by Simon French
After training, when everyone was drinking thirstily from water bottles and putting jackets and jumpers on, ready for home, Bon came over and said, “Sam. Which one is Sam?”
I looked at him. His face was set and serious.
“How come you need to know?” I asked him.
“I just need to. I heard you call out to him when I was over there.” He pointed back at the play area, then repeated, “Which one is Sam?”
“The really tall guy putting on the black jacket. What, you know him?”
Bon looked over at where Split Pin stood. “That’s Sam?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t know him, do you?”
“No.” Bon sighed. “I don’t know him. He’s a different Sam.”
Bon was very quiet for the rest of the evening, enough for Dad to ask in the car on the way home, “Are you all right there, mate?”
“I’m tired,” was Bon’s only reply, but I heard him in the darkness of our car, murmuring to himself. I stared at him as though he was a crazy person, and he abruptly stopped.
His mum was waiting for him in her car. It was parked right outside our house, and Mum stood by the driver’s window talking with my aunt for the minutes it took for me, Gina and Dad to unload ourselves out of our own car, and get inside away from the evening chill.
“Bon didn’t come and have a kick with us,” Dad remarked afterwards. “What does he get up at school when it’s playtime?”
“He hangs around with the girls,” I said.
Dad was more than surprised. “Really?”
“His best friend is a girl,” I added.
Dad nodded his head. “Well, everybody’s different, I guess,” he said, dropping his sports bag in the hallway and heading for a shower. “Poor kid. He looked completely lost with that soccer ball tonight.”
I heard the noise of my aunt’s car leaving, and our front door clicking shut.
“How was training?” Mum asked.
“Good,” Dad replied. “Kieran nearly got the ball into the net past Jacko Anderson. How was your dinner?”
Mum thought a moment. “Interesting. We worked through some issues. Made some important decisions.” She glanced at Gina and me. “I’ll tell you more later.” Which I knew meant after my bedtime.
We saw Bon again early the next morning.
“Now, that’s interesting,” Dad said, stopping on the footpath across from the Tealeaf Cafe. Usually, he kept his eyes on the footpath or on the way ahead. He would jog the length of the Sheridan Street shops without stopping, and would keep a sharp focus on every breath and step. He would only glance up when someone else walked near or he came to a kerb and had to look for traffic. Dad might pause to say Hi, guys to Lenny or Danno as they emptied the bins, but would usually not stop until we came to Apex Park, where he would do his leg stretches, sit-ups or simply lie on the grass for a few minutes. This was when we would talk – about the weather, the familiar people or cars we’d noticed while jogging, our guesswork about the warm scents that drifted from the bakery. Or we might talk about the approaching weekend game, about players and tactics.
But today was different. Dad had happened to glance across at the cafe as we passed by, and then stopped in his tracks. Of course, I knew what he had seen, who he had seen.
“It’s Bon,” he said between breaths. “What’s he doing there? Kelsie’s giving him breakfast, by the looks of things. So where’s his mother?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well,” Dad said, “I might go and say hello. Coming?”
“I’ll wait here.”
Dad crossed the road, tapped on the door that had its closed sign showing. I could see Bon’s alarmed face, a slice of toast at his mouth. I saw Kelsie wave and grin, open the door and say hi.
I decided then to follow Dad across the quiet main street, and stood directly outside the cafe window.
“Your customer,” I heard Dad say. “My nephew. Morning, Bon.” I saw him ruffle Bon’s hair the way he might have done with me, and then have a short conversation I couldn’t quite hear. Maybe Bon relaxed a little; he said something to Dad and nodded before taking a long mouthful from the tall mug that Kelsie had brought to his table. Uncomfortably, he looked at me through the cafe window.
When Dad returned, he said to me, “Breakfast. Kelsie has been giving Bon free breakfasts for a few weeks now. She saw him wandering around early and called him in. It’s a regular thing, can you believe that? Bon says his mother doesn’t have any breakfast to give him; she’s asleep when he’s ready to go to school.” Then Dad asked, “Did you know about this?”
