Human Torpedo

by Tim Winton

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Old Squasher was built like a rainwater tank – tall, round, fat and corrugated. “When he was angry he sounded like someone had thumped his side with a big stick. He vibrated, and brown dandruff came off him like rust.

  ‘Sirrrrrr! I said Siiiiirrrrrrrgh! Rrgh!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lockie. ‘That’s when I got confused. I thought for a moment that — ’

  ‘Leonard.’

  ‘Sir?’

  Old Squasher looked suddenly like a man who’d just made a breakthrough. ‘Aah, you understand! Class, he understands.’ There was a polite titter around the room, but nothing enthusiastic. Squasher wasn’t what you’d call a smash hit with the kids. ‘Why are you scratching yourself, Leonard?’

  ‘Is that what you wanted to ask me?’

  ‘Sir.’

  Lockie blinked. The class couldn’t tell if he was daft or brilliant. ‘Sorry?’ he whispered.

  ‘Out!’

  Lockie blinked again.

  ‘Outsi-i-i-ide! Get out of my room before I tear your head off and use it for a blackboard duster.’

  Lockie stood up looking perplexed and started down the aisle. A girl with green eyes and glinting braces was looking at him. She was twisted round and one decent-looking breast was aimed at him.

  ‘Leonard?’

  Lockie stopped and turned to face Old Squasher again. ‘Yes?’

  Squasher closed his eyes. ‘You mean, “Yes, sir”, I’m sure that’s what you mean.’

  ‘That’s it, yeah.’

  Everyone went quiet, as though waiting for an explosion to begin World War Three. ‘Are you a good Maths student, Leonard?’

  ‘I think I’m basically a good student, sir, but I’m useless at Maths. I have nightmares about it.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that Leonard, and I think you’ll be having a lot more.’

  Lockie nodded.

  ‘One more thing, Leonard. I think you’re basically a lousy student, and I suspect I’ll be having nightmares about you, so don’t feel sorry for yourself. Now go away.’

  Lockie headed down the aisle on the way to the door. That girl was looking right at him. She looked really impressed and it scared him.

  On the bench outside, he took a long breath and began to shiver and twitch. First day. Excellent start.

  •

  It didn’t get any bettter, and the Vegemite in his undies didn’t improve with age.

  In Science: ‘Boy, have you got worms?’

  In Social Studies: ‘Who is that scratching and wriggling over there?’

  In Art: ‘Get that paintbrush out of your pants, you dirty little snail!’

  In Typing: ‘It’s Leonard, isn’t it? Yes. Leonard, as well as Typing, you know, I teach Grooming and Deportment, and I consider myself an expert, and in my opinion you should take a bath now and then. At a car wash.’

  In English: ‘Does anybody smell something odd? I mean like yeast?’ Forty hands go up. The first hand up is Lockie’s.

  •

  When the final bell went, Lockie swung his bag over his shoulder and headed home in the rush, but when he got outside he stopped dead and groaned. Double-parked in the bus zone was a police car. Oh, no. He got ready to lie down and die of embarrassment in front of thousands.

  ‘Jump in,’ said the Sarge.

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘I’ll drop you at the beach. The swell’s up, surf rat.’ Lockie got in.

  ‘How’s the old First Day?’ said the Sarge with a grin.

  ‘Oh, fair.’

  ‘That bad, eh?’

  ‘Worse.’

  And then, to put the icing on the cake, the Sarge slapped on the siren and peeled out of the bus zone like one of the Dukes of Hazzard. Lockie didn’t know whether to hoot or hide.

  ‘Geez, Sarge.’

  ‘Not bad, eh?’

  ‘I’m ruined.’

  ‘Whew, what’s that smell?’

  •

  The sun was almost down as he caught his last wave, leaning and cutting across its orange glistening surface as it rolled towards the beach like the twist in a great monster’s tail. It hissed behind him. His hand trailed in the smooth, faceless wall; he tossed his head back and hooted as the whole pitching funnel of its insides shot him down the line. He wasn’t thinking of anything. He didn’t need to.

  ockie rolled over, sweaty and breathless in the early dawn light, and felt the wet patch in his pyjamas. Oh, no, he thought, looking across to Phillip who was still asleep. Don’t tell me bedwetting is contagious! There wasn’t much of it, just a small circle the size of a block of boardwax. And it smelt funny, like beansprouts, or something. His heart banged upward in his throat. A bird called from the tree outside and Lockie thought he’d like to strangle it.

