TWENTY SEVEN SEVENTY
PERRY GAMSBY
Twenty Seven Seventy
Copyright Perry Gamsby 2011
Published by StreetWise Publications
22 Waikanda Cres, WHALAN, NSW, 2770
http://streetwisepublications.info
http://twentysevenseventy.info
Gamsby, Perry. 1961-
ISBN: 978-1-105-30369-2
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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental and unintended.
DEDICATION
To those who call 2770 home and especially to our police, hospital and fire fighting professionals.
Prologue:
3:16pm Thursday
You could smell it as you got closer. The blood. It was everywhere and it stank; hot, coppery and real. So very real. The blood belonged to Jayden St Clair. It had run in his veins and arteries for twelve years as he ran the tough streets of Mount Druitt, New South Wales, 2770. Now it was running in the gutter, running away from the life that had been his as if it was trying to beat him in a race to a finish nobody wanted to win.
Mandy Scott applied pressure to the wound with a wadded up T-shirt of her eldest daughter’s she had found in her car. She was a nurse, she knew head wounds bled like a bastard but that didn’t mean he was gone. He was still breathing. Still had a pulse, what did she think was pushing the claret out like that, all over the kid, her daughter’s T-shirt and the street itself? He’d live, if she could keep as much of that blood in him as out and get him to work soon. Like right now. She heard the siren of the ambulance she had called for moments ago. The ambulance station was not far away, at least not for another month or two. Then the budget cuts would leave it all to the St Mary’s station to deal with. This kid didn’t realise how lucky he was, so to speak. Another week or two and he would have most likely bled out waiting for the ambos to arrive.
Tafon Ta’alofa stood there, white as a ghost, or at least as pale as any Samoan lad could be. He was in shock. He didn’t mean to hit the kid, the kid just ran out in front of him. Shit! He had no time to do anything! Shit! Damn his mates! They said ‘go on, Tafon! Again! Do another one!’ and he did. One more burnout. One more tyre smoking rip down the street outside the paki’s house where they stole the car from. The paki’s car. Same bastard that stopped them the other night. Serve him right his mates said. Nick his car and joyride the crap out of it! Then this! Shit! And they didn’t even have the guts to stay and help him. Just took off. Left him. Ran for it like gutless…
April Fernandez was screaming at Tafon. Hitting him, pushing him, shoving him, making him… making him… making him what? He just stood there, too scared to move. Frozen. She knelt down next to the boy and tried to help, the lady already kneeling there holding the T-shirt to his head smiled at her. ‘I wasn’t… I was just getting a lift to the library…’ she stammered, desperate to explain to an adult, an authority figure like her mom and dad, that she wasn’t to blame. She was a good kid, a good student, she was going to the library. The boys in the car go to her school, she knew them, they said they would give her a ride, she…’
Sendip Gujrata ran up, then slowed and walked, hands on his head, slowed again, stopped. Hand to mouth. He was shocked. Their eldest was not much younger than this boy when they came here. Ten, eleven. How old was the St Clair boy? They had lived next door but one to them since they moved here from India seven years ago and they hardly had ever said a word to anyone in that house. It was a bad house, dirty, untidy garden and dirty, untidy people with the young mother and her three children and a procession of boyfriends, each one blackening her eye a little more before they left. He didn’t care about her, she could do as she wished but he felt genuine sorrow the children had to suffer and looking at the oldest one lying there, bleeding and ragged, he felt pity and sorrow well from the bottom of his heart. It was his car that had caused this damage. His car parked at the end of two long, black and still smelly tyre tracks. It sat askance and he could see the dent in the bonnet and the shattered spider web of a windscreen, the dent in the roof and the place where the boy hit the asphalt then rolled to where he lay now. Bleeding. In the arms of this woman with the T-shirt.
Valerie Mildano stood at her front window, the lace curtain edged just far enough across to afford an unrestricted view of the scene. She had seen most of it and heard the bits she had missed. The revving. The tyre screeching. The scream of the brakes. The thud, the thump, the thunk as the boy hit the car, bounced onto the roof and then bounced to the road and he did bounce. Like a ball. A twelve year old ball of boy. She heard the car stop, the doors open, the gang members yelling at each other, the two white ones running away. The tall darky running to the boy he had just hit. The pretty Chinese girl getting out, screaming, hitting the darky. She saw her neighbour Mister Gujman-something-or-other run outside, screen door slamming behind him just like when his kids ran out to play or help his missus with her shopping. Nice kids, the Gujman- something-or-others. Not like the poor little beggar the darky ran down. She knew him, She knew the darky boy too, used to live over the back. Samoan lad. Nice family, went to the Samoan church at the community center while she was off to mass. Never though he would run with a gang but you never can tell. Of course you can tell with the Sinclair boy, Jason or whatever his name is. Mother’s no good. No dad, brother and sister from different fathers, mum smoking pot and boozing, spends all day in her dressing gown, drunk as a lord. Boy was a mongrel, running riot, stealing her eggplants and egging her back windows. Still, didn’t deserve to be run down by the Samoan boy. Run his mum down maybe, or that boyfriend of hers, the latest wife basher to keep her up late making the poor woman and her kids scream blue bloody murder.
