He always let a story sit with them for a day before they discussed it. Now it was time to look for a new home.
Lee rode with his dad to their get-off-station and walked the kilometre and a half back to the Clocks. It was so hot even the Yarra seemed ready to fry. Today they were looking for a station, but normally they’d be amongst people like them. Sort of like them. The people they worked with were different. They seemed sad. Crushed. The Stevensons helped them get clothes and find food. But Joe wouldn’t take their return offers of money or protection. From the time he’d consigned his family to life on the street he’d only accepted certain things: offers of food or clothing, used books from libraries, and whatever he could find in laneway bins. But he never took money.
Joe stood under the Flinders Street timetable screen as announcements blared in Indian accents. Lee thought of Orwell’s elephant owner. It had been a sad day for him. He’d loved that animal. And it was a working elephant. That fact
had made it even harder for Orwell to shoot it. Lee knew his father was going to ask him tonight if he’d have shot it. He wouldn’t have.
Joe gave the timetable a final stare. Like this was its last chance to give an account of itself. He put his hand on Lee’s shoulder.
‘Werribee Line.’
They could have got off all the way back at Footscray to ride Werribee!
Lee got on the train with his dad and watched backyards pass, hills hoists draped with white sheets and underwear. Graf-fiti covered the severed iron fences. His father hated graffiti, but Lee didn’t. It was lively. It was an expression of something, he didn’t quite know what. But he liked it. But it’s illegal, his father had said when they’d first discussed it. Then he’d smiled when Lee had reminded him their train rides were illegal too.
‘Yes, but you know what I think about that.’
Homeless people should be able to register with the Hous-ing Commission. And that registration, he said, should provide them with free public transport until they were no longer homeless.
‘The fact is the Government won’t do it. And it’s not because the train companies can’t afford it. It’s because they don’t want people like us on their trains. Tickets or not.’
They had been riding the Glen Waverley Line that day. A middle-aged couple had been trying hard not to stare at Joe and Lee. The man was wearing a tartan cap, and the woman a mint blazer. At Joe’s pronouncement the man had stuck his nose back into his newspaper, but the woman had met Joe’s eyes. Even attempted a smile.
‘You can ride the train...’ the woman said.
‘And disembark near your house?’
Joe’s voice had turned acid. He loved showing off his vocabu-lary when the occasion called for it. Whether it was the couple’s stop or not, they’d got off at Kooyong.
Lee and his father disembarked now at Newport and got a drink from the public toilets. The sun’s mood had turned from annoyed to vicious. Joe told him to put his ripped Bulldogs cap on and he did. Sweat ran into Lee’s eyes and stung them. He wiped, but the sweat came on again like tears. He exhaled loudly when they got back on the air-conditioned train.
Could they live on a train? Air conditioning! Seats! Trains had it all. Even views. Soon it was Point Cook’s outskirts; fields of grey steel-roofed houses pressed close together, surrounded by petrol stations and bright-painted signs on warehouses. Then the view shifted. It became the man on the seat opposite in tattered black track pants, holding his stomach and groan-ing. Joe was beside him like Orwell’s bullet, his arm around his shoulder before the guy even threw up.
‘Are you alright mate?’
Pale vomit on the guy’s pants was the answer. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t do anything because, as Lee had learnt from an early age, the man was full of heroin.
‘Just hold on, buddy,’ Joe told him. ‘Someone alert the driver! And call triple zero.’
There wasn’t exactly a rush to get it done. Suits shuffled, handbags were hugged tighter, but a boy with a twisted baseball cap and white shiny track pants got busy following Joe’s com-mands. He seemed proud. Joe was.
‘Thanks kid. You’re a credit to yourself.’
A stunning woman with high cheekbones called out from a seat at the other end of the train.
‘You’re a credit. You’re an angel.’
Joe ignored her. The guy threw up again.
The train made a long stop at Aircraft station and staff hauled the sick guy from the carriage. Joe wanted to go with him, but the staff thanked him and ushered him and Lee back into the carriage. There was a scattered round of applause.
