unusually manic over lunch. Griz hadn’t turned up at school so he felt as though his death
sentence had been reprieved.

Dad burst into the flat at seven o’clock the next morning. Mum asked him to look after me and he grumbled
that he always does.

His old ute was parked out
the front and it had a bit of
a lean to the driver’s side. It used to be white but it’s more red-brown rust and mud now. There’s so much shit piled in
the back that it looks as though he’s constantly heading for the tip. All his decent
tools are locked
in two battered steel toolboxes that live in the back and the ladders he needs
are tied to the roof racks with shaggy rope.

The passenger’s side door handle is broken—has been since before I was born—so Dad leant across the piles of
clothes and papers to let me in. Two green beer cans fell out
of the door and clattered into the gutter. I picked
them up and stuffed them back with the others
in the foot well. Stale beer and cigarettes. It smelled like adventure.
Dad pumped the accelerator pedal and braced
himself as

he turned the key. The starter
motor barked and the engine roared into life. We bucked and lurched down Vincent Drive
and into Merrimans Creek Road.
Five minutes and we were there.
Wasn’t even in the next suburb.

The house was one of those flash-looking Federation-style places with a dozen bedrooms and an upstairs.
It was totally unlike the sort of shack Dad normally works on. A waist-high
brick fence surrounded
a garden bursting into
springtime. The trees were covered with
lime-green baby leaves and
the lawn neatly finished
where the rose beds began. It looked perfect except for the stacks of bricks and piles of sand and crushed rock that
were blocking the side gate. Dad
parked the ute on the nature strip.

I shovelled crushed rock into the wheelbarrow and carted it across the yard. It looked like Mr Thompson
was just trying to spend money. A big area of concrete had been
pulled out—Dad said contractors did that, thank
God—and he wanted
Dad to lay bricks the same colour as
the house in its place.
We spent the whole day
moving rock and putting planks of wood in level. At about four o’clock, I filled a barrow a bit too full and rolled it onto
the grass, spilling the rock everywhere.

‘Smoko,’ Dad chuckled and got the thermos out of his
bag.

We got to talking about
the flaming shit-bomb
incident and he asked me if I knew anyone that would have a reason
to do it. No-one, except maybe Griz.
I told him that Griz was a bit pissed at Dennis. Yeah, it would be something Griz would do.

‘What’s the bloke’s name again?’

‘Shane Grizotto.’

Dad didn’t have a single smoke all day. Maybe he had quit.
Jesus, I was dying for one. I picked up my mess and
put it where it was supposed
to go.

Mum invited Dad to stay for dinner. That was out of the
blue. He said he’d love to. I was getting a drink and Mum said
under her breath that it would probably
be the first home-cooked meal he’d had this month. Shepherd’s pie. Bliss. I ate like a kelpie and dragged
myself from in front
of the telly to bed at about
half past nine. Knackered.

Sunday was much of the same except my arms and bum
ached and after lunch Dad had me racing
around with a thing
he called a ‘whacker’. That’s exactly what it does. It weighs
about as much as I do and it vibrates
like hell as it
whacks all the rock into place. Turns
loose rock into hard, flat rock and then we put the sand on top of that, one
wheelbarrow at a time, and make it level with a screed—a long bit of wood with a handle nailed
to it. At half past four
I was totally whackered and screeded out, so we went
home and Mum had tea ready for us both again.
She’d been at Uncle Ted and Auntie
Penny’s place all day so she’d
bought pizza on the way home. And a couple of
beers. It was something else sitting in front
of the telly with my mum and my dad eating pizza and drinking
beer. The beer was good and I almost finished
a whole can.
Give me bourbon any day. After tea Mum and Dad started
to talk so I wished them goodnight
and left them to it. I
think I heard one song on my radio before I dozed off but I can’t be sure. Knackered.

I got the surprise of my life the next morning. I showered, had breakfast and went to wait for Dad out the front and
his ute was already there. It hadn’t
moved. I ran into Mum’s bedroom and gave her a kiss goodbye—he wasn’t there
either. I asked if she knew where he was and she
grumbled that he’d slept on the lounge.
Something was going on. Dad hadn’t slept in the same suburb
as Mum since I was
seven and Mum had let him camp
in the lounge room. Wicked!
He was sort of scrunched
up in a ball and I hadn’t noticed him while I was getting ready.

‘Hey Dad. You coming this morning
or what?’ I said and shook him gently. He sat up straightaway, still in his
grubby work clothes. He took a leak, boiled the kettle,
made a cup and a thermos full of coffee
and slipped his boots
on. The whole act took less than five minutes.

‘See you, Sylvie. Thanks,’
he shouted with the doorknob
in his hand.

‘Yeah, yeah.’

It started raining as we pulled
up in front of the
Thompsons’ place. Dad said that the rain would mess up
the work we’d done with the sand but it didn’t last
long and we were screeding and moving sand for most of the morning. Just before lunch, Dad cracked
through the metal tie on a pack of bricks with the claw of his hammer.
All afternoon I had the privilege of moving bricks
and putting them into piles. Dad laid them down as quickly as I could cart them. Quicker. He had to stop and help me unload
a few times. Mr Thompson
came home at about
two o’clock and Dad introduced us while he oohed and ahhed
at the work we’d done. It did look good and Dad was right—Mr
Thompson was a nice bloke. He wore one
of those train driver’s hats and he laughed
a lot.

We were packing up when a group of kids rode past the front. Griz and Otto Christiansen with his Saints beanie
pulled too far down over his eyes. There were two other kids
I didn’t know. They were scoping
the place out and
hadn’t recognised me. Griz spotted me at that exact
moment.

‘Hey Wayne. What are you doing? Building a sandpit?’
Otto looked bewildered. ‘Is this your joint?’

I didn’t say anything,
just prickled.

‘No. Dickhead, he lives over on Vincent Drive.
Don’t you Wayne? Having fun on your holidays
and all that?’

They laughed.

‘Hey Wayne,’ Griz said. ‘Tell that mate of yours that I’m
coming around to collect my money tomorrow. Okay?’

Dad came around the side of the house
and they rode off.

‘Mates of yours?’

‘Nup.’

He looked up the footpath until they disappeared. We finished loading the stuff into
the ute and took off home. Didn’t say a word the whole way. He dropped
me off out the front of
the flat and said he’d pick me up in the morning. Mum had made tea for him again.

‘Arsehole,’ she said under her breath when
I told her that he’d gone.

Den rang that night.
He hardly ever phoned. He wanted to know for sure whether
I’d be coming with them on Sunday. He’s a different person on the phone, like he
struggles with the whole thing.
I told him that Dad and I
would be easily finished by Sunday and that it would take a
heap of horses to stop me from going with them. I gave
him the message from Griz and he laughed.

‘All piss and wind.’

•

Dad had me laying bricks
for a change on Tuesday. It was easier for him to cart them and he only had to fix a few.
We
laid them in a basket-weave pattern and when we’d
finished the big area it did look like it was woven.
Dad went to get a brick
saw from Stilson’s Hire and he taught
me how to mark the bricks to be cut so they would fit along the edges. It seemed like a simple
operation but the first
few he cut didn’t fit into the holes they were supposed
to so I had to mark them again.

The brick saw was something else. A whirling, wet, noisy, bench-mounted saw that you operated with your
foot. Big petrol motor. The cover had a hose attached to it and a jet of water shot onto the spinning blade. It kept the blade lubricated and stopped
the
bricks from jamming.

It made a bloody mess, spraying
fine
red mud on everything, so and Dad had to wear a funky yellow raincoat and
pants. No goggles though because they’d get totally covered with water and
brick-dust in two seconds flat. Dad wore earplugs and earmuffs but it was nowhere near as loud
as the Feral Pigs concert that Den and I went to last year so I reckoned he was being a bit wimpy about it. I asked him if I could have a go on the saw and he fobbed me off.

‘Maybe tomorrow,
mate. This thing’s a bloody
beast. Whip your fingers
off in a flash-of-where’s-your-grand-mother.’

The next afternoon
he decided that he’d show me how to use the saw. I think
he got pissed off with using it. What a beast. Cuts through solid bricks like butter. Dad was shouting
instructions at me but I’d
been
watching him so I knew what to do.

‘Just keep the brick moving. Backwards
and forwards. You don’t
need to press down hard.
That’s it. Let the blade do the work.’

Very cool. A little bit scary when I got to the bottom of a cut and the two bits fell apart in my
hands. I imagined being a gem cutter or one of those palaeontologists who cut open rocks
to find fossils. The cut surface of the brick
was shiny and silky to touch.

I guess I was getting a bit cocky. Running
my finger over the
side of the spinning blade and tracing
patterns in the water. Dad had crept up behind me and scared the shit
out of me.

‘Oi! You bloody idiot. Keep your mind on the job. It’s
not a freaking toy!’

I didn’t say another word that afternoon. Griz, Otto and a few of their mates rolled up. I think they were impressed
with the brick saw too. I could see them out of the corner of
my eye, pointing
and laughing, but they stayed
a while. They’d just left when it happened.
Dad had parked one of the
legs of the wheelbarrow on the hose and unloaded
the marked bricks. As I piled the cut bricks into the barrow,
the weight had gradually cut off the water supply
to the blade. The mud
had turned to dust. The engine started to labour. I got a flash of
Dad running at me, screaming. The brick grabbed and dragged me into the blade. My head
smacked into the cover. My arm got stuck at the back of the
blade and I could
feel it cutting me. Rasping
the bone. Red dust.
Red blood. Black.

I wish I could say that I just got up, dusted
myself off and kept
at it. That’s what always happened
before then. Even when
Den and I were nine and we had that massive crash on our bikes at the bottom of Merrimans Creek hill, I still
got up and rode home.

When the saw bit me, I didn’t get up.

Dad has filled me in on the details.
He said I had my eyes open while it was all going on but I don’t remember
a thing. Weird. Like those moments
just don’t exist in my
mind. He said he used his singlet
to stop the bleeding
from my arm and when the blood came through
he got some scungy
overalls out of his toolbox. He was screaming for help until an old lady came out from the house over
the road. She watched from her fence for a few seconds—
wasn’t game to cross.

‘For Chrissake,’ Dad finally said, ‘call an ambulance my son’s been hurt.’

Then, he said, like a
flash-of-where’s-your-grandmother, an ambulance rocked up and a bloke and a woman jumped out—like on the telly—and carted me off to the hospital. Sirens and lights and everything. I wish
I remembered that bit.

When I was eight I got really sick and had to go to
hospital for a few days. I had measles
and I spent the whole time sleeping then catching glimpses of people
looming over me. It was scary then and I was in the same
situation now, floating in and out of consciousness and feeling frightened by the people hanging over me.

The scariest part was when I woke up and I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t hear. I shouted
out for Mum but she couldn’t
hear me or no sound
came out. My legs were frozen and my arms were like lead. My hand hurt and it’s
like I was looking at the world through a cardboard tube, watching the people in the blue gowns ghosting
about. I screamed in terror and then
it was all black but I was still
awake. I stopped screaming, still thinking with my eyelids strained open. Like I was in the deepest rainforest in South
America at night searching for the faintest
light. I knew there was something
out there. I could feel it.

I could hear a car in
the distance and it gradually
became louder and more musical.
It wasn’t a car; it was seagulls cawing, and a scratching sound
behind it like someone running
their fingers down a blackboard. I was screaming again. That sound was eating my brain out.

‘Nooooooo. Help me.’

Black silence,
then a sound so sweet and pure that I
could feel it lifting me. The thousand
screeching seagulls had been drowned out by a chorus of tiny bells making
music like the twinkling of stars. Out of the blackness in my mind came a form—violet water in front of
my eyes that suddenly
had arms and legs and dark hair. At first I thought
it was a bird but as the form turned
towards me I could see it was a little girl with glowing green eyes and
full soft lips that never moved from a warm smile, yet I heard
her talking to me. The tiny bells were her voice and she
whispered into my mind that everything was okay. I was going to be all right. She moved as if to hug me but
when I reached out to her
she was gone, right through me like
a warm breeze.

When I woke up, my head was thick.
I didn’t want to open my eyes. I could hear quiet talking
near to me but couldn’t recognise
the voices. A smell danced
in my nose, the barest hint of
something. Sandalwood. I forced my eyes
open and saw Kerry sitting on the side of my bed and Den standing behind her. At the sight of me blinking
like a rat in a flour
bag, her lip quivered.

She picked up my hand and held it to her face. ‘Hey

Wayne. You’re back!’

‘You’ve been in the intensive
care thing for, like, three
days. Back from the dead.
Check his pulse, Kez. Is he a zombie
or what?’ Den
darted across the room
and shouted into the hallway, ‘He’s awake!’

Then Mum was there hugging me and wetting
my face with her tears, wheezing
and sobbing. Barry and Gracie pushed their way inside too.

‘We thought we’d lost you. You lost so much blood that
you almost ... thank God you’re still here.’

Then it was a nurse making a fuss, asking
me stupid shit like if I could hear her okay
and how many fingers she was holding up. They all parted when
an immaculately dressed Asian man came in.
He looked like he’d just stepped out
of a kung fu movie. His broad muscular shoulders were barely disguised under a clean pressed short-sleeved shirt. Fragile round
hippy glasses sat comfortably on his nose and he moved with the grace of someone who could pluck
your eye out with his big toe from across the street. He
introduced himself as Dr Michael Chen. He waved his tie at me; Mickey
Mouse was embroidered on it in colourful silk.

‘You can call me Mickey. Everyone else does,’ he said in an American accent that seemed out of place from a man with eyebrows so fine and dark.
‘You gave us quite a workout. We thought we’d lost you—I’ve never seen so much
blood in all my life!’

I liked him. He looked me in the eyes as he spoke to
me.

‘Wayne, how do you feel?’

I struggled to tell him that my arm hurt but not much sound came out. The nurse
stuck a straw in my mouth and told
me to have a drink.
The water was cold and I felt it
go all the way down.

‘Wayne, your left hand was very badly damaged
in the accident with the saw. Do you remember
that?’

I nodded and he moved a bit closer pushing his glasses
back on his nose, like
he was at a good bit in a bedtime story.

‘Wayne, we had to amputate your hand.’
Yeah, good one.

‘Just above the wrist. Too much tissue damage to your
wrist and hand to save it. I’m very sorry it had to be that way. You will be okay to move around
in a couple of days. You will be all right, okay?’

He patted my hand and left. Mum was really bawling now, Kerry too. Grace was honking into a flowery hanky. Even
Barry had a tear in his eye. When I looked at Den, his face
screwed up and he dived out into the hall again. All around me,
cards and flowers
were taking up every bit of space
that wasn’t flashing
or beeping quietly at me. I felt sick
in the guts. Where the
hell was Dad? Here’s the
weirdest bit: instead
of crying, I nearly pissed
myself with laughter. Shaking
and shuddering every time
I looked
down at the neat bandages
that I now had instead
of a hand. I laughed
like a retard for an hour, off and on. Every
time Mum tried to comfort me or I thought
of another thing that I wouldn’t be able to do, I’d just lose it. No more
bike riding. No more video games. Imagine
what it will be like at
school. Mandy won’t want to know me ... that was the hardest of all. My life was fucked. What a laugh.

The Humes left for
Mars Cove on the Monday—a day later than planned
and without me. They came in and apologised for having to leave
‘in my time of need’, as Gracie
called it. Baz said they weren’t going to take the boat,
they had decided to leave that momentous launching
for a later trip when I was better.

Whatever.

Apparently losing your hand isn’t such a big operation, or maybe it was because
Mum was a nurse. She took me home
on the Tuesday and organised time off work to look after
me. It was the first
time in about a year that she’d had
time off work. The last time was when she had the flu
and I had thought she was going to cough up a lung. She spent
her days bringing me food and medication, making sure I was comfortable. Bought me a new little
telly and set it up in my bedroom.
And a VCR. Once, when she was out shopping I remembered I had a couple of porno
videos under my bottom drawer. I had found
them in David Henderson’s locker. I guess it’s stealing
and I know he is supposed
to be a mate and everything but what’s he going to do about it? Tell Mrs Kneebone? Tell the cops? I watched
one of them. It was shit-hot. It was like stick-books
that had come to life. There they were, going for it in a hundred
different ways with all this screaming
and swearing and licking lips. Glad my dick still worked.

I still hadn’t seen
Dad but I didn’t really
give a shit. He’d be down the pub drowning his sorrows or over at Pat’s place being indispensable. I didn’t do much crazy laughing after that first mad hour or so but I started to get pissed off. Not so much about losing my hand, just about
life. Mum booked me in to see Dr Stevenson at the hospital to talk about losing my hand. Turned out he was a psychologist but he had two hands and two legs so I
guessed I already knew more about losing a hand than he
did. He was an old man who looked like he should have
retired ages ago. He spoke to me like
I was two years old and that
pissed me off even more. I was
supposed to arrange for a weekly visit but I left that up to Mum.

I wondered if I should go back to school. Being the
freak didn’t really appeal. I reckoned I’d had enough of
school anyway. I was the legal age to leave so that was an
option. Well, nearly.
Sometimes being fifteen nearly
sixteen is like being stuck
in no-man’s-land.
I can really enjoy a drink
or six but I’m too young to buy it and I’d cop
a caning if Mum found out. Christ,
I could be a father if I lay
down with the right woman at the right time. Wouldn’t
want to be a father
yet but there’s no harm in dreaming
about it.

Mum told me that I had actually died at one stage
before they could give me more blood.
She said that Mickey was shouting
and dancing around
the operating theatre while she stood outside the door panicking. She said she couldn’t
find words to explain how helpless she felt
having all her qualifications but not being able to do
a thing for me. She watched
them pump my chest and wished it was her instead of me. How cool. I’ve actually
been dead. Wish I could remember it.

On Sunday afternoon
the sun was streaming in my bedroom window. It had a
bit of a kick in it, like summer
wasn’t that far away. It was calling
to me, begging me to come
outside but I couldn’t be stuffed.
I pushed the mute on the remote when I thought
I heard some music. It was
a magpie in the paperbark at the back of
the Velos’ singing a quiet ballad that seemed a bit sad. I watched
the footy with the sound off for a while and listened to the
magpie. They had a full-screen shot of a seagull strutting at quarter time, neck arched and beak
open wide. I imagined the sound
it would have been making and it was nothing like the magpie. Eventually Mum came in and
shattered the stillness. So did the Humes. Back from their
holiday and all sickly sympathetic. Den had a cold and he sounded retarded with his blocked
nose. It made me laugh
a couple of times when he was trying to be sincere
and friendly. A couple of minutes
after they left Dad arrived. I could hear
him arguing with Mum
on the porch. Ahh, the good old days. The door slammed and a car roared off.

He looked different. His clothes were
ironed and he’d had
a shave. He smelled like Lynx ‘Aztec’. Maybe he did get
the hint after all? He sat at my desk acting really
cool, talking about the footy and shit. He propped a fist on one
hip and the other hand rested on his knee.

‘Listen mate,
I’m sorry I didn’t get to
see you at hospital. I’ve been a bit busy and ... you know how I am
about hospitals and that.’

I nodded and watched
another goal pounded
home on the screen. This was turning into a slaughter.

‘To be quite honest, I’ve been beside
myself since the accident and I wouldn’t have been much use to you.’

Nod, nod. See ya. Bye Dad. You can go now.

‘I’m going up the coast for a while. Terry Fisher’s got
me a job working on a boat
at Bermagui. They need
someone to help with the deepwater fishing
so I said I’d give it a go.’

He’s nodding
along with me now and at that moment I really hated
him. Spineless arsehole. He got up to go.

‘Jesus you talk crap,’ I thought
and it came out of my
mouth.

‘What?’

He started puffing himself
up like he was going to
deck me or something.
I couldn’t have cared less.

I jumped out of bed and looked him straight in the face. ‘You’re full of crap. You talk shit.’

