by Simon French
Stay on the bus next time, won’t you?
I jumped the roadside ditch and followed my rabbit-track path through yellowed stalks of paspalum grass and fireweed. As I got closer to the house, the grass turned to gravel and a rusting jigsaw of car parts. Darryl’s car parts.
Go away. Get out of our house. Now.
The closer I got, the worse I felt. Heart bumping against my school shirt, hair on my head prickling, breath speeding and shaking. The baby was crying. On the driveway beside the house was the white and blue patrol car; inside a voice spoke to itself over the two-way radio.
The screen door squealed on its hinges when I opened it. They were in the kitchen leaning against the cupboards and Mum was sitting over at the table. Her magazine was opened to the crossword page, but her hand clenched the pen and tapped it like a drum roll on the laminex. There were two policemen and one of them was Constable Blyton. “Gidday there, young Steven,” he said in a matey kind of voice. It was the same thing he’d said to me the year before at school, when he’d strode into our classroom to talk about bike safety. Gidday there, young Steven, so that the whole class turned around to stare and Mr Holcroft, my teacher, had given me a funny look. It was because Blyton knew Darryl, of course. Everything was because of Darryl.
I tried to ignore him. “How long’s Dylan been awake?” I asked Mum, because I could still hear him grizzling in his cot.
Mum shrugged. “Leave him,” she mumbled.
But I couldn’t, so I dropped my schoolbag on the floor and went to rescue my little brother.
Right now, Patrick would be talking to his mum about school.
Assembly was a drag, Mum. Guess what, I got all my maths right. And Steven’s mum had her car stolen. He fell asleep in class today. Yeah, again.
My brother was a damp, tiny bundle, wet face and wet bum. He was lying in his cot with a face blotchy from crying and when he saw me, put his arms out to be picked up.
“How long’ve you been here this time?” I asked in a quiet voice, and he stopped his hiccuping cry. Once I’d picked him up, I calmed down a bit, too. “She forgot you again, didn’t she?” I whispered, and put him into a dry nappy and warmer clothes. “Slack old Mum.”
There were muffled voices from the kitchen. I walked slowly back, around the edges of the lino until I was standing next to Mum.
“Bit of a talent there with babies, Steven,” said the younger constable.
“Just been looking at a shed break-in up the hill,” Blyton said to me. “Heard about your car this morning, too.” He jabbed a thumb at the other officer. “This here’s Constable Cartland. Started at the station with us last month.”
Blyton had been to our house once before, his police car quietly crunching on the gravel up to the doorstep. He had stood in the lounge room and quizzed Darryl about the bike parts out in the shed. And me, I had hidden in my room.
“Your mum,” Cartland said, “told us it was you who woke first. Who heard the car being taken.”
I shook my head. “It was dark. All I heard were noises and then I saw the car down at the gate.” I paused and glanced at Mum, then back at the two officers. “I didn’t see who it was or anything.”
Blyton was smiling to himself. “And who,” he said to Cartland, “in their right mind would drive out of town, all the way here, to steal a rusty Toyota station wagon that’s older than young Steven here? Why not knock off a townie’s hot Holden or turbo Ford instead? Doesn’t make sense.” He looked straight at Mum. “Does it, Lisa?”
Mum looked angry. “Tell me about it.”
“Was the vehicle insured?”
“Are you serious?” Mum exclaimed, “you think I can afford insurance? Try paying for petrol on a supporting parent’s benefit.” She paused and then added, “What are you really trying to say?”
“Mum,” I whispered in alarm.
Blyton folded his arms and grinned at Cartland. Then he said, “My guess is that your friend Darryl had something to do with it.”
Mum’s crossword pen hit the table with a sharp smack. “He’s not our friend,” she told him angrily, “and I haven’t the faintest idea if he took the car or not. All I know is that I’ve no way of buying another car. What d’you expect me to do?”
Blyton held his hands up. “Okay, okay. You phoned us about it. What you have to do is go to the station in person and report it as missing. We’ll do what we can from then on in.”
