by Mark Brandi
The silly bitch.
He should’ve stuck up for her.
* * *
Ronnie moved quickly ahead of Ben in the hallway, almost running, like he forgot something. He called out from the lounge room, ‘Wait a sec, just putting the telly on.’
He was fiddling with the remote control and the screen went from loud snow, then to black, then back to life. It was something about the ocean.
‘Bloody remote, useless things.’ He threw it on the couch. ‘Take a seat, mate.’
Ben noticed the beer bottles were all gone.
‘Make yourself comfy and I’ll get you that drink. You must be thirsty after all that work.’
Ben sat down and decided he would drink whatever Ronnie gave him as quickly as he could. A shark was on the telly, a white pointer. A man was in a cage in scuba gear, watching it swim by.
Ronnie returned from the kitchen with a can of sarsaparilla. Ben hated sars.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
Ronnie sat down on the edge of the coffee table. Ben cracked open the can and drank. It tasted like old, sweet liquorice. It wasn’t that cold, like it had only just gone in the fridge.
‘So here’s your ten bucks.’ Ronnie passed him a ten-dollar note, folded between his fingers. It was one of the new plastic ones. ‘Are you saving for something then, or what?’
Ben looked at the note. It had a picture of a ship from the First Fleet. Mr Burke had been talking about it at school, even though in grade five they’d done heaps on it because of the bicentennial. It was all about convicts and shit like that. It was so boring.
‘Um, maybe some runners. Nikes.’
Ben pushed the note into his pocket, took another swig of the sars and watched the telly. The shark was gone now and there was an old man with a foreign accent talking about diving for abalone. Ben heard a car drive slowly past outside.
Ronnie didn’t say anything for a while, but Ben could tell he wasn’t watching the telly. He could feel his eyes on him and hear the slow whistle of air through his nose. He took another deep drink of the sars.
‘Nikes, eh? Pretty fancy.’
Ben nodded. He’d almost finished the can. The man on telly was diving underwater for the abalone. He didn’t have any scuba gear and Ben wondered if the shark was there somewhere.
‘So, the girl who lived here. She was a bit of a hottie, wasn’t she?’
Ben shrugged. That shark had to be there somewhere.
‘Y’know why she did it?’
Ben kept his eyes on the telly. He’d already told him he didn’t. He shook his head.
Abalone.
‘Her old man. Her dad.’ Ronnie was whispering. ‘He was giving her one. Fucking her real regular, y’know?’
Ben’s ears went hot, then his face too. The can crunched a little in his hand. The man was back in the cage.
Abalone.
Abalone.
‘The boys down the mine told me. She was a real hottie, they said. And he was giving it to her proper. Wasn’t the only one, by all reports.’
Ben downed the last of the sars. It was warm and thick on his tongue.
By all reports.
Old men and the sea.
Old men and abalone.
Abalone.
‘A real fuckin hottie.’ Ronnie’s breaths had gone all deep and slow. He shifted a bit forward. ‘Couldn’t blame him, they reckon.’ Deep breaths. Deep and slow and rough. ‘She was ripe for it. Ripe for it. That’s what they say.’
Ben’s ears throbbed.
‘What do you reckon? You musta seen her. Did ya like her?
Like her tits?’
Ben shrugged. His whole body was on fire.
Abalone. Old men. Old men and the sea.
His dick was hard in his shorts.
By all reports.
Abalone. Abalone. Abalone.
Nothing could stop it. Not even the shark.
Ronnie laughed. ‘I reckon ya did, mate. But it’s all right, I’ll keep it a secret.’ He rustled Ben’s hair, softly with his fingers. ‘And I’ll stop asking questions.’
He brushed Ben’s cheek with the back of his hand. His skin felt cool. Cool and smooth.
‘Ah! I nearly forgot that other thing I promised ya.’
He reached under the coffee table and pulled out a bunch of magazines, stacked in a pile. He flicked through until he found the one he wanted. ‘Mmmm, yeah. Here.’