‘Hang on a minute, Wayne.’

‘I’m lying in hospital—dying—and you’re too busy
dipping your wick to even come in and see how
I’m going. You’re bloody useless.’

He slapped me. Open hand right across my cheek. Bloody pussy. Den’s hit me harder than that and he’s my
mate.

‘I won’t take that sort of crap from you. You hear? My life
with Pat’s my business.’

Yeah, well, I think I guessed that right.

His face went red and veins started to pop out in his brow
and neck. He was up for a shouting match at least.

‘You’re my bloody son. I love you and I want to be
around you.’

‘So why didn’t you come to the friggin’ hospital?’ I spat. I took a step back, ready to defend
myself. His face cramped. His lips bent down at the corners
and shook. He took
me in his arms and had a bit of a sob. He said it was his
fault that I had been hurt, that he was a no-good
father and some other garble
that was punctuated by bubbles
of snot bursting in his nostrils.
I’d never seen him cry before, about anything. We talked
on my bed after that, in the ad breaks
anyway. He ran out to his ute and brought back a six-pack of VB
stubbies. He cracked a beer for himself
and one for me. He told me that he and Pat have a strictly
paternal relationship. I think
he meant platonic but I still think he’s
hot for her. He apologised for whacking me one. He asked
me how my stump was. I told him it was okay.
‘Nah, nah, I mean how is it really? What does it feel
like? Do you, you know, miss it?’

Yeah. Real bad some days. I thought
of a stupid little thing from Days of Our Lives, when
Counsel and Serena were facing each other and just staring
into each other’s eyes. Holding
hands. Telling each other
that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. A stumpy arm would
get in the way of that. And clapping hands.
Sometimes I can hear the brick saw in my head. Sometimes
I wake up from dreams that I can’t remember
and my jaw aches like I’ve been cracking
nuts with my teeth
all night. I thought all that and it came
out as, ‘Yeah, not bad though. It’s all right.’

Then Dad told me about how his dad used to beat him when he was little and his mum would just stand there
screaming. She’d never
interfere though
for fear he’d hit
her. He never did. He told me that’s why he never hit me.

‘You just did.’

‘Yeah, that was different.’

‘How?’

‘You deserved it.’

‘What?’

‘Well . . . you’re
a bloke now. You got to realise
that if you give people the shits they’ll have a go at you.’

‘What, you didn’t think I’d worked
that out already?’

‘Not with me you hadn’t.’

He dropped a clanger
seven minutes into the last quarter. He said that I had a sister who had died at birth.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Yeah. Your mum will kill me if she finds out I told you so keep
it to yourself. She was born seven months after your mum and I were married.
She had a heart defect. We called her
Carrie but we didn’t have a funeral for her or anything.’

‘Why didn’t Mum . . . why didn’t you tell me before?’
We
heard a car pull up. The door slammed.

‘Mum never got over it. Not a word,’ he whispered
and waved his fist in my face again and hid the beers under the bed.
Mum thundered through the house and nearly
smacked the door off its hinges coming
into the room.

‘Out!’ She shouted
at Dad. There wasn’t any room for negotiation. Dad just lay there on the bed. She grabbed the leg of his pants and dragged his feet to the floor.

‘Get out, Mick. Now.’

‘I haven’t finished
with Sunshine here yet,’ he said with a smile and kicked his legs back up on the bed. The motion made the bottles clink
and
Mum doesn’t miss stuff like that.
She went to walk around to the other side of the bed.

‘Grab them,’ Dad growled
so I reached over and
grabbed the full ones. He carefully pulled the others
out from the stash under the bed. Mum did the matron thing in
front of the telly with her fists on her hips.

‘Ya want one?’ he said, waving a beer at her.

She stood there huffing
for a full minute and we tried to
look around her to see what they were screaming about on the footy. Her scowl melted.
‘Yes. I bloody well do.
Shove over.’

And in a rare moment
that I will remember for eternity, the three of us watched
Mum’s team (carn the Cats) get up
and clip Collingwood in the first
semi-final. By three points. It wasn’t over yet.

For a while,
everything felt like it would
be okay. Dad talked about working out some way of modifying
my bike so that I could ride, and anything that I suggested
would be difficult with one hand he said he could make ‘an
attachment’ for. But what about girls?
What about the slab
of my life that involved
being with people?
How do you stop them from staring?

Dr Mickey said my stump was healing okay. I wondered
if it would ever close over—it was swollen and a sick-looking purple—black and red raw on the end beside the stitches. Every so often I could feel my hand like it was still there, only it wasn’t much fun. It would feel like one of my missing fingers was aching or my palm
was itchy. No matter what I did I couldn’t scratch it or stop the pain. Mickey called them phantom
pains. That phantom
sure pissed me off. Mum changed
the dressing a couple
of times a day and it felt weird
but didn’t really
hurt. She cried the first few times. No noise, just a few tears. There were times when I totally
forgot that my hand wasn’t
there. Like when I went to get some milk and I knocked
the stump on the fridge.
It hurt so much I swore flat out
for a minute. Mum asked Mickey if my arm should be in a sling and he told her mobility would be good for it. She
made sure I was full of painkillers but they didn’t temper agony, only pain.

Mum went back to work. Telly became my best mate. I hate to admit it but I started
to really enjoy Days of Our Lives and they had some really interesting
guests on Oprah.

Dr Stevenson said that it would
be good for me to
construct some habits that I could get used to. So I did:
a nice routine of what to watch and when. Mum got me a
few videos every other day.

Den started calling in. He’d jump off the bus at Merrimans Creek
Road and walk to my place. We’d watch the
cartoons for a while then he’d go home. He never said much.
I guess he’s embarrassed like everyone else.
One Thursday he rocked around at about four o’clock. Mum wasn’t home from work and I jumped out of bed to let him
in.

‘Getting ready for bed?’ he joked.

‘Nah.’

‘Happy anniversary,’ he said smiling
and handed me a flower he must have yanked out of next door’s garden.

‘Wha?’

‘Two months today, since your accident.’

‘Whoo. Two months?’ It didn’t seem that long ago.

‘Yep. Two months and the only thing
I’ve seen you dressed in is PJs.’

‘Yeah. They’re comfortable.’

I pulled on the loose
sleeve that hung over my stump.

‘Griz come and beat the shit out of you yet?’ He
choked a laugh.
‘Yeah, he did.’

He explained that when they got back
from holidays, Griz rocked
around to his place
and pinned him to the ground on his own front lawn. Gracie came out screaming
and Griz nicked off. The cops paid a visit
to Griz.

He looked at the door and sighed. ‘When are you coming outside?’

‘Oh, when I feel a bit better.’

‘When?’

‘I don’t know. When . . .’

‘When your hand grows back?’

I laughed. His eyes were black,
his lips thin and drawn tight.

‘Nah . . .’

‘Come outside now. It’s beautiful,
mate,’ he pleaded.

‘Nah . . .’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t feel like it,’ I said and shrugged.

‘Scared?’

‘Nah. Piss off.’

‘What is it then?’

I could think of one million reasons why I didn’t
need to go outside, the words just wouldn’t come together.

He turned to go. ‘You look like a couch potato to me.’

‘Thanks very much, arsehole.’

‘You’ve given up,’ he said. ‘Hope you and
your fat arse have a good life.’

With that he left. I stood in the doorway and could hear
the magpie in the Velos’ paperbark,
singing that sweet, sad song.

•

The following
Saturday, Uncle Ted, Auntie
Penny and Jenelle rolled
up just before lunch. I scrambled into my
bedroom but Mum brought them in anyway.

‘It’s the walking wounded.
How are you, Wayne?’
Uncle

Ted went to shake hands, then hesitated.

‘Oh, er. You can still shake hands all right? Good. Sorry mate.’

He shook my hand until I thought that one was going
to fall off then Auntie Penny
did the kiss-cuddle thing.
Jenelle just stood there with her mouth part-open, staring through her Coke-bottle glasses. Auntie Penny’s
always going on about how well Jenelle does at her grade three work but I think she’s
thick. Penny and Ted went into the
kitchen but Jenelle sat on the side of the bed and stared
at my stump. I was pretending
to watch the telly but I
could see her out of the corner
of my eye, straining to have
a good look at it. I did a low monster growl
and slowly lifted my stump towards
her. Her mouth dropped right open and the blood drained from her face. She was
frozen to the spot for a second
in sheer terror
then she burst out the bedroom door squealing. Mum stomped in and asked me what I had done to her.

‘She saw my stump and she freaked.’

I thought I did well not breaking into screaming fits of
laughter. Mum rolled her eyes and closed the door.

Something in my head must have popped in that incident with
Jenelle. Instead of being ashamed and embarrassed about my stump I looked at it and I thought it
was cool. No-one else had one. And I could freak little kids out. A slightly
retarded nine-year-old had set me free.

I got dressed
in my black tracksuit pants and an Adidas
jacket with pockets. It took me
about five minutes
of juggling but it wasn’t that hard.
But all of my shoes had
laces. From my Nikes to my shitty Doc Martens,
I would need help to get them on. Then I remembered my good
old elastic-sided Blundstones that live in the laundry cupboard.

Mum nearly choked on her biscuit when I walked
into the kitchen and past her into the laundry. Jenelle started
a fresh bout of howling.

‘Wayne. Are you all right? Where are you going?’

‘I’m fine, Mum. I’m going for a walk.’

I slipped my boots on
like I’d been doing it one-handed
for years and strode out the back door like it was the end of
a prison sentence. Well it was, only I’d locked myself up.

The sunlight was fierce and it hurt my eyes as I walked across the shaggy lawn to the shed. I couldn’t find my bike. Some bastard had pinched it. I ran back inside and
told Mum that my bike had gone.

‘Your dad’s got it. He’s fixing it,’ she said.

‘It wasn’t busted.’

She shrugged. I walked back out to the shed and
grabbed my smokes and lighter from above the flimsy metal door.

I’ve got to say that walking up Merrimans
Creek hill sucking on my first Holiday Extra for two months was not easy sport. By the time I’d
made
it to Garrison Street I
was
stuffed. Puffing and panting, I flicked my cigarette butt at a car turning into Howard Avenue then crossed over to the shops and dawdled to Game Zone.
I had my stump stuck a little uncomfortably in my jacket pocket.
No-one even looked at me sideways. That was
cool.
I didn’t hang around long. I thought about
walking up to Den’s place but after our last little encounter it seemed
too far to walk.

I crossed Garrison
Street and went down Howard Avenue. I don’t really
know why, it was a shining
day and I didn’t
feel like going home, I guess. Howard Avenue would take me past the front of the school. Would, but I
didn’t get there. Two doors down from
where Howard Avenue intersects with Pilberton Street,
I met Richo on the road,
washing his BMW and whistling. At first I felt
like I wanted to hide but he saw me and froze like he’d seen a vision of Jesus. Then his face cracked into a huge smile and he tripped
up the gutter coming over to shake my
hand.

‘Wayne, Wayne, Wayne. Very good to see you,’ he said,
almost shaking my wrist apart,
his other hand planted on my upper arm. He asked me how I was going and looked right at my stump still shoved in my pocket. I nodded but before I got to speak he was talking
at me again.

‘Damned horrible accident by all accounts. Not fit for an
old bloke like me let alone someone as young as you. Got
time for a cup of coffee
or lemonade? Good. Come
in.’

I looked up and down the street and followed him inside. I chose coffee and sat at the table in his kitchen while he made it. He spoke about my accident like he was excited about it in some morbid way.

‘Do you have much pain now?’

‘No. My stump gets uncomfortable when I sleep sometimes,’ I said looking
at the yellowing dressing Mum had
put on that morning.

‘Has it changed
the way you think about your future?’

‘Nah. Not really.’

The fact is I didn’t think about my future much anyway.
Not much further than my next smoke or my next meal. Or
my next root. Well, my
first root.

Richo gave me my cup.
Snow white and two dwarfs, he
said. He led me into another room adjoining the kitchen
that smelled of leather and had books instead of walls.
He motioned that I sit
down in one of the deep black chairs
and I did so as politely as I could with a hot coffee.
The chair farted and groaned. Richo sat down then shot up
again and grabbed a framed
photograph off the bookshelf behind him and handed it to me.

‘See if you can pick which one is my dad,’ he said.

I looked at the photo; yellowing
and old like the happy snaps of my grandmother. It was a footy team in long-sleeved black and white
tops and knee-length shorts. It looked like there were fifty blokes in the photo and I scanned it for any faces that resembled Richo. Nothing.
Maybe one bloke, third from the left in the second row.

‘No. Guess again.’

Dumb game. How was I supposed
to know? I looked at the photo again and saw his dad. The bloke squatting in the
front row. The bloke with the beard that made him
look like a bear. The bloke with the stump of his left arm
resting on the footy.

Richo laughed when I showed
him and nodded until I thought his head was going to flop off.

‘Played one hundred and eighty-seven games of senior football. Had his pilot’s licence
until he was seventy-four and died three years ago aged ninety-one. He lost his hand
in a flourmill when he was thirteen
and he always said to me that if anything
it made him more determined.

He was very keen on showing
people that his injury was
never much of a disability.’

He shot up from the couch again, this time back into
the kitchen.

He’d brought in a leather-bound photo album and showed me a few more pictures
of his old man.

‘He played footy because
his mum, my grandmother, said
he couldn’t do it.’

I finished my cup and told him I had to go. On the
front doorstep I asked him how
he was
going. He shrugged.

‘I’m okay. Still a bit up in the air. How are things with you
at school?’

He offered his assistance in any way. I told him that things were going fine, that the accident hadn’t been a big setback. I don’t know why I bullshit
like that.

I was awake before Mum on Monday. I told her I was going
to school.

‘I don’t know, Wayne. I
think it’s still a little early. You’re probably not ready for it yet.’

‘Yeah, I’ll be right. I can walk home if my stump gets
sore.’

I’d made up my mind.

It wasn’t until I
made it into the breezeway near the
lockers that I felt like I’d made a mistake.
At first I thought
it was going to be like
when I went to Game Zone—
everyone just going about his or her
business—but at school
everybody knew me. I almost
kept walking. Right across the faded
paint on the quadrangle. Right
down past the science
wing and the woodwork room and through the back gate.

‘What the hell are you doing here? You could have had the
rest of the year
off at least. Dickhead,’ Den said. He’d
crept up behind me at my locker. He was smiling and he offered
me his hand. I think it
was the first time in our
lives that we’d shaken hands.
Carlson and Shane Lee were standing behind him looking up and down the breezeway like they were in trouble. Kerry came out of nowhere and wrapped herself around me, jumping and giggling. I felt
like a hero and it only got better.

In the common room at recess
I was swamped by people, asking stupid stuff like ‘What happened to your
hand?’ for the thirtieth time and ‘Did it hurt?’ I made up a few great stories and Den played
along with them all.
Some year eight girls at the canteen
left with the sure
knowledge that my hand had been bitten off by a crocodile
while I was saving
a Japanese tourist. Yeah, we were holidaying in Cape York. Den lost the plot at that one and
covered his laughter with a fake cough.

I had a smoke
with Den at lunchtime. We’d just lit up when
he saw Griz coming
and stubbed his smoke out before running into the quadrangle. Griz came straight up to me—like he was going to
have a go at me—and said he
was sorry to hear about my accident.

‘Hope it . . . you know . . . gets better and all that. Well ... you know... not get better, just doesn’t hurt and all
that,’ he mumbled at his boot. Then he walked off.

My mouth was hanging
open when Den returned.
He grunted and called
Griz a wanker.

At the end of lunchtime, Fay the
office lady announced that Piggo Johnson
wanted me in his office. Den sucked air
through his teeth and shook his head.

Mr Johnson was on the phone
when I got there and there
was an electrician in his office playing
with some wires beside
his desk. Half the electrician’s bum was hanging out of his work shorts and
his bum crack looked like a coin slot. Piggo
was talking quietly on the phone but
he invited me in with a wave of his hand. I looked out of his office
window back to the administration desk. A
queue of kids was waiting at the counter for Fay. She was talking on the phone, her head bowed and her bright
red hair hanging across her
face. She hung up and Mr Johnson’s phone clattered back into its cradle.

‘Wayne. Nice to see you up and around again.
Sorry to hear about your accident. Everything okay?’

I nodded and looked at my stump.

‘I’ve asked you in to check up on what we can do from
here. You’ve missed quite a bit of work and you’ll
have a bit of catching
up to
do if you want to keep on into next year.’

We’d had maths
in between recess
and lunch and I had had
to ask Mr Dobson to help me half a dozen times
and I still ended up with brain pain.

‘I’ll be having a word with your
teachers tomorrow morning and we’ll see if we can work out some sort of
program to help you
through—a sort of condensed
version of the term’s work.’

This losing a hand isn’t altogether
a bad thing.

Mandy was in the
library when I got there and my gut flip-flopped. Maybe she wouldn’t notice
me. Maybe she hadn’t noticed I’d missed school.

‘Wayne!’ she shouted,
way too loud for the library. Mrs Kneebone told her to get on
with her work. She was waving and patting the table in the stall next to her. Mrs
Kneebone was sitting with Gary Reardon, engaged
in some important discussion so I sat next to Mandy. All
vanilla and smiles and flowing
hair, she whispered that it
was nice to see me and asked me how I was going. She asked about my mum, staring me in the eyes. She’s never met my mum. She lifted her arm to push her hair back
and I saw her armpit—smooth and clean like the rest of
her skin. And the curve of her bra-covered breast down the sleeve of her T-shirt. She told
me that Kylie Simpson had had a girl on the 23rd
of September, the
day after her birthday, and that she’d got a job working in Coles after school and on the weekends. I apologised for forgetting her birthday
and she laughed.
Cheryl and Emma came over
to Mandy’s stall and started chatting.
Took it in turns to
ask me how I was going and if I was feeling all right.

‘Good on you for coming back to school,
Wayne. When Mandy told us what happened
we thought you would have to
go to, like, a special
school or something,’ Cheryl said.

‘Yeah. We thought you wouldn’t be able to do school stuff like normal . . . well, you know, like people that . . .’ Emma
said.

Mrs Kneebone interrupted us and told me to find a seat
with my own form group. I found
one—a seat where I
could watch the back of Mandy’s head.

The miracles continued that day. Dad rolled
up in the ute at about four o’clock. Back from Bermagui already?
That didn’t last long. He didn’t say anything and I wasn’t going to ask him about
it. He had my bike in the back. He’d taken it up to Pat’s shed and modified it. He’d taken the
brake lever off the left side of the handlebar
and put it on
the right. He’d also mounted
a road-racing armrest
on the handle where he’d removed the brake.
It was a padded rest and I could comfortably sit my stump on top of it and
steady the handlebar. Probably
wouldn’t be able to do a mono or bunny-hops up the gutter but I would be able to ride.
Without thinking, I hugged him. He
hugged me back—well, punched me in the spine like he was trying to burp
me. He watched me ride until Mum came home.

Didn’t
take long for the fact that I was different to wear
off. All the extra attention eventually faded and my mates got
cheeky. Carlson now called
me the ‘one-armed bandit’
after it came out that I’d nicked Henderson’s porno videos. I must have watched them a hundred
times and they got boring so I had stuffed them back in his locker. Hendo
laughed and said that he knew I’d nicked them. He
fessed up to being the one that had lit the pile of shit and
paper on the front porch
as revenge. I told him he
was a
sick bastard.

‘You haven’t seen anything yet. Me and Mandy are
putting out a video next week,’ he said and rolled his eyes.

‘Makes these pornos look like Play School.’ Now that is sick.

Griz started calling
me ‘Captain’ because he reckoned

I should have a hook like the dude in Peter Pan.

And he made me one. It was December. Maybe he was infected with the Christmas
spirit? I dunno.

I was late. He stopped me in the breezeway and handed
me a
brown paper bag. I half expected it to have a dog’s
turd inside it or something dead. I certainly wasn’t about to open it without
some sort of facemask.

