by Anne Davies
I force myself to count to five and then turn and look straight at the rat-faced boy next to me.
“Flattening arseholes with big mouths,” I say quietly and then keep eating my soup. I will my hand to keep steady, but my heart is jumping.
A laugh bursts out of the dark boy opposite me. “Good answer, kid,” he says.
I look up, keeping my face blank. He’s about 17, with a snub nose and warm, deep-set eyes, his round face split with the white grin of his teeth. The only thing really memorable about him is his build. I could only see him waist up, but man, is he a tank! The T-shirt he wears isn’t baggy like mine or that of any of the others at the table, for that matter, but stretches taut across his swelling chest, the bands of the arms and neck straining around the bulge of his muscles.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Luca.”
He nods, not making any comment, and then smiles. “Luca, the smart-arse next to you is Tim, next to him is Johnno, then Aaron—he’s the brains around here—and there’s me, Archie. I’m the brawn.”
I look in turn at each face. Tim squints back at me with that shy, eager look of a weak kid whose only hope is to attach himself to someone stronger by ingratiating himself. That’s what he was trying to do with his comment to me—ingratiate himself to Archie, who looked to be the boss man of this little group, by making him laugh. Johnno sits next to him. He gives me an unsmiling, appraising stare, nods almost imperceptibly, and then turns back to his food. Aaron sits opposite him, next to Archie. He looks at me coolly through clear blue eyes. He has the face of an angel—short blond hair, firm mouth, strong jaw and nose—but it’s those eyes, deep and searching, that hold my gaze.
He smiles, says, “Hi, Luca,” and holds out his hand across the table. I take it without hesitation and nod. What the hell could he have done? Whatever it was certainly didn’t show on his face. I knew though, instinctively, that asking that question would be a mistake, just as it had been when Tim asked it. Nobody’s business.
Archie is leaning back in his chair, a smile on his face, and he looks at me expectantly. “Anything you want to know about the place?”
I hesitate and glance around the room, which is now noisy as the boys use their mouths as much for talking as they had been for eating. “I guess you’re the main man around here,” I say.
He raises an eyebrow. “You applying for the job?”
I shake my head. “Nuh. Just figured you were by the way you’re built.”
“Size doesn’t make a guy the boss,” says Aaron, shrugging. “No real bosses amongst the guys here. Just people who are okay and people who are dangerous bastards.”
“Well, who’s the most dangerous here, then?” I ask.
“Don’t turn around real obvious, but three tables across, there’s a big guy with tats on his face they call ‘King’—not ’cause he’s a boss but because his real name is Neil Brown.”
I look blankly around the table, and they laugh.
“Never heard of a King Brown?”
“What, the snake?” I answer, puzzled.
“Yeah, the snake,” says Aaron quietly, glancing across at the other table. The others look at him, forks suspended above their plates. “Did you know it’s got more venom than any other snake?”
I shrug. “I know that if you get bitten by one, you’re pretty much dead.”
“Well, unless you happen to get bitten by one right outside the hospital, you’re pretty much right. The thing with them, though, is they just won’t get you once; they’ll keep striking you over and over, more venom pumping in each time.” Aaron pauses, spears a piece of sausage with his fork and then chews on it slowly. “That’s why we call him ‘King Brown’. You cross that mongrel, and he won’t let up. He’ll make it his sole mission in life to make your life hell. His brain isn’t big, but man, once it latches onto something, he doesn’t let go.”
The table is silent apart from the sounds of the boys’ eating. I am interested, despite myself. I had come in here determined to sit down, eat up and shut up, but I want to know a bit more. I open my mouth to speak, but the siren blasts and everyone shovels and slurps the last bit of food down. A guard moves to each table in turn, and the boys stand and take their plates and cups to a long bench at the back of the room, where they scrape the crumbs from each plate into a bin, place the plate in a stack, and then line up at the double doors where the guards are waiting. It’s all so smooth.
I flick my eyes across to that King Brown kid and notice that even he goes through the motions quickly. He might be called King Brown, but he’s still just a trapped worm in here like me.