  He lay back on the pillow and wiped the sweat from his face. No, it isn’t bedwetting, he thought, it’s . . . that other business. Geez, I’m only twelve and three quarter years old – I’m not ready for this stuff!

  Getting his breath back, he reached out for that little green booklet still there by his bedside, but at the last minute he pulled his hand away. Pride, maybe. Besides, it’d just come to him, what he’d been dreaming about. If he concentrated he could see it now. That girl turning around. She had braces. Green eyes. Her nose turned up a little. Her hair was frizzy and long. Brown, it was, with streaks of sun. And inside her jumper, her left breast there, almost like a woman’s. And he’d had his hand on it.

  Lockie tore back the covers and swung out of bed faster than ever before – a torpedo for real this time. He had to wash his PJs or the oldies’d think he was heavily into pre-teen sex. Moral danger.

  He headed down the creaking corridor in the half-light. Not a sound. Down toward the laundry. He hit the skateboard first and took a cricket bat and two brooms down with him. One broom took a paint tin off the shelf, which shifted a couple of light globes and a jar of ball bearings which crashed to the floor. Pock-pock, ker-rash! Ball bearings raced down the bare boards with a sound like a dozen jet fighters roaring by.

  That you, Lockie?’ called Phillip.

  ‘No, it’s Rambo and I’ve lost me bearings. And me balls.’

  he first couple of weeks at Angelus High went by quite smoothly for Lockie. Well, compared to his first day. He got into the routine of his timetable, did his homework, kept out of trouble, and learned the name of that girl up the front in Maths. It was Vicki Streeton and she was the smartest kid in the class. For Lockie, Maths was like trying to understand some ancient Icelandic language. Old Squasher kept his eye peeled for any slip-up in class, but for two weeks Lockie was almost invisible. He was so nearly invisible that hardly anyone spoke to him, not even the class dags. They just didn’t seem to notice him there in his seat or standing out in the quadrangle.

  In Phys. Ed. he was just a part of the pack, another pair of smelly feet in the change room. In the lunch queues he was another hungry face. No one knew this new kid from the city, the one whose old man was the copper. No one even remembered the wheelie in the bus zone in front of thousands that time. Even the hairy kid whose leg-rope he’d cut didn’t appear to notice him.

  Lockie began to suspect they were just ignoring him. The cop car. They were scared. No one is game to come near me, he thought.

  Maybe that’s why he wasn’t ready for what happened Friday lunchtime. Lockie sat in the sun by a hedge clipped in the shape of an elephant. He was reading a book of poems he’d found in the library and wondering if he’d get through the lunchbreak without ever understanding a single one of them, when he looked up and saw Vicki Streeton walking his way alone. She didn’t walk anywhere alone. There were always a pile of girls with faces like half-chewed Mars Bars following her round, or some hunky footballers chatting her up.

  She walked with her head up in the breeze and all that frizzy hair rolling around in the wind behind her. She had nice legs, but her feet turned out. Ballet dancer, he thought
. Lockie’d never really thought much about how girls looked until lately. Oh, he’d always known the difference between awful and pretty, but he’d never cared less. And now he couldn’t help looking. He was safe back here against the hedge. She’d walk by, he’d go back to his dumb poems.

  She got close without looking his way.

  Don’t look, he thought, turning a page.

  Her shadow fell across him. He saw it moving over his legs and he got an instant dose of goosebumps.

  ‘Hello Lockie Leonard,’ she said.

  Lockie looked up to see her passing. Was that the end of a smile he saw? Cor. He fell back against the hedge and watched her go. What? What?

  Right then she turned her head and glanced at him. That breast sticking out like an iced bun.

  Aaaaarrgh!

