‘How is your father?’ the man outside asks. ‘Has he been behaving?’
‘Well.’ Freya’s voice is softer, the car must go slower so it doesn’t make so much noise. ‘Not really. I wish he wasn’t rude to you at the barbeque.’
‘Was he rude? I don’t remember that.’
‘It’s boring,’ blurts Syd. ‘The way it works is boring —’
‘If you always go fast,’ Colt answers quietly, ‘you’ll always crash. It’s the law.’
‘How’s he been at home?’
‘Well. You know.’
Syd shifts on his knees. ‘There’s nothing bad about crashing.’
‘Yeah!’ says Bastian. ‘Crashing is fun!’
But Colt drives the car slower, so it travels at a dead crawl. Freya’s voice comes past the flyscreen, the open slats, as if searching for a place to be. ‘We’re his children, and Mum is his wife. Aren’t we supposed to be his good things? But what he does . . . he doesn’t seem to love us. And he doesn’t seem to care if we love him or not.’
‘It’s unfortunate.’ The man’s voice is even, safe. ‘For all of you, and for him too.’
‘But why does he do it? Why is he like this? Why can’t he be more like – you?’
‘Be quiet, Bas,’ says Colt under his breath, although the boy has said nothing, and looks quizzically at his brother. They hear the bench creak as the man moves his seat. ‘Life is complicated, Freya,’ he says. ‘None of us go through it the way anybody else does. Who knows what history has shaped your father into being who he is? Maybe his own father was a careless man, and he grew up thinking that’s how fathers must be. Maybe he has thoughts which give him trouble, make him angry, or jealous, or sad. Maybe it’s none of these: maybe he just has a temper, maybe he’s someone who shouldn’t drink. I can’t tell you, Freya. I’m not Joe. You could ask him, but you might not get an answer. He might not think there’s anything wrong with the way he behaves, or maybe he’d be too ashamed to admit there is. Anyway, the only important thing to know is that you are not to blame.’
‘But it’s us who suffer, not him —’
‘Oh, he suffers, don’t you think? He suffers. And he’ll suffer more, in other ways, as time goes on.’
Freya says nothing. Then, ‘I feel sad for him.’
‘Because you love him.’
‘It’s not fair.’
‘No,’ the man says, ‘life isn’t. But don’t let that spoil it for you.’
There’s silence from the deck; Syd’s gaze follows, as if dragged by a wheel, the tour of the red car around the track. Forgetting the command to be quiet Bastian says, ‘Why is your car just sitting there, Syd?’ And when neither Syd nor Colt replies, he reaches for Syd’s control and sets the blue car in motion. With two engines making their insect buzz it is more difficult to hear, and Colt and Syd dip their heads.
‘I don’t know why they got married,’ says Freya. ‘They don’t even like each other. I don’t think they ever liked each other. They’re smiling in the wedding photos, but that doesn’t mean anything.’
‘It probably means something.’ The man’s cup makes a sound against the table. ‘Maybe it means things weren’t as bad as you think. You’ll never know everything about your parents, Freya. No child can, just as they’ll never know everything about you. Maybe they didn’t have the choices you imagine they had. Sometimes people get married for reasons other than love.’
‘Reasons like what?’
‘Well – like babies. People sometimes get married because of babies.’
Again there’s silence on the deck, or at least nothing Syd can hear. Then something startling: ‘I don’t know for sure, but I think Mum’s having a baby.’
‘That’s wonderful. Babies are lovely.’
‘No they’re not. We haven’t got anywhere to put another baby. We haven’t got enough money for another baby. We don’t need another baby. I wish Mum would stop having babies!’
There’s a throaty chuckle, although Syd sees no reason for laughter. He can hear the distress in his sister, and suffers waves of distress himself. ‘Once again,’ says Colt’s father, in his voice that knows everything, ‘maybe your mother doesn’t have the choices you think she does.’
Freya says, ‘I don’t know what I think, but I know she’s got enough kids already!’
‘Maybe she needs you,’ says the man.
‘What?’ Syd hears her scowl. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, maybe you’re her – how did you put it, a moment ago? Good things. Maybe you’re her good things.’
