White Ute Dreaming

by Scot Gardner

  ‘Cool,’ I said, but my feet tingled. Two weeks already? I looked at him and he smiled. Even in his feral moods he’s still good value. And Kerry. When I thought about her I felt like an old man. Shoulders drooped, head hanging. That also meant there were two weeks of school left this term. Yay, boo. I didn’t feel so good. My guts were rumbling and the only word that escaped was ‘Cool.’

  I decided to hunt Carolyn down at recess. Put an end to the poxy notes. It was pissing down rain and everyone who wasn’t at the bus shelters having a durry was crammed into the common room. I found her huddled against the wall furnace with two girls I didn’t know by name. She shifted feet when she saw me coming and one of her friends put her hand over her mouth and backed away a little. Hang on. Yes, I did know one of them. Her face seemed new to me but . . .

  ‘It was you,’ I said to the blonde friend of Carolyn’s, and her face filled with blood—not like she was going to pop, just like the biggest blush I had ever seen.

  She nodded. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘What? I remember you from the milk bar. Angie. And your dog’s name is . . . let me think.’

  She crossed her arms and looked over her shoulder.

  ‘Kelsey!’ I said. ‘I hardly recognised you in uniform with your hair pulled back.’

  ‘How did you know?’ Carolyn asked.

  Know what? Angie was biting her bottom lip and looking out the window, as red as a traffic light. The other friend still had her hand on her mouth and it finally hit me. How thick am I? Angie just confessed to writing the notes. Shit. She’s gorgeous. Shit. She likes me. Bloody hell. What now? In a wicked comeback that I’ll remember forever I said, ‘I didn’t know. I just hoped.’

  I thought my heart was going to drum itself into oblivion as I walked coolly out the door. I went to the dunny and stood at the urinal. Three kids came in, pissed and left. Nothing would come out. A year-eight kid came in and the bell rang. I tucked myself away and sighed like I’d just finished the best piss ever and to seal the deal, lifted one foot to let a fart rip and shat my pants. No joke. A tiny little fart escaped and then I followed through. I waited until the kid left and walked like a cowboy into the closest cubicle. What a mess. I wiped and wiped and finally decided to flush my undies as well. I should have flushed all the paper first. The pipe blocked and water started filling the bowl. I pulled my pants up and bolted. Sorry Mr Cleaner dude. It was an accident.

  I sat near the window in SOSE, just in case I smelt half as bad as I felt. I had an argument with Jenny Findlay about it. She wanted the window closed and I guaranteed her it would be better left open.

  What if my name was on my undies? I still had a few pairs that I’d taken to Baringa in year eight. Mum was not shy about scrawling on them in black texta. I hadn’t lost any on camp. I convinced myself that Mr Cleaner dude wouldn’t be getting close enough to those monsters to read my name.

  My guts didn’t get any better. Hendo was sitting next to me and he kept asking me to speak up when my guts rumbled, and that spun out to me being pregnant.

  ‘You okay, love? Do you want a hot-water bottle? Nurse? Nurse! My wife needs a hot-water bottle,’ he said, and I was frightened to laugh. I asked Mrs Jenkins if I could go to the toilet and she asked me if I was okay.

  ‘You look a bit pale, Wayne.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t feel crash hot.’

  ‘Why don’t you go up to sick bay for a while?’

  I nodded and packed up my stuff. I kind of shuffled to the toilet. I was glad I didn’t have any undies on. I wouldn’t have got them down in time.

  Richo saw me going into the sick bay. It’s only two doors down from his office and he called in to see if I was okay.

  ‘Do you want me to ring Sylvie? Mum’s at work today, isn’t she?’

  I nodded. ‘Would it be okay if I went home?’

  ‘Yes. That will be fine, Wayne. I’ll give your mum a call first, hey?’

  He vanished into the next office and yelled, ‘Do you want your mum to pick you up?’

  ‘Nah. I’ll walk my bike. That will be fine.’

  I should have waited for Mum. Halfway home my guts started a kung fu demonstration that made me stop and clench my bum cheeks so hard that I started to shake. Not here. Not now. It eventually stopped and I started breathing again. I sat on the seat and rolled my bike down Merrimans Creek Road into Vincent Drive before round two. I lost. Just one hundred metres from the front gate. No underwear. Plenty of mess all the way to my Doc Martens. I grabbed the key from under the mat at the back door with Ernie sniffing at me a little more than I would have liked, and finally understood the saying ‘shit happens’.