CHAPTER THREE
We file back to our cells. I notice that the boys pretty much all go into their cells in pairs except me and a few others. That Brown kid goes in alone, I see. The guard closes my door, and I lie down. I start thinking about the kids I talked to. Had any of them done anything as bad as what I did? I don’t really want to know, do I? I just don’t want to get connected to people again—just you. I know you’ll always be there. But my mind is jumping around. I’m not in the mood to write. I just want to go over everything that happened. Does it mean all my meals will be out there now? Can’t write now, mind too jumpy.
*
I’ve calmed down a bit now. Guess it was just being amongst people after being alone for so long. Better that I’m on my own.
I guess when I was about seven or eight, things changed. Not so many cars came to our place anymore, and Dad didn’t get many calls for work. He got quieter and quieter and stayed out in his shed longer but didn’t seem to want to talk when I hung around. He and Mum didn’t seem to talk together anymore either.
One night, we were sitting silently at the table eating soup. Mum sat at one end of the table, Dad sat at the other, and Katy and I sat in-between them. There were no jokes, no talking—just the slow ticking of the clock on the wall and the sounds of us eating. Each time I swallowed, I made a strange gulping sound. My throat seemed to be closing instead of opening to take in my food, and the sound seemed so loud in the quiet room.
“Eat properly, Luca!” Dad said, his thick eyebrows lowering.
“Leave him alone! He’s just trying to eat. Don’t take your bad mood out on him!” Mum’s voice was shaking—with what, I didn’t know. Anger? Fear? It wasn’t worth all this. Dad hadn’t really growled at me.
Turning slowly towards Mum, Dad put his spoon down deliberately. “My bad mood, is it? What am I supposed to be like when all my business has gone down the tubes? Should I maybe do a little dance for you? Should I laugh and sing about how all the people I know here, people I grew up with and thought were my friends, have stopped bringing their cars to me to fix because they can save $20 by going to Cants?”
Dad’s voice had been getting louder and faster as he spoke, and as he spat out the word ‘Cants’, he slapped his hand down onto the table. The plates all jumped and clinked, and Katy’s soup bowl tipped and hot soup slopped out onto the table, bits of carrots and celery clumping in a mound on the check cloth.
“Christ!” Dad shouted, turning and striding out of the room, his chair tipping onto its side and landing on the floor with a thud. We heard the back door bang shut and then there was silence again—just the tick tock of the clock. I was too afraid to look over at Mum, but Katy was sniffing a bit and I glanced across at her. Tears were glistening in her eyes, and she brushed them away quickly, her forehead crinkling in anger—at herself, I knew.
“Clear the table and then go straight to bed,” my mother said in a hard voice.
Katy and I leapt up together and stacked the plates and cutlery in the sink, and then we both went up to Mum, who sat holding her head in her hands. I thought she was crying, but when we mumbled, “Good night, Mum,” she raised her head, and her eyes were dry and cold, her mouth set in a narrow line.
“Okay, off you go,” she said, and sensing there’d be no kiss or bedtime story tonight, we both turned and went to our room. I clim
bed into bed silently. Usually, Katy and I would chatter away to each other about school, but not tonight. I lay there feeling agitated but not really wanting to think about it. We both switched off our bedside lights at the same time, and then there was silence. Katy’s bed creaked, I heard her bare feet whispering over the boards, and I opened the blankets for her to slide in beside me. She snuggled into my back without a word, and then we were asleep.
Dad didn’t come home the next night, but the next day when we got home from school, we saw his car. Wordlessly, we dropped our bags and ran inside. He was sitting with Mum. Katy ran up to him and hugged him, and he swung her onto his lap then pulled a chair close to him for me. I sat down, and Mum jumped up to get us something to eat.
“Well, kids, there’s something I’ve got to tell you. I’ve got a job driving a truck. I’ll be driving all over the place from right up north and east as far as Kalgoorlie all through the wheat belt down to Perth.” He stopped, and my mind raced.