‘Go on, you wimp. Open it. It won’t bite
you, I promise. You know. Cross my heart and all that.’

There was something black inside. Black fabric. Black fur. Something.

‘Here. Give it to me,’ he said and snatched the bag. He
pulled out a cylinder of heavy fabric and ripped it apart. It was joined with Velcro and he asked me to hold out my stump. He slipped
it over the sock I’d taken to wearing over my bandages.
It fitted
neatly and felt
comfortable—the inside was lined with black lamb’s wool. He reached
back into the bag and pulled out a hook that screwed into the end.
It was a classic. Ten centimetres of shiny curved steel.

He stood back and looked at my face. ‘What? Don’t you like
it?’

‘No. Yes! It’s fantastic.’

‘Yeah, well . . . you know, I thought it would be useful as well,
you know. For picking
stuff up and all that.’

He kept shrugging his shoulders and I couldn’t
stop smiling. He said he had to go and I put my hand out so he might shake it. He didn’t see it as he loped off to class.

‘Arghhh!’ I shouted and waved my hook at him.

‘Dickhead,’ he grumbled.

There were some savage rainy days before
my birthday, and some hot ones. The bloke on the radio said it was
already the wettest December in Melbourne’s history. I
believed it. Mum paid for Den,
Hendo, Shane Lee, Carlson and I to go to the pictures
for my birthday. We saw
Terra Firma
VIII—awesome! Real footage
of the most brutal sports stuff. Blokes totalling motorbikes and doing
mad-arse things on skateboards. Every time one of the
blokes did an awesome stunt
and pulled it off, Hendo would say: ‘I reckon I could do that.’ Bullshit artist. He’s flat out pulling
a mono.

Mandy got a boyfriend. We were sitting in front of the
theatre and they came out with flushed
cheeks. I wanted to ride straight home. Big ugly sucker
from Chisholm Catholic. Bible-reading boy with bum-fuzz.
Ponytail, earring and lots of little pimples.

Hendo knew him and
hated his guts.
‘Yeah, Phillip Baxter. Arsehole. Keep your hands off her you big prick,’
he said to himself.

Looked like Phillip
was a mate of Cheryl Bickerton’s
boyfriend, Steve with the
eyebrow rings. Ahh, good luck to him. It’s not as if I’ve kissed
Mandy or anything.
Hendo tried to jump his imaginary motorbike
over our seat and
ended up on his guts in front of the two-dollar
shop. That bloke is out of control.

Dad modified the lawnmower so I could keep the jungle
at the back of the flat under control.
For my birthday he bought me a fishing
rod and reel—expensive Shimano job—and covered
the bottom of the handle
with Velcro. He stuck a patch of Velcro on the hook Griz had made me and
it worked! I practised casting
and reeling in on the road
in front of the flat. Haven’t worked out how to bait a hook
yet, or tie a sinker on. I guess I’ll just have to go fishing with someone who can do all that stuff. I’ll reel in the whales. The Humes were going to Mars Cove again
after Christmas and I was dropping hints
like crazy that I’d
like to tag along.

I worked hard on my school stuff. It was as boring as lunch
in an old people’s home but I kept at it. Johnson
had organised with my teachers
that they give me the bare
minimum needed to catch up and that was fine, except for
English: Mrs Leavey lumped
me with
two one-
thousand-word essays. I hadn’t written
one thousand words back-to-back ever in my life. Looked like I was going to
bomb it but I wasn’t phased.

But Mrs Leavey turned
into a monster in the last two weeks of term. She dogged me constantly about my essays, to the point where I almost told her to get stuffed.
It was like she could read my mind.

‘Wayne. You may have lost your hand. There’s nothing I can do about that. You may have had a long period of time off school. There’s nothing I can do
about that either. I’m
your English teacher.’ She spoke flatly and
moved closer to me, staring
into my eyes. Her breath was
stale and smelled like spew. Her eyes were milky brown where they should have been white.

‘It doesn’t matter how
much work you do in the other classes . . . if you fail English
you fail year ten. If you don’t
complete those essays you will fail.’

I got a ‘B’ for one and a ‘C’ for the other. I passed year
ten. Whoopee-do.

The last few days of
term are like a blur now. I can
remember the things that happened
but I wasn’t really there. The Humes invited
me with them to Mars Cove
(surprise, surprise) and I
agreed—barring accidents—to
go. For one reason or another I forgot to mention it to
Mum, until three days before Christmas. The Humes were supposed to leave on Boxing Day.

‘What do you mean,
Boxing Day?’ Her lips were pulled
tight. ‘We are all going up to
Shepparton, until the New Year.’

I can remember her mentioning
it but it must have slipped my mind. I told her it would be okay, I’d just go
around to the Humes’ place early and stay over and
she could go up by herself.
That wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

‘What about Christmas?’

The thought
of sitting with all the old farts and my cousins (Jenelle is the oldest
and the smartest) didn’t turn me
on at all. Christmas had lost its appeal for me years ago.

‘We can have Christmas here before you go,’ I said, and she
slapped the arm of her chair and sent her ashtray flying.

‘You’re so bloody self-centered, Wayne. You’re like your
bloody father—you don’t
give a shit unless it concerns you.’

She went on and on. Gave me a big lecture about how I don’t pull my weight around the flat and don’t respect her or all the effort she puts in.

My eyes just glazed
over and from the corner of my eye
I could see what looked
like a thundercloud hanging over her
and coloured bolts of
lightning, red and orange, shooting into the lounge room from the top of her head.
If I
looked right at her, I could see little bits of spit flying out of her mouth but if I looked beside her
I could see the heavy cloud and the lightning
hovering over her. Bizarre.

‘No. You can’t bloody go. You’re coming with me,’ she
said, and started coughing.

I stomped off to my room and slammed
the door. We gave
each other the silent treatment
until Christmas Eve.

I came home from Game Zone at
about two o’clock to find
Dad’s ute in the driveway.

‘Wayne!’ Dad shouted as I pushed
through the door.
They were in the kitchen with two empty bottles
of champagne, grinning at each other like little kids.

‘Merry Christmas, mate.
Like a glass? Here have a glass of champagne.
You’ll need it,’
Dad
said stuffing a bubbling flute into my hand.

I sipped at the glass and nearly
spat the stuff back. It was sucking my mouth inside out. Carbonated camel’s
piss. Maybe I could mix some Milo
with it to take the edge
off . . .

‘Sit here,’ he said, and pulled out a stool at the breakfast
bar. ‘I have insurance, right? You know what insurance
is?’

I nodded.

‘Yes? Good. I have health insurance,’ he said again and
looked at his hands on the bench.
Mum had a drag on her
cigarette and nodded, waiting for him to continue. He sat
like that forever and Mum started laughing.

‘Shut up, Sylvie. Where was I? I have health insurance. My insurance company paid all the hospital
bills after the accident and because I employed you, Workcover are making a payout to you. One hundred and four
thousand dollars. It’s in a
trust and we can only access it to
buy
prosthetics and that sort of thing until you’re
eighteen. But it’s yours,
mate. Just like a
flash-and-where’s-your-grandmother.
One hundred and four thousand dollars,’ he said and slapped me on the shoulder.

I drank my glass of camel’s piss like it was Coke and
motioned for Dad to fill it up again. ‘Tell me you’re bullshitting me . . .’

They both shook their
heads. So this is what it’s like to win
Sale of the Century.
What a buzz. Suck on that Phillip
Baxter!

‘Yes!’ I shouted and nearly rocked off the stool.

‘Yeah, hang on a minute mate. It’s in trust for you, right, until you’re eighteen. That means you can’t use it until you’re old enough unless
it’s to pay for a prosthetic.’

‘What’s a prosth . . .’ The camel’s piss was working
already.

‘Prosthetic.
Fake hand,’ Mum chimed.

Nah. Don’t need a fake hand. I’ve got a hook. I’ll just
save it all up and when I’m eighteen I’ll buy a shit-hot car like
a Porsche or maybe even a Subaru. My
mind went wobbly with the possibilities, so much so that I didn’t notice
Mum hugging me and kissing
me on the head.

‘I’m sorry about the other day, love. Caught me on a bad trot.
I’ve made arrangements for you to catch the train back to Melbourne on Christmas afternoon.
Of course you can go with the Humes.’

‘I know you only love me for my money.’

She slapped me as I got up—had to tell Den.

I got back to the flat at about five,
starving hungry and still
buzzing. Mum was coming
into the lounge
from the hallway, smoothing her clothes down.
She was surprised to see me and unsteady
on her feet.

‘Oh, hello love,’ she said fluffing
up her hair like she’d just been to the toilet. Her
face was flushed and she
fumbled with, but eventually lit, a fag. I told her I was hungry and the toilet flushed.
Dad came out, fluffing his own hair and Mum said the magic word: ‘Pizza.’

I reckon I’ll remember that afternoon for eternity.

Christmas Day was a stinker. It was
thirty degrees by eleven
o’clock and Mum’s little Hyundai was as hot as a chip vat by
the time we’d made it to Shepparton, even with the air-conditioning
on flat out. Hugs and sickly smiles all around. Only Uncle Don was any fun.

‘Hey Dickhead,’ he said to me and pulled my arm so I had
to bend down to where he was sitting.
He looks much more like an Aborigine than Mum does. His skin is darker and he has brown eyes instead of Mum’s blue—just like his
dad. He stunk like that greasy shit he uses to cake his
hair flat and hissed beer-breath at me.

‘Silly bugger. What did you go and do that for?’ He grabbed my stump for a closer inspection. ‘Cut off a perfectly good hand! Silly bugger.’

I laughed and he flashed his gums at me. He gave up wearing his false teeth ages ago but he always carries
them in his shirt pocket. It was a sit-around sort of day and
I was allowed to have
a couple of beers. I sat in the shade
of the lemon tree with Don while the barbie sizzled
and popped.

‘When Sylvia
was young . . . bit younger than you . . . maybe
seven or eight . . . the three of us, me and Sylvia and Ted, all slept in the same bed. Anyway, one night,
Sylvie climbs over the top of me in a real hurry, right? I think she needs the dunny
real bad, right? Next thing I
hear this tinkle, tinkle like she’s having a piss, right? And
I think oh, she made it to the dunny, right?
Then the light flicks on and I hear my old dad shouting, “Sylvia, what the bloody hell are you doing?” And Sylvie says “Just going to
the toilet, Dad.” Still asleep,
right? And she pissed all over
the chair in Mum and Dad’s room. Gawd it was a funny one,
that one.’

Uncle Ted and Auntie Penny gave me
a book. The cover looked stupid
but I flicked inside and there were heaps of swearwords. Maybe
it’ll be more interesting than I first thought. Don gave me a card with twenty dollars in it. The card
was one that he’d made himself. When he was working he was an architect and he still loved to draw and paint. The picture was a blackfella sitting by a smoky fire
at the foot of a huge waterfall. The image was misty, like a dream, and I stared at it for quite a while before opening it
and reading:

Dear Wayne,

You can do whatever you want to. Best
wishes,

Uncle Don

It was the nicest card. I thought it had the proudest message of all until I thanked Uncle Don for it.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s all right little
bloke. Made the card myself, eh? Not bad. Like I said in the card mate, you can
do whatever you want with the twenty
dollars.’

He pulled me close and whispered, ‘Come down to the brothel with me on Monday and that twenty dollars will buy
you a head-job. He, ha, ha, ha.’

Baz, Kerry and Den came to the station
to pick me up in Gracie’s
little Honda. It was almost dark and Kerry
couldn’t believe that I had everything I needed in one
pack, even my sleeping bag. I realised
why she thought
it was a miracle
when we got back to their place and I saw
their blue station wagon.
It was loaded like a pregnant
hippo. The roof rack had duffel bags laced onto it with octopus straps
and
the boat—cleaned and newly painted—was piled full as well.

‘Are you sure you’ve
got everything?’ Gracie asked and
shook me by the shoulders.
I nodded.

We spent that night playing
‘silly Scrabble’ where you
make up words on a Scrabble board using as many letters as you can. The rules were a bit tricky
for me to begin with. It’s not allowed to be a real
word. The word has got to
follow the rules of English,
like a ‘u’ after a ‘q’, no triple
letters and that sort of stuff. The hardest bit for me was
that you have to explain
what the word means, convincingly, to the other players.
They didn’t keep score but I
reckon I would have won the third game
with words like ‘barstola—an umbrella that covers
a seat in a Spanish
bar’ and ‘dircult—a small
Iranian sword worn behind the ear’.
Once I got the hang of it, it was sensational.

Den and I went to bed early that night but we didn’t get to sleep until
after midnight. We kept ourselves
awake talking about the girls at school.
Giving them a mark out of ten at first until
that
deteriorated into discussing what we
liked about them. I think Den must have got a bit hot because he started talking about the girls’ boobs, bums and hair. He doesn’t usually talk about stuff like that. I liked it.

We crammed in the car after a tomato and eggs breakfast that filled me to bursting, dropped
Jesus off at the cattery
and then we were on our way. Kez stared out the window.
Heavy blue— grey clouds chased
us along the highway
into the sun. They eventually
overtook us, putting on a show of lightning, rain and thunder
that
had Baz hunched over the wheel.
I watched the countryside
change and I realised how long it had been since I’d been
into the mountains. I’d forgotten how green the hills were and
how soft they were on my eyes. Every so often we’d
move through a stretch of road where I could scan the
horizon and see no living being except a few birds,
a cow and maybe a sheep.

‘Did you see that?’ Den asked.

I craned my head to look out the back window.

‘That sheep back there ... it had exploded.’

Yeah. A few ribs and vertebrae scattered in the centre of a circle of wool. Kaboom.

We had
lunch in Bairnsdale. The storm had
overtaken us and left a bright,
steamy day in its wake.
The air, heavy and smelling like metal, made me hungry. Baz explained that the
name of the town came from two old English
words

‘bairns’ meaning kids and ‘dale’ meaning valley. Kids valley. He was a good tour guide and he knew where the bakery
was. Gracie bought vegetarian pasties
for everyone except me—she asked
me what I wanted and in a fit of madness I ordered a kangaroo-meat pie. Kerry nearly
chucked and Den started talking
like he was Aboriginal.

‘Good tucker, that one. Old Skippy. Good tucker after
you burn all the hairs off in the fire,’ he said.

It was good.

We sat on the side of the highway near the shadow
of an enormous church.
Spooky-looking joint of smooth
red brick. We had a look inside and a funny little man told me
off for bringing in my can of Coke.
There was a whole wall you
couldn’t see from the
highway panelled in stained
glass like a smashed-up rainbow. It was pretty
but I kept thinking about all the dead people
that had probably been carted
up and down the aisles
and I got a bit freaked.
Den loved it.

Ten minutes back into the drive, Kerry and Den started fighting over a water bottle. I was in between them. Gracie
pleaded with them to sort it out and they both huffed and
crossed their arms like two-year-olds.

‘When will we get there?’
Den moaned.

‘Yeah, I’m hungry.’

‘I’ve got to go to the toilet.’

Kerry said, ‘I think I’ve just pooped my pants . . .’ A few seconds
later I remembered it.

‘Can we go back?’ I asked.

‘What for?’

‘I forgot my fishing rod . . .’

They groaned and Barry pulled over like he was going to
turn around.

‘Nah, nah. It’s all right.
I’ll get a live goat and we can
hang it on your hook, Wayne, and you can dangle your
arm out of the side of the boat,’ Den scoffed.

‘You’re sick,’ Kerry said.

Soon the farmland disappeared and we were travelling through heavy forests of huge
furry-barked trees. We saw
wildlife everywhere: three dead wombats, one of them on
its back in the gutter with his chunky little
legs pointing to the sky like an upturned
coffee table; a dead wallaby
lying in a pool of blackened
blood; and the carcass of a big old
kangaroo that filled the car with the heavy smell
of rotting flesh as we zoomed past. I thought I was going to bring up
my pie. We left the highway
for a rough dirt track, pot-holed
and dusty, with green wooden signs that told us we were only a kilometre from Mars Cove National
Park. I wanted to get out and run. I
started jiggling. We were
fighting in the back seat and I elbowed Kerry in the boob. I
felt my face get hot and I apologised quietly.

‘Muuuum. Wayne just elbowed me in the breast and it
really hurt,’ she moaned with a smile
on her face.

I apologised a bit louder.

‘Now kiss it better, Wayne,’ Den ordered. ‘Come on.’

Kerry pulled
her knees up to her chest and buried
her head. ‘Get stuffed,’
she said and I laughed
it off.

Around the next corner
we burst into another world. The wall of trees on the right side
of the car abruptly fell away
to reveal a steep slope of blue–green bushes studded with
massive granite boulders that had
been blasted smooth by winds
straight off the sea. The winds had groomed the bushes
neatly till they blended
with one another like Uncle Don’s greasy slicked-back hair. And the ocean. Brittle, dark and inviting,
it stretched to eternity where it had been sliced cleanly
with a good sharp knife so
it would fit neatly with the
cloudless sky. My brain
ached, from the vastness, beauty
and the brightness of it. All
I wanted to do was dive into it and swim out so far that I couldn’t touch the bottom.

Ten minutes later that’s what we did. Gracie
and Baz insisted we go and swim while they set up camp in an alcove
with a sign out the front that read ‘167b’.
A short stone’s throw from the toilet and shower block and a five-minute sprint along a sandy track to the edge of the water.
Brilliant.

God and his team of beach
designers went all out with Mars Cove. The perfect quarter-moon of pale sand was
hemmed on both ends by tumbled
granite walls that stretched out until they faded into the ocean. Surfers bobbed on the crestless waves and the sand
was home to a
fair throng of people. Little ones painted in zinc with buckets and hats made out of material that reminded
me
of my mum’s dressing gown. Big people with sunglasses
and beach umbrellas. Bulging
muscles and beer bellies here and boobs barely
contained by bikinis there. And there. And there.

I wear footy shorts
when I’m swimming—my brown Hawks ones I’ve been wearing since I was thirteen—and
jocks underneath because
they have a tendency to fall off when
I dive in. My body goes really
brown in the summer, I reckon it’s my Aboriginal blood, but I felt as white as a
snowflake when I stripped off. Maybe it was that feeling
I’ve always had when I get undressed in full sight of people. Yeah, that was the feeling,
only much stronger.
One whole stumpy arm stronger. No matter how hot or cold
I have my shower, my stump
complains for a few seconds, throbbing and tingling
like pins and needles. I’ve got to
say that I was feeling a bit nervous about plunging into the sea. Den is a sight at the beach—bony
white body and black Speedos.
I felt like a blackfella when we dived into the wet sea together. My stump was fine; I was worrying about nothing,
though I did tend to veer to the left like a wonky shopping trolley
when I swam. Then I was a dolphin: arms by my side, kicking both legs together, going way out, opening
my fuzzy underwater
eyes and peering at the headless bodies
floating around me. Still holding my breath, I saw past the bodies
to where the water looks like the edge of a thick pane of glass with the
gently sloping, rippled sand bordering the bottom
and the sky at the top. I could hear the muffled
whoosh of the waves as they broke near the shore.
Looking into the edge
of that glass made me feel small. I know what lives out
there. I frantically kicked and flapped my arms—not quite swimming
but it won me a green ribbon
in the grade three dog paddle relay
at Fairleigh Primary—until I touched
the bottom. Then I was cool again, walking from the
fizzing surf like an iron man. When I was
waist deep, Kerry grabbed
me roughly around the neck and dragged me down. I fought
to stay upright until I had snatched
a breath then I buckled until my
face was touching the loose, wet sand. In a few seconds, she let go of my neck
and I struggled up for air. Works
every time.

We did the lizard thing in the sun for a while. Kez had brought down a bag of chips and when she opened them
a squadron of seagulls dropped
out of the sky and began cawing and strutting
at each other hoping to be in front if any
food escaped.

