Happy as Larry

by Scot Gardner

  Vince looked up and realised they were waiting for him to speak. He shrugged. ‘I guess I just grew out of it. It was quite a difficult period of my life, turning forty. I won’t bore you with the details. I doubt I’ll be restarting my career now, anyway. That was a treat for Larry. I can’t see a bloody thing these days. Sorry. Excuse the language.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Denise said. ‘What’s wrong with your eyesight?’

  ‘Oh, just getting old, I think. Having trouble reading those large-print books now. Did you see how many times I fumbled with the juggling?’

  ‘I thought it was all part of the show,’ Mal said.

  Larry piped up from the floor. ‘I could read to you,’ he offered.

  The adults turned and stared at him.

  ‘You could, Larry,’ Mal said. ‘His reading is excellent, isn’t it, Denise?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Vince said. ‘I love westerns and war stories.’

  ‘What’s a western?’ Larry asked his father.

  ‘Cowboys and Indians.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I think Larry would be okay with that sort of thing. He’s been reading chapter books for years now,’ Denise said.

  ‘What do you think, Larry?’ Mal said.

  ‘I could try.’

  Vince was nodding. ‘Okay. Okay, thank you. Maybe I’ll come over after school or something. Give it a try.’

  ‘What’s Muriel up to?’ Denise asked. It had been very quiet next door: no barking Betsy and no ranting wife for days.

  ‘She’s up in the city for a few days. Her sister’s had a little op and Muriel’s gone up to give her a bit of a hand.’

  ‘Nothing serious, I hope.’

  ‘Women’s business, apparently.’

  Denise and Mal exchanged understanding looks over Vince’s shoulder.

  Muriel killed the clown.

  It was dusk when Mal remembered to put the wheelie bin out for the Thursday-morning rubbish collection. Over the rumbling of the bin’s wheels he could hear what sounded like a child screaming blue murder. Screaming and a siren. He stopped on the driveway to listen. The siren got closer and the child didn’t let up. The screaming turned to fractured shrieks of real pain. Agony. Mal could feel it in his stomach and his pumping heart. He wanted to run, but was frozen to the spot.

  The siren abruptly stopped. The ambulance surged into Condon Street.

  Across the road, at Clinton’s house, the flyscreen cracked open and the screaming child was carried onto the street. Mal dropped his bin and sprinted to the woman’s aid. The boy’s mother – the pasty-skinned woman in the headscarf cradling the boy must be Clinton’s mother, thought Mal, though he’d never seen her in all their years living across the road – coughed and whimpered and shook.

  ‘Baby . . . my baby . . . baby . . . baby . . . hold on, baby. Here they come, baby.’

  Except for the charred, wet T-shirt, Clinton was unrecognisable. His hair was a singed mess, his face blackened in some patches, in others raw and blistered. His left eye had been seared open and the iris and pupil had gone, burned to white.

  Mal lifted Clinton’s feet onto the trolley that had been lugged from the ambulance, and the boy found his voice again.

  ‘Mummy . . . Mum?’ he screamed before the words were lost among the sounds of pain.

  ‘I’m right here, Clinton. Right here.’

  They were bundled into the back of the vehicle and the driver closed the door. He hurriedly thanked Mal before climbing into the driver’s seat. Mal stood on the road and stared at the shadows moving across the back window. The siren yelped to life and he jumped.

  Others appeared on the street, voyeurs shaken from their evening’s television by the siren, but they were too late.

  ‘What was that?’ an old woman asked the night air, but Mal couldn’t respond. He was bent over the nature strip regurgitating party food. It was the smell of the boy that had finished him off. Not just the reek of burned flesh and hair, but another smell lingering on his skin: petrol.

  IN TIME

  SYDNEY HOSTED THE Olympic Games that September, and almost all the news that made its way into the Rainbow household was good. Denise watched it on TV from the opening to the closing ceremonies. She discovered she had a fascination for rowing, fencing and archery. Mal listened to the action via the radio and a set of headphones tucked into his helmet as he did his rounds. Vince postponed the reading-aloud time that week on account of the Games. It was Olympic fever at home and at school, and by the afternoon on the first day of the competition, Larry was already tired of the fuss.

