Burning Boy (Penguin Award Winning Classics), The

by Gee, Maurice

  Her old man’s mad and my mother’s mad, Hayley thought. It surprised her that teachers should have troubles of that sort.

  She chained her bike to the fence and walked along the shingle bank to Freaks’ Hole. No one was there. Most people went to the big holes downriver, where you had to swim with screaming kids and pot-bellied men who perved on you and dogs chasing sticks, even though notices were nailed on the trees: No Dogs Allowed. You had to dodge beer cans and broken glass. Here it wasn’t deep, not up to your chin, but at least you got it to yourself. If it wasn’t for the golfers through the willows and the Rounds’ house along the hill you could swim in the nick like those hippies.

  She changed into her togs and sat on the sand. The river was low because of the drought and slimy weeds grew on the rocks. You had to ignore that when you swam, or have fights with it, wind it round your neck like a scarf. It only looked dirty, really there was nothing wrong with it. The water was so clear you could see pebbles, brown and green and white, magnified on the bottom.

  Hayley had a swim, diving and porpoising and doing back somersaults. She swam the length of Freaks’ Hole under water and was in the rapids at the top, letting water run over her, when Gary arrived. ‘Bugger him,’ she said. He had brought his creepy friends, Tuck and Legs. ‘What did you bring them for?’ she said when he swam up.

  ‘Why not? They won’t look.’

  ‘They won’t have nothing to look at.’ But in the deeper water they rolled all round each other. She helped him get his fingers in, not that it felt any good, and held his cock and rubbed him till he came. She would have let him put it in if it hadn’t been for Tuck and Legs watching from the bank. She kept up-river from his come and watched it curl away like bits of weed.

  ‘Some lucky slag down in Monday Hole is gunner get that,’ Gary said.

  She swam away from him, not liking him, even though he was so neat to look at. On the bank she took a fag from Tuck and lay on her towel and smoked, listening while they told jokes that got more and more filthy. Some of them made her feel sick. She saw their cocks slew round and stiffen in their togs and wished someone would come so they’d have to roll over and shut up.

  Gary took a can of beer from his bag. ‘No thanks,’ Hayley said. She’d told her father she wouldn’t drink or smoke and she threw her cigarette away, deciding she’d keep the whole of the promise. She went into the water and swam around and when Gary joined her she said, ‘You brought those two for a gangie.’

  ‘No I didn’t. You’re all mine, eh?’

  ‘You’re a liar. Why do you hang around with creeps like that?’

  ‘They’re all right. They buy me booze.’ He was feeling between her legs. ‘Give old Tuck a hand job, eh? He’s never done it.’

  ‘No.’ His cunning pretty face made her sick.

  ‘I’m gunner put it in this time.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  Then Tuck and Legs surfaced beside her. They came up like seals, poking up their heads, and rubbed themselves on her bum and hips. Their arms unrolled and slithered round her neck. She thought they were going to pull her under and was terrified at the thought of drowning. Someone – it was Gary – stuffed weed in her bikini pants. Legs pulled her bra down and made a finger-bite on her breast. ‘Lay off,’ she screamed; and punched him with ridged knuckles on his throat. She found a hand pressing her mouth and bit as hard as she could and heard Tuck scream. She spun away from Gary, jerking her head through the noose of her bra, and made it to the bank; grabbed her jeans and T-shirt and ran.

  ‘There’s people watching you,’ she cried, half-seeing a golfer in red through the willow trees; and although she was sobbing her fear was gone, because she knew she was better with her body than any of them, better at fighting and running, quicker and harder at everything. No one like Gary would get her. She stopped and picked up a stone the size of a hockey ball. Legs was on his hands and knees at the edge of the water. Tuck had his bitten hand hugged to his chest. She lined up Gary and threw at him underarm, hard and flat. He spun side-on, with a shout that turned into a scream as the stone hit his forearm. He fell over, rolling on the shingle.

  Hayley pulled her T-shirt on. She walked the rest of the way to her bike. Her knickers were at the pool but the bikini pants would do. She took the weed out – it felt nice and cool, better than Gary with his fingers – and pulled on her jeans. At the first bend in the road she found a place where she could see the lower part of Freaks’ Hole. The three of them were sitting on the shingle, nursing themselves. She’d wiped out the whole lot of them.

