The Legend of Kevin the Plumber

by Scot Gardner

  ‘I hope you’re feeling fit, Gary,’ Homer said.

  I shrugged and nodded.

  Homer chuckled. ‘Yeah, I bet you are.’

  Phil levelled a finger at Homer. ‘No bullshit, Homer. Look after him.’

  ‘Yeah, boss. Of course,’ he said and touched his baseball cap in a salute. I helped Homer load Kevin’s van, and then we were on the road.

  Homer jabbed the cigarette lighter and offered me a Peter Jackson. We took turns to light up from the glowing coil and the cabin filled with smoke.

  Homer opened his window a crack. ‘They tell me you dropped a grate on Kev’s leg.’

  ‘Nah, I slipped. Kevin dropped the grate on his own leg. Ankle.’

  He stuck his hand out again and I shook it.

  ‘Congratulations, mate,’ he said. ‘You’re the fastest worker I’ve ever seen. Normally takes me a couple of weeks to work up to trashing someone who’s giving me the shits. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke. Kev’s an arsehole. Did us a favour, mate. Now we get his nice new van as a reward. Good job.’

  ‘It was an accident . . . I didn’t mean . . . ’

  ‘Bullshit. Come on, take the credit.’

  We pulled into the driveway of a spanking house in the new estate. The front yard was a pile of building rubble, pieces of plasterboard and busted roof tiles. White wires hung from the verandah above the front door.

  Homer handed me a yellow-handled shovel.

  ‘Out the back.’

  I followed the clomp clomp of his work boots on hard, dry earth to a small hole dug beside the wall of the house.

  ‘See that pipe down there?’

  He pointed to the bottom of the hole.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Run a trench from there all the way to the back fence there. See that white stake?’

  I nodded. It was a big yard, enclosed by new fences on three sides and a house on the fourth. The hole with the pipe in it was fifteen metres from the stake.

  ‘Just . . . dig? All the way?’ I asked.

  Homer had his hands on his hips. His mess of a mouth was smiling.

  ‘How deep?’

  He pulled a black texta from his pocket and grabbed the shovel. He stuck it in the hole so the metal scritched against the plastic pipe. He marked the yellow handle with the texta and gave it back to me. The mark was above my knee.

  ‘Yep. Fine. No worries. I’m onto it,’ I said.

  He slapped my back and it stung.

  ‘Good lad. Give us a yell when you’ve finished. Or if you die.’

  When he laughed it reminded me of that vampire puppet from Sesame Street; Homer laughed like the Count. He left and I felt pumped. I felt the most revved-up I had in years. I’d show the prick. I smacked the dirt with the shovel and it bounced. It flicked up a puff of dust and barely made a mark. I stabbed the earth and smacked it with the blade. I poked it and jumped on the footholds on the neck of the shovel and the soil started to give. I went at it like an animal, my dreads drumming on my ears and my forehead, and in five minutes I’d scratched out almost a full shovel of soil and piled it beside the trench. The morning shadow had been chased from the yard and I banged away. The sun warmed my neck and back and I took my shirt off. I used it to mop my brow but there was no sweat mark. There was a tapping of the window near my head. Homer was inside the house, staring at me with his hand full of tools.

  ‘Put your back into it,’ he yelled at the glass, and then laughed. Another mad-bastard chuckle that made me grit my teeth. I dug. I dug and I dug and played backhoe. When the inside of my thumb started to hurt I checked that Homer was out of range and for a while I made digger noises, like a three-year-old, to take my mind off the pain. I worked out that they’d never be able to get a real digger into the yard, unless they pulled down part of the fence. The path beside the house was only big enough to push a wheelbarrow through. Slowly the trench started to form. I was going at a dicky angle and had to straighten up and scrape more out of the bit I’d already dug. I got into a rhythm. Dig, scratch, scrape, lift, dig, scratch . . . check the depth against the handle. A blister came up on my thumb and the air rattled in and out of my drug-fucked lungs. The dirt seemed to get softer, sandier, and easier to dig. My forearms ached. Maybe they could lower a trenching machine over the fence? Maybe they have a little one, smaller than a wheelbarrow that they could drive beside the house?

  ‘Brew,’ Homer said, and it startled me. How could a goon like Homer sneak up like that?

