by Tim Winton
‘Lookin’ good, Lockie,’ said Phillip under his breath.
‘Quick, Sarge,’ said Lockie. ‘Put ’em back on the bus. We’ll pay.’
But the Sarge smiled like a condemned man and took the golf bags and the overnight bags with Blob still on his hip. All in a day’s work, his smile seemed to say. Lockie knew better, but he kept his mouth shut.
‘Phoo,’ said Pop, lifting his veiny nose into the air. ‘This town stinks, doesn’t it?’
‘It’s the phoo hitting the fan,’ said Phillip.
‘What’d he say?’ said Pop. ‘Can’t understand him with that scuzz on his lip.’
‘It’s real good to see you and Nan,’ said the Sarge, glaring at Phillip.
‘Hmm,’ said Pop, climbing into the Falcon.
Lockie leaned against the car and thought he might faint with laughter. His life really was a mess.
s soon as the Sarge settled everyone in he headed off to the hospital. Lockie and Phillip and even Blob sat around expectantly, waiting to see what remarkable thing would happen. The oldies padded around the house in their two-tone shoes, sniffing and rolling their eyes. They looked out at the dismal swamp that was the Leonards’ yard. The whole place was awful the way only a government-supplied house can be. Lockie supposed he was used to it. He remembered the first day the family moved here. His mum cried that day too.
The oldies opened and closed the fridge, peeked in cupboards and sighed.
‘Put the kettle on, Mother,’ said Pop.
‘That’s your Pop,’ Lockie told Blob. His little sister was admiring Pop’s shoes. She probably wanted to eat them. Suddenly she belched.
‘Borp!’
‘Hear that?’ said Nan. ‘She’s talking. She’s not slow at all.’
‘Slow?’ said Phillip. ‘Who says she’s slow?’
‘Oh, your mother,’ said Pop opening the microwave. A great waft of burnt icecream put a few more wrinkles on his not very smooth face. ‘The kid crawls backwards, won’t walk or talk, I hear.’
‘Joy has these silly notions,’ said Nan. ‘The baby is perfectly normal. Well, fairly normal.’
Joy. Lockie never thought of his mother as Joy. Joy Leonard. Joy. It was a happy name. He always thought of her as Mrs Leonard, his mum. It rocked him a bit, the difference a name made.
‘Blob’s fine,’ said Lockie. ‘She just has weird eating habits.’
‘Well, it’s not a big enough thing to go and drop your bundle over. Your mother used to eat flies and Nan didn’t flip.’
‘Butterflies, Father.’
‘Oh, yeah. Well, that’s not so bad then.’
Lockie detected a kind of tone in their talk that he didn’t like. Drop your bundle. Flip out?
‘Well,’ said Nan. ‘What do you normally do today?’
Lockie ran his hands through his ratty blond hair. ‘I don’t even know what day it is, Nan. We’re sort of out of routine. We’re a bit freaked out with all of this.’
‘It’s Sunday.’
‘Oh.’
Phillip piped up. ‘Church. We usually go.’
‘We’re not churchgoers,’ Pop said firmly.
‘We’ve missed it anyway,’ said Phillip.
‘Good. What about homework?’
‘Nan, it’s the summer holidays,’ said Lockie.
‘Hmm.’
‘We’ll need to buy disposable nappies for the baby,’ said Pop. ‘I’m not washing diapers.’
‘Mum doesn’t use them,’ said Lockie proudly. ‘Disposables are terrible for the environment. They don’t break down, you know.’
‘We’re a bit old for washing nappies,’ said Nan in her best little old lady voice. ‘We’ll all have to compromise.’
‘Mum’d be really upset, Nan,’ said Lockie.
‘Well,’ said Pop, ‘what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, eh?’
Lockie bit his tongue. He shrugged. Then he piped up. ‘I’ll wash the nappies. No disposables and I’ll wash.’
‘You’re on, junior.’
What a victory, thought Lockie. I just signed up for crud-scraping duty.
Blob headed for Pop’s shoes. A silver thread of drool dropped sweetly onto his sexy two-tones. Pop looked down in horror.
‘Mother, quick, bring a tissue!’
‘Borp,’ burped Blob.
Til give you bop.’
Get me outta here, thought Lockie.