Greg McVincent took one look at the scene and knew he’d be up for murder or manslaughter or whatever it would be. He had been chasing the little prick when he ran in front of that coconut bloke that used to live in the other street. Tafo or Tefo or something. Knew his uncle down the club, big bugger, just like his nephew. Well he wasn’t going to get caught up in this shit, not over that stupid bitch’s bastard. Shit!. Right into old Gujcurry’s car! How come Tefo was driving it? Shit, he nicked the bloody thing! Christ now the dogs are going to be here and shit! More bloody trouble and checking names and warrants and other bullshit. Time to piss off. Grab whatever cash the bitch has lying around and hoof it for a few days. Let the heat die down. Stupid little turd! The shit he’s got me into, hope he’s friggin dead.
Donna St Clair had heard the noise, even over her own sobs and the fact she was locked in the bathroom at the back of their house. It had been so close, so loud and somehow, louder inside her head than she could understand. She knew it was one of her kids. She knew it had to be Jayden. She knew something seriously bad had happened to him. She knew who had caused it. That shit for nothing boyfriend of hers, Greg. She knew she should get up, go and see what had happened, see what she could do to help. She knew that but she knew she wouldn’t. She was too scared. She knew that she would hate herself later for being so gutless but she hated herself completely now just for being herself, she figured she wasn’t going to make it any better by getting up and going now but if he was still out there, she might make it worse. For herself. Shit.
Mandy let go of the boy’s hand as the ambulance crew put the stretcher into the back of the big Mercedes ambulance. She still held her daughter’s T-shirt, replaced by a more sterile dressing while the crew stabilized and prepared their patient for transportation. He was going to Mt Druitt as it was the closest and he needed more sophisticated attention right now, with a good chance a helicopter was on its way to take him to Westmead for help as sophisticated as it gets. He was in a very bad way and Mandy knew that. She also knew he would be dead if she hadn’t been there. So why had she been there. Right place, right time? Why her? Why that boy? How come she just happened to have that T-shirt in the car, sitting on the front seat right next to her bag with the mobile phone, almost so there was no way she would miss it and not have anything immediately at hand to staunch his blood loss? Who knows why anything happens, least of all such tragedy as this. That was why she had become a nurse in the first place. That and because her dad had insisted she do a year at college and qualify as an enrolled nurse. Then she could travel the world, do as she liked but she would have a career, a way to make a living of her own and not have to rely on a husband to keep her fed and housed, clothed and well enough to do the same for their kids. She had done her year, got the letters E.N. to her name, then did her travelling, met her man and had her kids. Then he shot through and she went back to college, changed the letters to R.N. after a couple more years of hard slog, juggling kids and study and part time work to make ends meet. Now she stood on her own two feet and watched the ambulance pull away, lights going, siren winding up and a feeling of emptiness, despite having probably saved a young life. She turned to go back to her car, taking one last look at the scene, just as the police officer asked her for her contact details. The police had arrived right after the ambulance but she had been too busy working with the crew to notice. They noticed her, knew her from the hospital and figured they could catch up with her later, when the dump died away. The adrenalin dump. They knew she had it. They all did at these things. Some lived for it.
Tafon’s adrenalin dump had gone. Now he was feeling like he had been dumped on from a great height. It was just sinking in. What he had done. What he was responsible for. He felt sick to his stomach. He certainly didn’t feel big and tough and cocky now. Now he felt like he was a little boy and not just a week past his eighteenth birthday. He was a grown up now. An adult. That meant he would be tried as an adult, maybe thrown in gaol right now. Shit he was scared.
Chapter 1: 2770
February 1968
“Manjarni!”
“Manjarni? What’s manjarni?”
“Lunch time, come on, we eat!”
The big Aussie labourer sat down next to the Italian bricklayer and they opened their lunch boxes, one had a small esky with some sandwiches and a flask of coffee, the other had a larger esky filled with meat and bread and salad and sauces and a flask of coffee. Both men tucked in with the kind of hunger several hours hard manual labour builds in a bloke, especially a bloke building a house. Billy Cooper had been working on the sites for a month and today the ganger had sent him to give Luigi the Wog a hand with the bricks at number twenty two. It was one of them Radburn places, the front of the house faced another house across a short narrow lane that joined two streets and the driveway ran between the number 20 and 24, what they called a battleaxe block. Neither house either side of the drive had been started much past the concrete stumps and the slope of the land meant the building materials for all three houses were lumped together more or less where Twenty Two’s drive would take a turn to the right and open up. The men were sitting on some of the stacked timber frames for 24, enjoying the break and the weather and, if Billy was honest, his time with the Wogs.
