by J. C. Burke
‘Huh?’ Moe’s dumb look snaps me out of my fantasy. ‘Damon?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You sure you’re okay?’
‘No doubt about it, Moe,’ I say, shoving my hands in my pockets. ‘It’s always good to hear that the town knows my business even before me. But then, they love a drama. Glad I could oblige again. I’ll keep working on it.’
‘Man, this town’s had all its dramas packed into one weekend.’ Moe’s voice is getting its spring back. ‘One solid weekend. And I’m not just talking about Strathy High losing the game. That was small fry. The Pigman just about killed Gordon. Gordon …? What’s his last name? You know the stoner who works for the Pigman? Or I should say “worked” for the Pigman ’cause he’s out of a job now. The Pigman found him …’
I know I’m meant to be feeding off his every word, drinking in the scandal and licking my lips like a good Strathven citizen. Moe’s talking and talking but it feels like he’s having the conversation with another person. I almost expect to see someone standing at the counter nodding their head like I would if I had the energy to fake it.
But then Moe says the word ‘gun’ and I snap to.
‘The gun was right there.’ Moe is pointing to where the gap should be in his monobrow. ‘Right there. Gordon reckons he shat himself. The Pigman would’ve shot him for sure. Like my old man said: “They don’t know what they’re dealing with.” You don’t want to piss the Pigman off. Now he’ll have to have to find someone else to work for him.’ Moe stops and grins at me. ‘Hey, there’s a job for you, Damon. You could be the Pigman’s assistant shooter. He’ll need a new one. They reckon he made Gordon do all the dirty work, ’cause the Pigman’s got a bung hand or something.’
‘Hang on, hang on.’ Suddenly I’m cursing myself for not being a good nosy citizen. ‘What gun? What are you talking about?’
‘The Pigman’s gun!’ Moe barks. ‘He was pointing it at Gordon’s head.’
‘So, so are you saying, are you saying …’ I’m trying to swallow the tremble climbing up my throat but it’s rattling so hard I can feel my spine shaking. ‘You saying the Pigman needs someone to work for him?’
‘Why? You thinking of applying?’
I hear myself say, ‘Maybe.’
Moe’s mouth is half-open. He thinks he’s in a game, that it’s still my turn and he’s waiting for me to say ‘joooooking’. But I don’t. Moe’s mouth stays open and his laugh begins.
‘I might!’ I snap. ‘Why not? I haven’t decided if I’m going to sit the exams. Maybe I’ll get some money together, go travelling. Get out of here.’
‘But Damon, Damon.’ He’s giggling like a girl now. ‘You wouldn’t be, you know mate, you wouldn’t be, be into it.’
‘What are you saying? That I wouldn’t be into it or I wouldn’t be any good at it?’
‘You got to have experience.’ Moe’s pressing his lips together. He knows I’m fully aware he’s not talking about pigs. Once in a weak moment I told him how shit-scared I was holding Archie’s revolver that night at camp. That I knew nothing about guns. That I’d only assumed it wasn’t loaded because I didn’t want to check it myself.
But working for the Pigman, I could learn it all.
MY BACK IS PRESSED AGAINST the tiles, my knees bent like I’m squatting on air. The cold water runs down my face before hitting each kneecap. I am trying to zap some life into my body.
The fifth night of no sleep. In the dark, I’m like a little boy frightened by tales of monsters lurking inside my wardrobe. Except this time there is a monster in my wardrobe and I’m not little any more.
There’s a tiny package containing three yellow sleeping pills in my drawer. ‘I don’t think so,’ I hear myself say. ‘Their expiry date’s well past.’
When I come out of the bathroom I see my bedroom door is open. The urge to charge in there is overwhelming. But I tell myself to be calm. Calm is the key. Panic will only have you discovered.
My feet inch slowly towards the doorway, like I’m taking fairy steps trying not to make a sound. Is this how they will creep down the hallway when they come for me, I wonder. So softly, so as not to even rattle the china cats in the cabinet?
I wrap the towel tighter around my waist. The entrance to my bedroom is now right in front of me. Mum is standing by my desk. She’s touching something on the shelf above.
‘Hi love,’ she says, even though her back is turned to me.
