by Scot Gardner
I sat there for hours. Occasionally, a bolt of lightning would go off in my head and I swear I could smell singed brain cells. Griz turned the tap off. Crack! Hendo made my nose bleed. Zap! Mandy still likes me. Kerry hates me. Crack, crack, kaboom.
There was a telly mounted high on the wall and it got suddenly louder as the waitress behind the counter poked the remote. They were counting down the seconds and the waitress and a few others in the restaurant started chanting with them. Four, three, two, one. Happy New Year! They started kissing each other and I looked out the window. A couple of cars passing on the highway tooted.
Mum will be pissed. Maybe I should call her? It was three o’clock in the morning by the time I could think clear enough to phone and I decided it was too late. Probably wouldn’t really be missed until the morning anyway. Oh well, happy New Year, Mum.
I curled up there with the trucks and pissed New Year revellers rolling in every few minutes. I got to see the regulars. I saw the waitress check her watch and make a burger. A thin man with a scruffy moustache came in and smiled to her as he picked up his burger. She held his hand for half a breath and took his money; not a word was spoken. Sad. Later she made a coffee with five sugars and sat it on the counter. An hour passed and the coffee just sat there. Eventually she turfed the whole thing into the bin. I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to be like the truckies and do the same thing every bloody day. And I don’t want to be like that lady. Waiting. Waiting for the same old people and the heartache. Waiting for the next truck-stop romance. Stuff that.
The old bloke came back in as the sun was colouring the sky and ordered another ace-of-spades tea.
‘Still here are you?’ he said and sat opposite me again, big smile on his face.
‘Are you still going up to Brisbane?’
‘Yeah,’ he chuckled. ‘Got to get this corn off before it goes rotten and stinks my truck out, I do.’
He took a sip of his tea then spat it back. He looked up to see if I’d seen him and his eyes were watering. ‘Whoo! Bloody hot. Just burnt the bubble wrap off my tongue,’ he said, fanning his mouth.
‘Can I come with you?’
He looked me over. ‘Yeah. I suppose you can come if you want. You’d better go to the toilet. I only stop for food and fuel, if you know what I mean. You know?’
His name was Jack. Jack Gobstopper or some wog name like that. The sun was low on the horizon and occasionally streamed in through his window. Told me his whole life story before we got to Seymour, not bad going for an hour on the road. One wife, Georgina, who he hadn’t seen in two years and one son, Stephen, who lives in a juvenile detention centre.
‘Sixteen years old and he’s already in jail. She just didn’t look after him, she didn’t. You know? And I’m on the road a lot so it’s hard to keep track of where he is from the front of my truck, you know?’
The truck was an Iveco. Bloody comfortable, once I’d conquered the steps that were more like a ladder up to the door. Made my bedroom look like a tip. Even had an Iveco recycling bin—no shit—one bag for rubbish and one for bottles and cans. Had a fridge loaded with little bottles of Coke, I reckon he drank one per hour. Didn’t offer me one. I didn’t really mind, my guts were aching and the country and western music that droned through the stereo made me want to chuck. ‘My dog can’t walk properly because his balls drag along the ground and my wife stole my truck and run away with my horse. Yeah.’ It put me to sleep.
Dragon’s fart. That’s what the handbrake sounded like and it scared the shit out of me. I didn’t know where I was or which way was up.
Jack apologised. ‘You want to grab something to eat, Wayne? Do you?’
I nodded and fished my wallet out of my pack. I wasn’t quite with it and I stumbled getting down from the truck. Ended up on my arse in the gravel in full sight of the packed café.
‘Gosh. You all right Wayne? Did you hurt yourself? Did you?’ Jack said, and helped me to my feet.
I had to laugh. I know I went red as a baboon’s bum but I had to laugh. Yeah, free show everybody. Roll up, roll up, come and see Wayno the bouncing boy toss himself from stationary trucks. I should have bowed.
The sun was high overhead. The day had heated up while I slept.