  On the last Monday of the Games, a mad westerly whipped in from the mountains and tore small branches from the liquidambar in the front yard. It was an angry wind that peppered Larry with grit and made him squint as he sat at the top of the slide in the park. Through the dust and spiralling leaves, a boy appeared at the foot of the slide. He wore new white sneakers and black sweat-pants, and his hands were stuffed in the pockets of a puffy white gangster jacket. His ears poked from beneath an oversized yellow Dada baseball cap. He had cotton wool taped over his left eye. His clothes were clean and neat.

  Larry launched himself down the slide to welcome the stranger and realised it was Clinton. The skin on his neck and cheek below the eye patch was pink and puckered and pulled his mouth into a lopsided grin.

  Larry shivered. He couldn’t help himself. ‘What happened?’

  Clinton shrugged. ‘Do you want to see my bird?’

  He took his hand from his jacket pocket and uncurled his bandaged fingers to reveal a featherless chick. It peeped pathetically from an oversized beak and stumped at Clinton’s bandages with tiny wings. Its bulbous belly and purple-lidded eyes looked like scar tissue.

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘It was on our driveway. I think it was blown out of the nest. I’m going to get some worms. Can you dig for me?’

  Larry scratched through the playground mulch until he found three fine red worms that flicked and squiggled like rolled rubber bands.

  The bird wouldn’t eat.

  Larry felt the other boy’s frustration rising like boiling milk until Clinton swore and threw the bird onto the footpath.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ Larry cried, and ran to where the bird had fallen.

  Clinton shouldered him clear, pressed the toe of his sneaker on the chick and spun his foot.

  ‘No!’

  Clinton lifted his shoe dramatically.

  They stared at the mangled remains.

  Larry felt ill. ‘What did you do that for?’ he repeated.

  Clinton shrugged. ‘For fun.’

  The revulsion made Larry’s limbs ache. He hurried away.

  ‘Whoah. Its guts are purple. Look, Larry. Larry? Where are you going?’

  Larry kept walking.

  ‘They never live,’ Clinton shouted. ‘I was putting it out of its misery. I was doing it a favour.’ The wind swallowed the last of his words.

  Larry met Vince on the Rainbows’ driveway.

  ‘Oh, hi Larry. Is your dad home?’ There was a desperate edge to the old man’s voice.

  ‘I don’t think so. Not yet.’

  ‘Do you think it would be okay to borrow his big ladder? The antenna for the TV has taken a beating in the wind and we can’t watch the four hundred metres final.’

  The ladder that lived beside the garage was a tired, wooden thing that Mal had salvaged. It was missing two of the bottom rungs but it was the only one that could reach the gutters on the back of their houses. They carried it into the Hammersmiths’ yard and propped it against the eaves near the back door. Betsy growled and limped arthritically to the depths of the yard.

  ‘I’ll go up,’ Larry said.

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ Vince said. He stepped on the lowest rung and it cracked beneath his slipper. It didn’t snap, but it certainly registered an objection.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Larry said again. ‘I can see where the cable has
unplugged.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes, look,’ Larry said, and pointed to the black cord dangling against the cream brick chimney.

  Vince shook his head. ‘I can’t see a thing, Larry, honestly.’

  Larry held his breath and began to climb while Vince gripped both sides. ‘Be careful, Larry.’ The decaying timber was rough beneath his fingers and there were three rungs on the way up that felt spongy under his weight. He didn’t start breathing properly again until the roof tiles were grinding beneath his feet.

  He plugged the cable into its socket.

  ‘Yes! That’s it!’ Muriel bellowed from inside the house.

  But the connection was loose and the weight of the wire blowing in the wind tugged it apart again.

  ‘No! It’s gone again,’ Muriel growled.

  ‘It’s too loose,’ Larry yelled. ‘We need some tape or something.’

  ‘Tape? Electrical tape?’

  ‘I guess so. Any tape will do.’

  Larry pushed the plug home again and held it in place.

  ‘Yes! That’s it!’ Muriel screamed. ‘Hold it there. Don’t move.’