The Wogs was the name given to Luigi, Mario and Giuseppe, the three men who were assigned to build the brick façade covering in the timber frames of all the houses on the even side of the street. They had started at Sixteen, done Eighteen then jumped to Twenty Two after the rain stopped last week. Billy had no idea why they hadn’t gone on to Twenty but he figured they had their reasons. The Wogs had the respect of all the blokes working this street. They worked hard, played hard and were nice, friendly blokes. Billy’s Dad had fought them in the Western Desert, well not these three but Luigi had said his uncle had been a prisoner of war and spent most of it in Canada and never came back. He wasn’t dead, he had just opened up a newsagent’s in Vancouver after the Italians switched sides in ’43.
By now the Poms had come and joined in, sitting on the timber frame stack for 20 and adding their voices and accents to the lunchtime gabble. Billy had worked with the Poms last week fetching frames and helping hold them while they hammered them together. They were doing the floor boards of 18 today and reckoned on finishing by knock off. Billy finished his sandwich and lit a cigarette, then leaned back against the stack and relaxed.
“Billy! You worka good to dye!” old Giuseppe said in his sing song Italian accent. He was like something off that movie, ‘They’re A Weird Mob’ he’d seen at the flicks last month. Wore a knotted handkerchief on his head, pants rolled up to show bare ankles and a white singlet on in just about all weather. Billy liked the middle aged bloke, he liked all the Wogs and the Poms, too. Not every Aussie builder felt the same but Billy had been to London and drove around Europe in an old bus a couple of years ago with a bunch of mates he met up with in Earl’s Court. He had finished uni and gone off looking for adventure. When he was tired of Europe he came back to Sydney overland in a Bedford van. He had tried to settle down and work as a solicitor like he had trained to be but he was bitten by the bug. He preferred to work hard making good money on building sites then piss of for a few months in the winter and just travel around Australia, Asia, wherever.
“Thanks, Giuseppe, you worka pretty da good too, mate!” They all laughed at him taking the piss out of the wog. They knew he didn’t mean anything nasty by it, not like some of them. Last week a Greek and a Maltese had gotten into a fight with the sparky’s doing the odd side of the street. Both of them had been sacked but it hadn’t been their fault and everybody knew it. Loud mouthed sparky’s had been taking the piss a bit too much and the Greek bloke had enough and asked them to lay off. They turned on him and the Maltese carpenter jumped in and it was on for young and old. Cliff the pommy plumber had told him how the previous year when they were doing the suburb next to this one the Turks and the Greeks had gotten it on, then the Serbs and Croats and even some Irish lads had started blueing amongst themselves. This housing commission project was a regular United Nations but the fact was the war hadn’t been over that long and even if it had, there were plenty other reasons for everyone to get stuck in now and then if they scratched history hard enough.
Billy Cooper was actually Alistair William Cooper of the Wahroonga Coopers. His family were First Fleet or Second Fleet free settlers, or so his Aunty Agnes always claimed. His dad thought there had to be some convict blood somewhere down the line but nobody looked too hard. His father was a solicitor in the city and Billy had gone to good schools and had it pretty easy growing up but he loved the rough and ready life on the building sites. It suited him and if Australia hadn’t been in Vietnam, even though his number never came up for nasho’s when he was old enough because he was in uni, he probably would have joined the army and been an officer like his dad had been in the war. Billy Cooper was tall, well built and deeply tanned, fashionably long ‘hippy’ hair and a beard that was barely past scraggly enough to be respectable and add some character to his face. He was 26 and loving every day of his life out here in the far western suburbs.
The New South Wales Housing Commission had a big part to play in the SROP, or Sydney Regional Outline Plan and that meant that new houses were being built in satellite suburbs around major railway stations with the plan looking to add all the cultural, educational and industrial areas to make the place pretty much self sustaining. These new suburbs were all in the growth corridors spreading out from the CBD like spokes on a wheel. They were doing the same thing in Green Valley near Liverpool and Claymore, Airds and Macquarie Fields down Campbelltown way. Billy had been through these places and seen the same houses being built there as here. There were perhaps five or six basic floor plans and some were left handed and others right handed as the ganger had told him one smoko. That just meant they reversed the floor plan to add a little variety. All the houses were available for purchase or rent and so far plenty of people had bought up. The average three bedroom brick veneer house cost less than $17,000, although that was a fair ask when the average weekly pay packet was just $39. That was one of the reasons Billy was working on the building sites. They got more than that and overtime too and he didn’t mind the travel, nothing on the roads coming to work and everybody heading the other way at knock off. It was a long way out, though. Over thirty mile to the city, he reckoned.