  ‘Pardon?’ I said.

  ‘Cup of tea time.’

  ‘I don’t drink tea.’

  ‘Fine. Morning playtime then.’

  I laid the shovel beside the trench and dusted my hands. We sat in the van.

  ‘Going to have to pick up the pace a bit,’ Homer said, and offered me a smoke. ‘Need that trench today.’

  I said no to the smoke and wished I’d packed some lunch. And a bong. And a drink. And a hat. The blister in the crook of my thumb had popped and turned the dust around the little pink dot to mud. It stung but I hid it from Homer.

  ‘Reckon they’ve got a digger or something small enough to fit beside the house there?’

  Homer coughed. ‘All a bit much for you, precious?’ he sang.

  ‘No. Just if you want it finished quickly and all that . . .’

  ‘We’ll be right. As long as you pull your finger out.’

  He turned the radio on. Some knob-jockey was counting down the day’s greatest hits. Gutless pop music. Homer smoked and looked like he was enjoying himself. He pulled his baseball cap over his eyes and slumped in the seat until his gut pressed into the steering wheel. Fat prick. I wondered how he’d cope with a shovel in his hand. I sat there and stared at the windscreen. Homer flicked his ciggy butt out the door, crossed his arms and, in about three seconds, started snoring. It was a disgusting bubbly wheeze that grew louder with each breath. I gently lowered myself out of the cabin and went back to work. I’d scratched a guideline on the dirt and unearthed another foot of trench by the time Homer reappeared.

  He stood there with his hands on his hips for half a minute then shook his head and walked off.

  I’d almost finished the trench by lunchtime. Homer came out again with a dirty black mark on his cheek and sweat patches under his man-boobs. Whatever he’d been doing inside had been a bit of an exertion. Probably reading the paper, I thought. The skin had peeled off my blister and it was completely caked with dirt. I thought about asking for a bandaid. I thought about washing it at the tap near the back door. I cracked the tap open but no water came out. I thought it would just cake up after lunch, anyway. The back of my neck prickled hot like I’d been wearing the jumper that Nanna knitted me before she left.

  Homer had a little esky filled to the brim with food. Four sandwiches, a piece of cold pizza wrapped in aluminium foil and a scabby-looking chunk of dry fruitcake that crumbled as he ate it. His lap, moustache and the footwell of Kevin’s van were dusted with crumbs by the time he’d finished and I prayed a flock of seagulls would spot him while he snored his lunch off.

  I walked. I eventually wound my way to the end of the new estate and into a service station to grab a pie. Two pies. With sauce. And a 1.25-litre bottle of Coke. I drank and ate on my way back to the van. I burned my gum on the first bite of the microwave-soggy pie. I was hurrying, dropping bits of crust, blood spots of sauce and the occasional thunder burp. I didn’t know why I was hurrying; Homer would still be asleep. I’d almost finished the job . . .

  I was hurrying to finish the job. Make him think of something new for me to do. Show the prick what I was made of.

  He was snoring in time with some boy-band shit on the radio as I crept past.

  I finished the trench. Well, I got within a foot of the white stake and I hit pipe. I scraped the shovel against the white plastic and the sound crawled up my spine and stopped behind my teeth. I leaned the shovel against the fence and went to wake up the fat bastard in the van.

  ‘Oi!’
I shouted in his ear. He jumped but recovered quickly. ‘I’ve hit a plastic pipe.’

  ‘Good. That’s what’s supposed to happen,’ he said. He pulled his baseball cap off, revealing a sweaty-oily ring of balding head, and surveyed my trench.

  ‘That’ll probably do,’ he said. ‘You’ve gone a bit deep but we can easily backfill. Dig a hole around the pipe. Expose it completely for . . . say . . . a metre or so. Dig underneath as well. Don’t crack the friggin pipe.’

  Too deep? I’d dug to where he’d said. Backfill? My hands ached as they folded into fists at my side.

  ‘Reckon you can handle that?’

  I started digging. Think of the money.

  Mum picked me up at four thirty. She looked at my hands and smiled.

  ‘How’d you go?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘You look knackered.’

  She drove back to the salon. I slumped in the waiting room chair and looked at myself in the mirror while she did something smelly to an old lady’s hair. My nose was red. My cheeks were red. My neck was red and burning. My ears were red.