“But when will you be home?” I rasped, my throat dry. He glanced at my mother, and she turned away, her mouth in that thin, hard line again.
“I won’t be home that much, Luca. Maybe every couple of weeks.”
Katy started to cry. “But I want you home all the time!” she sobbed. “Why can’t you just fix everybody’s cars and stay home?”
“Because no one wants me to do that anymore, Katy. There’s a new big place opened up in Dongara, and it’s got lots of fancy things for checking people’s cars. It’s got computers and lots of cheap parts, and they even sell petrol.” His face hardened. “All I can do is fix cars.” He was silent for a minute, and then his face brightened and he said, “It’ll be fine. I’ll be able to bring you things from Perth, and we’ll have great fun when I’m home.”
“I don’t want anything from Perth. I just want you,” I said, my voice quivering in a way I hated. I sounded like a baby.
“Well, Luca, that’s the way it’s going to have to be from now on. You’ll be the man of the house while I’m not here, so I want you to help Mum as much as you can and look after your sister. And Katy, you’re the same age as Luca, so you need to do your bit too. Do everything Mum tells you and don’t make everyone feel worse by crying. You’re getting to be a big girl now. You don’t see Luca crying, do you?”
Katy lowered her head and shook it slowly.
“That’s my girl,” Dad said, hugging her. “It won’t be forever. I’ll figure something else out later on, but for now, that’s the way it’s got to be.”
The next morning when we got up for school, he was gone. Mum was quiet, and Katy and I bolted down our breakfast, stuffed our lunchboxes in our bags and left.
School was about a 30-minute walk down the road. Dad had promised us a bike each for our birthday, but for now we walked. I was desperate for a bike. I already knew how to ride from trying other kids’ bikes, but Dad said we needed to be eight first because then we’d be old enough to remember to be careful on the roads. There wasn’t much traffic, really, but when the trucks came through, carrying sheep or machinery, they would thunder through, only slowing down when they veered off onto the side road that bypassed the town and then curving back onto the main road once it was past. No one had thought to take that road as far as the school, so it could be a scary place to be when a truck hurtled through.
The road was only gravel, and it was easy to skid, so all the kids knew to jump off their bikes and push them right off to the side into the dirt when they heard a truck coming. Other smaller roads joined the main one on the way to school, so Katy and I would only walk for a minute or two before other kids would come down those roads and join us. Some walked, some rode bikes, and the truly envied ones were the kids who rode their own horses.
The O’Brien boys, all three of them, had a pony each. So did the McCaghs. The horses would be tied up to the fence under the trees at the back of the school, their saddles pulled off and slung under cover. They seemed quite content to munch away slowly at whatever grass they could reach or just stand there, one hind leg bent up slightly and resting up on the hoof with their eyes glazed, until the school day was done.
The school only had 22 kids. Grades one to seven, all of us, were in the one room. A lot of the rich farmers sent their kids off to the city to boarding school when they’d finished primary school, but for now, we were all together.
“The days are long gone when you could just go and work on the farm at 14, boys,” Mr Evans would say. “Farms don’t just need labourers now; they need someone who knows business, who can do other things besides shear sheep and sit on a tractor. You need to be educated, or you’ll go under. And as far as you girls go, you’ll need an education, or the best you’ll do is a job behind a counter in Coles in Geraldton and a bunch of kids.”
The girls would always look at each other and sneer at this. They all wanted to get to Perth as quickly as they could. The smart ones were aiming for university or apprenticeships. As for me, I was too little to think about it much, but I knew I just wanted to work with Dad.
The day Dad started his new job always sticks in my memory for another reason too. One of my friends, Gary Morgan, was walking home with me. Katy was in a little group of girls a few metres behind us. It was a stifling hot day, the sun soaking through our clothes and skin in a way that, for some reason I could never fathom, caused little shivers to go through us every now and then. The wheat in the paddocks on either side of the road had been harvested, and although no breath of air touched us, we could see the wind sliding through the stubble, changing the flat gold to a rippling wave of silk.
