Hey Brother

by Jarrah Dundler

  Ricky trailed off. But based on the conversation I’d had with Mum, I had a pretty good idea of what he’d been about to say.

  ‘Yeah, Ricky,’ I said. ‘Yeah, that’s great.’

  ‘Yeah, it was. But, oh…shit. That was the good news. There’s some bad news, too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fuck, sorry to say, but it’s Jessica, brother. Talked to Jade on the phone and she said when Jessica got home this morning, stinking like a brewery, she got in a ton of shit from her stepdad. So much shit that when Jade called up, he gave her an earful. Big lecture on how he’d be having words with Jade’s olds. Told her that girls getting drunk with groups of teenage boys was dangerous.’

  ‘Ah, shit!’

  ‘Yeah. Told Jade that Jessica won’t be talking to any of her friends for the rest of the holidays and that he’s taken her computer away so she shouldn’t even bother trying to email. Jade’s fucken tough, though, hey. She keeps trying. Keeps calling up, trying to get through, hoping that eventually Jessica beats that Paul dickhead to the phone.’

  ‘Fuck! Give us Jade’s number, would ya?’

  I scribbled down the number. Hung up, then dialled Jade.

  ‘Oh, Trysten. It’s even worse than I thought. I got through to her, finally, and was only able to talk to her for a minute before Paul got there. She said she was in such deep shit that…that…’

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘Oh my god, Trysten, it’s so fucken unfair—Paul and her mum are threatening to send her over to the all-girls school in Big Town. Oh, Tryst—’

  I slammed the phone down before Jade could say another word and skulked back to my room where I cried till my eyes were red and raw. At some stage Trev yelled out, ‘Ya right?’ but I just yelled, ‘Piss off,’ back to him and went on crying. When it felt like there were no tears left to cry, I just lay, staring at the ceiling, feeling like someone had ripped out my heart and left a big fat lump of nothing in its place.

  24

  Trev was cooking up two-minute noodles. Not ordinary two-minute noodles, though.

  ‘Thumbed me way across the country a few years back. For a couple of legs I teamed up with this fella, half-Chinese half-Japanese. Showed me how if ya add a few bits an’ bobs—soy sauce, chilli flakes, thinly sliced carrot if you’ve got one—ya can turn these things into a damn tasty feed.’

  Trev took his seat at the table, slid my bowl over to me and got started on his—slurping and sucking down the noodles so fast that drops of the soupy water flicked all the way across the table.

  ‘Jeez! Watch it, would ya?’

  With strands of noodles hanging from his mouth like Dad’s wet beard, Trev looked at me then slurped the noodles up and eyed my untouched bowl. ‘Garn then, eat up.’

  ‘Nah, don’t feel like it, hey. Not real hungry.’

  ‘Bullshit. Kid your age is never not hungry.’ He placed his fork on the table, wiped the noodle juice from his chin. ‘Garn then, what is it? What’s on yer mind? Spit it out.’

  I stared into my bowl and told him all about Jessica—how sharp and sexy and funny and tough she was. How she gave it back to Leckie and the hippy kids in Civics, how she put Henry in his place on muck-up day. Told him the shit she’d got into for lying to her parents about the party, about what her mum and stepdad had planned as punishment. Told him how since receiving the news yesterday I’d rung Jade five times already and how, while she’d been trying, she still hadn’t been able to talk to Jessica again. I told him how I couldn’t get the thought out of my head, the terrible vision of what might come. Looking out the bus window as we approached her stop on the first Monday back at school and her not being there.

  ‘Ah, Trev. I dunno what I’ll do if she’s not there.’

  ‘Ah.’ Trev’s eyes were all starry—twinkly and distant. Then as he walked over to the fridge to grab a beer, he grinned widely like the story I just told him had a happy ending. ‘Young love, hey. Young love.’

