by Tony Birch
‘A puppy. What’s its name?’ she asked.
‘Maxie, but he’s no pup. He’s going on ten years old. He should have slowed by now but hasn’t.’
The dog jumped up and butted Rachel on the chin with the end of his nose and licked her all over the face.
‘Can we walk him?’
‘You can. Be sure, though, to keep him on a lead. He’s a bolter. And the side gate, out in the yard, always remember to keep it shut. I don’t want him running off and getting himself bowled over.’
When Gwen left us at the bus terminal she told me she’d pick us up in a day or two. I was glad when she didn’t turn up the next day. She called the house about a week later. I knew she was on the other end of the line when I heard Pop ask if she wanted to talk to us. She didn’t. He got off the phone and said she’d told him she was sick and we’d have to stay with him for another week or more.
While he was cooking the tea, we took Maxie down to the football ground at the end of the street, on his lead. Two kids from one of the houses along the street were hanging over their front fence, giving us the eye.
‘Fuck off!’ the taller boy yelled out and stuck a finger up.
I looked back at them a couple of times as we walked on, to be sure they weren’t following us.
When we got to the oval I let the dog off the lead, even though Rachel said we shouldn’t. Maxie ran around in circles, lifted his head in the air and barked and growled like he was crazy or something. He upset a magpie that had been pecking at a brown paper bag with a half-eaten sandwich inside. The bird flew into the air then swooped down on Maxie and tried to take his eye out. Maxie took off across the grass with Rachel and me chasing him and calling out to come back. He ducked under the fence and stopped and waited for us under a tree. He was so puffed out he lay down in the grass and rolled on his side. Rachel put his lead back on and told him how naughty he’d been.
On the way back to Pop’s I could see the two boys were standing out the front of their place, waiting for us. I grabbed Rachel by the arm.
‘Come on. Cross the street.’
When we crossed, they did too and stopped on the footpath ahead of us, blocking our way. If one of them hadn’t been half a foot taller than the other, I’d have reckoned they were twins. They had buzz-cut hairdos, like kids who’d been caught with the nits, and skinny arms and legs with sores all over them. The tall boy was carrying a long stick and I could see that the short one had a rock hidden in his hand. The boy with the stick also had a cockeye.
Gwen had always warned me that it was bad luck to look a cockeyed person in their bung eye, so I looked down at the ground.
‘Where ya from?’ Cockeye asked, aiming his stick at me. He looked like he was going to spear me, any minute.
‘We’re from nowhere.’
‘Get fucked. Must be from somewhere. Everyone’s from somewhere.’
Maxie stepped forward and growled at them. The smaller boy pointed at him.
‘Dog belongs to The Preacher. Seen him walk this fucken dog all the time. You seen him, Donny.’
Cockeye Donny spat on the ground, just missing Maxie, who barked and pulled on the lead.
‘Yeah, I seen him. You staying with The Preacher then?’
‘Come on, Rache. We have to get back.’
They wouldn’t move from the footpath to let us pass. I walked onto the road, holding Maxie’s lead in one hand and Rachel’s hand in the other. Cockeye Donny ran onto the road and blocked our path again. His brother was giggling like a lunatic. Cockeye Donny lifted the stick so we couldn’t get around him.
‘Where you think you going? You want to pass, you got to pay us. We’ve been here all our life and this is our place, not yours. So fucken pay up. A toll is what it’s called.’
I had no money to pay with and nothing I could give them to pass by. I took a step forward. I was frightened but I remembered Jon telling me there were times when I would have no choice but to step up. I concentrated on Cockeye Donny’s good eye and hoped he couldn’t see my legs shaking.
‘I’m going home, to my grandfather’s place. I have to get my sister in for tea.’
I moved in closer to him. As my chest touched his he took a step back. He tried staring me down. I had no choice but to look him in both eyes and accept that it might bring me bad luck later on. He looked at his little brother a couple of times, dropped the stick to the ground and let us pass. I gripped Rachel’s hand as tightly as I could and didn’t look back as we walked away. I could hear them following us.
‘Youse know?’ Cockeye Donny yelled out when I reached our front gate. ‘Before he was The Preacher, your grandfather, they called him Shit Legs, cause that’s what he did, shit his pants all the time when he was pissed.’
He yelled, ‘Shit Legs, Shit Legs . . .’ until I closed the door behind us.
I couldn’t believe that Pop had ever been a drunk, or had done the things that Cockeye Donny said he had. He ran his house and his life like clockwork, and had a set routine for everything. After Gwen’s phone call, when he knew we wouldn’t be leaving too soon, he gave us jobs to do each day. We had to organise breakfast at seven o’clock ‘on the dot’, both on weekdays and weekends. Rachel had always found it hard getting out of bed, and I was sure she’d complain about having to get up early, but she didn’t. She got straight out of bed when the alarm went off and loved her job, arranging the bowls and spoons and cups on the table. I looked after the toast, the butter and jam, and the cereal and milk. Pop said making a good cup of tea was an ‘art form’, so we left that to him.
