by Stephen Orr
‘Come on. This is our big adventure, isn’t it?’
Patrick almost grinned. ‘Yours, perhaps. It’ll be freezing.’
Moy could tell that Patrick liked the idea, but wasn’t sure about the logistics. ‘There’s no one for a million miles.’ He got out and ran down the hill towards the waterhole. He was thinking of stripping as he went, throwing himself in and splashing about, but then thought better of it. Arriving at the water’s edge, he slipped off his shoes and socks, pants and shirt. ‘Come on.’
Patrick was walking down the hill towards him. ‘You won’t go in.’
‘Wanna bet?’
Moy turned and walked into the water. Jesus. He stopped, eyes watering. He’d guessed it’d be cold, but not how cold. Still, he felt the boy’s eyes on him and willed himself forward. He got up to his knees before he stopped. ‘I’m not doin’ it alone.’
Patrick was standing at the edge, the brown water lapping at his shoes.
‘Come on.’
The boy thought about it, then took off his own shoes and socks. He stepped into the water; kept walking, up to his ankles, higher.
‘You gonna take your gear off?’ Moy said.
Patrick looked at Moy’s bowling-ball belly and meaty arms; the hair across his chest and his small nipples.
‘Well?’ Moy asked.
He walked in further.
‘Come on, take your pants off. I’m not lookin’.’
Patrick stopped, deciding.
‘You don’t wanna drive home in wet clothes.’
He turned and walked back to the muddy shore.
‘Come on,’ Moy said. He followed the boy out of the water, grabbed his shirt and tried to remove it.
‘No!’ Patrick said, pulling his shirt down, backing away.
Moy looked at him, confused. ‘I just thought…don’t you wanna come in?’
There was no reply.
‘That’s all I was doing.’ He stopped, remembering. The bathroom door being locked, checked, locked again. Patrick’s habit of doing up his top button, until he was told, ‘You’re gonna be hot like that.’
Patrick turned and headed back up to the car.
‘You can just swim in your pants,’ Moy called.
He reached the car and got in. Moy walked from the waterhole, gathering his shirt and slipping it back on, finding his shoes and socks, soaked brown by the lapping water.
On their way home, as the car glided along the empty road, as the sun spread itself out across the horizon, Patrick said, ‘My mum…’
‘Your mum?’
‘I suppose she was burnt, in the fire?’
Moy took a deep breath. ‘What makes you think—’
‘That’s enough.’
Moy drove on, waiting for an answer, a way out. ‘You’ve already guessed, haven’t you?’
Patrick returned to the mid-distance. They drove in silence until they arrived back in Guilderton.
Then Patrick looked at Moy and said, ‘I’d like to thank you, for looking after me.’
29
MOY CLOSED THE door and turned to face the toilet. There was piss on the seat, dribbling down onto the floor, where it had formed a yellow veneer. He used a fistful of toilet paper to wipe it clean. He dropped his pants and sat down. Looked at the streaks of dried shit on the wall. ‘Jesus.’
When he was finished he washed his hands using a wafer-thin slice of soap with a few greying pubic hairs embedded. Then he made his way out the front door, along the garden path to his car. ‘So, are we ready?’ he asked his father.
‘I’ve been waiting.’
Moy looked at Patrick. ‘How are your muscles this morning?’
‘Okay, I guess.’
Moy had hired a twelve-foot trailer from the local BP. He’d spent the previous evening (as Patrick kept him supplied with coffee) loading it with bed-slats and boxes, drawers and a few pot plants. He’d loaded his two wardrobes, fridge and washing machine using a sack truck from work. When he’d finished he tied the whole lot down with a too-short rope that had come loose on the journey.
‘The big day,’ he said.
‘What?’ George replied.
‘The prodigal son returns.’
‘Who?’
‘Me. Don’t I get a welcome home? It’s been a long time.’
George didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘What, you think I bought champagne?’
‘Did you?’
‘Christ…Where do we start?’
Moy loosened the wing-nuts on the tailgate. ‘You’re not doing anything,’ he said.