When the kettle boiled Nan and Pop made a cuppa for themselves and headed straight for the telly.
‘Look at the size of that putter!’ groused Pop. ‘It’s like a damned flagpole.’
‘Ah,’ coohed Nan, ‘there’s that big lunk Daly. They reckon he’s off the turps but you’d think he could tuck his shirt in.’
‘Whoo, but can he hit a ball, Mother. Yes indeedy.’
Lockie and Phillip stood behind the couch making unkind hand signals and pulling faces that weren’t exactly respectful. Blob got the giggles. In the end the boys took her out onto the verandah and took turns at being horses until their knees ached.
‘I never felt like running away from home before,’ muttered Phillip.
Lockie shrugged.
‘It’s a disaster, Lockie.’
Lockie pursed his lips.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Not yet.’
But it would be. Lockie knew that much. It had disaster written all over it.
As the Sarge rolled in from the hospital, Lockie went out to meet him at the car. There was that smell again, that Listerine smell of the hospital. The Sarge had brought it home in his clothes.
‘How’s it all going, Lock?’ asked the Sarge looking washed out.
‘No one’s dead yet,’ Lockie said. ‘But it’s only a matter of time. How’s Mum?’
‘Not good.’
‘But what does that mean? I feel like I never know what’s going on, Dad. I’m nearly fourteen, you know. You should trust me more.’
The Sarge looked surprised at this. ‘But I do trust you.’
‘I’m not a kid anymore.’
‘Lockie, I can’t talk now. I’m nearly . . . I’m too . . . Another time, okay? We’ll talk.’
Lockie kicked the Falcon’s front tyre and stalked out to the shed.
‘This sucks!’ he yelled to the tools and the cardboard boxes and trunks and teachests and the wreckage of Phillip’s mad experiments. This Hoovers! It suuuuuuuuuuuuuuckks!’
He was too busy spitting the dummy to notice the Sarge still out in the Falcon with a hanky squashed into his eyes, crying without a sound.
ockie and Phillip gave up their not very salubrious bedroom to the golfing grandparents and moved into the loungeroom. Lockie wasn’t thrilled about the idea of sleeping on a couch but you couldn’t really expect old people to be sofa campers. Besides, he wanted to keep the peace as long as possible. The trouble was that, not only did Nan and Pop need his room, they also badly needed to watch the Blah-blah Open and the Whatsit Masters on the telly most hours of the day and night. So it was pretty hard to get any privacy in the loungeroom.
The first night Lockie tried to tough it out by unrolling the sleeping bags at ten and laying heavy hints about how tired he and Phillip were after bathing Blob, washing the dishes and clearing out their room, but Nan and Pop were glass-eyed with the hot action at Palm Springs or the Vines or some other bit of green grass with holes in it and they didn’t move a wrinkle.
‘Phillip,’ said Lockie in his least subtle voice, ‘I think we’ll go to sleep now in our sleeping bags.’
‘On these couches?’
‘Golf willing.’
‘By golf, you’re right.’
‘Yes, brother Phillip. In golf we trust.’
Phillip wriggled into his sleeping bag and lay tittering on the free couch. Lockie stood up in his bag beside his riveted grandparents and waited for them to get the message.
‘Hey, Pop!’ said Phillip. ‘Lockie’s getting teed off.’
‘Shh! It’s Craig Parry.’
‘Golf
dammit, Pop,’ said Lockie. ‘I should have known better. Hey, he’s got erotic two-tones like you.’
Phillip shrieked and fell off his couch.
The Sarge came in looking shocking.
‘Phillip, hop into my bed. Come on, Lockie. Show a bit of maturity.’
‘Yeah, right Sarge.’
‘I’m off to bed now,’ said the Sarge to the hypnotised retirees.
Nan waved a half wave but she might have been scratching her ear or practising her swing. The Sarge looked at the wild, blood pumping action on the TV and shrugged. He headed off. Lockie flopped onto the other couch and hoped for a power blackout. He fell asleep while grown men in baby clothes hit little white balls across grass.
Lockie sat waiting with Phillip in the back of the car. He fooled with the ashtray and heard Phillip hum a nursery rhyme beside him. Both of them were small again. Their feet stuck out from the seat and their sandals clacked together. Magpies flitted across the sunny carpark. Wheelchairs rolled by. For a long time nothing happened, nothing at all, but they didn’t muck around or play up because they were on their best behaviour. Absolute very best behaviour.