  I groaned as I got up to wash my hands. I didn’t mean to. It just jumped out. My back creaked.

  ‘You all right, love?’ Mum asked, smiling.

  I washed my hands and went to wait in the car.

  I almost fell asleep into my roast lamb.

  ‘Your eyes are all bloodshot. You look like you’re stoned,’ Sharon said.

  ‘Better wear a hat and some sunscreen tomorrow, Gaz. You’ll turn into a skin cancer,’ Mario said, through a mouthful.

  ‘Turn into Gaz Melanoma,’ Sharon said.

  The sunburn didn’t stop me sleeping from nine thirty until Mario shook me awake at six thirty. Nine hours.

  ‘Come on, Gaz. Got time for a quick shower.’

  I rolled over, with every muscle in my body moaning and bitching. They signed a petition in my head. We, the undersigned muscles of this body, hereby declare that today is a day for sleeping. We shall not be moved.

  Mario rolled me onto the floor ten minutes later. ‘Go! Get your overalls on. We’re leaving.’

  He’d made me two sandwiches and wrapped them in plastic. They sat in a paper bag on the kitchen table next to a big pump bottle of 30+ sunscreen and wide-brimmed green cricket hat with ‘Australia’ written on the front in gold stitching.

  I picked up the sandwiches and sunscreen and thanked Muz.

  ‘Take the hat. Save you getting cooked like a bum cheek at a nudist colony.’

  I took the hat. He couldn’t make me wear it.

  I pulled the hat over my dreadlocks after lunch. I could feel my sunburnt neck getting double-sunburnt through the sunscreen. Homer was snoring and I was finishing a new trench at a new house. It amazed me that the fat prick still had a job. Palms off all the real work and snores through lunch.

  I lost it with him on Friday morning when we rocked up to a new house and he instructed me to dig a new trench across a new yard.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You dig the fucken trench. I’ll pissfart around with the pipes inside.’

  His shoulders shook in a silent laugh. He licked his saliva-wet moustache.

  ‘You poor little pussy flap. Here’s a lesson for you . . .’ He stepped closer and his lips puckered until his mouth looked like Trixie’s coit, only hairier. He stabbed a finger at his chest. ‘I’m the fucken tradie.’ He jabbed his finger into my chest. ‘You’re the fucken assistant. Do what you’re told or fuck off home.’

  And I nearly did fuck off home. I picked up the shovel and thought about throwing it at his hairy arse crack. I looked at my hands. They’d started to shape themselves to the shovel. My blister had rubbed into a red callus and it didn’t hurt anymore. My muscles and bones complained in the morning but after lunch they kind of glowed and I watched the veins in my forearms. If nothing else, the digging would turn me into a he-man. And think of the money!

  Mum took after-hours appointments on Friday. And Mario turned up after work with Grandad in Grandad’s Fairmont.

  ‘So, Gary,’ Grandad said. ‘What is it you do here exactly?’

  ‘Work.’

  Grandad laughed. ‘Bullshit. You wouldn’t work in an iron lung. Useless little prick. If I was a betting man I would put a hundred bucks on you being unemployed next week.’

  Mario told Grandad to shut up then shouted instructions at the deaf bastard. He screwed his neck around to face me. ‘The cops found my car in the pines.’

  We drove past the Mullet Head turn-off and into the pine plantation at the back of Blinley. We couldn’t find the car. Mario’s directions to Grandad got louder. He’d started to snarl at the old bastard, and then I spotted it.

  It had been bogged in a drain. Every panel was spotted with mud like she’d been on a bit of a rally. The driver’s door and window were covered in white powder and I realised the cops had dusted it for fingerprints. I felt sorry for the car. I felt sorry for Muz. It was his baby. He picked his way around and swore to himself. Grandad leaned against the door of his shitbox, arms crossed. He was smiling.

  ‘They’ve pinched the CD player,’ Mario said.

  Grandad let out a scream-laugh and slapped his thigh.

  ‘What? No CD player? That means the thing is worth absolutely nothing now.’

  The lights had been left on. The battery was as dead as a hamburger. Mario shouted at Grandad. Told him to turn his car around and pull the Commodore out backwards with a rope.

