P E T E R
Kate Walker
First published 1991 by Omnibus Books, Australia
First
American edition 1993 by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston
Smashwords
edition published by Kate Walker 2011
ISBN:
978-1-4659-1660-0
Copyright Kate Walker 1991
All rights reserved. No part of
this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, without the prior written
permission of the author or subsequent copyright holder.
All
characters are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or
dead is purely coincidental.
Dear
Reader,
This is a revised version of the original novel first
published in Australia in 1991, and the US in 1993. American readers
please note I’ve used the Australian word ‘fringe’ instead of
‘bangs’. A fringe is a fall of hair across the forehead.
Table
of Contents
1 –
Friday morning! School holidays!
2
– A bit about me.
3 – I was
down on the flat …
4 –
“Peter, is that you?”
5 –
Mum came home at 3.30 …
6 –
David Rutherford lives two blocks down …
7
– The Markets is a big steel shed …
8
– A dinner to remember!
9 –
With my bedroom door open …
10
– He sat on the end of my bed.
11
– Tony came round …
12 –
At the Mall …
13 – On the
way home …
14 – The first
bikes arrived …
15 – I
peeked inside the garage …
16
– I started my bike …
17 –
I flew into the paddock …
18
– Tony phoned …
19 –
“What were yus doin’ …
20
– I’m not scared of sex.
21
– Dad dropped in …
22 –
Vince suggested the subdivision …
23
– I crossed to the curb …
24
– I roared down Valley View Parade.
25
– Peak hour traffic …
26 –
On Saturday Mum baked cakes …
27
– On Monday I caught a bus …
28
– I drew some money out …
29
– I took up smoking …
30 –
With my head still woozy …
31
– Wednesday was cloudy …
32
– Friday morning …
33 –
Three days later …
About the
Author & Book Awards for ‘Peter’
Foreign
Language Editions of ‘Peter’
Cover
Copyright
______ 1 ______
Friday morning! School holidays! Nine o’clock sharp! Mrs Minslow arrived and went straight into her bulldozer impersonation, rattling dishes and banging cupboard doors.
Sleep in? Forget it.
I held out for as long as I could by rolling over to face the wall and curling my pillow around my ears. But next minute – Whaaaaaar! My bedroom door flew open and my world was being sucked up the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner.
Mrs Minslow is our cleaning-lady-cum-semi-resident-snoop. She never knocks, just barges straight in. You could be doing anything!
“Sleeping in at your age? I don’t know what your mother’s thinking of.” Even with my eyes closed I wasn’t spared the image of her floral stomach advancing on me as she sent her vacuum-cleaner nozzle on a seek-and-destroy mission under my bed. “Now, when I was girl ...”
This nosey old jelly-roll was once a girl? What a terrifying thought.
“And I’ll need those sheets for the wash in five minutes, so up you get!”
I had my underpants on but I grabbed my clothes off the chair and held them in front of me as I edged out the door. What a way to start the day – being perved on by a myopic old cleaning woman.
I got dressed in the bathroom and then went to get some breakfast. The state of the kitchen put me right off eating. Every cupboard door was open, and the contents of the fridge were spewed across the breakfast bench. She’d been into everything.
It was too early to go to Tony’s and scrounge breakfast off him. So instead I went downstairs to the garage, pulled on my bike boots and helmet, and pushed my Yammi up the drive and on to the road.
The sky was white; the day was hot. Already it had the feel of an oven. And I’d been forced out into it, driven from my own home.
Go back and tell old Mother Min to get nicked.
Right!
Pull the plug on her vacuum cleaner.
Good idea!
Drop your duds and flash her!
Yah!
They were all brilliant ideas. I did none of them. I walked my bike as far as Longworth Avenue, pumped the engine into life at the top of the hill, and rode down into the subdivision.
______ 2 ______
A bit about me. My name’s Peter Dawson, I’m fifteen, I hate my brother, and I’m not all that keen on my dad. He’s only part-time now anyway, just wings in for Christmases, birthdays and crises. He and Mum have been divorced for a couple of years and I hope they stay that way.
Mum’s a nurse in a doctor’s surgery and she’s great, you’d like her. She’s the one who took me through the “birds and bees” routine when I was eleven. Of course I knew most of it already anyway, from dirty jokes and drawings on the back of toilet doors, but I liked the way she did it – straight from the hip. Know what I mean? Like I was a man and understood all the big words she was using.
My ambitions at the moment are to finish school, get my road licence for the bike, and get a job with cameras: press photographer, television, movies maybe! And after that? I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it that much. Make lots of money and be famous!
Anyway, to get back to the subdivision ... My big payoff for getting up early was that I had the place to myself. I opened the bike up, gunned it down the straights, laid it through the corners and roared across the vacant blocks, raising dust behind me. (There’s nothing built in the subdivision yet. It’s just a whole lot of streets with vacant house blocks, waiting for the real estate slump to end.)
When I got bored tearing around there, I went on to the paddock at the far end. That’s a little blind valley that actually belongs to us, that is to Dad. Real estate wise it’s worth nothing. Probably he’d sell it if he could – if anyone wanted to buy it. But they don’t. So he lets the boys ride there because they keep the lantana bush down – saves him getting the slasher in every year to cut it back.
The whole paddock – which is what we call the valley, dunno why – is criss-crossed with bike tracks. There’s hardly a landmark left that hasn’t had a trail cut over it, and some of them are pretty hairy, such as Muffler Hill. That’s the one I went for.
It’s a slag-heap left over from an old mine, and I won’t tell you how many times I’ve bombed out on it. You’ll learn enough of my secrets without me baring the lot.
It’s a steep climb, with a sharp turn at the top, so you can’t afford to go tearing up. Otherwise you’ll overshoot the bend and wipe yourself out. But I like doing things slowly, taking my time and getting them right. Which is exactly what you can’t do with the boys around.
