Midnight Echo 8

by AHWA

  Lily Jane bled so much that when she was done, Mama had to stick a hot skillet ‘gainst the cut to make the bleedin’ stop. She put the tail and pouch in the skillet and had me dump ‘em in the feed bucket for the pigs. The pigs went right in and ate it all up. I guess it’s true that pigs’ll eat anything.

  Lily Jane was sick for almost two weeks after that, burnin’ up with a fever and not wantin’ to eat, but Mama got her through it all right. I don’t know if I got as sick as Lily Jane. I think I probably didn’t and that’s why Mama dotes on her more than she does me. I guess she figures Lily Jane is weaker than me and needs more ‘ttention. I guess that’s all right, now that I think ‘bout it. I ain’t really got nothin’ to complain ‘bout. Mama treats me real good and she looks out for me the same as she does Lily Jane. With some luck, we’ll stay in blissful ignorance and that’s ‘bout as good as any of us could want.

  Hello Kitty

  Jason Nahrung

  The train’s fulla them these days. Downtown looks like Tokyo, jabber-jabber-do. Me granddad would turn in his grave. Lost the war but won the peace: that was one of his fave sayins. Don’t you go buyin one of them Tojos or other Jap crap, he told me when I got me first set of wheels. Stick to Ford or Holden, he said, but we both knew even then I’d have to be picky. Buy Australian, he’d say. Good luck, eh?

  * * *

  White tight socks. White tight knickers. White bra … Could be a boy, till you get the clobber off and find all them girl parts. I like the quiet way they come, sometimes just a squeak, like a mouse under the heel. Sometimes a scream. Banzai, Chink. Nip, slope, gook: they all squeal the same.

  Except for this one. Down in the mud in the pourin rain, pine needles, trees swishin and crackin in the wind, thunder and lightnin to help keep things on the quiet. Here, behind the bus shelter, it’s quite a rush. That actress, the big-boobed one, you know, she was in that movie: she’s watchin, kind of. Advertisin a watch or somethin. Well, watch this, baby. In and out in five minutes flat. Please come again.

  Cars swoosh by only feet away from our bed of needles and muck. She just stares, brown eyes—they all got brown eyes, you notice that? Not enough cultural diversity or whatever they call it, they all need a bit more Anglo in ‘em, eh? Lightnin flash turns her eyes silver; it kind of lingers, like she got hit by the bolt. I roll her over and pull her up on her knees. She mews like a cat, like a cat teasin a dog rather than one callin for its supper. I figger she likes havin a good bit of red Aussie meat, makes a change from all that rice, eh?

  Crash-boom-done.

  I’ve seen enough Jap pornos to know them Asians, when they come, they say they’re ‘goin’. Fancy that, eh: comin and goin at the same time. Piss funny.

  Silent, still, starin, she watches me leave, shadows like bruises on her pale skin, clothes scattered round her like a tissue shredded in the wash, all muddy now. Her little backpack with those stupid danglin stuffed things, like them trolls everyone went ga-ga over back in the day. Broken brolly.

  I keep her knickers.

  * * *

  She took me by surprise, this one, there all alone in the bus stop in the storm. Didn’t have me bayonet, had to use the hand clamp till I’d fucked her senseless, and there’s bites on me fingers, I can feel ‘em now as I walk away.

  The bayonet pulls them sheilas into line. Eight inches of cold, hard steel, before they get eight inches of hot, hard me. It was me granddad’s; stuck it in a few Nips, he reckoned. Me dad lined up, followin in the old fella’s GPs, I guess, but fuck, those gooks did for him. Sent him home like a ghost, but guess what? Enough of him left to hang in the garage. Some nights, or real early in the mornin, I reckon I can still smell the piss in there, where he did it. He was wearin his uniform. Weird, huh? I think Dad checkin out like that killed Granddad, too. LMF, he said, and told me to not grow up like me old man with his ‘lack of moral fibre’. Be a man, Bevin, he said. He was pretty happy when I bought the Commodore, that’s a fact, but mighty let down when I failed to make the army. As if you gotta be somethin special to pull a trigger, huh?

  * * *

  When I get home and wash off the mud and stink, me hand’s on the mend but me back stings somethin fierce. A bit of yoga twist-like, and I can get a look in the mirror to see the scratches in me back. That’s gonna be hard to explain. If I’m lucky, they’ll be healed by the time the missus and the sprog get back from her mum’s. I finish off a bottle of Bundy and pass out in me jocks in front of the late-night footy show with the mud-stained knickers in me hand. Those blokes all dressed up as chicks with big tits. Piss funny, that.

