by Scot Gardner
I shook my head. Not to this particular track. The one in Dempsey is indoor and outdoor. A few months of driving and you can upgrade to the pro racing karts. I was upgraded on my thirteenth birthday. My sister was in her final year of secondary school and took time off study to throw me a party. I stuffed myself with the birthday cake she’d made (in the shape of a wheel) and then I won the grand prix. Sofie cleaned up my cakey vomit. It was really the last thing we did together, my sister and I.
‘Mick says we can go on in about ten minutes,’ Sandy bellowed.
Julian uppercut the air.
‘So, Will, you went to St Alphaeus and now you’re pushing trolleys for Milton’s? Bet your parents are glad they forked out all that cash.’
I felt the barbs in the comment, but batted them off with a grin. ‘It’s called revenge.’
Sandy threw his head back but howling engines swallowed his laughter.
He gave me the full twenty questions, the way his son had, and I told him the truth, mostly.
‘Right now, I’m camping with Julian in the bungalow,’ I said.
‘I hope you’ve had your injections.’
Julian levelled a kidney punch at his dad. Sandy grabbed him in a headlock, licked his finger and jammed it in his ear. Julian squeaked like a rodent.
We paraded our hairnets like models on a catwalk and eventually found helmets to fit. Sandy – medium. Julian – medium. Me – extra large, with a side serve of gratuitous laughter.
My fingers tingled as Mick guided us to our karts. I’d resigned myself to the fact that the machine would, at best, be mediocre. It only had to be faster than the other two. My XL helmet seemed like a badge of honour in light of the fact that Julian needed two large pads of foam behind him so his little legs could reach the pedals.
With our engines running, we were given the safety spiel and instructed to have a couple of practice laps before an official start. I found my line and got a feel for the sluggish accelerator. The brakes didn’t seem to work, but if everything went to plan I wouldn’t need them.
Paused on the starting line, I could feel my heart beating in my ears.
‘It’s all about power-to-weight ratios, Alfie,’ Julian screamed at me. ‘So long, sucker!’
He was fast off the start, but not uncatchable.
Being both light and strong would work in Julian’s favour, but he drove go-karts the way he wheeled shopping trolleys – not thinking about the corners until it was too late. Much too late. He bounced off the barricade and his rear wheel nipped at the tyre wall on every corner.
I could beat him.
Sandy held his own for the first five laps but gradually dropped back until we caught up with him again. Julian used a passing technique as old as go-kart racing itself, known in the handbook as the ‘ram and apologise’ ploy. I hugged his rear wheels and slid past Sandy with him, and the track was ours to thrash it out for a few more laps. On lap eighteen of twenty, I took a corner deliberately wide and when Julian’s tyre kissed the barricade I gunned past him also.
There was only one winner.
Julian tore the hairnet from his head. Sweat had flattened his locks and he looked like something that had been left in the rain.
I dumped my own hairnet and collected the lap times sheet from Mick.
‘Pretty close,’ I said.
Sandy grabbed his son’s shoulders from behind. ‘What about a pool comp?’
Julian grinned and rubbed his hands together again.
All the tables were in use when we got to the pool hall in the heart of Treedale. We played a round robin of air hockey while we waited and I didn’t lose a match. We finally got ourselves a table and Sandy insisted that Julian and I play off for the chance to test our skill against him. Sandy had all the right moves – rolling the hire cue on the table to check its shape then chalking the tip to excess.
Julian went down by four balls. In a rage, he lifted the corner of the table and balls clattered to the carpet.
‘Hey, Jules! Steady,’ Sandy said. ‘Put it down!’
Julian clenched his teeth and I could see the tendons in his neck.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
Sandy and I played to the black. To sink the black and win the match, he had to peel the white off the cushion at a tight angle. Instead of trying to jam the cue in behind the ball, he nudged the white into the cushion with just the right force to shunt the black ball home.
Julian hugged his father then jogged a lap of the table with both fists in the air.
