Coming Home

by Max Bolt

  The reality, Mason discovered, sitting inside the school office beside Linda and Ben, his thirteen year old son, was vastly different. A seventeen year old kid sat in the corner; old enough to drive but displaying the functionality of a newborn, as he slammed his head against the wall, before his parents led him, bloodied and howling, outside. Another kid was talking to himself in the corner as a teenager was dragged thrashing and screaming into the office like a four-year-old on his first day of preschool.

  Welcome to your new school Ben. How do you like your new class mates?

  Mason glanced at his son, who, seemingly oblivious to things, sat scribbling in his drawing pad.

  Just talk son and we can walk straight out of here. Talk and you don’t got to be part of this. Just talk and I don’t have to tell me mates I enrolled you in the crazy school.

  You see Ben does not suit normal schooling as he does not speak. He has not spoken for five years.

  “This is wrong,” Mason mutters to Linda, “he’s not like them.”

  Linda does not respond. She just stares straight ahead.

  The kid that jackhammered the wall returns, they’ve cleaned the blood off him, and his parents are holding his hands. But the kid takes one look at the place and shakes free and finds his favourite wall again. Mother stands and holds her mouth in shock as father tries to pull the kid away, before a pair of school staffers lead the child into the back office.

  A staff member approaches Mason and Linda.

  “Good morning. You are here for your first day?”

  She checks her paperwork and crouches in front of Ben.

  “Ben. It is nice to meet you. Welcome to our school.”

  Then to Mason and Linda.

  “A staff member will be out shortly to show you around.”

  Mason has seen enough.

  “Ben, let’s go to the bathroom.”

  Mason leads his son to a restroom outside the office. As soon as they are inside he pins his son to the wall.

  “What is going on? Talk. Just say something and we don’t got to do this.”

  Ben stares blankly at his father.

  “You want to be part of this loony asylum?”

  Mason’s voice is loud in the enclosed space.

  “What’s it gonna take to get you to talk?”

  Mason is dreading the inevitable questions from his mates.

  Where’s your kid going to school? Western Sydney Grammar? St Pius Catholic? Nup. You know that walled up psycho asylum. The one where they lock the kids in? Yeah. That’s the one.

  “Talk,” Mason pleads, “say something. Anything!”

  He’s slamming his son up against the tiles.

  “Talk. Talk. T-”

  Linda bursts in and pulls Mason back.

  “Get off him you animal.”

  Mason staggers back and Linda holds Ben and glares at her husband.

  “You punish him? When this is all because of you.”

  Mason blinks himself back to reality as he approaches the front gate of Ridgeland School. Unlike the day they enrolled Ben it is not raining, instead, it is forty plus degrees and there is smoke in the air. Seeing the place from the outside you might mistake it for the grand entrance of a prestigious private school. The red brick wall and bronze patterned gate. The prestigious plaque bearing the school’s name and Latin motto.

  The grounds inside are well maintained but sterile. There are no kids out playing in the playground. No crooked art work stuck to the walls. No forgotten clothing or lunchboxes or balls lying around. Everything is in its place. It looks wrong. A class of kids are sitting around a teacher under a tree. Nature class for the nutters, Mason thinks.

  The office is quiet when Mason enters, just the bubbling of the filtered water dispenser. A ceiling fan twists slowly in the heat. The young woman looks up from behind the high counter.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Mason Turner, I would like to see my son Ben.”

  “One moment,” the woman taps her keyboard and glances at the screen, her expression tightens.

  “Ah Mr Turner, it seems you are not listed as one of Ben’s guardians.”

  The words strike Mason like a spear. Linda has cut off the one aspect of their relationship he thought they still shared.

  “Check again please. I am his father.”

  The woman pretends to check but returns the same response.

  “If you would like to arrange with Ben’s mother, then maybe you can see him.”

  “He is my son.”

  The woman nods in mock understanding.

  “Yes Mr Turner but we have protocols to keep our students safe.”

  Mason sees the way she looks at him. His request and his appearance is making her nervous. He had not expected this obstacle. Instinctively his hand settles around the gun inside his pocket.

  The easy way or the hard way. Which will it be?

  *

  Craig needs to talk to his people. Not his management team but the wider employee group. They are waiting for him, two hundred of them, congregated in the hired auditorium across the street. It is the usual town hall style presentation where he is expected to communicate the Company’s strategy and explain the Company’s recent performance. It is supposed to be an uplifting experience. A chance to buoy everyone’s spirits, get everyone working together, and reassure them that their livelihoods are in safe hands.

  But Craig has had enough of the lies. He cannot stand in front of that group and preach false hopes like a traveling medicine man. So he takes the unprecedented step of cancelling the presentation ten minutes after it is supposed to have started. His Personal Assistant is concerned.

  “But everyone is already waiting for you.”

  “Cancel it,” Craig confirms.

  His PA smells trouble. She knows how the office rumour mill works.

  “People will talk and take the wrong message Craig.”

  “People always talk,” Craig counters.

  “What do I say?”

  Craig shrugs. “Don’t know. Whatever works. Maybe the truth.”

  Which is…

  She raises her eyebrows and leaves, and is replaced by Craig’s Head of Legal.

