‘My husband and I run a rescue service for animals,’ Sue adds.
For some reason, I picture her in a lifesaver’s uniform running into the ocean to rescue a pig that’s fallen off a surfboard. The pig is floundering in the fast-moving rip, one trotter held aloft as it feebly attempts to snort for help. Sue, a surf ski under her arm, dives into the waves, jumps on the board and paddles to where Babe was last seen.
‘Did you hear what I said, Jesse?’ Sue asks.
‘Yeah. No. Sorry?’
‘You can visit if you like. We have lots of animals to feed. Babe would love to meet you. He’s such a friendly pig.’
Hunter is standing beside the entrance to the library, peering through the window. The window fogs up with his breath and I slink lower into the beanbag. Thank Trevor, he didn’t see me.
‘You have a customer,’ I whisper to Sue.
She looks around as Hunter walks through the door. ‘Hello, Hunter. We were just talking about pigs.’
It really is Hunter’s day for being compared to animals. Hunter snorts and walks away, not even bothering to answer Sue.
‘Sorry about Hunter, Sue,’ I say. ‘He’s a little upset, since his pet goldfish died.’ I can’t resist adding, ‘Maybe you should invite him to your farm. He’d love to meet Babe.’ I get up to leave. ‘But don’t mention the fish, okay? He’s trying to …’
‘Move on?’ Sue suggests.
I nod and wave from the doorway, careful as I step into the corridor that Hunter isn’t lurking.
6
HUNTER
Hunter stands on the corner of Lister and Brighton Streets, looking across at the football oval and the young players running laps. He thinks of his father and how years ago, he’d wait expectantly for his dad to come to football training. Ha! Hunter remembers looking at the car park instead of the football, his coach blowing the whistle to get his attention. Only once in the two years Hunter played footy did his dad turn up to training. And even then he spent most of the time on his mobile phone. He never made the Saturday game. Work. As if that one word was excuse enough. And then his father left home for good.
Hunter sighs and carries his bag to the fountain in Elkhorn Park. He watches the young woman in trackpants and sweatshirt punching the gloves of her personal trainer. She skips from foot to foot and throws a punch with a loud exhalation of breath. Droplets of sweat fly from her forehead with every punch she throws. Hunter hopes her personal trainer can revive heart attack victims. The trainer signals a break and the woman rests on her haunches. The trainer offers her a water bottle. She drinks it quickly, water spilling down her shirt.
‘Hey, leave me alone,’ a voice calls from the opposite side of the park. It’s Samuel, the boy from the toilet. He’s reaching for his backpack which is being swung in the air by Watson Watts, from year five.
Watson towers over Samuel and gloats, ‘Come on, you can do better than that’. Samuel jumps up and nearly grabs the strap, but Watson pulls it away, just in time. Samuel swings his arm at Watson, who easily dodges it. Then, Samuel crosses his arms and waits. Watson swings the bag a few more times and flings it onto the grass, a few metres away. The boys look at each other, neither moving.
‘It’s all yours,’ Watson says.
Samuel takes a deep breath, looks around the park for help, sees no-one but Hunter at the fountain and decides to make a run for it. He sprints toward the bag, but Watson overtakes him and scoops it up with one deft movement. Samuel falls to the grass and starts to cry.
Hunter notices Watson is holding only one bag: Samuel’s. He scans the park and sees Watson’s bag on the bus-shelter seat. ‘Ha!’ He walks casually over to the shelter. The name tag reads, ‘Watson Watts’. What a stupid name, Hunter thinks. He picks up the bag and walks toward the boys. Samuel sees Hunter first. He buries his head in his hands, afraid of what’s going to happen next.
‘Hunter!’ calls Watson. It takes him a minute to notice that Hunter is carrying two bags and one of them is his.
Hunter turns to Samuel instead of Watson. ‘Hey, Samuel,’ says Hunter, his voice flat and quiet. ‘Which bag do you want?’ Hunter holds Watson’s bag in front of him. ‘This one, or yours?’
‘That’s mine,’ says Watson.
Hunter and Samuel ignore him. Samuel points to his own bag, still in Watson’s grip. ‘Mine,’ he says. ‘Please.’
Hunter stares at Watson. Watson looks furtively around the park. The woman and her personal trainer are jogging away, heading toward the path along the creek.
