When there’s nowhere else to Run

by Murray Middleton

  ‘What about her parents?’

  ‘I might just have to shoot them.’ Roy slapped Sonny on the back again.

  ‘Good luck with that,’ said Sonny, hoping Roy knew he was only joking.

  He recognised the next song. It was a fast cover of a famous Slim Dusty ballad.

  Roy drained the rest of his beer. ‘I love this one,’ he said, rising from his stool. ‘Listen, do you want to dance with me and Danielle?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Sonny watched Roy shuffle back over to Danielle. Bullfrog’s legs were quivering again. Roy approached Danielle from behind and put his hands over her eyes. She surrendered to his touch, allowing herself to sink into his outstretched arms.

  ■

  At the beginning of the band’s second set, Sonny bought a six-pack over the counter and walked upstairs. He found the communal kitchen at the end of the hallway. Turbo was slumped on a couch in front of the television, snoring. The south-east Queensland derby was on and the crowd was going berserk over something that’d just happened. Sonny watched for the next few minutes, hoping for fireworks, but everything started to die down, so he retreated down the hallway.

  His room, which was directly above the main bar, had a double bed, a bedside table, a desk and a big wardrobe. He lay on the bed. The furnishings were much nicer than he was used to. If only there was a bit of work going around, he could have lodged there with Roy and made a good fist of it. His arms felt itchy. He’d suffered countless mosquito bites since setting out along the east coast. Back home the mosquitoes had no interest in his blood, but that was about the only reason he could think of to ever go back.

  The music from downstairs was making the bedframe vibrate. It sounded so repetitive, probably repetitive enough for him to fall asleep, if he wanted. But it was too early. Then it would just be another wasted night. He cracked the first of his beers and drank it lying in bed. It felt like the kind of thing that his dad would have done, getting half-cut in a strange room in a strange town, dwelling on everything that hadn’t quite worked out in his favour.

  He stood up and walked over to the mirror above the desk. On looks alone, he was almost an interesting person. Bloodshot eyes, long straight nose and a fluffy beard that was slowly starting to get some coverage up around his cheekbones. His thin chestnut-coloured hair was beginning to look unruly around his ears, which he liked, but he could already see how his hairline was going to recede in the middle, just like his dad’s had over the years, and how he’d eventually have to accept it and shave all his hair off.

  He moved to a table on the balcony right outside his room and started playing a game of solitaire, but he soon lost interest and opened his second beer. He looked out over a deserted intersection in the centre of town and then into the darkness where he knew the mountains and the valleys were. His eyes were drawn to the orange hue of a telephone booth on the opposite side of the street. A young woman was holding the receiver and chatting away. Sonny wished he was on the other end of the line, telling the girl how much he missed her, not that he could even see her face properly.

  ■

  ‘Sonny-boy!’ said Roy, appearing on the balcony hand-in-hand with Danielle, his black hair pasted across his forehead. As Roy was getting two chairs from a nearby table, Sonny looked down and saw Bullfrog being helped across the intersection by two men. His legs weren’t quivering anymore.

  ‘Been wondering where you got to,’ said Roy. ‘Still owe you a beer by my count. Maybe this’ll even things up a bit.’ He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a joint. ‘Any objections?’

  Sonny shook his head.

  Roy lit the joint, inhaling several times in quick succession before passing it to Danielle. He only let her inhale twice. Sonny puffed on the joint three times and handed it back to Roy. He’d never really smoked much because his dad didn’t like to mix it with the drink.

  Danielle shifted onto Roy’s knee, put her head on his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his thick neck. Sonny realised that Roy had a wonderful neck for a football player. Danielle closed her eyes and Roy started stroking her fine hair.

  ‘Got to wake up at five in the morning so we can climb Mount Warning,’ said Roy.

  ‘Sounds exciting,’ said Sonny, having the strange sense that he was suddenly talking outside of himself.

  ‘Yes indeed, we want to be the first people on the mainland to see the sun come up,’ said Roy, still holding in his smoke. ‘Nice and romantic.’