  It’s funny how if you say a ‘oh hell’ just a little bit different it comes out ‘oh well’.

  Mum took me to see a doctor from her work that afternoon. She got home while I was still in the shower. The washing machine was going before we left. Mum’s such a nurse sometimes. The doctor poked me in the guts for a few minutes. It hurt like hell and he told Mum I had diarrhoea. The bloke’s a genius. He had hair growing out of his ears. We had to get some stuff that tasted like chalk dustings mixed with water from the chemist at the plaza. Yum yum.

  It cleared up overnight but I stayed home for two days watching videos and that. Den came around on the Wednesday after school and I scabbed a couple of smokes from him.

  ‘We’re having a garage sale on Saturday. Should come over. You’ve got to see all the shit we’re getting rid of. Jeez, I didn’t know we had so much stuff. Mostly crap. We found sixteen containers of talcum powder that had never been opened. Mum said we gave her most of them as presents when we were in primary school. Nobody uses it.’

  I know all about getting rid of shit.

  Chapter Eight

  IF YOU’RE COOL, YOU’RE COOL. RIGHT? BUT IF YOU’RE HOT, you’re really cool. Right? Can’t lose. I took the letters home and read them again. And again. I shook my head at ‘Come with me baby, get down and get rude’. It wasn’t sick or anything. I couldn’t believe that Angie would think that sort of stuff about anyone. And she was thinking it about me. Wild.

  The funny bit was that the whole thing went quiet after that. Didn’t get any more letters and I tried to avoid her at school. Nah, not avoid her, just walk the other way if I saw her and she didn’t see me. I did the same if I saw Kerry or any of her mates as well. A school of three thousand kids gets small when you’re trying to avoid people.

  I bought my first pack of Holiday Extras since before Christmas. In a way, it felt good to give Mr Pantozopolous the money. It’s like a secret society or something. He knows I’m underage to buy smokes but he doesn’t care. Smokes like a wet campfire himself and that’s got to help. Mum’s been buying her smokes from his milk bar since we shifted to the flat. I don’t think he’d sell me a whole carton. I dunno, maybe he would. I bought the bloody things but Den smoked them. Hendo kept asking but I told him to buy his own. I remember a time when we’d be lucky to smoke three a day. Now, we’d put away a pack of fifties in two days.

  ‘I found out who wrote the notes,’ I said to Den at recess. It was just him and me at smokers’ corner.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Have a guess.’

  ‘I dunno. Just tell me.’

  ‘Nah. Come on,’ I teased.

  ‘I dunno. Mandy Masterson.’

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘Wayne, I really don’t give a shit. Just tell me.’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘I dunno. Mrs-friggin’-Jenkins.’

  I gagged. ‘No. Angie. Carolyn’s mate.’

  ‘Angela Hudson?’ he said, and took his smoke out of his mouth. ‘Year eleven? Blonde? Build like a shithouse brick?’

  I nodded and laughed. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Oh. I dunno. Perfect or something.’

  ‘Yep. That’s her.’

  ‘Mate, she’s gorgeous. I could kiss her. Easy.’

  I nodded.

  ‘So, what’s happened?’ he asked.


  ‘Nothing,’ I said, and shrugged.

  ‘What? After all the notes and that?’

  I shrugged and we smoked quietly.

  ‘What happened with Kez?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t really know. She said she wanted to give it a rest. I don’t really know why.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask her?’

  How simple would that have been? Might have helped me iron out a few of the wrinkles in my gut. But what if she let loose? ‘You’re a self-centered, arrogant pig, Wayne’ or something like that.

  ‘Nah, she’s jake,’ I said.

  ‘Was it about the notes?’

  I nodded and chucked my butt down with the seven thousand others and crunched it with my boot. ‘Yeah. I guess so. She thinks I’m hot for Mandy.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Nup. No way. I don’t think so.’

  The bell rang and Den frantically sucked the last three drags, chucked his butt with the others and wandered off to maths.