Joe said nothing, just took his seat. The attractive woman moved and sat across from them. Oblivious, it seemed, to the lingering smell of vomit.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked. Lee couldn’t stop looking at her teeth. So white and straight. Like a piano minus the ebony.
‘Are you police?’ Joe asked.
‘No, I’m —’
‘—a journalist?’
‘I’m a church elder.’
Everyone in the train had been listening. Now they went back to newspapers, screens and earphones.
She didn’t look old enough to be an elder. She looked young enough for Lee to think about doing the things he’d been thinking more and more about doing. Every time he saw a billboard with a Berlei bra ad. There was a lot to think about. A lot he’d like to do. He just didn’t know what any of it was.
The woman’s hair was blonde like on shampoo billboards. Like a collection of gold necklaces bunched together. She’d called Joe an angel. Wrong. Because she was. She even wore a short white dress that stuck to every bit of her. A sexy angel. Lee swallowed the thought. His father would kill him. At least tell him off and read the Bible at him for a day.
He looked at his father’s lined face to see what he was thinking. There was a sparkle in his eyes.
‘I’m a church elder too.’
‘Really? What church?’
Joe smirked and looked at himself dramatically. His clothes had always seemed tatty, even to Lee, but never more than in that moment. There was a rip above the knee of his green King Gees. It showed the matted dark hair on his thigh. His round-necked, grey t-shirt was more grease than cotton. You’d have thought twice before cleaning up the vomit with it.
‘I’m not really a church elder.’
‘Where do you go to church?’
Joe looked out the window. The houses were almost identical now. Their roofs and doors staring at each other.
‘Everywhere.’
‘Well, come to mine sometime. Would you?’
‘Why don’t you stop talking to me?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to be pushy. It’s just that I think you could teach our congregation a lot.’
His father had taught at small gatherings. For a long time. But never in a church.
‘Thanks. I’m sure I could. But I’m not going to.’
Somehow she knew exactly how to respond.
‘I can help you with food.’
Lee told Peter that he knew his father couldn’t refuse. They were running low. And this could only be, in Joe’s words, a blessing.
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Great. Here’s my card.’
Joe studied it.
‘I don’t have a phone. Or a computer.’
‘Where do you live?’ she asked.
Joe shook his head, smiled and studied the newly cleaned floor.
‘Where can I find you?’ angel woman persisted.
‘West Footscray station. Know where that is?’
‘I’ll come tomorrow. And we’ll make arrangements.’
Joe nodded slowly. He surely wasn’t going to make them move before then?
‘Okay,’ he said and put her card in his pants pocket.
He was definitely going to make them move. They’d be folding cardboard and packing shopping trolleys tonight.
‘You’ll love our church.’
&nb
sp; ‘I doubt it.’
The train passed through a station under construction. Forget an upgrade, Walton’s Landing hadn’t got a grade at all. Orange tape sealed off stairwells and the spaces where escalators would go. Beyond the station were flat fields marked with tiny white flags; the blocks on which houses would soon rise. Other flags noted where roads would be paved. More cars would soon pump the sky, the dying sky as Joe called it, with more fumes in a day than every bird in history had swallowed.
‘It’s really an alive church,’ she smiled. ‘Full of life. Like you.’
‘Really?’ Joe scoffed.
‘Yes! You helped that man quicker than, I don’t know...’
A bullet could hit an elephant? There were graders the size of those animals in the paddocks now. Quiet and lazy. Workmen wandered around them.
‘Look,’ Joe took her card from his pocket, ‘Della. I just do what I do. I’ve always done what I do. It makes me who I am.’
Sometimes Lee wanted to cry when his father spoke. From shame and love.
‘You’re an amazing man.’
‘No, I’m...’
‘No, no, of course you’re not. You’re just a man with God on his side.’
Joe pulled himself up taller in his seat.
‘If that’s God’s choice.’
‘Everything’s God’s choice.’