  Hayley laughed. ‘Jerk each other off,’ she yelled, and she turned round and rode back up the valley, past the bridge to the Rounds’ house, past the golf course. She wasn’t ready to go home yet, she’d find a place and have another swim. She felt this was the best day of her life. She’d got past creeps like Gary Baxter and felt she had travelled a long long way and good things would happen to her now. All the same, as she rode, she sobbed in her elation. They would have raped her, they would have drowned her. She knew that she could easily be dead and felt something dark and horrible close by her shoulder.

  She found a pool by the top of the golf course and washed her face and swam up and down, twenty lengths, in her T-shirt and bikini pants. She was not even puffing when she stopped.

  ‘Plee,’ a voice said.

  She looked up the bank and saw a Japanese man in a neat little cap with a white pom-pom, smiling at her. She had not heard his ball land in the pool but went where he pointed, and dived and brought it up and lobbed it to him. He caught it in one hand, gave a little bow, laid something on the grass, ‘Fi’ dollar,’ and dropped the ball over his shoulder. She watched him play his shot, and scrambled up the bank when he had gone. A five dollar note lay on the grass. She was a little insulted that he’d taken her for a child. He wouldn’t have offered money to a woman, probably tried to chat her up instead. She watched him join his friends on the green, and the four, in bright trousers, take their turns at putting. Golf was expensive in Japan, her father said, so the trawlermen brought their clubs to New Zealand. They’d never get near a course at home.

  Hayley walked across the pool, holding the note, and put it with the silver in her jeans. Everyone was giving her money today. She felt happy now that something stood between Gary and her and she smiled at the way the Japanese golfer had said please.

  Two joggers went by along the bank. Stella Round and her big sister, whose name Hayley could not remember. Their faces were bright red, over-heated, and Hayley was sympathetic, although she usually hated Stella Round. She watched them cross the footbridge single file and go away through the willow arch, flashing on and off like lights, red and blue, red and blue. The big sister was the one who had saved her brother’s life. She hadn’t tried to save Wayne, of course.

  Hayley turned her face away. When she remembered Wayne she felt her chest go empty as though her heart and lungs were taken out. She saw how it could happen to anyone. If Wayne was dead, Wayne who had tried wrestling holds with her on the floor, and smoked fags in his bedroom and used the air freshener before their father came home, and eaten with his mouth open – ‘Chew with your mouth closed, Wayne’ – if Wayne was dead then she could die as quickly, just as easily, one day soon.

  Hayley jumped up and pulled on her jeans. She rode up the valley and saw goats in the bracken by the road. A drive with ruts in it curved steeply in the scrub. She got off her bike and wheeled it up, not sure this was Lex Clearwater’s place, and not sure he’d want her if it was. She couldn’t remember anything special now in his invitation and felt like a pupil walking up.

  A goat was tied to an iron stake where the drive elbowed back. She stopped to feed it grass and was amused by its comic chewing and troubled by the sharpness in the black part of its eye and a kind of blindness in the yellow. It was as if it saw, saw everything, but didn’t have any interest. Didn’t give a stuff. Only for itself. Nothing could be more greedy than its mouth.

&n
bsp; Pellets as black as licorice fell from its bum. It’s just a machine for eating, Hayley thought, and was a little disgusted even while the goat’s greediness attracted her. It butted her hand for more grass.

  She walked on with her bike and found a house at the back of a sun-baked lawn. Dry land stood behind it like a wall, crumbling away, and dried-out bracken grew higher up, and only the pines on the top of the hill seemed alive. The tea-trees and the gorse by the fences seemed made of crinkly wire and broken sticks. As for the house – she couldn’t believe Lex would live in such a rundown place – if it was Lex’s. She looked about for a sign. No ute. No clothes she might recognize on the line. Goats were the only thing and plenty of people had goats. She thought she had better go away.

  ‘Hey, Lex,’ she called; then, small in the silence, ‘Mr Clearwater.’ Goat heads looked at her from the bracken. She wondered if goats ate people at all. They seemed to eat anything they could find. She did not want to go back down that drive closed in with scrub.