Mum sighed very loudly and looked away. “Great. Terrific. I’m really glad you called by.” Her voice was still angry.
“Can you get into town somehow?” the younger constable asked, as Blyton edged himself towards the screen door.
Mum shrugged a reply. “I’ll get a friend to give me a lift in.”
Blyton was already outside as Mum spoke. “Let us know if you see your friend Darryl,” he called. “We’d like to chat with him.”
They left then, their boots clunking and squeaking as they walked back to the patrol car. Mum began to tap a drum roll with her pen again.
When the sound of their car had drifted out of earshot, she told me, “I rang them at nine thirty this morning. Walked all the way up to Vidler’s to use the phone.” She picked up her pen and scribbled tiny spirals at the bottom of the crossword page. “Have a good day at school?”
“The best yet,” I answered.
“Liar,” she said, without smiling. “I rang Katrina, too. She’s driving out later. Bringing us pizza for dinner.”
Just lately, Katrina had visited us more than she ever had while Darryl had been around. “Give yourself a break,” she told Mum in a bossy voice that was kind at the same time, and had jiggled Dylan on her lap or made cups of coffee while Mum talked about Darryl and sometimes got upset as well.
And when I’d felt angry and hopeless, Katrina had told me, “Hang in there, Steven,” squashing me with a hug the way Mum never seemed to any more.
She was Mum’s only friend, really.
Darryl’s friends weren’t our friends. They didn’t come to hang around any more, to drink and eat everything in the fridge and sit outside and tinker with cars and bikes, talk about football and stuff. In five weeks, our house had become quieter, and I liked it that way.
One week after he had left, Darryl had come back. After school, I’d found him at the outside shed, forcing the lock because he’d lost the key. In the kitchen, I had said, “Is he back?”
“Only for his things,” Mum said as she sat in the same chair at the kitchen table with her crossword.
And through the kitchen window, I’d watched Darryl kick the shed door open and load a borrowed ute with his tools and bike bits. The bike itself came last of all, its engine dead and tyres soft and out of air; Darryl heaving it onto the back of the utility.
“Never could get it going,” I told Mum.
It was the sound of his footsteps to the back door that had really frightened me. Suddenly, I was worried that he would take the baby and bundle him into the ute as well – but all he did was open the screen door and send the broken shed padlock skating across the kitchen floor.
We hadn’t seen him since.
I blinked my eyes and it was the here and now, Mum rubbing her eyes as if she needed sleep and Dylan squirming in my arms, tired of being held.
“Can I give him a drink?” I asked, and swung the baby in a gentle aeroplane curve beside Mum.
“I guess so,” she answered, and looked back down at her magazine.
I settled into the kitchen chair opposite her, with Dylan on my lap so that we were both looking at her. Except that she wouldn’t look at us. I wanted to grab that magazine and throw it across the room, but instead let Dylan take the feed bottle of juice with his chubby fingers. He pushed the teat against his cheek, his nose, his chin and finally found where his mouth was. He’d been able to do that for three weeks now.
“I’m glad they’re gone,” I said quietly, meaning the police.
Mum nodded.
“D’you reckon it was
Darryl, Mum?”
“Probably.”
“But why?”
“It’s the sort of person he is.”
“But he said he was going to Queensland. Now he’s taken our car as well.”
“Give it a rest, Steven.”
“I hate him. Don’t you? I hated him even when he first moved in.”
“Steven!”
“What?”
“Just shut up for a while, will you? Give me a break.”
I shouldn’t have been so surprised to see her nearly in tears, but I was and I hated it. I slumped back into the chair and watched Dylan guzzling his juice.
“He didn’t even say goodbye to me.”
After a moment, Mum looked up, “That makes three of us then, doesn’t it?”
“I’m glad Katrina’s coming over,” I said, because I couldn’t stand the silence. In my head, I tried to write a reply to a kid whose name I somehow knew.
Dear Elise.
How did I know that name?