Billy had read up on the SROP and what was in store for this suburb. It was part of the Mt Druitt post code, 2770, although he thought where he sat now would be called Whalan. Either that or Emerton. All the suburbs were pretty much the same and still getting built in patches, here and there. Where he sat near the top of the hill he could see out across a couple of gentle valleys and see the railway line and Mt Druitt station and shops. They were going to build one of those big shopping centers there, just like that new place at Roselands. Dozens of shops all in the one place, not dragged down the main street from the station to the highway like over at St Mary’s where they had bought some smoko the other week. They better put the bus in or it was going to be a long walk to anywhere, he thought. Billy had loved London’s buses and tube and hadn’t felt the need for a car when he lived there. As soon as they got back from Europe they sold the bus to the next lot of Aussies and Kiwis. Then he bought the Bedford and that was still going strong somewhere up the north coast, sold it to a couple of surfies.
He could see the railway station from where he sat but it was at least a mile and a half away as the crow flew. Hot days like today with a bubba in a pram and poor mum would be stuffed by the time she made it to the shop. Schools were close enough and there were going to be some shops nearby in every suburb the ganger had said, which should help but you would still want a car here, he was sure of that.
The paper had said the residents that were buying up the new houses were all from the inner city. Leichhardt and Balmain and those slummy areas in the inner west. They probably thought this was great, all this space and blue sky. They would love having a house all to themselves without neighbours banging on the walls either side like they did in those old Victorian terraces. Damp and cold in winter and stinking hot and muggy in the summer, at least out here you had a choice between brick veneer or weatherboard. It was hotter out here, he knew that and the Poms had told him last winter they thought they were back in Blighty some days, it was that cold and wet. He knew what a pommy winter felt like so he was planning on making it to Brisbane before the Queen’s Birthday in June. Head to Cairns and then maybe across to Darwin, see what was happening in the top end. Maybe get some work on a cattle station then nip over to Timor, have to brush up on his Portuguese. His dad had fought in Timor in the war and spoke highly of the local Timorese, not so the Portuguese or their neighbours, the Indonesians. Billy would find out for himself as he always did. No point taking dad’s word for it all the time, had to make his own mind up, and his own mistakes now and then.
The Italians were lying back getting some sleep and the Poms had decided they could out kip the wogs, Billy was the only bloke still upright. He knew they would be back at it in fifteen minutes so he didn’t see much point in trying to sleep. He looked around the building site and spread his gaze out into the street, the still fresh asphalt gleaming black and bits on the edges melting in the mid day heat. He could smell the tar and the new timber of the frames and even the dust off the pile of bricks he would have to shift after lunch. The air was still, hot and almost thick enough to touch. It would piss down later, about three or four and that would be a welcome relief. They would be packed up and waiting for the boss to let them head off but if the big boss was around he would have to keep them handy, just in case.
“Enjoying your time with the wogs, Billy?”
It was the ganger, Old Ted. Old Ted was actually 49 but as one of the oldest blokes on the site and because there was a younger Ted somewhere, he was known as Old Ted. Old Ted didn’t mind the nickname, he was the ganger and the blokes respected his authority and didn’t give him any grief so why make a fuss?
“They’re good blokes, Ted” said Billy. “A lot of fun and bloody hard workers. Takes me all I have to keep up with them!”
“Yeah, they do work hard when they want to. We had some here in the war and they were pretty keen to do a good job.”
“Italians? Here? In the war?” repeated Billy.
“Yeah, well you know there used to be an airstrip here, down the hill over there past the new electric power lines.” Old Ted pointed with a shrug of his chin over his shoulder and Billy followed the stubble, down the hill and to the south west of where they were sitting. In between where they were now and where the airstrip had once been was less than a mile of new streets, house starts and some gum trees left to add a bit of character to the new estate. Billy could see the large open space that was ear marked as a reserve with footy fields and cricket pitches to go in.
“So the airstrip was along the flat bit, from the railway line to the north, Ted?” Billy deduced.
“Yeah, pretty much. This side of Rope’s Creek. You can see the treeline along the banks of the creek. Further down, on the other side of the railway line the local Abo’s used to camp at the water holes, had done since time began I suppose. Sometimes they would come to the camp perimeter fence and ask for grog or the kids would beg for lollies. The gins might get in on it too, now and again, but wasn’t my thing. I felt sorry for the poor beggars, especially in the winter. They didn’t get much of a fair shake from the white fella back in those days but then when was it ever different around here?” Ted asked no one in particular. He seemed to have drifted off and was gazing down the hill towards where the wartime strip once stood.