  “Hey aren’t you supposed to be across the road?” Head of Legal asks.

  “Aren’t you?” Craig counters.

  Head of Legal avoids the exchange and gets to the point.

  “We have got an issue Craig. Read this.”

  Head of Legal hands Craig a letter and exits. Craig glances at the letter, a service of claim for fifty million dollars from one of the Company’s largest suppliers. He shrugs and places the letter at the bottom of his in tray; the space reserved for matters deemed too hard to deal with right now. He sits back and glances out his window. The smoke from the bushfires has spread half way to the city. The billowing black cloud casting the earth in shade.

  *

  Mason holds the smooth handle of the gun in his pocket.

  Choices. Life is full of them. You live and die by them. Rewind to the long gone driver of the Humvee that tripped the IED in Afghanistan – do I steer a little to the left or just a little to the ri – boom.

  Mason has a choice to make as he studies the woman behind the counter. He tries to read her eyes. He got good at reading eyes in Afghanistan. But that was the Afghan desert not some civilized society like Sydney. There are other ways. He takes his hand off the gun.

  “Ok,” he says, “have a good day.”

  He leaves the office just as the school bell sounds and kids appear in the grounds. There is no rush like a conventional school; no scramble for handball courts and cricket nets and the cool places to sit. The students seem to crawl out of the cracks like timid rats.

  By chance Mason spots his son in the crowd. Walking alone with his head down and carrying a book. He sits in the shade of a tree.

  “Ben.”

  The boy recognises the voice and looks up. He does not say anything. Why would he? He has brown hair and
is tall for his age. His skin is pale and smooth. He is a good looking kid. Girls might rate him if he could string two words together.

  “No lunch?” Mason says, noticing the other kids opening lunch boxes and paper bags.

  No response.

  “Want to get something to eat?” Mason says, heading for the front gate.

  Ben knows that leaving school grounds is a big no-no. He also knows what happens when he defies his father.

  “Come on son. Will be fun. A bit of father son time.”

  Ben pauses at the exit, the threshold between the imprisoned and the free. He glances over his shoulder to where the teacher on duty is distracted by something on the far side of the lawn.

  “Come on,” Mason beckons with a flick of his head, “an adventure. I’ll show you a bit of what this world has become.”

  Ben follows his father up the street.

  Choices. Mason thinks. Life is full of em.

  Chapter 9

  KFC, because they don’t have Café Sydney out West. Mason eats a crispy skin chicken burger and watches his son scribble in his drawing pad.

  “You gonna eat something son?”

  Ben doesn’t look up.

  “How’s your mother?”

  Ben glances at his father but does not say anything.

  “You’re like the perfect confidant son, everything in and nothing out.”

  Mason knows his son hears everything he says. And he also knows from years of practice that one-sided conversations are real annoying. He has just finished telling his son about his morning. And about how together they’re going to get his job back. His son does not offer so much as a raised eyebrow in response.

  “I hear you’re getting better,” Mason says, “that you at least respond when someone speaks. Don’t say nothin’ but you listen. They reckon you’re sharp with your maths. But I don’t reckon we’ll see you on the debating team, huh?”

  Mason laughs at his own joke.

  “Nutty as a bloody squirrel. That’s my boy.”

  Mason continues the rhetorical conversation but in time it raises old frustrations. He has taken Ben out of school because he believes, as he has for the last six years, that he might be able to fix his son. That they might, for an afternoon at least, be like a normal father and son. Just shoot the breeze about rugby league, cricket, or fishing. But the present sequence merely reminds Mason that his son is beyond fixing.

  “You gonna scribble in that book all your life?”

  There is a flicker of fear in Ben’s eyes.

  “You know what you have done to me?” Mason continues, “turned me as nutty as you are. Bloody embarrassment you being in that nuthouse school. I should just cut you loose. Don’t even know why I’m here.”

  Mason gets increasingly unhinged as he talks. The room seems to shift around him. He slaps his face and rubs his eyes.

  “How about a test?” Mason says.

  The black gun looks out of place in the plastic whiteness of KFC.

  “Now kid imagine you’re facing a madman with a gun,” Mason points the gun at his son, “some crazy bastard who’s come off his drugs and is gonna shoot you unless you say something. A single word. Anything. This madman ain’t fussy. Just tell him a joke. Just say hi.”

  Ben does not move. He has been catapulted back five years to a dreadful afternoon inside his family home. Except his mother is not around now to protect him as Mason presses the gun to his forehead.

  “Would you talk to save your own life?”

  Mason is shaking really bad now. It is the kind of shaking that might see you fire a gun by accident. What started as a dramatic experiment is suddenly real. The demons have him, swapping the Western Sydney KFC for an Afghan home. The Taliban sympathiser knows things but he won’t talk, not even with a gun at his head. Talk. Where are your people hiding? Who gives the orders? Who supplies the weapons? Talk. What is the next target? Talk.

  Ben is shaking. The gun is shaking. The room is shaking. Ben believes his father will shoot him if he moves. Then–

  Divine intervention. A guardian angel in disguise. The teen KFC worker, immersed in her headphone music does not notice the gun, or if she does, thinks nothing of it, as she removes Mason’s food tray. The distraction breaks Mason’s spell and he lowers the gun. Ben takes his pad back and starts drawing again.