A pause, and then I nodded. “Yes.”
“How?”
“I saw him. Other mornings when we were out.”
“And you didn’t say anything?”
“No,” I admitted.
Dad took a deep breath. “Kieran, I think you probably should have. How often have you seen Bon over there?”
“Six, maybe seven times.”
Dad exhaled loudly. “Kelsie is not charging him. She’s feeding him because she’s kind and she cares.” He paused. “I thanked her and said she wouldn’t have to keep doing it. That Bon and his breakfasts would be looked after from now on.”
“Looked after?”
“Renee needs our help,” Dad said as he gazed along the length of the main street. “We’ll talk about it properly at your nan’s tonight.”
Before I could ask another question, Dad set off jogging. “Come on!” he called.
Somehow I knew I was going to be told something I wasn’t going to like, and that it was going to be all about Bon.
He was nowhere to be seen in the playground as the school day dragged on, and I started thinking that maybe Bon and my aunt were gone, had moved away somewhere else.
My aunt’s car was not parked outside Nan’s house later that day when we arrived. But Bon was curled up on the couch, hypnotised by the television show he was watching. He said hello in a dreamy, absent voice, and I caught sight of his backpack in the spare room, his sneakers and a jacket scattered on the floor. Gina bounced herself down on the couch, alongside Bon.
“Where’s Aunty Renee?” I asked, sitting down at the table with Nan and my parents.
“She’s already left,” Nan said. “She decided to return … home.”
“Why isn’t Bon with her?”
“Because,” Nan said, “Bon is staying with me. I had him and Renee here most of the day, which is why he wasn’t at school.” She paused. “It was good for us three to be together for a while. Kieran, I’m going to be Bon’s guardian from now on.”
“He’s staying with you?”
She wants to leave him here with us. Mum had said that the day my aunt had visited, the day Bon had remembered the way to our house. The picture became a little clearer. Bon’s mum did not want him, or else could not look after him.
“He’s going to stay with you? Why?”
No one answered at first and the moment of silence quickly became uncomfortable.
“What’s the matter with Aunty Renee?” I asked.
“Kieran,” Mum began, “Renee is often not an easy person to know or to be with. She doesn’t always look after herself, and she never stays in one place very long. She doesn’t always make good decisions, and none of that is very good for Bon. Renee knows that too, and what we’ve all agreed to do is very important. For her, and especially for Bon.”
“Kieran,” Nan said, “this is not about playing favourites. It’s about giving Bon a safe, happy place to be, for as long as he wants. Somewhere to call home.”
Home. Reluctantly, I let the word bounce around in my head. “So he’s going to live at your house.”
“Yes.”
“He’s going to take over the guestroom, so Gina and I can’t have sleepovers there any more.”
“You can still have sleepovers.” Nan smiled. “Now I have an excuse to tidy the junk room. So there’ll space
enough for three grandchildren.”
“And,” I said, “instead of his mum, it’s going to be you looking after him.”
“It’s what grandparents need to do sometimes, become parents to grandchildren. I know other people my age doing exactly the same.”
“You do?” I asked, surprised.
Nan nodded, but I tried to avoid her steady gaze by focusing on other things – the crimson streaks in her hair, the dangly dragonfly earrings she had chosen to wear that day.
“And it’s going to be a team effort,” Dad said. “To give your nan a break, we’re having Bon stay with us as well. Every second weekend and a couple of weekdays each fortnight.”
It was the last thing I had expected Dad to say, and the surprise must have shown on my face, because Dad added, “We’re all going to help out. Aren’t we, Kieran?”
I couldn’t get an answer out. Bon was not only taking over Nan’s house, but ours as well. For a moment, I felt like shouting at someone.
Dad thought I was daydreaming. “Kieran?”
“Yeah,” I answered doubtfully. “I guess.”
