Mike (3 page)

9
…AND LIZARDS

Boundary Street suited its name. It was on the edge of the great suburban sprawl. At its back was the cluttered landscape of wider Sydney; the growing cities of Fairfield and Liverpool crowded each other to the east and south, and not five minutes away by car lay the expressway, which carried the endless streams of traffic to and fro between the inner-city and the exploding outer- West and the mountains.

But if you looked forward, towards the south-west, the country beckoned. A low line of round, green hills, dotted with horses or cows or the odd small gathering of sheep.

The street was a real boundary, and it shared a little of both environments. On the high side stood the older, established houses. They looked out over the fields and hills, with their backs turned on the growing chaos of brick and tile, as if by ignoring its presence they could put off the inevitable. On the low side were the newer houses, with their modern architecture and large-screen stereo tv sets (which shone their colours out at night between the gaps in their fashionable vertical blinds). These houses faced back towards suburbia and waited. For the unavoidable.

Riny just watched the street and the fields beyond. And remembered …

Pieter and Ros, at eight and ten, playing in the paddock where Michael's house now stood. Catching skinks and keeping them in a plastic butcher's tub in the garage; until the day they escaped and ran through the house like little hairless mice. She had screamed. But Tony just laughed and built a shelter for the tub in the backyard.

Lizards.
What a thing to remember …

Her thoughts shifted. The boy was planning something. There was more to all this morning training than fitness. He was too … serious. Too old for his age. His mother was worried that he needed his father around more often. Maybe that was part of it, but there was more.

And it had to do with his swimming.

Gretchen was dozing on the rug at her feet as she sat in the brown velvet lounge chair Tony had picked up one day from a garage sale.

“It's like new,” he'd said. “just right for my study. And it was only forty dollars.”

His study. It was the room she came to when she needed tofoel close. To him. She sat in his chair, surrounded by his books, looking out over the folds he had loved to watch. Feeling his presence, she closed her eyes and slept.

The dog stirred for a moment, to move its head a little closer to her feet. Then it too closed its eyes.

A few hundred metres to the south on a steep section of Elizabeth Drive, the diesel roar of a huge eighteen-wheeler cut through the silence of the early afternoon as it changed gears and belched a plume oo black smoke into the clear sky.

But Riny heard nothing.

She was dreaming of love.

… And lizards.

10
MOST PEOPLE

“Why are you training?”

She had a knack of asking me awkward questions while I stood, dripping, in the cold wind at seven o'clock in the morning, then staring at me while I tried desperately to think up an acceptable answer.

I thought of one. “I don't know, really.”

Okay, so it's not one of the world's most original lines. But I was tired. And cold. And Riny had put me on a spot. I found it hard to lie to her, so I tried to avoid questions I didn't want to answer, and most of the time, she let me. But not this time.

“Once,” she said, “when Gretchen was just a puppy, she fell into the pool and she was too small to climb out. She paddled around for a long time before Tony noticed her and we fished her out.' '

I waited. There had to be more.

There was. “Even
she
knew what she was swimming for, and she's just a dog. You're a little bit smarter than a dog, I think … Why are you training so hard?”

Okay, why not?

“You've got to promise not to tell Mum.”

She just nodded, but I knew it was a promise, all the same.

So I told her about Shane Thomas.

That afternoon, we were sitting by the pool, watching the sun on the water, and talking. About everything and nothing. And about school.

“Most people don't understand loneliness. They are never really alone,” she said.

I'd been talking about how I felt. Left out; cheated. Stuck in a place I didn't want to be, among a whole pile of people who couldn't really give a damn whether I was there or not. She had that far-away look in her eyes. I'd seen it before. It was as if she was watching something on an invisible screen; a replay of some incident in her past.

“Come with me,” she said. Then she got to her feet, and walked slowly out through the side gate to the front of the house. “You see that field over there, the one behind your house?”

I nodded.

“I remember, once, not too long ago, maybe a year or so before you came, there used to be a horse. An old horse, it was, not too well looked after. It stood in that field all day and all night, grazing and flicking away the flies. Probably it was too old to be of any use. Its bones showed through its skin and it … drooped. We used to watch it sometimes, especially early in the morning. Tony always loved the mornings …

“So, one day, not long after sunrise, along came this dog. A stray, I think. But it doesn't matter … It came up behind the horse. Straight up to it. And the horse got nervous; it bucked a little, and kicked out the way horses do when they're scared. The dog backed off.”