He cleaned the house from top to bottom after breakfast, sweeping and mopping the same floors he’d done the day before, even when they weren’t dirty. After lunch he went to his room and read for a while then went off on his own for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Before he left the house he would tell us he had ‘a meeting to be at’, but said nothing more.
We fell into his routine and did the same things at the same time every day. It could be boring sometimes, but for the first time in my life I knew, pretty much, what was coming next and really liked it. He also had rules and regulations but was fair with them and followed them as much as he expected us to. One rule was that the TV did not go on until after we’d finished our tea and cleaned up. I was used to putting the telly on as soon as I got out of bed in the morning and was a bit lost and lonely without it.
It was the only rule I decided to break.
Once he’d leave the house for his meeting of an afternoon I’d turn on the TV. We loaded up on cartoons, old episodes of I Dream of Genie, and half a game show before he got back. I sat in his armchair near the window, where I had a view of the street. As soon as I saw him walk around the corner at the top of the street I’d jump down and turn the set off. Rachel would run into the bedroom and lie on the floor with a book like she’d been there all afternoon.
It was a good plan. And it worked – for about a week. One afternoon, when I spotted him coming home, I turned off the TV and opened up the old atlas he kept on the coffee table and pretended I was studying a map. He came into the lounge, stopped in the middle of the room, sniffed the air and screwed his face up like someone had farted. He walked over to the TV and laid his palm on the screen. We both heard the crackle. As he walked past me and out of the room he said, ‘No telly, for a week. And by the way, you’ve got the atlas upside down.’
That night, after tea, he asked us questions about school, where we’d gone and what grade we were up to.
‘Are we going to go to school here?’ Rachel asked. ‘I don’t want to. Those mean boys from the street will be there.’
‘We’ll see. It depends how long you’re here. We’ll see what happens after Christmas. And don’t worry about any boys. They’re not so mean.’
I’d never liked Christmas with Gwen. Whether we were on our o
wn, sharing with one of her girlfriends, or if she was living with a fella, she’d end up drunk or high and get in a fight with someone. Sometimes we got presents, sometimes not. We also got the same story from her, every year, that one Christmas, when she got on her feet, she’d take us to Disneyland. And every year Rachel’s eyes would light up like the Christmas tree we didn’t have.
On Christmas morning at Pop’s house, I woke to the sounds of kids laughing and playing in the street. I lay on the mattress and listened. They were happy and I was jealous. I tapped at the frame of Rachel’s bed with my foot.
‘You awake?’
‘Yep.’
She’d been listening to the kids too. She rustled around under her blanket and poked her head over the top.
‘Shouldn’t we be up? It’s time to set the table.’
I hadn’t heard the alarm or Pop moving about doing his jobs. I didn’t feel like getting up, but thought it best to not be late.
The kitchen was empty. Pop usually had the radio on and listened to the news. It was turned off and he was nowhere to be seen. Walking to the toilet, I could see across the hallway into his bedroom. The bed was made and he was gone.
As I washed my hands I heard Rachel call out from the lounge room. It sounded like she was in pain. When I ran to the room, she was standing in the middle holding a parcel in her arms, wrapped in Christmas paper. A small tree stood in front of the fireplace, decorated with shining red balls.
‘There’s one for you too, Jesse. It has your name on it. And look, a real tree, not a fake one. Can you smell it?’
I could and it was a wonderful smell. I was sure I’d smelled it before, a long time ago, maybe even when I was a baby. Another parcel was sitting on the coffee table. I picked it up and noticed straightaway that it was heavy. I didn’t want to cry but couldn’t stop myself. As soon as I felt the tears in my eyes I turned my back on Rachel, walked over to the window. I could see Cockeye Donny hanging over his fence. He seemed to live in his front yard.
Rachel pushed herself between me and the window. ‘Jesse, why are you crying?’
I wiped my eyes. ‘I’m not crying. It’s sleep in my eyes.’
‘It’s not. You should be happy. Come on. We can open our presents together.’
‘I am happy.’ I was about to rip the paper from my present but stopped. ‘You go first.’
Rachel sat on the floor with the parcel in her lap. She turned it over and picked carefully at the sticky tape. She was taking too much time.
‘Come on, tear it off or we’ll be here till next Christmas.’
‘I don’t want to ruin the paper.’
She slowly removed each piece of tape and opened the parcel. There was a second layer of paper, pink tissue. She gently placed the gift on the floor, still wrapped in the tissue paper and started folding the wrapping paper, over and over, into small squares. Once she’d finished she stuck the gift paper in her pyjama-top pocket and patted it.
‘It’s for keeps,’ she said.
I couldn’t wait any longer. I picked up my gift and tore the paper away from the present. It was a pair of binoculars. There were some scratches and marks on them; they weren’t new but I didn’t care. I looked through the lens at Rachel. She was miles away. I turned them around and looked again and she was all a blur.
She took the tissue paper away from her gift. It was a rag doll in blue checked overalls on a pink blanket of paper. The doll had orange hair tied in pigtails, big eyes and red cheeks. She picked the doll up and hugged it to her chest.
‘She’s beautiful. I’ll have to think up a name for her. Do you think Gwen will like her?’
