by Stephen Orr
‘It was my fault.’
‘This goes on your record.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘It does. I’m not paying eight thousand a year …’ He trailed off, and sat looking at the card in his hand:
LATE SLIP: Charlie Price
LESSON: Biology
YOU ARE TO REPORT TO STUDENT SERVICES, TUESDAY, 12.55, COLLECT GLOVES, BAG AND TONGS, FIND A YARD DUTY TEACHER AND COLLECT RUBBISH UNDER SUPERVISION FOR TWENTY MINUTES. FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN AN AFTER-SCHOOL DETENTION.
‘What were you doing?’ Damien asked.
‘Practising.’
‘Can you at least look at me when you talk?’
Charlie looked up. ‘We were practising.’
‘You must have heard the bell.’
‘It’s a soundproof room.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Okay, bullshit, but it is.’
Damien sat forward. ‘Watch your tone.’
Charlie watched an ad for an exercise machine. He looked at the male model and said, ‘He shaves himself.’
Damien sank into his seat. The springs were gone, but there was no money for repairs. That’s what Charlie didn’t understand: there were a lot of other uses for eight thousand dollars—a stove with a working hot plate, rising damp in the bathroom. He knew there was no point nagging him. He didn’t listen, and he certainly didn’t hear. He called it Charlie’s World. Charlie lived in Charlie’s World. Unless there was something he wanted to hear.
Damien had his son’s long face, but it had been pushed out by time. He had his blue eyes and arching brows, but his nose was flatter, finished with a few fine capillaries. He had the Price shoulders—flat, strong and mechanical where they attached to arms. His body was narrow, too, although he had a pot belly that doubled as a personal dining table. ‘So, now you’re stuck picking up papers.’ Undoing his belt, loosening his tie and refolding the yellow card.
‘You’ve gotta sign it.’
‘And what if I don’t?’
‘I’ll get an after-school detention.’
Charlie watched as his dad took a pen from the pocket of his Datsunland shirt. He looked at the cursive letters trailing across his chest: ‘It’s a World of Datsuns out there’.
And wankers, he thought.
Damien signed the card and flicked it across to him. ‘So what else happened today?’ Opening a can of beer.
‘We’re learning about mitosis.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Cell division.’
Damien drank then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Disgusting, Charlie thought. Still, it wasn’t as bad as the way he always hitched his pants, blew his nose into a handkerchief he refolded and pocketed, walked around the house in his undies, cut his toenails on the lounge, cleared his throat and spat in the garden. It wasn’t as bad as the dumb game shows he watched, the way he called women love and darls, the way he unpicked his undies from his bum and said, ‘Yes, too true’, as he listened to shock jocks.
‘Cells … like bacteria?’ Damien asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s it?’
No reply.
‘So that killed an hour. What about the rest of the day?’
‘I dunno. Stuff.’
‘Stuff?’
‘Vectors, statistics … boring.’
Damien had no idea how to connect, to create some sort of spark. All that was required of him, it seemed, was silence, cash and food.
I could put you in a state school, he felt like saying, but didn’t. His son was at Lindisfarne because his wife, Carol, had wanted him there. It was one of the last things she’d said to him. ‘He’s so handsome in a blazer, isn’t he?’
Damien dropped his stare, following his son’s leg down to the old rug. ‘I got you pasta for lunch tomorrow.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You wanna do the crossword with me?’
‘Not now, Dad. I do that stuff all day.’ He stood and looked at the television.
‘We gotta fix your hair, or there’ll be another letter home.’
‘They can’t make me.’
‘They can.’
‘It’s my hair.’
‘It’s their school.’
Charlie looked at the monkeys jumping around, clutching their oversized cheque.
‘Perhaps Nicole will come over,’ Damien said.
‘You’d think they’d worry about other things.’ He went into his bedroom and sat with his guitar on his lap. Then he tried to remember the box patterns William had showed him.
After tea he was back at it, and at eleven o’clock his father called out from his room, ‘Put that damn thing away, and get to bed.’
So he switched off the light, and continued practising without plucking the strings.