As far as they’re concerned, unless you tear about like a suicidal maniac, risking paraplegia at every tree, then you’re automatically a queer or a marshmallow or whatever the word of the week happens to be. Real men bust their skulls! Only pansies practise! Get the picture?
I came at the hill slow, with my gears low and my revs high. Passed the “muffler” at the bottom (that’s a car exhaust jammed upright in the heart of a tree stump; the boys put it there). I hugged the shoulder of the track to keep clear of the rainwater ruts in the center. Didn’t push it. This wasn’t a race, it was just me. There was hardly any dust in the air and the only noise in the place was mine. And I enjoy the paddock best when it’s like that.
Halfway up I hit a patch of sand, dropped off the footpegs and paddled through it. The bike wasn’t going so well. It’s only a 125 and it was pretty well flogged when I got it. And Muffler Hill is quite a haul, so I wasn’t surprised the engine was surging a bit.
As soon as I felt the back tyre grip solid dirt again, I powered on. The rainwater ruts were edging me off into the weeds so I bounced across them, to the other side. Kept moving, kept scanning ahead.
That’s what I like about trail bikes: there’s a thousand things to do, traps to watch for, decisions to make, all with split-second timing and no second tries. It’s like space games, only better. It’s real!
Rock steps coming up. No problem. I rapped the throttle and jerked the front wheel up and over the first rise. Then the second.
And then the engine missed.
I felt it through my boots on the pegs and my hands on the handgrips. One missed firing stroke in thousands, and I felt it like a missed heartbeat in my chest. My nerves went on to super-scan waiting for it to happen again.
Third step, I rapped the throttle. The bike made the climb but the engine did it again – missed!
The worst place you can lose power is on a hill, and this hill was getting steeper. And if this rattling heap of chicken-shit that passed itself off as a bike was going to drop its guts on me, I wanted to know now!
I squeezed in the clutch and wrung the throttle for all it was worth. Really pressured the engine. It gagged and spluttered and, as I’d half expected, died beneath my hands. I felt gravity tighten its arms around me, ready to bring me to a halt. I picked the best spot that was offering, laid the bike over on the slope and stepped off the high side. And there I sat, hanging on to the bike with one hand and hanging on to the hill with my backside. And swore.
If the boys turned up and caught me doing Spider-Man impersonations on the side of the hill, they’d rip me off something terrible. They’d never believe it was the bike’s fault.
Fortunately, from where I was sitting I could see right across the subdivision, and there was no one in sight – yet. But they’d turn up soon. It was only a matter of time.
I’ll spare you the tedious details of turning a bike on a cliff face and getting it down unpowered. Just take my word for it, it’s a very classy manoeuvre. And a pig!
______ 3 ______
I was down on the flat with my bike on its side-stand when the boys came in through the gate. Gaz was in the lead, with Rats and Jason and the rest of the group straggling behind, about ten kids in all, mostly ones I knew from school. And because I was parked in the shade under one of the paddock’s last surviving gum trees, they pulled in around me, hemming me in with exhaust fumes and noise.
“See your bike’s not goin’ again, Pete!” Jason said. He’s a little toughie who rides an RX80, the smallest bike in the group.
“It just needs tunin’, that’s all,” I said. I had the sparkplug out and wiped it down my jeans, leaving a long oily smear. “See?”
Jason gasped, “That’s incredible!” and announced to the tree, “Peter Dawson’s trick motorcycle will now roll over and play dead. Take it away, Pete!”
The boys laughed. So did I. You’ve got to be able to take a joke down here, otherwise you won’t last ten seconds.
Gaz switched off his machine and sat back, holding it upright between his massive thighs. He’s a big boy, our Gaz. Been shaving since he was thirteen; riding since he was ten. And because he’d been away for Christmas and had just got back, he asked, “What you fellers been up to?” He likes to think we can’t do anything without him.
“Nothing much.”
“Same old stuff, Gaz.”
“Nothin’ interestin’, not since you were here last!” Jason said, and everyone groaned.
Jason’s a crawler, but Gaz lapped it up. “No need to fight over me, fellers,” he said, “there’s enough of me to go round.” And he unzipped his two-hundred-dollar leather jacket down to the waistband, letting his chest, covered with copper-red curls, shine through.
“One thing happened while ya were away,” Rats grinned, and when the boys couldn’t remember what it was, he curled his lip at them. “Friggin’ dickheads! Can’t yus remember what happened yesterday?”
The boys swore, and Rats laughed. He’s a skinny kid with rodent eyes and the tiniest teeth you ever saw. His whole reason for existence is to get up people’s nose. Anyone’s – he doesn’t care.
“Come on, Rats,” Gaz said. “Give! What happened?”
Rats smirked across the group and chanted, “Alice got an earring.”
“Hey, yeah, Alice got an earring!”
The boys were ecstatic at being reminded.
“Alice got an earring.”
“Come on, Alice, show Gaz ya earring. Don’t be shy!”
Alice’s real name is Eddy Peterson. I don’t know how he got the nickname “Alice”, probably no reason. He’s in Year 10, same as me, but he’s a baby – desperate to be liked. He’d do anything to be one of the boys. He’s definitely not the type you’d have tipped for a trail bike rider. No co-ordination whatsoever. His legs and arms wobble just sitting on a bike, and don’t the boys give him hell I over it. But he keeps on turning up. Who can figure it?
“Get ’is helmet off!” Rats yelled.
Eddy was already taking it off by himself, but a couple of pairs of hands shot out and dragged it off for him. He turned his head side-on to show Gaz his gold stud. Usually it’s only the tough boys who get an earring. I don’t know why Eddy thought he was going to get away with it.
“Has it worked yet, Alice? Got anyone interested yet?” the boys asked.
“It’s the other ear that makes ya a faggot,” Eddy said. “The right ear!”
“That’s right, Alice, you got it in the right ear!”
“What do ya reckon, Gaz?” Rats called out. “D’ya reckon Alice’s joined the club?”
“Mmmmm.” Gaz shook his head. “An earring in the right ear, Alice? Don’t know about this one. Looks mighty sus, mighty sus.”