“So what kind of planes did they have here, Ted?” asked Billy. He still had the young lad’s interest on the war and planes and such things.
“There weren’t any, at least not all the time like a fighter squadron or anything. This wasn’t one of those dispersal strips or a training ‘drome like Camden and Bankstown. This was where they trained airfield maintenance and construction squadrons and what have you. They did have plane’s fly in and out on navigation flights and such, for training. At the end of the war the Yanks left ten thousand bombs here. Five hundred pounders. I was demobbed by then but I saw the photo in the paper and it took me back. I think they bull dozed the lot at the end of the strip down at the railway end ‘cause it’s all lumpy down there, overgrown now.”
“Geez, wouldn’t they be dangerous now? What if someone was to dig and hit one, set it off?”
“Nah, they was just the steel casings and I think the explosives. No fuses or detonators. They would burn pretty hot but not explode. Needed a small explosion from the fuse to set them off and make the big explosion. You weren’t in the forces, were you, Billy?”
“I wanted to join but I was in uni and anyway, I missed the nasho draw by a day either side!” He thought it bad luck at the time, his birthday not getting drawn like a tombola ball at the church fete while the men born the day before and the day after him got their call up. Funny system but that was the way it was. “Then I could have joined up but I had a girlfriend and she wanted to go to the UK for a year and travel around Europe so I did that, instead.”
“Good fer you, Billy. Getting an education and chasing a Sheila is a lot better than marching up and down playing soldiers. Trust me. I never wanted to join up but I knew they would call me up and stick me in the army and my dad had been in Flanders and he told me that was no way to go, so I volunteered for the RAAF and ended up in an airfield construction and maintenance squadron. Got up to the islands in early 1945 and the only Japs I saw, dead or alive, were filling in craters at the end of the strip. We used to have to guard them sometimes and they were a pathetic looking, sorry bunch. All ashamed because they had been wounded and taken prisoner but by then not many were too willing to die for the Emperor if they could avoid it!” Both men looked down the hill to where the old airfield had once stood, then Ted said, “After the war they made a racing car track there. I used to go and watch them scream down the old runway to the Devil’s Elbow where they threw a tight U turn then screamed back, across the grass to the pits then up over there where they are building that school on Madang Avenue, then turn and across the grass again and hooking up with the runway. The track was rubbish, the drivers used to help fill in potholes in between races. Not on the old strip, we made that good and solid. On the bits they graded to join up the good bits. Just a dodgy layer of bitumen and not much else. Saving money I guess, just like the mob building this place.”
“What do you mean, saving money, Ted?”
Old Ted chuckled and explained, “This place is built on the Radburn Plan, do you know what that is, Billy?”
“Not really, something to do with the fronts of houses facing each other and the backs come out onto a street for the cars to drive up and park at the back of the houses, rather than having driveways and stuff.” Billy said.
“Yeah pretty much but it’s more than that. There is this place in the US in New Jersey called Radburn and they built houses there like this in the 1920’s. Basically the excuse goes that people like a sense of community with their houses facing a shared communal green space. The back yards come out on a cul-de-sac road so there is no traffic out the front to disturb the kids playing and people chatting and such.”
“That sounds alright, nice and friendly” said Billy.
“You would think so but it doesn’t work like that. What happens is the kids tend to run riot on the paths between the houses and people end up coming in through the back doors and not the front and it just doesn’t work.”
“So if it didn’t work in the US, why bring it here?”
“Money, Billy. Money. What shapes all major decisions be they from business or government, which is too often the same thing as my old union boss dad used to say back in the twenties and thirties.”
“How do you mean, money, Ted?”
“Well, a main street like the one out the front here must be so wide and the kerbs and gutters must match specifications and there has to be so many streetlights and telegraph poles every set number of yards and the sewage and water pipes must be so big to handle the number of houses, yes?” he asked to make sure Billy was following but he knew the young man was smarter than most and would keep up.
“Yes, so…”
“Well with Radburn Plan houses, the streets are back alleys, not streets. This means they can be narrower, use less bitumen and have no foot paths and the telegraph poles and street lights can be fewer and the sewage and water pipes can run down the guts and handle twice as many house connections. All in all, it saves a motza of money to make them like that as well as letting you crowd in a lot more houses without making the place seem crowded. You still have the same size blocks of land but the roads that service them are smaller and use less space and over the entire estate it saves a lot of space and materials and money.”
“Sounds brilliant, Ted. You get more public housing for the tax payer’s pound, or dollar as it is now. Why the scornful tone?”
“Because it means that people live a back to front kind of lifestyle and they found in America they didn’t like that. They found the place becomes like a ghetto and these quiet walkways and lanes are ideal places for gangs to lie in wait and jump on people going to the shops or the main road for a bus. People were fine if they had a car and used it all the time but half the reason for the layout was to encourage people to walk and get involved in their community and it never happened like that” said Ted.