‘Is it? Is it God’s choice that all that land out there, all those houses when they pop up, will be occupied by people who keep this ridiculous system running? A system that keeps out people like me, who don’t believe in it, who won’t compete in it, who won’t do the things it demands, who won’t corrupt their souls, as well as those who literally can’t do any of it, even if they wanted to, is it God’s choice that...’
He moaned and berated and the angel woman watched, expressionless. Careful not to annoy him. Lee tuned out. He thought of last night’s dinner. The beautiful smell of beans, thyme and tomato. And of his father seeing preciousness in him.
‘You might be right, that’s why—’
‘—of course I’m right,’ Joe snapped.
‘Shut up mate. There’s other people here. Who don’t give a fuck.’
It was a big man who’d got on after Aircraft station. He hadn’t seen Joe help the sick guy. The stranger’s shoulders were round and hairy and his visibility vest was losing its shine.
‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ Joe said.
Della slipped Lee one of her cards too. Insurance, maybe. He took it.
‘Should be sorry. Get a bloody job.’
Joe nodded. He knew when to keep quiet. And how to keep others quiet. It was the same when they got back to camp that night; Lee wanted to talk more about the train incident and his father said they would—after they’d talked about the Orwell story. Which would be after they’d packed up to move. They bent over their blankets and folded them. They’d barely started when Della showed up.
‘Hi,’ she said. There was a Samoan guy next to her in a tight and shiny grey suit. The pair had arrived so quietly the Stevensons had jolted. Except Joe.
‘Hello,’ he said and he rose to greet them. He shook their hands, but studied the stony ground. The silent Samoan guy smiled. Lee didn’t know whether to be scared of him or climb on his shoulders for a ride. Della’s hair glittered, Lee thought.
‘Are you all off for a picnic?’
Joe didn’t play the game.
‘No. We’re off to live somewhere else.’
‘So I wouldn’t have found you tomorrow?’
He shrugged. Lee and Molly kept at their packing.
‘A good thing I came then?’
Her voice worried Lee. It was as if she owned their station. And every other station. His dad didn’t seem concerned, but Lee’s mum got to her feet. She studied Della and the Samoan guy calmly. Then addressed Della while positioning herself between her children and the strangers.
‘Excuse me, who are you?’
Joe began to explain hesitantly, apologetically, but Della took over. She told Penny about the sick guy and Joe’s work. Penny frowned.
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Joe?’
‘Because...we were leaving. It didn’t matter if—’
‘—here’s what we can offer you to come and talk at our church, sir.’
It was the Samoan super hero. He handed Joe a Coles gift card. Lee had seen them before. His father couldn’t stop his bolt of surprise when he read the back.
‘I can’t accept it,’ he said and thrust it back at the Samoan. But the big man kept his hands behind his back. Della smiled at Joe softly.
‘Is that really true? You can’t accept it?’ Joe was beaten.
‘No.’
‘This Sunday then?’
He nodded.
‘We’ll send a car.’
‘No you won’t.’
The Samoan guy flinched.
‘We’ll catch the train,’ Joe groaned and the Samoan nodded. ‘Coles near here?’ the big man asked.
‘Yes,’ Penny nodded.
‘Enjoy then,’ he smiled.
Lee caught a look in his father’s eyes he’d never seen. Like he was in the middle of throwing wet tissues on a factory fire. For a second he thought Joe would toss the gift card away. Della and her friend said their goodbyes and the look passed from Joe’s face. He put the card in the pocket of his pants. Molly and Lee bombarded him with questions about what he was going to say in church, but he wouldn’t answer. He left his kids to murmur at each other and climbed the walk bridge. He stopped at the top and gazed at the city lights. They knew to leave him. When sleep was ready to haul Lee in, his father was still holding the railing. The lights were winking at him but he was giving them nothing in return.
The inside of Hopper’s Crossing’s Wayfarer Church was twice the size of Flinders Street station’s foyer.
‘This way, up the front,’ Della said, pointing to an empty row of padded seats. She wore black slacks and a white sleeveless shirt. Like a businesswoman ready for sport.
