The Legend of Kevin the Plumber

by Scot Gardner

  ‘When you fart, Gary, you’ve got to be proud.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Must remember that.’

  Kevin handed me the battery from one of the drills. ‘I’ll take the rest of the stuff. Stick this in the charger in Phil’s office.’

  I walked through the shed into the reception area. Pip wasn’t at her desk. Phil’s door was closed. I heard furniture bump in Phil’s office and I smiled.

  ‘Hello?’ I shouted, and there was a flap of activity behind the door. I’d managed to bite my smile when Pip emerged from the closed office, cheeks flushed. She wiped her mouth and peeked at the back of her hand.

  ‘G’day, Gary,’ she chirped. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Kevin asked me to plug this into the charger in Phil’s office. I —’

  She held out her hand. ‘Yep, I can do that for you.’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ I said, and stepped past her into the office.

  Phil sat at his desk with a pen in his hand. He was huddled over a blank piece of notepaper. He looked up and smiled, flashing more teeth than a grey nurse shark.

  ‘Gary! What can I do for you?’

  I showed him the battery and he pointed to a row of chargers on a shelf beside the door. I plugged the battery in. There was a little red light and a little green light on the charger and I hoped like hell that was all I had to do. I’d seen all the evidence I’d needed and I tried to make a casual exit.

  ‘You guys are back early today,’ Phil said, as I stepped through the door.

  I stopped and turned. ‘Kevin’s got a doctor’s appointment.’

  ‘Ah yes. You got something to do until knock-off time?’

  ‘Yes, Kevin’s got a job for me,’ I lied.

  ‘Good-oh.’

  I jogged through the shed and out to the van. Kevin was wiping his hands on a bit of torn bed sheet.

  ‘They were at it again,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Pip and Phil.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  He sounded like he couldn’t give a shit; cleaning his hands seemed far more important.

  ‘What, did you . . . see them?’ he eventually mumbled.

  ‘No, but I heard them. They were in the office together. Door closed. I yelled then Pip came out all flustered.’

  Kevin raised an eyebrow.

  ‘It’s true,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘I believe you. Just none of our business.’

  ‘Hasn’t Phil got a wife?’

  He nodded. ‘And two little kids.’

  ‘Arsehole.’

  Kevin was scowling again. ‘He gave you this job, didn’t he? Like Mrs Hunter. Can’t afford to bag people like that. Just got to let them live the way they want to live. Sleep with who they want. Wear their hair how they want.’

  He threw the rag at my head. Not in an angry way, just to make his point. He’d obviously missed my point.

  ‘Think about the kids. Imagine how it’ll stuff their lives. It’s wrong.’

  He paused and stared, his dusty blue eyes slapping at me. Challenging me. ‘What happened to your dad?’

  ‘Moved to Queensland.’

  ‘With another woman?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Did that stuff your life?’

  ‘No. I’m going to live with him after I’ve finished here.’

  His eyes widened in triumph. ‘You think it’s wrong. Maybe even I think it’s wrong, but don’t bag them for it. Don’t waste your energy bagging anyone. One day it’ll be their shout.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll remember that. You’re full of wisdom today.’

  He smiled again. ‘And wind.’

  He lifted one foot slightly and gave birth to a fart that rattled and honked for a full second. I held my face and ran low like a commando into the shed.

  Kevin set me up sorting bits from a huge box of scraps. He found me a spanner and a hammer and told me to salvage every fitting from the box.

  ‘You right for a ride home?’

  I hadn’t thought about it until he asked. ‘Yes. Mum’s got a salon in Christmas Bay. I’ll walk down and go home with her.’

  ‘You sure? I’ll come back and get you if you like. I just don’t know what time I’ll be done.’

  ‘It’s fine. Fanks anyway.’

  ‘Pick you up in the morning then?’

  I nodded and thanked him as he left.

  Unpredictable bastard, I thought. One minute he’s telling me I’ve done a great job, next he’s telling me off for chewing with my mouth open. One minute he says that I sound like Homer, next he’s organising me a ride home. And bloody rock scissors paper . . .