‘We were just having fun, weren’t we, Samuel?’ says Watson.
‘No,’ says Samuel.
‘Come on, Hunter, it’s just a game,’ says Watson, his voice uncertain.
An old man drives slowly along the path on his mobility scooter, his shopping in the basket on the handlebars. He wears a peaked cap and has a pipe in his mouth, the smoke trailing behind, like a faulty exhaust. He slows down when he passes the boys.
Watson says, ‘Hey.’
The old man stops his cart. He takes the pipe out of his mouth. ‘Can I help you?’ he says, in a deep voice.
Hunter smiles. ‘No, thank you, sir. Watto thought he recognised you, that’s all.’
The old man looks at Samuel on the grass. Samuel nods his head. Watson swallows hard and doesn’t say a word. The old man puts his pipe back into his mouth and takes a slow puff, before driving away.
Once the man is out of hearing range, Watson chucks Samuel’s bag on the grass. Samuel jumps up, gathers the bag and runs past Hunter to the path beside the creek.
Watson looks at the ground and says, ‘Can I have my bag, Hunter?’
Hunter waits until Samuel is out of sight.
‘Come on, Watto.’ He smiles. ‘You can do better than that.’
7
jesse
On the way home from school, Kate catches up to me at the street corner. She’s whistling a slow mournful sound. We don’t speak until she finishes.
‘That sounded so sad,’ I say.
Kate smiles. ‘It’s the mating call of the humpback whale.’
‘A live humpback whale,’ I add.
Kate giggles. ‘Skye is such a …’
‘Stresshead?’ I suggest.
‘Blubber guts! And I don’t mean whale blubber either.’ Kate looks at me. ‘You were the only one who understood, Jesse.’
I nod.
‘I thought Sarah would get it,’ Kate says.
‘Teachers are scared of tears,’ I say.
‘I was going to suggest we all write protest letters to the Japanese Embassy.’ Kate smiles. ‘I thought we could save the whales and get out of maths in the same afternoon.’
‘Algebra makes my brain hurt,’ I say.
‘The only good thing about maths is watching Hunter squirm in his seat all afternoon,’ Kate adds.
‘How many times can one boy go to Walter?’ I say.
‘Maybe his bladder and brain are connected,’ Kate says.
‘Yeah, and they’re both leaking,’ I respond.
Kate laughs. ‘Is that toilet humour?’
She stops walking and takes off her backpack. She rummages inside and brings out her notebook. ‘Do you have a pen, Jesse?’
I reach into the side pocket of my backpack and take out a pen, handing it to her. On a scrap of paper, Kate writes something and gives it to me, along with my pen.
‘The Japanese Embassy?’ I ask, stuffing it in my pocket.
‘Of course,’ she says.
‘I’ll write soon,’ I say. I wonder what Trevor would think about saving the whales. I’m sure he’d support it. Then, as usual, the next thought I have is if Trevor really supported the whales, he’d have a word … upstairs … to God.
‘What are you thinking about, Jesse?’ Kate asks.
I swallow hard. Kate never called me Jesus Freak last week, when Hunter turned on me.
‘You could ask somebody else,’ my voice is quiet, ‘to stop the whaling.’
/> Kate nods. ‘I’ve already sent letters to the Norwegian and Canadian Embassies.’
‘No, I mean …’ I look up into the sky.
Kate notices. ‘You mean …’ She points a finger to the heavens.
‘It can’t hurt,’ I say.
Kate shrugs. ‘I imagine if he,’ she giggles to herself, ‘or she is up there, they’d have more important things to do.’
‘Like stopping wars?’ I suggest.
‘Yeah.’ Kate punches me on the arm. ‘Or stopping themselves from falling out of the sky. Why do people always look up for God?’
‘Maybe he floats like a hot air balloon,’ I suggest.
‘He or she definitely doesn’t sit on a cloud. I’ve been on a plane heaps of times and clouds don’t look heavy enough to hold somebody as important as …’ She points skyward again.
‘My parents tell me not to worship false gods,’ I admit.
‘My mum says the only supernatural thing in the universe is,’ Kate touches her heart, ‘inside us. It’s what we do that counts.’
‘But who makes us do it?’ I ask.
Kate laughs. ‘Dad says it’s all nonsense and everyone knows the only true God plays in the midfield for Barcelona.’