‘You can have too many good things,’ says Freya.
‘Can you?’ says the man. ‘I’m not sure about that.’
Bastian has completely lost patience with his brother and friend; as the cars amble past he karate-chops them off the track. Colt says dumbly, ‘You crashed them.’
‘I crashed them!’ Bastian agrees stormily. ‘You’ve played enough!’
Syd can’t look up from the floor; he feels a nauseating sense of exposure, as if they’ve caught him with a finger up his nose. Abruptly he scrabbles to his feet and shouts, ‘Freya! We can go home now!’
Colt picks up the cars and sits them on the track. ‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘Nothing’s broken.’
Syd hears this and desperately needs it to be true; he can’t have the conversation cost him the BMX, the playroom, the water. He feels himself pouting, being swept down a drain. ‘It’s a school night,’ he says. ‘We have to go home.’
The red car resumes its stately tour around the curves, along the straights, past the finish line and onwards. ‘Come back on the weekend,’ Colt says. ‘We can race again. Now you’ve learned something.’
Syd looks at him blindly, and cannot speak: ‘Freya!’ he barks at the window, ‘hurry up!’ And then his sister is at the door: ‘All right!’ she says. ‘Don’t yell! Jeez.’
They walk home together, Syd with his towel around his shoulders, his mind racing like a rabbit in a paddock. The sky is darker, and streetlights have come on. ‘Why did you tell that man those things?’ he asks, because he’s always believed – although he can’t remember being taught – that what happens in their house on his father’s bad nights is something they are supposed to keep to themselves. His mother never says much about it afterwards, and Syd’s uncles and aunt and grandparents don’t say anything either. Even between themselves, his brothers and sisters, it is not something they discuss. On the mornings after even the worst nights they get up and get dressed, eat breakfast, go to school, and though memories move through Syd like a virus as he assumes they move through his siblings too, no one mentions it, they drive it down. And the reason is that it’s embarrassing: it’s embarrassing to have a father who cares so little about them, it’s shameful that their family isn’t happy. No one must know: and now somebody does. ‘Isn’t it – the secret?’ he asks.
Freya is walking fast, so he has to hurry. She is much taller than he is, to the degree that he’s sure he will never catch up. All his life he’s had the greatest respect for her, his infinitely smarter sister, as well as a healthy dose of caution; and he is not so much angry at her as impressed that she could so casually break something he’d believed was ironclad. He thinks she’s about to introduce him to a world where the rules are much looser than those which bind him, and he’s ready, he’s thrilled: so it’s disappointing when she says, ‘It is a secret. Don’t go telling everyone.’
‘But you told him —’
‘It’s a secret,’ she says, and he hears her teeth grit, ‘but not a secret from him. Is that OK, Your Highness? Is that all right with you?’
A pinch or some other asp-like act of violence is close; Syd steps sideways, and doesn’t say no.
Avery Price rides his bike at night, around the cricket oval, across the schoolyard, down to the creek, up to the milkbar, and much further afield: past the shops grouped at the tram terminus, along the supermarket carpark, to the train station and the offramp of the
freeway, to many places he doesn’t need to go. His bicycle carries him easily, he will journey for hours, sometimes two or three hours or more, through the blackest quietest hours of the night. He rides in the centre of the vacant roads, the streetlights repeatedly finding him and letting him go, occasionally swerving onto the footpath where the darkness is thicker and where he finds objects of interest that have slipped free from the daytime world: car keys, a glove, a letter that never reached the mailbox. The wheels of his bike make a steady unzipping sound as they whirl. If he sees people on the street farewelling friends or arguing or smoking against a fence, he changes direction without hesitation and speeds away. He often encounters dogs who’ve been released into the night and they ramble alongside him for a while, their tongues lightly swinging; he sees cats sprinting over the road or standing, arch-spined, on fences, eyes locked on the face of their foe.
Avery loves these night rides more than anything else he knows. He loves the damp breeze skimming past him, the sound of the tyres on tarmac, the brotherhood of the animals. He loves his bike, his reliable friend. When he cruises around the midnight streets he is the captain of his life, carefree. The sights to which he has been the sole witness are innumerable. The hours he’s pedalled through make a dark palace into which he retreats when his teachers berate him, when his sister slams her door, when he imagines what’s coming and sees nothing.