  He sat back at the table and prised open his tinnie—his sixth for the day, I’d been counting—and took a long swig. ‘Yep! Nothing quite like that first love. Nothing in the world like it. Can still remember mine. Maryanne Enright. I might’ve been about your age. Yeah, fourth form, in the old system. She was something. Bright blue eyes like sapphires. Wavy butterscotch hair. A killer smile. She was smart, too. Sweet as a peach. And she was into me. Thought I was funny. Ah, when she laughed at my jokes, that sound was like the sweetest song ever written. Had a great time together, for a few terms. Fuck, we got up to some mischief, I tell ya. Mate, yer pop would’ve had some stern words with me if he’d known what I was up to with her.’ Trev paused, swigged on his beer thoughtfully. ‘Shame it had to come to an end. Ahhhh—wouldn’t have minded having a bit longer with that one.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Family moved away. Interstate. So long, Maryanne.’

  I hung my head low. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oi! Chin up, mate. Listen, I was gutted too. But then, a year or so later, I got to know this other bird a bit better. Sandra Pileggi. Italian, she was.’ Trev wolf-whistled. ‘Jet black hair. Dark eyes. Soft, soft skin. A regular bella donna. May not’ve loved her as much as I did Maryanne, didn’t have that same, oh, I don’t know, connection, but I sure enjoyed messing round with her. Then after her, well, um, there was Va—’

  ‘Stop! Alright? I get it—more fish in the sea and all that shit. But I don’t care about other fish, Trev. I just want Jessica.’

  Trev rolled a durry, lit it and took a long drag. ‘Ah, I feel for ya, mate. I really do. But maybe you shouldn’t give up just yet. Maryanne went interstate, so I had no other options. I had to give her up. This Jessica of yours, she’s only going to a different school. Still be living round here. Right?’

  ‘Right. But her mum and stepdad are psycho control freaks. I can’t just rock up to her house one day for a visit. Can’t even bloody call her!’

  Trev made a shooing motion with his hand. ‘Cah! How old’s she now? Fifteen?’

  ‘Yeah, and a bit.’

  ‘Well, I tell ya what, mate, this Jessica sounds like a bloody firecracker of a girl. There’s only so long those two will be able to hold that tight rein on her. Sounds like the type of girl that’ll make all-hell for them sooner or later if they don’t start to give a bit. Anyhow, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Ya don’t even know for certain yet they’re shipping her off, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So try and let it rest. Wait till ya get back to school. And if she’s not at that bus stop, then cry the tears ya have to…but not a drop more, hear me? Don’t get stuck sulking. Keep your chin up. Then figure out a way to make it work.’

  Trev’s eyes had a knowing look in them, like he believed every word he was saying. ‘If youse are meant to be, you’ll find a way. Got it?’

  ‘Got it.’

  Trev craned his head back, sent a huge puff of smoke up to the ceiling. ‘Now, get eating, would ya? Slaved me fucken arse off for hours in this bloody kitchen!’

  He tilted his head forward, grinning.

  I grinned back, a huge wad of noodles dangling from my mouth.

  After a week of Trev and me cooking for ourselves, the stink of the house became almost unbearable.

  While we had some healthy dinners besides Trev’s not-ordinary-two-minute noodles—a stir-fry one night, a spaghetti bolognese the next—mostly we just shallow-fried whatever we dug out of the freezer. Chips, sausages, dim sims, spring rolls, pork chops, steaks. We used the same big frying pan each time, not bothering to change the oil. The kitchen stank like a fast-food joint. Plus there was the stink we made. All that grease and oil. Jeez! My room was the worst. Along with all the trapped fart gas was a mountain of unwashed clothes. Trev’d overloaded the washing machine one morning and busted it.

  The stink was what gave me the idea to move into Mum’s room. I figured I’d stay there till she and Dad were back, which was supposed to be only a couple more days, but I didn�
�t even last an hour.

  Soon as I was in there I sat on Mum’s bed and looked round the room at all her stuff. Then I got to thinking about how she’d been while Shaun was away at war. Sleeping with that godforsaken radio. Drinking with Trev. Yo-yoing. Up down. Up down. I remembered one of her up phases, and how happy that letter from Shaun’d made her. Then I remembered how she wouldn’t let me read it and had squirrelled it away in her chest of drawers.

  I went and opened the top drawer, which squeaked as I pulled. I pushed some clothes aside and found her precious box—wooden, about the size of a shoebox with carvings of flowers on the lid. When I pulled it open, I saw an A4-size envelope. I pulled it out. Inside was Shaun’s letter, along with a couple of dozen pages, paper-clipped together. Last Will and Testament.

