The Legend of Kevin the Plumber

by Scot Gardner

  ‘Fanks,’ I said as I handed her the bandanna. ‘You didn’t have to show me that.’

  She shrugged a couple of times. Circles of sweat had darkened the armpits of her singlet. Her forehead glistened pink. ‘I wanted to.’

  Ash looked at me and there was something different about her eyes. Something a bit spooky.

  I patted my pocket. ‘I need a smoke.’

  The saddle creaked as she pulled herself onto Alice’s back.

  I pointed my bike the way we’d come and I could feel it pulling at the reins. Ready to go. Freewheel all the way home.

  ‘Horses are excellent for going uphill but on the downhill, bikes rule. See you at the bottom. Whoohoo!’

  ‘Wait, Gaz! Come on, I waited for you on the way up.’

  ‘So long, sucker.’

  ‘Arsehole.’

  I clanked down the gears and in a breath I was zipping along with tears crawling out of my windswept eyes. I got down low over the bars and pretended that my brakes were busted. I hit the gravel on the edge and swore but pulled it back onto the tar without using the anchors. I crossed to the wrong side of the road and had to pull onto the gravel to avoid a head-on with the bull-bar of a Jeep. I saw the bloke at the wheel swear at the windscreen and the tyres howled on the tar. He kept driving.

  I was swearing over my shoulder at the prick when the sign zipped past.

  I hit the bridge doing about fifty k’s.

  My front wheel dived into a crack in the deck. There was a crunch and I was airborne. My helmet left my head. My foot clipped the rail as I sailed over the edge, set me spinning, tumbling into whatever the bloody hell was below the bridge. I had enough air-time to think ‘Fuck, I’m dead’ and grit my teeth. Turning. Waiting for the crunch.

  I landed flat on my back. I touched down in the reeds on the side of the river like I’d rolled out of bed. The reeds cracked and complained and cushioned my fall.

  I could hear the river. I lay there staring at the blue, puffing stupid little half breaths and thinking about my limbs. No pain. I felt no pain and I thought it must have been shock. I thought that I’d go to get up and find the busted branch of my thigh bone poking out of my leg. That I’d go to move and the messages wouldn’t make it along my smashed spine to my hands. I lay there puffing, waiting for the pain to hit, and it never came.

  I sat up. There was no blood. Not a drop. I stood up and could see my body print in the reeds. I could see the shape of my back pocket pressed into the soft mud under the reeds. I started laughing, a squealing giggle that I couldn’t control. Not a scratch. I pulled myself up the riverbank and onto the bridge. My bike was upside down, wheel still wedged in the crack.

  The front wheel was fucked. Buckled and fucked. Totally fuckled. I imagined the look on Muz’s face when he saw the wheel. I imagined the sound of Grandad’s satisfied laugh and I felt like dying.

  My old helmet had landed in the reeds. I picked my way down the riverbank again and thought I should throw myself in. Beat myself around the head with a rock. I started pulling out reeds and rubbing them into my dreads. I mashed a handful of mud into my cheek. I found a prickle bush and shoved my hands into it.

  ‘Ow, fuck.’

  They’d never believe me. My front wheel was fuckled and I didn’t have a receipt. No blood. No damage to me.

  I heard hoof falls on the bridge and I face-planted into the reeds. I kicked and rolled in the mud.

  ‘Gaz?’

  I thumped my head on the soft earth and swore.

  ‘Gaz?’

  Ash looked down from the bridge. Alice hung her head over the rail and her bottom lip sagged. I could see her brown teeth. The horse was smiling.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing. I stacked my bike.’

  ‘I can see that. What are you doing down there?’

  ‘This is where I landed.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘No!’ I screamed. ‘It’s true! I flew over the edge and landed here. I nearly broke my neck. I nearly died.’

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Yes. No. I’m fine.’

  Ash looked along the bridge. ‘Your bike is fucked.’

  Seven

  I’d managed a bit of a limp by the time I made it home. The buckle was so bad that I had to disconnect the front brakes. The cable made music in the spokes as I wobbled up the driveway.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Mario asked.