‘Oooh. It’s a Wayne bird,’
she said pointing to a limping seagull that burst into flight at the
movement. It only had one foot. The other leg ended in a lump at the
ankle.

‘I know how you feel
brother . . . I mean sister . . .
whatever. I know how you feel,’ I said and waved
at the bird.

Looking at campsite
167b, you could tell that the Humes had
done this sort of thing before. Their big brown and
gold family tent looked like it was brand new but I knew
better. Den and I had camped in
it a few times in their
backyard. Once, Jesus
came in and peed in the corner and it stunk like the mower shed at the back of our flat. The Humes
kept their tent clean. A neat-looking square of flowery red carpet became the floor for an outside
eating and cooking area, with a large square of canvas
for the roof held in place by a cobweb of poles
and guy ropes. The place could have been up
for months but I’d seen the
grass underneath it only a few hours
before.

Gracie and Baz made a wicked
meal for us all. Pinching each other’s bums and pressing
their bodies together
in between cutting onions and capsicum.
The pasta was divine, even though the meat wasn’t really
meat (I didn’t find out until
after I’d finished). Better than a kangaroo pie.

After tea Baz and Gracie sat and read under a gas lamp that
they probably didn’t need. I guess that quiet hiss and whistle was all part of the camping adventure. We had to
do the dishes—Kerry washing, Den and I drying
and flicking each other with the tea towels.
Then Kez scrambled
off up a track that led to the top of an enormous
dune. The sand sucked at my feet.

‘Come on. Sunclipse! Sunclipse!’ Kerry shouted
back to Den and I. Her mousy brown locks were shining gold in
the last light of the sun.

‘What’s a sunclipse?’

‘Oh, tell you when we get to the top,’ Den puffed as he
stopped to light a PJ 12, checking
over his shoulder. He offered
me a drag. It didn’t make the hill climb any easier.

We flopped into the sand at the crest as the sun’s huge perfect circle
was broken by the distant
ocean horizon. The water was ablaze with reflected
light. I couldn’t look at
it for long but when I lay on my back and closed my eyes
the burning sun was right there behind my eyelids in all its
flaming glory.

‘Sweet sunclipse,’ Kerry whispered. I looked at Den.

‘Well, Dad says that the sun doesn’t rise
and set. It’s the earth that moves, rotating
and orbiting. It eclipses the sun
as it spins off in the afternoon and in the morning it’s not a sunrise, it’s sunsight.’

‘Sunsight and sunclipse,’ I said. I guess it made sense, though I doubt if I’d ever use the terms again. The sun has
been rising and setting for a heck of a long time.

I pressed my stump
into the cool sand beside me, kind of
an eerie feeling
but not unpleasant. I lay there for a full five
minutes watching the feathery clouds whisper
along.

‘Gone,’ Kerry sighed and got up. She started running down the track and I sat up to watch her go. Before she
vanished around a clump of tea trees she was loping gracefully as though she was in slow motion.

‘Hey—campfire,’ Den said. I sat up reluctantly and in
the afterglow of the sun saw a thin
line of smoke rising from a dune. ‘Let’s check it out.’

He started walking down the sandy slope towards where
the sun had set. I stood up and stumbled
along behind him until my feet and legs woke up.

The dune got us to where we could hear voices
and music wafting over the shrubs.
I could smell the sweet smoke of a driftwood
fire but a solid wall of tangled
tea trees stood between
the campfire and us. Dennis
found some sort of animal’s
tunnel through the bushes and waved me over. We could
crawl through it but it was a tight
squeeze. Den bobbed his head and
scuffled down the tunnel like a wombat
on a mission. I followed, spiking my stump painfully
on the first step. I tucked
it up against my belly and hurried after Den like a three-legged poodle. God, he could move. I was stuffed by the time I caught
up with him where
the tea trees stopped and another dune began. He hushed me with a finger as I got close to him
and pointed into the sandy valley below. Four people
stood around a bright fire. Two were wearing Wind-cheaters, another was wearing a brightly coloured
parka and the fourth
looked ridiculously overdressed in a grey knee-length trench coat. I was hot in my shorts and T-shirt,
but then I’d just crawled
the length of a swimming pool under bushes so I guess that’s
acceptable. At the camping area there were big ‘No Fires’ signs. Maybe they couldn’t read English.

‘It’s bloody Hendo,’ Den said and shot to his feet. I almost
had kittens. One minute we’re commandos
in the bushes, the next
he is walking down the dune,
cool as you like. The music stopped.

‘Hendo!’

I couldn’t recognise him but the bloke in the trench coat looked up. I sheepishly followed
Den out of the scrub and arrived in time for the
introductions. I thought Hendo must
have already been stoned because
he introduced us all like we were
at mothers’ club or something. Steve was there—the one with the eyebrow rings—and his mate Phil who I’d
met before but I didn’t
know where. The bloke in the parka was Davo, a Mars Cove local who used
to live in Fairleigh. He couldn’t get the stereo
to work properly. It would play a savage blast of sound and as soon as
he took his hand off it, it would stop. He was mumbling, swearing and cursing, his shoulder-length snow-white hair made his face look like a beetroot, but he
persevered.

Steve recognised
me from the party at
Rebecca Hanson’s place and he started
chatting with me and head-butting the air. I asked him how things were with Cheryl.

‘Yeah. Good, man. Good. She’s sort of why we’re
here. You know Mandy, Cheryl’s mate, hey? Yeah, well they came down with Mandy’s mum and stepdad, hey. And we’re just waiting for them. Going to have a bit of a rage here, right.
You’re welcome to hang around, man, if you want. Got plenty of beer and weed and stuff.’

Mandy’s here? My gut flip-flopped then I realised
where I’d seen Phil. I didn’t
recognise him out of school uniform.
It’s amazing how clothes can make someone look completely different. Last time I saw him he was hanging all over Mandy at the Plaza.
He seemed like a
nice enough bloke, even with his head stuck in the blue and
white Esky. He stood up and offered me a beer.
He must have been six and a half feet tall. I took the beer and thanked him. He smelled like Lynx ‘Aztec’—a man after
my own cool style.

‘You’re Wayne, yeah?’
he said, pointing at my stump.

‘Yeah, Mandy told me about you. Pretty horrible
accident. What happened?’

‘Oh, I cut myself
while I was shaving,’ I said. He thought
about it for a minute then rolled his head back and let out a
silly high-pitched laugh that made me step back.

Phil insisted I tell him the real
story. His bloodshot eyes would
wander from me to the fire to the beach then back to me and he’d say, ‘Oh, sorry. What was that?
I missed that bit.’ I gave up after the fifth try and finished
my beer.

Hendo and Den were huddled inside the open front of Hendo’s trench
coat trying to light the same skull bong we’d shared at Rebecca’s party. The wind had picked up, but it was warm and sweet with smoke and sea. I called
Hendo a thief—I was sure the bong belonged to
Carlson—he shushed me through
his
finger and chuckled. More contraband.

The girls arrived just after dark. Cheryl, Emma Barclay and Mandy all wearing tight, tight jeans and sloppy
Wind-cheaters. Emma had her hood pulled over her head and
it took me a minute to recognise her. None of them recognised me. Or Den. We were all quite hammered
by then. I heard Phil say my name—it cut through the music and the
noise of the ocean like he’d spoken
in my ear. Next thing I know I’m flat on my back in the sand.
Mandy, vanilla-perfume and Bacardi
Mandy, had bowled me over
in her excitement.

‘What are you doing here, Wayne?’

‘What the hell are you doing here? And get off me you great
lump,’ I said. The last bit was for Phil’s benefit,

I wasn’t in any hurry for her to get off me. Warm and soft and
smelling so good. She sat up and told me how they all
got down there and that they’ve been going there for
years. Then it was all over. She staggered past the fire to
Phil, who’d made a seat for himself in the sand, and flopped on his lap. I sat up and smoked some more with Hendo
and Den. Emma dug herself
a seat.

‘Nice couple,’
I said to her, pointing
with my head to Mandy and Phil
cuddling by the fire. She screwed up her
face and sucked air through
her teeth.

‘Don’t know for how much longer though . . .’ I raised my eyebrows.

‘Yeah, Steve told me
that Phil’s got a girlfriend
in Sydney and she’s coming to Melbourne
to live in the New Year. Two-timing
bastard.’

Some time later, after the fire had died down and Davo had
stoked it up again, there was a rat’s nest of activity
over the way. Swearing, shouting and finally . . .

‘Stupid bitch,’ Phil shouted
and stood up with his arms
wide, shaking his head. Mandy had emptied
the contents of a VB can on his head. How tragic. How disastrous. The stereo died. How convenient.

Phil stormed off towards
the beach and Mandy flopped into the sand and covered her face. Cheryl came out of the darkness
fixing her clothes and sat beside Mandy with
her arm on her back.

I think Davo was
getting into the swing of it. He
grabbed the stereo and pulled
the cassette out, leaving
two neat threads of shiny brown tape clamped somewhere in the guts of the machine.

‘Stupid bitch,’ he shouted
at the machine. Holding it
by the handle he began to
spin. Faster and faster, then—hammer throw! He sent the stereo crashing
off over the other side of the dune. Party over.

Mandy got up and started walking
to the beach; well,
staggering at first, and then walking.
I followed her.

‘Leave her alone, Wayne,’ Emma said.

‘I’ll just keep an eye on her.’

She walked to the beach
and kept going right
to the edge of the water. Looked
like she was going to keep on going
but she flopped on the wet sand and hung her head between her knees. In the weak light she could have been a
big lump of seaweed. I sat on the sand and played with
half a pipi shell until it got warm in my hand and I felt like
throwing it at her. My eyes had adjusted
to the dark and the smashing waves looked ghostlike as I got
up the courage to move beside her. She obviously hadn’t heard me
coming and she jumped, hanging
her head again when she realised it was me.

A gap between
waves left an enormous silence
that

Mandy filled with a half-sob. ‘Hey Wayne.’

‘Hey, you. You okay?’

‘Yeah, bloody terrific,’ she said, and looked away from me
up the beach.

I rested my stump on her shoulder and she snuggled closer to me.

‘What happened?’
She shrugged.

‘His old girlfriend, Angelique, is coming down from Sydney next week. He just wants to be friends
. . .’

‘That’s a bit rough.’

She reached out to thank me and grappled
awkwardly with my stump.
I felt her shiver. She jerked away and groaned like she’d smelled
vomit. Before the shock of her pulling away had fully registered she was on her feet and
pelting me with handfuls of sand.

‘Get off me you fucking
cripple. Fucking freak.’

I covered my head, covered my ears against
the hard balls of wet sand and the words like broken glass. I could feel heavy footfalls vibrating the sand under my bum. Dragged to my feet—half by my hair, half by my T-shirt— a fist thumped into my
guts. Before I’d buckled I took another blow to the shoulder that spun me. I fell forward, arms covering my face.
My arms took the blow from a boot
that hit hard enough to move me
across the sand. Pinpricks of white in front
of my eyes and the taste of blood.
I could hear Mandy screaming and the scuffle
and splash of more fighting in the shallow
water then the pain
hit like one of the waves, drowning
me.

The wave passed and I felt someone
gently pulling at my arm, locked tight around my head.

‘Wayne. Come on. You okay? He’s gone.’
Groan.

‘Come on, mate. Can you walk? Here, let me help you.’
Den dragged me along the beach. I felt like I’d been in
one of those playground spew-machines that had been spun so fast I’d been thrown
out. Even in the darkness
I could tell the colour of the sticky
witness on my face and mouth. Red.

I was crying. Blubbering like a five-year-old. My mate
dragged me and carried me into the closest toilets at the camping ground. In the fluorescent light
I could see blood stuck in the moons of his fingernails. The whites of his eyes were red from the dope and the effort, and he
took a sharp breath when he looked at me.

‘Shit. Here, mate.
To the sink.’

Dark blood dropped on the stainless
steel and in the
scratchy mirror I could see someone
else. I looked like
one of those dudes on a drink-drive commercial: my face splattered with blood and sand, and a steady drip-drip-drip from my nose. Den told me to get my shirt off and I used it
as a cloth to mop up my face. A few stinging minutes passed as I dabbed at the blood and stopped
the flow from my nose. A bloke with a round red face walked in
and took a piss then walked straight
out again. Obviously he sees road-trauma victims in the toilets every day.
Den suggested that he go and get his mum and the first-aid kit from the back of the wagon.

‘No. Nah, don’t get your mum. Everything is okay.
Here, look. It’s all from my nose.’

Although it was a bit sore to touch it didn’t really
hurt. My arms and my guts felt bruised but the cold water and the
lights helped me come back to earth.
Den had one wet shoe and it made disgusting
squelchy fart sounds as he walked me back to the tent at 167b. The gas lamp was out and
so were the Humes. We crawled
into bed. Baz was snoring like an idling chainsaw. I whispered
to Den to keep quiet about the
little incident. He didn’t answer
for a minute then he whispered that he wouldn’t tell his folks. Thanks, mate.

In a few minutes
he was breathing loud and regular
but the blood was still pumping in my veins. Pure adrenaline,
making my temples thump and playing the film of what
happened over and over. I should
have kicked Phil in the balls. I missed the perfect opportunity to head-butt him in the face—that would have slowed the bastard
down. I shouldn’t have put my arm on Mandy’s shoulder. I can’t believe she said that
shit. Fucking cripple. The words tasted like blood. She was right.

At about three o’clock I felt like walking home. I couldn’t
see the door so I just stayed
in bed and squeezed my eyes
tight shut. Bit my lip. Felt like I wanted
to spew my guts out. Scream. Something.

‘Wayne. You okay?’ Kerry whispered.

I snuffled and rolled onto my side with a heavy sigh.

‘What is it?’

I clicked my tongue a couple of times and breathed
a bit louder.

‘Do you want to go for a walk?’

I just lay there.
Scuffle, scuffle. Then she’s pulling at my
sleeping bag.

‘Come on. I heard you crying,’ she whispered right
in my ear. ‘Let’s go walk down the beach.’

‘Okay.’

It was darker than death outside the lights of the camping
ground. Not a star, just heavy clouds to hold in the
heat of the day. A sweet, wet breeze rolled
in off the ocean and Kerry and I walked
without saying a word for a long time,
away from that dune and the blood in the sand. Kerry must have been able to see in the
dark. And read my
mind. I slowed down a
couple of times and started
freaking out—it was just so dark. So absolutely black
that I couldn’t see the difference if my eyes were opened
or closed. She took my hand and we walked like that till we
couldn’t walk any further; huge rough granite
rocks marked the end of
the beach. Kez clambered up on top of
one and I lay against
its scratchy side feeling the warmth of the day still radiating
from the rock. After a while, I could
see the difference between the sky and the water
from the corner of my eye. Later still, a star glinted through the clouds. And another.

‘Did you guys get lost? Mum was getting
a bit edgy when it got to eleven o’clock and you weren’t back. She was probably still awake. I was.’

‘Nah. Not really,’ I said, having to cough-start my voice
box.

‘What happened?’

I listened to the waves. I listened to them rolling
quietly in then slamming into the rocks and I told her what had
happened. Told her the whole bit—except what Mandy had called
me. At first, I gagged on
that and then it slipped out of the story altogether. Phil and Mandy had a
barney. I went down to the beach to comfort Mandy
and Phil beat the shit out of me. End of story.

‘You should have told the police. Why didn’t you tell
the police?’

‘Oh, no harm done really, just a bloody nose and that. Everything is okay.’

‘Bull. What happens next time you see him?’

‘Nothing. It’s all over. I just won’t go near Mandy.’

‘Yeah. Why would you want to go near her anyway?
Shallow bitch.’

‘She’s not that bad . . . just hangs out with losers.’

‘Do you like her, Wayne? You do! You think she’s hot, don’t you? Whoo.’

‘Shut your hole. What if I do? What’s she ever done to
you anyway?’

‘Ha! Do you want the whole list or the abbreviated one? Let me see ... At Beck’s party she made me a drink with someone’s piss in it. Thought it was such a joke.
At school, she’s constantly trashing Carly’s locker. She peeled the backs
off a whole pack of Carly’s panty-liners and stuck
them all over her books and door. She spits on that beautiful big labrador that hangs around at school.
Feral bitch.’

‘Yeah, Hendo does that too. Poor
old Spitball. Disgusting.’

‘Wayne. She’s no honey. Admittedly she looks like she
should be on the cover of Dolly magazine or something but she’s off.’

‘Yeah, okay. That’s just your story though.’

‘Oh I could go on . . .’

‘Nah. Not necessary,’ I said, and she laughed.

She couldn’t see my face and, in the darkness, my heart cracked open. I couldn’t
stop it. I got tight in the chest
and then the words just fell out. ‘She called
me a fucking cripple. And you know what? I think she’s right.’

I doubled over and held my head in my hand. I dry-retched and spat on the sand. It covered
most of my sobs,
but she slid down the rock and put her arm
over my back. I could hear myself wailing
but it didn’t sound like me.
Sounded more like that dog that
got hit by a car on Garrison Street. It lay on its side and kicked
and span in a
circle screaming and howling until a policeman shot it
with his pistol. Where’s a policeman when you need one?

I hugged Kerry so hard I heard her back crack, sobbed on her neck until I couldn’t stand up any more. With my
bum on the sand and my back against the hard rock,
I cried until there was nothing
left, just aching ribs and those
silly little sniffly sobs that you can’t control. Kerry
kneeled beside me stroking my brow and shushing me.

‘Wayne. You’re
not a cripple. I think you
can still get wherever you want to go. And if Mandy doesn’t like you— take it as a compliment. I know a dozen babes that would gladly give up their left hand to hang out with you. Me included. You’re beautiful, Wayne. Everything about you,
the way you walk, move.
Everything.’

I took her hand,
squeezed it and let it go. ‘A dozen
babes?’

‘Yeah, well maybe half a dozen.’

I laughed and a bubble of snot burst in my nose and sprayed the sand near my knee.

‘Would you believe
three? One for definite certain
and two “oh yeah”s.’

That sounded more likely. She helped me to my feet
and I wiped my face with my T-shirt, snotted my nose and wiped
again. We hugged, but this time I was there and aware
of everything. Warm and soft and perfect. I kissed
her forehead. She kissed my arm, and we started
the slow walk home as the horizon began to glow. It was going to
be another hot one. A flock of giant red and blue budgerigars—Kerry called them rosellas—were squawking and chattering above the tent at 167b. It felt like morning and we
should have been getting an early breakfast
as Kerry and I stepped
between the sleeping bodies and crawled into our own beds. Den looked as though he’d been shot
in his sleep with his arms and legs hanging out everywhere.

‘Quick, ring an ambulance!’ Kerry whispered as she punched her pillow into shape.

I burst
from sleep in the late morning,
puffing and shaking from violent
dreams that I couldn’t remember. I
peeled my sleeping bag off and darted
out the door. It wasn’t much cooler outside
but the air was moving;
and that was the only thing—the Humes had vanished. I
freaked. All of the heat and dark dreams and the Humes not
being there rolled
into one panic
that sent me darting
back inside the tent for some clothes. I dressed at a
million miles per hour and as I shot through the door of the tent
again I saw a note pinned to it—in such an obvious spot that you’d have to be an idiot to miss it. Or
freaked.

Good morning, Wayne. Or is it afternoon? Hope you
had a good snooze. Mum has made lunch for us
all and we’ve walked around
to Chestnut Bay. It’s not
far. Follow the signs from the main ramp on
Mars Cove to the end of the beach and up over the
point. Just bring your towel.