I shook Sandy’s hand for the second time that day. ‘Well played, sir.’
‘And you too, Will.’
They let me shout them kebabs for dinner, and as Sandy said goodbye to us on platform two at Treedale station, I shook his hand again.
‘Thanks for a great afternoon and some solid competition,’ he said.
‘Pleasure has been mine,’ I said, and I wasn’t lying. Julian was right about his father – he was an eminently likeable man.
They hugged and kissed goodbye.
‘Love you, Dad!’ Julian shouted from the door of the train.
‘Love you too, boy. Look after yourself.’
Julian had been right on that count, as well: no two fathers are the same.
And no amount of winning could match a score like that.
SURPRISE
‘GOT A LITTLE surprise for you,’ Julian said, as the train pulled in at West Tennant and we alighted.
‘Fantastic!’ I grumbled. It wasn’t very late, but the station was empty and the sodium lamps painted the platform sepia and lent an air of imminent axemurder to the scene.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Be ungrateful. But you’ll be thanking me later.’
I could barely keep my eyes open. I wanted the rumble and clatter of the bowling alley. I wanted my own private oblivion. I didn’t need any more surprises.
I could hear the music from the bungalow over the traffic noise on the street. Thumping bass at first, then screaming guitars as we got closer.
The light revealed Nishi sprawled starfish on the bed. Julian hurtled across the room and dived on her. She squealed and they rolled like puppies around the mattress.
I looked away and discovered eyes watching me from the couch. Another girl, as pretty as Nishi, with her head on the armrest and her bare feet tucked behind the cushions. She stared and smiled, then dragged herself upright and flicked her hair.
I offered my hand and she took it. ‘I’m Will,’ I shouted.
‘I know,’ she said, but she didn’t let go right away.
I was running out of places to look. I admired the light bulb until she let my fingers drop.
Nishi untangled herself from Julian and killed the music with the remote. ‘Will, this is my friend Jenny.’
‘We’ve met,’ I said. I glanced at Jenny. She was still smiling at me.
‘Man, I could go a cone or six,’ Julian said. He collected his smoking gear and headed for the camp chairs.
I excused myself and followed him. I stood beneath the empty clothesline in the suburban half-dark, arms crossed.
‘You like your little surprise, bruz?’ Julian asked.
‘Jenny is my surprise?’
‘I know, she’s hot, isn’t she?’
‘You can’t give someone as a gift. That’s just—’
‘She’s not a gift, she’s a surprise. You have to give her back at the end of the night.’
‘What?’
‘Nishi and me went halves. We hired her from myhotasiangirlfriend.com.’
‘She’s a prostitute?’
‘Well, not exactly. Escort.’
‘There’s a difference?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe you’ll be able to tell us in the morning.’
I grabbed my hair and whispered curses at my feet. I paced a lap of the yard, thinking that I couldn’t live with Julian. I’m not dope smoke and prostitutes; I’m early nights and early mornings, gym time and coin laundries.
‘You w
ant some of this?’ Julian asked, offering me the bong.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ I said. ‘I don’t really smoke.’
He shrugged and lit up.
‘I appreciate all you’ve done for me, Jules, I really do, but . . .’
The bong bubbled for what felt like a minute and I realised he was laughing. ‘You should take up smoking, man. You get so Alfie and strung out that you can’t even hear when I’m taking the piss. Jen is Nishi’s best mate. Sit with me.’
He patted the other camp chair.
Just as quickly as it had arrived, the mess of confusion and anger in me dissipated like bong smoke. The seat farted as I sat. I did some theatrical exhaling of my own.
He patted my arm. ‘A proposition . . .’
‘A what?’
‘A proposition.’
‘That’s a big word.’
‘I know, good one, hey? A proposition . . .’
‘I’m listening.’
‘You teach me about manners and shit and I’ll teach you how to relax.’
‘Manners and shit?’
‘You know, how to talk properly and dress to impress and that.’
I snorted. ‘You’ve got use for that stuff?’