  * * *

  I wake up and there’s scratchin at the back door, and me heart fairly explodes cos I’m still on the sofa half naked with them knickers and the bottle. Me back’s stiff and pains when I stand up, but I can relax: it ain’t the little woman come home early, just some mangy cat lookin for a handout. I tell it to piss off—Christ almighty, it’s barely sun-up—and I haul on me dressin gown and Uggies and stash the undies in the shoe box in the garage with all the rest. Me faves are these little pink lace ones with a smiley face on ‘em. Cute; real cute.

  The cat shadows me the whole way and I can’t find nothin to chuck at it, and it’s still there in the back yard in the shade of the lemon tree when I go back inside and lock the door and hit the sack. Nice to be able to sleep in after a big night out.

  * * *

  A couple of days later and I get home from work and Suze is back. She’s up me ribs from the minute I get through the door about how I wasn’t there to pick her up from the station and she had to take a cab and now she’s got no money for smokes, and I point out, I was at work, right? What was I expected to do? And, fuck, has she got even fatter? We exchange some other pleasantries and she wobbles out to the back yard to suck down a durrie and a rumbo and I pop into the sprog’s room to see how she went at Grandma’s and tell her not to worry about the adult stuff, that Mummy and Daddy love her, even if they maybe don’t always get on between themselves, eh.

  She’s a little princess, Jayde. Sounds a bit fuckin slope to me, but Suze said it was a gemstone, besides, the Y made it different. Made it unique. Fair enough, I said, she’s your daughter.

  Yours too, she said.

  Like she’d let me forget it, that night of the Radiators gig, we figure; back seat of the Commodore and all that. If givin me head was the only thing she’d done, well, we probably wouldn’t be here, would we? Still, like Granddad said, you gotta man up. Gotta pull ya weight. He loved little Jayde, and I tell you somethin, it just goes to show how somethin good can come from somethin that maybe ain’t.

  We play with her Barbies for a bit and she tells me all about Grandma’s house and the pikelets and the parrots, and then I go to get some dinner cranked up and make sure Suze hasn’t knocked off the last of the bourbon.

  At dinner Suze says, I missed you, and I say, I missed you guys, too, rufflin Jayde’s hair, me back throbbin, and later after I’ve tucked Jayde in for the night in her princess room, I fuck Suze on the couch without takin her dress off while we’re watchin that Aussie cop show with that hot motorcycle cop, the one in the real tight pants and the leather jacket that barely does up over her tits. When Suze has done her last jelly roll, ooh ooh ooh she goes, like a steam train chuggin up a hill, I climb off and go for a night cap, and she asks, what’s that on your back, and I’m thinkin what the fuck, has she got x-ray vision, me with me shirt on and all, but she says, looks like some kind of stain on ya shirt, and I say yeah, got a bit of a hit at work, car on the hoist, it’s nothin. She threatens to take a look at it in the mornin but she doesn’t, just as well; the friggin scratches itch like they got ants nibblin at their insides.

  * * *

  In the mornin, Jayde finds the cat by the back door and asks if we can keep it. She’s nursin the friggin thing, and she stares at me, pleadin-like, blue eyes as b
ig as hubcaps, and the cat’s starin, too, a bitsa thing, all white and mottled black like one of them dairy cows, and it just stares, narrow-eyed and not blinkin, but it knows it’s won. I tell Jayde to feed it some milk and hope the fucker pisses off back home when it’s done. That night, it sleeps in Jayde’s room, and when I go in in the mornin, it’s tucked up next to her like some kind of stuffed toy.

  Can we afford a cat, I ask Suze, but she says Jayde loves it and it’s good for her to have a pet, somethin to care for, and I say, well don’t let the fuckin council find out. I see the cat watchin from the doorway. It seems to smile, somehow, fangs hangin out over its lip. I never did like cats much; me granddad didn’t, neither. Can’t trust ‘em, he said, not like a dog. More like a woman, he said.