Love Kerry and the humorous Humes

I flicked the note into the tent and jogged
to the beach. I had forgotten
my towel so I jogged back and grabbed an orange
while I was there. I walked to the beach
a second time, with my
eyes scrunched shut to cut down the glare
and my ears ringing with the chorus of a thousand
cicadas. I peeled my orange and pitched each little
bit of skin under a tea tree on the side of the track; no one
would find it there. The signs were easy to find—the first one on the beach
said ‘Chestnut Bay 2.7 km 1.5 hr’ and
pointed down the beach to the granite boulder that Kerry
and I
had been sitting on last night; I’m sure
it was the same one. Right up in the soft sand near the end of the beach
was the second
sign: ‘Chestnut Bay 1.9 km 1 hr’. The
walking track rose from
the beach sharply and it wasn’t until I looked
back that I noticed how many people there were down there.
Hundreds of little specks and coloured umbrellas
dotted the shoreline and the shallows. A bit further out, a few black-suited surfers sat on their boards waiting for the big waves, and the sharks.

The track snaked amongst
some enormous chunks of
granite to a point, then wound back down to sea level at
Chestnut Bay. There were a few families and groups scattered
along the white sand—none that I recognised, so I just kept walking. Chestnut
Bay looked bigger than Mars Cove and there were fewer people.
I thought I could see Den
in the distance, and when I waved he waved back
then cartwheeled down to the water. It was Den all right. I started jogging again, this time with a bit more purpose. Misguided purpose. It wasn’t Den and the Humes but a
family of wogs with
milky white skin and coconut
sunscreen. I had almost sat down at their towels
before I realised and, in a quick recovery, I asked if they’d seen the Humes. Lots of smiles and head-nodding as I described the family. Eventually the man spoke through
a neatly trimmed black beard.

‘Not speak English very good. You look for friends? I think
I seen them maybe bit further
and further that way.’ He pointed along
the beach and I thanked him. There were only a few groups of people between
us and the rocks at the far end of the bay and none of them looked like the Humes.

‘Hey. You watch bit further and further along some
people with not clothes on. Okay? Bit funny not clothes
on.’

Nudists? All right!
I thanked him again and certainly
kept my eyes out for naked bodies. After another five minutes of walking—past an older couple
reading books and a group of girls in bikinis watching
a shoal of blokes on boards bobbing in the swell—I was ready to turn back.
I had promised myself I’d go to the next group of people
then give up, but halfway there I found them.

All along the beach the steep edge of sand that marks
the high tide line was unbroken, except for one
small sandy gorge, not big enough to drive Dad’s ute through, that opened into an eroded
area of soft white sand. Fresh footprints leading through the gorge drew me in and I
didn’t know where to look. Bare bums everywhere. Well, not
everywhere but it was a shock to see my best mate’s bum, his mum’s boobs and his dad’s penis resting
against his thigh. And his sister’s . . . well, everything. I thought
they’d see me and scramble
to cover themselves but I was wrong. They weren’t embarrassed—I
was. I should have guessed and a thousand
thoughts crammed into my head all
at once. Are my friends
sick? A bit kinky? If they don’t cover up then what am I going
to do? What if I get a hard-on? I’m not taking my clothes
off. I might just look up at the dune until they’ve finished getting dressed.
They’re not getting dressed.
What, do they all have sex and stuff
too? What if it wasn’t me that came in for a look, they’d all get
caught naked.

‘Hey Wayne,’ Den said, and Gracie looked
up from her book.

‘Poor kid. Look at his face,’ she chuckled.

‘We can put our clothes
back on if you like, mate,’ Baz said,
pulling his sunglasses off and standing
up.

‘No we can’t,’ Kerry said as she ran up the sandy hill to
where I was frozen. She grabbed my hand and dragged
me into their camp. ‘Bare
bodies won’t kill him.’

Den flopped onto his bum and took two handfuls of sand,
letting them cascade onto his pale thighs. Gracie just watched me with a sympathetic look on her face. Her boobs were the same colour as the rest of her
body, all sort of heavy and gold–brown.

‘Come on. Let’s go for a swim,’ Den said, and bolted past me through the gap. When he ran, his knob jumped
about. Kerry dragged me back out onto the beach where I
felt even more embarrassed for them. What about the people down there—the old couple and the girls—what will they think? Didn’t
cross their minds. They just went
barrelling into the water and I crashed
in with them, with my footy shorts and T-shirt still on. It was cold enough to
make me suck in a sharp breath and
my stump ached for a few seconds. I was hoping it would be
like a cold shower.

‘Get them off,’ Den shouted.

‘Yeah, come on Wayne. I’ll give
you a hand if you want,’
Kerry
said gently. She helped me drag my wet shirt off,

God knows that’s hard enough with two hands.

‘Take your shorts off?’ she asked gently.

I think I was pressured.
‘But
what if I get, you know . . .’

‘A hard-on?’

I nodded and looked up and down the beach.

‘You probably won’t and even if you do, who cares?
Sometimes Den gets a bit excited when he first gets his gear off . . .’

I think I was conned. ‘What if someone sees us?’

She laughed. ‘So what? You reckon they haven’t got
bodies of their own?’

‘Yeah but . . .’

‘Whatever,’ she said,
and dived under a wave that
nearly bowled me off my feet.

Oh, this is bullshit. In a moment of wildness
I ripped off my Hawks footy shorts and my jocks and heaved them
clear of the water. I can’t even begin to describe how luscious and naughty it felt to swim without
clothes on, the water peeling off my
body so softly. When I dived through the waves after Den and Kez, my willy would flap
and rattle deliciously but I didn’t
get a hard-on. It wasn’t
really a sex feeling at all—just wild. We crashed and tumbled in the waves for a while then swam to deeper
water where I had to struggle to stay afloat.
Treading water is hard with one hand. Hard but not impossible.

I could see Kerry’s breasts
bobbing as though they were floating. I had to battle to keep my eyes off them.

‘Yeah . . . Cool huh? Breasts
float! And penises,’ Kerry said, and I felt like a pervert.

‘Hey! White whale!’ Den shouted and duck-dived
so his bum cheeks were the only part of him sticking out of the water. Kerry giggled
and did the same. Their bums were different shapes. I had a go myself and nearly drowned thinking about what it must look like from the surface.

‘Wayne, we said you should take your shorts off,’ Den
said.

‘I did.’

‘Yeah? Doesn’t look like it . . .’

I looked at my loins through the water. The tan line at
the top of my thighs
looked like it had been painted on. Ha ha. I dived on him and pushed his smiling face under
the surf. His skin was silky-slippery-smooth. Kerry dived on me
and I took a lung full of water with a wild laugh. Coughing and spluttering, I crawled to the shore and up onto the dry sand. The
others followed, Den rolling like a
puppy until he was coated with sand except for his face.

We had sandwiches for lunch—with real sand—and I got to thinking that the Humes are my family. I do more stuff
with them than with
my own mum and dad; they take me
as I am. No hassles.
With the sun scorching my shoulders and neck, and the white,
white cheeks of my bum resting on the warm sand, my life felt perfect. Just for that
minute, everything was as it should be. All the stuff with
Mandy and Phil felt like a bad dream—there
was the sore spot on my right
ribs and the feeling in my
nose like I’d had a cold for a week and blown it until it was raw, but that
was nothing. Somewhere inside me, something had been cut open, all the shit had fallen out and now I was getting
on my
feet again after the operation.

Kerry kept looking
at me. Maybe it was me looking
at her. Her nipples were sticking right out when we got out
of the water, now they were soft
and the same shape as the
rest of her breast. She had hair in her armpits,
like me; I’d never noticed that before. So did Gracie,
soft and almost white. I thought women didn’t have hair there. I know
about shaving and all that but I thought it would grow different or something. I dunno. Mum always shaves her
legs and armpits and stuff. I guess that’s what the shavers
are for. I found
them in the shower when I was little and I
just assumed they were Dad’s and then one day, maybe two years after Dad had left, I noticed
they were still there so
they had to be Mum’s.
I shivered at the thought of seeing my mum naked. Yet seeing Gracie
naked was no big
deal. Seemed natural. Normal even,
just part of who she is. But Mum—that is a whole different story. I’ve never
even seen her in underwear. When she hangs her undies
out on the line, she hides them in between
other stuff so you could never see them even if you happened
to be Mr Velo and you
looked over the back fence. Mum hates the
water, too. And Dad will
go on it but never in it. Baz and Gracie
roughed and tumbled like kids and floated together in the surf for hours while we mucked around in the sand.

We had to keep topping
up the sunscreen and Gracie made a running joke about having to put lots and lots of sunscreen on the bits that didn’t normally
hang out in the
sun. She offered to rub it into my bum for me with a little
smile. So I let her. She got embarrassed and did a botchy
job of it—slapping me on the cheek when she’d
finished.

We were making a sculpture on the beach; it turned
out to be half man, half woman. Den was
hell-bent on making breasts and Kez was determined
to form a dick in the sand. Kez went hunting through the high-tide line for some seaweed
pubic hair and came back with
a dead seagull pinched at arm’s
length. It had all its feathers and there
was still colour in its beak but its eyes
were just holes.

‘We can call him
Brutus,’ she said. ‘Brutus the budgie.’
She threw it down near the sculpture’s bulky shoulder
and I started to arrange it like a pirate’s parrot.
The bird only had one foot. I dropped it and sat back.

‘Phwoar. It stinks,’
Den said.

‘Get a grip. You can hardly smell anything,’ I said and started digging a hole.

‘What are you doing, Wayne? Don’t bury it! It’s part of
the sculpture.’

‘Nah. It’s
my brother. I’ve got to give him a proper
burial.’

‘Your brother?’ Kerry poked the bird with her toe.

‘Poor thing.’

She danced back up to the high-tide line and came back
with two sticks bound with a ratty piece of blue plastic rope to make a cross.
We had a short ceremony
where Dennis wished the bird well in its next life. He said
he hoped it came back as a real chicken
that laid eggs and
ate earwigs on a farm instead of a coastal
chicken that had to eat rubbish
and be bossed around its whole life.
It was a touching
ceremony and Kez managed to contain her laughter.

‘Do you guys ever think about what happens after you
die?’ Kerry asked as we walked along the beach
back to camp, with our clothes on. (It
was a horrible experience getting
dressed, feeling the clothes sticking
to my salty skin made me want to rip them off again and go crashing
into the surf.)

‘Yeah. You die and then you rot,’ Den said flatly.

‘You reckon?’

‘I’ve been dead,’
I said.

‘Yeah and he came back as
a coastal chicken.’ Den added.

‘Nah. Seriously. When I had my accident. Mum said that I died. Beeeeeeep.’

‘No shit?’

‘What was it like?’ Kerry asked.

‘I don’t know. I was dead at the time. I don’t remember
much.’

Den laughed.

‘But I did have
a few freaky dreams while I was in hospital.’

I told them about the blackness and yelling out for
Mum and not making a sound. And being scared—that horrible scratching, moaning
and the girl with the voice
of little bells.

‘Freaky! They weren’t dreams.
You
were dead and doing
stuff out of your body,’ Kerry said. I looked
at her and the softness in her eyes was
amazing. She really believed it.

‘Bullshit Kez. You listen to too much drug music,’ Den
said.

‘That’s a bit harsh,’
I said.

Den flashed a glance at me that was filled with ice, shrugged and trotted
off to catch up with his mum and
dad.

‘What was that about?’

‘He’s a bit undecided about the death thing. Listens to
all this devil worship, “kill,
kill, kill” music and it confuses
him,’ she said, and I thought
she sounded like Gracie.

‘Mum and Dad both believe that our soul lives on after we
die. I think it is true.’

‘My mum thinks that God is a game show host and my dad . . . my dad thinks
God is a beer additive.
Or maybe living on the ocean floor somewhere.’

‘That’s sad.’

‘It’s true. No wonder your family gets on so well. You
believe in stuff. My folks
don’t believe in anything.’

It took us hours to get back
to the camp. The others disappeared up the hill and we sat in the warm shade and talked. Some of it was heavy. She told me that her dad had killed someone in a car accident
when he was at university. He was drunk but the other bloke had
run a red light and slammed into the side of his panel
van. It was in the days
before breath testing so the other bloke was seen as completely at fault. And an uncle had
sexually abused her mum.
I couldn’t believe that.

How come some parents
talk about that stuff all the
time and others, take mine as a fine example,
are flat-out discussing the weather without having an argument?

I told Kerry about my dad’s little secret: my dead sister.
She clamped her hand to her mouth and
moaned.

‘Your
dream! When you were dead ...I
bet that was

Carrie. She’s probably, like, your guide or something.’

I huffed air through my nose and shrugged. Whatever.

‘That’s so sad, Wayne,’
she said. ‘You would have been such
a good brother.’

‘I think that’s a compliment.’

‘Yeah. It was supposed to be.’

She looked at me for the longest time and I had to struggle not to blush—think about
water, think about dead seagulls, think about Den.

‘Den’s an all right brother
though, isn’t he? He’s like a
brother to me. I’d never
say that to him though.’

‘He’s
great most of the time. He gets PMT though. Really moody and black for a few days before his period.’

‘Get off! You’re full of it.’

‘Fair dinks. Well, he does get moody and snappy,’ she said
and,
after a moment of thought, added, ‘Why wouldn’t you tell him that he is like a brother?’

‘I dunno. I guess it sounds a bit fake or something.’

‘You love him though,
don’t you?’

‘Get stuffed! I’m not a poof.’

I think it was the ‘L’ word that set me off, and reacting like I did splashed
in our calm puddle of conversation. I wanted
to apologise, let her know that I liked Den a lot but the ‘L’ word was reserved
for other people. People of the opposite sex. People like her. The words didn’t come
together and it was Kerry who broke the silence.

‘Why haven’t you got a girlfriend, Wayne?’

‘Well, I did have but she doesn’t like the fact that I can’t clap
hands.’

‘Who? Mandy?’
she grunted. ‘She’s twisted
and I think she’s been hurt.’

I went quiet as those feelings
of being absolutely
hated by Mandy washed
over me and made me weak. I looked
across Mars Cove. I got up and pulled Kerry to her feet and
hopefully changed the subject. I felt hungry.

‘Mum and Den are making burgers
for tea,’ Kez said
and I must have looked at her a bit strangely. ‘What?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. I was just thinking
about food.’ She laughed.
‘Get used to it. I’m psychic.’

The burgers were great. Juicy and loaded with stuff— tomato, lettuce and satay sauce. No meat,
again, just mushed-up veggies and something from a can that looked like dog food. Tasted okay to me. Hendo came over after
dinner and Kez dragged us all, Baz and Gracie too, to the top of the dune to watch
the sun go down. I mean
sunsight. Sunclipse. Whatever.

Hendo nearly
died getting to the top of the sandy hill. He
and Den shared a smoke
discreetly while the rest
of us struggled on through
the sand. Baz looked around and
smelled the air. Maybe
it was wafting up the track. I couldn’t
smell it but then again I think my smell glands
have been burnt out. The air was
as still as one of the
wombats we saw on the way up. Three streaky clouds
gave the sun something
to reflect off as it set.

‘We’re going to get a thunderstorm,’
Gracie said, rubbing her nose furiously.

Kerry flopped in the sand next to me and explained
that her mum’s nose got itchy before
a thunderstorm. Without fail. I would have put money on a clear night.

Den and Hendo kept walking when they got to the top,
kicking sand at us as they went past.

‘Come on, Hendo,’ Den said. ‘Let’s go find a quiet spot and
leave these lovebirds
alone.’

He looked straight at me then danced off down the dune
holding Hendo’s hand. Their long shadows were soon
fighting and rolling. Part of me wanted to rumble with them. Part of me wanted other things.

‘Want an ice cream?’ Baz asked. ‘Mum ... Gracie and I
are going to whip over to the shop—I forgot
to grab a paper—you guys want to come?’

I shrugged. Sounded like a good idea. Kez just sat and
squinted at the sun.

‘Kez?’

‘Oh, I’m okay here Mum. You go if you want to, Wayne.’

I didn’t want an ice cream. Right then I realised
that there was something going on. Something weird. Something warm.

‘I think I’ll just sit here for a bit.’

The feelings washing
over me as we talked—almost in whispers—were both alien and welcome. Every time I did something stupid or said something awkward
Kez would just smile and reach out or laugh to take the edge off it.
Suddenly everything Kez said was
interesting—even the
stuff about how she missed Jesus the cat and all that—I could understand what she was talking about. There were
a few times when everything about her was golden and I
wanted to touch her but I was shitting bricks.
What if she pulled away? Worse, what if
she actually liked it and wanted more, what would I do then? The thought of resting my hand on her shoulder
gave me a fat. I was
thankful for my baggy T-shirt
and the birds that winged into our vision—hundreds of white birds cruising along the
edge of the dunes. Den would know what
they were for sure. I heard magic in Kez’s words. She looked like a
model or something in the final glow of the sun. This kid
I’d known since before she went to school was a
woman and ambulance sirens
were
going off in
my
head. Somehow the silly little caterpillar of Kerry Hume got all
squashed up into a cocoon while I wasn’t watching. Then pop!
She’s this gorgeous
butterfly that I want to cradle and kiss. Kiss? Yeah,
I wanted to kiss her. Is that sick or
what? My best mate’s sister. I was past the point of caring.

I said some things to her that I hadn’t even
said to myself. I told her that I missed my dad and that I hated his guts
sometimes. I told her that I thought
my mum and

dad were getting
back together again and that made me want
to chuck. Move out. Something.
I told her I’d never had
a pet. Not even a guinea pig in a goldfish bowl. She
sat there open-mouthed and nodded. At
some point during my story she’d picked up my hand but I didn’t notice
until I’d run out of words and was left breathless by the look in her eyes.

‘I do love you, Wayne.’
I melted inside.

‘I think this place is our sacred site,’ I said, and squeezed her hand. I was going to tell her that I loved
her, too, but my mouth
was paralysed. Kerry’s lips were pressed
against mine and their softness
and the sweet taste of her
breath pulled me into a trance that will hold me forever.
Something clicked inside me with that kiss: I finally
understood what all the fuss was about.

When Den and Hendo came racing up the dune a few
minutes later, Kez and I pretended that there was nothing
going on but Den’s not an
idiot. He started scuffling
around on the sand between us like a hungry kelpie.

‘What are you doing?’ Kez asked.

‘Nothing.’

He was pushing us around
and feeling in my shirt pocket.

‘Get off! What are you looking for?’

He pulled my ear to his mouth and whispered, ‘Used condoms.’

‘Piss off.’ I grabbed
him and we rolled down the track together. We were both laughing but some
of the fake punches weren’t so fake and the one that landed in my
bruised gut made me wince
and push him off. He pranced
off down the track with Hendo. Bastard.

•

Barry was buried in his paper under the gaslight. Gracie had been to the showers and was fishing
around in her bag
for some clothes.
I’d seen her naked body so many
times during the day, on the beach and in the water, but
she seemed more naked inside
the tent. Hendo had taken off
again with Den; his eyes would have popped out of his head
if he had seen Gracie’s heavy boobs swaying
in the gaslight.

‘Hey Kerry, what are we up to tomorrow?
Going to the waterfall or floating the boat?’ Barry asked.

We’d had the conversation over burgers but Den had wanted to go to the waterfall and Kerry had wanted
to float the boat so nothing was resolved. Gracie emerged from the tent in a dress with Aboriginal designs printed on it. She was rubbing her nose with the palm of her hand.

‘If we’re going to get
a thunderstorm, I think
we should go to the waterfall. Ungh. I hope it’ll
all be over by the morning,’ Gracie said.

I scoffed to myself.
The
sky was a shower
of
bright stars. I saw that mob of stars that we
call
‘The Pot’—don’t know its proper name but you know the one I mean. At home, on a really clear night, I can see three stars in the
handle, three on the
bottom and one little star that
completes the pot shape. There are four
bright stars around it that make a wonky frame. All up—eleven stars. Tonight, this night before
the
so-called thunderstorm
from
hell, I could barely make out the pot: one of the cosmic
landscapers had tipped over a wheelbarrow full of glitter and every dark patch of sky had been sprinkled. Mate, it was awesome.
I would have bet my entire one

hundred and four thousand
dollars on it being clear and hot when the sun came up the next day.