“And now they expect it to work better here?”
“Not just here or even other places in Sydney, Billy. Same plans are used in Broadmeadows in Melbourne and in Brisbane and probably Adelaide and Perth too I imagine, not to mention country towns like Newcastle and Dubbo. You mark my words, give it a few years and this will be a big problem, especially for whoever has to pay to replace the streetlight bulbs and the fence palings.”
Billy sat there for a few minutes, turning this over in his head before Old Ted roused the men and chivvied them back to work. It might be interesting to come back here when he was Old Ted’s age, another twenty or so years and see what the place is like then. Maybe see if he could remember which houses he helped to build, see who was living in them. Billy got back into the swing of things, loading bricks into his wheel barrow and running it up to where the bricklayers seemed to lay as fast as he could deliver. It was hot and he was looking forward to a cold beer at knockoff time but he couldn’t stop thinking about his chat with Old Ted and what this place would be like many years from now. Where would he be? Would have kids and a wife? Would he still be pushing a wheel barrow? He laughed at that and knew after his next walkabout he would settle down. Who knows, maybe buy a place around here somewhere. But not a Radburn Plan place. Not one that opened onto a walkway. Maybe a battleaxe one like this. Lots of privacy even if you do tend to use the back door all the time. Nice and safe for the kids though, no traffic to worry about and that was something to consider.
Chapter 2: The Tag
11:20pm Tuesday
“Where you goin’ this time of night, boy?”
“Out”
“Don’t you backtalk me boy. I’m your uncle and you show some respect for your elders!”
“You asked me where I was going and I’m going out, alright?”
“No, it’s not alright. It’s after ten and it’s a school night. I don’t care how old you think you are, you need your sleep and you need to stay out of trouble. You should be in bed, not running the streets.”
“Yeah, well I’m going!”
“One day, boy! One day you gonna have to stand and face your life. You can’t run away forever…” Tafon’s uncle was cut short by the banging of the door, followed a staccato heart beat later by the tinny sound of the screen door following suit. Big Will just shook his head and went back to his Bible. He felt for the boy but he’d done all he could. Any more would be just his will against Tafon’s and that was never going to end in anything but misery. Big Will knew that because he had been just like his sister’s oldest child when he was a teenager. Only then he had run with a gang in one of Auckland’s toughest suburbs. Now Tafon ran with a gang of his own on some of Sydney’s toughest streets. Cycles, vicious cycles.
Big Will was playing a dangerous game, trying to give Tafon just enough line to keep him playing but keeping him close enough to reel him in if he looked like getting into serious trouble. Trouble came in varying grades and different levels of cost. Some trouble cost you time, some cost you money, some cost you time and money and some… well he didn’t want his nephew in that kind of trouble. Big Will had held his best mate’s hand while he died in his girlfriend’s arms what, twenty years ago? More. Dead, not here anymore, missed out on all the good times since then. There were good times, even though money was always tight. Shit, any time was better than dead time. Rangi had been dead twenty two years this New Year’s Eve. Never saw his nineteenth birthday.
Tafon was eighteen now. Eighteen and one week, two days and some hours old and he was racing as fast as he could to his next birthday. Maybe when he got past his fortieth like Big Will he would have the sense to slow down. They come around every year whether you want them to or not. He never thought he would see forty. Never thought he would see twenty five for that matter. If you can get the young bloke past his quarter century without a serious stretch in boob and no blood on his hands he would settle down. They all did. You never saw a gang banger over thirty. They were either dead or settled down. By the time they hit twenty six they somehow realised how stupid it was fighting over ‘turf’ that belonged to the crown, the council or some other... Mind you, if you did come across a gang banger in his thirties or forties you were wise to leave him alone, he wasn’t your average citizen. He might take a bit to go physical on you but if and when he did you wouldn’t be walking away. Big Will knew a few blokes like that back in Aeotearoa and maybe one or two here in Sydney but they were the exception and you could spot these guys coming a mile away and get well out of their way. Most of the time.
Tafon was cocky and figured he was bullet proof like all young blokes do at his age but he was street smart and knew how things went. If he could get him away from those two roosters he hung with then there was a chance. Maybe get him into a TAFE course, swing an apprenticeship at his mum’s work for him or something. Something could be fixed up for him, the kid was smart enough and had a good heart, just hung with the wrong crowd. Who didn’t at that age? Big Will had. At least he had till the night Rangi died and he gave up walking for the rest of his life.