  ‘There’s some inside. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  Larry heard the back flyscreen slam. The ladder scraped on the gutter, wobbled and fell, cracking a large terracotta pot on the way down. Larry sucked air through his teeth and peered over the edge of the roof to see it lying like a broken limb on the lawn.

  ‘Oh,’ Vince said, when he returned with the tape. He tossed the roll to Larry, who fumbled the catch, letting the plug fall apart.

  ‘No!’ Muriel shrieked. ‘It’s gone again. Fix it quickly. The race is starting.’

  ‘Have you got it?’ Vince pleaded. ‘Can you get it? I’ll . . .’

  ‘Go,’ Larry said. ‘Watch the race. I’ll sort this out.’

  ‘Not likely,’ Vince said. ‘I can watch the replay later on.’

  Larry couldn’t find the end of the tape with one hand. He rolled it in his fingers half a dozen times before the first big drop of windswept rain ticked against his cheek. He looked heavenward as the clouds dumped their load.

  ‘Hang on,’ Vince bellowed. ‘I’ll grab you an umbrella.’

  He was gone in a flash.

  Larry made his own connections as his skin grew damp. Ideas clicked together like Lego.

  Helping was the remedy for an overdose of Clinton.

  A cold shower on the roof of his neighbour’s house could wash the invisible blood from the invisible scratches and cuts that Clinton left on his body.

  He scrunched his eyes shut and felt the raindrops pecking at his face. He smiled at the weirdness of the situation – stuck on the roof of his neighbour’s house, accidentally discovering new and valuable uses for weather.

  The shower stopped abruptly, just as Vince returned with the umbrella, and the sight of his grey-haired neighbour squinting up at him and battling with the brolly in the wind set Larry laughing. The umbrella turned inside out and Vince tossed it in the garden.

  ‘My goodness, Larry. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?’

  ‘Did they win?’

  ‘I believe so,’ Vince said. ‘Cathy Freeman takes home gold.’

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ Larry said.

  In time, Larry found the end of the tape and lashed the plug together with a wad the size of a tennis ball. In time, Mal arrived and inspected the broken ladder before phoning Stan to borrow a replacement. In time, Larry climbed down the replacement ladder and on to terra firma.

  In time, the boy even forgot about the broken bird and the broken kid across the road.

  But the broken kid from across the road never forgot a thing.

  BEACH

  THE DOG REPAID a debt that summer.

  Mad cow disease had spread panic and vegetarianism through Europe and something shonky had gone on with vote-counting in Florida for the new US president, but in Villea the sun shone and the Rainbows rode their bikes around the point to Tuber Bay. Mal had fashioned a trailer for his rods and bait bucket from an old wheeled golf bag and a milk crate. It looked precarious. Larry and Denise gave him a wide berth.

  At the bay, Gilligan chased pads of wet sand that Larry hurled at the waves. Mal cast beyond the breakers. Denise applied sunscreen to her shoulders and stretched out on a towel, her winter-wan flesh escaping from her over-tight bathing suit.

  Even though it was almost mid-December, the ocean hadn’t really warmed and Larry’s ankles began to ache from the cold. Gilligan shivered as he waited for the next lump of sand to be thrown. Larry called him and they ran along the lonely beach to the steep bank of dunes that marked the high-tide line. The surface of the dune was powdery and made for easy digging, but as Larry dug deeper into the embankment the sand became more compacted and held the shape he scoured with his fingernails. Gilligan grew tired of the digging and started snapping at the clods Larry tossed between his legs. A cave began to form and the boy’s scooping grew more purposeful. He was an army man from one of Vince’s war books. He was digging himself a tunnel to avoid the enemy. Soon fine sand cascaded onto his neck as he put his head into the hole to reach the back wall. It was quiet inside. He could hardly hear the ocean. Echidnacave quiet.

  Half an hour of hard digging yielded a tunnel that Larry could crouch inside. He backed in. With his knees pressed against his chest, Larry was completely hidden. Safe from stray bullets. Concealed like a sniper. Gilligan lay on his side in the sun. Larry could see Denise on her back with an elbow up shielding her eyes. Mal squatted, rebaiting his hook.

