by Tony Davis
George rubbed his eyes, and swallowed hard against a dry throat. Thirteen years old. He’d almost forgotten. Beeper rolled out from under the table and brushed down his clothes. The shape of a curled-up six-year-old was silhouetted in dust on the floor.
‘It’s George’s birthday,’ Beeper coughed out. ‘Dad, it’s Georg …’
FOUR
Beeper ran down the hallway to their father’s room and shouted back: ‘He’s not in his bed.’ He ran back down the hall. ‘He’s not in the day room!’
George shook his head and then grabbed his rumbling stomach. It hadn’t been a bad dream. Their father really was missing. They were alone.
‘Of course he isn’t in his bed, or in the day room,’ George said slowly, trying to sound calm. ‘He wouldn’t just come home in the night and go to bed without waking us, would he Beep? He’s just been held up a little, that’s all.’
George stood up and walked around the servery into the kitchen. He needed to change the subject. For Beeper’s sake — and his own. ‘We missed dinner, Beeps. Are you as starving as I am?’
George looked in the cupboards. There was not much. A single row of tins. A few small boxes of savoury biscuits. Some packets of dry fried noodles. A little sugar and salt, and a plastic container of powdered orange drink that was almost empty.
Beeper sat on a stool at the servery. ‘We should tell a policeman that Dad’s gone, Torgie.’
George read the labels on the tins. ‘No Beeper, it’s George. And we shouldn’t. We can’t tell a policeman. Or a policewoman. Or anyone else.’ George selected a tin of Plums in Syrup. He pushed the dirt off the kitchen bench with his forearm, then popped the ring-pull at the top of the tin.
‘Why can’t we tell anyone?’ Beeper asked.
George shook a tea towel and wiped two bowls. He softened his tone. ‘There was a kid at school, named Josh. And just before the summer holidays, the last one before the shutdown, his parents went missing.’
George scooped a few plums into each bowl and poured the syrup on top. Then he opened a box of salted biscuits. ‘Josh told a teacher at school. That night, three men came to his house. They said they were from Children’s Welfare. They had a big white van and they took Josh’s sisters — his little twin sisters — away.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. Some people say …’ George stopped. ‘It doesn’t matter. Grab a seat over here.’
Beeper moved to the dining table. The plums were pale blue and had no taste beyond a sickly sweetness. George sloshed each spoonful around inside his cheeks, savouring the moisture, trying to make it last. He stared at the back door and vaguely wondered when the last strips of white paint would peel off. Anything to avoid the main issue.
After a while, he tried to imagine his father at the markets. Or the port. Or anywhere. Loading the car with food. Preparing to drive home for a birthday lunch.
Beeper charged through his plums, pushed each of his biscuits into his mouth whole, then slurped the syrup from his bowl. ‘Why not Josh too?’ he asked when he had finished.
‘Sorry?’
‘The people who took Josh’s sisters. Why didn’t they take him too?’
‘Welfare only takes kids who are under seven. They say that’s all they have room for.’ George swallowed his last plum. ‘Now we’d better clean up. We can’t let Dad come back to a mess.’
Beeper’s cheeks reddened. ‘But I’m under seven.’
‘It’s okay, Beeper, I promise.’
George put on his dust mask and goggles, then gave Beeper his. He passed his brother a broom and told him to start in the day room. Beeper pushed the broom across the floor as hard as he could, sending most of the dust straight back into the air. George went to stop him, then changed his mind. A busy Beeper was less likely to ask more questions.
The blaster had dumped an ankle-deep layer of dirt along the hallway. George shovelled some of it into a bucket. It was almost too heavy to lift, but he managed to haul it into the back yard. He emptied the bucket against the fence and watched the cloud of dust rise through the barbed wire way up at the top. A pair of thin grey rabbits watched from the other side of the yard.
It took five trips just to clear the hallway.
Beeper stood on the back patio. ‘Why do you walk so close to the side fence?’
‘I don’t want Mr Carey to see me,’ George whispered. ‘I want him to think it’s Dad cleaning up, not us.’
