by Tony Birch
She didn’t answer.
‘Are you still awake, Rache?’
If she was, she was playing dead.
Pop had been to church on Christmas morning. He said he went on Sundays as well. It wasn’t too hard to work out why kids in the street called him The Preacher. He even knelt at the end of his bed of a night and prayed. I saw him doing it a couple of times when he forgot to close the door. And I’d sometimes hear him mumbling a prayer to himself from my bed.
One afternoon he came back from his meeting with his hair and clothes wet after getting caught in the rain. I was sitting on the bed looking at the frame of Gwen. I had taken the frame down from the wall and didn’t hear him come in. He was on his way back from the bathroom with a towel in his hand when he saw me. He stopped in the doorway as he patted his hair.
‘She was a lovely girl, your mother. That’s the last photograph of them together. Her mum was already sick when it was taken.’ He bowed his head. ‘We didn’t know it then but she had only three months left.’
He hung the towel from the doorknob, took a small plastic comb from his shirt pocket and ran it through his hair. He held the comb up to the light and blew some hairs out of it.
‘It was real hard for her, Gwendolyn, after her mother went. It was just the two of us, and I . . . I was a wreck. For years. She more or less fended for herself.’
He put the comb back in his pocket. I jumped off the bed and followed him as he walked back to the bathroom with the towel.
‘Where do you go in the afternoon, Pop?’
He placed the towel over the rail, stood back and checked that he’d hung it straight.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Just been wondering. Is it church?’
‘Nothing wrong with wondering. It’s good for you. But no, I don’t go to church, other than Sundays. And Christmas morning, of course. If you want to know where I go, come with me tomorrow.’
The next day, just before three o’clock, we left the house and walked across the football oval where I took Maxie of a night. As we passed the netball courts behind the oval he told me Gwen had played on the local team when she was a girl.
‘She was the best player they had. Captained them to a pennant, twice.’
I tried to imagine Gwen playing sport but couldn’t.
When we got to her old high school, and he said she’d been ‘top of her class, year after year’, I was more confused.
‘Gwen? Top?’
‘You bet. Smart as a whip.’
We came to another a park, where a woman was pushing a kid on a swing. The girl was screaming, ‘Higher, Mummy, higher.’ Pop stood and looked at them for so long I wondered that maybe this was all that he did on his walks, came to the park and watched people. He finally turned his back on them and looked at his watch.
‘Come on. We don’t want to be late.’
We crossed to the other side of the park, to a wooden building that looked a bit like a church, except there was no cross on top. A woman and two men were standing out front of the hall smoking. The woman came over and said hello to Pop.
‘Pauline, this is my grandson, Jesse.’
When she smiled at me I could see a scar on the side of her neck; it was raised and looked like it had been badly stitched together.
‘Want to come into the hall,’ Pop asked, ‘or wait in the park? You can watch from the doorway if you want. They won’t mind.’
I followed him into the hall. People were standing around an urn of steaming water, drinking tea and eating biscuits. I sat with Pop on a wooden bench near the back of the hall. The men were around his age but I reckoned the women mostly were younger. I couldn’t work out what was going on. I just hoped it wasn’t some sort of dating meeting for lonely people, and I’d be embarrassed for him.
A snowy-haired man, who’d been sitting on one of the front benches, stood up, clapped his hands together a couple of times and asked the people who were still standing down the back to finish their tea and come and sit down. When everyone was seated Pauline got to her feet. She coughed a couple of times as the room went quiet, and she walked slowly to the front.
‘My name’s Pauline,’ she said, ‘and I am an alcoholic.’
After the meeting, as we walked back home, I asked Pop why he went to the meetings as often as he did.
‘Would they kick you out if you didn’t turn up every day?’
‘No. Nobody can kick you out unless you’re drinking and rowdy. You can come and go as you feel like it.’
‘And you feel like it every day?’
‘That’s right. Every day.’
I remembered what Jon Dempsey had said to Gwen the day before he left the farmhouse.
‘So you’re on the wagon, Pop?’
‘Yeah.’ He laughed. ‘I have been for years. You had a drink yourself yet?’
I’d snuck some beer from Gwen. And one night, when I was about nine or ten, I’d mixed half a bottle of vodka with some lemonade and drank all of it. I threw up all the next day and felt real sick. It wasn’t a story I wanted to tell Pop.
‘No, I haven’t. I’m only thirteen.’
‘Don’t matter. My old man gave me my first taste of grog before I could walk, my ma told me years later. He used to soak my dummy in it. I must have got a taste for it because I was knocking his beer off when I was younger than you.
‘Dad knew the drink was no good for him but he couldn’t stay away from it. It killed him. He died in the street before he was fifty. If I hadn’t stopped drinking when I did, it would have killed me too. We can’t handle it, our family. We’ve got a weakness. I’d been a social drinker until your grandmother died. But once she was gone I hit it harder than the old man ever had.’
He stopped and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘I could give you the best advice I know, to stay away from it. But you’ve got to make that decision for yourself. No one else can do it for you.’
