Scumbuster

by Tim Winton

  ‘You’ve got three seconds! You hear me?’

  Lockie went. He was nearly bawling himself. Man, what a mess. His whole life was a wipeout.

  ockie stopped in his own driveway and looked at the strange Land Rover parked out the front of his house. His heart sank even further – it was dragging somewhere down inside his pelvis now – and he tried to think if he had any relatives with a Land Rover. Who else would visit on Christmas Day? Rellies. Aaargh. Death by boredom.

  The cop car peeled away from the house, out from behind the battered 4x4, and came walloping down the bumpy drive. The Sarge pulled up beside Lockie.

  ‘Reckon you’d better get in there, mate. The house is full of subversives.’

  Lockie blinked. ‘Rellies?’

  The Sarge laughed and hit the blue light just for the hell of it.

  ‘No, your teacher mate and his friends.’

  Lockie gulped. ‘Oh.’ Oh? Oh – oh!

  ‘Hey, by the way, is that her?’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘The cause of all this achey-breaky heart stuff. You know, daydreaming with little fat hearts coming out of your ears all day.’

  ‘Dot?’

  ‘One syllable and look at him,’ the Sarge chuckled. ‘I s’pose that’s her, then. What else could turn my eldest son into a walking beetroot? Well, you better get into your shining armour, Sir Lockie. I’ve got crime to fight. I’ll leave love to you.’

  Laughing madly, the Sarge planted his foot and fishtailed up the drive in a blast of dirt. Sometimes Lockie thought his father should be locked up.

  Full of dread, he trudged up toward the house. Man what a Christmas.

  He stopped at the front door and decided it would be smarter to sneak in the back way, so he went into a commando crouch through the weeds and under the clothesline, going so fast he didn’t recognize that pair of brown feet until too late. He hit Dot like a half-back and she went down with a great oof of a thud.

  For a moment he just lay there stunned with the point of his chin in her belly button until she whupped him on the head with her knuckles.

  ‘Get off me, you boofhead!’

  ‘Um – ’

  ‘Get off!’

  She swatted and cracked him till he got up and offered her his hand which she refused indignantly. She got up on her own.

  ‘You orright, Dot?’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Going in the back way, that’s all.’

  ‘Like a terrorist or something,’ she said brushing herself off. There were grass seeds in her hair; he didn’t dare reach over and brush them out for her.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ he murmured.

  ‘Hmm.’

  Lockie looked at the grass seeds in her hair. No, he couldn’t resist. He reached out and touched her head. She flinched.

  ‘What are you doing now?’ she said irritably.

  ‘You got something in your hair. Here – ’

  And that was it. He couldn’t help it. He kissed her on the forehead. Whoosh! Aaargh! His toes curled up, his ears caught fire; his knees popped out of their sockets and came back like yo-yos.

  Dot looked at him, startled.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Um, a kiss?’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  ‘I really like you, Dot.’

  ‘Yeah?’ She smiled. Oh, it killed him; it made his teeth hurt.

  ‘Well, yeah.’

  Dot smiled again and looked at her feet. Great feet, too.

  They just stood there, not saying anything. I mean, what can you talk about at moments like this? The football scores? The average rainfall of Guatemala? Michael Jackon’s plastic surgery?

  They said nothing.

  Not a thing.

  And then Dot stuck out her hand and grabbed his and squeezed it and smiled again.

  ‘Aw, puke,’ said Phillip with his head out the bedroom window.

  Lockie and Dot jumped.

  ‘Lovers,’ said Phillip disgustedly, wrinkling his nose like the ten-year-old he was. ‘Can’t you do that somewhere else?’

  ‘Phillip, pull your head in or I’ll pull it off,’ said Lockie, shaky with anger.

  ‘Did you get your Chrissie present, Dotty?’

  ‘Phillip!’

  ‘It cost fifteen bucks! I can do subtraction, you know.’

  ‘Think about Phillip minus head, then,’ said Lockie, preparing to lunge.

