by Tanya Moir
He thought about Bodun some more on the bus after school and maybe that was the wrong thing to do because when he got home Debbie gave him a funny look and said that Ros-your-social-worker had rung and they’d found his brother. They’ve got him up in Christchurch, she said.
Winstone asked if Bodun was okay and Debbie said he was fine and he asked if Bodun was coming to stay with them in Glentrool and Debbie’s mouth opened but nothing came out and she looked at the cat for a bit and then she said no he wasn’t.
Winstone paused to consider how he felt about that and he thought he was pleased but that didn’t seem right and Debbie said that they weren’t allowed on the internet where Bodun was but that Winstone could write to him if he wanted and Winstone thought about the pit where they put Doc and Chavez in Young Guns II and he wondered what he’d say.
He didn’t have anything to say to Debbie either so he went out and fed the dogs and when he got back Jemma had drawn a picture of him and the cat. Winstone on the left, though it wasn’t easy to tell and the picture not all that flattering to either. Write your name, Jemma told him. Here.
So he wrote his name above the figure of him and then he wrote the cat’s name although he hadn’t realised until that moment that it had a name or thought about its gender. Mr Socks, Jemma said, write Mr Socks, and he wanted to check how to spell it but there wasn’t much point asking her so he just asked if it was like the socks on your feet and Jemma wanted to know what other kinds of socks there could be and Winstone couldn’t think of any.
When he heard the Pajero door slam outside he shifted forward a bit in his chair and concentrated hard on the fox he was trying to draw that kept turning out more like Sonic the Hedgehog. He didn’t turn to look when Todd walked in and Todd passed behind him and laid a hand on the back of his chair and Winstone felt the weight of it there but he looked at the fox.
There’s my girl, Todd said.
Winstone looked up then. Jemma clambered onto the cracked leather seat of the chair beside his and held out her arms and Todd lifted her and she clung to his neck with her bum hanging over his forearm and her summer dress rucked up and showing her pants.
Are you a good girl? Todd said, and she bit her lip while she thought about that and then she bounced a bit on his arm and she shouted out a triumphant yes.
What have you got for me? Todd said, and Jemma didn’t hesitate one bit, she kissed him full on the lips and then she laughed like a drain.
She laughed and bounced and Winstone looked at her and thought about Todd’s arms around him standing out on the shingle fan in the Glentrool Stream and the sound of Todd’s breath in and out above his head and he thought about Debbie and Debbie’s thighs and he thought about Tara and the track of her neck and when he’d finished all things considered he thought that whatever fishing turned out to be it would be okay.
WEST
The line flew over the dam back and forth like a spider travelling the wind but there was no wind no spider no fly just a man with a few little feathers and a barb trying to trick a trout out of the water. Winstone waited until the fisherman had settled into his cast and then he went back around the rocks and up the slope to the end of the track where the fisherman’s Isuzu Trooper stood solitary against the sky and he opened the far door.
Underneath the front passenger seat of the Trooper he found an old box and in the box was a dusty billy and a dustier mug and a plastic container of teabags and in the billy under the lid was a camping stove and he picked it up and weighed the gas in his hand and it felt good and heavy. It was too much to ask for anything more but he looked anyway and up front in the glovebox he found a lighter and a whole bag of peanut slabs and he took it all every bar without even trying to hide it.
Near dusk the fisherman caught a fish and he waded out and checked the sky and went back to his hut on the other side of the dam and it was a hut that Winstone had never seen open before and there was nothing left on its shelves but coffee and tea and a bottle of bitter black sauce and even the sugar had been exhausted. Winstone watched the windows light up small and yellow and far away and the smoke rise grey on the greyer sky and he thought about the fisherman sitting down to a fried-up trout and he didn’t care because he had chocolate and gas and hot satay chicken noodles.
The next day the wind cut up and blew the fisherman and the Trooper back down the road and off the range and Winstone went around the dam to the hut where the fisherman had stayed to see what things had been left behind and in the cupboard next to the sink was a weird square tin and he looked at the bright pink meat on the tin and he couldn’t believe his eyes.
There were also two cans of barbecue beans and one of tomato soup and a six-pack of chicken noodles and he stuffed the lot down his hoodie and took it fast before somebody else came and got it. He went back the long way just in case the Trooper returned. But the hut had been closed up pretty good and he didn’t really think it would and on the way he stopped and hid up in the rocks for a while in a spot he knew where the wind wouldn’t come and the uncut sun fell thick and gold from the blue sky. He took out his tins and set them one by one on the stone with the labels lined up and looked at them and they seemed like a lot to have. He picked up the tin of corned beef and turned it and shook it a bit and he heard the beef slide and he set it back down and looked again at the smiling bull on the outside.
Away over the dam he heard a long cry and Winstone stood up and shaded his eyes and looked and a string of geese came beating out of the western sky and settled beside the water. In the wake of the geese the wind dropped away and he watched the geese amble and bleat and begin to feed.