The boys liked that. They took it up, tossed it around, made it their own: “Looks mighty sus, Alice! Mighty sus!”
“Might have to run him through the poofter test,” Rats said.
That got them all yelling out ideas for what the test could be. Most of them were pretty off ideas. Eddy played along with it though, pretending to laugh. And all the while going more rubbery in the middle and limp on his bike.
Gaz had the final say, naturally. He’s a year or two older than most of the boys, and he just presumes he’s the leader therefore he is.
“There’s only one thing that scares poofters more than big dicks,” he said.
“What’s that, Gaz?”
He kept the boys waiting, kept Eddy sweating. It’s unusual for Gaz to join in when they pick on someone. He makes out he’s above all that, like it’s too childish. Maybe Eddy had been getting on his nerves. Or he was bored that day and felt like doing something different. Take your pick.
Gaz plumped out his pink cheeks and said with a smile, “Big hills, of course!”
I didn’t get it. Jason and Clinton fell off their bikes and rolled on the ground, cackling. Most of the boys cracked up too. Eddy glanced around, grinning one minute, looking panicky the next, wondering whether he should laugh or not.
Gaz leaned towards him and said, real chummy, “Now, if you were to scoot up and down there a few times, Alice, we’d know you were all right. We’d know you were one of us.” He let his gaze swing up the slope behind us, and Eddy’s Adam’s apple bounced in his throat.
I didn’t blame it.
The part of the paddock Gaz pointed to was a steep rise of about a hundred foot, sweeping up from the flat where we were congregated, to the line of back fences along Valley View Parade. (That’s where I live; you can see our roof from here.) The whole slope is covered with weeds and scrawny tea-trees hanging on by their toenails, and outcrops of rock that are near vertical in places.
It was all right for Gaz sitting there on 850 cc’s of shiny green Husqvarna – a bike that could climb trees! But Eddy didn’t pretend for a second he was going to try cutting a hillclimb up there. His little red Honda wouldn’t make it over the first stump.
So he blurted out, “We’re not allowed up there!”
“Really?” Gaz leaned further forward, giving Eddy his full, undivided attention, all two hundred pounds of it. “And why do you think that is?”
“We’re not allowed near the fences! None of us are! You’re not either!” Eddy said.
Bad move. That was not the line to take with Gaz.
He settled his bulk slowly back onto his bike seat and said, “I ride where I like, feller. Got it?”
Naturally the other boys said the same: they rode where they like, too. Meaning Eddy was in trouble. His backbone must have felt like porridge, ’cos he was wobbling so much his bike was wobbling too. It wouldn’t look so bad if he was a little kid, but he’s quite big – what you’d call fleshy. Everything about him is loose, including his brain!
He called across the group to me, “We’re not allowed up there, are we? You tell ’em, Pete, we’re not allowed!”
My Adam’s apple did a bounce then. I didn’t want any part of this. It wasn’t my problem.
I don’t pick on Eddy. I’m not the least bit interested in giving anyone a hard time, and he’s noticed it. He’s even thanked me for it. “Thanks for not pickin’ on me, Pete,” he said once. “You’re the only friend I’ve got in the paddock.”
Wrong again! I’m not his friend. No one can afford to be friends with Eddy down here, he’s too much of a dork.
I’ve got to be careful here myself. I’m only just accepted by these kids as it is. Being in all “One” classes at school, and doing photography and coming top in English, are considered highly unmasculine. I have to spit and swear and take an occasional leak against a tree to make up for it, otherwise I’d be considered sus too.
While all this was going on I was squatted beside my bike, fiddling with the carbi screws and wrapping the throttle to keep the engine running. And that’s right where I was staying – out of it! “I dunno,” I mumbled and concentrated on the screws.
“No, you remember, Pete!” Eddy sat higher on his bike, trying to make eye contact. “We’re not supposed to make a noise up near the houses. You remember?” He was pleading to be saved.
I shrugged. “Maybe there was somethin’ said about it a while back.”
“Ya do remember!” he told me. “Your old man said he’d kick us out if we made any noise up there.” It was like he was blaming me now for what my old man had said.
Gaz’s pale eyes slid across to me. “So your old man thinks he’s gunna kick us out?”
I couldn’t expect to shrug Gaz off so easily. “I wouldn’t have a clue,” I said. “He’s not around any more ... thank Christ.”
“Then his mum’ll do it!” Eddy yelled. “She’ll kick us out!”
Gaz grinned. “Oh? Bit butch, is she? Lady wrestler? Weightlifter, maybe? Gunna toss us around a bit, give us a thrill?”
“Yeah, go for it!”
“She into whips, Pete?”
“Yah, bondage!”
That was hard to take, having to listen to all the little loonies crack jokes about Mum. Especially when Eddy joined in: “Pete wouldn’t go up there. He’d be too scared of his big butch mummy!”
“He’d better go up there,” Rats said, “or if he don’t, we’ll all know why!”
As quick as that, I was in the hot seat! Everyone was glaring at me now and suddenly I had to climb the rotten hill. This place is a minefield: one wrong step and ... aaah! Look Mum, no legs!
I glanced up the slope without really seeing it. “My bike’d make it up there,” I said, “when it’s going properly.”
“Quit using your bike as an excuse.”
“Can’t use that one forever!”
“I’m not using it as an excuse!” I said. “I went up Muffler Hill this morning!”
“Who’s never been up Muffler Hill?” Rats said.
Eddy hasn’t, for one. And, boy, was I tempted to say so, to swing the joke back onto him. And I should have. It would have kept him from blurting out his next cretinous line. “I’ll lend you mine, Petey!” he shrilled in a girlish voice.
The idiot! He thought he was being funny. He thought everyone was going to love him for playing the clown, when what he was doing was handing out nails and wood so the boys could crucify him. And me besides.
Straight away the boys started making cracks like: “What else’ve you two been lending each other over the holidays?” and “Check out his ears! See if he’s got Alice’s other earring!”