Then, after a long time Lockie looked up to see the big doors opening and out came their mum in new clothes, looking pale and leaning on their dad a bit. Lockie and Phillip sat up like two dogs, alert and trembling. She got in the car carefully and a strange Listerine kind of smell came in with her. The smell of hospital. And a kind of quiet sadness. Everyone said hello, still on their best behaviour and it was a long, puzzling trip home with no one speaking much, not even Phillip who was small. Even he knew something was wrong. Lockie wanted to ask, but he was on his best behaviour.
‘Lockie! Hey, Lockie!’
He sat up with a grunt. The Sarge was in full uniform. He was holding a cup of tea.
‘Here, drink this.’
Lockie stared at the cup and saucer, not quite awake.
‘You were dreaming.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Seven.’
Lockie sat up in his steaming sleeping bag. So that’s what it was, that hospital smell. She had been in before.
‘I’m on days this week, Lock. Make a big effort with your grandparents, okay? Help ’em out. They’re sort of outta practice.’
‘If you get home and find two unmarked graves in the yard, don’t ask any questions.’
‘I’m depending on you to be responsible, son.’
‘I want to talk about Mum.’
‘Tonight. I’ve gotta go.’ The Sarge checked himself in the dead reflection of the TV. ‘Cuffs and holster, hat and handbag—I’m set.’
‘You forgot your book.’
‘It’s in the car. Wutbering Heights.’
‘I’ll bet that’s a babe-fest.’
‘Hm, you’d be surprised. See you tonight.’
Lockie didn’t know it yet but that was the last sane moment of the day.
t breakfast dear old Pop got all antsy about the fact that there was no bran, no wheat-germ and no double-strength bum-blasting prunes.
‘I’m a self-funded retiree whose bowels actually work,’ he said, shaking his blotchy little fist. ‘None of that happens without care, planning and hard work.’
‘Oh, he’s a proud one,’ said Nan admiringly.
‘Well,’ said Lockie as cheerfully as he could manage, ‘Monday’s shopping day.’
‘Have eggs ’n’ bacon, Pop,’ said Phillip. ‘It’s good gear.’
‘Cholesterol! Fat!’
‘Taste!’ said Phillip.
Nan came over to Phillip with a little brown tin, ‘Give me a look at that lip. Hmm.’ She popped the tin and dug out some greasy grey goo which hung off her fingertip like something unspeakable from someone’s infected sinus.
‘I was only jokin’,’ yelped Phillip. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’
‘Goanna Oil,’ said Nan. ‘Just the thing for that lip.’
Nan coated Phillip’s scabby lip with the vile reptilian goop.
‘Urrrrggggghhhh!’
‘Exactly. Feels better already, doesn’t it?’
‘Smegma!’ cried Phillip.
Lockie smiled. ‘Well, it does look a lot better, mate.’ Actually it looked too awful for words but Lockie was trying to be a diplomat. Anyone put that on my face, he thought, I’d be laying charges.
They spent the entire morning trudging the streets of Angelus prospecting for the kind of food that Nan and Pop could eat without getting bunged up or barfed off. As they cruised the shop aisles looking for bean curd, rice cakes, alfalfa sprouts and dried fruit that looked like shrunken body parts, Lockie prayed that no one he knew would see them. But of course everybody saw. How could you miss an entourage like that? Two overtanned oldsters in canary tracksuits shouting about their bowels? The little brother with the nuked lip dripping lizard grease? The baby in the stroller screaming like a band saw? Not exactly inconspicuous. Lockie slunk around the shops trying to be invisible. Without success.
When they all got home, flustered, hungry and cranky, Lockie realised that there was no milk, no bread, cereal, butter, Vegemite or meat in the house. In all the ruckus they’d only managed to bring home birdseed and laxatives. There wasn’t even any Napi-San left, and Lockie knew from hard experience that you couldn’t exist without nappy wash.
He tried to break the news to the oldies without sounding disrespectful, but they were too pooped to even be embarrassed. Besides, Pop was already itching to get back to the golf coverage. They flopped on the couch. Phillip locked himself in the toilet. He refused to come out until the lizard lard wore off. So Lockie changed the bawling Blob, grabbed the grocery money, turned the stroller around, and headed back to town.