I didn’t want Rachel spoiling everything by mentioning Gwen. ‘Who cares?’
‘I do.’
I changed the subject. ‘I wonder where Pop is?’
‘Maybe he’s gone to his meeting again. Do you think he’ll be angry that we opened the presents without him?’
‘I don’t reckon he’d have left them out with our names on them if he didn’t want us to open them.’
I left her playing with the doll and went into the front yard with the binoculars. I looked through them along the street. I followed a young kid trying to keep a new two-wheeler balanced as a man, probably his dad, ran alongside him, guiding him down the middle of the road with a hand on his shoulder. Cockeye Donny’s face bobbed up in the lens all of a sudden, like he was standing right in front of me. I dropped the binoculars. The brothers were walking down the middle of the road, heading straight for me. I could have walked back into the house and closed the door, and maybe I should have. Instead, I rested against the fence and waited for them.
Cockeye Donny stopped outside the gate and pointed at the binoculars. ‘Where’d ya get em?’
‘Off my pop, for Christmas.’
‘How far can ya see through em?’
‘Maybe for miles.’
He put a hand out and looked down at the ground as he spoke. ‘Can I have a go?’
I looked at his open hand. He had dirt under his fingernails and scratches on the tips of his fingers. I knew if I gave him the binoculars he’d probably run off down the street. His little brother wiped some snot from his nose with the bottom of his t-shirt. I hadn’t met too many kids who were poorer than us. I knew they were and felt sorry for them, even though Cockeye Donny could be an arsehole.
‘My pop says I’m not supposed to take them out,’ I lied, ‘until I know how to use them properly. But if you come inside the gate, you can have a look through them.’
I opened the gate and held out the binoculars. ‘Come on. You can have a go, then.’
I pointed to the tree right up the other end of the street. I could just make out a bird, high up in the branches. ‘Tell me what colour he is.’
Cockeye Donny picked up the binoculars and squinted through the lens.
‘Well, what’s his colour?’
He handed them back to me. ‘I can’t see good.’ He dropped his head. ‘Cause of my bad eye.’
‘How’d you get it?’
His brother piped up before Cockeye Donny could answer. ‘Our uncle. Our mum’s brother. He was looking after us one time and he smashed Donny in the head. His eye was all crooked after that.’
Donny ran at his brother and pushed him onto the dry grass.
‘Shut your fat mouth, Kade. That’s our business. Not his.’
I offered him the binoculars again. ‘I don’t care how you got the eye. Like you said, it’s not my business. Have another go.’
‘Na. I don’t want to any more.’
He looked down at his whimpering brother. ‘Come on, you fucken girl. I’ll get me arse kicked if we’re not home. Get up.’
Kade crawled across the yard on his hands and knees and followed his brother out of the gate. I called out to Donny as he walked off.
‘Hey. What did youse get for Christmas?’
He stopped, turned around and smiled. He’d never done that. ‘I got to have a look through your binoculars and Kade fell on his arse. More than we got last year.’
I lifted the binoculars again just as Pop was turning the corner. He was wearing a suit and tie and carried something in his hand, a book with a gold cross on the front. A Bible. When he got a little closer to the house he slipped the book into his pocket.
He wasn’t annoyed that we’d opened our presents.
‘I hope you like them.’
I spent the next couple of hours in the backyard looking for birds through the binoculars. I counted three magpies, a black bird with an orange beak that I didn’t know the name of, a flock of pigeons, high in the sky, heading towards the football oval, and heaps of sparrows.
We had roast chicken, potatoes and greens for lunch, and afterwards some apple pie. I wanted to thank Pop for the binoculars, but
when I tried to say the words they wouldn’t come out because I was too nervous. When we sat down to watch TV later that night Rachel tucked her rag doll under one arm and Comfort the bear in the other. I still had the binoculars hanging from my neck. I looked over at Pop a couple of times and practised what I wanted to say to him, under my breath. Finally, after a few tries, I held up the binoculars.
‘I really like these. I saw a bird in the yard. It was on the fence, after lunch.’
I looked across at Rachel and rolled my eyes in his direction.
‘I like my doll too,’ she added.
Pop opened his mouth to say something but the words got stuck. I could see that his eyes were watery. He pointed to the kitchen and marched out of the room. ‘I’ll put the kettle on for us.’
That night I took the binoculars to bed with me. The excitement of the day had left me restless.
‘Rache, are you asleep?’
‘Yep. I’m sleeping,’ she giggled.
‘Did you like today?’
‘Yeah. A lot.’
‘I wish we had some money. To buy Pop a present.’
‘What would we buy him?’
‘A book, I suppose. I’ve seen him reading lots of books.’
‘He only reads one book. The one with the cross on it.’
‘No he doesn’t. I’ve seen him reading lots of stuff. Have a look at all the books in his room.’
Rachel yawned.
‘When do you think Gwen will come for us?’
‘You know her. Could be anytime. Tomorrow, maybe. Could be never.’
‘Do you want her to come? Or do you want to stay here?’
‘Doesn’t matter what I want. If Gwen comes for us, we have to go. What about you?’