  He fell back so far into the hedge that he spent the rest of the lunch hour trying to get twigs out of his hair.

  unday came around again and the Leonards went to church. Lockie’s mum and dad were religious, though they didn’t show all the usual weird signs. I mean, they seemed normal enough. Well, for a copper’s family living in a swamp. Lockie’s olds got religion back when he was a baby. They went to a stadium to hear some Yank talk and they wound up signing on. People did that sort of thing in those days. Lockie figured he believed in all that stuff, you know, about there being a God and Him listening to your prayers and everything, but he just couldn’t see how it fitted into church. Lockie hated going to church.

  Just to cheer him up this morning, it rained. Lockie got into the car and pressed his cheek against the cold glass of the window. Sunday, day of boredom. He figured that if he was a dog and this bored, he’d be asleep already. He wondered how the surf was. He thought about the poem he was trying to write, wondered why he was so miserable all of a sudden.

  The church was up on the opposite hill from school. You could see old Angelus High from the car park. It wasn’t a big Catholic church that they went to with steeples and stained glass – it was squat and white and ugly as sin (so to speak). It might have been a squash court or a medical centre. As Lockie went in through the door behind his oldies, taking a hymn book from the smiling bloke at the entrance, he got that old feeling of being in a dentist’s waiting room. He knew he wasn’t here to get his teeth drilled, but by the end of an hour he thought maybe that’d be more fun.

  He sat on the pine pew with his family. Blob gooed and gaahed. The organ up the front warbled like a dying pensioner. Everyone sat looking glum. There was a banner behind the pulpit that just said SALVATION! To Lockie it might have said I LOST LOTTO! That’s how they all looked, like they’d just lost a million bucks.

  They got up to sing. Lockie didn’t mind the singing. Next to him, Phillip sang like a cat in a blender, but he seemed to enjoy himself. Then they sat down and various people rattled on. The Sarge tried out a few hallelujas during the sermon but no one was having any. No one laughed or smiled for an hour, and only in the singing did they sound halfway enthusiastic. Lockie liked the closing hymn, though. It was gutsy. It felt like the last straining sprint at the end of a marathon.

  In all that time, he realized, all through – church besides praying that Phillip would stop piddling his bed – Lockie was thinking of Vicki Streeton. Like a bloke who couldn’t help himself. He scribbled on the back page of a hymn book:

  A girl turned her head

  and looked at me.

  Her breast was like

  Like . . . something. He couldn’t get it right. Like . . . well, like a breast, but what was a breast like? Hell, he didn’t know. Blob’d know for sure – she was only just finished breast-feeding, but he couldn’t exactly ask a baby. Well, what did he know about them? Jugs, norks, knockers, boobs and bosoms. He’d leave it out of the poem, that’s what. Right, the tit goes. That’s better. But it didn’t help. Breast or no breast, he couldn’t finish the poem.

  •

  ‘Why don’t you come along to our Youth Group on Saturday night, Lockie?’ the minister asked him at the door.

  Lockie shrugged. ‘Umm.’

  The minister wasn’t a bad sort of bloke. You could meet a face like his behind a counter in any shop. Eager to please.

  ‘Well, think it over, Lockie.’

  ‘He’ll be there,’ said the Sarge.

  ‘Thanks Dad,’ said Lockie as they walked to the car.

  ‘It’ll give you a chance to go back before next Sunday,’ the Sarge whispered.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To take the boobs out of the hymn book.’

  Aaaaarrrggh! Death!

  ‘Oh. Yeah.’

  Lockie sank into the back seat of the Falcon. What a life.

  eonard!’

  Lockie looked up from hacking away at a piece of wood with a chisel. Borax, the Woodwork teacher, was coming at him. What is it with Woodwork teachers? They probably aren’t good enough at Woodwork to be carpenters, and they sure aren’t good enough at teaching to be proper teachers, so they just walk around boiling and screaming like granma’s kettle. They carry round something foul like a straightedge, something to clock you with. There’s nothing that’d cheer them up more than the sight of your knuckles hanging neady off the end of their straightedge.

  ‘Leonard, what is it exactly that you’re doing?’

  Lockie threw his arms up, swinging the chisel dangerously near Borax’s long chin. ‘I dunno, sir. A lap joint, is it?’

  ‘Son, you couldn’t put together two hands to clap.’

  Lockie looked back at his lap joint. ‘Reckon yer right, sir.’