Then bloody Eddy did it again! “That’s right,” he said. “I gave ’im the other earring, the one for the right ear!”
“Ya gave me nothin’, Eddy, so shut your face,” I said. I was standing up now.
Eddy’s mouth fell open.
“Aw, you’ve hurt his feelings, Petey. No more earrings for you.”
“And he thought you were his friend.”
“A lovers’ tiff. They’re having a lovers’ tiff.”
The joke had gone far enough. The best thing to do with the boys when they get like this – stuck on a joke – is to clear out. Whatever you do or say, it’s just more ammunition; logs on a fire. Actually, gasoline on a fire would be a better way of putting it.
I rammed the screwdriver into the tool pouch at the back of the bike seat and zipped it shut.
“Not leaving already?” Gaz asked. “We were hoping to hear more about your big holiday romance.”
I swung my leg over my bike, concentrating on keeping the engine firing rather than on them. Or pretending to.
“Better go that way!” Rats nodded in the direction of the boulders and the tea-trees – up the death-defying slope, in other words.
“Yeah, up ya go, Pete. Get it up!”
“Can ’e get it up, Alice? Is ’e any good?”
Suddenly I was in the middle of a war dance – mouths chanting and boots stomping all around me. I tried to roll my bike forward and found I had to work the throttle like crazy. My on-the-spot tune-up had knackered it.
“Up you go, Petey.”
I didn’t have a choice, I had to say something to save myself and swing the spotlight back the other way.
“Ladies first, Alice! After you!” I said. It wasn’t particularly clever and I felt lousy doing it.
Eddy’s eyes bugged out. I’d never called him Alice before, and I guess he hadn’t expected it.
But he surprised me more! He suddenly let fly with a long list of names. Every foul thing the boys had called him over the past months, he hurled at me. Talk about recycling your garbage! I couldn’t let him get away with it. I had to slam him.
“Go wank off somewhere else, cretin!” I told him.
If Eddy wanted to keep on riding with the group, he had to be able to handle it on his own. No one saves anyone else in the paddock. There’s no masked avengers here.
I got my bike moving and powered off out of there, as best I could.
______ 4 ______
“Peter, is that you?”
Damn! Mrs Minslow. I’d forgotten she was still in the house, cleaning. She was in the kitchen, head-first in the fridge and rattling the shelves.
“Yeah, it’s me.” I kept on heading down the hallway.
“Have you been out on that bike again?”
“Yes, Mrs Minslow.”
“You’ll kill your mother one day, the way you ride that bike.”
“Only if she’s standing in the driveway when I come in.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing, Mrs Minslow.”
“Peter! On your way through, bring me the Ziff cleaner from the bathroom.”
Because she’s working, she thinks everyone else should be.
I grabbed the Ziff, deposited it on the breakfast bench – still smothered in jars and bits of food – and kept on going.
“Peter?” Mrs Minslow was out of the fridge now, wiping her hands on her floral apron. “You’re pale,” she said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes you are, my boy!”
“No, I’m not!” And I’m not your boy.
“Let me feel you.” She came rolling towards me.
I backed away and opened a cupboard door between us. “I’m fine!”
She stopped and stared, frisking me with her eyes. “Have you fallen off your bike again?” she said.
“No.”
Vince chose that moment to make his entrance. He’s my older brother, and he was wearing good jeans and cover-up goo on his pimples, so he was obviously on his way out. He broke the end off a wedge of cheese that was out on the kitchen bench.
“Come off your bike again, Ace?” he asked.
“No!”
“Look, Ace, why not forget all this kid stuff with the busted elbows and scraped knees, and go for the big one – brain damage! Try it without the helmet, hey, and make us proud of you!”
“Lord spare us!” Mrs Minslow cried.
“Just giving the kid a little pep talk, Mrs Min,” Vince said. “Spurring him on to greater things.”
But that was not what she was gawping at. Vince had forgotten there was one person left in the world yet to be stunned by his new haircut. He started patting it.
“What on earth possessed your mother to let you do that to your hair?” Mrs Minslow asked.
She should talk; her hair is blue!
“Mum didn’t let me,” Vince said. “I did it myself.”
It’s the truth. He cadged twenty dollars off Mum, saying he wanted his hair trimmed before he went back to uni next month. Then he went to a trendy hairdresser in town, and came home looking like a toothbrush. Short back and sides and long on top, which doesn’t really work on him ’cos his hair is curly.
“Do you like his new perm?” I said. “He got it permed while he was at the hairdresser’s too.”
Mrs Minslow huffed at me like I’d said something immoral. “Of course he didn’t get it permed.”
Sometimes I think I’m the only person in this house with a sense of humour.
Vince took a swig of orange juice from a plastic bottle and said, “See ya later.”
“Where are you going?” Mrs Minslow asked him.
“Out,” he said.
“If your mother phones and wants to know where you are, I’d like to be able to tell her.” She shuffled after him as he headed for the door.
“You can tell her,” Vince called from the hallway, “I’ve gone out!” And the front door banged.
I broke a piece of cheese off for my breakfast too.
“Peter, do you know where your brother’s going?” Mrs Minslow asked me. The housework is just a front to her. She thinks Mum’s really paying her to keep tabs on us.
“No,” I said, “and I don’t care.”
She gasped, making out like I’d shocked her to her corn-pads. “That’s a terrible thing to say. You should care about your brother. You should love your brother.”
Good one, Mrs Min!
Who’d have thought the old girl had it in her to crack a funny?
I nearly choked on my cheese.
______ 5 ______
Mum came home at 3.30, an hour later than usual. I was in the garage fiddling with my bike when she drove in. Vince bounded down the stairs and yanked her car door open for her.
“Madame!” He bowed like a butler.
Mum stayed in her seat and pushed her hair back, showing her grey roots. “How come your father gets the car with the air-conditioning,” she sighed, “and I get this sweat-box?”
“He needs it for his self-image,” Vince said. “You don’t. You’re cool.”