George swept the bathroom, the bedrooms and the kitchen, all the time listening for the front door. Listening for Dad. He scooped the dirt out of the sinks so the drains wouldn’t clog. He shook the broom and used the bristles to pull a few cobwebs from the corners of the ceilings.
When the cleaning was finished, the boys waited until the air settled, then removed their dust masks.
‘Can I do the straining?’ asked Beeper.
‘Okay. Just this time.’ George passed Beeper one of the water jars they had emptied during the blaster.
Beeper grabbed a small square of cloth from the top drawer and shook the muck out of it. He stretched it over the top of the jar and held it tight. His fingers slipped and he banged the jar into the sink with a clang, almost smashing it.
‘Slow down,’ said George. ‘You’ll break something.’
Beeper turned on the tap. A groan travelled along the pipes and out the spout, followed by a trickle of brown water. It dribbled through the cloth and into the jar.
‘Water’s not too bad,’ said George.
Some days it simply didn’t flow, even when Dad went outside with the hand pump to try to clear a blockage from the bore. On others, it smelt so foul that the only thing it was good for was the toilet cistern.
Beeper’s jar gradually filled with tea-coloured water. He scraped the sludge off the cloth with the back of a blunt knife and went through the same series of actions with a smaller jar.
When a third jar was filled, George said: ‘Take a full jar to the bathroom. And bring back the empty one from the cabinet.’
The new jars Beeper had filled meant there were now twenty-two full jars of water sitting in a long row on the kitchen bench. The jars at the far end of the bench near the outside wall had been there the longest. After a week of settling, they were almost clear. Or as clear as they were ever going to be. The rest would need a few more days for the last of the silt to sink to the bottom.
George paused and listened yet again. Hoping to hear the front door open. He put the plug in the kitchen sink and poured half a jar of good water into it so they could wash their hands and faces. They shook their dust masks and rinsed them. They had to be quick: the rubber plug was cracked and the water leaked through it. The boys hung their masks on a wire above the bench. They wouldn’t take long to dry.
‘Okay, next chore,’ said George. He headed into the hallway.
Beeper followed him. ‘The story about Josh’s sisters, Torgie. Is it true?’
George pulled an old wooden extension ladder from the hallway cupboard. ‘Grab the other end of this. We need to take it out into the back yard.’
They had only carried it a few steps when Beeper dropped his end. ‘Is it true? Are those people — those Welfare — going to take me away?’
‘No, Beeps.’ George dragged the ladder through the back door. His stomach was tightening again, his voice cracking. ‘They can’t split us up. Because we’re still a proper family. Dad isn’t missing. He’s just held up.’
FIVE
George stood on the top rung of the ladder and clung to the edge of the roof. Dad always checked the roof after every blaster, but Dad wasn’t home yet. Someone had to do it, particularly after that loud tearing noise they had heard while huddled in the bathroom.
And George needed to keep himself busy. Otherwise he might begin to panic. He stared at the iron sheets on the back section of the roof. He couldn’t find the courage to take the final step over the rusted gutter. He wasn’t sure the ladder was stable. Maybe the roof would be sl
ippery. And how would he get over the gutter again, and back onto the ladder when he was finished?
‘I’ll do it,’ said Beeper. ‘I like climbing.’
‘No, you’ll stay there at the bottom. You wouldn’t know what to look for.’ George didn’t know what to look for either. And all he had to work with was the small hammer he’d pushed through his belt. The rest of the tools were in the boot of the car.
Wobbling on the top rung, George sneaked a glance at the burnt-out house to his right. Only two walls were left standing. Behind, a few hundred metres away, was the picnic reserve where he and other kids from his street used to play. Where they would put on silly concerts in the bandstand, or hide under it, sometimes for hours.
What had been lawn and gardens and picnic tables was now mainly dust, rocks and stumps of wood. George glanced quickly across to Mr Carey’s house. The upstairs windows at the back faced down on the boys’ back yard. George felt they were always being spied on.