Still, Damien could hear him. He said nothing. He spread a newspaper out across his bed and started searching the classifieds. He checked that all of his Datsunland ads had been put in correctly—a 2001 Toyota Camry, new tyres and low kilometres; a 1993 VP Commodore with reconditioned engine; a chirpy Volkswagen Golf, a couple of Corollas and a Nissan Skyline that was equal parts attitude and horsepower (he knew he’d have it sold before the end of the week—some nineteen-year-old with a pocketful of McDonald’s money and two capped teeth).
He turned the page and started reading the death notices.
De Fazio, Simon. 1971-2010. Now you’re in God’s arms …
He remembered sitting on his bed with Carol as she read the notices aloud. He recalled saying, ‘What do you read those for?’ and her replying, ‘They’re sad.’
‘You’re morbid.’
He remembered thinking, All very nice, but what’s it got to do with us?
Now he knew. Everyone ended up in the classifieds, one way or another—birth, marriage, food processors, death. It was just a matter of time. The classifieds brought people together. They were most people’s most public moment—all that was left of a life that had seemed bigger and more promising.
He remembered how long it had taken him and Charlie to compose Carol’s notice. How they’d agonised over every word. Loved mother. Although this couldn’t begin to describe how they felt. Nonetheless, it would have to do. He still had the notice in a photo album somewhere. And the invoice from the paper, the same one he got every week in the mail at work: subtotals, units, rates, GST and the amount payable within fourteen days. So that even in, and despite, death, the economy kept moving.
He let his hand drop back onto his pillow. Pushed the paper off the bed, thought about switching on the radio but was asleep before he could decide.
William was waiting for Charlie when he arrived for his next lesson. He took him into the music suite’s performance room—a space big enough to seat two hundred people, decorated with photos of everyone from Handel to Santana, smelling of a new carpet with the school’s crest. He took him onto the stage and showed him the set-up—two stools, music stands and a pair of electric guitars plugged in to Marshall amps. ‘Have a seat,’ he said, indicating.
Charlie put down his bag and acoustic guitar and sat on one of the stools. Then he picked up a black Stratocaster copy.
‘Go on,’ William said. ‘It’s mine.’
Charlie laid the guitar across his knee. He turned up the volume and played a chord. The sound came out of the amp in shards, and William reached over to turn it down and switch pickups. Charlie tried again. ‘Smooth.’
‘Try the pedals.’
He looked at the pedals at his feet: distortion, reverberation and a little green box flashing with frequency shift. As he tested the sounds he grinned at William, who sat back contentedly, occasionally leaning over to adjust the effects. ‘The distortion was the first one I bought. When I was sixteen.’
‘Nice,’ Charlie said, feeling the music through his feet. ‘I’ve saved a hundred-and-fifty dollars—but I want to spend it on a decent guitar.’
‘Good idea.’ William picked up the other guita
r and sat down. He took a moment to think, adjusted the volume and said, ‘I tell you what—you save two hundred, I’ll sell you that one.’
Charlie’s face lit up. He moved the guitar around, felt the varnish on the neck and the roughness of the strings. ‘It feels great.’
‘It’s a nice instrument. I mean, it’s a copy, but not like the Korean shit … stuff, you get today.’
Charlie looked at the guitar, and then his teacher. ‘Okay, deal.’
‘It’s got a case, cord and strap.’
He was already thinking of ways to save the money faster. He’d just thrown in a paper round, refusing to work in forty-degree heat for three cents a paper when Murdoch had billions. He could always ask his dad for a loan, but probably wouldn’t get it for a guitar. Then there was his sister, Nicole, and her boyfriend, David, who’d already offered him a few loose joints.
Even bribery crossed his mind. Dad, you’ll never guess what Dave offered me.
Charlie said, ‘Please don’t sell it to anyone else.’
‘I’ve had it twenty years. I’m not in any rush.’
‘Give me a few weeks.’
‘Take your time.’