We stop walking as we reach Elkhorn Park. Hunter is swinging a schoolbag wildly around his head. Watson is trying to grab it off Hunter, who holds him at bay with one outstretched hand.
‘Hey!’ Kate yells.
Hunter slows down his swinging and Watson manages to grab the bag. Both boys pull. Watson stumbles to his knees, but holds onto the bag. Hunter lets go of the strap and walks toward us. Behind him, Watson clutches the bag and hurries away. Without meaning to, I tighten the grip on my backpack.
‘Bleakboy and Whale-eater,’ says Hunter.
I look nervously toward Kate, wondering how she’ll react. She doesn’t say a word. I follow her example and we both stand silently a few metres from Hunter.
His glance wanders to my Dunlop Volleys. ‘My uncle wears shoes like that,’ he says. ‘Old-man tennis shoes.’
He looks from Kate to me. ‘You couldn’t hit a tennis ball if you tried, Bleakboy.’
There’s really nothing I can say to respond, so I bite my lip. Kate stifles a yawn. When it’s obvious neither of us is going to react, Hunter starts looking uncomfortable. His eyes flit from Kate to me, looking for something else to pick on.
Kate smiles.
‘How do you eat so much blubber with railway tracks on your teeth,’ Hunter says.
Kate stops smiling. I think her braces give Kate an infectious smile, but I’ve never said that to her.
‘You’d better not walk too close to a magnet with all that metal in your mouth.’ Hunter mimics being drawn into a wall face first. He calls out, in a deliberately muffled voice, ‘I’m stuck, I’m stuck!’
I can hear Kate’s teeth grinding with the effort to remain silent.
Hunter looks scornfully at both of us. ‘Talking to you two is like talking to a wall,’ he says. ‘A metal wall.’
Kate yawns, this time not hiding her mouth with her hand. Both sets of braces are showing. She glances toward me and tilts her head, indicating we should leave. She turns away from Hunter. A second later, I do the same. At the far end of the park, Watson is about to board a bus home, both hands clutching his backpack.
Hunter calls from behind us, ‘Bleakboy and Whale-eater.’ His voice echoes across the park until we cross the road. I sneak a glance back and see Hunter standing alone wondering where Watson has gone and wondering what to do next.
Kate says, ‘It works!’
‘Pardon?’
‘Mum told me about non-violent protest.’ Kate frowns. ‘I think that’s what she called it. She said the best thing to do when somebody picks on you is nothing.’
‘Somebody should tell Watson,’ I suggest.
‘Hunter didn’t know what to do,’ says Kate.
‘Yeah, but …’ I don’t want to say the obvious.
‘But what?’
‘If I was here alone, just boy against boy, Hunter would have been swinging my backpack, not Watson’s,’ I say.
Kate shakes her head. ‘You’ll never know until you try it.’
I giggle. ‘You mean I should offer myself to Hunter? To pick on?’
Kate punches my arm lightly again. ‘We have the power, Jesse.’
I rub my arm. ‘No. I have old-man tennis shoes.’ We both look down. ‘And Hunter has the muscles,’ I add.
Kate just smiles and taps a finger to the side of her head as if to say brains beat brawn.
8
HUNTER
On the long walk home, Hunter stops at the intersection of Ficus and Burnley Streets. He looks east along Ficus Street to where Saint Stephen’s Church is surrounded by a stone wall and flowering shrubs. That’s where his parents got married. His mum told him it was a perfect summer’s day and they took photos under a wattle tree in bloom.
And then the wasps flew down from the tree and stung the bridesmaids, the groom, the best man and most of the wedding party. Everyone except the bride and the photographer. The wedding album at home is packed with photos of people slapping themselves. The reception was held at the local conference centre and instead of passing around glasses of champagne, they shared ointment for the bites. Everyone was red and blotchy, except Hunter’s mum. His father had swollen lips for days, Mum said. He could barely speak and they couldn’t kiss. Hunter liked that story.
The old man on the scooter from the park pulls up alongside Hunter. He reaches into his pocket for a box of matches to light his pipe and cups one hand around the flame. He puffs and Hunter smells the acrid smoke. Hunter waits for him to move on, but he doesn’t. He just sits on the scooter looking down the street.