  ‘Stacked my bike.’

  ‘Jesus, look at the front wheel!’ he said. ‘You all right?’

  I nodded. ‘Sorry, it wasn’t my fault. I . . . this car just . . . ’

  ‘Shut up, Gary. Just shut up,’ he said. He shook his head.

  He pulled the front wheel off, declared it stuffed and decided we should get a new one on Monday. As a joke, I suggested we use the front wheel off my old salt-encrusted BMX so I could still be on the road. Mario didn’t get the joke. It fitted. Except for the brakes. Instant circus bike.

  They should print a health warning on that blue Pepsi. Danger. May induce bouts of uncontrollable giggling in teenage girls. Mum made me sit with them after my shower and eat Shaz’s birthday pizzas.

  I suppose I didn’t help matters by telling them stories about my little sister. Like the time she let one rip on the lounge room floor at Debbie Swift’s place. Debbie used to work with Mum. Her husband was a priest or something. They didn’t have any kids and their house was like a church, only there were more crucifixes in their house. Sharon had been sitting up all proper in her dress. Only the thin material of her knickers separated her arse cheeks from the polished wooden floor. Debbie let us watch the television with the sound off. I think Sharon was about six and I saw her face changing shape like she was giving birth. Then a fart popped out. It was no little baby though. It had a personality all of its own. At first it was a quiet drum roll and we all looked at her. It started bubbling and getting untidy then Mum shouted ‘Sharon!’ and she must have clenched her cheeks or something. Her fart squealed then it got all spiky and wet. I thought she’d followed through. Sharon and Mum and me were snorting and carrying on, Mum trying to tell Sharon off and nearly pissing herself. And the smell. Mr Swift left the room. It stuck in your neck like riding past a maggoty wombat. Debbie Swift stopped working for Mum.

  The girls wanted more stories. I sat on the couch after pizza and Sharon dropped next to me. Her mate Sarah sat on the other side and when Vanessa came in from the kitchen she poked her bottom lip out and told Sarah to move. Sarah told her to piss off so Vanessa sat on my lap. Just jumped aboard. She put her arm over my shoulder and started playing with my dreads.

  ‘Nice dreads, Gary. I’m going to get dreads,’ she said.

  I laughed and pushed myself back into the couch. Someone turned up the thermostat in my face.

  ‘You’re squishing me!’ I groaned, and started wriggling. Well, she wasn’t squishing all of me. In fact, she wasn’t squishing any of me, but her body was warm and soft, smelled of pizza and perfume. Her sun-bleached hair hung over one blue-green eye and SHE WAS THIRTEEN YEARS OLD!

  I shoved the girls off and bolted to my room. I thought about having another shower.

  I was laying on my bed, headphones heating up my ears and I started nodding off. Ten o’clock! Ten o’clock on a Saturday night. The ride into the hills had knocked the crap out of me. I got up and made a coffee. The lounge room door was closed but I could hear the TV. They were watching my American Pie DVD. Mum was reading in bed with the radio on. Mario was probably in the shed. I had my hand resting on the doorknob to the lounge room and I was dying inside. Dying to crash their party. Dying to see what would happen.

  ‘Gaz?’ Mum shouted.

  I jumped. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You making a cuppa, love?’

  ‘Yes, you want one?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yep, that would be lovely.’

  ‘Just black?’

  ‘No, Gaz. White with two
. Where have you been living for the last seventeen years?’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  I drank my coffee in my room. It didn’t wake me up much. Got to eleven o’clock and I was nodding off again. I stripped to my boxers and crawled under the doona. Turned the music down. Just a bit.

  I dreamed of Trixie. She was a puppy again and had hold of my sock. I tried to kick her off and she growled. ‘Gary.’ She growled my name. ‘Gary.’ I started freaking out and I kicked her off.

  I woke up. There was someone in my room. I fumbled with my bedside lamp.

  Vanessa. Messed up hair. Smiling face.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I whispered.

  She shrugged with one shoulder. ‘The others have all fallen asleep. I was bored. Talk to me?’

  ‘It’s bloody three o’clock.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Go to bed,’ I said, and flicked my light off.

