by Zane Lovitt
Ty didn’t think Dominic was too upset about his brother’s death, but it was hard to tell. The Cross boys had always been known for their toughness and didn’t give much away when it came to emotional stuff.
‘He was driving an expensive car,’ said Dominic. ‘Where’d he get hold of it?’
‘Out at the country club. The tourists have been coming up here since it opened, for the golf and the pokies. Fucken golf. Me and Pat have been up there chasing cars most Saturday nights. They’re hard buggers to wire, the new cars. Full of computer shit and all. I can get around it, but it takes time. I would have been in the car with him Sunday morning except my old man ordered me drive across to the west with him on Saturday night. We was supposed to be on a cattle run. Didn’t find a single cow and come home with a pair of fucken goats. He slaughtered them Sunday morning and fed them to the pig dogs.’
‘Who were you two working for?’ Dom asked.
Ty was desperate for another drink.‘Haul down to the bottle-shop with me and I’ll tell you about it. The work.’
Ty bought himself a bottle of whisky, staggered across to the playground opposite and sat on a rusted swing. He unscrewed the bottle and threw the cap at a sign riddled with bullet holes: Tidy Town – 1978.
‘You know Georgie Barron who runs the scrap yard?’ asked Ty.
‘Sure. He used to run stock cars at the drag track. Dad used to take me and Pat there on a Saturday night.’
Ty took a long swig from the whiskey bottle, like a man in the desert dying of thirst. ‘About six months back we were out there at the scrap yard, Pat and me, going through the wrecks after a sports wheel for my Commodore. I could hardly believe it when we found one. We pulled it out with the tools, walked over to George’s hut by the gate and ask how much for this? I couldn’t believe it when he said we could have the wheel for nothing, and any parts we wanted to strip off the wreck. It would have been a great deal but there was a catch.’
‘Like what?’ Dom asked.
‘Like if we could find him George a Nissan SS. Like fuck, I told him. There’s nobody in town who drives an SS.’
Ty took another drink out of the bottle and looked across to the empty highway.
‘So, what happened?’ Dom prodded him.
‘The shifty bugger was a step ahead of us. He told us that some fella had been coming up to the country club from the city most weekends for the golf and a wrestle in the cot with some woman he was having an affair with. He drives a beautiful red SS, George said. You get me that car and we’re in business, boys. The info on the car was spot on. Around three the next Sunday morning me and Pat watched the car from the rise above the club. It was dead quiet, we strolled down to the carpark and were out of there within five minutes, Pat screaming his lungs out behind the wheel of the car soon as we hit the highway.’
‘Why’d he want you stealing a flash car for spares? Makes no sense.’
‘Nothing like that. George is married up to some Asian woman. They move the cars to someone who ships them overseas. We made good money out of the deal, me and Pat. Then three weeks ago we hit the jackpot. A two-door Merc. Almost brand new. Took me fifteen minutes to turn it over. Should have seen George’s face when we drove it into the scrap yard. I thought he was gonna start pulling himself.’
‘How much did you get for it?’
‘Nothing. Not yet. They work with a dealer in the city. The wife runs the show and she don’t pay until she has money in her own hand.’
‘The boss?’
‘Yep. She’s frightening. Looks like some Kung Fu killer. We’re overdue. Five thousand. Pat’s half is yours, Dom.’
Dominic spat on the ground.
‘Dunno that I want money. If Pat hadn’t been stealing cars for them he’d still be alive.’
‘Maybe. And maybe not. You know how Pat was. He’d lift a car for money. And he’d steal one just to wind the windows down and roar along the highway in the night. I’m gonna drive over to the yard tomorrow and ask where the money is. You want Pat’s share or not?’
‘Why’d you tell me? No-one would know if you kept it all.’
‘I might be a thief, Dom. But I’m not a bastard. You in?
‘Suppose so. Yeah. I want the money.’