‘Three, two, one … this is it!’ George chanted. Counting down made him feel braver. He threw his right knee over the gutter. Then he grabbed hold of one of the cables that crisscrossed the roof. He pulled his other leg up. His arms shook with the strain. He yanked on the cable until he was crouching on the steep iron that covered the roof. The heat bounced off the metal and onto his face. He wondered how long he could stay up there without fainting.
George examined every sheet of iron covering the triangular section that made up the back of the roof. As far as he could tell, they were all still in place. That was good. But it was also bad. It meant he had to check the sides of the roof — then the front. With his knees shuddering, he took a step upward towards the ridge, making sure to bend double and cling tightly to a cable.
George’s soles skidded on the metal roofing. The hot cables were frayed and tore at his fingers. But he took a second step, grabbing a new cable with one hand before letting go of the old one. He focused on his hands, his feet, the cables, anything but the drop to the ground. There was more grip if he placed his feet sideways and straightened his legs. Then he took a third step and a fourth. Soon he reached the ridge. It was possible to see the horizon in every direction from there. But George was not brave enough to look.
His father had been on this roof so many times, walking surefootedly along each side, glancing all around as he went. George instead sat astride the ridge, as if riding a horse, and inched towards the front of the house. One hand gripped the ridge in front of him, the other behind.
Sweat ran into his eyes and ears. It drenched the top of his T-shirt. He didn’t dare let go to brush the flies away from his face.
The sides of the roof were undamaged. If there was a problem, it must be at the front. George finally reached the end of the ridge. The roof appeared steeper at the front than at the back, and even more slippery.
The problem was there, halfway down. A corner of iron was sticking out between two cables, exposing the tiles underneath. Maybe it could be flattened with a small hammer, but it couldn’t be in a more difficult place to reach.
George wasn’t prepared to take the risk. Nor would he take the ladder around to the front of the house and use it in full view of the street. He might be seen by someone. Or he might accidentally touch the tangle of electric wires that stretched from the edge of the roof to a leaning pole next to the road.
‘This isn’t how I should be spending my birthday,’ George mumbled to himself.
He stole a glimpse of the murky city skyline to the north, and turned briefly to the east. The air was too thick to see even as far as the shopping mall, maybe thirty or forty minutes’ walk away. There was no chance of seeing the bay beyond, or the port at its southern head. The port where Dad might have gone.
George realised just how high up he was. His hands, knees and legs tensed, gripping the ridge capping even more firmly. It was so hot he was ready to pass out.
He looked behind. It was going to be safer to slide backwards along the ridge than to spin around. He slowly moved one metre, then two. It was going to take forever. He glanced back over his shoulder. A face stared at him from the other end of the roof. ‘Beeper! Why are you up here?’
‘You hadn’t come back.’
‘You could kill yourself.’ George swung his legs over the ridge and spun around without even thinking about it. ‘Go!’
Beeper didn’t go. Instead, he climbed up the back of the roof and straddled the ridge, exactly as George was doing. ‘You can see everything from up here, Torgie.’ Beeper paused. ‘Except for Dad.’
He pointed towards the hills in the west. ‘There’s a blaster.’
‘Huh?’ George’s head went light again. There was a black cloud on the horizon, bubbling like boiling oil. It was rolling through the haze across the distant suburbs. George relaxed. It was a long way away and heading for the coast.
‘Why is there a blaster over there, Torgie?’
‘Because! That’s why: because! Now, can you please get down?’
‘Why, Torgie?’
‘Get down,’ George sighed.
‘Why, Torgie?’
‘For the same reason as we had the blaster yesterday. It’s the drought. And something to do with high pressure systems, and low pressure systems, and pollution and, I don’t know … hotter weather. Now move it!’
Beeper didn’t budge. ‘Why don’t we live somewhere where they don’t have pressure systems, Torgie? Where there are no blasters?’
‘I’m not sure there is such a place. People still come here from other cities, and from the country. So it must be worse there.’ George lifted his head and took in the view. Around them, the houses, the streets, the parks were the colour of broken biscuit. ‘And this is our home.’