  ‘Gary?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m scared. Talk to me? Just for a little while. I promise I won’t be a pain.’

  I flicked my lamp on again.

  She was sniffing and rubbing her eyes. I could see up the sleeve of her silky love-heart pink pyjamas. I could see her boob. Her little lump of boob. Her little THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD lump of boob. I rubbed my own eyes.

  ‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’

  ‘Please.’

  She sat on the bed.

  I wriggled to give her room and sighed. ‘What are you afraid of?’

  She shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. The dark.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Thirteen.’

  ‘And still afraid of the dark.’

  ‘I haven’t always been frightened of the dark.’

  ‘Oh, so this is a recent thing then?’

  ‘Yes. Sort of.’

  ‘I thought you were supposed to grow out of being frightened of the dark, not in to it.’

  ‘It’s only been since . . . only the last few years.’

  ‘Since when? What happened?’

  She shook her head and looked at her hands in her lap. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  I wriggled again, trying to give her more room. I’d reached the edge of my bed. I’d reached the edge of the conversation, too.

  Her eyes started leaking and she rubbed at her cheeks with the heel of her hand.

  I got out of bed and sat beside her. She lost it. Her head was shaking with noiseless sobs. I put my hand on her shoulder and she turned her face into my chest.

  This is not a good look, I thought. Someone comes through the door now and they see my pasty arm wrapped around one of my little sister’s mates and I’m stuffed. Straight to jail. There was the threat of jail and there was the sense in me that Vanessa was just like my sister. It had been a few years since I’d patted Sharon’s back when she was crying, but I’d done it. Hundreds of times. And, shit, what had happened to make her scared of the dark? Maybe some prick had had a go at her. Bastard. I rubbed a big circle on her back. ‘It’s okay, mate. You’ll be right. No monsters in here.’

  She toppled on her side on the bed and drew herself into a ball. I could see her black knickers peeking from the leg of her silk shorts and I had to move. Had to leave.

  ‘Gary?’ Vanessa whispered. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Nowhere. Just to the kitchen.’

  ‘No. Please. Stay here.’

  ‘But . . . ’

  ‘Please.’

  I sat on the bed and looked at the wall.

  She shifted. ‘It’s your bed. Lie down. There’s room.’

  And there was room for me to lie like an ironing board, right on the edge of the bed so we didn’t touch.

  She sniffed for a while, then apologised.

  I told her not to worry. I was worried enough for the both of us anyway. I was worried about what had made her scared of the dark. Worried about what she really wanted from me. Worried what my mum and sister would think if they found out. Worried what I’d do if she wanted my body.

  ‘You remind me of him,’ she said, and I had to wonder if she’d suddenly nodded off and was talking in her sleep.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My brother.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He died.’

  I sat up. ‘Really?’

  Her hair rustled on the pillow as she nodded. ‘In a car accident. When I was in primary school.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  She lay there breathing and I remembered Mum telling Sharon ages ago that primary school kids don’t go to funerals, unless it was a relative who had died. Maybe Sharon had asked to go to Vanessa’s brother’s funeral? Vanessa’s brother had actually died. In a car accident.

  ‘That’s why I’m scared of the dark.’

  Eight

  ‘Oh . . . my . . . god.’

  It was Sharon’s voice. It was one of her favourite lines and it had come with a dream of some great drama. In my dream, I couldn’t see what she was ohmygodding about. Something like a hair on her toothbrush or a pimple. In my dream, I rolled my eyes and went back to what I was doing.

  ‘Oh . . . my . . . GOD!’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘OH MY GOD!’

  ‘WHAT?’ I said, and sat up.

  Sharon had turned the light on. My curtains were still closed but morning was creeping through.

  There was someone else in my bed.

  I flinched and squirmed and slipped to the floor, dragging my doona with me.

  ‘Oh my god.’

  A couple of buttons on Vanessa’s silky pyjama top were undone. She rubbed at her eyes and sat up, the action pulled her top off her shoulder and made her boob pop out. She scrambled to cover herself but Sarah and Sharon gasped. We’d all seen her.