Kez seemed distant now that we were back at the camp.
I wanted to kiss her more than anything but she
was cool—until Gracie asked
us to roll down the brown canvas windows of the tent. We were in the dark
and she grabbed me by the shirt.
Planted a frantic
kiss on my cheek
and lips. Her breath and the heat of her body made me burn
inside, want more. Feel more. She pulled away and
dragged me further from the tent.

‘Mum, me and Wayne are going to the beach.’

‘Wayne and I . . .’ Gracie corrected.

‘Yeah.’

‘Can I come?’ Gracie asked.

Kerry’s shoulders dropped.
‘Yeah, sure,’ she chirped. I
thought I would burst.

When we reached
the end of the beach and the wild
rocks, Gracie suggested we go for a dip. I thought, yeah, I
could, I’ve got my shorts
on, and Kerry and Gracie were already naked and in the
water. I took my shorts and jocks
off, scanning the beach for people, then splashed in after
them. The cold water didn’t work or maybe it was the fact that
Kez kept diving
under the water and running her silky hands over my skin till I felt like exploding. She’d thrash her feet and disappear in the dark water only to
resurface at a safe distance from me. Gracie just sighed and floated. I’d never been so turned on in my whole life, then I bumped my leg against
something rough and I squealed like a baby and crashed
to the shore.

‘Shark! Something just bumped me . . . Arghhh!’

Kez and Gracie came screaming out behind me. Kerry

let out a crazy laugh.
I guess it could have been weed. Could have been a lump of sponge or something. But in
my mind, in that dark water, it could only have been a shark
with teeth poking out everywhere. It took me a few minutes to get hold of my breath and forgive Kerry for laughing. Gracie pulled her dress over her wet body and said
she was going back to camp.
After she’d walked a few hundred
metres she called back, ‘Don’t
be too long or you’ll get drowned.’

In the southwest, a storm flashed.
I couldn’t see a cloud
but the light show was wicked. I thought the storm would probably die out before it got to us. I found
Kerry backed against a rock, drawing its warmth into her wet body. We cuddled forever, feeling
our cool, wet bodies get hotter
and drier with each breath.
I held her face in my
hands. When we kissed, the sky rumbled. Salty, soft lips. We tasted each other and a cosmic flashbulb burst on the horizon.
Growl. Sexy, sweet surprises. I kissed my way down until I was on my knees. I prayed
for the first time in my life, gave
thanks for the curvy bits and straight bits of bodies. Musk
and sea. Waves of pleasure.
Oh God. Flash! I saw her
standing above me, head to one side, mouth slightly open and
eyes tightly closed. Her fingers locked in my hair.
Pulled me close. Shudder. Tight.

The wind was picking
up and she knelt at my feet with
such soft fingers and warm breath. Flash! I saw her wet hair hanging on her shoulder. Against
my thigh. A bark of
thunder made us both jump. I didn’t know
how much more I could
... tumbling wet bliss again and again. My body
slumped against the rough rock and we kissed again, tasting ourselves and each other mixed
in passion soup. More. I wanted it all.

There was a flash along the beach and Kerry spoke loudly to be heard.
The wind stole her words. Gracie was right.

‘There’s a torch, someone is coming.’

We got dressed in a rude hurry and stumbled through the sand towards the trees.

Flash! Crack.

I shouted in fright
and one of the people carrying the
torch squealed. Kerry grabbed me, squeezed my hand
hard. I dragged her along the beach. We ran. Then it
rained. Big bucket-drops of sweet
rain that soaked
us to our pubes again in ten seconds.
The wind just kept getting stronger, lashing in off the ocean, breaking
branches and driving the rain so it hurt. Kerry was trying to hide. I was
shitting bricks—I can admit that now—and dragging
Kez along. Had to get back to camp.

Flash, flash! The sky ripped open.
The hair prickled on my neck and back, and I bent low as
we ran.

The tent was buckling
and flapping like a torn sail. The roof
of the eating area had been ripped from its pegs and lay
bunched over the stove stand.
Baz and Gracie were
shouting instructions to each other. I could hear a little kid crying in the next camp and the howling gale
sent the rain drumming against the
roof of the car. Den and Hendo were inside. I ripped open the door and dived
into the back seat pulling Kerry in with me.

‘Close the door, bonehead!’ Den shouted. The car
rocked as it was buffeted
by surges of wind. The windows
of the car were fogged
and I cleaned the one closest to me
with the palm of my hand.
No-one said a thing. Kerry held my
hand. I held my breath.

As quickly as it arrived,
the storm disappeared, flashing and rumbling
inland. Probably going to trash
a few houses on the way through.
Probably going to send a few lovers scurrying to the car. Den turned the interior light on and laughed.

‘Wha?’

‘Dickhead. You look like you fell overboard.’

‘Hope it didn’t spoil your root,’
Hendo grumbled, and

Den thumped him in the arm.

Kez popped the door and went out to find Barry and

Gracie. I followed
her.

The power in the camping ground had failed. The only light of any value flashed
on the horizon. I found Kerry’s
hand. She led me inside
the tent where her mum and dad were drying their naked bodies by fading torchlight. They had saved the tent and I think they were charged by the
experience. I heard their camp bed rhythmically hitting the canvas wall later that night.
I crept to Kerry’s
bed and I think I woke her up. She kissed me and told me to go back
to bed. I did what I was told.

Kerry and I held hands in the car on the way to the falls.
I got aroused by that. Den just wriggled
in his seat. The sandy track was carpeted
with green and yellowing leaves. Every so often Baz would
stop the car and Den would
jump out to pull a branch off the road. Baz drove over
most of the little ones but a few were big enough to need Den
and I both out and on
the job. After a stop–start hour on the road we pulled up in a circular
car park lined with
ferns as big as trees.
Behind the ferns towered smooth barked gums that stretched
into the blue. Den packed
ropes and Kerry packed
lunch into a red backpack
that I foolishly volunteered to carry.
The track to the falls twisted and rambled up a decent
hill and I had to stop to get
my breath when it finally
flattened out.

‘I can carry it if you like, Wayne,’ Gracie
offered.

‘Nah, I’ll be okay. How far to go now?’

‘We’re nearly halfway,’ Barry said.

I took the pack off and handed it to Gracie.
Smiling, she pulled a plastic
water bottle from one of the side pockets and handed it around.

‘Hang on, Mum,’ Den said, and fished
into the pack. He
pulled out a blue plastic bag with something like a loaf of bread
inside. Yeah, I could go some more food ... or a rock. The
bastard had made me carry a rock
that he couldn’t lift with one hand all the way up that friggin’ hill.
He smiled at me. I felt like dropping
it on his head. As it
was, it broke out of the flimsy
bag and landed on his foot.
Suck eggs.

Along the ridge the
landscape changed. The ferns had disappeared and in their place grew a spiky yellow-flowered bush. The trees
weren’t nearly
as tall as they were on
the hillside and their
bark was brown and scraggy like old
carpet. I managed
to walk behind Kerry most of the
way,
watching her bum through her thin shorts.
She was walking and talking like nothing had happened between us. Baz walked in front and he held his hand up for us to stop. I walked into Kez and she grunted.

‘What is it?’

Baz shushed me with a finger
and pointed. Sauntering along the track was the scariest
looking animal I’ve seen in the
wild. An enormous black lizard flecked with gold. His toes—I guessed it was a boy,
looked too brutal to be anything else—ended in shiny black claws that could rip a man apart. Every step looked like a huge effort.

Kerry grabbed
my hand.

‘Oh my God. Isn’t it beautiful?’ Gracie whispered. That’s not the word I would have used, maybe
some thing like ‘savage’ or that
handy word ‘awesome’ that
describes anything that pounds the senses.
Griz would probably have this monster as a pet—they say some pets look like their owners.

It showed no sign of having seen us. It just kept getting closer. Den yelped and jumped on his dad’s back and the
movement scared the lizard. It bolted into the scrub and
straight up one of the scruffy-barked trees. It stopped
just above head height, flattening
its body and moulding itself to
the curve of the trunk.
Den got off Barry’s back and
confidently picked his way to the tree.

‘What is it?’ Kez asked squeezing
my hand. I squeezed
back.

‘Der, it’s a lizard,’
Den said. At the sound of a voice so close,
the monster puffed itself full of air and exhaled like a
steam engine. Den toppled over and scrambled
behind his dad. Barry smiled.

‘It’s all right.
He won’t hurt you, as long as
you don’t get too close. Lace monitor. Type of goanna. Big one, too.’

Lace monitor. What a stupid name for
a big lizard. Sounds like someone
who cleans up at the end of sewing
class. Should be called
‘Dragon’ at least. Yeah.
‘Grisly Dragon.’

A ten-minute
walk
along the ridge took us to a spot where
the track branched and Baz had us stop again and
listen.

‘What? I can’t hear anything,’ Den complained.

‘Wind in the trees?’

‘Close . . .’

‘It’s water! We’re nearly there,’
Kerry said.

Baz loped off down the narrow
track that vanished behind a pile of motley lichen-covered rocks.

‘I thought you guys had been here before?’

‘Yeah. We have, but we always come in another
way. A shorter way,’ Den said.

‘There’s a shorter way?’

Kez nodded and pushed me along the track mumbling, ‘It’s my turn now.’

I looked at the rocks and trees and even saw a few birds
darting amongst the shrubs that surrounded the track
but I only noticed a burning
lump in my shorts.

Kapunda Falls. They put the fire out. We picked our
way through rocks until we
came to a ledge about six
metres wide and as flat as a road. The ledge looked
hand-carved, like some ancient
Dreamtime spirit had cut it with
a gigantic brick saw. Some old one-handed Dreamtime spirit, my guess. Standing
close to the edge, I felt like I was falling but from a few paces back I could see that the cliff
face would look like a weathered skyscraper from across the valley. I could imagine
the skeletons of windows and balconies way below me, all softened by the wind and rain. The
river that fed the falls thundered down a gully and
leapt out from the cliff face. Roaring and sparkling, it fell against the cliff sixty metres below then came together amongst the rocks to become a river again flashing through the ferns and out of sight. It was—am I allowed
to say it? Awesome. Well, beautiful.

We ate lunch on the edge. Den dangled his feet over. I sat with Kez and Gracie and shouted
conversation about how magnificent the view was. Barry had picked his way up onto a boulder that overlooked the falls and us. When I’d finished my sandwich I crept up
behind Den and grabbed him on the shoulders.

‘Saved you!’

In reflex his hands shot out behind him sending half his
cheese sandwich tumbling
down the cliff face.

‘Fuck off,’ he spat,
his eyes black. He got to his feet and pushed me hard. Too hard. ‘Sister rooter.’

‘Take it easy, Den.’

‘Arsehole.’

He pushed me again and I fell onto
my
bum. He puffed up as though he was going to pound me and I could feel myself pulling back, glazing over, staring into nothingness. Waiting for him to hit me. From the corner of
my eye I could see his cheeks pulled tight and teeth
bared.

He didn’t hit me. I wish he had. Would have been all
over in a flash-of-where’s-your-grandmother and
he wouldn’t stew over it. Instead,
he picked up the pack of
ropes and walked towards the falls, to a tree that had perched itself in the crevice
between a couple of huge boulders. As thick as my waist at the ground, it towered
over the rubble of prickly
shrubs and rock. He took a
short, thick rope from the pack and looped it around the base
of the tree, feeding a metal clip through the loop on either
end. I walked over.

‘I’ll get you back. Here, hold this crab,’ he shouted.

He handed me a metal clip like the one on the tree rope. His eyes were still black and pinched.

‘Doesn’t look anything like a crab,’ I said.

‘Carabiner. Crab for short,’ he shouted,
as he climbed
into a web of blue seatbelt material. It pulled up tight
around his bum and thighs to be a neat harness that
made the front of his shorts bulge. He hoisted his balls from
left to right until he was comfortable
then asked for the crab. He untied a big coil of tartan rope and threw it
over the edge while holding the end so tight his knuckles went white. I watched it flick and wriggle down to the next ledge, maybe thirty
metres below. A warm breeze
tumbled up the valley and prickled
my face with mist from the falls so softly it felt like the kisses of angels I closed my eyes and lifted my arms. I was flying.

‘Saved you!’ Den shouted and he grabbed my shoulders.
But he didn’t save me.

My whole body tingled and I grabbed at Den. Sucked in a breath. Grabbed at his shirt and held on. My feet wouldn’t move and I could feel myself losing balance.
For a moment, it
felt like Den was going to hold me then he took another grip on my shirt and his foot scraped
over the rock. We fell. I heard Kerry and Gracie squeal. We fell over that ledge.
Plunged through
the mist then slammed into the rock
face when the rope tied to Den’s harness caught. The air was forced
from my lungs in a grunt so I couldn’t scream. We bounced and span in the air before smashing into the rock
again. With me hanging on to his shirt, Den flipped
upside down. His shirt ripped. I could feel it going. He shouted ‘no’ and ‘grab the rope’
and
‘give me your hand’.
He hooked his legs in the rope like a trapeze artist.

Barry scrabbled for the rope at the ledge and frothed at the
mouth. I punched
uselessly at the rope with my
stump. Rip. Den let go
of my shirt with one hand and grabbed
for my arm. He hooked onto my wrist. His T-shirt had slid
halfway up his back but it had stopped ripping.
We were swinging like a demolition
ball, just grazing against the rock
face. My feet kicked
at the rock but could get no purchase.

‘Hang on! Jesus. Hang on,’ Barry shouted.

My fingers
were locked onto Den’s top. He had hold of that wrist and his other hand held the shoulder of my shirt.
I wasn’t going anywhere. Kerry and Gracie were on the rope
now too. I could hear their little grunts and whimpers, reeling us in like the biggest marlin. Den was panting in my ear and dribbling.
They lifted us two inches then we slipped
back again as they took another grip. My shirt pulled over my
head and Den gasped. I could feel his grip on my wrist slipping. I couldn’t see a thing. My legs were going frantic
in the air and then they connected
with something solid. A tiny ledge. My
toes
curled and I shrugged
myself forward. My foot slid into the smallest crevice and it took my weight.
I slipped my other foot in beside it.

‘Jesus,’ Den said and took another grip on my wrist.

‘You all right down there?’

The biggest adrenaline rush I’d
had in my whole life was
pumping through me. I didn’t
feel safe but I didn’t
feel like I was going to fall. ‘Yeah. Now what?’

‘Get another rope!’
he shouted.

The rope went tight again. Den almost pulled
me off my ledge.

‘No! Don’t pull. Get another rope!’
he shouted again. Gracie squealed something I couldn’t understand.

‘Here. I’ve got a rope,’
Barry panted. ‘What do you
want me to do with it?’

‘Tie it off on the tree. Tie a loop in it big enough for Wayne’s bum. Quick!’

Barry did what Den said and cast the rope over the edge.
It clattered against
my leg and I stabbed
at it blindly with my stump. I hooked
it and shook it to the crook of
my elbow. What I would have given for five extra fingers
and a hand to hold that rope . . .

‘You’re going to have to climb into the loop.
Can you see it?’ Den asked.

‘I can’t see a friggin’ thing.’

‘It’s just under your feet. Your left foot. No, your right.
Feel around.’

I lifted my foot tentatively and poked around
below the ledge. I felt the rope squirm between my runner and the
rock.

‘My foot’s in,’ I said.

‘Pull it up a bit, Dad!’ Den shouted,
and the rope lifted
to my knee.

‘Stop!’ I yelled
and lifted my other foot into the loop.

‘Take it up a bit.’

The rope dragged over my legs and I sat into it before it pulled over my arse. I wriggled and positioned the rope
with my stump.

‘Right. He’s in,’ Den shouted. ‘Take him up.’

The rope pulled tight
and I started going up. My feet lifted off the ledge and tingled.
My knees grazed over the rock.
Barry and Gracie and Kez dragged
me up the rock face until my head popped into my shirt
and I could see again.

‘You’re going to have to let go of me,’ Den said. I was dragging him up with me, by the shirt.

I couldn’t do it. My hand wouldn’t open.

‘Wayne, let go! Grab the rope.’ My
hand wouldn’t work.

Den let go of my wrist
and slapped at my hand. ‘Let go.’ My
fingers uncurled and he pushed my hand towards
the rope. I grabbed it and watched my knuckles go white.
They lifted me to the ledge in one smooth
motion and my thighs
bit into the rock as I scraped back onto the flat ground.

And then I kissed
the earth like it was a woman,
feeling the moist dirt mash onto my face. Breathing sharp little
breaths like the dying dog on Garrison
Street. I shook
all over.

‘Are you all right, Wayne?’ Gracie
asked.

What a fucking stupid
question. I nodded.
I was okay. I’d left some skin on the rock but there wasn’t much blood.

Gracie joined Baz and Kerry on Den’s rope and pulled him up with ease. He stepped
onto the ledge like he’d been for a walk down the mountain then fell to his knees and
sighed loudly again and again.

My left knee had cracked against
the rock face but it wasn’t broken.
It held my weight and I hobbled
over to where Den was. He struggled to his feet with his mouth
open and hands on his hips. He hugged
me around the neck.

‘Sorry mate,’ he said right into my ear.

‘Nah. I’m sorry.’

It wasn’t until
we were walking away from the
waterfall that I realised I’d survived another near-death adventure. Sometimes it’s all too much. Why can’t I have really
nice friends like Gary Reardon
and play chess?
Nah, stuff that.

Kerry held my hand most of the way back. By the time we
got to the car, we were laughing about the whole thing. I asked
Den
if I could borrow a pair of his undies—I thought mine were full. Barry told me that I wasn’t allowed in the car but I got in anyway.

‘Hasn’t been much of a holiday for you, Wayne,’ Kerry
said, and Gracie glanced
over her shoulder with her
eyebrows raised.

‘Yeah,’ Den said.

A tense moment passed then Gracie asked, ‘What happened the other night?’

I prickled. ‘The other night? Nothing much.’

‘Bull. Phillip,
Mandy’s boyfriend, beat the crap out of him for no reason,’ Kerry said.

Den gagged and shook his head vigorously.

Kerry shrugged and kept talking. ‘Wayne went down to
comfort Mandy after Phil had just dumped
her and he must
have reckoned he was trying to hit on her. Beat the crap
out of him.’

Den shook his head.
‘It wasn’t Phil,’ he said and stared
out the window.

That didn’t compute. I looked at the back of his neck.

‘It was Hendo.’

I sat there for a full minute looking
at his neck. It wasn’t
Phil that tried to break me in half and the
more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
Hendo had the hots for Mandy. Never said a word about it. Kerry called Hendo a sleazebag and shivered.

Barry had got a fright at the falls and when we got back to the campsite, he couldn’t stand still. He wanted to pack up
and go home. Gracie joked about it and tried to talk him into staying.
He
packed up the stove
after tea and pushed it into
the back of the car then lit the gaslight and slumped
into his chair. Buried his head in the newspaper.

‘Do you want to walk?’ Kez asked me quietly.

I nodded and felt a tingle
in the front of my shorts. Gracie was inside the tent and Kez opened her
mouth to yell then changed
her mind and bent close to her dad.
She mumbled that we were going to the beach. He shrugged.

We slipped into the half dark and Kez held my hand. That’s all we did—hold hands and talk quietly so we didn’t
disturb the sound of the waves. That felt so good. Kez started getting cold so we went back to camp.