  ‘You left that?’ said Dot. ‘I thought some homeless person had slept on the verandah, like it was their belongings or . . . ’ her voice trailed off as she realized what she was saying. ‘I . . . oh, geez, I didn’t mean . . . I mean it was really nice of you to – ’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Lockie, absolutely shrivelling in shame and embarrassment. ‘It was a kind of . . . joke. It was . . . I guess . . . ’

  He just couldn’t stand there any longer. Lockie slunk off inside leaving Dot out there in the yard, and locked himself in the toilet. He wanted to crawl into the septic tank and live there forever. He wanted to disappear from the face of the earth and not be remembered, not even in the fashion capitals of the world.

  ong after Dot and everyone went home, Lockie stayed barricaded in the toilet. It got dark, but he stayed. The family got stuck into the Christmas leftovers and he stayed. Phillip needed a pee, but Lockie stayed and he heard his brother doing it off the back step. ‘The Simpsons’ came on the TV, but Lockie stayed and read old Women’s Weeklys and Police Gazettes. He wasn’t coming out for anything; he was in there for the long run, for the term of his natural life. Yep, it was the dunny for him, forever and ever, Amen.

  At eight-thirty Mrs Leonard whacked on the door.

  ‘Lockie? Blob’s pooped her nappy. I need to get in.’

  Lockie didn’t make a sound.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘ . . . ’

  ‘Come on, love, I’ve got a nappy full of pumpkin soup here. Are you sick?’

  ‘ . . . ’

  ‘Tell you what, I’ll just shove it under the door and let you scrape it out for me, huh?’

  A vile, life-threatening terrorist device slid silently across the floor of the toilet. Lockie stared in horror. Half a kilo of milk-fed goop wrapped in a pink diaper. Septic fallout! The stink was like a harbour of your very own. It steamed and throbbed like a half-formed alien. Around the edges there was overflow. Yes, it was like plutonium pumpkin soup alright, and here and there it had croutons of lino in it. Aaaarghhhh!

  Lockie Leonard came out like a man shot from a cannon.

  ‘Ah,’ said the Sarge over his book of Lithuanian poems. ‘The Count of Monte Christo returns!’

  Lockie lay on his bed. The TV was still going out there. The Sarge was doing the ironing and his mum was writing something on the kitchen table. Blob was asleep and Phillip was busy turning the toaster into a blender on the loungeroom floor.

  Lockie lay back feeling deeply sorry for himself. Being thirteen was plain hard work. Teenagers should get a humiliation allowance from the government. His love life was a joke, his best friend wouldn’t talk to him and everything stank sky high.

  Mrs Leonard came in, a bunch of papers in one hand.

  ‘We’re having a vigil outside the phosphate works tomorrow night.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A few of us are taking some action about the harbour.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘John, Cleve, Queenie, some people from the Fishermen’s Association – Merv and Pat Mason.’

  Lockie squirmed. ‘Great.’

  ‘Just thought I’d let you know. You know, on the off-chance you’re still interested.’

  Lockie shrugged. ‘Uh-huh.’

  Mrs Leonard sighed and went out. Lockie rolled over and got his pillow in a half-nelson and pounded it mercilessly against the wall. They were hijacking his protest! Was nothing sacred? Aaarghhh!

  ll night Lockie lay awake with the noise of ten million frogs washing over him. They sounded like the Hell’s A
ngels on steroids out there in the swamp, but it wasn’t only that keeping him awake. He just couldn’t turn his mind off and relax.

  Across the room, Phillip ground his teeth mechanically and let out machine gun bursts of snoring.

  Lockie counted sheep. He counted frogs.

  He wanted to see Dot, real bad.

  But he thought about Egg; it got to him every time he rolled over, the sight of poor Egg bawling out there in his mum’s shed. Geez, some people had real problems on their hands and here he was moaning about some stupid tee-shirt and a bit of embarrassment. What was wrong with his brain? Hadn’t he learnt anything at all in thirteen years?

  Just on dawn, as Lockie was finally dropping off, Phillip climbed into bed with him without his PJ’s on. Lockie didn’t have to ask; he knew what it meant. Phillip had wet the bed again.

  Lockie got up and left the dry bed to Phillip who was asleep again already. He dressed himself and slipped out the window. The frogs, exhausted from their partying, were silent as he cut his way across the swamp toward Egg’s place.

  Lockie tapped at the window. The curtain was drawn back and through the flyscreen he could see Egg sprawled asleep, his mouth open, his pimples mellow in the dim light.