He held up the cover of the magazine so Ben could see. It had a naked woman and a man on the front, and the title was in another language – German or something. The man had a thick moustache and he was behind her, holding on to her bum with a strange expression on his red, sweaty face, like he was concentrating hard. She had her hands tied to a wooden bench, with her big boobs hanging down like balloons. She looked like she was in pain, her mouth wide open. Ben looked at her boobs and her bum up in the air and his dick started going stiff again.
Ronnie rolled it up and passed it to him. ‘Don’t tell your mum or anyone, right?’
Ben grabbed hold of the mag. His head swam and he went to drink the sars, but forgot there was none left. His mouth felt dry and sticky. On the telly, the shark was back and was circling the man in the cage.
Ronnie smiled at him. ‘Let me know if you like that one.’
Ben nodded.
He couldn’t believe what he’d heard. He just couldn’t. But he was really looking forward to showing Fab what he’d got.
Eleven
The front door was the best option. Down the hallway, straight into the bedroom.
‘Is that you, Ben?’
Mum called out as soon as he came in. Shit. She was in the kitchen. Not bad, but backyard or laundry would have been better.
‘Yep.’ He took a few careful steps down the hallway.
‘How did you go?’ It sounded like she had an old movie on the black and white telly.
‘Good. Just gotta go to the toilet.’ The toilet? Fuck. He just blurted it out.
‘Okay,’ she said.
He rushed into the bathroom, which was between his room and his parents’, and shut the door behind him. He looked at his face in the mirror. It was bright red. His eyes were glassy.
Daisy. Her dad. Could it be true?
It all seemed like a strange dream, like something he’d imagined. Maybe Ronnie made it up. It was probably just a joke and Ronnie would laugh about it next time. He was just playing a trick on him and he would laugh that he had him fooled.
There was no way – it just couldn’t be true. Dads wouldn’t do that to their daughters. No way.
He flushed the toilet, ran the tap for a second, then slunk into his room. He wouldn’t have long til the movie would be over. Before she’d wanna talk. She always liked to talk, especially when Dad wasn’t home.
He hid it behind the wardrobe. There was a gap of a few inches there and it slid down to the floor, out of sight. He sat on his bed, looking at the wardrobe’s dark wooden doors, imagining all the possible scenarios.
His mum wanting to shift the furniture around.
His dad looking for something he’d lost.
A sudden spring clean.
No – he had to hide it somewhere else. Somewhere outside. Anywhere inside the house was too risky.
He waited til the telly clicked off. He knew that when the movie ended, his mum would let out a long sigh, turn on the kettle, then go to the toilet.
She always did the same thing. Like clockwork.
* * *
He rolled up the magazine and pushed it down the back of his shorts, right down into his undies, and pulled his t-shirt over the top. He looked in the mirror and it poked through a bit, but at first glance you wouldn’t know.
As soon as he heard the toilet seat go down, he walked quickly from his room, through the laundry, and out the back door. The magazine was scratching his arse, so he pulled it out and carried it like a relay baton. His heart beat fast, just having it out in the open air like that, even though no one c
ould see.
Sunny followed him down the back and behind the shed. He wished that Sunny wasn’t watching him, even though he was just a dog. It seemed like he could tell something was up, the way he was sniffing around his feet.
Between the fence and the back of the shed there was a narrow gap about a metre wide. It was where his dad kept a whole lot of old steel and crap that his mum reckoned should go to the tip. No one ever went down there, not even his dad; it was full of red-backs, rust and sharp edges – the perfect spot.
But, before he hid it, he should just have a look. Just a quick one, so he knew what was inside. Just for a minute.
It couldn’t hurt.
* * *
Almost every page was full of naked women. Lots of them had dicks in their mouths, sometimes two at a time. The dicks were huge, thick and veiny and the men were all hairy as. Ben thought about his own hairless dick and how small it was compared to those ones. He wondered if it would get bigger. He hoped like anything that it would.
The women mostly had blonde hair, except for a few, but pretty much all of them had huge boobs. There were close-up photos of their fannies. Ben had never seen that before. They had a patch of soft-looking hair and were all pink and fleshy looking.