‘My arse. I’m not useless.’
‘I didn’t say you were, but I got it all on, so I can get it all off.’
He dropped the tailgate and unhooked the wire doors to the cage that surrounded the trailer. Then he used a board to make a ramp. ‘How about you supervise?’ he said to his dad. ‘Give Patrick the small boxes and tell him where to put them. I’ll take the big stuff.’
‘Nonsense, I can help. My brain might be shrinking, but I’ve still got muscles.’
Moy opened the boot and retrieved the sack truck. ‘I don’t want anything broken, or strained. Let’s just keep it simple.’
‘Come on,’ George said, shaking his head.
‘Listen, Dad, now I’m back you can take it easy. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?’
‘I thought it was so you could stop paying rent?’
‘No, it’s to help you. What’s the point if you’re gonna…’ He stopped. ‘You need to listen, Dad.’
‘It’s my house.’
‘Ours.’
‘My rules.’
‘No.’ Moy lifted the first box onto the sack truck. ‘Compromises.’
‘I’m not changing a thing. What’s in that box?’
Moy read the words Patrick had scribbled on the top. ‘Utensils.’
‘In the kitchen.’
‘Some of it we can work out for ourselves.’
‘You asked.’
‘Fine.’ He turned to Patrick. ‘Maybe you could start with the bed slats. Two at a time.’ He pulled two lengths of wood from the trailer and balanced them in the boy’s arms.
‘The back bedroom,’ George said, and Patrick walked down the drive, carefully avoiding a wind-chime hanging from the porch.
When he was gone George said, ‘You never told me there was another kid.’
Moy loaded a second box. ‘Where did you hear that?’
‘I just did.’
He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t take long, does it?’
George didn’t seem surprised. ‘You’re the one going around asking people.’
Moy wondered who: Rebecca Downey, Mrs Flamsteed? Perhaps Jason’s wife or girlfriend. Any one of a dozen people who’d let something slip in the café, the Wombat Inn or Fred Hoyle’s yoga group at the Institute.
‘His name is Tom,’ Moy said. ‘Patrick won’t tell me anything else.’
‘Why don’t you make him?’
‘What, smack him around the head with a phone book?’
‘You say, I need to know, and I need to know now.’
Moy adjusted the sack truck. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’
‘Tell him if he doesn’t help you’ll send him to town, and they’ll find a place for him to stay.’
‘Dad…’
‘What?’
‘He’s screwed up. We don’t know what happened.’
‘All the more reason.’
Moy studied his father’s face, but couldn’t work him out. ‘His mother’s dead.’
‘So?’
‘He knows we found her, in the house. Listen, if you’re gonna live with him you’ll have to show some compassion.’
George looked surprised. ‘I do show compassion. Plenty of it.’
‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.’
‘You wanted to do it.’
They stared at each other. Eventually Moy said, ‘I’m trying to think of you.’
‘I’m
all right.’
Another long pause.
‘No, it’s sensible,’ George said. ‘No point payin’ for that place when there’s room here.’
Patrick re-emerged from the house and returned to the trailer. He stood with his arms out, waiting for more slats. George loaded him up with another two. ‘How you coping?’
‘Fine.’
‘Can you manage three?’
‘Two’ll do,’ Moy said.
‘He can manage three,’ George insisted, taking another plank and placing it in the boy’s arms. ‘It’ll make the job quicker, won’t it, Patrick?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Off you go.’
Moy followed him in with his first load of boxes. ‘If there’s anything George says that you’re not happy about, you tell him… or me.’
‘I can carry three.’
‘Not just that. Anything. Sometimes he’s pig-headed.’
‘I’m okay.’
Moy unloaded and returned to the trailer. ‘That toilet of yours,’ he said to his father.
‘What?’
‘How often do you clean it?’
‘Often enough.’
‘Books?’ He loaded another four boxes onto the sack truck.
‘The lounge. There’s plenty of room on my shelves. What’s wrong with my toilet?’