“Oh?” She raised one eyebrow. “And what do you want?”
“Do I always have to want something?”
The eyebrow slumped. “Sorry, honey.” (She calls us “honey” and things like that all the time.)
“Well, now that you’re home,” Vince said, “I wouldn’t mind borrowing the car.”
“Sorry, I haven’t finished the shopping yet. I didn’t get away from the surgery till late.”
Vince’s hand closed into a fist on the top of the door. “That’s OK!” he said. He reached in and plucked the keys out of the ignition. “I’ll get the stuff out of the back for you.”
The hatchback was crammed with shopping bags. Mum has half a day off on Fridays and does all the shopping for the week on the way home. I came over to help too and the three of us marched up the stairs, single file, lugging the bags.
“New uniform looks nice, Mum,” I said, from behind her.
Usually she wears all white to work – white dress, white stockings, white shoes – but today’s uniform was blue.
“Thank you,” she said. “I like the color too. Would you believe Dr Walkom suggested the change himself? Not like a man to notice what you’re wearing.”
“I noticed it straight away,” Vince said. The garage stairs are only narrow, and when he stopped, we had to stop as well. “It looks very nice, very sexy,” he said. “Matches your eyes.”
Her eyes are green, not blue.
“Don’t let him con you, Mum,” I whispered.
“I won’t,” she whispered back, then said, “Hike!” to get Vince moving.
We dumped our grocery bags on the kitchen bench and Vince tried again.
“About the car, Mum. I promised David I’d take him into Boss Brakes this afternoon to get re-lines for his brake shoes. He’ll be waiting for me. He’ll have taken them off by now.”
“Like I said – sorry. I haven’t bought the vegies yet.”
“But I told him I’d be there!” Vince said. “I gave my word. And I know what you’re like about people giving their word.”
“You shouldn’t have given your word until you knew for sure you could get the car.”
“Mum, he’s driven me all over town. This is the first time he’s asked me to drive him somewhere, and I don’t want to let him down. We could last a day without vegies. You could buy them tomorrow.”
“Why can’t David last a day without his brake shoes?”
“You can’t get them on the weekend,” Vince said. “Boss Brakes is closed.”
Mum frowned. “No. We agreed, when you got your licence, that you could borrow the car any time so long as I didn’t need it. I meet the repayments, I pay the registration, the car is mine.” She pushed a frozen pizza at him. “And don’t just stand there looking decorative in your new haircut. Put something away.” She pushed a juice bottle at me. “Oh, and Peter, I got a phone call at work today about bikes along the back fences. Is that right, were the boys riding up there?”
“Yeah.” I busied myself sticking the juice in the fridge.
“You know they’re not allowed up there, honey.”
“It wasn’t me,” I said.
“You went riding this morning,” Vince said. “I was here when you came in.”
He was shitty ’cos he couldn’t get the car, so he was taking it out on me. That’s usual.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t riding,” I said. “I just said I wasn’t riding the fences. What have you been up to that’s making you go deaf?”
“That’s enough,” Mum said. She can’t stand us fighting.
“He’s the one who started it.”
“Oh, touchy-touchy!” Vince said. “Did we hurt our little self when we fell off our bike?”
Mum squeezed a waistline into the loaf of bread she was holding. “Peter, did you have an accident today?”
“No, Mum.”
“Are you sure?” She scanned me for telltale signs.
“I think if I’d wrapped myself around a tree, I’d remember it.”
“Don’t get smart.” (Bike accident jokes are not in at our house.) “You promised to tell me if you ever had another accident.”
“And I will! But I didn’t!” (Laying a bike over on a hill is not an accident; I didn’t have to tell her about that.) “Vince only said it to get you going, Mum.”
“And I suppose that dirt on your backside just leaped up and hugged you,” Vince said, “because of your magnetic personality?”
“Aw, get stuffed!” There was no dirt on my backside and I knew it.
“Don’t you boys start!”
“I didn’t start anything. I’m just standing here breathing. Or aren’t I allowed to do that either?” I said.
“Mum, where do you want this?” Vince asked. Slimy toad! Now he’d got her mad at me, he was going to grease up to her, making out like he was the perfect son and I was a shit.
Vince and I used to be friends once, would you believe? We just about lived in each other’s pockets when we were kids. We had special hide-outs, like Grandma’s chook-shed. And we’d prick our fingers and press the blood together, making ourselves blood-brothers. (You wouldn’t want kids doing that nowadays, would you?)
And we had our own secret language with key words and hand signals so we could have conversations no one else was in on. We could send messages across rooms, or through walls even. Then Dad left and Vince saw his big chance to be the man of the house and walk all over me. So now we fight.
“Peter.” Mum inhaled. “I want the truth. Did you or did you not have an accident?”
“No, I did not!” I said.
She didn’t believe me. “Put that away.” She pushed a jumbo box of laundry detergent at me. I went a short way down the hallway, then doubled back to listen at the door.
“Did he have a fall today?” she asked Vince.
“Probably. He wasn’t gone long this morning and he’s been grotty ever since he came back in.”
“Why didn’t you phone me?”
“You don’t like getting phone calls at work.”
“This is different. If he’s come off the bike, I want to know. He could have been hurt.”
“Mum, if he’d been hurt, the whole neighbourhood would have known about it. He’s got a low pain threshold.”
There was an angry rustle of plastic bags from Mum.
“If he’s had a fall, the odds are he’s hurt, and if he’s hurt, I want to know about it. You’re not a doctor, it’s not for you to say, so in future – phone!”
“Mum, how much damage can he do to himself on a piddling little one-two-five?”
“The size of the bike makes no difference. All bikes are dangerous. You know what he did to himself last time, on this very bike.”
“He pulled his shoulder and sprained his wrist, that’s all!”
“It was not a sprain! He fractured a scaphoid, and his handwriting’s never been the same since.”