When we turned the corner into our street, he said, ‘Gwendolyn had lost her own mother, who she adored, and I didn’t lift a finger to take care of her. No wonder she went off the rails. I was no good as a father. No good.’
I thought he was a lot better than Gwen was.
‘Pop, are you what they call a born-again Christian?’
‘No, mate. I’m a born-again alcoholic.’
‘Why do you read the Bible then?’
‘You seen me, have you? You’ve got a sharp eye. It’s like any book. There’s something to learn from it. Some great stories in the Bible. Your sister, Rachel, she’s got a name from the Bible, from the Old Testament. Rachel is a beautiful woman from the Bible. And that’s what your sister will grow up to be, a beautiful woman.’
On New Year’s Day Pop said it was about time I got my own bed.
‘I don’t know if we can fit it in that room. Might have to clean out the bungalow and paint it up. Would you like that?’
I could tell from the look on his face that he knew I would.
‘And school. We’ll have to start thinking about school, for both of you.’
When Gwen turned up on the doorstep a week later it was like seeing a ghost. Pop had been in the kitchen when the phone went. I heard him raise his voice a couple of times, and I knew it could only be her. After he hung up he told us to take Maxie for a walk. I’d only just got back with the dog and told him so.
‘Well, take him again. The two of you.’
When we got back to the house after the walk I saw our case standing in the hallway. I went into the kitchen. Pop was doing Rachel’s job, setting the table. He looked over at me but didn’t speak. Rachel marched into the kitchen carrying her doll.
‘My bed is all folded up. Why’s that? And where’s Comfort? He likes to be on my pillow, Pop. You know that.’
He w
as moving a sizzling frypan from the stove to the table. He stabbed at a sausage with a fork and threw it onto her plate.
‘Sit down and eat your tea. Please.’
While we were eating I started telling him a funny story about Maxie chasing another dog around and around the oval.
‘They were going faster and faster in circles, like those tigers in that story that turn to butter. You know that story, Pop?’
He wasn’t listening to my story, and didn’t answer or look up from his plate.
We were quietly sipping tea when the doorbell rang, followed by a knock.
Pop looked up at the clock on the wall and down at his empty cup. ‘Jesse, get that.’
I knew who it was and didn’t want to answer it.
‘Jesse, the door!’
‘I don’t want to,’ I said, shaking my head.
Rachel didn’t have a clue what was going on, and went to jump up from the table. ‘I’ll get it, Pop.’
He grabbed her by the arm and told her to sit back down.
‘Jesse. Go. Please.’
Gwen was standing on the doorstep. The light over her head made a dark shadow on her face. She looked creepy. As she opened her arms I moved back, out of reach.
‘Hey ya, babe. You packed? Where’s your sister? I rang and told him to have you ready.’
She took a step into the hallway and stopped suddenly, like she’d hit a wall.
‘Come on. We gotta split. I’ve got a ride waiting.’
I could hear a car idling in the street. When I got back to the kitchen, Pop was standing at the sink with his back to me.
‘It’s Gwen,’ I said. ‘She says we have to go with her. Is that true?’
I thought Rachel might be excited to know Gwen had finally come for us, but she didn’t say a word. She hopped down from her chair and walked over to the sink. She touched the back of Pop’s hand with her own.
‘Do we have to go?’
‘Get the case, Jesse,’ he said. ‘I’ve packed everything. I put your binoculars between some clothes to keep them from getting knocked around.’
I heard a car horn and then Gwen, calling to someone to ‘wait up’. Rachel asked him again, ‘Do we have to go? I don’t want to leave here.’
He picked up a plate from the sink and threw it in the dish strainer. It smashed to bits.
‘Go on, girl. With your brother. Now.’
She looked at me, hoping I’d refuse. But I knew I couldn’t.
‘Do what Pop says. We have to go.’
He threw the tea towel on the table and walked out to the backyard, slamming the door behind him. I grabbed the case and went out the front door. Rachel trailed behind me. The boot of the car was open and Gwen was leaning against the passenger door. Her old friend Midnight Mary was behind the wheel.
Gwen nodded towards the boot. ‘Throw the case in there.’
When she saw Rachel she ran at her, wrapped her arms around her and lifted her off the ground.
‘Hey, look at my baby doll. My beautiful girl.’
Rachel tried wriggling herself free. Gwen put her down.
‘Hey, come on, babe, I’ve been missing you.’
Rachel broke away from Gwen and hopped into the back seat of the car without saying a word. Mary looked over her shoulder at her.
‘You’d think she’d be fucken grateful to see ya, Gwennie. I’d smack her arse if she were mine.’
Gwen stuck her head in the car. She noticed the rag doll in Rachel’s lap. ‘Where’d you get the doll, honey?’
‘From Pop. For Christmas.’
Gwen snatched the doll from her and threw it out the window. Rachel looked at Gwen liked she never had before. Her face was full of hate. I shoved the case in the boot and got in next to Rachel. Mary blew some smoke in my face.
‘How you been, handsome? Long time no see. You’ve grown. Good looking too. Getting any?’ she cackled.
When Gwen spotted Pop coming out of the house she jumped in the car and wound up her window.
‘Come on, Mare. Fucken hell.’