One of the waitresses smiled at me, I’m sure she had enjoyed the show. Chick about my age and a real honey. As it turned out, she served me my two pies and a bottle of Coke. I would have got her phone number if I hadn’t ripped my wallet open. I had to use one of Mum’s fifty-dollar notes to pay for my food and a great wash of guilty sads made my gut wobble on the inside. What the bloody hell was I doing?
Jack went for a piss. I went for the payphone. ‘Your call could not be connected. Please check the number and try again’ and a spooky faint voice behind it said something like ‘en double you are jay’. I freaked and dialled again. Come on Mum. Same message. Jack was coming out of the toilets wiping his hands on his jeans. I bolted past him into the dunny. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pee. I stood there for a minute shaking my willy about trying to encourage a flow but nothing happened. I ran back out and realised I’d left my food and wallet on the stand next to the phone. Idiot. Jack was waiting near my open door munching on a sandwich.
‘I’ll give you a hand if you like, Wayne. Give me your food and stuff,’ he said and wrestled me until he had an armful. He carted them up and laid them in a neat row on the dash. Wallet, pie, pie, Coke.
‘You right then?’ he said. Looked like he was going to hold my hand or something.
I nodded and flew up the steps.
Mate, those pies were good. I felt like a python at the end of three months’ hibernation. Nothing like a rat pie. Jack and I talked on and off as the sun did its disappearing act. Fade to black over paddocks of gold. My bum went numb. He never asked me where I was going or anything like that and I’m glad. He’d been so honest with me that it would have been hard work to bullshit my way out of it.
Jack said they grow a lot of wheat along the Newell
Highway and it suddenly dawned on me why Mum’s phone didn’t work. We were now in New South Wales and I hadn’t used the area code. Dipshit. We were driving through little country towns and I was praying that Jack would stop. Every town had a payphone lit up like the mirror in our bathroom and I watched them whiz by. My bladder was going to burst.
‘Shit!’ Jack shouted, swerved and braked hard. All the hissing and groaning almost made me piss my pants. He got out and turned on his torch. I got out and turned on my fire hose. Relief or what?
I found him right down the back of the truck peering at one of the wheels.
‘Sorry about the language, Wayne,’ he said, and I scoffed.
‘Heard worse than that in church, Jack.’
‘Ran over one of those blessed porcupines. It was already dead, it was. Gosh they can make a mess.’
He pointed with his torch to one of the inside wheels where a clump of echidna spikes stuck out from the wall. The wheel next to it was the same and the one behind.
‘No holes though. They don’t usually make holes. Not tough enough for that, they aren’t. But sometimes they do.’
It felt like midnight when we stopped again at another truck stop. The air was warm and heavy.
‘This is it, Wayne. The end of the line, it is. I go up to the depot from here but it won’t get you any closer to the city. You could hang around here, you could. Maybe get a ride with one of these blokes or jump on the train,’ he said.
I grabbed my pack and climbed down the stairs. I shook his hand and he slapped me on the shoulder. ‘Look after yourself.’
I thanked him and walked to the station. Wacol. The phone on the platform was lit like all the others I’d seen but my heart sank when I got close enough to see it had its guts hanging out. A train arrived at 11:33 and I jumped on. Only one bloke sat in my carriage, looking pretty seedy with his chin resting on his chest. Jeez, I hoped it was going the right way. What was I talking about? I didn’t even k
now where I was going. It may be stupid but right then the thing that I missed the most was the mower shed at the back of the flat. All the cobwebs and cat’s piss. Seriously. Not my bed or my mum or even the telly, just that scungy shed. Maybe it was the fact that no-one ever went out there except me. I guess that makes it my joint. I don’t know, but I wished that I was there right then.
The bloke snapped awake like he’d had a bad dream. He gripped the seat and stood up. We got off at Roma Street. The bloke staggered off platform number nine and rode the escalator to a new level. I slung my bag on my back and followed him along a wide corridor where our footfalls echoed. He fished in his pocket, drew out his wallet and strode for the ticket barrier. He awkwardly showed the fold of his wallet to the sleepy looking bloke in the booth. He didn’t stop and the bloke in the booth rubbed the stubble on his jaw and nodded. It was now or never and, thinking on my feet, I stopped in the light of the booth, looked the bloke in the eyes and smiled.