“Thanks for fixing Dylan up,” Mum said, the crossword pen clamped between her teeth.
“You shouldn’t have let him cry so long,” I told her, but she looked so tired and sad that I decided to keep quiet for a while.
Dear Elise,
My name is Steven Matovic and I’m eleven. Nearly twelve. I live in a farmhouse that is little and old. Can’t swing a cat, my mum says. In my family there is me, my mum Lisa and my baby brother Dylan.
And that was all.
It was enough for one day, really.
CHAPTER 4
I don’t know where we came from.
Several times when it had seemed important to know, I had tried asking, but Mum never really answered.
“The city,” she’d say. Or, “It’s not important. Where we are now is what’s important.”
Which was no answer at all.
It was different for Patrick. “But you have to come from somewhere,” he told me.
“The city,” I answered.
“But whereabouts? Where did you live?”
“A house,” I said vaguely and looked around Patrick’s room. There was something I remembered. “As old as your house, but not as big. There were holes in the walls, too.”
But he wasn’t really listening. “Mmm,” he mumbled, and all the while we’d been talking, the LEGO blocks had been going click, click as a spacecraft took shape. Patrick was a wizard with LEGO – his castles had dungeons and secret rooms, his spacecraft had battery packs and moving parts. Like schoolwork, nothing I could do was quite as good as Patrick could manage.
“I’ll show you,” he’d say, but usually all I wound up doing was sitting and watching.
Patrick’s room was as full as a toyshop, his house was large and friendly. His mother cooked fantastic meals with things she grew in her own garden. His father rescued tortoises that crossed Bulldog Road and set them free in his own dam. I liked being at Patrick’s, even though the Hetheringtons were renovating and there was usually the racket of power tools and a mess of timber and sawdust every weekend.
I wish I lived at Patrick’s place instead. I’d said it to Mum after Darryl had come to live with us. I wish Patrick’s dad was my dad too.
She hadn’t liked that. Don’t be stupid, she’d told me, I didn’t have a dad and I’m okay.
I could never tell Patrick, but I still wished it.
And I gave up my struggle to make something fantastic out of LEGO. Patrick had his head bent over in concentration, his hair a mop of curls the colour of orange peel, the LEGO going click, click in his hands. I felt sad and jealous all at once.
“This is where I’ve lived,” he suddenly told me in a quiet voice, “all my life. Even started kindergarten at the old Valley School before it closed down. My dad’s still cranky about that. Slack government, he said. Hey, guess what?”
“You talk too much?” I guessed.
He slapped his hand across an imaginary face in front of mine. “Shut up. There’s someone moving into the old school building. To live.”
“Yeah?”
“But it’s right near your place. Haven’t you seen anything?”
I shook my head.
“There was a van there yesterday, someone unloading furniture and boxes and stuff. Tomorrow,” he went on, “it’s Sunday. You rode over my place today, I’ll ride over to your place tomorrow. Okay?”
I was still getting used to that idea. For a long time now it had been easier for Patrick to stay away from my house, away from the small crowded rooms and Darryl’s impatience. “Yeah, sure,” I replied.
From my own backyard, I could see nearly all of Warrah Valley. The paddocks were a wet winter green under the dark sky, the farmhouses and sheds were set out like neat little Monopoly pieces.
My own house wasn’t really a farmhouse. It was like an ordinary house from town – no verandahs, no garden, no shade except when you went indoors. And the car stuff around the yard that Darryl had mucked around with and then left wherever he’d liked. Next to the house were four yellowed patches of grass where our car had been parked, and I could still see the last set of tyre marks it had left behind as it had been rolled out of the yard and out of our sight by … Darryl? I wondered about that.
“Why don’t you stick your bike in the shed again?” Patrick asked when he arrived on the Sunday morning. He was out of breath from pedalling.