  I walked to the salon. I said hello to Mum and collapsed into one of the leather waiting chairs. At first I didn’t recognise Mum’s client. She was just another head with hair until I looked twice. It was Ash.

  She blushed and wriggled under her wrap. ‘Gaz, you’re not supposed to see this part, only the finished product.’

  ‘I promise I won’t tell. Who’s the lucky guy?’

  She snorted. ‘No guy. Just getting my hair done.’

  ‘Should go for dreads, mate. Low maintenance, cheap . . . ’

  ‘Not cheap if you don’t live in the same house as your hairdresser,’ Mum said.

  ‘How much is all this going to cost?’ I asked.

  ‘Ash and I’ll come to some agreement.’

  Mum washed her hands and her stockings scritched as she walked to the back of the shop.

  ‘I can pay for it if you want,’ I whispered.

  ‘Don’t be a dick! It’s my hair.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’ve got money.’

  ‘Whoohoo. That’s a first.’

  ‘What’s going on at the weekend?’

  Ash rolled her eyes. ‘Absolutely nothing now.’

  ‘What?’

  She leaned forward and breathed, ‘The cops found the crop.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  She shook her head. ‘I went for a ride after school yesterday. There was a divvy van parked on the track and another four-wheel-drive in the bush. I kept riding straight past. One of the cops even waved to me.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘He waved at you and you still didn’t get caught?’

  ‘She. She waved at me.’

  ‘Did you wave back?’

  ‘Yes. I thought she was going to stop me. I just kept riding. I waited until they were out of sight and bolted home. I thought I was going to have a heart attack.’

  I sighed and my lips rattled. ‘So the hair change is part of your disguise?’

  Ash nodded and straightened the wrap on her lap.

  Sharon pushed through the salon door. Vanessa was with her. Vanessa’s cheeks coloured when she saw me. She grabbed Sharon’s elbow and almost hid behind her until my sister shook her off.

  I pushed back in my chair and put my arms behind my head.

  ‘Didn’t you go to work today?’ Sharon asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re not very dirty.’

  The dust and cobwebs from under Mrs Hunter’s house had fallen off during the afternoon.

  ‘Not very dirty now, but I worked at the most disgusting joint in Creston.’

  I told them the story of the Hunter place and the mongrel dogs and their shit bombs. Vanessa sat next to Sharon and opposite me. She sat on the edge of her chair, and I could see her black satin boxer shorts under her school dress. She squealed and slapped her hand over her mouth when I got to the part about the kangaroo’s head.

  ‘Oh my god,’ Vanessa said. ‘You work with Kevin Daly. That’s my dad.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, surprise painted on my face.

  She nodded frantically.

  ‘What’s he like to work with?’ Sharon asked. She looked down her nose at me as she said it.

  ‘He’s all right, I suppose. Hard worker compared to some of the other slobs that work there. I wouldn’t want to get on
his wrong side.’

  ‘He’s an arsehole,’ Sharon said, and Mum growled her name. ‘Well, it’s true. He never lets Ness go anywhere, does he, Ness?’

  ‘He’s pretty strict,’ Vanessa said.

  ‘Being strict doesn’t make him an arsehole,’ Mum said. She was washing Ash’s head at the sink, tip cap and all.

  ‘He’s probably just looking out for you,’ I said.

  Sixteen

  My eyes pinged open at 4.52 am on Thursday. Like someone had plugged me in and flicked my switch. I couldn’t get back to sleep. I pulled my coveralls on in the dark, made some breakfast and packed my lunch. It was five thirty-seven and I was ready for work. I walked.

  The sun was colouring the horizon but there were stars out and streetlights still blazing. Even the birds were asleep. It was a nice quiet. I walked on the side of my boots. I wasn’t going to be the one to wreck the quiet.

  I picked my way down past the jetty and onto the beach. The waves whispered at the sand and the first sunlight on the water lit up a lone boatman. The man in the boat was big enough to be Kevin but the graceful way the paddle cut the water seemed too gentle. He was paddling like a slow-mo kung-fu master.

  I followed the boat along the beach and stood there with my hands in my pockets as he paddled ashore. He was smiling.

  ‘Morning,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘You want a go before I drag it up to the ute?’