Big Will nearly scraped the hallway wall again as he made sure the slammed door was locked and spun his wheelchair around, heading for bed. No point waiting up and no point chasing Tafon. Look bloody stupid screaming down the street this time of night in a wheelchair telling a grown man to come home and go to bed ‘cos he had school in the morning. What was that? Counter productive. Yeah, that was the term they used at his councilor’s course. Counter productive. Best to let the boy win this one and then have another go when he had him a little more cornered. Pain in the arse this cripple shit.
“Ay Taf!”
“Ay Shane!, Ay Chris! Good to see youse could make it!”
“You’re the late one, Taf!” laughed Shane. He was always the first one anywhere, easiest for him to slip out. He only had his gran at home and if she wasn’t sleeping she was too scared of upsetting him and having him leave her to say anything about his nocturnal wanderings, even on a school night. Not that school meant much to Shane. He was only still there because the government said he had to be or else he would go to a correctional facility and he got paid to go. His student allowance wasn’t much but if he wagged too much time off he would get the social onto him and then they would piss about with his pay and it was just simpler to go, get the tick and then piss off if he felt like it. Night time he did as he pleased and unless it was freezing or pissing down he preferred to be hanging out than sitting at home. He didn’t miss anything on tv as he just downloaded it off the net and watched it when he wanted to. He just liked hanging out late at night and the later the better.
“You got the cans, Taf?” asked Chris. He didn’t have a great deal of difficulty getting away every second week as his Dad was on nights and his mum did afternoons. By the time she got home he was out and he would miss her in the morning or just say g’day to his dad as he returned and mum would ask dad and dad would say he saw him and what was the problem and who gave a rat’s arse anyway? His parents had better things to worry about, like a whopping big mortgage, two car loans, four credit cards and a personal loan for the holiday to Hong Kong they took last year. They also had the mobile phones, the internet, the cable television and that interest free loan for the new 60 inch plasma TV they hadn’t started paying off. Yeah, they had more to worry about than where their eldest son got himself to on week nights. When they were both on days he still managed to swing a few nights out but if he was honest with himself, he actually liked having to stay home and just cruise the web, play his Xbox and pretend to be a good student, homework and study and all that shit. Made a change. No pressure to perform for his peers.
“So, what’s it feel like, Taf?” Shane queried.
“What’s what feel like, Shane?”
“Being eighteen. Grown up. Legal?”
Tafon was about to say it didn’t feel any different to being seventeen years, eleven months and twenty nine days old, but he wasn’t going to let them off the hook that easy. He was a year or so older than they were because he had repeated school twice, they had just the one year extra under their belts. That was why they were finishing Year 10 and not Year 11 or for him, 12. Nobody was ever going to university but Chris was supposed to go to TAFE and Shane was supposed to do something his gran would approve of and Tafon was supposed to finish Year 10, even if he did the vocational stuff the thicko’s did. None of the boys gave a toss, if they had been asked, but inside they did. Inside they wanted to be rich and famous and successful and respected and they knew, in their heart of hearts, thicko’s weren’t rich, successful, famous or respected. It was just that earning that shit was such hard work. It was easier to piss on it than put in the effort.
“It feels good. Wait till youse are legal. I can buy smokes and booze…”
“So can we, Taf. In fact Chris buys more smokes and booze than you…”
“Yeah, but I’m talking no worries now. No sweat. Legal. Got ID and screw them, they gotta sell it to me!”
“So you can buy knives and cans of spray paint and vote, too, right?”
“You can buy knives now, dickhead. Sixteen for knives. Who wants to vote anyway? As for spray cans…”
“ Five finger discount at…”
“WALK AWAY PRICES!” they chorused, laughing and finding it far funnier than it should have been. It was just the rush of being out on the streets when all the nobody’s were inside their little boxes, TV’s blueing the curtained windows and the only sounds were those they made themselves as they walked down the middle of the empty street. Flanked by an honour guard of otto bins, yellow lids and red lids standing two by two outside each drive on either side of the street, wheels aligned and just touching the kerb, the boys trooped their colours past the neighbourhood they called their turf. Housing commission on the left, renters and owners on the right, the small park coming up at the intersection with Luxford Road belonged to them, had done since they were kids. They would hang out there for a while, then maybe head into the tunnel under the main road and smash the lights the council just replaced. Maybe they would head for the mall and dodge the security pricks, smash the lights there the mall just replaced. There was always the railway station. This time of night the two staff were hunkered down in the ticket office and wouldn’t dare come out for love or money. Even when that Canadian guy in the wheelchair was bashed in the lift it looked like they waited till the two kids who rolled him had run off. Made the news for days. They had plenty of lights to smash on the platform. The best ones were right in front of the security cameras. Pull your hoodie over your face and no way the cops could prove it was you. Who’s scared of the cops anyway? Nothing they can do to you or you sue them. Nothing the teachers at school can do either. Or your oldies. Anyone touches you, sue their arse and there were plenty of social workers to help you. Soft in the head those dicks. Thought they were ‘connecting’ or something, trying to act all cool and street when you knew they grew up in friggin Mosman and been to uni and never had their mum hit you or watched as your dad or her boyfriend hit her or you or any of that stuff.