  A tiny spill of sand rolling down the back of his shorts was all the warning Larry got. With a dull whumph and rush of air, the tunnel collapsed. While the weight of the dune and the sudden darkness were like an injection of pure panic, Larry managed to hold his breath, but the rest of his body was paralysed. The muscles in his arms and legs were useless, pinned in a foetal position inside a womb of cold sand. He pushed and pulled against the mass that encased him. As his air ran out, stars appeared in the blackness, pinpricks of colour that expanded as his lungs began to scream for breath. Above the roaring silence and the impending and familiar sense of death, Larry heard scratching. It sounded as though it was inside his head. With his lungs burning and heart hammering its last few beats, he registered the scratching growing louder. Claws scraped at his scalp. With every micron of his strength, Larry surged forward, thrusting his eyes into the harsh light, his ears ringing with the frenzied yapping of his dog.

  Gilligan had dug his head free.

  Larry exhaled and the sand slumped further around his chest, making the sandy in-breath that followed frighteningly difficult. With panic as his ally now, Larry scrabbled and twisted and strained until a shoulder, an arm, his torso, his whole body was free.

  He stood, wobbly and panting in the sun. He spat and shook and rubbed his eyes. His mother slept on, indifferent. His father was fighting with a fish at the water’s edge. His dog sat at his feet and stared up at him, smoothing the sand with his tail. Larry crouched and hugged Gilligan’s neck, tears of relief and gratitude flushing the last of the sand from his eyes.

  Mal did eventually land the fish, an impressive tailor. It thrashed and carried on in the surf and Gilligan went crazy trying to bite it. It went calm when Mal lifted it out of the shallows, as if resigned to its fate. Denise took a dozen photos of Mal and the fish with the digital camera. Mal was posing for a close-up, threatening to kiss the fish on the lips when it came to life and bit him on the mouth. Its keen teeth stamped through the soft flesh and made him bleed. Mal shrieked and flopped backwards onto the sand but didn’t let go of the prize. Swearing under his breath, with his back to his wife and son, he despatched the fishwith a single slash of his filleting knife.

  They built a sand tower to perch the camera on and used the self-timer to catch a rare family photo. Denise downloaded it onto the computer that night and printed it as big as it would go to show Vince. It was certainly a beautiful photo – even
the dog was smiling. Larry saw beyond the ink and paper. He saw the little details – the rosy flush of sunburn on his mother’s neck, the sand on his own cheek and the tiny puncture wounds on his father’s lip – that rendered the picture as a frozen moment. A single word copied from a loose page in the book of his life.

  Beach.

  It could have been the final chapter. Only the boy and the dog knew the truth and he knew his secret was safe with Gilligan. Besides, he’d survived. They’d all survived. The world would have to be bigger and meaner than that to smash the Rainbows.

  Back at home, Vince had been chatting with them for almost ten minutes before Denise noticed the bandaid on his forehead. A red-brown blood spot stained the centre of the strip.

  ‘What happened to your head? Ouch. That looks nasty.’

  Vince lightly touched his brow. ‘I hit a road sign on my run this morning. I . . . I just didn’t see it.’

  Mal snorted a laugh, then bit it in two.

  Vince was shaking. His eyes were wet.

  ‘Sorry, Vince,’ Mal said. ‘That must have been horrible.’

  The old man straightened. ‘Oh, no, I mean I’ve run into things before, I’m just . . . I’m not ready to give up running. I think if I stop running, I’ll die, and I’m not ready for that yet, either.’

  ‘What about a treadmill?’ Denise suggested. ‘Running on the spot.’

  Vince’s nose wrinkled. ‘Muriel bought me one a few years ago. I hate it. Seems so pointless. I’m not really running for the exercise . . . well, I am, but mostly I run for the foreshore, the smell of seaweed, the seasons, the freedom. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Mal said.

  An awkward silence fell in the room. Only the news chattered away on the box. Apparently, the US Supreme Court had decided once and for all that George W. Bush had won the vote in Florida and would be President of America for four years.

  ‘I’ll run with you,’ Larry said.

  Vince, Denise and Mal stared at him. Mal laughed again, though this time he gave it free rein. Sometimes his boy said the most crazy, insightful, generous things.