  ‘Nah. She’ll be right.’

  ‘Sure? There’s nothing like it.’

  ‘I’ll get a wet arse.’

  ‘Only if you bail out. It’s as still as a salt lake out there. Come on, have a go.’

  Before I’d thought about it too much, I tore my boots and socks off and shoved the legs of my coveralls up to my knees. Kevin was wearing shorts and a blue singlet with a hole in the shoulder. His hairy feet were partly buried in the wet sand.

  ‘You’ll be right,’ he said. ‘Straddle it then sit down and I’ll push you out.’

  I squatted over the boat and plonked down. The seat was warm. Kevin pushed me into deeper water and handed me the paddle.

  ‘Go for it,’ he said with a final shove.

  The front of the boat pierced a little wave and I banged at the water and tried to hold balance. The wave passed and with five good strokes I was in so deep that I wouldn’t have been able to touch the bottom. I cut along the beach and looked back at Kevin drying his legs with a faded beach towel.

  ‘Whoohoo! This is cool,’ I shouted. ‘I want one.’

  ‘Yeah, well don’t get too involved. We’ve got to go to work.’

  I paddled towards the beach. Kevin waded out to knee-depth and pulled the kayak onto the dry sand. I had one little wet patch on my leg. As soon as I stood on the sand, he hefted the boat onto his head saying he’d be around to pick me up shortly.

  ‘Right,’ I said, and watched the sand flicking from his feet as he strode to the car park. ‘See you then.’

  Kevin arrived at exactly 6.45 am. His hair was wet and there was still sand in his beard. He grumbled hello and drove in silence, almost the same sort of quiet that had started the day. When we got to work he told me to go and wait in the van while he collected the stuff. Ten minutes later he dropped a cardboard box of bits onto the seat and put on some reflective blue sunglasses before backing out of the yard. The sunnies looked like hundred-dollar jobs and I wanted a pair. I decided I’d go and buy myself a pair with my own money.

  ‘Where’d you get the sunnies?’

  ‘Safety glasses. Phil supplies them. I think there’s a spare pair in the glove box.’

  There was, and Kevin said I could have them. I didn’t put them on straightaway. I thought I’d look like a dwarf copy of the big bloke. Then we drove onto the highway and the sun exploded through the windscreen and reflected off the dash. It was sunnies or squint.

  We were heading into the hills again. Another septic. A big brick joint with verandahs all round on a few acres of paddocks. We stopped in the circular driveway and a girl in Christmas Bay Secondary uniform pushed through the front door. She had her school bag on one shoulder. She would have been in year seven or so. Her face was familiar but I didn’t know her. I knew the girl who followed her into the yard though. Her big sister. Tammy Wilde.

  ‘Mum, the plumbers are here,’ Tammy shouted into the house.

  She smiled and walked straight past me. Didn’t recognise me in the sunnies.

  ‘Don’t say hello then, Tammy, you bitch,’ I said.

  She spun like someone had slapped her. I slipped my sunnies onto my hat.

  ‘Gaz!’ she screamed, and hugged me. She jiggled and her bag clunked around on her back. ‘How are you? Jesus, I didn’t recognise you. Look at you!’

  I nodded and smiled. ‘Going okay,’ I said. I nodded at Kevin. ‘The boss looks after me.’

  Tammy’s other sister (not the one in year seven, the one in year nine — I could never remember their names) was standing there with her hand on her hip. ‘Good morning, Gary. Tammy, we’re going to miss the bus.’

  Tammy kissed my cheek and squeezed my arm. She smelled like Fruit Tingles. She clomped up the drive and onto the road. The three of them looked pretty hot in their uniforms. I could hear the bus winding down through the gears. For half a second, I missed how easy school was.

  ‘Good morning, guys,’ Mrs Wilde said. She was dressed in a uniform of some sort but had bare feet. She stood under the verandah wiping her hands on a tea towel. ‘The toilet’s in the back here. You’ll have to excuse the mess.’

  Kevin and I kicked off our boots and followed her into the house. It ponged of dunny spray or deodorant or something.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ Mrs Wilde moaned, as she pushed open the toilet door. ‘Someone has flushed it again. I’ll grab the mop.’