‘No thanks,’ Joe said and he led his family to the rows of plastic seats in the middle of the auditorium. A thousand or more people were going to fill this place. As the Stevensons shuffled towards some empty spaces, people smiled at them so brightly Lee got chills. The churchgoers wore beautiful clothes. Bright coloured suits, clean shirts, and pleated dresses. Pressed chino pants and freshly washed jeans were popular. Giant wafts of perfume and aftershave. Everyone said hello and shook their hands. Asked how they all were. And they responded. Even Joe, finally.
The crowd’s warmth came at Lee like an arrow made of jelly. It landed in his chest then spread to his stomach and head. He reckoned his father copped an arrow, too; Joe smiled for a second before he remembered to put on the grumpy face he’d held throughout the morning’s train journey.
A polished timber lectern stood beside a row of empty black chairs on the stage. A group of men in sharp suits filed from the wings and sat. A drum kit was suddenly occupied, and then the rest of a rock band pulled into position, plugging in guitars and testing keyboards. Backing singers performed warm-up scales in the hub-hub of people finding seats and greeting each other.
Della was the lead singer but she didn’t warm up her voice. She adjusted her microphone stand and tapped the mike. A man in a Lakers’ cap stuck up his thumb where he sat at a sound desk a few rows in front of the Stevensons. Della smiled and nodded. She said good morning and a thousand people said good morning back. Except Joe.
He hadn’t changed his clothes for his day in church. He wore the same filmy t-shirt and ripped King Gee pants. Penny had made sure Molly and Lee were in their best clothes; their jeans and the patterned t-shirts without holes or stains. Before they’d left, she’d smiled at them warmly. But their father was unimpressed.
‘No need for them to look any different.’
He’d stalked off then and Penny had whispered for them to be on their best behaviour.
‘This could be the start of something,’
she said.
Lee noticed there was a lightness about his mother; she moved quickly as she went from, annoyingly, brushing his hair to smoothing down the pale blue cotton dress she was wearing. It was a pretty one Lee had never seen. This could be the start of what, he wanted to ask her, but he didn’t bother. Because he knew, somehow. He had known it since Della had called out to Joe on the train.
When his family had reached the doors of the church that morning, Lee had winked at his mother. She’d tried to suppress a smile but she’d failed. Then she’d winked back.
Telling his story to Peter, Lee became animated when he recalled that first visit, how he had shifted in his plastic seat as Della had said a more rousing good morning. A thousand voices whooped and shouted. It spooked and excited Lee. Words appeared on the big screen as she sang.
He is our God today, tomorrow and evermore/We know His name and He knows ours...
Lee tried to catch the melody then stopped. The Bible said only God knew his own name. Yes, there was Jesus, but he was part man. And part God. Or something. But God, the starter God, the one who yelled and everything in the universe took off with a bang and a rumble, he had a name that no one knew. Lee wondered if his father had noticed this glitch in the lyrics, but Joe was looking at his shoes. Which were so floppy and disap-pointing that he may as well not have worn any at all. It was like he was trying to upset everyone by dressing as horribly as he could. It was embarrassing. He should have at least tried to look interested.
‘Today, we will hear from one of the most fascinating men I have met...’
The singing, church news, Bible readings and prayers had finished. Time for the main event: Lee’s father. Joe Stevenson. Joe-looking-at-his-ugly-shoes Stevenson. Lee wanted to shake him. Penny looked at Joe sharply and held his forearm. Her action said, Sort yourself out! but Joe loosed her grip.
Della told the congregation how Joe and his family lived. That they were poor, but had always cared for those poorer. What they would and wouldn’t accept as payment. And her opinion on why. The congregation stormed its applause.
The Stevensons were Jesus’ best buddies. Angels in the flesh! Joe lumbered to the front of the church as more applause rained. He climbed the stage steps and stood behind the lectern. He didn’t say anything until the auditorium was silent. A toddler wailed in the church crèche. Joe smiled in spite of himself. Or was he at last happy to be there?
We. Are. Family. Page 14