  * * *

  I’ve got Jayde up and ready for school. The kitchen still stinks of burnt toast. She’s playin with the moggie. They’re sittin in a patch of sun by the glass veranda door, Jayde croonin and pattin, and the cat is just stretched there, its brown slanty eyes starin at me, and its tail’s lashin, flip and flop, twist and turn, like a windscreen wiper made of liquorice. Jayde’s shadow stretches across the kitchen towards me, and the cat’s just a bit of a bump next to her where she crouches, whisperin ‘nice Kitty’—that’s its name, Kitty—real original; maybe we could spell it Kytty, eh?

  I look up to tell her to get her shoes on and damn near drop the knife where I’m cuttin the crusts off her sanga. I take another squiz. That cat’s tail: bloody oath, if it ain’t throwin two shadows. Like them days when you get two rainbows, right? It’s like that, one next to the other, kinda like the moggie’s got two tails. But it’s clearly got only the one. Maybe I oughta cut that off, see what it does. I grip the knife a bit harder: it’s sharp enough. Not the bayonet, but it’s enough for a cat’s tail. The cat lashes out, whack!—Jayde has time to bawl—and the moggie’s out through the gap in the slider and back under the lemon tree.

  I slam the door then run water over Jayde’s hand. That’s what you get for takin in a stray. Unpredictable mongrels. I wonder if the bugger’s been spayed. We’re runnin late by now so I got no time to think about it. Just … I look at the floor where Kitty had been, rememberin that shadow. Must be tired, a trick of the light. Still, it’d be a hell of an experiment, to cut off its tail.

  * * *

  I get home latish and I’m feelin fidgety. Back’s sore, helpin me remember No.7 out there by the bus stop. Nothin in the paper, which is a bit piss poor. But then, not all of them rated a mention. Maybe they kept it to themselves. Dishonour and all that. And those that did offered a shit description. Me hair ain’t black, for starters. Maybe we all look the same to that lot, eh? Gives me a boner, thinkin about it. I squeeze Suze on the arse as I walk past on me way to the fridge for a beer. Snags for dinner, she says, but they’re still defrostin in the microwave.

  Late start to the day, eh?

  She tells me to go fuck meself.

  Fine. I scruff Jayde, who had an ‘all right’ day at school but wonders where Kitty is.

  Don’t tell me I bought all the cat food for nothin, I say. You seen how much it costs?

  You can take it for lunch if you have to, Suze says, and I’m not sure she’s jokin.

  You wouldn’t, would you, Daddy? Jayde asks, and I say of course not, though it couldn’t be worse than Suze’s mash, eh, then head out to the garage to ‘fix somethin’.

  And there’s the mongrel cat. It’s found me little box of goodies wedged right up there at the back of the shelf and dragged it out, knocked the lid off. It’s sittin, happy as Larry, on a pile of knickers.

  I freak out.

  I shout. I try to sink the boot in, but the bitch is fast, and I collect the box instead and knickers fly everywhere. The box hits the broom which falls, just slow enough for me to grab at it but fast enough for me to miss it. The broom hits a tray of ratchets that go tumblin like marbles.

  Suze calls from the kitchen and I gather up the knickers, quick as I can. Four, five. Six. Six! Fuck!

  She calls again. She’s at the door, I fuckin know it!

  All right, hold your horses, I shout. Just bumped somethin, didn’t I.

  I’m missin a pair of panties but I don’t have time to hunt for ‘em. She ain’t likely to come in here, it’s true, but still … which ones? I check ‘em fast. The latest: No.7. Lucky number seven. Shit. Lace edged, they were. Still smellin of her. Fresh-like.

  No sign of the bloody cat.

  Suze calls again and now she’s gettin pissed, I can tell.

  I tuck the box in the boot of the Commodore, down in the wheel well. Suze’s never changed a wheel in her life, ain’t likely to. Takes the bus mostly unless it’s shoppin day, which ain’t tomorrow. I can find a better hidey-hole later. A shadow moves: tail lashin like a snake, down the back, but I can’t see the cat. I turn off the light and slam the door, hopin to lock the moggie in. I’ll check back after dinner—with the bayonet.

  * * *

  That night, I go to tuck Jayde in. Suze has gone to bed already with a migraine. Brilliant. She’ll be snorin like a rusty exhaust half the night. And the friggin cat’s in there with Jayde, on the pillow right next to her. And they’re both lookin at me from the half light of the bedside lamp, and I feel this big hand, this massive hand of ice, just reach in and grab me heart and squeeze it like it’s a tennis ball. On the wall is the cat’s shadow, twin tails lashin all slow and steady-like, countin some beat. But the worst thing, the absolute worst thing, is for a minute, in the time it takes me to blink and gasp and grab that door frame to stop me sudden stagger, Jayde’s eyes look brown. Brown like a slope’s.