  Hayley stood her bike on the lawn. She hoisted herself on to the porch – it was really just a deck made of planks, not even nailed, curling at the ends and making warps. Her father would be disgusted, but she was half frightened, half excited, feeling she’d reached a place where rules were put aside and did not count. She looked in the door. ‘Lex?’ she said.

  A torn envelope lay on the sack used as a doormat. She picked it up and read ‘A. G. Clearwater’, and felt her stomach give a lurch. She expected to see him come from one of the doors leading into the room. ‘Hey, anybody home?’ Blowflies, bush-flies, drilled at the window panes over the sink. A bird with sharp claws slid on the iron roof. Hayley wondered if Lex was dead. The stillness in the house was like TV, before you opened doors and found a body in the shower. She crossed the living-room and went down a hall, looked in three doors – junk-room, bathroom, bedroom. The bed sheets were filthy, yellow grey, and the pillow had no case and bits of chip foam-rubber leaked out one end. She curled her lip, then giggled as she thought of Sandra Duff in there with Lex. It stopped her thinking of bodies, though she looked on the floor beyond the bed. A glass of milk with a rubber skin stood on the window sill. A folded dollar note (more money) lay beside it. It looked as if it had been jammed in the frame to stop it rattling. Hayley was tempted to keep it, but she smoothed it and put it on the dressing table, where old half-used bottles and pots, Oil of Ulan, skin balm, female stuff, stood like a forest of stumps. She blew the dust on them but it was thick and greasy and wouldn’t move.

  Hayley went back to the kitchen and looked in the fridge but found only butter and cheese and half a tin of herrings. Maybe he ate goat’s meat or maybe fish and chips. Men were supposed to stop looking after themselves when their wives walked out. Lex had sure done that. Socks and underpants soaked in a bucket on the sink but the water smelled bad so they’d been there a long time. She could wash them and hang them out; saw herself pegging socks on the line when he came home, but sniffing the water put her off. She sat on the porch and enjoyed the sun and watched the goats. Over the golf course the willows by Freaks’ Hole made a patch of green against the foot of the hill. She couldn’t see if Gary was still there. She’d better give him a bit more time, she wouldn’t put it past him to ambush her as she rode home.

  Lex drove up in a Land-Rover. He pulled up on the lawn beside her bike and climbed out and looked at her distantly. ‘Yeah, gidday.’

  ‘I thought I’d come and see you like you invited,’ Hayley said.

  ‘You should’ve rung up, eh. I’m busy today.’

  ‘I didn’t know I was coming. I’ll go if you like.’ She did not want to go and found herself trembling from the shock of Gary’s attack. It was as if he had waited until now to leap on her. She felt cold and crushed and tears ran on her face. Lex Clearwater brought himself up close. She saw his eyes make a painful cranking on to her, and she thought, He’s mad, he’s loony; but wanted him to comfort her.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. She slipped down from the porch and stood in front of him, leaned on him, arms folded on her chest.

  ‘What is it, Hayley? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. Something happened, that’s all.’

  ‘Where? At home?’

  ‘At Freaks’ Hole.’ She had not meant to tell anyone, but poured it out, that moment in the water when they closed around her. She felt his finger trace a mark on her throat and chest.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘They scratched me, I guess.’

  ‘They sure did. You want me to go and sort them out?’

  ‘No, I did that.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I punched Legs in the throat.’ She put up her fist with the middle knuckle jutting out. ‘I bit Tuck in the hand.’ She had a sudden memory of blood in the pool. ‘And I chucked a rock at Gary. I think I might have bust his arm.’

  ‘Jesus then, there’s no need for me.’

  ‘Gary shouldn’t have brought them. He wanted me to take them on as well.’

  ‘This Gary joker’s your boyfriend, eh?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘You want to be careful, Hayley. A bunch of blokes like that – plenty of girls have ended up dead.’

  ‘I thought he liked me. I liked him.’

  ‘Did you used to fuck?’

  ‘Sort of. We were careful. I always made him wear a condom.’