“Mum!” Vince made it sound like a joke. (If it’d been his shoulder that got dislocated he wouldn’t have thought it was so funny. I’m told it’s about as painful as anything can get.) “You’re not doing him any favors, you know, asking him every five minutes if he’s hurt himself. Let him break a leg, it’ll do him good. He’s too soft.”
“He is not soft.”
“He is!”
“Your brother happens to be a sensitive young man.”
I am not “sensitive”!
“... and I want him to stay that way.”
“He’s sensitive, all right,” Vince said. “You can’t look sideways at him these days without hurting his little feelings.”
“Then stop baiting him! At least he’s got feelings to be hurt, which is a vast improvement on most males.”
“I’ve got feelings too,” Vince said. “I don’t expect special treatment just because I’ve got feelings.”
“You’re not fifteen,” Mum said, “it makes a difference.”
“I was fifteen once and I was never like that.”
“You were exactly like that.”
“I was never a wimp.”
“Your brother is not a wimp.” She whispered it.
“He’s going to be if you keep on coddling him, Mum. Let him go! Let him ride the bike. It’s the only gutsy thing he does. Let him wipe himself out if he wants to.”
“Oh, I see,” Mum said, sounding calm, which is a bad sign with her. (Vince had no chance of getting the car if he stayed on this tack.) “So your advice is to let him hurt himself, let him turn himself into a scar-faced cripple, so long as it makes a man of him.”
“Something had better,” Vince mumbled.
Mum growled, “That’s not being a man, that’s being a moron. And it’s not what I want for my son!”
“Yea, Mum!” I stepped back into the kitchen and gave her a round of applause.
“Oh, eavesdropping, very macho,” Vince said.
“Peter!” Mum snapped at me. “I told you to put that box in the laundry!” And when I came back she was still cranky at me. “Will you please tell the boys to stay away from the fences. I don’t want any more phone calls at work.”
“I won’t be going down to the paddock for a while,” I said. “My bike’s stuffed. I won’t be seeing them.”
“You could always walk down,” she said.
I followed her into the pantry. “Mum, it won’t make any difference what I tell the boys. They won’t listen to me. They’ll only do it more if I start laying down the law to them.”
“I’m not asking you to lay down the law,” she said. “Just remind them of their original agreement: that they can ride anywhere they like in the paddock except near the fences. Surely you can do that?”
“Yeah, I could. And they could also take me apart,” I said.
“They’re your friends! What on earth would they do to you?”
“They’ll think of something,” I said. “And they’re not my friends.”
“You ride with them every day!”
“That doesn’t make them my friends!”
Mum says Vince doesn’t influence her, but he does. He only had to pass the door with a “told you so” look on his face and she switched sides.
“I do everything else round here! Do I have to police the paddock as well?” she said.
“It’s Dad’s paddock,” I said. “Let him do it.”
“He doesn’t get the phone calls!”
“Give them his number,” I said.
“Peter! The boys aren’t going to hurt you!”
See, she thought I was a wimp!
“All right.” I tramped out of the pantry. “OK. Forget it. Don’t worry, I’ll do it. And when I come home bleeding from multiple stab wounds, don’t blame me.”
And I hoped I bled all over the carpet and the stain never came out, and she was left to face it every day – the terrible memory of what she’d done to me!
Vince dropped a jar of pickles to get her attention.
“Be careful!” she said.
“Sorry, Mum.” He picked it up, all smiles. “But I’ve had an idea. What say we do the shopping for you? We can drop by The Markets on the way to Boss Brakes and buy the vegetables. And you get to stay home and put your feet up. Cool scheme?”
Mum pushed her hair back harder, exposing more grey strands. “Who’s this we?” she said. “Not you and David?”
That was a laugh: the two super-cools, Vince and David, getting around The Markets squeezing tomatoes and comparing grapefruits.
“No, me and Peter,” Vince said.
“But Peter doesn’t want the car.”
Right on, Mum!
“Peter, you’d help with the shopping, wouldn’t you?” Vince gave me a wink and sort of jerked his hand like he was trying to tell me something via our old code. I didn’t remember any of it.
Mum answered him before I got the chance. “Thank you,” she said, “but I’d rather do the shopping myself.”
Vince balanced the pickle jar on the edge of the cupboard. “Is it because you don’t like David?” he said.
“What?”
“You’ve lent me the car every other time I’ve wanted it, but now I want it for David, you say no.”
Mum’s lipstick had worn off and she looked tired. “At the risk of repeating myself,” she said, “I need the car to do the shopping. It has nothing to do with David. I think he’s one of the nicest friends you’ve had. I’ve even forgiven him for being the inspiration behind that new haircut of yours.”
Vince’s hand shot up to defend his hair. “See, you don’t like him.”
“I do!”
“But you don’t need the car, not if we do the shopping for you.”
“I told you …”
“And what happened to that big spiel we got the other day about men learning to do their own cooking and ironing and the rest of it?” Vince was pulling out the big guns now.
Mum sighed. “I don’t want to have to go out again in the morning and re-buy all the things you got wrong.”
“If we get it wrong, we live with it,” he said.
“No, you don’t live with it. You live with frozen pizzas. I’m the one who eats mushy bean sprouts for the rest of the week.”
Vince shifted his weight against the cupboard. “Is your getting the right stick of celery more important than our learning survival skills?”
“Survival skills” is one of Mum’s phrases; he was using her own weapons against her now. (You don’t have to like Vince to admire him. He’s studying Law at university and he’s going to be good at it. In ten years’ time, when he’s defending people, there’s going to be crims walking around all over the place, scot-free.)
“It’s not just vegetables we need,” Mum said, still fighting. “There’s dry cleaning to be picked up, and the videos to be returned. You boys don’t know the half of what I do around here.”
“We can get those too,” Vince said.
“But will you get it right?” She was holding her forehead permanently now, like she was getting a headache.
“They say that’s the hardest part of parenting,” Vince said, “letting your kids make mistakes.”
That did it. Mum closed her eyes, and he knew he’d won. He wins so often now he doesn’t make a big deal of it.