Lately he has been thinking about Garrick, who is and always has been a kind of beloved enemy of Avery Price. Garrick insists he is superior to Avery, but everyone knows he is not – even Garrick, especially Garrick. They know each other well, these boys from the bottom of the pile; only Garrick bothers pretending that the bottom is the top.
He thinks about Garrick, and Garrick’s behaviour of late, which has not been very different from the usual – he’s still Garrick; the word makes Avery think of a black mole on the skin – yet there is something strange. Around Colt Jenson, Garrick is changed, but it’s tricky for Avery to say how. It is as if there is something inside Garrick which cannot rest unless it’s looking at Colt, or forcing Colt to look at it.
Saturday is a momentous day: the bandage comes off his leg. It’s been nearly two weeks and under Mr Jenson’s care the wound, which had been dreadful, is as neat and clean as a porcelain pin tray. The flesh is sealed with a pale scab, tender and slick in the centre, leathery at the edges. His calf is criss-crossed with greasy remnants of the sticking-plaster. Mr Jenson licks his thumb and rubs futilely at these. ‘You need a good soaking,’ he says.
The injury has taken up too much space in his life; it’s a relief to be free of the burden of trying to care about it as much as Mr Jenson does. Avery doesn’t want to flee the clutches of the Jenson household – a street cat of a boy, he’s found good and plentiful food there, warm rooms full of wonders – but he is used to looking after himself, to judging the depth of his own danger. He’s used to the freedom of neglect; he likes it.
He’s an agile daredevil, a quick learner of every mischievous skill, and flies down the Jensons’ driveway on the striped skateboard so fast that Bastian howls. Speed carries him over the gutter, the board soaring as it hits the dip. At first he can’t manage it and has to leap for his life: three attempts later he has the hang of it, knows exactly how to distribute his weight and absorb the wallop of the landing. Bastian’s shrieking brings Mrs Jenson to the porch. ‘Avery!’ she calls, ‘you’ll be hit by a car! You’ll be killed!’ And Avery smiles through the trees to her: he won’t get hit by a car.
The boys play together into the afternoon; Avery knows that his friends spurn Bastian Jenson, but Avery doesn’t mind him. They are suited to the company of each other, neither of them mean-spirited, both content to while away the day with the mildest amusement. When Garrick appears on the crest of the afternoon he has with him two fat green sticks of bubblegum which, bitten, bleed a sweet pink fluid. One stick has been ravaged, its wrapper shredded away, the gum protruding like the diseased shinbone of a zombie. Garrick plumps down on the naturestrip between Avery and Bastian, chewing loudly. ‘What are you spazzos doing?’
‘Nothing. Sitting.’
‘Sitting here like little birdies. Two little turdy birdies.’ He chews and chews, black eyes staring across the road, his jaw working methodically. ‘Where’s Colt?’ he asks, as Avery has known he would.
‘Out with Dad,’ says Bastian, proud keeper of all facts about his brother.
‘Out where?’
‘Out at the shops.’
‘Doing what?’
Even to Bastian the question is silly. ‘Buying things!’
‘When will he be back?’
The boy shrugs. ‘Probably later.’
Garrick rolls his eyes. Chomp, chomp, chomp. ‘This tastes like shit,’ he says, plucking the glistening wodge from his mouth and hurling it mightily into bushes on the far side of the road. He’s stronger than a boy his age needs to be. He tosses the packets of gum into the gutter as if he never cared about them in the first place. ‘This is shit,’ he says. ‘I’m bored with this shit. Let’s go somewhere. The pinballs.’
‘Nah,’ says Avery.
‘Get the BMX out, then. Why are you just sitting here?’
‘We like sitting here,’ says Bastian.
‘You don’t have to,’ says Avery.
Garrick sneers savagely. ‘Homos.’ Only then does he notice Avery’s knee, released at last from its swaddling. The scab is interesting – its centre is weirdly translucent, it is possible to imagine strange fish swimming under there – and he asks, ‘Leggy-weggy all fixed now, is it?’