Soon William was fingerpicking some jazz chords and Charlie was playing his box patterns over the top. William watched how the boy had learnt to bend notes, flick his fingers off the strings, repeat phrases with minor variations and improvise melodies and riffs that were complete, sweet and singable. ‘Very good,’ he said, as they played. ‘Maybe you won’t be a Segovia.’
But Charlie was consumed, his eyes lost on the fretboard, his thoughts dissipating in a haze of blue notes, fade-outs and amplified fifths. He remembered the pedals. Went from one to the other, testing their effect on a lead break, lapping up the growl of fat chords. After a while he said, ‘I suppose I better show you my scales.’
William shrugged. ‘No, that’s okay. As long as you’re still practising them.’
‘I am.’
‘I can tell.’
Charlie hit the distortion pedal and played ‘Smoke on the Water’. Then he said, ‘I got a detention the other day.’
‘Why?’
‘Our last lesson … I was late for science.’
‘We weren’t that late.’
He leaned forward. ‘It’s this prick I’ve got. He locks the door at five past two and makes you wait outside. Then he lets you in, with his hand out.’ He lifted his head and pouted his lips. ‘“Your diary, please, Mr Price. Perhaps next time you’ll clean out your ears. I’d have thought a musician could hear a bell.” Wanker.’
‘And what about your dad?’
‘Yeah, the usual speech.’
William tried to make light of it. ‘Well, that’s his job I suppose.’
‘Apparently. Still, he doesn’t go on about it.’
‘He’s a good dad?’
‘He’s okay … I guess.’
‘You guess?’
‘Yes, I guess, Mr English teacher.’
William adjusted his guitar on his knee. ‘Well, you’re lucky. My dad made me practise outside. Forty degrees, out you go—under the bloody peach tree. Half an hour a day, then he’d make me put it away. “This is why you’re failing maths”, he’d say. Which was probably true.’
‘Dad doesn’t mind. As long as I’m still getting A’s.’
‘All A’s?’
‘The stuff they give us isn’t that hard. I know more geometry than my teacher. So, Dad expects it from me now.’
‘He’s a lucky dad.’
‘Well, you know, I can’t afford to lose another parent.’
William wondered if the boy was inviting him to ask, or whether it had just slipped out. ‘And your mum died?’
‘Shit happens.’
‘Not when you’re fourteen.’
‘I was twelve.’
William knew he wasn’t good at death. ‘Do you miss her?’
Charlie licked his bottom lip. ‘I was twelve.’ He tried to remember her. He could still see the outline of her face—her long hair, brown eyes—but he was concerned about the detail. He knew she had freckles, but couldn’t see them. And what were her eyebrows like—black, brown, did they finish short, or curl up on the ends? Was her neck long, and wasn’t there a small mole towards the back? Were her lips smooth, or marked with light creases? He looked up. ‘But you know, she bought me my first guitar.’
‘When?’
‘When I was little. One of the half-size numbers from Kmart. And I’d just strum it and sing. I have a video of it. It’s awful.’
There was Damien, sitting on the lounge on Christmas morning, looking at his wife and shaking his head. ‘What were you thinking?’
‘Cheer up,’ she was saying. ‘He’ll lose interest.’
‘Bullshit.’
Charlie was a blond seven-year-old in summer pyjamas, swimming in a sea of wrapping paper, sticking his tongue out at the camera his sister was holding.
Back in the rehearsal room, Charlie reached down and turned off a pedal with his foot. ‘She’d be happy, if I got good.’
They returned to their jam and before long slipped into a twelve-bar blues that soon transformed into a poorly croaked ‘Hound Dog’. Charlie laughed at his teacher’s voice, before taking a chorus himself. Then he stood, shaking his hips, sticking out his tongue, hammering at the strings and unsuccessfully attempting a fingertip solo on the fretboard. They became louder and faster until he ended up on his back turning circles on the carpet. William just watched, laughed. A marvel, he thought, seeing so much potential in front of him. What could be—smart, inventive, original. Before all the planning, scheming, wanting, thinking critically about how much a bridge could support or what drove Lady Macbeth, before girls, and women, before facial hair and man boobs and comments muttered when someone else got the promotion he deserved. Failing to see that there were other solutions. The correct path. The path of no regrets or suffering. The path that no fourteen-year-old in history had ever found among the undergrowth of the adult world.