  ‘Egg? Oi, Egg!’

  With a start, Egg sat up. When he saw it was Lockie, he grunted and lay back on the pillow.

  ‘You orright?’ whispered Lockie.

  Egg shrugged.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ said Lockie.

  ‘I was doing orright, myself.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘They sacked my dad, ’ said Egg.

  ‘Oh, mate.’

  ‘On Christmas Day, they sack the minister.’

  Lockie leaned against the sill. So that’s what all the arguing was about yesterday.

  ‘I don’t think they’ll stay married after this,’ said Egg. ‘That’ll make the church happy.’

  ‘Let’s go to the beach,’ said Lockie. ‘Let’s just forget everything for a moment and just nick off to the beach. That’s what I do when everything goes to poop.’

  ‘Lockie, I can’t swim, remember?’

  ‘I’ll teach you, no problem.’

  ‘Sounds incredibly tempting, Lock. I’ll forget about misery for a day and get into terror. You’re a bright bloke.’

  ‘It’s just water, Egg.’

  ‘It’s what’s in the water that bothers me.’

  Lockie stood back a moment, defeated. He looked along the graveyard of steel that was the Eggleston’s yard, and an idea splattered against his brain like a meat pie against a blackboard.

  ‘I’m a genius!’ said Lockie.

  ‘Yeah, and I’m Tom Cruise.’

  No one who saw those two on the beach that day ever forgot the sight of Lockie Leonard’s shark-proof swimming machine. It was pretty low-tech – actually the horse and cart was probably space-age compared to it – but everyone agreed that it was dead original.

  From the jetty all the way round to the surf break Egg flapped and spluttered, laughing like a madman’s parrot while Lockie steered him best he could. Egg’s beachwear was pretty phenomenal – a pair of black Stubbies, a Bonds tee-shirt the colour of baby poo, and some Pinke Zinke on his nose that smelt like pile ointment. On top of the water all you could see was the huge bunch of old fishermen’s buoys and cordial bottles that kept him from sinking like the national economy, but under the surface the real business cruised along like a U-boat. Lockie Leonard’s famous sharkproof swimming machine was actually the aluminium tubs of two old washing machines joined together with fencing wire. The ends were hacked off and Egg’s head and arms stuck out one end and his feet the other so he could kick and flap all he liked. Any shark with the IQ of a fingernail could have burrowed in one end and eaten his way to the other, but Egg felt safe as houses. He felt like Grant Kenny, like Shane Gould, like Marine Boy, even, and Lockie kept telling him he was the new human torpedo.

  Little bubbles poured from the tiny holes in the tubs all around him. The floats clacked together and bobbed madly above him and he chugged along ridiculously well. They laughed themselves sick and then made the big mistake of trying it as the Lockie Leonard sharkproof bodysurfing machine. It was Egg’s first surfing experience, and it didn’t make a convert of him. He looked like one of those guys going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, and he rolled all the way up to the high tide mark before Lockie could pull him out.

  ‘Hm, what’s this?’ said Lockie. ‘A message in a bottle?’

  ‘Am I alive?’ said Egg.

  ‘I think that’s the spin dry cycle.’

  They just lay on the beach and laughed themselves blind. Lockie felt so happy he nearly busted his boardshorts.

  ockie and Egg, limp with laughing, were strapping the contraption back on the bike trailer when Lockie saw a familiar silhouette on the next dune. His heart hit the pause button and he stared. She was coming their way. Cut off jeans, a Midnight Oil tee-shirt, all that frizzy hair blowing in the wind.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Egg, his pimples suddenly going neon underneath their zinc paste.

  ‘Battle stations,’ said Lockie weakly.

  ‘G’day, Lockie,’ she said, smiling nervously.

  Vicki Streeton. His old girlfriend. The first girl he ever loved. The absolute home-baked-economy-sized-discount-final-offer love of his life. Aaaarghhh!

  ‘I saw your gizmo,’ she said, pulling the hair out of her eyes. ‘It’s a scream. Still the torpedo, huh?’

  ‘It was Egg inside,’ said Lockie. ‘This is Egg. Egg this is – ’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Egg.

  ‘Are you Tomorrow or the Day After?’