  He kissed Danielle’s hair. Sonny enjoyed seeing the soft swelling of her ribs, but he stopped looking because he didn’t want to upset Roy, even though Roy hadn’t shown any hint of an aggressive streak.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be able to get up on time?’ asked Sonny, wanting to keep the conversation going.

  ‘The way things are stacking up, I might need to push on through to the morning,’ said Roy. ‘Maybe you can help me out on that front.’ He grinned and stubbed out the joint in the ashtray. ‘Naturally you’re welcome to join us.’

  ‘Why not, I guess,’ said Sonny, feeling good about things.

  ‘Always happy to share the good times among friends,’ said Roy, grinning. ‘Hopefully there’s plenty more of them to come.’

  They fell silent.

  Sonny drained the rest of his beer and placed the empty bottle on the table, next to the deck of cards. There was no longer any commotion coming from downstairs. He’d lost track of the time. It was much harder to tell the time at night, especially once alcohol entered the equation. He wondered whether they should be concerned about keeping the noise down. He didn’t want to wake the publican, or his wife.

  ‘What’s on your mind, stranger?’ asked Roy.

  ‘Nothing, I was just wondering if the pub’s closed.’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ said Roy, grinning again. ‘And you know what they say, don’t you, Sonny-boy?’

  ‘No,’ said Sonny, confused.

  Roy started singing the Slim Dusty ballad from earlier, closing his eyes and tipping up his mouth to face the roof.

  Sonny’s dad’s drinking friends had belted out the exact same song at his funeral, as though it was supposed to be some big sentimental moment they were all sharing.

  ‘Hate’ was the word that suddenly came to mind. He hated everything about his dad. All those fishing trips, pretending it was a father–son thing. They never did any bonding. He was just stealing Sonny away from the real world, taking him out on the water for company. He didn’t even make a big deal of it when Sonny caught his first flounder and had so much excitement stuck in his body that he felt like he was going to explode.

  Roy was up to the chorus now.

  It had been hell sitting there in his Salvation Army suit, watching those red-cheeked men belt it out. Sure, they were all honouring him in their sad old ways, the seven men who’d bothered to show up, but there was one way Sonny could tell the truth and that was by watching their faces. No one shed a single tear the whole funeral.

  ‘You with me, Sonny?’ asked Roy, waving his hand from across the table.

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘Looked like you were drifting off someplace.’

  ‘I was, but thanks for bringing me back.’

  ‘No sweat,’ said Roy. He pulled out another joint and lit it.

  ‘I was just saying, seems you know all about me, but if we’re going to be mates, I’m going to have to know something about you,’ said Roy. ‘So what’s your story?’

  ‘My story,’ said Sonny, playing with the unruly hair around his ears. ‘I don’t think I have one yet.’

  THE GIFT OF LIFE

  My childhood friend Leo Rosenbloom lived in a Californian bungalow. It was a two-minute run from my house. His mother, Jeannie, worked the evening shift at Piedimonte’s. She was a large woman who used to dye her hair auburn every month, but not before her grey roots would emerge.

  Leo’s father, Abe, was born in Russia. I couldn’t pronounce the name of his home city. He was unemploye
d. He used to lie in bed most of the day, facing the wall, listening to a silver transmitter that let out lots of beeps. He didn’t like being interrupted while he was listening to the transmitter, but it all just sounded like static and beeps to me.

  The main thing I didn’t understand about the Rosenblooms was why they always left their front door open during the day. It even stayed open when no one was home. I sometimes walked past their house on weekends and imagined that the whole place was yawning. I preferred to knock when I visited, even though it seemed pointless waiting at an open door.

  They were robbed twice when Leo and I were in grade three. Abe and Jeannie were both home the second time. Jeannie was cooking and Abe was lying in bed, listening to the transmitter. The robbers took a wooden stringed instrument—which Leo called a gusli—from his bedroom. He had to stop having lessons. After the second robbery the Rosenblooms finally started closing their front door.