As we plodded along, too hot to say much, we heard the familiar rumble of a truck from behind us. I turned and saw Katy and her group move onto the scrubby ground next to the road, and Gary stepped in behind me.
“I think it’s a sheep truck,” he said, as the roar of the truck got closer. He said something else, but I couldn’t hear him clearly, not just because of the noise but also because he had turned away from me to look at the truck, which was only a few metres from us now. It passed with a flurry of dust from the gravel road, and I turned away, holding my breath. As the sound faded, I heard the girls behind me running and making ‘panicky girl’ sounds. I turned.
Gary was lying on the road, with his hands covering his eyes. His mouth formed a ragged ‘O’ that looked almost funny, and the most hideous sound roared from his throat. Blood gushed from between his fingers. The girls around us started whimpering, and I stood frozen, unable to think or move. The guttural screams from Gary slowed to a wheezy, gasping whine.
“What’ll we do, Luca?” Katy pulled on my arm, and I woke from my fright.
“Run quick to Criddles and tell them to ring an ambulance, and then run home and tell Mum what’s happened. She’ll find Gary’s mum.”
Katy turned and raced off, her pigtails flying. The others ran off after her like a twittering flock of birds, leaving just me and Gary, the sun still beating down on us, silence only broken by Gary’s rasping shudders. I patted Gary’s leg in a useless and helpless way.
“You’ll be okay, Gary. Someone’ll be here soon.” Gary’s hand dropped from his face. He must have lost consciousness, and I could see a gaping bloody mess where his eye had been. A gravel stone, flicked up by the speeding truck, must have hit him. I sat there in the dust and heat, savagely brushing flies away from his face. I was crying loudly, but no one was there to hear me. They’d taken my dad away from me, and now they’d taken Gary’s eye.
“Bloody trucks!” I blubbered. “Bloody trucks!”
CHAPTER FOUR
I woke early this morning and lay there thinking about Katy. I hadn’t seen her since that last day in court. I hadn’t heard from her at all. Where was she? Who was looking after her? There was no one I could ask. We’d never been away from each other for more than a night or two when we’d stayed at friends’ houses. It was bad enough not having her around the corner let alone not speaking to her for so long.
&nb
sp; I eat all my meals with everyone else now. I’ve tried not to, but I can’t help but look forward to those three meals a day. Yesterday, after I finished breakfast, the guard said to me, “Come with me. The boss wants to speak to you.”
I looked up, surprised. “Why?”
“No idea, mate, but on your feet.”
“Okay, Mr Owen, I’m coming,” I said, brushing my hair down quickly.
He laughed. “It’s just ‘Owen’, not ‘Mr Owen’. Owen is my first name.”
I realised then that the staff here wouldn’t want any of us to know their surnames. Too easy to track them down and cause trouble later on if anyone had a grudge. Using an adult’s first name seemed friendly, but nothing here is as it seems. Owen stood outside the door again, and I stepped out in front of him.
“Go straight down the steps and then turn left.”
I walked down the steps, conscious that he was right behind me. What did he think I was going to do? Throw myself head-first down the stairs and finish myself off? I turned and walked straight towards a double door. He stepped to one side and entered the code, and the door opened. I blinked in surprise. A long passage opened in front of me, and on either side were windows into large, well-lit rooms.
As I walked along, I could see that each room was a classroom of sorts. About 12 boys were in each room. I didn’t have time to see what they were doing. In some rooms, they seemed clustered around a teacher; in others, they were sitting at desks or working at benches. Passing several guards, Owen quickened the pace behind me, and I could feel his hand on the small of my back.
“Step it up,” he said, “Mr Khan is waiting.” We came to the end of the passage, and then he stepped past me and knocked on a door.
“Come in,” a voice called. Owen opened the door and motioned me inside. I stepped in, my eyes directly on the man in front of me. Mr Khan was only about my height. He was Indian-looking and dressed in a dark-grey suit, white shirt and tie. He stepped lightly and quickly around the desk, his hand outstretched.