‘Listen, you’ve got to—’
‘No one’s ever got sick from a toilet.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s just those dirty bastards coughing all over you in the shops. Or those fuckin’ Asians, not washing their hands after they have a bog.’
‘You haven’t even got soap.’
‘Listen, I’ve been quite happy here these last thirty years.’
‘Okay.’
‘Doing things my way.’
‘Sorry.’
Patrick re-emerged and they fell silent. George loaded him with the last three slats. ‘See, hardly heavy now, are they?’ He looked at his son.
‘No.’ The boy turned and walked off.
‘As long as you don’t mind if I…standardise things,’ Moy said.
‘Standardise?’
‘Like soap, clean towels.’
Patrick looked back at them.
‘Go about your business,’ George called, returning to his son. ‘I don’t care if you have fresh towels every morning, and flowers, and ironed hankies…just don’t go on about it.’
Patrick came out and took a heavy box from George, carried it a few metres up the driveway and stopped to rest. When he picked it up it slipped from his fingers and fell with the muffled tinkle of breaking glass. He looked at George, but the old man hadn’t noticed. He picked it up again, climbed the three steps onto the verandah and dropped it again, knocking over a pot of petunias. It broke and the seedlings scattered across the concrete. He put the box down.
‘What are you up to?’ George said, hobbling up the drive onto the verandah, followed by his son. He stood looking at the small plants, the shards of broken pot and the soil. ‘Bloody hell.’ He bent over and picked up a petunia.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ Patrick said.
‘How did you manage…?’
‘He didn’t mean to, Dad.’
George looked at the small figure, his hands clenched. ‘If it was too heavy, you should’ve said.’
‘I was going okay until I tripped.’
George shook his head and collected the seedlings in his palm before dropping them in disgust.
Patrick waited for him to explode. ‘I can help fix it. I saw some pots out the back.’
‘What’s the good of that? Once the air gets to them roots…’
‘I’ll buy you another punnet,’ Moy said.
George took a deep breath to calm himself. ‘Right, inside. You can wash up.’
‘He didn’t mean to,’ Moy repeated.
But George just glared at the boy. ‘Now.’
AFTER LUNCH, WITH the trailer unpacked and both bedrooms full of boxes, Moy went to the shed and found another pot and a pair of old trowels. With Patrick’s help he scraped the soil from the tiles and filled the pot. As they worked he said, ‘You know, he will come good.’
Patrick just looked at him, unsure. ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’
‘Of course not. Old people just explode, like volcanoes.’
They soaked the soil with water from a bucket. ‘If he gives you trouble just think: you poor old man, I understand. Then walk away, wait an hour or so, go back and see how he’s going.’
‘Does that work?’
‘Mostly. Sometimes he needs a day or two.’
Moy made a hole with his finger, planted the first petunia and compacted the soil. ‘Go on.’ He handed one to Patrick, who repeated the process.
‘Whatever you do, don’t start an argument. He’ll just get his back up.’
Patrick moved on to his second and third seedling. ‘Was he like this when you were a kid?’
‘Worse. He used to have a very short temper. Once, I remember, something happened in the traffic—someone cut him off, or didn’t indicate. So there he was, flashing his lights, tailgating him.’
Patrick was almost laughing. Moy knew he couldn’t stop now, even if he had run out of story. ‘So, Dad followed him all the way to Port Louis.’
‘Port Louis?’
‘Yes, just cursing him. You bastard! Pull over! And when this fella finally stopped…’
‘What happened?’
‘He storms out of the car, and Mum’s saying, George, get back in, don’t be so stupid.’
Patrick was sitting forward, the last petunia clutched in his hand. ‘Your mum?’
‘So Dad marches forward and it’s this little old lady. And she says, have you been following me? Like that. Have you been following me?’
Patrick started laughing.
‘And Dad says, Oh no, Missus, I’s just comin’ back from the shops.’
Patrick made a hole and put the last petunia in. He pressed around it with his fingers and Moy watered the flowers. ‘There, finished,’ he said, standing, looking at the seedlings. ‘As good as new.’