  Leo was almost as obsessed with cricket as I was. We created a makeshift pitch in his front yard by placing a rubbish bin at the head of the concrete pathway. We glued one- and two-cent pieces along the path to make sure there was enough variation in bounce. Jeannie didn’t like the look of the coins on the concrete, but because they had no other visitors, she never bothered to remove them.

  It took us a whole afternoon to come up with the rules. There were all the normal modes of dismissal, plus automatic wicketkeeper. Any ball that hit the side of the picket fence was worth two runs. Any ball that reached the front of the fence was a four. Any ball that bounced on the road on the full was a six. And any ball that landed in a neighbour’s yard was six and out (plus the batsman had to jump the fence and get the tennis ball).

  Our games were played over two innings, which meant that we each got to bat ten times in a row (barring declarations). We swapped hands to impersonate the cricketers we idolised. I loved pretending to be Clive Lloyd, the giant West Indian captain known as ‘Big Cat’. It took weeks of practice to learn how to copy Lloyd’s relaxed, bottom hand batting technique. I hated getting dismissed cheaply when I was being Big Cat.

  Our childhood seemed like a never-ending battle against the fading daylight. Neither of us ever wanted to stop playing cricket. We often ended up playing in complete darkness to reach the conclusion of a match. No one ever called us inside.

  When it wasn’t cricket season, we played downball with Alexander Kostopoulos. His parents owned the milk bar on the corner of Leo’s street. We played on a sloping quadrangle outside his parents’ garage door. Occasionally Alexander’s father would roll up the door and interrupt our games to speak sternly with his son in Greek.

  Alexander played games differently to us. He didn’t have any sports heroes to pretend to be. There was something funny and aggressive about his movements. We both enjoyed competing against him. He always beat us at downball. Yet, unlike the other kids at school, he never teased us about it.

  The kids at school called him ‘Zorba’ and tried to get him to dance by clapping their hands faster and faster. I was never sure who coined the nickname or what it actually meant. He didn’t particularly like it. I sometimes got the feeling that he wanted to use his knuckles in the schoolyard but had already learnt the reasons why he shouldn’t give in to those impulses.

  Alexander stole lollies from the milk bar. He gave them to us in white paper bags, which he plucked from the inside pockets of his bomber jacket. The bags were chock-full of bananas, raspberries, teeth, liquorice, big bosses, bullets, fags, sherbet bombs, musk sticks and stale clinkers. Much to our bemusement, he never seemed interested in eating the lollies himself.

  He said he was just like the famous mobster Al Capone, smuggling alcohol in America during the Prohibition years. Neither Leo nor I had heard of Capone or Prohibition, but we were happy to play along.

  On sunny afternoons Alexander often insisted that we lie in the street and pretend to smoke big bosses. He would blow out a thick cloud of imaginary smoke whenever a beautiful woman walked past. Every woman looked beautiful to me. In spite of the funny looks he usually got, he assured us that the women had been impressed.

  At the beginning of our ninth summer, a nasty piece of graffiti appeared on the side of the milk bar. It was about Alexander’s mother. A fortnight later the milk bar changed hands and he stopped coming to school. The hardest part for Leo and me was the realisation that we would have to start paying for lollies again.

  ■

  Alexander’s departure seemed to release something in Leo and me. We became more adventurous, crossing main roads, running through sprinklers and pooling our pocket money to buy fish and chips. We passed many hot afternoons on the summer holidays in Curtain Square, eating off fat-soaked butcher’s paper. We also took to playing chicken with the number 96 tram. Leo always lasted a little longer than me before dodging the oncoming carriages.

  Abe’s beard grew long and grey. He reminded me of a famous bushranger we’d learnt about in school. He no longer bothered to greet me when I visited their house. I barely saw Jeannie. She was working extra shifts at Piedimonte’s on weekends so that she could buy a new gusli for Leo. I didn’t like spending time inside their house because of the nonstop static coming from the silver transmitter.