George Barron’s scrap yard sat at the dead-end of a mile-long stretch of gravel road. Ty borrowed his father’s ute, telling the old man he’d picked up some landscaping work. He fishtailed along the road, leaving a snake of dust in his trail. George had inherited the scrap business from his father along with a decent bank balance. He rewarded his good luck by belting the piss day and night. It took him less than a year to run the business into the ground. Down to his last ten thousand dollars he took off to Asia for a sex holiday. His drinking mates at the Pioneer Hotel were surprised when he returned with a Filipino bride. George bragged to them that he’d bought himself a housemaid and bedwarmer. His new wife, Maxine, had other ideas. She was sharper than George. Maxine was also tough. Unknown to him, before meeting George she’d run a lucrative gambling house in downtown Manila. Maxine had never so much as picked up a broom and wasn’t a woman for keeping house. Why she ever agreed to move to a rundown country town in Australia with the under-educated, boozed up and overweight George was anyone’s guess. Maxine had a nose for business and soon had the scrap yard back on its feet. She quickly became known for her ability to bargain mechanics and motor hobbyists into the dirt. Once the yard was turning a dollar she turned her energy to the more lucrative stolen car racket and set up a partnership back home moving stolen luxury cars.
*
Ty and Dominic walked through an open gate into the scrap yard. Ty knocked at the open door of the shed that passed for the office. Dominic could see Maxine sitting behind a desk. She was smoking a thin cigar and shuffling a pack of playing cards. She dealt herself a hand of patience and looked up at Ty through the haze of smoke.
‘What you want today, boy?’
‘We’re after George. Is he around?’
‘George is in the toilet. You talk to me.’
Ty wasn’t sure what to say. He was too afraid to ask her for the money. The toilet flushed and George appeared at a curtained doorway hitching up his pants.
‘The kid is for you,’ Maxine said, louder than she needed to. Ty felt a little insulted. He was no kid. He was turning nineteen next birthday.
‘What are you doing here?’ George asked, not bothering to buckle his belt.
‘The money you owe me and … Pat. You haven’t paid yet. For the Mercedes.’
‘Pat.’ George laughed. ‘Fucked himself up good and proper. No coin heading his way. What would he spend it on?’ He chuckled.
Dominic’s feet shifted in the gravel. He didn’t like George.
‘Knock it off,’ Ty said. ‘This is Dom, Pat’s little brother. I’ve been telling him about our deal with you. What was coming to Pat goes to him. I’ve explained it.’
Maxine dealt another row of cards, watching George out of the corner of one eye. He offered Dominic an open hand. ‘I’m sorry about the business that went on with your brother. Pat was a good worker. I’m sorry to be losing him.’ He turned to Ty. ‘But I don’t have any money for you. Not yet. We’ve had no luck moving the motor. I got it sitting under a tarp in the workshop out back. Might be able to get it on the next consignment. I’ve got a couple of beautiful cars back there.’
Ty was sure George was lying to him. ‘But it’s been three weeks.’
‘If you don’t fucken believe me I’ll show you the car.’
‘Why can’t you pay now?’ Ty pushed him. ‘We done our work. You can get your money back when you sell it.’
Maxine had heard enough. She turned over a last card, stood up and walked around to the front of the desk. She waved a long manicured fingernail in front of Ty’s face. He followed the nail like someone who’d been hypnotised.
/> ‘You boys. Last time you make mistake and bring the wrong car here. My customers don’t want the colour. It is bad luck. I have to pay now to change colour. Very expensive. I get less money. You wait now and get less money too.’
‘How much less is less?’ Ty asked, speaking barely above a whisper, he was so intimidated.
She looked past Ty to Dominic. ‘Five hundred. Each.’
‘Five hundred! George, you promised us five thousand dollars for that car. You rubbed your hands together and jumped up and down screaming that it was gold. Those were your exact words. Fuck it. This isn’t fair.’
‘Hey!’ George screamed. ‘Don’t you be swearing in front of my wife, son. Maxine’s a Catholic.’
‘But you promised,’ Ty pleaded. ‘Five thousand.’
‘Don’t matter what I said. You watch your mouth.’
Maxine stepped forward and ran the tip of her sharpened nail down Ty’s left cheek.