I watched her face. She was staring off across the field, but looking into the past.

“But it didn't go away. It circled around to the front of the horse. A few metres away. And it sat down, just facing the horse. It sat there for some time; a few minutes, I suppose. Then it began to circle again, slowly, around and around, and the circle began to get smaller and smaller. And as it got closer, the horse just stared, didn't move, until the dog came right up to it and walked underneath it. Right between its legs.

“And then, the most amazing thing. The horse lowered its head, and this strange dog licked it gently on the end of the nose. Then it ran off.”

She paused for a moment, but I could see that there was more. She continued: “From then on, we watched; every morning — at about six o'clock. And every morning the dog returned. The next day, it circled again for a while, the same as the first time, but after that, never again. Each day, the horse would come down to the same spot, and wait. And the dog would arrive and stay for a while, maybe half an hour. Then it would go.

“And you know, that old animal changed. It was still thin, but it had … life. You could tell by the way it moved.

“Then, one morning, just after the dog arrived, the farmer came. I remember, he was dressed in blue overalls; every time I've ever seen him, he's been wearing blue overalls. He saw the dog and he yelled at it and started throwing stones at the poor animal. For a moment, it stood there, then one of the stones hit it. Quite hard. The dog yelped and fell backwards, then it turned and ran.”

Looking over at the field, I could almost see the incident.

“It never came back. For the next week, every day, the horse would come down to that same spot and wait, expectantly. Then, after a while, it stopped expecting. It sank back to the way it used to be. Just standing there; drooping. We woke up one day, not long afterwards, and it was gone. We never found out what happened to it.”

She looked at me for the first time. “Most people don't understand loneliness …”

11
A VISIT WITH ROWLEY

I
didn't understand Shane Thomas. I mean I
did.
But I didn't. He was really heavy and no one ever tried to stand up to him, so, sure, he could act any way he wanted with people. But why
would
you? I wouldn't feel all that great if the only power I had over people was that they were scared I'd rip their faces off. Mind you, I've never been in that position, so it's hard to know how I'd act. Even the Year Threes didn't get out of
my
way in the playground.

Still, you'd think it would sink in — even through the concrete he has for a head — that it's better to be admired than feared. At least it is for most people.

Don't get me wrong, he did have his mates — which is more than
I
could boast about. Trouble was, they all looked like characters out of the
Addams Family.
And they all spoke in grunts. Except for Chris Walker, who spoke in sort of a high-pitched whine and used a few words longer than “cat” and “dog”. He was the intellectual of the group.

If I had friends like that, I think I'd take up bungie-jumping …

He caught up with me at lunchtime. It didn't matter where I went or how I tried to avoid him; it seemed to make no difference. He must have had his spies everywhere. Either that, or he was a whole lot smarter than I thought … No, I definitely think he must have had spies.

Anyway, I was standing on my own behind the handball wall with my mouth stuffed full of peanut-butter sandwich. I figured the more I could eat before he caught up with me, the less he could take off me. I even took a bite out of each one, hoping it would put him off eating them. Fat chance! Oh, it put him off eating them all right. He just took my sandwiches, my lunchbox, my new drink-bottle and my pencil case, threw the lot of them into the filthiest bowl in the whole toilet block (they'd dragged me in there — it was only a few metres from where I'd been hiding) and flushed it.

The sandwiches disappeared and the bottle and the box bobbed around like corks in a whirlpool, but the pencil-case jammed halfway around the S-bend and blocked the pipe, so the bowl overflowed — all over Shane the Pain's imitation Nikes.
He
could get away with wearing Trax, because no one — and I mean
no
one — was going to say anything about them.

“Now look what you've done.” As if it was my fault! He sounded like a little boy — but he certainly didn't look like one.

I looked at the pool of sludge around his dripping hi-tops. If it wasn't so scary, it would have been funny, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to laugh. Not just at that moment. Especially when he grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pushed me into the wall of that cubicle.

His face was half a centimetre from my nose.

I wished he'd paid more attention when the guy from the Health Department came out to give the talk about dental hygiene. And I wished I'd just handed over my sandwiches, like I did every other day. But most of all, I wished that he'd stop pressing his fists into the centre of my rib-cage. I felt like it was going to burst.

It's amazing what goes through your mind when you're having the crap scared out of you. I had visions of my chest caving in and a fountain of blood spewing out of my mouth, all over Shane Thomas's dirty white shirt.

And he was worried about a drop of dirty water on his shoes!