Chris had never seen his dad hit his mum in his life, if he was honest, which he rarely ever was. Hardly ever heard the two argue but then you have to be around each other to fight and they were never home together, at least not so much as made any difference. Always working their arses off.
Shane had never seen his dad and barely remembered what his mum looked like and nobody ever hit his gran because the only bloke around who could have was him and he loved his gran and no way would he hit her or let anyone else raise a finger to her.
Taf had seen his mother lying unconscious on the kitchen floor. He had seen his dad lying there once or twice too. Depended who was the more drunk and who got the first hit in, usually with a frying pan or bottle of something if it were mum and his right fist if it were dad. Then dad ran off and mum stopped drinking and Uncle Will moved in and everything calmed down and had been like that since he was ten or eleven. Still, some things stick in your mind and you can see them all over again.
“Screw walking to the mall, I wanna spray my tag!” said Chris.
“Go on, do this fence. The community service crew just cleaned it last week, see. About time we tagged it, give ‘em something to do!” Shane said.
“Alright. Gimmie the can!”
Valerie Mildano could hear them. If she had had the courage to peek through her lace curtains she would be able to see them. She knew that, which was why she wasn’t peeking. Actually she wasn’t peeking because she knew if she could see them, they could see her. She didn’t want to be seen. She didn’t want them to know she knew they were there and then, maybe they would come back and instead of just spraying paint on her back fence they might do something far worse. Like before, in 1987. She didn’t like to think of that night and yet it was times like these when she could do nothing but remember. Remember her fear, remember him. His breath, his weight, his anger. She was younger then, not young but younger, stronger and yet she had been helpless.
She was seventy five now and beyond helping herself if anything happened which is why she didn‘t look out the window. She could live with paint on her fence, she never walked down that back lane so she would never see what ever it was they were painting on it. She knew if they saw her watching they would climb over the fence and come for her and she couldn‘t handle that. She could barely bring herself to think the thought because of the fear. In fact, she was beyond fear. Valerie Mildano was terrified. She felt the warmth on her legs and heard the splatter on her polished wooden floorboards and she smelt it and she sobbed. She couldn‘t look and she couldn‘t move away from her spot beside the window and she just stood there, sobbed and prayed to her God that this too, would pass.
She wasn‘t a brave woman, but in her time she had been brave enough to leave her home in Italy after the war and go all the way to Australia on a ship with her new husband, Paulo. She said goodbye to her mother and uncles and aunts and sisters and bid farewell to the grave of her father and she boarded the ship to a new land and a new life and it had been hard. Migrants were not always welcomed in 1950’s Australia and those from former enemy countries like Germans, Austrians, Italians and she supposed if she ever saw one which she didn’t, Japanese, were given a hard time, at least harder than the Greeks and the Maltese and even the English seemed to get called names like pommy, something you never heard anymore just like you never hear the names they called her and Paulo, or their children, Mario, Maria and Guido. Wog, wop, spick, greaseball, gyppo. Name calling seemed to have died off in the 1990’s as attitudes changed and new waves of migrants from other countries began to arrive. Now the mall was full of Africans and people from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan and people wearing pyjamas and women with their heads covered in scarves like her mother used to wear all the time, or full face veils with only the eyes showing. Nobody called them names. Not to their faces but many people didn’t like them coming here.
Valerie understood what it meant to leave behind your home, your country, your family, your language, everything you knew and come to Australia. She didn’t like them either but she understood what they were going through trying to adjust. Even the loud black kids at the library, always so many of them and always making noise and using the computers and hanging around outside and looking so menacing and dangerous. She felt the same way when she saw a gang of Samoan kids or Abo kids even if you can’t call them Abo kids anymore, you have to call them Koori or Indigenous or something. She still called them Abo’s and she remembered how when she first came here there were not so many of them but the ones that were around were real Abo’s. So many now say they are Abo but they don’t look like it but she didn’t blame them for not saying anything back then. Back then if you were an Abo you got nothing but a hard time, harder than her and her husband or her kids, even though her kids were all born here. She had been in Australia since 1954 and she became an Australian citizen a couple of years before all those Abo’s became Australian citizens and she had voted YES in the referendum to give them citizenship and they never said thankyou, just wanted her to say sorry for some reason but she never did. Maybe if she had they wouldn‘t be painting her fence. All the bad things around here were done by Abo’s. Everything. But you couldn’t say that because they would call you a racist and then you would get your house burned down, Valerie was sure of that.