  Water was creeping across the floor and heading for the carpet.

  ‘It’s not actually blocked,’ Mrs Wilde said. ‘It does eventually flush but it takes half an hour.’

  Kevin backed into me and grabbed me by the coveralls before I fell over. ‘Sorry, Gary.’ He patted the wrinkles out of my coveralls and dusted my shoulder. ‘Sorry about that. You right?’

  I followed him to the door, put my boots back on and stood beside the van.

  Kevin was sifting through the tools and mumbling to me about the things we’d need. It was as though the flap about Vanessa and me had passed. I smiled to myself and thought that Tammy had done that. Hugging me and giving me a peck on the cheek in public was something that Tammy had done since we were in year eight, but doing it in front of Kevin showed that I wasn’t a sick bastard stalking his daughter. See, I thought, everyone loves me. It’s not just Vanessa that I have a spell on.

  I took tools as Kevin handed them to me. A shovel, a long metal spike with a handle, a crowbar. Well, if you excluded family, Tammy and Vanessa were the only two females of the species who hugged me. Ash didn’t. That wasn’t our thing. Heck, if you included family that only added Mum and Sharon. Oh, and Nanna. Not that we’d seen her in the ten years since she left Grandad.

  The back of the house was mostly dead lawn. It had been mown to the point where dirt could be seen between the blades of grass, and the unforgiving sun of the last few weeks had baked it brown. Except for two green strips near the back fence. The green strips continued under the fence into the paddock.

  ‘Thar she blows,’ Kevin said, pointing to the strips of grass. ‘They’re the aggi lines from the septic. The tank will be around here somewhere.’

  He poked the ground with the metal spike. Nothing. The spike made a puff of dust each time it hit the ground but didn’t strike any concrete tank. Soon Kevin had put a spike into every square metre of the yard. No tank.

  ‘It’s probably been covered with topsoil. That can make life difficult.’

  He went to the van and came back with two welding rods with handles bent in them near one end. He carried them like a pair of long-barrelled pistols and walked back and forth across the
yard.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Finding the tank.’

  ‘With welding rods?’

  ‘Divining.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Smells like it’s going to rain.’

  ‘What the . . . ?’

  The rods crossed as if by themselves. Kevin stopped and dug a mark in the dusty lawn with the heel of his boot. He continued across the yard and back. Again, the rods crossed, hardly a metre from the first mark he’d made.

  ‘We’ll dig here, I reckon. Rock scissors paper.’

  I did scissors, Kevin did rock. I picked up the shovel and dug at the spot where Kevin had marked with his boot. At a foot deep, I hit something hard.

  Kevin smiled and grabbed the crowbar. He cracked the earth with the bar so I could shovel it clear. Together we sweated and exposed the lid of the septic.

  ‘How did you do that?’ I asked.

  Kevin shrugged. ‘The tradie that apprenticed me way back in the dark ages showed me.’

  ‘How does it work?’

  ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t work every time and it doesn’t work for everybody, but some things are like that. If you think science can explain everything, I reckon you’d need to take more drugs.’

  He scratched the last of the loose dirt out of the hole with his hand. ‘And if you think the world is run by little green men or that drinking your own pee is good for you, I’d suggest laying off the drugs might help.’

  We did rock scissors paper to decide who’d lift the lid. Kevin chose rock. I chose paper but I ended up giving him a hand anyway.

  The tank was only half full. It stunk of piss and earth and waxy dead things, but not as bad as the first tank. My nose wrinkled but I didn’t gag. Kevin poked the grey mess with the spike then crouched and stuck his head inside and looked around. I stepped back when he lay on the dirt and stuck his hand inside.

  ‘Whoah. You’re brave,’ I said.

  His face was going red. He was holding his breath. He grabbed at something and his arm shook briefly with effort, then a waterfall erupted in the tank and he rolled back, dragging something with him. Something that looked like a nest of huge spider’s eggs, toilet paper and web. He stood up and dragged it towards the fence. It just kept coming. It was two metres long before it came clear of the tank. A huge dreadlock of tampons.