Some of their fannies looked wet and slippery. Some had big dicks poking inside their fannies. Some had thick, white cum smeared on their faces, their boobs, and in their mouths.
Ben hadn’t come before. Fab hadn’t either and he reckoned it didn’t happen til you were older. Once, they both had a wank at the same time when they went camping, to see if they could come. But it didn’t work and they never ever talked about it again. Ben had noticed though that Fab’s dick was bigger than his, longer and a bit thicker. It also still had the skin on top, which only a couple of kids at school had, as far as he knew.
Once, when Ben had wanked in the bathroom, a bit of clear liquid had come out, but that was it. He wondered if he might be infertile, but he didn’t say anything to Fab. He thought if he wanked harder it might happen, eventually.
He turned the pages and started to feel woozy. His mouth fell open and his breaths became deep. In some of the photos the women had a dick inside their fanny and another in their mouth, their tongue all over it. They all looked like they were right into it. The men looked kind of angry though – with red sweaty faces and serious eyes. Almost like they weren’t enjoying it that much.
Ben felt a tingle and his dick was as hard as a rock – he needed a wank something terrible. But it would have to be fast, much faster than his mum could drink a cup of tea. He didn’t think that would be a problem.
He looked around but no one could see him there. He held the mag in one hand and pulled down his shorts. His dick looked about a quarter of the size of the ones in the photos, the eye staring back at him all pink and shiny. It didn’t have any veins in it, not like the thick ones in the photos. He concentrated on a curly-haired woman with two big dicks in her mouth and started to pull.
Then he heard the back door squeal open.
‘Ben!’
His breathing stopped and he was stuck, frozen, holding his dick, with his shorts at his ankles.
Mum.
He could hear her coming up the path.
He couldn’t move. This was the end. She’d probably die from a heart attack and he’d be there, paralysed, clutching his dick. Then his dad would kill him and probably go to jail for it.
He tried to roll up the mag but his fingers were shaking and the pages scrunched. He dropped it on the ground and pulled up his shorts, his dick poking through the nylon like a beak.
‘Ben! Are you out there?’
Footsteps. Crunching grass. Closer.
‘Coming, Mum!’ his voice cracked. He picked up the mag, rolled it up as best he could and shoved it in a steel pipe.
He stepped out from behind the shed, but tripped on an old metal box, scraping his knee on a length of old guttering. ‘Shit!’
His mum stood a few metres away with her hands on her hips, frowning, with Sunny panting at her feet.
‘What are you doing back there?’ she said. Then she smiled a bit and Ben wondered why.
‘Nothing.’
He stepped slowly toward the house, his body angled away from her view, as he counted backwards through his twelve times tables.
* * *
Ben held on to his secret til Monday lunchtime. Til they were playing two-square in the yard.
Fab’s eyes lit up. ‘Where’d you get it?’
‘I found it.’
‘Where?’
‘Out the tip.’
Fab whacked the tennis ball into his square. ‘Yeah, sure.’
Ben batted back defensively. ‘I did!’
Ben’s voice went shrill and he knew Fab would know he was lying.
‘Bullshit.’ Fab smacked the ball into the left corner of Ben’s square and it bounced across the asphalt of the netball court, to where some girls sat in a circle. It hit Melissa Hickey in the back and all the girls in the circle turned around.
‘Go get it,’ Fab said.
‘Nah, you go get it. You hit it.’ Ben didn’t want to run over there with the girls watching him.
‘You know the rules, loser fetches.’
Melissa’s twin, Jodie, picked up the tennis ball. The Hickeys were definitely Jehovah’s, but they were also definitely different to Kevin Hester. They looked normal and dressed normal. Jodie had really big boobs and Fab reckoned he’d seen them after school one time. He’d dared her to flash em and she pulled her t-shirt right up. Ben wasn’t sure if it was true, but he liked to believe it was. They were huge, Fab said, and he reckoned he might become a Jehovah too one day.
‘All right,’ Fab crossed his arms. ‘I’ll get it, but you gotta tell me where you really got that mag. And you gotta show it to me.’ Fab was off before Ben could answer. He watched him jog over to the girls. He stood there with his hands on hips, then stuck his hand out for the ball. Jodie threw it but it missed by miles and all the girls laughed at her. Fab ran after it and threw the ball back to Ben.