He packed up his tins and his noodles too and he walked around the dam through the long yellow grass every blade standing still and nothing flew out and the cattle fence strung on the sky up ahead was bare and he realised the Armageddon birds had got tired of waiting and gone and the earth was still rotating at its usual speed as far as he could tell.
He took the tins home and stacked them up and he put the corned beef tin on the very top and he looked at it one more time. Then he went back to the dam and walked around the Red Hut and assessed its boarded-up windows and door and he made a mental list of the tools he would need if he was going to maybe one day get inside and climb into Alicia’s bed and lay low there for the winter.
For an hour or two he scouted the other huts for the tools on his list and after a while the blue ran out of the sky and the cold came up and Winstone got his things from the cave and in the fireplace under the rocks behind the Red Hut he built a fire and he built it big and the fire lit up the range and the thickening dusk and he didn’t care. When the fire had burned down he opened up the can of corned beef and he did it slow with the proper respect and he thought of the Bible lady from Brownburn School and he almost said a prayer as he broke the tin and the smell rushed out meat and jelly and fat so good it hurt his heart. He tipped the corned beef into the billy and threw in a can of barbecue beans and poked it about with a stick and put the billy over the fire to heat and hash or no hash when it was done it was the best thing he’d ever tasted.
He was cleaning the pot with his finger when the kitten turned up and it looked pretty angry to find itself late and he gave it the corned beef tin to lick out but the kitten wasn’t falling for that trick twice and it just stuck in the tip of its nose and licked the rim.
The range was settling into black and before the edge of the lake got lost he went down and squatted beside it and scoured out his billy and rinsed his fork while the brown moths whirred past his ears and across the water on the opposite beach the geese complained but did not rise.
When he was done he went back to the fire and built it back up until it warmed the sky. He ate another peanut slab and lay back on the grass and the kitten lay with him close and tucked in its paws and Winstone reached out his finger to touch its ear and the kitten bit it but only around the edges where the skin was already hard.
He lay and the grass beneath him was th
ick and dry and his belly was full and his face was warm and he watched the night wrap up the range and on his shoulder he felt the palomino’s warm breath as it cropped the grass.
The Kid stretched his boots to the fire and he looked across it.
Hey Coop. You ever get to thinkin we could jes let em go?
But in the darkness Cooper couldn’t be seen and maybe he was already fast asleep because he made the Kid no reply.
CENTRAL
Jemma made him a card. She had it waiting for him on the table when he got home from school and it said at the top and Jemma at the bottom in pink felt-tip pen and in the middle was a drawing of two figures holding hands and one of them had a big black hat on and the other looked like it had its head in a box but she said it was wearing a veil.
Jemma asked if she could marry you when she grows up, Debbie said, and she arched her eyebrows at Winstone and smiled. So I hope you don’t mind but I said since you’re not her brother that’d be okay.
There was cake on the table too. A pile of little brown cakes in paper cases with patterns on the paper and each little cake had chocolate icing and coloured sprinkles on it and stuck in the icing of each of the top eleven cakes was a little coloured candle.
Did you have a good day at school? Debbie had to raise her voice to say it because she was in the pantry by then and Winstone looked at the back of her standing there and his birthday must have been yoga day because those were the pants she had on, tight around the bum and black except for Jemma’s floury handprints. He nodded.
The school had known about his birthday as well. He supposed schools had to know about that kind of stuff but it didn’t seem right that they could just go and tell everyone else without even asking. It seemed like it should be against the law. They didn’t have his permission for what they did and he wouldn’t have given them his permission if they had asked because he knew nothing good was going to come of it and nothing good did.
First thing after the morning bell Mrs Saunders came in and said good morning as she always did and enough of Room 3 said good morning Mrs Saunders back so it sounded neat and tidy.
We have birthdays today, Mrs Saunders said. Tara, come on up.
Tara was already sitting up straight in her chair and she tossed her shiny brown hair to her other shoulder and ran her hand down its length like it was a very good pet and got up and walked to the front of the class and all the while she was smiling a great big white-toothed smile like she’d just been given a pony.
And Winstone, Mrs Saunders said.
Winstone didn’t know what sort of diseases horses got but it looked like Tara’s pony had suddenly dropped stone dead or maybe hatched out in something contagious. There was the sort of silence that wasn’t really a silence at all but composed of breath taken in and held and let out through the nose and a shuffling as if a tribe of meerkats was forming up to embark on an offensive.
Come on, Mrs Saunders said. Up you come.
Someone giggled. Tara was looking off to one side as if something might be about to happen there and her smooth brown cheeks were all red and from the look on her face Winstone bet she was hoping that someone was going to come along and dig a big hole in that spot and bury her with the pony. He felt for Tara but in his experience such holes never appeared when you wanted them to and he had no other choice but to get out of his seat and go to the front of the class and stand beside her.
Tara was wearing a tight orange T-shirt with a kind of bullseye thing on the front and although Winstone kept his eyes on his trainers as much as he could in the corner of his right eye was her breast where the cotton stretched and the pattern swelled and the lines of her bra cut into the perfect roundness of it like the stitching on a softball.