‘I tell you something, kid. I feel sorry for you and your friend who die. I give you two thousand dollars. And you bring one more car. Special car. And we double. Four thousand dollars. Other boy is dead now. You can make all the money for yourself.’
‘It doesn’t work that way,’ Ty said, pointing at Dominic. ‘Pat’s cut goes to his younger brother.’
‘Your business, not mine.’ Maxine smiled. She pointed her finger to the ceiling. ‘You bring one car more. We pay.’
The following Saturday, around midnight, Dominic was perched on a boulder overlooking the Country Club car park. Ty lay on his back in the damp grass enjoying his third joint of the night – on the back of the half-a-dozen beers he’d downed earlier in the evening, and a couple of unidentifiable blue tablets handed to him by Big Roscoe on the door of the Motorhead, a pokey shopfront that passed for the town’s only nightclub.
Dominic surveyed a line of cars. They didn’t have dent or cracked windscreen between them.
‘Hey, Ty, where do you reckon they get all the money for these cars, the people from the city who come up here?’
‘My guess would be that most of them are lawyers, coppers and crims.’ He took a long drag on his joint and held the smoke deep in his lungs as long as he could before blowing it out. ‘Drugs. It’s where all the big money is. We deliver this second car maybe we could pool the earnings. Buy in some coke, in bulk. You imagine them on the gear around here. Go fucken mental on it.’ He got to his knees, fell forward onto his face and began giggling like a child.
‘You sure you’re okay to drive, Ty?’
‘I’m good to go. I always have a beer and weed before a job. Eases me into the work. Dunno why, but I can get nervous behind the wheel. You remember driver ed back at school, Dom? Safety first.’ He giggled again. Ty gave up trying to get to his feet. He lay on his back and looked up at the clear night sky. The stars shone from one side of the dark blanket to the other. A full moon sat above the mountain range directly ahead of them.‘You doing any of that astronomy shit at school? Looking up at the sky?’
‘Next year, if I’m still there. Mr Macleod takes a class out to the hills camping with this telescope he’s got. It’s like a cannon.’
‘I know. I went one year with him. Me and Pat and some others. He ever talk to you about it? You know Pat was mad for the stars. His best subject at school.’
‘He never mentioned it to me. Only thing Pat talked about was cars.’
Ty raised an arm in the air, extended a finger and waved it across the sky. ‘Well, he liked the stars too. Can’t steal them though. And he knew the names of every one of them … what do you call them? Clusters or something?’
‘Constellations.’
‘That’s them. Fucken constellations.’ Ty pointed to a particularly bright star low in the sky. ‘You see that one?’
Ty was slurring his words. Dominic looked up at the sky, unsure which star Ty was pointing at. ‘What about the star?’
‘Well, the time Macleod took us camping he aimed his telescope at one of stars. I reckon it’s that one. It’s in the right place, anyway. He lined us up and got us to take a look at the star through the telescope.’ Ty sat up and wiped his mouth, as if there was something very important he had to say. ‘And you know what he told us?’
Dominic wasn’t paying attention. All he could think was that Ty was in no state to hot-wire a car let alone drive it back to Barron’s yard.
‘You listening, Dom? You know what he told us?’
‘No, I don’t. What did he tell you?’
‘I know this sounds crazy but the star we were looking at that night, the same star you can see up there winking at you now, it’s dead, Dom. Fucken dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Yep. And it’s been dead for a million years. Maybe more than that. The light you can see up there, it’s taken all that time to get here. Right now that star, where the light is coming from, I know this sounds like bullshit, it’s already dead.’
Dominic looked up at the star, burning bright yellow at the centre with exploding red sparkles at its edge.
‘It sounds like bullshit to me, Ty. A star as bright as that one, I don’t see how it could ever die.’
He buried his hands in his pockets and began walking away.
‘Where you going?’ Ty screamed at him. ‘We got this job to do. One car and we hit the jackpot. It’s what she said.’
‘You believe her, that she’s gonna double your money?’
‘I got no choice.’
‘Well, I do.’
‘We stealing a car or not?’
‘Nup. I’m going.’
‘You going home?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Where you off to then?’