‘Just about.’
Garrick’s lightless gaze lingers on Avery’s eyes, something like a smile on his face. ‘Did you get a kiss to make it better?’
‘. . . No.’
‘Are you sure?’ Garrick lifts a hand and strokes it heavily down Avery’s head. ‘Sure you don’t need a kiss? For your poor little bleeding knee-wee?’
Avery shakes away his touch. ‘Piss off.’
‘Piss off? Oh, now you’ve hurt my feelings. I only want to help you, Avery. I want to take care of you. You’re so small and skinny and helpless. You smell so nice I could eat you. I want to stroke your hair and your lovely skin —’
He grabs for Avery’s ribcage, and Avery struggles. ‘Get off!’
‘But Avery, I love you!’
Bastian, laughing throatily, says, ‘He loves you, Avery!’
‘Just one kiss, that’s all I want!’
‘Kiss him, Avery!’
‘Just a peck! One on the lips! After all I’ve done for you!’
Avery springs up, spinning away. For an instant he seems about to bolt, a bird taking to the sky. Instead he reels on the road to the giggling boy. ‘Don’t laugh at him, Bastian!’ he barks.
Bastian swallows his laughter like a rock. Garrick leans on his palms, grinning loosely. ‘Hey, Bastian,’ he says. ‘Do you like living here now?’
Bastian turns to him eagerly. ‘I do like it.’
‘What about the bogeyman? Do you like him too?’
Bastian’s downy eyebrows dive. ‘What bogeyman? Is there a bogeyman?’
‘Yeah! If you listen really hard, you can hear him. Bastian! Bastian! Come to me, little boy! ’
He crooks a finger, beckoning: Bastian shrinks back in the grass. ‘There’s no such thing as a bogeyman.’
‘There is,’ Garrick says. ‘I’ve seen him.’
From the centre of the road Avery says, ‘Shut up, Garrick. You’re an idiot.’
‘What does he look like?’ asks Bastian.
‘Well, you know. Like a normal person. Like a good guy who’s actually a bad guy.’
Bastian thinks on this. ‘Where does he live?’
‘Pretty close. Really close. He’s probably watching us.’
‘It’s not true,’ says Avery. ‘Ignore him, Bastian. He’s full of shit.’
‘Yeah, just ignore me,’ Garrick agrees. ‘I talk about things they don’t want
you to know. Like about the bogeyman. And about . . .’
‘About what?’
‘Oh, about – you know. The creepy-crawlies. The ones who live in the trees and in the stormwater drain and under your house. They’ve got big green fangs and rusty nails for fingers, and they love to eat little boys. Can you hear that noise?’
‘What noise?’
‘Listen – it sounds like the wind blowing, or cars driving past. That’s the creepy-crawlies talking to each other. They sound like something ordinary, but they’re not. They’re ugly stinking creepy-crawlies who should be killed. And you know which one is the scariest?’
‘Which one?’
‘Me !’ blares Garrick, and Bastian leaps to his feet and runs up the driveway, hands flapping, screaming like a parrot, a boy born for this world only if the world is a stage. Avery, watching him go, grumbles. ‘We’ll be in trouble now.’ But the minutes pass and no one comes out to scold them, and soon Bastian’s face appears at the window half-wary, shyly grinning, and when he sees that Avery and Garrick are still sitting on the naturestrip he makes a bold return to the street. ‘You’re not a creepy-crawly!’ he cries, jabbing a finger at Garrick, and Garrick says, ‘Nah, I’m only a person. There’s only people, isn’t there?’
Later, when the afternoon is closing down and the neighbourhood boys have gone home and Colt is in the kitchen making peanut-butter toast, Bastian asks him, just to be certain, ‘There’s no creepy-crawlies who eat kids, are there? Garrick said they live under our house.’
‘No, that’s not true,’ says Colt.
‘What about the bogeyman? Garrick says he’s watching us.’
Colt lifts his head to look at his brother. ‘You’re not stupid,’ he tells him. ‘Don’t believe stupid stories.’
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