Dead Dog in the Still of the Night

by Archimede Fusillo

  It didn’t remind him of the Fiat smacking into the bollard, or Maddie’s brittle voice yelping in fear. It brought back the memory of his mother slapping his father across the face as they’d stood toe-to-toe in the kitchen, unaware that he was watching. He would have been a little boy, maybe five or six, but Primo remembered the moment vividly. It hadn’t been the first time his mum had struck his dad like that.

  Primo swallowed and shook the thought from his muddled brain.

  ‘Anyhow, as I keep telling you, I can get you a good deal on Bambino,’ Tone went on, reaching for Albert Camus’s novel, The Outsider, that Primo had been thumbing through when he’d arrived. ‘There’s a huge market out there for unusual cars, like my little baby, right. Reckon I could smell out a good deal on your behalf, like the twenty bucks I got for that clapped out bike of yours yesterday.’

  ‘The Fiat’s not for sale,’ Primo answered matter-of-factly.

  ‘Apart from your misadventure, when was the last time your old man even sat in, let alone drove, the Fiat?’ Tone asked.

  Primo stapled a few pages of the English text response essay he’d been trying to work on, and got to his feet. ‘Just chase your cousin on the exact quote okay, Tone? Sooner I can get it fixed the better.’

  ‘And you’re going to pay him with what exactly?’

  Primo hesitated.

  ‘Prims, listen to your mate here, you’d make enough on the car, even with the dent, to cover a trip OS with Maddie. Easy.’ Tone lowered his voice and leaned closer to Primo. ‘And besides, watch if Ad doesn’t sell it if that woman comes chasing money he doesn’t have.’

  Primo flinched. Tone realised he’d landed a punch and dropped an arm around his shoulder.

  ‘My old man’s a pain in the arse, Tone. Always has been with me,’ Primo admitted. ‘But I can’t sell the car out from under him. Not even for Maddie. I’ll get the money. Just find out what the damage is, okay?’

  Tone patted Primo fervently on the back. ‘Sure, but you just keep that option open, okay?’ He gathered his things, pulled on his cap, and twirled his car keys around one finger.

  ‘Guess what?’ he asked with a grin. ‘Guess who I think I’ve almost convinced to come ride the Stiff Master?’ When Primo shrugged, Tone added, ‘Alison Walker.’ He arched his eyebrows and touched the side of his nose. ‘It was just a matter of time. You want to sort things out with Maddie so we might, you know, double date or something?’

  ‘You couldn’t manage a date with Alison when you were in the same class together, Tone,’ Primo said. ‘What makes you think she’s keen on you now?’

  Tone had stopped twirling his car keys and stood leaning against the doorjamb. ‘It’s different now, Prims,’ he said. ‘Now that I’m not a school kid anymore, she looks at me differently.’

  ‘So, by that reckoning, how exactly do you figure Maddie sees me? Given that I’m a “school kid” still, Tone?’ Primo asked.

  Tone pushed off the doorjamb and moved into the middle of the room again. ‘Girls always thought you were older than you are, Prims. You know that. Me, they saw as the kid who hammed it up for the class. I got the laughs.’ He paused long enough to waggle the keys to the hearse. ‘I have my own wheels now, Prims. That changes things. You didn’t need no car to impress Maddie. She went for your …’ Tone shrugged. ‘I don’t know, mate. Maybe she went for your intellect.’ Under his breath, but loud enough for Primo to hear, he said, ‘Couldn’t be your looks, eh?’

  Primo shook his head. Whatever Maddie had seen in him, he thought, it was all under threat now.

  As though reading his mate’s thoughts, Tone said, ‘She likes you ’cause you’re a good guy, Prims. And good guys like us are getting harder to find, eh?’

  Primo smiled, tossed his paperwork into a large manila folder and dumped it all on his bed. He grabbed an old pair of tatty jeans from the floor, changing out of his track pants, and slipped on steeltoed boots as well.

  ‘Mind dropping me off at the yard?’ he asked as he pulled on a hoodie.

  ‘Thought you didn’t work Thursday afternoons? Too much homework and whatever.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t, not usually, but I need the money now, don’t I?’ Primo said.

  ‘I’d loan you the grand or whatever it’ll be, Prims, but my recent ac-qui-si-tion has, you know, de-pleted the bank account.’