‘My ticket’s right at the bottom of my pack,’ I said and shrugged my bag off my back.
The man in the booth grunted and waved me through.
‘Don’t worry about it, mate.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
I wasted no time in striding out onto the street. Just over the road was the second biggest police station in the world. Police headquarters. I nearly crashed into a letterbox on the footpath. What a place to break the law!
A lone seagull ghosted high above the street, squawking pathetically to itself, its wings gold in the reflected street-light. It flew like it was drunk. Drunk and lost, looking for a place to land.
There was a park behind the station. Fresh looking and newly built, it offered me a seat and sanctuary.
It hit me that I was halfway across the country, in a city that wasn’t my own. I’d gotten there on a confused whim. The whim had run out and all that was left was confusion. Why? Why did I nick off? To prove something to someone, I supposed. Mostly to get up Mum’s nose.
A feeling started clawing at my tummy. It was like being hungry, and I probably was, but it made my arms and legs feel heavy. I heard the seagull again, its harsh cawing ‘braw, braw, braw’ bouncing off the empty street and concrete buildings. It was the loneliest sound on earth. Sitting on a park bench lit by streetlights, in a strange city, the curtain that was across my heart got ripped aside. That feeling in my tummy was loneliness. I missed Kez and Mum and Den. I missed Dad and my bike. I missed the Merrimans Creek hill and everything about the place where I have lived all my life. I wanted to go home.
At the top of Roma Street was a row of telephones—lit up so they looked like the gates of heaven to me. I slung my pack in the disabled booth and unzipped the front pocket where I kept my ciggies and my wallet. My wallet wasn’t there. I ripped open the top zip and pulled my clothes out. Shit, shit, shit. No wallet. I grabbed a big handful of hair and pulled until it hurt. Stamped my foot. I could picture it on the dash of Jack’s truck.
I had to ring her. ‘Your call could not be connected . . .’ Slam! Shit, shit, shit. Area code then number. Ring, ring. It rang forever and I realised it was probably well after midnight.
‘Hel—’ Click. Boop boop boop.
‘Mum!’
I slammed the phone down and burst into tears. Big silent sobs that made my body shake. Game over. It wasn’t funny any more. All the life in me fell out through my guts and dribbled into the gutter. I started praying. I told God that if he got me out of this one I’d be his mate. I promised him I’d give up the smokes.
‘Hey mate, you okay?’
I sniffed hard, wiped my face on my arm and turned to see the bright light of a torch in my face. It was a woman’s voice, a hard woman. I blinked and wiped my face again.
‘What’s your name, mate?’ she asked.
‘Wayne Armond.’
‘Where are you from Wayne?’
‘Chisholm.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Near Fairleigh. In Melbourne.’
‘You’re a long way from home.’
I nodded and she took the torch down so I could see her uniform and the bloke standing beside her. ‘Yeah. I’ve lost my wallet.’
‘Oh. Have you? Where did you lose it?’
‘I didn’t really lose it. I left it in a truck.’
‘In a truck? Where are you staying tonight, Wayne?’
I shrugged and stuffed my clothes back in the pack.
‘How about you come with us and we see if we can find your wallet?’
I nodded. They took me past police headquarters to another police station in the back of a divisional van. It smelled like disinfectant and a faint hint of vomit. Pretty cosy.
Mum wasn’t angry. She blubbered at me down the phone saying she was sorry. Senior Constable Angela Gray and Constable David Waddington were more pissed with me than Mum was. Gave me a big lecture about the dangers of hitchhiking and not letting people know where you’re going and that. They didn’t find Jack Gobstopper and they didn’t find my wallet. They showed me how to make a reverse-charge phone call and let me sleep in their sickbay. I had to smoke outside and they gave me so much shit about it that I had half a ciggy and chucked the rest out. Forty-eight left in the pack and I chucked them out too. There God, see, I quit. They drove me to the airport at eight o’clock that morning, in the back of the divisional van. Dave gave me twenty dollars for lunch and slapped me on the back. Told me he didn’t want to see me again.