  ‘Not the first time. Won’t be the last,’ Grandad chuckled. ‘Take this as a lesson, Gary, you dickhead.’ He stalled the Fairmont three times before he’d dragged Muz’s car onto the track.

  There was grass packed in under the bumper on the front but it didn’t look like anything was busted.

  Mario popped the bonnet and got Grandad to pull the Fairmont around so he could connect the jumper leads. I climbed into the passenger’s seat and surveyed the hole in the dash where the CD player used to live. I felt sick in the guts. What sort of prick would steal Muz’s car? Yeah, he was a bit of a try-hard and that but he was good to everyone. Everyone knew him and he was everybody’s mate. Everybody except Grandad’s, that is.

  ‘I’ll drag it to the clearing out there and we’ll pour some petrol on it. Have a bit of a bonfire,’ Grandad said. ‘You’re an idiot, wog. There’s no two ways about it. How could anyone steal your fucken car from your driveway while you’re home? You’re brain dead. Got me beat what Karen sees in you. You must have a big dick. Don’t have much else going for you.’

  Mario slammed the bonnet and threw the jumper leads into the pines. The red lead got stuck on a branch two metres above the ground.

  ‘Go home, Warren.’ He spat, and pointed down the track. Grandad, being a good old dog, bared his false teeth, shook his head and got into his car. He revved the bags out of it and dropped the clutch. The Fairmont lurched and stalled. He started it again, took the handbrake off and slid and swerved off up the dirt track.

  Mario dropped into the driver’s seat. He hung his head on the steering wheel, his hair covering his face. His body started shaking and my guts tightened. Mario had put so many hours into the car. If it were my car, I’d be crying too. I thought about putting my hand on his shoulder, only Mario wasn’t crying. He sat up and rubbed his hair out of his eyes. His mouth was split by an open-mouth smile and it made me laugh.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘You never know, Gaz, play your cards right, work all your life at a job you hate, you too could end up like Grandad. Piss your wife off so much that she leaves you for another woman. Might even be able to afford a Fairmont.’

  The Commodore roll-started at the bottom of the hill. Mud clunked in the wheel-arches as we drove into town. Mario pulled into the drive-through bottle shop and bought a six-pack of Melbourne Bitter cans. He cracked one and handed it to me,
cracked one for himself and we clunked them together in a toast.

  ‘Here’s to a good week’s work . . . and the old Commodore.’

  ‘Cheers,’ I said. I’d earned it.

  Eleven

  My eyes pinged open at twenty-seven minutes past six the next morning. I swung my legs to the floor and rubbed my eyes in mild panic — I was going to be late for work, and where was Mario, my human alarm clock? Luckily I’d slept in my overalls again.

  It was Saturday. Der. Mario was in the kitchen dressed in blue shorts and a blue singlet. His hair was wet.

  ‘Hey, Gaz. Ash came over last night.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  He chuckled. ‘It was about half past nine. I tried to wake you up. Had to check for your pulse. Ash said she’d catch you after lunch.’

  I did remember being shaken during the night. I remembered Mum calling to me. And then I woke up this morning.

  ‘You were ratshit, mate,’ Mario said. ‘What are you up to today?’

  I shrugged and rubbed the hairs on my chin.

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘Give us a hand with the car?’

  ‘Yeah, no worries.’

  Mario poached me two eggs for breakfast. Next thing I knew, we were in the garage. Wasn’t even eight o’clock and we were already under the bonnet, giving the beast an oil change and checking her over. I got the vacuum from the laundry and sucked the back seats clean. My ring! Muz had put it in the console. I looked under the seats. In the passenger’s footwell I found a crushed cigarette butt. Dunhill. Mario didn’t smoke and he didn’t let Mum smoke in the car and no-one I knew could afford Dunhill. I showed Muz.

  ‘Filthy pigs.’

  ‘Maybe we should tell the cops,’ I said.

  ‘What for? We got the car back.’

  ‘Yeah, but whoever took the car is still out there. And they took my ring.’

  Mario found a little zip-lock bag.

  ‘Stick it in here, we’ll drop it in to the cop shop and tell them about the ring on our way to the car wash.’

  The battery hadn’t recovered. There was enough juice in it to make the dash light up and the solenoid click, but that was all.