In the morning—the
day after our trapeze act at the
falls—Baz got up early whistling a Beatles’ song and said we were going to launch the boat. It took twenty minutes of forward and backward to get the trailer
on the boat ramp. Barry frantically screwing
the steering wheel left
and right, looking in the mirror
then over his shoulder and still managing to hump up onto the concrete gutter before finally getting the boat into the
water. I fully expected him to sizzle
when he crashed in after it and grabbed the rope from Gracie. He ordered us all in, then
pushed and tried to jump in himself.
He seesawed on the
edge—feet kicking in the water, hands grabbing
at the bottom of the boat—until we’d had a good laugh,
then sat up, red-faced. He gave Den an
oar and stuffed the other one
in my hand, telling us to swap seats so that I could
make my hand work hard. We zigzagged and almost cut a
full circle in the water before we got our rhythm, with Barry chanting
‘stroke, stroke, stroke’.
When Den and I found our groove, mate, we were scooting along.
Baz finally had a smile on his face.

‘Arghhh, me hearties.
This is the life. Boating
on the high seas.’

Kez rolled her eyes. The sea wasn’t exactly high. In fact it mirrored like a mirage along the cove. After a
few minutes of rowing I realised that I’d rather be in the water than on it. I started to sweat.

‘Ah. Dad?’ Kerry said looking at her feet.

‘Don’t call me Dad. Call me Captain.’

‘Ah. Captain. Is there
supposed to be water down here?’

It was ankle deep and filling fast. I could see the water jetting in through a gap that had opened
up in the freshly painted timber. Baz stepped through to the back of the
boat almost rolling us all into the water.

‘Shit,’ he mouthed.

‘Barry, where
are the
life jackets?’ Gracie asked.
Seemed like a sensible question, just twenty minutes too late.

Barry slapped his palm on his temple.
‘In the back of
the car.’

‘I’m getting out of here,’ Den said, and dragged his oar
in before diving overboard. Gracie
followed.

‘Man overboard! Man the life rafts!’ Baz cried.

‘Ah. Captain, this is the life raft,’ Kerry said and dived in after her mum. They started swimming
towards the beach.

‘It’s a mutiny!’

I told him I’d be going down with the ship. He slapped me
on the back and called
me bosun then grabbed Den’s
oar and we paddled like fury towards the beach. Such hard going and it only got worse. The boat
bumped against something. Baz looked at me then dived over-board and stood up—the boat had hit the sand.

In time, a whole crew of people
swam out from the shore: Davo, Steve and Cheryl. And Mandy. I couldn’t look
at her. They helped us empty the boat and drag it to the
shore and when Baz brought the trailer down they
helped us lift it straight
on. Muscles.

Barry shook their hands and thanked them in his stupid
pirate voice.

Mandy tugged on the wet sleeve of my shirt. ‘Hey

Wayne.’

I smiled but I think I might have
looked like a baboon—not the big red arse and that, the teeth.

She looked at her red toenails.
‘Sorry about ... you
know. I was a real bitch.’

I nodded.

‘It was just ... oh, it’s hard to explain. I didn’t mean all that
stuff . . . I was just . . . you know.’ She shrugged.

I stared at her toenails too. They were cute and I didn’t
know what to say. She was suffering. Suffering
in her jocks.

‘Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that. Okay?’
I nodded. ‘How’s Phil?’

‘I dunno. I haven’t seen him. Mum said he packed his gear
without saying anything.’

She took my hand. ‘You’re
all right, Wayne. Thanks.
And sorry about all that stuff.’

I looked down the beach. Straight
at Kerry. She stared at me, stone faced.

Mandy hugged me and kissed
me on the lips. ‘See you,’ she said, and galloped
after her mates.

We packed up and went home on New Year’s Eve. Quitting
while we were ahead. Ha! Baz and Gracie were grumpy as hell. There was a long line of cars coming into the park as we were leaving.
Lots of ‘P’ plates and surfboards strapped
to the roof. It was going to be one heck of a party on the
beach. Kez wouldn’t hold my hand in the car. Wouldn’t even talk to me. Den just stared out the window. Driving past the big church in Bairnsdale, I thought
about nipping inside to cheer myself up. I’m going to write a story about the
car trip and send it in to That’s Life magazine:
‘I was trapped in a car full of happy-heads’.

It was four o’clock when I got home. Den said he’d meet
me at Game Zone at eight but he didn’t
seem too excited about it.
Mum and Dad were both at the flat.
Under the same roof and there was no blood.

‘G’day Wayne. How was your trip?’ Dad asked,

‘Good.’

Mum got up from the couch and gave me a hug. ‘You
look tired. Why don’t you go and have a lie down. Tea won’t be ready for a little while. Mick, you staying?’

‘Umm. Yeah. That would be nice, thanks Sylvie.’

Mum and Dad were like best mates and that made me
feel uneasy. It’s not that I don’t like my old man, just that
he doesn’t fit in here any more. It’s been just Mum and
me at the flat for years. He used to live in another world and when things got shitty at the flat I could go and see
him and let off some steam. That doesn’t work when you’re practically living under the same roof.

I lay on my bed and tried to relive the good
bits
of the holiday but they were all mixed up with the other stuff.
Mandy felt like a hot chocolate with broken glass in it—
sweet but loaded.
And Kerry, the angel that I’d found when I wasn’t looking, had flown off.

I felt like that bloody seagull
we buried. All washed up and parched.

‘You okay, love?’ Mum asked through a
mouthful of lamb chop and peas. I nodded and she turned up
the volume on Sale of the Century.
Dad leant forward in his
chair as a chick with a cleavage
like the Grand
Canyon introduced the contestants. I put my plate on the sink and
grabbed my bag. It still had all my shit in it from the holiday.

I’m not sure where
the feeling came from, the feeling
of wanting to run. Run away from Mum and Dad, from Mandy
and Kerry, from the world. I’m not sure where it
came from but it stuck like a hat that’s half
a size too small, squeezing my brain into unusual shapes, making me think strange thoughts.
Do strange things.

I nicked an unopened
pack of Holiday
Extras and saw Mum’s purse on the kitchen bench. I picked it up and felt a
hot rush up my back and neck. Before I’d had enough time to get my head around what I was doing I’d opened
the purse and unfolded three fifty-dollar notes. Stuffed them into my pocket just as the television exploded into the adverts.
My heart was thumping like a bass drum in my
throat. There was no going back.

‘I’m going down to Game Zone. See you later.’

‘Oh. Okay, love. Don’t be too late.’

‘Yep.’

I walked to Game Zone. I felt the money in my pocket, slippery notes folding over each other until they were slimy with sweat. I had a smoke next to the stone soldier. I found
my wallet in the
front of my bag and ripped it open
to stash the notes and a
little dude inside me said: ‘Don’t do it . . . you’ll regret it. You’ll get a caning’.
I didn’t listen. I felt free. What a buzz.

Den burst from the door of Game Zone and tripped over the bikes that were piled on the edge of the
footpath, pulled himself clear and ran. I watched
from down the hill
on the other side of the road.
Otto and Griz slammed
through the door together. Den can run. He was going
like Carl Lewis with diarrhoea. There was no way those guys would have caught
him, that is if Pic hadn’t been coming up the hill on his bike. Den’s watching
out behind and Pic stepped off his bike and coat-hangered him. Den hit the deck like his parachute
had failed. Then Pic
had him by the hair and held his arm up his back.

‘Yes! Well done Picko,’
Otto roared, and they slowed
to a trot.

‘Hey! Let him go!’ I shouted and started sprinting up the hill.

Pic dragged Den to his feet. Otto was thumping
him in the guts. Griz stood on the nature strip watching me.

‘Let him go!’ I chucked my bag down and pushed
Otto in the back. He turned.
Griz caught his fist mid-punch.

‘Leave him alone,’ Griz growled at Otto’s face.

Otto shrugged him off and lunged at me, knocking
me onto my back and losing his beanie. Griz dragged him off me, kicking.

‘Leave him alone, Otto.’

Otto gave Griz one of those baboon
smiles.

‘Why? Because you’ve
got the fucking guilts?’

Griz looked at the footpath. Those words caught him
off guard.

I looked at him. Guilty
about what?

Otto poked at Griz’s chest. ‘Because you’re the fucker who turned the tap off. You’re the prick who made him cut
his hand off. Cos you’re the . . .’

Griz silenced him with a fist to the face. Something
went crack. Pic let Den go and grabbed his bike.

‘I’m sorry,’ Griz said.

Den held his guts and groaned.

‘Yeah,’ I said, and picked up my bag.

‘Sorry,’ he said again.
I walked.

I walked for a long time,
through the suburbs and into the
darkness. Made it all the way to the highway. My whole
body ached. My eyes were stinging. I pulled up a chair in
a truck stop and had a Coke.
It made my guts hurt.

An old bloke in a blue singlet asked me if he could eat
his sausages and eggs at my table.
I couldn’t say anything so he sat down.

‘Where you heading?’ he asked
through a mouthful
of greasy shit.

Took a few seconds for my brain to click into gear. ‘Up north.’

‘Oh yeah? Me too. I’m going
up to Brisbane in the
morning, I am.’

I nodded.

‘Yeah. That’s my rig out there.’ He pointed
with his shiny chin to a monstrous white truck parked
at the back of the restaurant. ‘Goes pretty well, it does. Sleep in the
back, I do.’

He talked at me for a while. Lonely old bugger. He was carting a load of sweet
corn up to Brisbane.
He does two trips a week. Has been at it for nine years. He talked in
whispers about how he avoids RTA cameras
so he can drive
it in one hit. Eighteen
hours straight. Christ, what a life.
He took himself off to sleep in his truck after a cup of tea that was so thick and black he must have had to chew it.

I sat there for hours. Occasionally, a bolt of lightning would go off in my head and I swear I could smell singed
brain cells. Griz turned the tap off. Crack! Hendo made
my nose bleed. Zap! Mandy
still likes me. Kerry hates me. Crack, crack, kaboom.

There was a telly mounted high on the wall and it got suddenly louder as the waitress behind
the counter poked the
remote. They were counting down the seconds
and the waitress and a few others in the
restaurant started chanting with them. Four, three, two, one. Happy New Year! They started kissing
each other and I looked
out the window. A couple of cars passing on the highway tooted.

Mum will be pissed.
Maybe I should call her? It
was three o’clock in the morning by the time I could think clear enough to phone and
I decided it was too late. Probably wouldn’t really
be missed until the morning anyway. Oh well, happy New Year, Mum.

I curled up there with the trucks and pissed New Year revellers rolling in every few minutes. I got to see the regulars. I saw the waitress check her watch and make a
burger. A thin man with a scruffy moustache came in and smiled to her as he picked up his burger. She held his
hand for half a breath and took his money; not a
word was spoken. Sad. Later she made a coffee with five sugars and
sat it on the counter. An hour passed and the coffee just sat
there. Eventually she turfed the whole thing into the
bin. I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to be like the truckies and do the same thing every bloody
day. And I don’t want
to be like that lady.
Waiting. Waiting for the
same old people and the heartache. Waiting for the next truck-stop romance. Stuff that.

The old bloke came back in as the sun was colouring
the sky and ordered another
ace-of-spades tea.

‘Still here are you?’ he
said and sat opposite me again,
big smile on his face.

‘Are you still going up to Brisbane?’

‘Yeah,’ he chuckled.
‘Got to get this corn off before it
goes rotten and stinks my truck out, I do.’

He took a sip of his tea then spat it back.
He looked up to see if I’d seen him and his eyes were watering. ‘Whoo! Bloody hot. Just burnt the bubble
wrap off my tongue,’ he said,
fanning his mouth.

‘Can I come with you?’

He looked me over. ‘Yeah. I suppose you can come if
you want. You’d better go to the toilet. I only stop for food
and fuel, if you know what I mean. You know?’

His name was Jack. Jack Gobstopper or some wog name
like that. The sun was low on the horizon
and occasionally streamed in through his window. Told me his whole life story
before we got to Seymour, not bad going
for an hour on the road. One wife, Georgina, who he hadn’t seen in
two years and one son, Stephen, who lives in a juvenile detention centre.

‘Sixteen years
old and he’s already in jail. She just didn’t look
after him, she didn’t. You know? And I’m on
the road a lot so it’s hard to keep track of where he is from
the front of my truck, you know?’

The truck was an Iveco. Bloody
comfortable, once I’d conquered the steps that were more like a ladder up to the door. Made my bedroom
look like a tip. Even had an Iveco recycling bin—no shit—one bag for
rubbish and one for bottles and cans. Had a fridge loaded with little
bottles of Coke, I reckon
he drank one per hour. Didn’t
offer me one. I didn’t
really mind, my guts were aching
and the country and western music that droned
through the stereo made me want to chuck.
‘My dog can’t walk properly because his balls drag along the
ground and my wife
stole my truck
and run away with my horse. Yeah.’ It put me to sleep.

Dragon’s
fart. That’s what the handbrake sounded like and it scared
the shit out of me. I didn’t know where I was
or which way was up.

Jack apologised. ‘You want to grab something
to eat, Wayne? Do you?’

I nodded and fished
my wallet out of my pack. I wasn’t quite
with it and I stumbled
getting down from the truck. Ended up on my arse in the gravel
in full sight of the
packed café.

‘Gosh. You all right Wayne? Did you hurt yourself? Did you?’
Jack said, and helped me to my feet.

I had to laugh. I know I went red as a baboon’s bum
but I had to laugh. Yeah, free show everybody. Roll up, roll up, come
and see Wayno the bouncing boy toss himself from
stationary trucks. I should have bowed.

The sun was high overhead. The day had heated up
while I slept.

One of the waitresses smiled at me, I’m
sure she had enjoyed the show. Chick about my age and a real honey. As it turned
out, she served me my two pies and a bottle of
Coke. I would have got her phone number if I hadn’t ripped
my wallet open. I had to use one of Mum’s fifty-dollar notes to pay for my food and a
great wash of guilty sads made my gut wobble on the inside.
What the bloody hell was I doing?

Jack went for a piss. I went for the payphone.
‘Your call could not be connected. Please
check the number and try again’
and a spooky faint voice behind it said something like ‘en double you are jay’.
I freaked and dialled
again. Come on Mum. Same message.
Jack was coming
out of the toilets wiping
his hands on his jeans.
I bolted past him into
the dunny. No matter
how hard I tried, I couldn’t pee.
I stood there for a minute
shaking my willy about
trying to encourage a flow but nothing happened. I ran back out and
realised I’d left my food and wallet
on the stand next to the phone. Idiot. Jack was waiting near my
open door munching on a sandwich.

‘I’ll give you a hand if you like, Wayne. Give me your
food and stuff,’ he said and wrestled
me until he had an armful.
He carted them up and laid them in a neat row on
the dash. Wallet, pie, pie, Coke.

‘You right then?’ he said. Looked like he was going to hold
my hand or something.

I nodded and flew up the steps.

Mate, those pies were good. I felt like a python at the end of three months’
hibernation. Nothing like a rat pie.
Jack and I talked on and off as the
sun did its disappearing act. Fade to black over paddocks of gold. My bum went numb.
He never asked me where
I was going or anything
like that and I’m glad. He’d been so honest with me that it would have been hard work to bullshit
my way out of it.

Jack said they grow a lot
of wheat along the Newell

Highway and it suddenly dawned on
me why Mum’s phone didn’t work. We were now in New South Wales and I hadn’t used the area code. Dipshit.
We were driving through little country towns and I was praying that Jack
would stop. Every town had a payphone lit up like the mirror in our bathroom and I watched them whiz by. My
bladder was going to burst.

‘Shit!’ Jack shouted, swerved and braked hard. All the hissing and groaning almost made me piss my pants. He got out and turned on his torch. I got out and turned on my fire hose. Relief or what?

I found him right down the back of the truck peering
at one of the wheels.

‘Sorry
about the language, Wayne,’
he said, and I scoffed.

‘Heard worse than that in church, Jack.’

‘Ran over one of those blessed porcupines. It was already dead, it was. Gosh they can make a mess.’

He pointed with his torch to one of the inside wheels
where a clump of echidna
spikes stuck out from the wall.
The wheel next to it was the same and the one behind.

‘No holes though. They don’t usually
make holes. Not tough enough for that, they aren’t. But sometimes they do.’

It felt like midnight
when we stopped again at another
truck stop. The air was warm and heavy.

‘This is it, Wayne. The end of the line, it is. I go up to the depot from here but it won’t get you any closer to the
city. You could hang around
here, you could.
Maybe get a ride
with one of these blokes or jump on the train,’
he said.

I grabbed my pack and climbed down the stairs.
I shook his hand and he slapped me on the shoulder. ‘Look after yourself.’

I thanked him and walked to the station.
Wacol. The phone on the platform was lit like all the others I’d seen
but my heart sank when I got close enough to see it had its
guts hanging out. A train arrived at 11:33 and I
jumped on. Only one bloke sat in my carriage, looking pretty seedy with his chin resting on his chest.
Jeez, I hoped it
was going the right way. What was I talking
about? I didn’t
even know where I was going. It may be stupid but right
then the thing that I missed the most was the mower shed
at the back of the flat. All the cobwebs and cat’s piss. Seriously. Not my bed or my mum or even the telly, just that
scungy shed. Maybe it was the fact that no-one
ever went out there except me. I guess that makes it my joint. I don’t know, but I wished that I was there right then.

The bloke snapped awake like he’d had a bad dream. He
gripped the seat and stood up. We got off at Roma
Street. The bloke staggered off platform number nine and rode the escalator
to a new level. I slung my bag on my back
and followed him along a wide corridor where our footfalls echoed. He fished in his pocket,
drew out his wallet and strode for the ticket barrier. He awkwardly
showed the fold of his wallet to the sleepy looking bloke in
the booth. He didn’t stop
and the bloke in the booth
rubbed the stubble on his jaw and nodded. It was now or
never and, thinking on my feet, I stopped in the light of
the booth, looked the bloke in the eyes and smiled.

‘My ticket’s right at the bottom of my pack,’ I
said and shrugged my bag off my back.

The man in the booth grunted and waved me through.

‘Don’t worry about
it, mate.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

I wasted no time in striding
out onto the street. Just over
the road was the second biggest police station in the
world. Police headquarters. I nearly
crashed into a letterbox on the footpath.
What a place to break the law!

A lone seagull ghosted
high above the street, squawking pathetically to itself, its wings gold in the reflected street-light. It flew like it was drunk. Drunk and lost,
looking for a place
to land.

There was a park behind the station. Fresh
looking and newly built,
it offered me a seat and sanctuary.

It hit me that I was halfway
across the country, in a city
that wasn’t my own. I’d gotten there on a confused
whim. The whim had run out and all that was left was confusion.
Why? Why did I nick off? To prove
something to someone, I supposed. Mostly to get up Mum’s nose.

A feeling started clawing at my tummy. It was like being hungry, and I probably
was, but it made my arms and legs
feel heavy. I heard
the seagull again,
its harsh cawing ‘braw, braw, braw’ bouncing
off the empty street and concrete buildings. It was the loneliest
sound on earth. Sitting on a park bench
lit by streetlights, in a strange city,
the curtain that was across my heart got ripped aside. That
feeling in my tummy was loneliness. I missed Kez and
Mum and Den. I missed Dad and my bike. I missed the
Merrimans Creek hill and everything about the place where I have lived all my life. I wanted to go home.

At the top of Roma Street
was a row of telephones—lit up so they looked like the gates of heaven to me. I slung
my pack in the disabled
booth and unzipped
the front pocket where I kept my ciggies and my wallet. My wallet
wasn’t there. I ripped open the top zip and pulled my clothes out. Shit, shit, shit. No wallet. I grabbed a big
handful of hair and pulled until it hurt. Stamped
my foot. I could picture it on the dash of Jack’s truck.

I had to ring her. ‘Your call could not be connected . . .’
Slam! Shit, shit, shit. Area code then number. Ring, ring. It rang forever and I realised it was probably well after
midnight.

‘Hel—’ Click. Boop boop boop.

‘Mum!’

I slammed the phone
down and burst into tears.
Big silent sobs that made my body shake.
Game over. It wasn’t
funny any more. All the life in me fell out through my guts and dribbled into the gutter. I started
praying. I told God that if he got me out of this one I’d be his mate. I
promised him I’d give up the smokes.