I worked out the hard way that I’m shit scared of flying. I was hanging on to the armrest so tight that my stump ached. If I had have been flying to Perth instead of Melbourne I reckon I would have evolved another hand. One of the hostesses stopped me on the way back from my twelfth visit to the toilet.
‘Going for the world record? The most trips to the toilet in one interstate flight?’
If she hadn’t been so gorgeous I might have thought of a smart-arse comeback.
‘Have you been listening to the music?’ she asked.
I shook my head. She led me down the aisle to my seat and showed me how to make it recline. She pulled out a set of headphones from the pocket in front of me and put them on my head gently. She was wearing vanilla.
‘Try channel sixteen,’ she said.
Rasping guitar that I recognised straightaway. ‘Feral
Pigs! Thanks.’
She giggled and held her finger to her lips. I shrugged. Mum and Dad both came to the airport. Baboon smiles all round. I apologised and hugged them both. Mum cried a bit and Dad pecked me on the cheek. No shit. Pecked me like a chook, his face felt like sandpaper. Sometimes he tries too hard.
In the car park, Mum’s Hyundai sat next to Dad’s ute and next to the ute was a little red BMW sports car with a suction cup sticker in the back window that read: ‘I’d rather be an old fart than a young dickhead’. Yeah, point taken. Dickhead.
Mum finally gave me the full treatment in the car. I felt like shit but I heard what she was saying. No respect for her or the work she does to keep me on the rails. Let down. Pissed off. Sorry. Sorry she couldn’t be a better mum. I told her she was the best mum I’d ever had. She whumped me with the back of her hand and nearly collected the bumper on a green Volkswagen beetle.
A big vase of red roses sat on the kitchen bench. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw flowers in the house. Yes I could—Mum brought a heap home from the hospital after my accident. They looked beautiful but out of place.
‘Nice flowers, Mum.’
She nodded and smiled.
From Dad? I don’t know. The more I thought about it the less likely that seemed. Dad’s as romantic as your average garden rake.
‘From Richo,’ she said and flushed.
‘Richo?’
‘Mmmm. Came over the other night to wish me a happy New Year.’
And it was relief that I felt. Relief that Richo was interested in Mum and that Mum was interested in him. That she could be friendly with Dad and still have a life. Only took her eig
ht years to work that out. She’s like lightning, my mum.
‘Why did you run away?’ She asked. I shrugged. ‘I dunno.’
She shrugged and mocked me, ‘I dunno.’
I smiled. ‘I ran away to try and find myself.’ She looked hard at me.
I stared at the flowers.
‘Did it work?’ she asked.
I shrugged again. ‘I dunno.’ She grunted.
‘I honestly dunno,’ I said. ‘But as soon as I do, I’ll let you know.’
•
Some things never change: Sale of the Century, lamb chops, peas and mashed potatoes, the songs they play on the radio, my underwear. I had a long shower that night and I felt like I was home. Home but not settled. I wanted to phone Kez and tell her what had happened, let her know that she was the one I wanted to be with, not Mandy. Mandy was a creek I had to cross to get to the ocean of Kerry. I wanted to phone but I was terrified. I lay on my bed and tried to work out what I would say to her. I imagined her in front of me and I apologised. That was as far as I got before I fell asleep and she flitted nicely in and out of my dreams.
I got a strange parcel in the mail from Jacobus Goudswaard the next day, with a note that looked as though it had been written left-handed by a right-handed five-year-old.
Mum had to read it for me. ‘It says: “Dear Wayne, so nice to meet you on the other day. You left your wallet in my truck and you had catched a train by the time I saw it. Sorry I missed you. Hope you get this. Best of luck. Jack.”’ Everything was in it: my student card, library card, a condom, a few receipts, and one hundred and forty-four dollars and thirty-five cents. I gave the money to Mum.
That’s how she found out I’d taken it.