“Here, sit down.” He pulled out a stool for her. “Make yourself a cup of coffee when we’ve gone. Have a rest. You deserve it.”
Wow, she must have been tired. She didn’t even gag on the sugar coating. “I’m glad someone thinks so,” she said.
Vince stretched up to look in the glass cupboard above the bench. “Are the dry cleaning dockets up here?”
Mum never made it onto the stool. “No, they’re in the bedroom,” she said. “I’ll get them.” She dragged her feet out into the hallway.
Vince already had the car keys. He hadn’t let go of them since taking them from the ignition. He found the shopping list in Mum’s handbag, folded it twice, very neatly, and held it out to me.
“What do I want it for?” I said.
“Do the shopping for me and I’ll see what I can do about getting you out of playing the heavy in the paddock,” he said.
I kept my arms folded and stayed leaning against the fridge. “How?”
“I’ll talk to Mum for you.”
“I’ve already done that.”
“No you haven’t. You whined for thirty seconds, then gave up.”
Vince has the clearest, deepest, most honest green eyes you’ve ever seen. Every used car salesman should have a pair.
“But if I don’t go down the paddock, I’ll be a wimp,” I said. “I’ll be chickening out.”
“Better a live chicken than a dead duck,” he said, suddenly – miraculously – seeing it from my point of view. “You try telling that group of little neo Nazis where they can and can’t ride, and you’ll end up in the morgue.” He was right, of course. Vince knows these kids, he went to school with most of them. Or their brothers.
“So why didn’t you back me up when I was trying to explain that to Mum?” I said.
“Jesus! I cop it for interfering in your life. I cop it for not interfering. Make up your bloody mind! What d’you want?”
“Nothin’ from you. You only do what suits you.”
“So do you. Everyone does.” He prodded me with the shopping list. “Don’t be a shit, do this for me. I need this one.”
“You need everything,” I said.
He grinned, showing all his perfectly orthodontured teeth. “You know what you’re going to be eating for the rest of the week if I buy the vegetables?”
At least he doesn’t crawl.
Mum came back and he started pleading my case straight away.
“You know, Mum, it’s not fair to expect Peter to police the paddock. Peer groups react badly to one of their members assuming an authority role.”
Peer groups? Authority role? Puke!
“Well, it’s nice to see you showing some concern for your bother,” she said.
“I’m always concerned about him.”
I snatched the shopping list off Vince. If Mum was going to be that much of a pushover, she deserved to be conned.
Vince pretended to beam at me. “Isn’t he a good kid? Didn’t I raise him well?”
“Mmmm ... ?” Mum said.
And I just said, “Let’s go.
______ 6 ______
David Rutherford lives two blocks down from us on Valley View Parade. The whole front of his house is hidden behind a mass of trees. If it wasn’t for the driveway and the letterbox you wouldn’t know anyone lived there.
Vince pulled into the drive and stopped just short of David’s car, which was parked in the garage. It had its rear wheels off and its brake-drums showing.
It’s an E H Holden, in top condition: burnished mags, very little chrome, and David had just had it spray-painted two-tone grey – charcoal on the top, light grey on the bottom, with thin black speed-stripes blending the two together. Very nice. Very classy. Makes you think straight away: what’s under the bonnet?
Vince bipped the horn, and through the windscreens of both cars I could see David at the other end of the garage, standing under a strip-light at a work-bench. Whatever he was doing, he kept on doing it for another thirty seconds.
Vince drummed his fingers on the steering-wheel. “You watch, he’ll wander down here in a minute like a snail on Valium and say, ‘What kept you? Don’t you know I’m in a hurry?’.”
The fluoro tube blinked out and David’s white sneakers came down the side of the garage. He did walk pretty slowly. But then he’s tall, so every step covered an awful lot of ground. He ducked under the roller door and came out into the sunshine, squinting. The overalls he was wearing swam on him, and even then they weren’t long enough for his legs. His jeans poked out the bottom.
He came up to our car, bent over double and leaned on the windowsill next to Vince.
“Where have you been?” he asked. “Don’t you know what time it is?” The wristwatch he flashed in Vince’s face looked like a piece of space-research hardware. “I had the brake shoes off an hour ago.”
“Mum didn’t want to give me the car,” Vince said. “I had to work on her to get it.”
David didn’t look impressed. “Boss Brakes closes at four-thirty.”
“If we get moving, we’ll make it,” Vince said. “Correction: if you get moving, we’ll make it.”
David’s older than Vince, about twenty, I think. He’s got a young face, but lots of lines around his eyes, or at least when he’s being hassled he has.
He rubbed his chin and you could hear the whiskers rasp. He’s got really dark hair and pale skin, and that’s given him a permanent after-five shadow. “I doubt they’ll have exchange shoes in stock for this model,” he said. “We’ll have to go back Monday.”
“OK, if they haven’t got them, we go back Monday,” Vince said.
“But your mother takes the car to work on Mondays.”
“If I need the car, I’ll get it!” Vince said.
David glanced past him to me. “Is he always this smug?” he asked.
I didn’t know David all that well. We’d said hello a few times when he’d dropped in to collect Vince, that’s all. So I just shrugged.
“I’m here! I’ve got the car!” Vince said. “I’m going to town. Do you want to come or don’t you?”
With Vince it’s always ultimatums.
David lowered his head, thinking it over.
Mum was right about him being the inspiration behind Vince’s haircut. His is the same – short back and sides and long on top, except much longer than Vince’s. David’s fringe hangs down to his eyes almost.
And, I noticed this thing the first time I saw him, it’s got one blond hair in it. Every hair on his head is dark except for this one gold hair in his fringe. It’s got to be dyed, it couldn’t be real. And it stands out a mile. You can’t miss it, close up that is.
Vince started a countdown on him and David made his decision: “OK.” He pushed away from the windowsill and went back into the garage. I climbed into the back seat, and when David came out again, he had the brake shoes wrapped in a rag and a rug over his arm. He draped the rug over the passenger seat, holding it down while he got in.