Now I’m stuck with him. Now I’m supposed to find a way to like him.
“It’s going to be a big change for us all,” Mum said, reaching an arm around my shoulders. “Lots of things for us to think about and start getting used to. But it’s an even bigger change for Bon.”
“We need to tell Gina,” Nan said.
“The short, easy version, suitable for six year olds,” Dad remarked.
Which was how it came out. Bon is coming to live at Nan’s house.
Bon drifted into the room and was silent. He gazed at the table, the floor, at our night reflections in the kitchen window glass.
“So what are you thinking about all this, Bon?” Mum asked gently.
He was silent a moment longer. “I think it will be good.” He used his precise voice, sounding neither happy nor sad. He stood beside where Nan was sitting and leaned against her shoulder.
“What about you, Gina?” Dad asked. “What do you think about Bon living with Nan and staying with us a couple of days each week?”
Gina was happy. When the short, easy version had been told to her, she had jumped up and down a couple of times, exclaiming, “Yay!” She grinned and added, “It’s good, because Bon is my favourite cousin.”
Bon looked at her. “Thank you,” he said, smiling.
Then he looked at me. He held the smile a moment longer before it faded. I could tell he was hoping for me to say something as well, but I couldn’t.
It was the longest we had ever faced each other, and the first time I had noticed how long his eyelashes were, and how a little scar above one of his eyes showed as a pale straight line.
CHAPTER 10
I was sitting a long way from everyone, and it was a strange, new experience.
Our four-wheel drive had a third, fold-down seat that we only ever used whenever there were our friends along for the ride – but now, I had it to myself. My parents were a long way off in the very front, and in the seat behind them were three kids. There was Gina and Emily, because this year it was my sister’s turn to choose a friend to come along with us for our one week holiday at the coast. Last year, I had invited Lucas, only to have Mason find out afterwards and say grouchily, “Well, you didn’t ask me. That’s pretty slack.”
“I’ll invite you next time,” I had reassured him, feeling a bit panicked and awkward. “The year after next.”
“What?”
“Me and my sister. We take turns; it’s like a family rule. Sorry, Mason.”
It had been good having Lucas along with us. He behaved differently from the way he did at school – or as I realised, differently from the way he behaved in front of Mason and the other kids. We swam and fished together, he said thank you to my parents every time they bought us lunch or dinner, or took us to the movies at the little beachside theatre. But with the holidays over and school on again, Lucas went back to his old self.
“Yeah, I had a good time,” was all that I heard him say to Mason. Asking him along hadn’t turned him into my new best friend. I had started to think hard and worry more about whether even to ask Mason when my turn came around again. Maybe he would be too busy being friends with Lucas, and busy being most popular boy in class even to remember.
I wriggled down a little further into my seat and gazed through the window. It was open a bit and the breeze cut sharply across my forehead. I had earphones on and my own music playing. Mum and Dad were talking. I could see Dad relaxed and cheerful, the way he always was at the beginning of a holiday at the coast. On the drive home in a week’s time, he would be quieter and maybe even a little disappointed that the holiday was over and he would be back working at Rural Engineering soon. But now, I could see a little of his face in the rear-vision mirror, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses and his teeth occasionally showing, smiling about something Mum was saying. Sometimes his face looked back at mine, or at the loaded trailer we towed behind us.
In a long meandering line, the back road across to the ocean passed dry yellow paddocks and slopes, deserted farmhouses and grazing sheep. Gradually, the hills bunched up and became greener, and the open country became shaded with trees and bush. There was a place where we would reach the top of the mountain range and begin the steep downhill run, where the coast would start to appear in promising glimpses and the air would start to smell a little of salt water.
On the seat in front of me, Gina’s and Emily’s heads were tilted at the same angle. They had talked and giggled nonstop for the first hour of the journey, and then fallen soundly asleep. The third kid on the middle seat was still awake.