  I left Ernie in the yard—much to his disgust—and rode my bike around to Den’s place early on Saturday morning. Well, I thought it was early. Maybe eleven o’clock. There were people and shit all over the lawn and down the drive. Kerry sat at a camping table with a straw hat on that was too big for her. Gracie was speaking with an unhappy-looking woman. Baz smacked into the fence near the back gate, struggling with a lounge chair that had seen more bums than a Penthouse photographer. I dropped my bike and ran up to give him a hand. Well, a hand and a stump. His face was beaded with sweat.

  ‘Thanks, Wayne. Just taking it over there with the others.’

  I started walking and almost pulled the chair out of Baz’s hand.

  ‘Isn’t that your bike?’ he asked. I looked over the back of the chair and saw that an old bloke with glasses had picked my bike up. He was squeezing the tyres.

  ‘How much?’ he asked Kerry.

  She looked out from under her hat and smiled. ‘I don’t think that one’s for sale.’

  The old bloke put my bike down gently and walked off.

  I planted the chair and Baz grinned. ‘You might want to pop your bike up on the porch. There were three people in the backyard when I got up this morning. One of them bought the boat. Didn’t have any pants on and I’d already made my first sale. Wasn’t even going to sell her.’

  Kerry grumbled.

  ‘We can get another one,’ Baz said, and pulled her hat over her eyes.

  ‘Maybe, but not like our boat. It was older than me. Didn’t deserve to be sold like that.’

  Barry leant close to her. ‘Doesn’t float. I got two hundred and fifty dollars for a boat that doesn’t float.’

  Kez laughed. ‘They’re cracked in the head, some of them. The shit they buy,’ she whispered.

  The old bloke who had been looking at my bike came up to Kerry’s table and gave her a handful of coins for a wooden knife block without any knives. Barry had vanished. The old bloke trotted off with his treasure and Kez looked at me from under the brim of her hat. My feet tingled.

  ‘Couldn’t have got a better day for it,’ I said, and instantly regretted it. Kez hates talking about the weather or anything like that. The footy. The news. She reckons it’s all crap and it gets in the way of talking about real stuff. Like love and people and nature and relationships and . . .

  ‘Isn’t it an awesome day? This is a perfect autumn day. Not too hot. No wind. No clouds. Wish I was at the beach,’ she said, and looked right in my eyes. Through my eyes. Right through to the back of my head.

  ‘Beach would be good,’ I said, and sat down on the lawn beside her. Sat down before I fell down. She didn’t hate me.

  Den jumped the handrail on the porch and landed on his feet next to me. ‘Hey, come and check this out. Cleaned out my cupboard.’

  Mate, what a trip down memory lane that was. His Meccano and Hot Wheels, even that stupid box of magic tricks that I got him from the five-dollar shop when we were in year seven. He even had a price on his slot car set.

  ‘You’re not selling your slotties are you?’

  He scoffed. ‘Yeah. Haven’t played with them for years.’

  ‘But they’re ace.’

  He poked his chin out.

  ‘Can I buy them?’ I asked.

  ‘What for? You’d never bloody use them.’

  ‘Yeah I would.’

  He thought about it for a minute. ‘Twenty bucks.’

  ‘Twenty bucks? They must be eight years old. At least,’ I said.

  ‘Got thirty-five dollars on them. They were a hundred and eighty bucks new. Still a bargain.’

  I squatted and pushed two pieces of the black track together and remembered what it was like. Every second lap, one of the cars would jump out of its slot. One of the triggers was dodgy. You could press it a little bit and it wouldn’t go at all then all of a sudden, it would take off and shoot the car into the kitchen or wherever. I still wanted it.

  ‘Fifteen.’

  He looked at me for the longest time. ‘Don’t be stupid. If you want it, take it.’

  ‘Nah. I’ll pay for it.’

  ‘Take it,’ he said, and stuffed the bits back into the box. The corners of the box were ripped and he stuck them back together with tape then taped the box closed. Kerry had been watching us in between taking money from customers and she suggested I stick the box under her table.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ Den asked, as he jumped up the steps to the front door. I nodded and sat back on the grass next to Kerry. She pulled her chair out so she could face me.

  ‘So how’s Mandy?’ she asked, and smiled.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t even like her. She didn’t send me the notes. I don’t even like Mandy.’