He turned to face me. ‘You can tell you’re not from around here.’
‘What’s wrong with being from around here?’
‘Do I need to make a list? People here go shopping for bad wine in their pyjamas, at midday. Westies think it’s cool to fight in public . . . Missus, kids, grandma . . . doesn’t matter. This one time, I saw a woman taking a piss in the middle of her front lawn. It was eight in the morning. I was on my way to work! Classy. I don’t want to be like that.’
‘You’re not like that.’
He chuckled. ‘You reckon?’
He handed me the bong and levered himself out of the chair, walked across the yard and pissed on the neighbour’s fence. He flapped his penis about as he returned, wiped his hand on his pants and dropped back into his seat.
‘I see what you mean,’ I said.
‘You know the worst thing?’ he said. ‘Feels natural.’ ‘Probably because it is. Well, perhaps not the display of genitals, unless you’re part baboon and you forgot to mention it.’
‘Ha! You’ve met my parents. What do you think?’
‘It’s all about context.’
‘In English?’
‘Well, it’s fine to pee outside under the cover of darkness.’
I gave him back the bong, went to the same corner of the yard and emptied my bladder on the fence.
‘Point taken,’ Julian said, as I returned to my seat. ‘You looked like a pretty natural garden sprinkler over there.’
‘Well practised.’
‘How did you cope?’
‘With what?’
‘Did you shit where you slept at the bowling alley?’
I recoiled. ‘No. Disgusting.’
‘Then where? Into the bowling alley itself?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know you well enough to be discussing my toilet habits with you. A gentleman wouldn’t—’
‘A gentleman!’ Julian hooted. His body shook and he covered his mouth for way longer than he should have.
‘I went at the gym. Or at work.’
‘You wouldn’t want to be busting.’
‘No. Thankfully, my bowels are quite regular. I only need—’
‘Okay, okay. Sorry I asked. You sound like my mother.’
‘Really?’
‘No joke. The goddess of overshare.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Don’t ask her about her love life. Ever.’
‘Better to be like that than . . .’
He looked at me. ‘Than what?’
He packed another cone in the gap that followed, but he didn’t press the question further. Perhaps there was a gentleman in there after all.
‘Lesson number one,’ he said, and handed me the packed water pipe and cigarette lighter.
‘No. I’m not sure that I—’
‘When your friend offers you something good, it’s rude not to say yes. If it was lasagne, you’d be digging right in. Anyway, what’s the worst thing that could happen?’
‘Could mess with my head.’
‘That’s the basic idea.’
‘Could trigger a psychotic episode.’
‘That’d be fun.’
‘It’s illegal.’
‘Now you sound like an Alfie.’
‘There were plenty of smokers at school.’
‘Ha! Yeah, the rebels.’
A quick mental survey of the stoners in my boarding house suggested he was right – the three who sprang to mind were all hand-painted rebels. One – a rower named Darcy – hit it pretty hard. He got caught behind the boatshed by one of the coaches. I thought at the time that getting caught smoking weed should have been a serious scandal, but Darcy smiled. He smiled when the coach shoved him along the path to the headmaster’s office, he smiled when the cops found his stash and was still smiling when they bundled him into the patrol car. Maybe he was stoned the whole time? Maybe he had bigger things in his life to worry about.
Julian proffered the pipe again. ‘This is how we stick it to the man.’
And, while my head rebelled and I coughed until my eyes watered, my heart’s deepest desire at that moment was to stick it to the man. Whatever that really meant. To me, it meant shedding a lifetime of dos and don’ts, of tutting and scornful glances. It was a middle finger raised to an eternity of curfews and hollow rituals.
When I could finally take a breath without being bent in half by a coughing fit, my lungs filled as if I’d only been using one for the last ten years, and when I sighed it came all the way from the tips of my toes.
I rested my head back and gazed at the sprinkling of stars above us and thought this old camp chair was the most comfortable place I’d been in my life.