  We started meeting outside the Nunquam sweets factory instead. I loved the minty smell that surrounded it. We sometimes took turns trying to stand on each other’s shoulders by the window in the hope of glimpsing the sweets being made (we’d heard that the factory used a hundred-year-old peppermint lozenge machine). We both wanted to work there when we were older because we imagined that it would allow us to eat as many Nice Mints as possible.

  While we were walking past the Nunquam factory one afternoon, a stranger started leaping around on the footpath in front of us. He was making a funny noise that sounded like a horse’s whinnying.

  ‘You bloody ripper!’ he shouted. He held two fifty-dollar notes in the air. It was more money than I had seen outside of a television screen.

  ‘I’ve been looking for this money for over an hour!’ he said, panting and smiling. ‘It must have fallen out of my pocket.’ He let out another whinnying noise. ‘Once I saw you two kids I looked down and there it was, just lying on the footpath.’

  He shook our hands. ‘I can’t thank you two enough,’ he said, bowing. He was balding on top of his head, but he had furry hair all around his ears.

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Leo.

  ‘There must be something I can do,’ said the stranger. He paused. ‘How about I shout you both an ice-cream to say thank you? It’s the least I can do. You’ve saved me a hundred dollars.’

  It was a boiling afternoon. The grass in Curtain Square was yellow. The offer of a free ice-cream seemed too good to refuse. Yet somehow I had the feeling that the offer was Leo’s to consider.

  ‘We could go to Yumbo’s,’ said the stranger. He held the money in front of our eyes.

  ‘Say yes,’ I whispered to Leo.

  ‘See, your friend wants to go,’ said the stranger, looking at Leo. ‘Come on, what do you say, sport?’

  Leo twisted his lips. I didn’t know what that look meant. The only time I had seen a similar look on his face was while he was waiting for Abe to slowly finish his food at the dinner table.

  ‘No, we better not,’ said Leo.

  I was shocked that he had refused such a kind offer. I couldn’t help but resent him for it.

  ‘Come on now, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do something nice for you kids,’ said the stranger. ‘I’ve been on my hands and knees for an hour.’ He crouched on the footpath, showing us how he’d been searching for the money. There was a hole in the knee of his trousers.

  ‘I’m not really hungry,’ said Leo.

  ‘You sure?’ The stranger shifted his eyes to me. His head was shining with sweat.

  ‘I think we better go home,’ said Leo.

  ‘You can have as many flavours as you want,’ said the stranger, sounding more like a kid than us.
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  ‘No,’ said Leo. ‘But thanks.’

  He started walking away. The stranger continued to crouch on the footpath. He ran his hand through the furry hair around his ears and dropped it to the concrete. His pose didn’t look quite right outside the Nunquam factory. I wondered whether the minty smell ever made the workers feel sick.

  I caught up with Leo as he was crossing the tram tracks. We kicked an empty Coke bottle along the footpath, but we didn’t talk. When we reached his front gate he said, ‘It wasn’t our money.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  He dragged his family’s rubbish bin across the pathway and lined it up in its proper place. He handed me his heavily taped bat. There was still some string left on the handle. He reached his bowling mark and started polishing the tennis ball on his shorts. He practised his action several times. It was identical to that of the great Pakistani all-rounder Imran Khan.

  I stared beyond his arm at the fruit trees, the terrace houses and the purple sky and I hoped that darkness would never come.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to Nam Le, for breaking the levee with his boat, and to Allen & Unwin, for taking a risk on me. I’ll never forget it.

  For their sharp eyes, my thanks to Cate Kennedy, Ali Lavau, Clara Finlay and Tim Fry, who have all made these stories indisputably better.

  For feeding me, driving me and letting me be driven, my thanks to everyone I’m lucky enough to call a friend.

  My heartfelt thanks to the lovely Laura, for eating greasy food in bed with me and taking on an extra special needs student.

  Finally, my thanks to Anne, Lauren and the silliest man alive.