Blob yelled and thrashed in the stroller all the way back up the drive. Lockie pulled a few wheelstands and handbrake turns but she kept on lunging it out. All the way up the street he surfed the kerb with the stroller, pulling reentries and cutbacks for her benefit. He even sang nursery rhymes, but nothing worked. In the end, she simply went to sleep, sweaty and red-faced, as though her batteries had finally given out.
Lockie stumped on in relief. His nerves were shot.
In the cool, peaceful aisles of the supermarket, Lockie hung plastic bags from the stroller and loaded up on serious food and supplies. He liked the way his Blundstones cheeped and squawked on the shiny floor. It drowned out the sick, dinky muzak trickling out of speakers in the ceiling—Kenny G does Soundgarden Favourites.
At the sweet-smelling baby section, Lockie scooted nobly past the piles of disposable diapers and looked for a hot bargain in the world of nappy washes. There were tubs, tins and tanks of the stuff, all with fuzzy pictures of shiny-haired mothers kissing their rosy-cheeked babies. No mention of bottoms or baby gravy anywhere.
Lockie picked up a big pink five-litre bucket that was on special. It looked like pool cleaner. He was reading the weird instructions on the side when a tremor ran along the aisle. The shelves shuddered. Flowery pink and white boxes rippled and teetered in a whole wall of swaying cardboard. It was an avalanche. Boxes began to pour and tip and tumble out onto two shrieking people further down. They tried to beat it off. It sounded like rain at first, but soon it had the rumble of a wave breaking and the two women gave up and let themselves be buried. In the end, when the commotion was all over, Lockie saw them giggling waist high in a pile of boxes. A woman and a girl. A woman and a girl he recognised with such a start that he cried out. It was Vicki Streeton and her mum.
Vicki.
Looking at him. Him behind the baby stroller with the pink safety pins hanging from his Mambo shirt. Him, Lockie Leonard, holding a five-litre bucket of nappy treatment. Poop wash! Aaaaaarrrrrrrgggggh! Embarrassment!
He saw those green eyes suddenly turn on him and widen in recognition and before he could get his mouth to work Vicki turned and bolted.
Lockie stood there like the last living idiot. It was then that he looked down and saw why she ran. She’d been standing waist deep
in the shop’s entire stock of tampons, pads and panty shields.
‘Don’t you hate this end of the shop, Lockie?’ said Mrs Streeton climbing out of that great pile of personal hygiene.
‘I was looking for a frozen chook,’ he said.
‘Of course you were.’
Lockie was pushing the overloaded stroller back home when a paddy wagon pulled in beside him and the Sarge and a constable wound down their windows.
‘What’s up?’ said the Sarge.
‘Shopping,’ said Lockie.
‘Where’s everyone else? You look white as a sheet.’
‘I’m okay.’
The Sarge got out and opened the back door to the van. ‘Here, pile it in. We’ll run you home.’
Lockie shrugged. The back of the cop van smelled of sick and sweat and Pine-O-Clean. He rested his head against the grille that separated him from the cab. As they took off, he held onto the stroller. Blob slept on, her cheeks bunched up under her eyelids. She looked peaceful and he felt a stab of envy.
As they pulled into the squelchy driveway, the van’s windscreen exploded. The constable hit the brakes and Lockie’s head whanged into the grille. Blob teetered out and fell back into her stroller, still asleep. The Sarge and the young constable spilled out of the cab, reaching for their holsters.
Lockie got up on his knees and peered out, terrified. An armed siege. Just what he needed to settle his nerves. And here he was, locked in a cop car like a sitting duck.
Out through the fractured windscreen Lockie saw a man running. He had something long and shiny in his hands. A glint of metal. A canary yellow blur. He wore two-tone shoes. He looked a bit like Pop. Something else caught Lockie’s eye, something closer. On the dashboard, amidst the little frosty cubes of shattered glass, sat a golfball. Slazenger No. 6.
There was a certain amount of coarse language outside the van at this point. Then the rear door swung open and the Sarge leant in, his face dark as doom. Lockie smiled and gave him the old spastic eyebrow routine.
‘We’re having the same kind of day, Sarge. Only difference is, you’re armed and I’m not.’