He knew what girls’ breasts looked like under their clothes. Bodun had plenty of pictures of them up on his wall, bloated bulbous naked things so big you could barely tell there was any girl behind them. And Winstone had seen plenty of them in the flesh, where they seemed smaller and less likely to burst, on the women Bic brought home and the women who came to the parties Bic and Grunt had, Kirsty and the rest, who didn’t wear a whole lot more on their tits than the girls in Bodun’s pictures and what little was hidden for starters was usually right in your face when they bent down to say hello. Kirsty had a tattoo over the fattest part of hers that said GRUNT and a lot of guys did and she never got it. Winstone had felt breasts pressed against him and had their mixed-up smell of perfume and cigarettes up his nose and he’d even touched a few.
But the breasts on Tara were different somehow, like baby mushrooms just breaking ground, and for them to be on a girl his own size was an alien and deeply disturbing sight. Winstone tried not to think about how they looked while Room 3 sang the birthday song but that just made him wonder whether they’d feel different to touch and somehow Tara’s breasts got connected to him and started to pull and his panic rose and he thought the stupid song would never end.
Dear Tara AND WINSTONE, the kids sang. They were eating it up like it was smothered in secret recipe special sauce. They’d have sung it all day if they could.
Hey Tara, they said at playtime, why aren’t you hanging out with your twin?
Hey guess what he looks just like you.
No he doesn’t.
Tara had no idea how to handle a situation like that, you could tell.
Anyway I’m a year older than him.
If he’s not your brother what is he? Jack said. Maybe he’s your lover.
You’re so dumb. That doesn’t even make any sense.
Tara was right but it didn’t help her.
He’s not your brother he’s your lover, a group of the Year Eight boys started to chant. Tara and Winstone, Tara and Winstone.
Winstone wished there was something he could do but he felt pretty sure there wasn’t. They were all under the shade sail as required by the rules and he looked at Tara sitting there on the opposite side in her orange T-shirt and her little pleated skirt and her black over-the-knee socks. She had her shoulders hunched and her feet splayed wide and turned in pigeon-toed and her knees pressed tight together. She was handing out pieces of birthday cake to Emily and Sara-Jane and pretending she couldn’t hear the boys but her cheeks were the sort of angry red you could fry an egg on.
God stop staring at her you little perv, said Sara-Jane. Can’t you see she doesn’t like you.
He’s always looking at you, said Emily.
Tara glanced up at him then.
You know. Emily’s eyes fell to Tara’s chest. Down there. He’s such a creep. He was doing it today while we sang happy birthday.
Winstone looked away quickly. He still had a picture of Tara on the back of his eyelids and he looked at her there and he wanted a lot of things but mainly to say sorry. Not for looking at Tara’s breasts, because she shouldn’t have put a target on them if she didn’t want people to stare, but for ruining her birthday.
Going back into class Emily and Sara-Jane were ahead and Tara was last in the line and he stood behind her and got the words ready and thought about how he could get her attention and how bad it would be if he touched her arm and then Jack looked back from the front of the line and yelled, Hey Tara your lover’s got something to say to you.
Tara turned round so quickly her ponytail hit him right in the face and it almost stung.
Just stay away from me freak, Tara said, not shouting but low. I can’t stand you. None of us can. We don’t care what happened to your sister.
Debbie backed out of the pantry and turned and she had another little chocolate cake on a plate and she’d lit the candle on it and she carried it shielding the small flame with one hand and put it down in front of Winstone.
One for now, she said. We’ll have the rest tonight.
Debbie stood back and Jemma was up there quick as a moth on his knee with her loose honey hair in his face and Debbie said, Jemma, no, it’s Winstone’s candle, let him blow it out, and Winstone said she could help and they counted to
three and did it together. Jemma laughed and clapped her hands and he reached both arms around her and broke the cake in two and gave Jemma half and watched her squish it over her face and lick her hands and Debbie said what a kind boy he was but he didn’t even mind.
Jemma go wash your face, Debbie said, and Jemma slid down from his knee and Winstone went out and fed the dogs and he gave them an extra biscuit each because it was his birthday.
The day was slick and swirling with heat and no wind and everywhere the cicadas rattling and the shed roof corrugating the sun and the long grass rank and cracking the earth and drawing it down to dust and the hills flattened into the sky. He walked back to the house and Jemma was crouched on her heels on the green watered lawn pulling dandelion heads to bits and waiting for him and she wanted to play.
Princess or cowgirl? he said.
Cowgirl!
So Winstone let her ride about on the lawn for a bit herding bees and then he charged in on his mean black horse and lassooed her and slung her over his shoulder and carried her up to the rustlers’ hideout at the top of the slide and he tied her up very tightly with his fake rope and told her she was his slave and she’d never escape and he left her there.
Help, cried Jemma. Please somebody help.
Then Winstone changed horses and hats and he galloped up and sprang from the saddle to the top of the slide and he took his knife from between his teeth and sliced through the ropes and scooped Jemma up and called to his horse and holding Jemma tight in his arms he slid down straight onto the palomino’s back and they sped away to his ranch house in the hedge.