  Mason sees some girls, two tables over, looking at him. They’re not frightened by the gun. Instead they’re giggling and looking around for the hidden camera, thinking it is some kind of YouTube prank. Mason points the gun at them and they just laugh harder. He considers shooting one of them in the leg to prove that this is not a laughing matter. But instead he pulls a face and puts the gun away.

  “You think I’m crazy don’t you kid?” Mason says.

  If Ben hears he does not let on. He just keeps drawing in his book.

  “Show me that thing,” Mason snatches the book from his son.

  He flicks through the pages. There are sketches of dragons and birds and people. Long delicate strokes with intricate shades and shadows. He stops when he comes to a picture of a young naked girl; her hair hanging down over her shoulders and front.

  “Now who is this?” Mason asks conspiratorially.

  Ben stares at his father.

  “Is that your girlfriend son? Is that your main squeeze?”

  Silence.

  “You ever been with a girl son? You ever seen a girl naked? Run your hands over a naked girl’s body? Eh? Ever done that son?”

  Ben blushes. Mason believes he might have found a button and he keeps pressing it.

  “I don’t think you have. I mean, it’s not like you’re about to ask anyone out. But hey, that’s fine, we can fix things, I know the perfect place. Come on.”

  Mason gets up and leaves. Ben doesn’t want to follow but he feels afraid outside the school grounds. He tucks his book under his arm and hurries after his father.

  “Come on kid. We don’t got much time but this is important.”

  Mason leads Ben down a narrow street and stops outside a brown door marked Thai Massage.

  *

  Talk of Craig’s unravelling is all over the office. You don’t cancel an all of head office love-in session at the last minute, get heavy handed with your Heads Of, and fire your marketing chief on the spot, without people talking. And doesn’t everyone love some office gossip. There’s whispering in the photocopy room, emails being flicked back and forth (IT do read those emails you know), and brave employees in the food court at lunchtime.

  He’s losing it.

  He lost it ages ago.

  Gone mental.

  Reckon it’s the heat getting to him.

  Alright – now stop being polite.

  Craig was a dope.

  Daddy’s Boy couldn’t cut it.

  Now that’s better.

  Daddy couldn’t cut it.

  Ok, careful now. Craig Senior has ears everywhere.

  Craig was too young.

  Now that’s totally ageist.

  I don’t care I think he’s cute.

  That’s like so sexist.

  He was never going to cut it.

  Pessimist.

  What’s it matter the Company’s like so majorly screwed.

  That’s so like alarmist.

  We’re all screwed.

  So defeatist.

  I just wish people respected each other a bit more.

  Pacifist.

  Alright stop with the ist’s already, you’re all being antagonists.

  Shut up you dipshitist.

  A million and one “ists” to describe the indescribable, and they all laugh and slurp themselves silly on cheap lunchtime laksa and noodles. But the reality is Craig Junior is going to drag a load of others down with him.

  We’re all like going to like lose our jobs.

  Who cares? I’m gonna be a personal trainer.

  Now that’s the spirit. Don’t let a little job insecurity get you down. The world can always use ano
ther personal trainer.

  *

  Mason stands in a small budget hotel style reception area; high wooden counter, worn red sofa, and a ridiculously out of place landscape painting on the wall. A curtain made of beads hangs from the roof concealing a room behind the counter. A rerun of M*A*S*H is playing on the old style box television behind the counter.

  Mason bangs impatiently on the counter. In time the hanging beads rattle and a man appears. A praying mantis, with thin wire like hair combed across his scalp. He wears glasses and speaks with an Eastern European accent.

  “It is early today no?”

  “A woman. For him,” Mason says nodding toward Ben.

  The man chuckles. He has seen this kind of father son thing before. Normally it is with the disabled. Sex, everyone needs it. Lucky for his business.

  “Do you have a favourite?” the man asks, “I cannot guarantee she is here. Night time yes but,” he checks the clock on the wall, “lunchtime is difficult no? These lazy bitches sleep most of the day.”

  “Any will do,” Mason snaps.

  The man smiles. He likes the non fussy types. Easy pleased. Easy money. Easy all round.

  The man leads them down a long corridor that smells of cigarettes and alcohol. They pass several closed doors before they stop at a staircase with a wooden bannister.

  He claps his hands and whistles. For a moment nothing happens. Then there is the patter of feet and a moment later a young girl descends the stairs. Although her black hair hides her face, Mason can deduce that she is Asian. It is a Thai massage place after all. She is dressed in black lace underwear and suspenders. She looks like a young girl dressed up in her mother’s clothing. She stands next to the man. He forces her chin up so that Mason can see her face. Her complexion is flawless porcelain.

  “Beautiful, no?”

  The man slaps her backside and she turns slowly in a circle.

  “A little thin I know. A little, how you say, sickly, yes? But a girl all the same. Speak,” the man orders.

  The girl stands with her head bowed.

  “Speak!”

  The man slaps her face and she looks up. Mason sees the fear in her eyes.