Dominic kept walking. Ty stood up, dropped his pants and pissed in the dirt. By the time he’d finished Dominic was halfway across an open field behind the country club, taking a shortcut through the bush to the scrap yard. Ty ran after him, screaming, ‘What about the car?’
*
An hour later Dominic sat in the bough of a tree on a hill a half-mile above the scrap yard. He was able to pick up the scent of petrol in the air. he looked up at a crimson sky, lit by a burning Mercedes two-door sedan. Ty lay at the base of the tree, sleeping like a baby, until the car suddenly exploded, shattering the windows of the row of cars parked beside it. One of them quickly caught fire. Then another. And another.
Tony Birch
The Teardrop Tattoos
You cringe when you see my tattooed tears. But driven by the same impulse that makes you slow when you pass a car crash, you look closer. One is transparent, a silhouette. The other, clear at the top and blue at the bottom, looks swollen, like it might roll down my cheek at any moment.
Who would do that to themselves?
I hear your mind ticking over, hear you whisper gang, murder, prison.
‘Does it mean she killed somebody?’ The boy is young and cocky, doesn’t know to hold his tongue. His mother shushes him and steps up the pace. I want to yell out, ‘Yeah, I did,’ but his mother has dragged him away from the scary dyke and her dog. One of those dangerous breeds, she’s thinking, the kind they train to fight.
I don’t hate her. She’s only doing her job. Protecting her boy.
People think I’m a lesbian because of the way I look, though I’ve never had sex with a woman, not even in my mind. I haven’t had sex with anyone at all in a long time, but not even the tattooed tears are enough to put some men off trying. Sully scares away the last of them.
Sully is a dangerous breed, an American pit bull. I got him through a contact I made in the rat house. I read up on dogs – had fuck all else to do – and concluded an American pit bull was the one for me. They’ve got a bad reputation. They look mean. People give them a wide berth. But get them when they’re young and train them properly and you can’t go wrong. Loyal, intellig
ent, protective, loving. My husband had none of these qualities. I could bloody well have them in a dog.
The guy I got him from said Sully was blue. But to me he’s the colour of storm clouds with a streak of white on his chest I think of as his silver lining. He lies on his back as I run my fingers up and down his white streak, gives me a black-lipped grin and pounds the floor so hard with his tail I worry the neighbours in the flat below will complain.
But Sully isn’t just a defence. He’s my friend. A dog’s affection is still more than I deserve, but Sully doesn’t hold that against me. The flat where we live is in Brunswick, one of those inner city Melbourne suburbs where wogs and yuppies collide. Not my choice, but beggars can’t be choosers. At least I got a place where pets are allowed. I would’ve preferred a car. Me and Sully could’ve slept in it, taken off whenever we wanted, made a home of the open road.
But you can’t check in with your parole officer when you’re on the road.
The powers-that-be gave me a place three doors from a childcare centre. I can’t hear the children if I keep the windows shut. Me and Sully try to stay out of sight at drop-off and pick-up times, though it means lying low for up to two hours at each end of the day, which isn’t always possible.
It was winter when I moved in. The childcare centre opened at sparrow’s fart and some kids were dropped off while it was still dark. Through the Venetian blind in my bedroom I watched mothers unbundle their babies from capsules and car seats, drawn faces illuminated by the interior lights of their SUVs. I watched them juggle their babies on one hip, close the car door with the other, stagger lopsidedly to the entrance and punch in the security code. When they reappeared minutes later, the women were light on their feet. I watched them dab at baby spew on lapels, slip into stilettos, touch up lipstick in rear-view mirrors.
I felt nothing for these women. Neutral as Switzerland, me.
When the childcare centre traffic died down, I’d take Sully to the park. Well, not so much a park as a grassy block surrounded by temporary fencing with a hole in it. It reeked of a failed development – like a builder had overcapitalised and didn’t want to crystallise his losses by liquidating his assets. You surprised someone like me says things like overcapitalised and liquidate assets? Yeah, well, you would judge a book by its cover. Just so happens in a past life I was a girl from a nice family with a Diploma of Business and a promising career in insurance. Not that it matters now. No-one’s ever going to give me a job in insurance.