  My sister backed into Sarah. ‘Oh my god.’

  ‘It’s not . . . ’ I said. ‘I didn’t . . . we didn’t.’

  Sarah and Sharon bumped into the hallway giggling.

  Vanessa’s face had flushed with blood and she hugged her knees. She shrugged and smiled. ‘Sorry, Gary.’

  I pulled on my jeans and t-shirt. Vanessa watched. I could only find one sock. I jogged out of the house barefoot. I needed a cone or six. My heel clipped a pile of dogshit on the nature strip, enough to make me hop and stumble across the road and wipe like crazy on the grass in front of Ash’s place.

  I’d knocked on the window of her bungalow before I thought about how early it must have been. The shadows were long and the light was a watery orange with no summer sting. It was Sunday. She’d probably wiped herself out on Saturday night. I knocked harder.

  ‘Ash,’ I whispered. ‘Oi, wake up.’

  I heard a groan. I grabbed the door handle. I was going to rattle the door for effect but it opened as I leaned on it.

  ‘Ash?’

  I poked my head inside. It was dark and my nose wrinkled at the pong. Stale beer, bong water, socks and something else. My eyes adjusted to the gloom.

  Ash’s bare arm hung off the side of her bed. Her face was squashed into her pillow and her throat ticked as she breathed. I thought about jumping on her bed — god knows she’d do the same for me — but I didn’t.

  ‘Ash?’

  Her clothes were in a pile in the middle of the floor as though she’d vanished in order to get out of them. Her shirt had fallen with one sleeve up and the other down, like a seventies disco move. I could see both leg hollows in the jeans that had crumpled like a squeezebox. And the knickers. I’d never really stopped to think about Ash’s knickers before. I mean, I really liked Ash and that, she was my best mate, but undies had never been a big part of our lives. There they were, lacy red things splashed inside her discarded jeans. And on top, sitting proud like a little boat on a wild sea of fabric, was a pad. A white pad, streaked with red-brown. Too much information. Too much. I backed out of the bungalow and closed the door.

  The sand under the jetty was cool on my feet a
nd my bum cheeks through my jeans. There were too many tossers with rods on the jetty so I’d dug a seat underneath and parked my arse. What was going on with me? I was doing all this suspect shit without even trying. I’d stacked my bike, proving Grandad right yet again. I’d invaded Ash’s private space and slept with a thirteen-year-old. Not capital ‘S’ slept, just snored in the same bed. My bed. She’d slept with me. Not that it would matter who slept with who or whether it was sleeping or sexing if word got out. My reputation was shithouse.

  Telford’s assessment of me when I pissed on his desk in grade three was coming true around me. And I wasn’t even trying.

  Yes, I think you’re right, detective. Gary Sleep certainly has a history. What you see before you is a drug-fucked and perverted paedophile. I think we’d better lock him up. He’s one bent unit.

  I dusted the sand off my hands and disturbed a flock of butterflies in my gut. Two more sleeps and those hands were going to work. I was shit-scared and at the same time starting to get excited about not going to school. They could work me like a rally car and I’d keep ticking. And the bucks! I thought that I could save up and get a car then drive up to my old man’s joint, only I couldn’t do that legally for another year. Only three hundred and sixty-something sleeps until I could get my Ps.

  Aggie and Gel found me mid-morning. Gel had a new girl hanging off him (Emily Christou, from school) and they were all wearing sunnies.

  ‘You STUD!’ Gel said, and slapped my back.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look at it,’ Emily said. ‘Face of complete innocence.’

  ‘What?’

  Aggie was smiling. ‘Emily’s little sister Sarah stayed at your joint last night. Word is you got lucky.’

  Gel slapped my back again. ‘With a fucken thirteen-year-old! Whoohoo.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ I said.

  ‘Was it the same one?’ Aggie asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The same one who’s been hot for you since we were in grade six? She was in prep!’

  ‘You’re full of shit.’

  ‘It was!’ Gel screamed. ‘It was that Vanessa, wasn’t it?’

  I rubbed at the seven hairs on my chin and looked up the beach.