  ‘Geez, word gets around.’

  ‘I just wanted to let you know I’ll be at the protest tonight.’

  ‘Protest?’ said Egg.

  ‘Ah, the protest, that’s great,’ said Lockie shoving his elbow halfway through Egg’s kidneys. ‘That’s really great.’

  ‘My dad says the mayor is seriously shat-off about it, though.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Lockie scratched his armpit and felt his lone zit vibrate.

  ‘I’m gonna bring some friends, okay?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Lockie with his heart in slow-mo.

  ‘I hear you’ve got a girlfriend,’ she said looking at her feet. Great feet. The same excellent feet.

  ‘Well . . . ’

  ‘He’s lost his mind,’ said Egg.

  ‘I hear she’s a hot grommet. Better than you, maybe.’

  ‘And she’s twelve this year,’ said Egg with a grin.

  Vickie’s face opened up in a great smile. ‘Really?’

  Lockie stood on Egg’s foot and ground it into the sand. The breeze blew his hair in his face and he was glad of the cover.

  ‘He’s a bit of a dirty old man, our Lockie,’ said Egg, ignoring him.

  ‘Well, I hope she appreciates him, Egg,’ said Vicki. ‘Seeyaz tonight, then.’

  She walked off, all denim butt and windblown hair and Lockie started stuffing Egg back into the swimming machine where he belonged for the rest of his life.

  ‘Ah, nausea of the heart!’ laughed Egg. ‘He’s suffering apocalyptic hormone disease!’

  hen Lockie and Egg got back to the Leonard house in the middle of its slow-fermenting government swamp, there were people everywhere, mostly oldies they didn’t recognize. They were all busy cutting cardboard and stapling and painting, and no one looked up at them as they walked through the house to the kitchen. Lockie headed for the fridge; he was so hungry he could have eaten the bottom out of a birdcage. Even his mum’s low-fat skim-milk hi-fibre, low-cholesterol zero-sugar totally flavourless and unpleasant rice flour treats. Mrs Leonard was at the kitchen table talking earnestly to a woman with a ring through her nose. Geez, his mum was getting radical!

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ he said, burrowing in the fridge for something Blob hadn’t already gnawed on.

  Mrs Leonard looked up a moment and went on talking.

  ‘Hey, Mu
m, I’m home. Is there anything else to eat?’

  ‘Excuse us, will you?’ Mrs Leonard said to Ringnose. The other lady got up and went out.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Mrs Leonard asked.

  Egg fidgeted at the edge of the room.

  ‘Down the beach,’ said Lockie.

  ‘Since dawn?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘With Egg?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Hullo, Egg,’ she said.

  ‘Um, hullo Mrs Leonard.’

  ‘When’s the do?’ asked Lockie.

  ‘The protest? I didn’t know you were still interested.’

  ‘Mum – ’

  ‘Don’t go mumming me! I’ve had people here all day. The town smells like, like, like – ’

  ‘Pus?’ said Egg.

  ‘Yes, pus will do just fine, thank you Egg. The town is smelling like . . . pus and people are coming here because of your noble handbills, and I’m having to deal with it because you can’t finish anything you start. You come home raving and moaning about the harbour and get us all razzed up and then call us hypocrites because we’re too busy to help and then we make time to help and then you fade off like the Ghost Who Walks. And here I am with a baby and a husband doing double shifts and a kid going back to wetting the bed and a houseful of people who want to do something about the world they live in and YOU’RE AT THE BEACH! It’s love again, isn’t it? As soon as you get the . . . the . . . the . . . HOTS for a girl you drift off. I can’t believe you can let this happen twice, Lockie. You become someone else. You forget your family, your friends, your principles, even. The human torpedo misses the target and the point, do you understand me? Lockie, I’m ashamed of you!’

  Lockie closed the fridge. Geez, his ears were on fire. Whew, that hurt. He didn’t know where to look. His whole body shrivelled with embarrassment. In front of his best friend! It seemed like the perfect time to head for his room, slam the door in a major way and swan dive onto the bed.

  ‘Um, Mrs Leonard,’ said Egg carefully. ‘Maybe I can explain.’

  ‘I thought you were genuine, too, Egg. I’m disappointed.’