‘Hey mate, you okay?’

I sniffed hard, wiped my face on my arm and turned to see the bright
light of a torch in my face.
It was a woman’s voice,
a hard woman. I blinked
and wiped my face again.

‘What’s your name, mate?’
she asked.

‘Wayne Armond.’

‘Where are you from Wayne?’

‘Chisholm.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Near Fairleigh. In Melbourne.’

‘You’re a long way from home.’

I nodded and she took the torch down so I could see her uniform and the bloke standing beside
her. ‘Yeah. I’ve lost
my wallet.’

‘Oh. Have you? Where did you lose it?’

‘I didn’t really lose it. I left it in a truck.’

‘In a truck?
Where are you staying tonight,
Wayne?’

I shrugged and stuffed my clothes back
in the pack.

‘How about you come with us and we see if we can find
your wallet?’

I nodded. They took me past police headquarters to
another police station in the back of a divisional van. It smelled like disinfectant and a faint
hint of vomit. Pretty
cosy.

Mum wasn’t angry. She blubbered at me down the phone
saying she was sorry. Senior Constable
Angela Gray and
Constable David Waddington were more pissed with me than Mum was. Gave me
a big lecture about the dangers
of hitchhiking and not letting
people know where you’re
going and that. They didn’t
find Jack Gobstopper
and they didn’t find my wallet. They showed me how to make a reverse-charge phone call and let me sleep in their
sickbay. I had to smoke outside and they gave
me
so much shit about it that I had half a ciggy and chucked the rest out.
Forty-eight left in the pack and I chucked them out too.
There God, see, I quit. They drove me to the airport at
eight o’clock that
morning, in the back of the divisional
van. Dave gave me twenty dollars for lunch and slapped me
on the back. Told me he didn’t want to see me again.

I worked out the hard way that I’m shit scared of flying. I was hanging
on to the armrest so tight that my stump ached. If I had have been flying to Perth instead of Melbourne I reckon I would have evolved another
hand. One of the hostesses stopped me on the way back from my twelfth visit to the toilet.

‘Going for the world record? The most trips to the toilet in one interstate flight?’

If she hadn’t been so gorgeous I might have thought of a smart-arse comeback.

‘Have you been listening to the music?’
she asked.

I shook my head. She led me down the aisle to my seat
and showed me how to make it recline. She pulled out a
set of headphones from the pocket
in front of me and put
them on my head gently. She was wearing
vanilla.

‘Try channel sixteen,’
she said.

Rasping guitar
that I recognised straightaway. ‘Feral

Pigs! Thanks.’

She giggled and held her finger to her lips. I shrugged. Mum and Dad both came to the
airport. Baboon smiles all round. I
apologised and hugged
them both. Mum cried a bit and Dad pecked me on the cheek. No shit.
Pecked me like a chook, his face felt like sandpaper. Sometimes he tries too hard.

In the car park, Mum’s Hyundai sat next to Dad’s ute
and next to the ute was a little red BMW sports car with a
suction cup sticker in the back window that read: ‘I’d rather be an old fart than a young dickhead’. Yeah, point taken. Dickhead.

Mum finally gave me the full treatment in the car. I felt
like shit but I heard what she was saying.
No respect for her or the work she does to keep me on the rails. Let down.
Pissed off. Sorry. Sorry she couldn’t
be a
better mum. I told her she was the best mum I’d ever had. She whumped me with the back
of her hand and nearly collected the bumper on a green
Volkswagen beetle.

A big vase of
red roses sat on the kitchen
bench. I couldn’t
remember the last time I
saw flowers in the house. Yes I could—Mum brought a heap home
from the hospital after my accident.
They looked beautiful
but out of place.

‘Nice flowers, Mum.’

She nodded and smiled.

From Dad? I don’t know.
The more I thought about it
the less likely that seemed. Dad’s
as romantic as your average garden rake.

‘From Richo,’ she said and flushed.

‘Richo?’

‘Mmmm. Came over the
other night to wish me a happy
New Year.’

And it was relief
that I felt. Relief that Richo was interested in Mum and that Mum was interested
in him. That she could be friendly with Dad and still have a life.
Only took her eight years to work that out. She’s like lightning,
my mum.

‘Why did you run away?’ She asked. I
shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

She shrugged and mocked me, ‘I dunno.’

I smiled. ‘I ran away to try and find myself.’ She looked hard at me.

I stared at the flowers.

‘Did it work?’
she asked.

I shrugged again. ‘I dunno.’ She grunted.

‘I honestly dunno,’ I said. ‘But
as soon as I do, I’ll let you
know.’

•

Some things never change:
Sale of the Century,
lamb chops, peas and mashed potatoes,
the songs they
play on the radio, my underwear. I had a long shower that night and
I felt like I was home. Home but not settled. I wanted to phone
Kez and tell her what had happened, let her know that
she was the one I wanted to be with, not Mandy. Mandy
was a creek I had to cross to get to the ocean of Kerry. I wanted
to phone but I was terrified.
I lay on my bed and tried
to work out what I would
say to her. I
imagined her in front of me and I apologised. That was as far as I got before
I fell asleep
and she flitted
nicely in and out
of my dreams.

I got a strange
parcel in the mail from
Jacobus Goudswaard the next day, with a note that
looked as though it had been written
left-handed by a right-handed
five-year-old.

Mum had to read it for me. ‘It says:
“Dear Wayne, so nice to meet you on the other day. You left your wallet in my truck and you had catched a train by the time I saw it.
Sorry
I missed you. Hope you get this.
Best of luck. Jack.”’ Everything was in it: my student card, library card, a condom, a few receipts,
and one hundred and forty-four dollars and thirty-five cents. I gave the money to Mum.

That’s how she found out I’d taken it.

I survived. But only just.

Den phoned just before
lunch. ‘They found you then?’ he asked. ‘Where did you get to? Your mum phoned here and
she was panicking, mate.’

‘Went for a quick trip to Brisbane.’

‘Brisbane? Bullshit . . .’

‘Nah, serious.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘How did you pull up after, you know, Pico and Griz and that?’ I asked. He was quiet for a long time.

‘Yeah, okay. Meet me at Game Zone?’

‘Yeah, maybe. Is Kerry there?’

There was a moment of silence.
Just a little moment. Enough time for some
hand signals and a bit of head shaking.

‘Nup. She’s not home. Don’t know where she is,’ Den said.

She was there all right.

‘Okay. I’ll see
you at Game Zone. Half an hour,’ he said.

‘Yep.’

He hung up. I listened to the phone booping in my ear for
a minute. She didn’t have to talk to me; I just wanted
to know if she was there. If she was okay. I wanted to tell her
that I missed her. I wanted
to tell her that she was the biggest reason I had to come back from Brisbane. I bolted
for the door.

‘Where are you off to?’ Mum asked in her
matron’s voice.

‘Just going to Game Zone,’ I said and realised that’s
what I’d said to her just before I
nicked off. ‘I mean . . . I’m going to meet Den. I’ll be back for tea.’

She stood there
with half a smile on her
face.

‘Promise?’

‘Yeah. Promise.’

She flicked her hand at me and grumbled
something under her breath.

An old couple
live in the flat next door to ours and they
have about a thousand roses growing in their front yard.

Not bad going really considering the front garden
is as big as your average grave plot.
Some of them were in full flower and I hunted through and found a red one that was just
beginning to open. I looked
at the front door of their flat and smelled the rose. One swift yank and the rose
would have been mine but I couldn’t
do it. It didn’t feel right. I walked in and rang the doorbell—weak electronic music chimed inside and the door sprung open.

‘Oh, hello,’
the old lady said and smiled.

‘Hi, I live next door . . .’

‘Yes, Wayne isn’t it?’

‘That’s right,’ I
said and puzzled
at
how she knew my name. We had
been neighbours for seven years. The
mystery wasn’t how she knew my name; it was how I didn’t know her name.

‘All this time living next door and I still don’t know your name,’ I said and held out my hand. ‘I’m Wayne Armond.’
She chuckled and held my fingers. ‘Hello
Wayne, I’m Ivy Pritchard.’

She smiled
and looked over her
shoulder. ‘Ted, it’s

Wayne from next door.’

The man with the smiling
grey moustache who’d been
next door for a million
years appeared behind Ivy.

I held my hand out to him. ‘Wayne Armond,’ I said.

He took my hand. His skin was warm, loose and soft
and his smile was genuine.
His teeth looked like they were
his own.

‘G’day Wayne, Ted Pritchard. What can we do for you?’
I felt rude. The first time I’d ever spoken
to my neighbours and I came asking for stuff.
Rude and awkward.

‘I was . . . looking
at your roses and I wondered if I could pick a couple for . . . for my . . . for a present.’

Ted grunted and threw his head back.

Ivy smiled. ‘Of course, Wayne. I’ll grab the secateurs.’
She vanished into the flat. Ted looked at his slippers then walked outside
shaking his head. ‘You don’t have to ask, Wayne. You can help yourself.’

‘Thank you.’

Ivy returned and began to hunt through
the flowers.

‘What colour?’ Ted asked. He smiled. ‘Red, of course.’

‘Red would be great. Just one or two.’

Ivy and Ted picked through their rose bushes
and gathered five beautiful red roses. Ivy darted inside
with them.

Ted looked across the neighbourhood. ‘Might get a bit
of rain.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Might.’

I looked at him
and thought that he’d probably
know.

‘That would be nice,’ I said.

Ivy came out
with the flowers’ stems wrapped in
aluminium foil. ‘There
you are, Wayne.’

I thanked her and Ted.

Ted grunted again.
‘Anytime, Wayne.
Help yourself or come
over and get the secateurs.’

I walked
onto the street, waved and thanked them again.

‘Good luck,’ Ivy said and smiled.

I smiled to myself, looked at the roses and then up the street. Griz was coming out of our
driveway. My smile faded and I felt tight in the guts.

He stopped in his tracks
and pointed over his shoulder.

‘Your mum just said that you’d gone to Game Zone.’

I looked at the roses and felt like a big girl. It’s hard to
hold flowers and be tough.

‘Yeah, I had to get some flowers,’ I said, and he smiled. There was a moment of icy silence. ‘What do you want?’

I asked.

He shrugged. ‘I got you something,’ he said, gently reaching into his jacket.
He couldn’t get hold of what was
in there.

‘Ow, shit,’ he yelped and pulled his hand out. ‘Bit me, little bugger.’

There was a smile on his face and he unzipped his jacket a bit. I took a step back.

From the ‘V’ of his zip popped a little head. A puppy.
All shiny black nose, golden fur,
pink tongue and big brown eyes; its ears pointing to the sky.

Griz levered it out and shoved it at me, its legs kicking in the air.

‘Nah, I don’t want it,’ I said, and backed away another step.

The puppy looked at me. Its mouth snapped
shut and its head tilted to the side.

‘Where did you get it?’ I asked.

‘My dog had pups. I picked out the best one for you.’
I looked at him suspiciously. ‘Why?’

‘Well, I know you haven’t got a dog and I know you like
them. You’re always sticking
up for that fat labrador at school
and that.’

‘I couldn’t keep a dog here.’

‘Yeah you could. It’s
bigger than my joint out the back. Just run a bit of a fence up the side
. .
.’

‘Nah.’

‘Yeah, come on. Take it please.’
He stepped closer
and swapped the dog into his other hand. ‘It’s my way to say sorry.’

‘Sorry? What for?’

He rubbed his nose and looked
at the footpath. ‘For
cutting your hand off,’ he said.

I laughed, and he jumped.
‘You didn’t cut my friggin’ hand off. I did that all by myself.’

He shook his head. ‘Nah, I turned
the tap off.’ He looked at my face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and shoved
the puppy at me.

My head rattled with thoughts. Mum would kill me. It takes
guts to say sorry.
What would it eat? Dog food, der. It was an accident. I could
take it for walks and that. Probably piss and shit everywhere.

‘It wasn’t your fault.
Dad parked the wheelbarrow
on the hose. It just happened.’

Griz’s shoulders dropped.
‘Yeah, but I turned the tap off.’

‘It happened,’ I growled. ‘Don’t beat yourself up about
it. It was an accident. Shit like that happens.’

He looked me in the eyes and frowned.
‘Jesus, I shit myself when I heard all the screaming and that.’

I chuckled. ‘I bet you did.’

‘Yeah and I ran into some guy’s joint and just grabbed
his phone and dialled triple zero to get an ambulance.
They asked me all these questions and I’m
going “Just fucking hurry up” and that, and the chick on the phone says “We’ll be there quicker
if you tell us where
you are” like a real smart-arse.’

I laughed and he smiled. I took the pup from him.

‘Thanks,’ he said and wiped his hand on his pants.

‘Thank you,’
I said.

He patted the pup in my hand and jogged off.

I stood there for a full minute, trying to get my head
around what had just happened.
Griz gave me a dog. I
patted it with my stump. It went floppy and its legs hung
down, chin rested on my outstretched fingers. I knew I’d be able
to talk Mum into letting me keep it. I wanted
to
feed it and bath it and play with it and drag it around on a lead.

I half jogged to the Humes’
place—pup in one hand,
flowers under my other arm—and rapped on the glass
panel beside the door. I heard Kez yell from inside that
she would get it. I smiled and put the puppy to my mouth. It smelled clean and sort of sweet as I kissed it and quickly tucked it behind my back. Kez ripped the door open and
her face hardened into a frown when she saw it was me.

‘Hi,’ I said, and shrugged. ‘Just
me. Happy New Year.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Um. I came around to . . . give you these,’ I said.

She looked at me puzzled and I must have looked like
a retard, shaking my shoulder
at her, trying to get her to
take the flowers from my armpit.

Her face melted from a
frown to a smile she was desperately trying to hide. Her eyes watered.
She took the flowers and looked over her shoulder. ‘You ran away from home?’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘To Brisbane?’

‘Yeah. Pretty stupid really.’

She laughed. ‘Yep. You all right now?’

‘Yeah, fine. Fine.’ I turned
slowly. ‘I’d like you to meet
my little mate.’

She sucked an open-mouthed breath
and came outside.

‘A puppy!’ she sighed. ‘It’s so cute! Where did you get it?’

‘From Griz.’

She stepped back. ‘The guy who beat Den up?’

I nodded. ‘It’s a long story. Can I come in?’

‘Yeah, I s’pose.’

She led me down the hall to her room and closed the door
behind us. I put the pup on the floor and she sat on the bed with her arms crossed and cooed at it.

‘Well,’ I said.
‘A long time ago there was this boy who worked with his dad . . .’

She chuckled and I told her the story. Told her how Griz
turned the tap off and phoned the ambulance. Told
her about feeling like my life was stuffed when I lost my hand. Told her why Mandy kissed
me at the beach.

She uncrossed her arms and I sat on the chair
at her desk.

‘Why did you run away?’ she asked.

I sighed. ‘For lots of reasons.
I thought I’d wrecked things with you. My mum and dad looked like they were
getting back together and I didn’t think I could cope with
that.’

‘Are they getting
back together?’

‘Don’t think so. Richo gave Mum some
flowers . . .’

She oohed and touched
the foil around the roses on
her bed. ‘So it wasn’t an original idea to give me flowers.’

My shoulders dropped.
‘No ...I guess not.’

My heart started beating
in my throat. I had to tell her, even if it killed me. There was no other way.

‘I think you’re beautiful, Kez. I really
love hanging out with
you and that. I was sitting
on a park bench in Brisbane and dreaming about home. I was wishing
I was with you.’

She bent and picked
up the puppy. She handed it to me and kissed me on the cheek. I hugged her, kissed
her forehead and thanked her. Said sorry for any mistakes I’d made. Told her I had to get going. She grabbed my sleeve
and dragged me towards the bed.

‘Nah, I’ve got to go,’ I said and tried to pull away.

Her shoulders dropped. ‘You don’t love me,’ she said,
and poked her bottom lip out.

‘Yeah I do. I do. I’ve just got to go—I told Mum I’d be
home for tea and she’s a bit sensitive about where I am
and that at the moment.’

Kez grunted. ‘That’s fair.’

Den and Griz were playing
a game of air hockey. One minute they’re beating the shit out of each other, next
minute they’re having a game.
I don’t understand the way that works. You wouldn’t exactly call them mates. Griz had just
sunk the puck to make it five-all and Den was sweating, I could see it glistening on his lip. They took a
breather and I showed Den the pup.

‘Gorgeous. Where’d you get it?’ I
nodded at Griz.

Den, mouth open,
pointed at the big bloke. Griz grunted, nodded and looked at his boot.

I told Den I had to go and he shrugged
and went back to
the table. I stuffed the bottom of my T-shirt into my
pants and lowered the puppy
down the neck hole. It scrabbled against my belly until
I laughed out loud and Maru
looked at me as if I was going spacko.

Mum had just dished up tea when I got home. I came into the
kitchen and poked my belly at her. The pup hadn’t
moved since I put it there and the bulge in my T-shirt made me look pregnant.

‘Mum. I’ve got
something to tell you.’

She looked at me and smiled.
‘You’re not?’
The pup licked me. It tickled and I laughed.
Mum took a step back. ‘What is it?’

I untucked my T-shirt
and held the little dog out to her.
She rolled her eyes and groaned. ‘Where
did you get that?’

‘One of my mates gave it to me. It was a present.’

I thought about telling
her the story of Griz but
changed my mind. What would that
gain? It was an accident. Can’t change the past. I was all right with that.

She stepped close and looked
in the pup’s eyes. It licked at her face and she chuckled. She put her hands on her
hips and sighed.
‘Where are you going to keep it? They
get bigger, you know.’

‘Yeah, I know. I’m going to fence in the backyard
and that.’

She smiled and patted
the back of its head with her finger. ‘Has it got a name?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Its name is . . .’

I looked at the pup’s face and then at its belly. It was a boy.

‘Um . . . Ernie.’

Mum snorted. ‘Why Ernie?’
I shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

She shrugged back.
‘I dunno,’ she teased.

After tea, I went out the front and played with Ernie on the footpath. If I stayed close to him and kept calling his name, he followed. It’d
take
me three months to walk him around the block at that rate. I walked him past Ted and Ivy’s flat and looked at their front window. It started
to rain. Ted appeared in the doorway.

‘What have you got there?’ he asked and chuckled.

‘It’s a puppy,’ I said and thought
that I probably sounded like a three-year-old.

Ted just
laughed. ‘Bit of a cutie,’
he said, turned inside and closed the door.

I picked up my dog and looked across
my street and into
the sky. The rain prickled nicely
on my face. It was getting heavy. Ted was right. I decided to cut a lap of the
block, get soaked, then go home.

acknowledgements

The following people made this book possible
through their sweat, their stories and
their big hearts: David Alldridge, Liam, Shaun, Jim, Joan, Belle,
Jennie and Bryce
Gardner, Darren Pilcher,
Jason
and Andrew Curry,
Pauleigh Gardiner, John Marsden,
Ron and Vonnie Ipsen, Dr
Darra Murphy, Richard Gubbins,
Geoff Block, June Reviére, Stuart Tripp, Darren Smith, Peter Little, the Gippsland Men, Shane Henry and all the young fellas. You’re all legends.

WHITE UTE DREAMING BY SCOT GARDNER

Dear Wayne,

Through the jungle I would slash, with my sword I’d crash and bash. All
the demons I could smash

Just for one good body pash. Anon

When hot notes start arriving
in Wayne’s locker, and his
girlfriend didn’t write them, he doesn’t have to be a genius to work out that
his life is about to get complicated. And then Wayne’s girlfriend
moves house, leaving Wayne alone with the anonymous
note-writer and a mad-arsed,
yellow dog …

To find out more about Wayne Armond and Scot Gardner check out Scot’s website at:

http://www.scotgardner.com/

or email scot@scotgardner.com