  Tone laughed at his own use of the words ‘acquisition’ and ‘depleted’.

  ‘You should consider coming to work for my old man now that you’ve got your licence,’ he suggested as they pulled up outside the gates of the massive freight yard. Already rows of canvas-covered semitrailers lined the concourse.

  ‘What would I deliver the pizzas with, Tone? My bike, of which I am no longer in possession?’ Primo stepped out onto the hot concrete. ‘Even I wouldn’t use Bambino for a pizza run, Tone.’

  ‘Reckon my old man would let you use his ancient Falcon. I could ask, you know.’

  ‘I’m good for the money for the repairs. Tell Alfie that, Tone. That’s all you need to do right now, capisce?

  ‘You think I’m thick,’ Tone snapped back. ‘Go sort the mail, Prims, before they sack you.’

  ‘It’s freight, Tone, freight,’ Primo called, but Tone was already fishtailing out of the car park, leaving a faint stench of burning rubber behind.

  Primo shook his head and grinned. Sometimes Tone was a total wanker, but he was the best mate he could ever hope for, of that Primo had absolutely no doubt.

  ‘And it’s freight that needs to be unloaded,’ a voice suddenly barked at Primo’s back.

  Primo turned and saw his supervisor, Akbar, a short, stocky Turkish man in his late fifties, glaring at him, his arms folded across his barrel chest.

  ‘You tell your mate he make that shit stunt here again, I’ll take his rego down and get his arse nailed. I got enough empty-headed no-brainers around here already. Okay?’

  Primo felt like laughing but thought better of it.

  ‘Okay,’ he said softly. ‘Yeah, no problems.’ He walked off to clock in for the afternoon shift, pulling on his orange safety vest as he went.

  The local drivers were just starting to get back, their vans and small trucks in the loading bays, back doors open to the dock area where everything from coils of cable to boxes of tinned fruit stood stacked three and four deep.

  Primo walked over to his section in the area of the dock designated to city and local runs. In the few months he’d been working after school, Primo had learned to keep his personal business to himself. He didn’t want the boys working beside him to see him as a show pony, there just to fill in the time between school and getting into some prestigious university course. Nothing irritated his co-workers more, Primo knew instinctively, than someone who thought he was above them.

  ‘A hundred and fifty pallets tonight, man,’ Jimmy, a thin, reedy young man who also worked the casual afternoon shift, called across the conveyor belt. ‘It’s gonna be hardcore, man. Gonna earn our keep today.’

  Primo smiled and looked up and across the open warehouse to the larger conveyor belt that brought the freight from the unloading docks to the sorting dock.

  ‘Looks like it,’ he said and gestured toward the unloading area where forklifts scuttled about like giant metal locusts, picking up and disgorging tall bundles of pallets, some bound in heavy clear plastic. ‘Wouldn’t mind driving one of those,’ he said. ‘It’s got to be easier on the back than lifting and sorting.’

  But Jimmy wasn’t listening. He’d put in his earplugs and was mouthing to lyrics only he could hear.

  ‘Yeah, that’d be great,’ Primo answered himself, doing his best to imitate his workmate. ‘Like, that’d be so cool, eh.’

  ‘What’s cool, Juice?’

  Primo turned. Ari was standing at the foot of the metal steps that led down into the loading bays, texta in hand. He was a full-timer and the lifting and hauling had given him an impressive physique. The tattoos of knotted barbed wire on his neck made him l
ook even more threatening.

  Primo. Prima juice. Juice.

  Ari’s way of being funny.

  Primo didn’t argue. It would be worse if Ari took a dislike to him. If you wanted a decent shift you knew to be nice to Ari. If you wanted something to help you cope with the boredom, to spike the weekend, you saw Ari about it.

  ‘Everything’s cool, Ari.’ Primo smiled tightly. He watched the big man closely, careful not to draw too much unnecessary attention.

  ‘I said it before, man,’ Ari went on, pulling himself onto the dock beside Primo, over whom he towered. ‘You look too smart to be working here, man. You sure you’re not a spy for the Boss Man?’ When he punched Primo lightly on the arm Primo staggered sideways. ‘You sure you’re not like a troublemaker for Ari, man?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m like Maxwell Smart,’ Primo replied light-heartedly.