‘I used to walk to the shops every day,’ the old man says, more to himself than Hunter. ‘Now I drive this contraption, like an invalid.’ Hunter notices the shopping in the basket: pasta, tinned sauce, a bottle of milk and dog food.
‘What sort of dog do you have?’ Hunter asks.
The old man laughs. ‘One that doesn’t yap all night. One that knows when to sit at my feet and,’ the old man takes a puff, ‘when to leave me alone.’ He reaches into the shopping basket and holds up the tin of dog food. ‘Deefer doesn’t need much.’ He drops the tin back in the basket. ‘We both eat out of tins.’
‘Deefer? What sort of name is that?’ Hunter says.
‘D for dog. Deefer,’ chuckles the old man. ‘Something easy to remember.’ He taps one finger against his temple. ‘In case I start losing my marbles as well as my mobility.’
‘Where’s your wife?’ Hunter asks.
The old man looks sharply at Hunter. He studies his pipe for a few seconds before answering, ‘She’s passed on’. He holds up the pipe. ‘They say this thing will kill me.’ He scoffs. ‘It’s the heart that kills us in the end. One way or another.’ The old man coughs into his handkerchief. ‘All the same, laddie, I wouldn’t be taking it up if I were you. The smell scares away the ladies!’ He reaches down and taps the smouldering contents out onto the grass. ‘Step on that for me, will you?’
Hunter walks around the scooter and presses the ash into the grass with his shoe.
‘Was I interrupting something,’ the old man says, ‘back there in the park?’
Hunter shakes his head.
They both stare down Ficus Street. The wind suddenly picks up from the east. Storm clouds colour the horizon. A flock of starlings swoop across the sky, like a mottled fan unfolding. A soft-drink truck pulls up a few metres in front of them. The driver jumps down from his cabin and lifts a yellow plastic crate of assorted drinks from the tray top, carrying it into the house with a green-painted fence.
‘When I was a kid,’ the old man says, ‘a bloke around the corner drove one of those trucks.’ He looks cheekily at Hunter. ‘He kept crate loads of soft drinks under his house.’ The old man winks. ‘Whenever I got thirsty, I knew just where to go. Even now, I can har
dly resist the desire to just scoot alongside the truck, reach in, grab a bottle and be on my way.’
Hunter laughs at the image of a pensioner thief puttering away on his scooter. ‘I’ll keep watch, if you want,’ he says.
The old man chuckles. ‘We’d never make it, laddie. The battery on this thing is on its last legs. Much like me.’
The truck driver comes out from the house, carrying an empty crate. He pulls the tarp over the full crates on the tray top and ties it down with rope, ready for the approaching storm.
The old man turns his scooter, preparing to cross the road. ‘I never ride down this side of Ficus,’ he says. ‘Going that close to the church gives me the screaming willies.’ He waves the pipe at Hunter and speeds across the road. Hunter watches him reach the other side and scoot up the gutter, the food in the basket shaking, the old man intently holding the handlebars as he surges forward.
Hunter turns away and walks slowly down Burnley Street. Lightning forks in the distance. He practises spitting between the gap in his teeth, first for distance, then for accuracy. He’s an expert by the time he reaches his house.
Hunter sits on his front fence, watching the storm bruise the horizon. A curtain of rain folds toward him. He hears the rain on the corrugated roof of Mrs Betts’s house before he feels it. He closes his eyes and turns his face to the sky. Pock. Pock. Pock. The raindrops drum on his forehead, soak his hair and channel down his back. He opens his mouth to catch the drops and says, ‘I’m eating the rain.’ He giggles.
Hunter remembers when he was five years old, being caught in a thunderstorm with his dad. How his dad lifted a newspaper above their heads as they scurried for cover. They were soaked before reaching the safety of a bus shelter. While he watched the rain gush down the gutters and turn potholes into puddles, his father read the wet newspaper, peeling each page away from the other. Hunter marvelled at the sky, amazed that clouds could hold that much water. With one of his father’s discarded sheets of newspaper, Hunter fashioned a boat: a newsprint canoe. He stepped from the shelter and launched it in the gutter. It swept away, riding the stormwater waves. Hunter knelt on the footpath and laughed. His father told him to come out of the rain.
Bleakboy and Hunter Stand Out in the Rain Page 3