  ‘Shit!’ I sat on the bed. ‘Mum’s will.’

  I wondered why she had one written up. She wasn’t that old. Would make sense for Old Greggy to have one—he was getting on close to a hundred, I reckoned—but not Mum.

  Then I saw the name.

  Shaun Robert Black.

  Shit!

  ‘Shaun?’ I spoke out loud. ‘Why did you…?’

  That fucken dickhead! He’d been planning to do it all along. Maybe since he got back, even.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the papers.

  ‘Oi!’

  Trev’s tone was friendly, but I still jumped. I angled my body, hoping he wouldn’t see what I had in my lap.

  ‘What you got there?’ Trev paced across the room. ‘Greg’s old Penthouses or something? Garn then, give us a squiz.’

  ‘Nah…I…’

  Trev reached down and grabbed the papers and leafed through them.

  ‘Hey! What are you doing reading this stuff? It’s not yours to read. Fuck, mate—when your mum hears about this…’

  ‘No, Trev, don’t say anything. Please. I just wanted to see the letter Shaun’d written. I didn’t know about…that.’

  Trev leafed back to the first page. The will.

  ‘Yeah.’ He drew in air through tight lips like he was sucking on a durry, then shot the air out of his mouth. ‘Your mum mentioned this, that it was one of the things Shaun had to do before he was shipped off. But, bloody hell, I didn’t know he made her hold on to it. Christ! What a thing for a mother to keep in the same room as she bloody sleeps. No wonder she went downhill. Come on now, mate. Put all that back where ya found it and let’s get out of here.’

  All that got me thinking and wondering. Thinking about how the last month’d panned out. Wondering how the next few would.

  ‘Shit, Trev.’ I said as we sat down for another round of two-minute noodles. ‘Like, what if Shaun doesn’t get better? What if he tries to do…’

  ‘Listen, mate. We can’t think in what-ifs. We’ll just have to take things slowly. Day by day. He wasn’t coping with his struggles, but that’s the kind of stuff they’ll be working through with him in the clinic. Ways to cope so he doesn’t get that bad again. And if he decides to stay here for a bit, well, yer mum will take care of him.’

  ‘Yeah, but what if she goes off the rails again as well? Jeez, she got messy. All the drinking and getting into those drugs of yours. Fuck, Uncle Trevor—I was ready to murder you!’

  Trev narrowed his eyes, then smiled a big beamer. ‘Yeah? Well, good to know, mate. Good to know that yer mum will have a tough fighter alongside her. And good to know, too, that ya’d protect my sister like that. But I want ya to know that I didn’t dish out those pills to her. She nicked ’em from me. After what happened to Johnny I swore off selling that shit. Promised meself to get clean too. Well, I promised meself all that, then I fucken broke it and it took me a whole another Johnny to quit properly.’

  ‘Ah, fuck. Really?’

  ‘Yeah…well, not the same story as Johnny, but the same ending. O-fucken-D. Only a youngun, eighteen, nineteen. Welshy was his name. Bloody nice kid.’

  Trev’s eyes welled, his face drooped. Then he tossed his head back and chugged the rest of his beer, the sixth of the day. ‘Decisions, mate. That’s what defines you in the end. Some advice for ya—before you make one, try and give it a little thought beforehand, would ya? ’Cause, believe me, regret’s a fucken cunt of a thing to live with.’

  Trev crushed the empty tinnie, tossed it over his shoulder, walked to the fridge and returned to the table with a seventh.

  I decided I’d let it slide, not mention to Mum that he’d gone one over. But if he went more than two over I’d dob him in for sure.

  Wish I had’ve just phoned Mum on her new mobile and told her about the seventh. Wish I hadn’t just thought, He’ll be right, and gone to bed after Trev said he was doing the same. If I had, maybe she’d have given him enough of an earful to convince him to lay off it. Then maybe I wouldn’t have found myself in the dairy the next day, just after lunchtime, standing over Trev on his makeshift bed, shaking my head.

  Christ! He didn’t have a sheet on it or anything—just his sweaty skin on that disintegrating foam that dusted your hands when you touched it.