  Borax nodded. He liked to be right. ‘Tell me the names of these tools.’

  ‘Umm . . . that’s a marking gauge, and that’s a pencil, ahh . . . an oilstone . . . ’

  ‘You know what they’re for?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Leonard?’

  ‘You don’t wanna know, sir.’

  Borax shifted in his mouldy old dust jacket. ‘That’s probably the only correct thing you’ll say all day, Leonard. Do you want to be here, Leonard?’

  ‘I have to be, sir. Like you, I imagine.’

  Suddenly every head at every bench went to work, and a truly evil silence came over Woodwork Three. There was going to be thunder down-under.

  ‘Son,’ Borax growled, ‘if you want to imagine, you imagine all you want.’

  Borax strode back to the material rack and and drew out a cube of pine as big as his own head. ‘You can imagine on that. This is your material for this term and that is your tool.’ He drew a half-bald hunk of sandpaper from his coat pocket and slapped it on the bench. ‘For ten weeks you can imagine all you like. And in ten weeks you don’t touch a real tool.’ Borax ground up an acid smile. ‘Alright?’

  ‘Orright. Thanks, sir.’

  Borax hesitated. Lockie Leonard was smiling like someone in a toothpaste ad.

  ‘What is it, Leonard? Share the joke.’

  ‘Well, sir.’

  ‘Tell us, Leonard.’

  ‘When they ask me what I’m doing in Woodwork, I can tell them I do what the teacher does. I can honestly tell them I’m doin’ me block.’

  The whole workshop cracked up. Mallets hit the floor. Boys collapsed on their benches. Lockie saw the door coming at him. He realized he was airborne. It was a beautiful feeling, true torpedoism, but it didn’t last long.

  •

  On the way down the verandah, Lockie saw girls sitting in the sun with their skirts pulled up their legs to give them a tan. They were laughing and chatty, rolling their eyes and popping bubblegum. He looked for Vicki Streeton among them but didn’t see her. He hitched his bag, feeling his files rolling around, and concentrated on faces. He recognized a couple by sight, but didn’t know their names. It almost stopped him in his tracks, the thought that came to him. He didn’t know anyone in this school. He didn’t know a single person.

  When he got to the door he wa
s looking for, he stood a moment to straighten himself out.

  Well, it’s better than being sent to the principal, he figured. He knocked.

  ‘Come!’

  Lockie hesitated.

  ‘Come in!’

  He slid the door open. Behind a desk, with his reading glasses up on his forehead, a whiskery young-looking bloke squinted at him. He didn’t look old enough for a job, even with all the face-prickle.

  ‘Leonard, sir.’

  ‘Ah, it’s you. Grab a pew.’

  Lockie blinked.

  ‘Park your bum. Sit.’

  Lockie crept across the carpet and took a chair. The Guidance Officer put his boots up on the table. They were size nines and made in Italy – Lockie read it on the soles.

  ‘I’m John East.’

  Lockie nodded.

  ‘Having a spot of bother, I hear. Sent out once. Thrown out another time. Three teachers have mentioned you to me, and various other staff. You’ve only been at school two weeks . . . Lachlan, is it?’

  ‘Lockie. People call me Lockie.’

  ‘Fair enough, Lockie. A couple of weeks and already you’ve made a reputation for yourself. Everything all right?’

  Lockie wanted to say it was all a mistake. He’d just said the wrong things at the right time. He was lonely, he’d figured it out. Lonely and nervous. This John East character looked like someone out of ‘Hill Street Blues’, someone in the drug squad who never shaved. Lockie sized him up, wondering what to say.

  ‘What does your mum do?’

  ‘She stays at home. My sister’s still a baby.’

  ‘Your dad live with you?’

  Lockie smiled. Of course.’

  ‘Does he have a job?’

  ‘He’s a cop.’

  ‘Oh, he’s tough, huh?’

  ‘Not very.’

  John East pulled his specs down to his eyes and gave Lockie the once-over. He looked older with them on. ‘There’s a bruise on your forehead.’

  ‘Borax, ah, Mr Borax, threw me out the door. The door was closed.’

  ‘Hmm.’ John East made a note. ‘You got any trouble at home, Lockie?’