“God, you’re an old woman, Rutherford!” Vince said.
David didn’t bite. “I wouldn’t want anyone getting in my car in dirty overalls,” he said.
His overalls weren’t dirty, but I was surprised to see him wear them into town. Every other time I’d seen him he’d been dressed in million-dollar jeans and designer shirts. You know the kind, with the labels on the outside.
He fastened his seatbelt, raised his hand from the buckle and flicked Vince on the ear, saying, “Just drive, cabbie.”
I plastered myself against the back seat and waited for the nuclear blast! No one touches Vince’s body. It’s sacred! Even Mum has to sneak up on him to give him a hug for his birthday.
You just kissed your brake shoes goodbye, feller, I thought. But Vince put the car into gear, reversed down the drive and merged with the traffic without saying a word. And David continued to live and breathe in the passenger seat beside him.
Unreal!
Then, for his second amazing trick, David turned around in his seat and started talking to me. I mean, he actually started a conversation with me, like I was a real person. Very few of Vince’s friends have ever done that. Younger brothers are usually seen as equal to warts or hangnails; everyone hopes they’ll drop off.
So what’s your game? I thought. Was he paying Vince off for being late?
“How’s your bike going?” he asked me.
“OK,” I said. “Um ... how’s your car going?”
“Not so good,” he said, kind of mopey. “The gearbox is on the way out.”
“You and your gearbox,” Vince mumbled.
“I’m worried about it!”
“Can’t you worry in silence?”
Vince didn’t want David talking to me, that was clear, and I wasn’t so keen on the idea myself. No matter what you say to older blokes, they always look down their noses at you eventually.
David raved on about his gearbox, about the synchros being worn, and not being able to change down through second.
I made the standard in-depth responses: “Really? ... Far out! ... Bummer!”
He reckoned he’d taken the gearbox out a thousand times in the last six months and, just for the sake of something to say, I commented, “You must change gearboxes like other people change underwear.” Vince fired death rays at me via the rear vision mirror. How dare I talk to one of his mates about their underwear?
David, however, thought it was funny. He laughed. Then he asked Vince, “Hey, did you ask Peter about the photographs for me?”
“No. I forgot,” Vince said. Via another flash of green eyes in the rear vision mirror, he asked me now. “David wanted to know if you’d take some pictures of his car for him.”
So that’s why he was being nice to me. He wanted a few free pics!
David turned around in his seat again. “Vince showed me some pictures you took of dirt bikes the other day. They’re really good.”
“Um ... thanks!” Vince had shown him some of my photographs?
“I’d like something like that of my car,” he said, “while it’s still in mint condition. You know, before some twit opens his door on it and chips the paint. I’ll pay you, of course.”
“It’s all right, you don’t have to pay me. I don’t mind,” I said.
“No, I’d rather pay. That’s the way I do things.”
I’d look like I was crawling if I made a big deal out of doing it for nothing, so I said, “Fine.” He was probably only going to slip me five bucks anyway. That set him off again, talking about the hassles he’d had with the spray painter.
I’d said I’d take his photos! He didn’t have to keep on talking to me!
We pulled off the highway and stopped in front of The Markets. Vince dropped two twenty-dollar bills over the back of his seat and said, “Pick you up in half an hour. On the other side of the road.”
The money fluttered to the floor and I had to go scrounging for it. He could have handed it to me.
“Pick me up here,” I said. “I don’t want go lugging the stuff over there.”
“It won’t hurt you!”
“I’m not standing over there with bags full of cucumbers!” I could afford to argue; he’d be in the shit if I changed my mind.
“What’s this about?” David asked.
“This is how he got the car,” I said, “by conning me into doing the shopping for him. Mum hadn’t finished it.”
David said to Vince, kind of quiet, “I don’t like you conning other people for me.”
“He’s not being conned,” Vince said. “We’ve got a deal. And I’m on a bus stop, Ace. Move it!”
“Are you happy with the deal?” David asked me.
“Don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t got my share of it yet.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” David mumbled in Vince’s direction.
Did Vince interfere in his life too?
“If it bothers you, you do the shopping,” Vince said. He snatched the shopping list off me and held it out to David.
And David called his bluff! He took it. Not angrily. He just slid the note from between Vince’s fingers, opened the car door and stepped out. Off came the overalls and there was the designer wardrobe – an immaculate black T-shirt and stone-washed jeans.
He was serious. He dropped his overalls on the front seat and peeled a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet and dropped that on top of them. “That’s for the brake shoes,” he said.
A bus pulled up behind us and the driver blasted us with the horn.
David tapped on my window and beckoned to me to get out. I stared at the back of Vince’s neck. He’s your mate, do something about him!
The bus driver blasted us again.
Someone had to move, so I opened the door. David kind of helped me out and closed the door behind me. Nothing happened for a second. The traffic zipped by but we just stood there. Then Vince pulled away with a small screech of tyres and the bus slid into the kerb to take his place.
This was silly. I didn’t know this bloke. I didn’t want to go shopping with him.
“Do you want to wait?” I asked. “He’ll probably do a lap of the block and come back for you.”
“Serves him right if he does,” David said.
With his long strides he loped over to the shopping cart bay at the front door of The Markets and started trying out carts, looking for one he was prepared to push. He made his choice, handed me back the shopping list and said, “Do you mind navigating? I prefer to drive.”
______ 7 ______
The Markets is a big steel shed filled with fruit and vegies laid out on trays or in boxes. A radio plays the whole time, slightly off the station, and a little tractor runs around terrorizing old ladies and bringing in more and more stuff.
Our shopping list said “lettuce”. We came to a bin full of them. I took one off the top, and David watched me lower it into his personally road-tested cart.
“You happy with that?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “How excited can you get about a lettuce?” They all looked the same to me: like bunches of limp green rags.
He reached across and plucked another one from the bin. “How about this one?” It looked exactly the same as mine.