‘Hey, Torgie, there’s Mr Scary!’
George stole a peek at their neighbour. Mr Carey was in his back yard, rubbing at his outside windows with a broom lashed to a long pole. His thatch of white hair was standing on end and he was scowling as he worked. Beeper was right. The name Scary did suit him better these days. George shuffled along the ridge towards his brother and yelled in the direction of the back yard. ‘It’s all right Dad, we’re coming down now.’
A few seconds later, George heard a door close. He looked back at Mr Carey’s yard. It was empty. ‘No more delays, Beeper. Get down. And carefully.’
George felt dizzy as he pulled the ladder away from the eaves and slid the top extension down. He slowly dragged the ladder inside. Beeper followed with one hand resting on a rung. He was weighing the ladder down, rather than helping to lift it.
‘Thanks for fixing the roof, Torgie. Dad’ll be proud.’
George didn’t say anything. He couldn’t make eye contact. He was ashamed. He wished he could feel his father’s arm around his shoulders, hugging him like he always did on his return. ‘I’m sorry to be a few hours late, boys,’ he would say, ‘but here’s what I found on my travels.’ Then he’d pull a bag of sweets from his rucksack.
Beeper tapped George on the shoulder. ‘We have to go and find Dad.’
‘Too dangerous. You know that. What if there’s another blaster, or wanderers. Or … Welfare.’
‘If anyone chases us, I’ll run like lightning. They’ll never catch me.’
‘No,’ George said. ‘We have to wait for him inside.’
Beeper’s cheeks started to redden. ‘I don’t want to.’
‘Bad luck! You have to do what I say. I’m in charge. We’re not going out of the house.’
In the late afternoon, George pulled Beeper’s mattress off its base and into his own room. In the evening, under an electric light that phased in and out, George prowled around the room with a hammer, ready to strike at spiders as he lifted the corners of each mattress.
Beeper stalked along the skirting boards and dropped his weapon — a block of wood — on two small bugs. George saw a large black spider with hairy legs on the side of the wooden box that held the candles and matches. He swung the hammer and missed
, knocking the box on its side. The spider scurried along the floor. Beeper cut across its path and stamped his right shoe down hard.
‘Well done,’ George said. But he was annoyed. He should have killed the spider himself.
George picked up an old towel, shook it to make sure nothing was hiding in the folds, then stuffed it firmly into the gap below the bedroom door. They were ready for bed. He flicked off the light.
‘Toilet,’ said Beeper.
‘Why didn’t you say that one minute ago?’
‘I didn’t need to go one minute ago.’
George sighed and flicked the light on again. Then he snapped the towel out from under the door, thumped the door handle and yanked it open. ‘Don’t flush it. It might back up. The cistern’s nearly empty anyway.’
As the boys finally lay down, the sound of a piano seeped through the windows.
‘We should ask Mr Scary Carey to help us,’ Beeper said. ‘He’s a grown-up.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ The music continued. All Mr Carey played were cheerless pieces, for hours on end. This was another long, slow tune, with each chord held until it almost faded to silence.
‘I’m not being silly,’ said Beeper. ‘I’m having ideas.’
‘Silly ideas. He’s weird. Forget it.’
Mr Carey was more than weird. He was dangerous. When George was ten, a few neighbourhood kids dared each other to thump on Mr Carey’s door and run off. When Mr Carey opened his metal door and saw the children sprinting away, he fetched a gun and pointed the barrel just above their heads. He didn’t pull the trigger, but his face made it clear that next time he would.
Then he pointed to his ‘Keep Out’ signs and slammed his door. They never doorknocked Mr Carey again.
Beeper rustled. ‘I’m too worried to sleep, Torgie.’
George couldn’t admit that he was too. He wondered if Dad had run out of fuel on the way home. Or if his car was bogged in the sand. Or if he was in hospital. Could they possibly walk to the hospital and find out? It was near the mall, he knew that. But he hadn’t been there for years. And that was with his parents. That was in a car.