  ‘Sounds like more than sort of.’

  ‘What I mean,’ she shook her head, did not want to tell him, ‘he wasn’t much good. He was after what he could get.’

  ‘Who isn’t?’ He took his hands away from her. ‘Want a cup of coffee? I’m having one.’

  ‘I don’t like coffee.’ She put her arms around him, hugged him hard. He smelled of sweat and goats, and of the sun.

  ‘Cut it out, Hayley. That’s not on.’ He reached behind him and broke her grip.

  ‘You told me to come.’

  ‘Not for that. How old are you? I’d end up in jail.’

  ‘I won’t tell. You want to,’ grabbed his fly, ‘I can feel.’

  ‘Stop playing hot pants. Shall I tell you something, I could be just as dangerous as those guys in the pool. You better stop putting yourself in situations like this. Anyway, I haven’t got time. You want that drink? There’s some Ovaltine left if the mice haven’t got it.’

  ‘Ovaltine,’ Hayley said bitterly.

  ‘Take it or leave it. You can have a glass of water if you like. You want me to put some stuff on that scratch?’

  ‘So I don’t catch Aids, eh?’

  ‘Shut up, Hayley. You’re not as tough as you like to think.’ He went into the house. She followed him across the planks and watched from the door as he put the kettle on.

  ‘I’ll have coffee.’

  ‘Thought you would. How’s school? Work all over?’

  ‘Yeah, we’re frigging around, clubs and stuff. Prize-giving practice. Not that I’ll get any prizes.’

  ‘None for softball?’ He lifted the bucket of soaking clothes to the floor and got two mugs from a cupboard; looked in them, wiped their insides with a baby’s napkin worn to rags.

  ‘She doesn’t look after you very well.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Miss Duff.’

  ‘You’re out of date. Sandra doesn’t come here any more.’

  ‘Couldn’t she stand the gunge? I couldn’t stand it.’

  Lex laughed. ‘Get it off your chest. Here,’ went to another cupboard, ‘Mercurochrome if it hasn’t dried out. Put it on yourself, I’m not touching you.’

  ‘Wouldn’t let you.’ Hayley grinned at him.

  They drank their coffee sitting on the porch. A breeze coming up the valley made a hissing in the scrub. She shook out her hair to dry and pulled her damp T-shirt loose from her breasts. She was glad now that Lex had said no. Sitting with him, talking, wasn’t as much fun, she supposed, but it made her relaxed.

  ‘Where’s your ute?’

  ‘I sold it.’ Gesture
d at the Land-Rover. ‘She’ll go more places.’ He threw his coffee dregs on the lawn. ‘Want to see?’

  ‘Where?’

  He hooked with his thumb. ‘Up the valley. Won’t be back till, maybe after six.’

  ‘Can I ring Dad?’

  She told him she was helping Mr Clearwater with his goats.

  ‘That’s all right, Hayley. Try and be back before dark, I’ll keep some tea. Hayley?’

  ‘What, Dad?’

  ‘Where did Shelley go? Did you notice?’

  ‘Judy’s, she said.’

  ‘Yes, all right.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I heard Neil Chote is back in town.’

  ‘She wouldn’t go with him.’

  ‘No, I hope not. Goats, eh? Be careful of that pitching arm.’

  ‘I will.’

  Lex had backed the Land-Rover round behind the sheds. She saw him busy in a pen with three goats. ‘Grab that one in the corner. Get his yoke off.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘They won’t need them where they’re going.’ He stripped a big nanny of her yoke and tossed it into the shed, where it rattled empty bottles. Hayley fought with her goat, a half-grown male, and wrestled the yoke from its head. ‘They’re strong, eh?’

  ‘You’ll find some bits of twine on the bench.’

  She fetched them and Lex threw the goats one by one on their sides and tied their legs. He carried them to the Land-Rover and laid them on sacks in the back. They kicked and twisted, trying to get free, and he climbed inside and held them still, ‘Take it easy, easy now, everything’s all right.’ Hayley got in beside him and felt their warm sides and ran her hands on their silky hair. She felt the tender dewlaps of the small billy and looked in his deep blind-seeming eye.