Pop ran onto the road, and stood in front of the car. I thought Mary might run him over. She did a wheelie away from the kerb, dodged around him and fishtailed down the street. When I looked back I could see Pop standing in the middle of the road between rising clouds of smoke. He looked as lonely as anyone could be.
Mary had moved just a few streets away from the old place above the tyre yard. That night Gwen and Rachel took the couch and I slept on the floor. It was a noisy place, with a train line outside the back window. The local trains stopped around midnight, but the diesels kept on coming, all night long.
Mary wasn’t growing her own dope any more. She was buying it by the bagful from a bush grower who delivered to the door. She packaged it and sold it on the street. Gwen had been helping her out. They sat in the kitchen of a night filling matchboxes with deals. Mary was always at Gwen, ordering her not to shove too much into each box. And she was also pissed off that Gwen was smoking as much as she sold.
Of a morning they would jump in the car and head for a shopping centre down the road and their regular customers, mostly tradies and kids out of school, who shoplifted for their dope. Mary would take just about anything in payment – DVDs, cigarettes, perfumes and aftershave and clothes, which she sold on to another fella who ran a stall at the trash and treasure market at the local drive-in on Sundays.
Neither Rachel or me had spoken more than a couple of words to Gwen since we’d left Pop’s. She didn’t trust us and said we’d have to come along with her and Mary while they did their business.
‘I don’t want you two doing a runner on me. And if you’re going to keep at me with the silent treatment, you can do it in the back of the car.’
Mary had her own plan for me.
‘He could deliver for us. You know, like a pizza boy.’
‘Na. Don’t think so. Keep him out of it.’
‘If he’s in the car, he’s already in it, love.’
Mary walked over, sat on the couch, put an arm around my shoulder and started playing with my hair. She had bad breath.
‘He’d be good. What do ya reckon, Jesse? Help your mum out with an earner? What about it, Gwennie?’
Gwen didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no either.
When it was time to leave for the shopping centre the next morning Mary threw me a plastic bag of stuffed matchboxes. ‘Hold onto that for me.’
We drove to the shopping centre and parked outside a Kmart. Mary unwound the window and looked around before getting out of the car and walking off. I watched as she made a call on her mobile. Rachel tapped Gwen on the shoulder.
‘Are we going to the shops?’
‘Yeah, babe. In a minute.’
Pretty soon, a van drove up and parked a few rows away from us. Mary came back to the car and got in the back seat next to me.
‘You see that van over there? The one with the ladders strapped to the roof?’
When I didn’t answer she dug her fingernails in my arm.
‘You see him? Pass me the bag.’
I passed her the plastic bag. She took out a matchbox, tied up with a red rubber band.
‘You go over to the van and knock. He’s expecting you. You wait until he gives you the money and you hand over the deal. You see any coppers, if they come near the van or try grabbing you for a chat, you take off.’
‘Take off?’
‘Yeah. Take off. Get those legs of yours moving and hop it.’
‘Where to?’
‘Through the shops. Brings you out to the other side, to another car park. There’s a wire fence and the railway line. You follow the line back to the flat.’
She spotted the fear in my eyes and patted me on the hand.
‘Don’t worry. Nothing’ll go wrong. Do this and you’ll be helping your mum get in front. Won’t he, Gwen?’
‘Yeah, he will.’ She shrugged and wouldn’t look at me.
I put the matchbox in my front pocket, got out of the car and walked between the rows of parked cars until I was standing beside the van. The driver’s door was open. A man in overalls was lying back in the seat, resting a muddy boot on the dash and listening to the radio. He had dirty blond dreadlocks. When he spotted me he sat up, rested his hands on the wheel and looked at me through his mirrored sunglasses.
‘You with Mary?’
I was nervous, and my mouth was dry. I couldn’t speak.
‘You got the gear or what?’
The best I could do was nod my head.
‘Good. Give it here.’
I reached in my pocket and pulled the matchbox out before I remembered what Mary had told me.
‘I have to have the money. Mary said you have to pay me first.’
He stuck his head out of the side of the van and looked back at her car. ‘I bet she did. The shifty bitch.’
He reached into his pocket and pulled our four twenty-dollar notes. He stuck his hand out the window and waved the money at me. I took it, buried it in my pocket and handed him the matchbox. As I did he gripped my hand, squeezed tight and wouldn’t let go.
‘You watch that bitch, kid. You get into strife doing this, she’ll let you fucken swing. Good people have done time over her big mouth.’
I waited until he’d driven off and walked back to the car. Mary counted the money and put it in a cloth bag under the front seat. She pinched me on the cheek.
‘Good work, kid. Look, we got another customer.’
‘Customers for what?’ Rachel called out from the back seat.
‘For nothing, Rache,’ Gwen said. She took some money out of her purse. ‘Go into the shop there and get yourself an ice cream.’
One morning, about two weeks later, I was just about to hand over a deal to a fella sitting in his tow-truck when I spotted a police car in the reflection of a shop window. The copper was walking towards me. I threw the matchbox through the window of the tow-truck as I ran by. I ran by Mary too, who was in a café ordering coffees.