  Daddy! Look, Kitty’s come back, she says, and her eyes are blue again.

  That’s lovely darlin, I say, pattin her forehead as the cat dares me—dares me—to reach out and pat it, too.

  Can she stay with me tonight?

  The cat stares at me, lips back, fangs out.

  For tonight, I say, and switch the light off and close the door till it’s just a crack.

  I got somethin for you, puss, I think. Granddad’s bayonet is tucked away in the garage. The money I wasted on cat food will be worth it.

  * * *

  Jayde is slow to get movin in the mornin. I knock, push the door open after she mumbles somethin I take to mean she’s up, and she’s at her little mirror combin her hair. It’s longer than I realised, darker, shiny in the sunlight comin through her bedroom window. The cat’s on the sill, lickin its paw.

  You’ll get yours, I think, and say to Jayde, What’d you say, darlin?

  She turns and I stumble back. She’s … she’s older. Her eyes are brown. She says, I said come in, Daddy. And I realise she’s naked. Are you ready to go?

  I turn on the ceilin light.

  The cat jumps out the window. It’s just Jayde, sweet little Jayde, blinkin, comb in hand, in her nightdress.

  Daddy? she asks.

  Go wash your face, I tell her, and I can hear the shake in me voice. I’m runnin hot all of a sudden, me back aflame; I can feel each scratch like streaks of hot candle wax. Don’t wanna be late for school, hey.

  We need to get her a new nightie. One that ain’t see through. I take a gander out the window, hand itchin to feel the haft of the bayonet. The cat’s there under the tree, lookin up at me, tail a’twitchin.

  * * *

  That night, I get home a bit early; fed the boss a line about Jayde havin a play at school, but actually it’s basketball night and Suze will be with her. Which gives me an hour or two.

  I grab the bayonet and search everywhere. No cat. The food in its bowl is untouched. I check the yard. Nothin. The garage. Commodore’s gone, of course; Suze probably missed the bus again. No sweat. I need a better hidin place for the trophy box. I search on hands and knees but there’s no sign of the missin
knickers. I’ve got quite a sweat up when the Commodore pulls in, and I realise it’s late, they’re home late … Don’t tell me they got a flat! That Suze, for the first fuckin time in her life …

  Jayde hops out first, school jacket over her basketball skirt and singlet, hair loose around her shoulders. She’s got a little carton, chopsticks pokin out the top.

  What’ve you got there? I ask as I hug her.

  She wanted noodles, Suze says, Jayde’s school bag over one shoulder, a plastic grocery bag in the other. Whinged all the way; had to go all the way over to that place on Lambing Street. Y’know the one: Kit-soon or somethin-or-another.

  Think they could learn to spell ‘kitchen’, I say, watchin her dig in the bag.

  She holds out a carton. Got you some, too. Get yerself a fork.

  I knock the box from her hand. The shit spills across the floor. What the fuck would I want that crap for?

  You can clean that mess up yourself, Suze shouts and stomps off towards the house. She turns at the door. Oh yeah, some cunt’s scratched the shit outta the boot of the Crummydore.

  Me guts lurch at the sound of that. I check it out. Lotsa scratches, shallow; they’ll buff out. Long, parallel lines, a lot around the keyhole. I pop the boot. The box is still there, under the tyre. I breathe out a long sigh.

  I push the keys deep into me pocket and slam the boot. Safe enough. I walk back into the house. Jayde’s up at the kitchen counter, munchin; the cat sits by her hand, smug as you like.

  You don’t like noodles, Daddy? Jayde asks, her mouth full of worms.

  I shout at Suze, in the livin room, all TV blue in the gloom, that I’m goin to the pub for some decent tucker. I grab me coat and the bayonet, too: never know, might be able to pick up some Asian takeaway of me own.

  * * *

  Toasted, I catch the bus home. It’s almost empty, no one on the street. The bayonet is a hot rod by me side and me back’s itchin under me jacket. At the bus stop, lucky No.7, the trees swish in the wind, the street lights flicker as they sometimes do. The actress on the billboard strikes me as bein a smart arse bitch; that grin, those eyes, mockin, knowin. Who’s she gonna tell, eh? I consider scratchin out her eyes but there’s movement, a shadow, two tails amid the tree trunks as a car’s headlights flash past.