When I’d looked inside the shed, it was completely bare, nothing except for a few oily patches of dirt and some nuts and bolts scattered. It still felt like Darryl’s shed, not ours. I shrugged. My BMX was leaning against the side of the house and I felt stupid for leaving it there. It had mud on it and rust as well; it didn’t look as good as it once had.
I put my head through the kitchen doorway. “Going for a ride,” I called to Mum. Dylan was crawling around the lounge room floor and the TV was on.
She came to the doorway, still in her dressing-gown even though it was after eleven, “What?”
“A ride,” I repeated, “with Patrick.”
“Oh,” she said, looking as though she’d been napping, “well don’t get back too late.”
Patrick spun his bike around and coasted down the drive towards the road. “Anyone at the old school?” he called back to me.
The pedals on my bike were stiff and I could hear something scraping.
“The school!” Patrick yelled again, because I hadn’t answered.
“Dunno!” I called back and pedalled faster to catch up.
“Check it out later,” he said in a quieter voice when I’d caught up, “go and check up near the highway, first. A truck came off the road last night.”
“Yeah?”
“Nobody killed or anything. Driver’s in the district hospital, my dad said.”
“Is the truck still there?”
“Doubt it. Bits of it might be. And,” he added, “there’s that old stretch of highway where people dump cars and stuff. Your mum’s car might be there.”
“Don’t think so. Cops would’ve told us by now if it was.”
“Doesn’t hurt to look. Come on.”
Bulldog Road was a skinny ribbon of bitumen that crossed from my side of the valley to the other. A side road to the left of my house led up past Vidler’s farm to the top of the ranges, and up there were more tracks into the bush than Patrick or I had ever been able to explore. From my house to Patrick’s was a ride I could make in twelve minutes flat if I pedalled fast – except that my legs felt like jelly when I got off my bike at his doorstep, and my bum as though it had blisters. I never seemed to have the pocket money for a better bike seat, so the seventeen-minute ride to Patrick’s was a better idea.
The sun found a gap in the clouds and was warm on my back.
“Your crank’s stuffed,” Patrick said. “I can hear the ball bearings clunking. Should fix it.”
“Don’t have any tools, do I?”
“Used to.”
“They were Darryl’s. I used to sneak into the shed
when he was in town.”
“Ever get sprung?”
“Never.”
“You’re lucky.” Patrick started weaving his bike from side to side across the road, “Next time you ride over to my place, we can strip it down. Use my dad’s tools.”
And he kept on talking and I kept on saying “Yeah?” “No.” “Huh?” until we’d reached the corner of the valley where the highway passed. We had to ditch our bikes and walk up the embankment to where the new bit of highway took off to the right in a broad, sweeping curve that was banked like a racetrack. The old highway took off straight ahead under the trees, down to what I knew was a sharp, difficult bend followed by an old narrow bridge. There were splinters next to the roadside where the guideposts had been broken off, and a mass of tyre marks leading off onto the old bit of road.
“Truckie got the roads mixed up, how stupid can you get? Jackknifed the trailer, my dad said.” Then Patrick went really quiet, which was unusual. He wandered off ahead of me along the old stretch of highway, examining the ground like a tracker.
Up on the new highway, a semi whooshed past, sending bits of loose gravel spraying and rattling. There was silence again, and I walked a few steps along the faded centre line of the road.
Elise.
Then I stood still. I had forgotten all about the sound of that name until a kid I didn’t know had written me a letter she didn’t know I would receive. I knew that name.
And when I looked down at my feet as I walked, my memory found something else. Where was that road I could suddenly see in my head? It looked like here, but wasn’t. Where?
Get out of the car!
In a place I couldn’t remember, I was on a road.
Walking, running, standing still.
Get out! Just get out!
“Catch!” Patrick yelled, and threw something at me. “Ha! Scared you!” he added, because he’d seen me jump.
“What is it?” I asked and searched around for where it had landed.
“Reflector!” he called, and sent two more clattering across the bitumen to me. “Prob’ly off the truck.” He walked further away.
Where had I been?
“C’mon,” I called, “there’s nothing here. Let’s go.”