But it didn't cave in, and I didn't end up having the features of my face rearranged, because at that moment Chris Walker squeaked from his lookout position: “Rowley's coming!”

And suddenly, I was alone.

Maybe I'd better explain about Rowley.

Mr Rowley is the Deputy-Principal, and there are two things he'd really like out of life. One is to be a principal, the other is the right to bring back public floggings — and executions. I really think he was born about a hundred years too late.

I didn't particularly like him. Not normally. But as I looked around the deserted loo, and remembered the pressure of Shane Thomas's fists against my chest, I suddenly couldn't work out why I hadn't always thought what a great guy Mr Rowley really was.

Not long after lunch, I remembered.

I got the call to his office while we were doing Maths. Normally, anything that gets you out of the room during Maths calls for a celebration. Everything except a summons from Mr Rowley. You know it's something bad if it's Rowley.

Mrs Stimpson, the Principal, gets to give out all the merit certificates and the citizenship awards, and to congratulate you if you've been smart enough to work out what it was the teacher really wanted you to do in that Social Science assignment, and you managed to score an “A” and an entry in the “good book”. Do you believe we still have a “good book”, and they still believe that Year Sixes might think it was cool to get their name put in it? Lisdalia Petrantonio has the world record for the number of entries in a single term. Between you and me, I wouldn't have minded the odd entry myself. It might have proved that I existed.

It would certainly have been better than having to face Rowley.

Except for the money, I didn't see why he wanted so much to be a principal. Especially as he'd have to spend his life being nice to little kids. I didn't think he'd be very good at it, and I was sure he wouldn't enjoy it half as much as he did yelling and threatening and acting all superior — like he was doing now.

Actually, he wasn't yelling and threatening. At least, not at first. But he
was
acting all superior. Especially when I told him that I didn't know how my pencil case and lunch-gear had found their way into the bowl of one of the toilets, blocking it completely and forcing old Mr Mackenzie, the General Assistant, to perform the unpleasant task of
un
blocking it.

I knew I should have taken the things out; but I just didn't have the stomach for it. And I'd decided it was safer to be out of the toilet-block before Rowley arrived, so that I wouldn't have to explain anything and run the risk of putting Thomas and his mates in. Like I think I said before, I wasn't
that
tired ofliving.

I decided to play innocent. Which I was.

Bad move!

“What do you mean, am I sure they're yours? They've got your name plastered all over them!”

Of course. My security-conscious mother. Even my singlets had my name sewn onto them.

“Are you or are you not missing your belongings?”

He was yelling now; and his manner could definitely be described as threatening. I took a deep breath.

“Yes sir, I am.”

“Then why the hell didn't you say so in the first place? ”

I had it. The perfect answer. “I don't know, sir.”

Okay, so it didn't work with Riny, and isn't as good as you could have thought up, but it still works most of the time. Hit a teacher — or even a Deputy-Principal — with “I don't know, sir” and he can't do a thing. He can yell at you a bit and call you an idiot — which is what Rowley did to me; but he can't actually punish you. What does he put on the punishment report form?
Michael Harrison: three lunchtime detentions for being stupid.
It doesn't work.

So, you stay polite and act dumb. Let him feel sorry for you or scream at you. It's better than standing up for yourself and copping it. And it's a whole lot better than telling the truth and having your face ripped off later by Shane Thomas.

I told him I didn't know what had happened to my stuff, that it had disappeared from my bag at the start of lunch, and I didn't know where it was. Well, now I did — and so did poor Mr Mackenzie. And no, I didn't want any of it back.

Talk about dumb questions. Did he think I was going to write my assignments with a pen that had been through what the pens in that case had been through, let alone eat my lunch out of
that
particular lunchbox?

It was only on my way back to class, when I thought about it, that I realised the golden opportunity I'd missed. After all,
I
never got to eat my lunch out of that lunchbox anyway; but Shane Thomas did. What better punishment?

Oh, well …

As it was, when I got back to the room, I noticed a few of the kids looked at me with new respect. A visit with Rowley was a visit with Rowley, after al. I noticed too that the Pain was looking a little bit nervous — which was unusual in itself. Perhaps he figured he'd pushed things too far this time, and he was waiting for the hammer to fall.

I couldn't help it. As I passed his desk, I winked at him and flashed him just the smallest of smiles. You could see the look of confusion on his face. Then he pasted on his familiar scowl, and things were back to normal.

Except that it was a few days before he got around to taking my lunch again.