Patrick stood next to him. ‘You think they’ll survive?’
‘Of course. Now I’m gonna sweep out the trailer. How about you put on the kettle and make me and Grandpa a cup of tea?’
30
THE NEXT MORNING, the first they were all together in George’s Clyde Street house, Moy was up early sitting in his bedroom at his computer. He’d closed his dad’s door, put on the kettle and made a coffee. Then came the dishes, scrubbed, scalded and put away. He’d returned to his room, stopping and surveying the boxes, the names of the products crossed out and relabelled with BM’s DVDs; my clothes; old elec equip.
He’d spent half an hour setting up his computer on a desk made from the planks and bricks of his old bookcase. Started his old machine, connected to the internet and checked his emails. Nothing much, just work. Stuff (he guessed) a better cop would be onto straight away—reports, requests—as well as spam about cheap hotels and a photo of seventeen nuns in a mini.
In the end he’d drifted back to the news: some footballer out three weeks with a hamstring, a new tax on cigarettes, a boy dead after waiting fifty-seven minutes for an ambulance.
He clicked onto the story and studied the boy’s face: freckles, and fine black rings around his pupils. The child, still in his pyjamas, was sitting beside his bed, playing with toys.
He knew when I needed a hug and I knew when he did, his mother had said.
Moy felt unable to take his eyes from the boy’s face.
A spokesman for the ambulance service. We received a call at 12.47 and the first unit was dispatched two minutes later.
Moy tried to make out what the boy was playing with. It was a plane, two wings and a broken propeller.
The address we were given was Forbes Avenue, but in the rush to respond our paramedics read this as Forbes Street.
Missing wheels.
By the time they’d realised their mis
take it was 1.07, and by then, I believe, the parents had rung a second time.
And a red lump which, he supposed, was the pilot.
We extend our sincere apologies to the family. Both paramedics have been stood down pending the results of an investigation.
The mother explaining how she tried, for thirty or forty minutes, to get a ball of plasticine out of her son’s throat. How she patted his back and squeezed his chest, but he kept turning blue.
Moy looked out of the window. The blinds were half-closed and the early morning was dark, split into small Cartesian moments. The blue and white of the sky pulsed with energy. He sipped his coffee and wondered how many people it would happen to again today. A hundred, a thousand?
‘Good morning,’ Patrick said, appearing behind him.
Moy clicked off the screen, and turned. ‘Hey, Patrick, sleep okay?’
‘Sort of.’ He winced, moving forward. ‘I think I heard George snoring.’
‘That’s something you’ll have to get used to. Along with several other…issues.’
‘Like what?’
But before Moy could provide the details his phone rang. It was Gary Wright. ‘This place is turning into a hive of excitement,’ he said.
Moy took a moment. ‘Please tell me, nothing major?’
‘I don’t think…but you better take a look.’
THEY DROVE PAST Civic Park, along Creek Street and turned onto Dutton Street. Halfway along there was an empty block with a tall sculpture sitting in the middle of weedy ground. It was granite, sitting on a plinth: a single stem of ripe wheat in the shape of a man, a farmer with broad shoulders and a sort of earless, mouthless head. And growing from the head, ram’s horns, turning in concentric circles that (a plaque explained) represented the rhythm of the seasons, the circle of life. ‘It’s called The Australian Farmer,’ Moy said.
‘What is it?’ Patrick asked.
‘It’s like a…shaft of wheat, with a head.’
‘Why?’
Moy shrugged. ‘Symbolic.’ He slowed past it. ‘The council wanted something to attract the tourists, but I’m not sure it worked. I’ve never actually seen anyone looking at it.’
‘It’s ugly.’
‘Everyone wanted a new toilet in Civic Park, but this is what they got.’
When they arrived at the end of Dutton Street, Bryce King was waiting for them. There were no homes this far along, just piles of rubbish and rubble that locals had dumped. Weeds and grass had grown up through most of it but there was one pile, part broken furniture and clothes, part ash, that looked fresh. Moy and Patrick got out and greeted the constable.