It was Bon, and I had done my best to pretend he wasn’t there at all, or at least to ignore him. From the angle of his head, I could tell he was reading, or maybe drawing his stupid pictures or maps. He wore a set of earphones, bought by Nan, and was listening to music he had downloaded from her computer.
“I should have hired a bus,” Dad had remarked back at home.
“We couldn’t just leave him,” Mum had said. “The choice was with us, or him the only boy in a coach load of grandmas and aunties. What eleven-year-old boy would find that fun?’
Bon, probably, I thought bitterly, wishing that Nan’s trip to the city with her golfing friends wasn’t happening at the same time as our only holiday away for the year. I would have loved the thought of Bon being dragged along on shopping trips, river cruises or horseracing days with Nan. There could have been no better revenge.
“He’s probably never seen the beach,” Dad had replied.
“He’s probably never been away on a holiday,” Mum had pointed out gently.
I didn’t feel sorry for Bon. In the car now, I glared at the back of his head, at his plait pulled sideways and spilling down against his own window. I knew I didn’t want to be seen anywhere at the coast alongside him, that there would be plenty of other kids at the motel to make friends and hang out with. I squirmed at the thought of Bon with his stupid plait, with the babyish woollen hat I’d seen packed into his overnight bag along with the new clothes that Mum and Nan had been buying him. Instead of having my own room at the motel, I’d be sharing with the last person I would have chosen to invite.
When we arrived, there were no other kids my age at the motel. It seemed to be nothing but little girls the same age as Gina and Emily, or else teenagers with sunglasses and loud voices. I sat miserably through an hour of boring afternoon television while Bon and the girls swam in the motel pool with Mum. I would have scowled my way through our first night there and through dinner at the local club, except for one thing the waitress said. She was about to take our meal orders, and looked first at the side of the table where Gina, Emily and Bon all sat beside each other. “Are you three girls ready to order?” she asked.
I laughed out loud. Mum nudged me with her elbow and whispered my name in an annoyed voice. Out of the corner of one eye, I could see Dad looking down at the ta
ble and grinning to himself.
“Two girls,” Gina explained to the waitress. “Me and my friend Emily are girls. And this is Bon. He’s a boy and he’s my cousin. He’s been growing his hair for four years!”
“My mistake. I’m so sorry,” the waitress said to Bon, and I could tell she was really embarrassed.
Bon simply shrugged his shoulders and replied, “I’d like salt and pepper squid, please. With chips and salad.”
Afterwards, with our food in front of us, I asked, “Hey, are you three girls enjoying your meals?” Mum elbowed me again, frowning and shaking her head.
But Bon was to give me at least one other thing to laugh about.
Dad and I liked to go fishing along the deepwater jetty at the end of the bay. It was one of the places we visited each year we came to the coast. Mum wasn’t the fishing type. “It’s like watching paint dry,” she remarked, although she was happy to barbecue and eat whatever we caught when we had evening picnics at the beachside park, along with other holidaying families. So Dad and I took our rods, bucket and gear to the jetty while Mum took the girls to the sand and the rock pools at the opposite end of the bay. Except this time, it wasn’t just Dad and me – Bon came along, too.
I didn’t know why, because everything about fishing seemed to worry or scare him.
“Doesn’t it hurt the fish?” he asked.
“A little, I guess,” Dad replied, as he and I baited up our hooks and checked our rods.
“But when you catch a fish, what happens then?” Bon asked.
“If it’s too small, or it’s a protected species, we let it go,” Dad told him. “If it’s big enough, and it’s what we’re after, it goes into the catch bucket.”
“Do you eat it?”
“Sure do,” Dad told him.
“But there’s … cutting up,” Bon said, and he sounded really worried. “Who does that?”
“I do,” Dad said. “I can show you how if you –”
“No!” Bon almost shouted, and moved a little away from us. He watched in silence as we sent our lines swishing into the water below the jetty, and then he sat down, pulling his cloth cap over his face so that I couldn’t quite see his eyes.