‘You seen Pokey?’ Ben said.
Fab’s face went a bit tight. ‘C’mon, serve.’
‘He’ll get ya eventually.’
Fab frowned, his eyes dark. ‘Just serve, will ya? Bell’s gonna go soon.’
Ben tapped the ball into Fab’s square. ‘He’ll work it out, y’know.’
Fab knocked the ball back to Ben’s left side. ‘I had to try something. I’m sick of him. And it nearly worked, didn’t it?’
* * *
It was Friday after school when Ben showed him. They were out the back, behind the shed. Ben didn’t feel safe shifting it from there, even though he was starting to think it was a shit spot, that it would probably get wet when it rained.
Fab couldn’t believe it.
‘Fuuuuck...’ he breathed. ‘Look at that!’ He pointed at a woman getting it from three men.
‘Be quiet will ya, I don’t want Mum to come out like last time.’
‘Fuuuck...’ Fab held the mag like it was something fragile, precious.
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘My cousin Marco has some Playboys and that, but nothing like this.’ Fab slowly turned the pages. ‘Fuuuuck.’
It was hot behind the shed and Ben was shit-scared his mum would find out. Plus, he was worried about spiders.
He reached for the mag. ‘C’mon, that’s enough I reckon.’
‘Just a sec.’ Fab pulled away, his eyes as wide as Ben ever saw. ‘Whoa, what is this shit?’
Ben only got a glimpse of it. A woman. A girl. She was young. A man and a horse. She had her hand on one and her mouth on the other. Ben grabbed the mag off Fab and rolled it up, his hands wet with sweat.
Fab laughed, but it wasn’t his normal laugh, more like he forced it. ‘There’s weird stuff in there,’ he said.
‘Hadn’t seen that bit.’ Ben felt his face go hot and he pushed the mag back in the pipe. ‘C’mon, let’s go.�
�
Ben turned and climbed back slowly along the fence line, over the scraps of metal and sharp steel.
‘Watch ya step,’ he said.
‘So, who gave it to you?’
‘I told ya. I found it.’
‘Stop talkin shit.’
‘I did!’ His voice went shrill again. Jesus Christ.
‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll tell Jodie Hickey that you like her.’
Ben stopped and turned around. ‘Just get stuffed, will ya?’
‘You like her big pillow tits and her Jehovah ways. They’ve got no telly, so she’ll be raring to go. Nothing else to do.’
Ben laughed. ‘Rack off.’ He kept moving across the steel.
‘C’mon, just tell me. I won’t tell anyone. Promise.’
‘Nah.’ Ben shook his head.
‘Wait a minute...’ Fab stopped. ‘I know.’
Ben turned. ‘What?’
‘It’s that guy up the road, isn’t it?’
‘Who?’
‘Ronnie with the Statesman. Your boss.’ Fab nodded and smiled like a shit. ‘He gave it to ya, didn’t he?’
‘Nah.’
Fab’s smile widened and he crossed his arms. ‘Yeah, he did.’
Ben leaned against the fence. ‘Okay, yeah. So what? He said he might give me some more too.’
‘No shit?’
‘Yeah. Don’t tell anyone, but.’
‘Nah, course not. When are you goin back?’
Ben shrugged. ‘Maybe this weekend.’ He looked at the ground between the steel and timber, to where a trail of bull ants streamed on an unknown mission. ‘He’s a bit funny though.’
‘What do ya mean?’
‘Said some weird things.’
‘About what?’
‘Um... I dunno. Nothin really. He just looks at me a bit funny.’
‘What? You reckon he’s a perve or something? Like Jimmy Shine?’
‘Dunno. Don’t think so. He doesn’t look like one.’
Fab smiled. ‘Well, whatever happens, just make sure you get one for me.’
‘Piss off, will ya?’
Ben turned back and they both climbed carefully over the rusty steel, with its sharp edges, bull ants, and the red-backs sleeping somewhere underneath.