  She laughed. ‘Joke, Wayne. Steady.’

  Her bare toes were burrowing in the lawn in front of me and I hammered on them with my fist.

  ‘You brute,’ she said, and rubbed them like it had hurt. I’d barely touched them. A car horn tooted out the front.

  ‘Who wrote the notes?’

  ‘I dunno. Some sheila in year eleven. Den knows her. Angie someone-or-other.’

  She nodded. ‘Are you going out then?’

  The car horn tooted again and we both looked up.

  ‘No we’re not going out. I don’t even remember her last name.’

  ‘It’s your mum,’ she said, and stood up, nearly knocking the change tin off the table.

  It was Mum. My heart wobbled. Wonder what she wants? She waved me over to the car. Maybe she’d found the pornos under my bottom drawer? She leant across and opened the passenger’s side window as I jogged to the car.

  ‘Hi love. Uncle Don’s in hospital,’ she said. The smoke from her cigarette rose in a perfect line to the windscreen.

  ‘What? Is he okay?’

  She shook her head and took a drag. ‘He’s got cancer. They don’t think he’ll live through the night. Grab your things. We’ve got to get up to Shep.’

  I clicked into panic mode and ran back up to the table. I grabbed the slot car set.

  ‘What’s the matter? Everything okay?’ Kerry asked and took her hat off.

  ‘My uncle Don is dying. I’ve got to get going.’

  Den came out with three glasses of green cordial.

  ‘Dying? What? He’s not that old, is he?’ Kez asked.

  ‘Nup. Oh shit . . . my bike. Could you look after that for me? Until I get back?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What’s the matter? You all right?’ Den asked, as he put the glasses on the table with a clink.

  I tried to tell him but the words got all jammed up somewhere between my brain and my mouth. ‘Kez will tell you,’ I said, and ran to the car.

  ‘Wayne!’ Kez shouted.

  Mum popped the boot and I stuffed the car set in beside an overnight bag. ‘What?’

  She held her hand over her mouth. ‘Love you,’ she mumbled.

  I wish I’d had the guts to blow h
er a kiss or tell her that I loved her. My head had turned to scrambled egg. I waved.

  Chapter Nine

  MUM’S EYES WERE PUFFED UP LIKE SHE HAD HAY FEVER. WE didn’t stop at the flat. She kept driving down Garrison Street all the way to the highway. We’d nearly made it to Seymour before I opened my mouth.

  ‘What about Ernie? Who’s going to look after him?’ I asked.

  ‘Ted and Ivy. Your dad’s not going to be around until tomorrow. Got some work in Broadmeadows. He said he’d take Ernie to the van when he gets back. He’ll look after him.’

  ‘I haven’t got any clothes. Or a toothbrush.’

  ‘I’ve packed you some stuff,’ she said, and pushed the cigarette lighter in. She opened the pack of Holiday Extras and tried to grab a smoke. She dropped the lot and they bounced off my leg and landed on the floor at my feet. She swore and ran her hand through her hair. I picked them up, gave her one and put the rest back in the pack. Except one. I rolled it between my fingers. Mum glanced at me.

  ‘Can I have one?’ I asked.

  The cigarette lighter clicked out and she lit up. Instead of stuffing the lighter into its socket, she handed it to me. It burnt my finger—there wasn’t much to hang on to—and I dropped it on my leg. It rolled against my crotch and I thumped my head on the roof trying to get it off.

  Mum laughed. ‘You right, love?’

  I could smell burning plastic. The seat cover stuck to it as I swept it away. I charged it up again and did it—had my first smoke in front of Mum. I felt like King Dick sitting there in the passenger seat with the window cracked open. Mum keeps a jar in the console of her car to put the cigarette butts in. We used it as an ashtray as well and when we had finished our smoke we put the lid on and closed off all the mess and the smell. The jar had boiled lollies in it in a past life. Here little kid, would you like a yummy cigarette butt to suck on?

  We’d just passed Nagambie when I noticed Mum’s eyelids getting heavy. Looked like she was going to nod off.

  ‘You want me to drive for a while, Mum?’

  She looked at me and her eyes weren’t sleepy anymore.

  ‘What? You drive my car?’