  ‘Who?’ Ari’s tone was challenging. He wasn’t smiling.

  Primo realised his mistake.

  ‘Maxwell Smart, a secret agent on a TV show from the 60s,’ he explained tentatively. ‘It was a joke.’

  Ari’s face hardened suddenly. ‘You’re not making fun of Ari, are you man? That’s not cool, you know.’ The much broader and taller young man flexed his chest and stuck out his chin. ‘We don’t need no 007 shit around here, Juice.’

  Primo put his hands out palm forward and shrugged. ‘Here comes the first load. I’d better get to it, eh?’

  From where Ari stood a short distance away marking up the loads, Primo could sense him watching him, mumbling. Nothing much was a joke to Ari unless Ari said it was. Primo reminded himself not to forget that.

  Primo lifted his father by the armpits, taking the weight on his shoulders as he parcelled the frail man into the front seat. Tucking the almost useless legs one over the other, Primo pushed the seat belt into place.

  ‘You should let me drive,’ the old man announced in his native Italian. ‘Everyone knows I’m a good driver.’

  ‘You are a good driver, but not today. Today I’ll drive.’

  Primo looked at his mother. She stood by the driver’s side door, a thin smile on her face. She looked drawn and tired, Primo thought with a pang of guilt.

  ‘I a good driver,’ his father repeated in English. ‘I be drive since I was little boy. I good driver.’

  ‘I could drive,’ Primo offered and bent to put the wheelchair into the boot.

  ‘Maybe next time,’ his mother said. She nodded toward their passenger. ‘He sometimes grabs the steering wheel.’

  Primo drew a breath. It was pretty much what he expected.

  From the back seat, Primo stared between his parents out at the familiar streetscape of renovated single-fronted terrace houses, drab red-brick three-storey flats, and the occasional patch of weathered parkland that led home. The sickening sameness of it all struck Primo every time he rode through it. If it were a human being, Primo thought as they sped past Tone’s father’s pizza shop, the entire suburb would be forced into a nursing home to die a passive, unremarkable death.

  The only saving grace for the neighbourhood and surrounds was that his beloved Carlton football team’s spiritual home ground was nestled a few blocks away on leafy, broad Royal Parade. As for the rest, it was just boringly ordinary as far as Primo was concerned.

  The thought made Primo wince and he dropped his gaze. When he looked up again, his father was slumped against the window, his left shoulder against the door, watching the passing façade of same-same houses and retail and light industry blocks with their protective grills and twists of barbed wire.

  ‘Exciting, eh, Dad?’ Primo muttered. ‘Doesn’t it make you wish you were dead?’

  ‘Primo!’ His mother caught his grin in the rearvision mirror and frowned.

  He stared blankly back at her. Her knuckles were white, and her neck was rigid.

  Primo took a deep breath. What if Tone was right? Maybe his mum did have a nest egg put away, some cash she could spare as a loan.

  ‘What would you guys say if I asked to borrow some money?’ he said, looking at the back of his father’s balding head where short strands of white hair stood electrified. ‘For that trip I mentioned to you, Papa, remember?’

  His father didn’t reply.

  Primo wasn’t surprised. Of course the old man didn’t remember.

  ‘I’d pay it all back. Eventually.’

  Primo’s father started to hum loudly, melodically. He looked toward the driver’s side and began to sing in the low, resonant voice Primo knew so well from long distant family gatherings. His father had a beautiful singing voice, even if Primo never fully understood or particularly liked what he sang.

  ‘You don’t want me packing and sorting boxes all my life do you, Dad?’ he prodded. ‘You want me to find a good job. A career maybe, right? So, I’m thinking of taking time out to think about what I really want to do with my life. Good idea, right, Dad?’

  But his father didn’t answer, caught up now in crooning the words to an Italian pop song from the Swinging 60s. A song Primo had heard hundreds of times before.

  ‘It’s the perfect time,’ Primo pressed. ‘Think about it, Mum. You won’t be alone because I can’t see Adrian going anywhere anytime soon. And Santo’s thinking of cutting back on his travels, so he’ll be around more. Kath’s just a few blocks away.’

  His father’s voice went up considerably and Primo sighed loudly.