  ‘Look at ya!’ I yelled, but he just went on making the same sounds he’d been making since I walked in. Not snoring. Worse. He slept with his mouth open. Each in-breath was wet and rattly. Every now and again he’d make a choking sound, like he was trying to breathe but someone was putting their foot on his chest. Then he’d make a startled roooohhooo noise, the first of which had made me jump, and go back to his rattly breathing. He looked almost as bad as he sounded. A few days of taking it easier on the drink and eating a bit more meant he’d got a bit of colour back. Now he was that ghostly grey again. He was sweating, too. Sure it was hot, but I’d just walked down from the house, sun thrashing me, and I wasn’t sweating near as much as he was just lying there sleeping.

  I counted all the empty tinnies scattered round. At some stage during the night he must’ve come up to the house and grabbed another two six-packs. Along with the empties at the house that was four days of rations he’d gone through in one evening.

  Remembering Mum’s Watch that he doesn’t hit them too hard gave me an idea. I scooted out of there.

  It took me a while but eventually I had the remaining twenty cans of beer open and standing just in front of our cattle grid. I’d arranged them in two triangles, like bowling pins.

  I walked along the driveway and collected two dozen fist-sized rocks, then walked back ten, fifteen metres and began to fire, counting as I went.

  Crack, splash, glug-glug-glug!

  Some of the cans just tipped, fell where they stood. Others flipped and tumbled back onto the beams of the cattle grid.

  ‘Thirteen.’

  ‘Oi!’ Barefoot, Trev tore down the driveway. His unbuttoned shirt, tattered and ripped, flapped behind him like a pirate flag. ‘Oi! What the fuck are ya doing?’

  ‘Helping ya out, Uncle Trevor…don’t worry, gave it plenty of thought!’

  Crack!

  ‘Fourteen!’

  ‘Oi! Fucken stop, would ya?’

  I picked up another rock. From the corner of my eye I could see Trev hurtling towards me at a terrific speed.

  ‘No!’

  Crack, splash. Glug-glug-glug!

  ‘Fifteen.’

  Trev ploughed into my back. I stumbled forward, landed on my hands and knees. He kicked at my pile of rocks and started racing to the remaining beers. I scrambled over, barged him aside and booted the remaining five so hard they flew all the way into the paddock on the other side of the road.

  ‘What the fuck is wrong with ya? What’d ya fucken do that for? Ya little fucken shi…awww.’

  Trev’s knees buckled. He placed his right hand on my shoulder to steady himself. With his left he clutched the side of his stomach.

  ‘Awwww…’

  ‘Fuck, Trev, ya right?’

  ‘NO! Awww… Fucken hell. Give us a hand, would ya?’

  Back in the house I laid him on the couch where he continued groaning and clutching his gut.

/>   As I ran into the kitchen he called after me, ‘What are ya doing?’

  ‘Getting you some water and then calling an ambulance.’

  ‘No! Well, yes to the water. But no thanks to the ambulance. Don’t worry. It’ll pass. Always does.’

  He grabbed the water and gulped it down.

  ‘Ya sure I shouldn’t call ’em?’

  ‘Nah. No need. I’m fine, I…’ He winced. ‘I’m fine, I tell ya. Listen, tell ya what, I’ll go and see Dr Roberts tomorrow.’

  Straining, he sat up and pressed his hand hard into his side. He smiled through clenched teeth. ‘See? Feeling better already.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘Well, if it happens again I’m calling them up.’

  ‘Deal. And, hey, Trysten. Let’s keep this between you and me. Just like that business with Shaun’s will the other day.’

  ‘Okay.’ But I didn’t offer my hand to shake on it, because I’d already decided that as soon as Mum got back in the morning I was going to tell her everything.

  25

  Old Greggy Boy stood on the back verandah staring down the slope at the silent scrub. ‘All those people. It’s all those bloody people. That’s what does yer head in. Everywhere, they are. All shapes, sizes and colours. Not that that bothers me—the colours—there’s just too friggin’ many of ’em! Jostling for space on the footpaths and in the shops. Got to watch yer toes don’t get trodden on. And, Jesus, don’t even get me started on the traffic!’