‘What pushed you over the edge?’ Julian asked. ‘At school.’
I took a long breath and held it. My thoughts squirmed like a bucket of eels. The words, when they did eventually come, burst out in a rush.
‘A run-of-the-mill dickhead posted a video of my girlfriend with another dude. It was the first I knew about it. I lost my shit, so to speak.’
Julian shook with a silent laugh. ‘Fair enough. Did he pay?’
I shrugged. ‘Few tears, a bit of blood.’
He nodded, seemed to enjoy the rhythm of it, and kept nodding.
‘Who did you smash?’ I asked.
‘My uncle,’ he said. ‘Wanted me to suck his cock.’
The silence that followed felt bruised.
‘Can you explain to me why we haven’t made up any more star signs since the time of the Greeks or the Italians or whoever it was?’ Julian asked.
‘Romans. Egyptians. I don’t know.’
‘They must have had some good ganja in those days to see a set of scales and a lion and crap up there.’
I snorted involuntarily. ‘True.’
‘I see a carrot.’
‘Where?’
‘Over there, beside Michael Jackson.’
‘Oh yeah, I see it.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, and pointed at the sky. ‘Just below the constellation of toothpaste tube.’
Julian leaned to the side in his chair and farted.
‘That sounded like Booboo,’ I said.
‘I can do all sorts of animal noises,’ Julian boasted. ‘Elephant, camel, turkey, fish.’
I laughed. I would have laughed for a full minute about that, but my scorched mind and the extra gravity my body was feeling forced it out in a single ‘Ha!’ that echoed around the neighbourhood.
‘Goose, yes, I can fart a good goose call.’
‘How, exactly, does one fart the sound of a fish?’
‘Magician never tells his secret,’ he said.
He dragged me into the house and we stood too close to the microwave while popcorn popped. I could feel my brain cooki
ng. It wasn’t unpleasant.
A tense drama starring Harrison Ford played out on the TV in the darkened lounge. Duane and his mother sat together. We left without making another sound.
The light was out in the bungalow too, but the TV painted the walls with flashing blue. The girls were watching The Life of Brian. Jenny’s lips were moving in perfect sync with John Cleese’s character, Reg, as he argued with Stan about the futility of fighting the Romans for his right to have babies if he can’t actually have babies. I watched her lips and realised there was someone on the planet who’d seen the film more times than the boys in Cedar House at St Alphaeus.
‘Popcorn!’ Nishi sang, and they made room so we could sit. We crushed in together – four of us on the two-seater couch.
I pushed back and, after some awkward flailing, rested my arm on the seat behind Jenny. She shouldered under my armpit and rested her head in the crook of my elbow as if we’d been doing it for years. I’d managed to grab one kernel of popcorn when Jenny’s phone rang with the Super Mario theme.
She swore, and leapt to her feet. ‘I have to go.’
I joined in the collective moan.
‘We were just getting comfortable,’ Julian said.
‘I know, I know. My mum’s waiting.’
I reached out and she shook my hand for the second time that night.
‘Been great to meet you, Will,’ she said.
I realised we’d hardly said a word.
‘For me too,’ I said.
‘Will you be around next weekend?’ she asked.
‘I . . . I hope so. Unless my landlord tosses me out.’
‘Might see you then.’
Nishi walked with Jenny to the street and when she returned, I felt like a spare wheel.
‘May I borrow your phone?’ I asked Julian.
‘What for?’
‘Ring my sister. Tell her where I am.’
He tossed me a puzzled look, and then handed me his phone.
I dialled and thought it had gone through to her voicemail.
‘Hello, you’ve called Sofie Rushton.’
Silence.
‘Sofe?’
‘Will? Wiiiiill! How are you, boofhead?’
‘I’m all right. Are you busy?’
‘Never too busy for you, my dear.’
‘I called . . .’
‘Yes, I got your messages. Would have responded if you’d left a number. Why the hell did you deactivate your Facebook account? That was our lifeline!’