Pete Ordon came in and they both stopped. A dozen or so new parents stood behind him and he said, ‘This is Mr Dutton, our guitar teacher.’
William’s lips zipped and his eyes bulged. He looked at Charlie. The boy broke up laughing and played one last chord.
Charlie, Nick and Aaron, a sort of Three Stooges combination, sat with their backs against a wall watching the Year Sevens and Eights play basketball. It was cloudy but warm, and the bit of drizzle that fell was dry before it wet anything. Charlie had just finished the sandwich he’d made that morning: tough fritz and spongy bread, allowed to sweat in Gladwrap and cook in his bag, crushed by textbooks.
‘How can you eat that shit?’ Nick asked.
‘I’ve gotta make my own lunch. What have you got?’
‘A Chickadee.’ Displaying a deep-fried chicken portion that oozed fat from every crumbed pore.
‘Why don’t you buy something?’ Aaron asked, struggling with a pie that was coming undone around the edges.
Charlie watched a pair of younger boys mucking around, pushing each other, until one of them said the wrong thing, or shoved or pulled too hard, and then they were exchanging blows. A few friends pulled them apart and there was a standoff. Aaron spat gristle from his mouth and called, ‘Go on, get into it.’
Then it was over, and the boys continued their game as if nothing had happened. Soon they were passing the ball to each other and laughing.
‘Pity,’ Aaron mumbled.
Silence. Flies. Someone spitting. The sound of balls hitting hoops. A voice calling, ‘Penis head!’ Chip packets shoved into the cracks between the bricks of the wall.
‘What’s after lunch?’ Aaron asked.
‘Edwards,’ Nick said.
‘Fuck.’
‘He’s okay,’ Charlie said.
‘Yeah, blah blah, twenty minutes later he’s told you what a carnivore is. It eats meat!’
Silence. Nick looked at Charlie. ‘Let’s see the letter.�
��
Charlie took the note from his pocket, unfolded it and handed it to him. The small, snotty boy started reading.
Dear Mr Price,
In reference to our recent discussion, I must say it is disappointing to see Charlie arrive at school today with an even more inappropriate haircut.
Nick and Aaron examined Charlie’s hair more closely. Yes, the dreadlocks were gone, combed out into the usual peroxide frizz, hair sticking out in every direction but down, but in their place was an even more creative style, courtesy of his sister. She’d come over the previous evening, especially. Set him up in the backyard with a towel around his neck.
‘You got in trouble for the dreads?’ she’d said, connecting the trimmer to three short extension cords.
‘So?’ He’d rubbed his toes through the dead grass on their lawn. ‘It’s my hair.’
‘Dad wants me to get rid of them.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘They’ll suspend you.’
‘They never suspend anyone.’
So there she was, as day turned to night, spraying and combing his hair, pulling at the knots as he ground his teeth, squinted and told her to be more fucking careful.
‘Fighting words,’ Dave had said, sitting on the porch rolling a cigarette.
‘It fuckin’ hurts.’
‘Watch yer language, y’ little prick,’ his sister had said, slapping his shoulder.
‘Go easy.’
‘This letter, just said no dreads? Didn’t say …?’
‘What?’
‘Something nice and short?’
‘Not too short.’
She’d grinned, bit her tongue-ring and set to it. A few minutes later Charlie had looked at Dave and asked, ‘What’s she doing?’ But he’d just smiled.
Ten minutes later she’d said, ‘There, that’ll do.’ She’d handed him a mirror. He’d looked at himself and said, ‘Fuck.’
She’d shaved the sides of his head almost clean. Then etched a lightning bolt into each of his temples, shaving down to bare skin to get sharp lines.
‘What’s wrong?’ she’d asked.
‘Now I will get suspended.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Dad will freak.’
‘No, it’s fine. Short, clean and Catholic.’