  Up ahead the road narrowed into a tight bend that swung under the cool of the railway overpass, where Primo had often sat with Tone during long boring summer days when the rest of the street was holidaying somewhere.

  Primo touched his father’s shoulder lightly. ‘You always said I needed to get out into the real world, like you did when you were my age,’ he said hopefully. ‘I mean, you even came out to Australia on your own, right? And, let’s be honest, if you look around this place, does it look like the real world to you? I mean, check it out, where’s the culture, the history, the …’ Primo leaned forward and whispered, ‘Where’s the sense in sacrificing your life for us kids unless we get to do some of the stuff you guys never did?’

  The lack of response from either of his parents was starting to bite at Primo. He slouched back in his seat.

  ‘Your father came out to Australia because of necessity,’ his mother snapped. ‘He didn’t go on some adventure holiday.’

  Primo knew there was no point trying to argue. The family saga had been indoctrinated into him whenever his father had had too much to drink, or felt like playing the self-pity hand. Blah, blah and blah! The hard-working Southern Italian had gone to work on a tobacco farm and met the attractive daughter of the town’s Irish baker. They had courted for less than six months before she’d fallen pregnant.

  ‘I bet both of youse would of done things differently, eh, given half the chance,’ Primo said defiantly

  ‘I need to have shit,’ his father said suddenly, and squirmed in his seat. ‘Take me to toilet.’ He reached for the steering wheel with both hands. ‘Mary. Mary, you hear me?’

  The car accelerated, drifted to the left and, more from luck than skill, avoided sideswiping a parked motorbike.

  ‘You really are nuts!’ Primo barked.

  ‘Primo!’ his mother snapped.

  ‘I think the shit is coming, Mary,’ Primo’s father announced firmly in Italian, and turned to look at Primo, his eyes half closed in concentration. ‘She wants to kill me,’ he said.

  A moment later, Primo’s father was staring out the window in silence, as if nothing had been said.

  Primo saw his mother tilt her head back as though she were swallowing a tablet without water. Her hands had shifted on the wheel, settling close together in two tight fists at twelve o’clock.

  ‘This is a perfect time is it, Primo?’ she said softly, pain evident in her voice. ‘For who is it a good time? Tell me.’ There was a pause, then she added, ‘There is no “good time”, Primo. None!’

  Primo was taken aback by his moth
er’s outburst and for a few moments sat in silence, staring fixedly at the back of her head.

  ‘Ever since your father promised me a life of never wanting for anything, Primo, I’ve waited for that good time to arrive!’ his mother whispered sourly. She lifted her eyes from the road to look at Primo in the rear-view mirror.

  The words slammed into Primo. He opened his mouth to say something, but his mother got in first.

  ‘He needs me.’ She answered the question Primo didn’t ask, but which he realised she’d anticipated, maybe even brooded over for a long time. He looked away sheepishly.

  The silence that followed was painful, as though it were a cutting, slashing thing that drew blood.

  From the back seat Primo stared at a dot in the far distance beyond the windscreen, his thoughts in flux.

  ‘Sorry, Primo,’ his mother said without looking at him. Her voice betrayed something beyond exhaustion, something closer to resignation, almost hopelessness. ‘I’m sorry for barking at you like that,’ she continued. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. I’m just ...’ She shook her head resolutely. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked the man sitting quietly next to her.

  He nodded, then said, ‘The shit is coming.’

  ‘The shit is always here,’ Primo’s mother uttered. ‘Always.’

  When his mother reached across and touched his father gently on the hand, Primo had to look away. This was a moment between two people he didn’t really know, engaged in a life he didn’t understand, and it disoriented him.

  ‘You always seem to miss out, Primo,’ his mother muttered after a few moments. ‘And I’m not talking about money. No. No, it’s more than that.’

  ‘It’s okay, Mum.’ Primo surrendered and immediately felt repulsion at his capitulation. And yet, it was always like this, he thought. He couldn’t bear to see his mum searching for explanations she couldn’t deliver with genuine resolve. Not about his father’s womanising. Not about their lack of money. Not even about why the workshop or Bambino couldn’t be sold.

  It was better to ignore the whole matter like a festering wound no one wanted to see, and so no one bothered to treat it fully, not enough to stop it spitting up rancour and poison every now and then.