‘What –’ I stop and try to make myself sound like a reasonable person asking a reasonable question. ‘What are you doing in my room?’ But each word feels heavy, as if my tongue has gone to sleep.
‘I’m just lookin’ at them Warhammer people ya done.’ She turns around and she’s smiling. ‘How old were ya when ya painted these? Twelve?’
I nod even though she’s wrong.
‘They’re real neat, son.’ She starts to walk away but turns and fixes her eyes on me. I try to make my face soft, like no matter what she is about to say I will smile and agree. ‘Damon, ya know it’s almost gone three o’clock in the afternoon. Ya been sleepin’ a lot.’
My mouth has formed a perfect ‘O’ like the clowns in a sideshow alley. What would happen if I told her I can only sleep when it’s light, that we’re not safe when it’s dark? But my jaw doesn’t move because every muscle is jammed. Behind this soft face is another thought: What has my mother been doing in my room?
‘Okay. Well, glad ya up now,’ she says, and closes the door.
My desk looks untouched. Last night, while waiting for Cleopatra666 to log on, I cleared everything off it. Now my PC sits here alone, keeping watch. What I’d like to do is rig up a surveillance system to check if the old girl’s snooping. Or maybe it’d be better to aim it out the window to see who’s looking in. But this year I’ve already smashed two webcams and it’s starting to cost.
I open the first drawer of my desk. The form to renew my gun licence still sits at the top. Last night I took it out of the pile of mail. I may end up needing it.
It doesn’t look like Mum’s snooped. The drawer’s still a mess and crammed with pens that don’t work, my full set of Australia’s Worst Crimes magazines and general crap.
The only thing that would be of interest to her is my collection of lists. But as always I’m one step ahead of the rest. They’re disguised in beaten-up exercise books that Mum’d never bother with. The only thing that could arouse curiosity is the Roman numeral etched in the top right-hand corner of each cover. It’s my cataloguing system. I want to always know which list came when. It’s important to me.
I have ‘lists’, plural, because once you start it’s hard to stop. They’re just lists of names. Names of people who’ve burrowed their way under my skin.
There’s something about writing the offender’s name, seeing it in front of you, storing it away for a rainy day. It creates fresh space in the brain. If I had to, I could close my eyes and recite every single one. But having them there on paper is a type of security, in case one day I forget just one of them.
The first list goes way back to the afternoon I put the cat out of its misery. The heading, written in my slanty Year 7 writing, says: The 4 people in the world I would most like to die. It’s melodramatic, and last night when I read it again I could’ve laughed. But the neatly placed finger space between each word made me think of the fat kid who couldn’t run and felt the sting of every cruel word that came his way. So how could I laugh? I was the only one who knew how bad he hurt that day. Writing that list was the only thing that made him feel better.
As I close the drawer, my arm feels limp and powerless, as if I haven’t used it in years. My body wants to fold onto the bed. I’ve been up less than an hour but already I want to climb back under the blankets and disappear.
Soon it will be dark again and the streets outside will tease me. A dog will bark but who is it barking at? Our gate will slam but was it the wind? A car will drive past, slowing down outside our place like Parker’s did last nig
ht. But one night it won’t be Parker’s car, it’ll be Steven and Billy Marshall’s shiny silver ute.
So it’s night tremors and monsters in the wardrobe. I’ll close my eyes hoping that tonight will be different. But it won’t because I’ll see the man’s face, the way he looked at me in that split second, and the idea of sleep will vanish.
In the bottom drawer is my most recent book of lists. I wrote the last one almost two months ago. It consists of only one name. His inaugural entry, actually, and a whole two pages dedicated just to him. Him and his selective judgement. The traitor Pascoe.
I don’t know why it took me so long to add Pascoe’s name to a list. I seemed to always be in trouble with him, always in his office. But I don’t think I really minded because usually we’d end up having a good chat and Pascoe’d say the words ‘you count as much as anyone else. You’re just as important’.
I must’ve presumed he’d intervene and the phone calls would just stop. But it wasn’t like that. Now I understand that he’d grown tired of me. I’d put his name on the list but not for the reason I should’ve. The hate hadn’t burnt as much then.
The calls to our home only came when I wasn’t there. Of course the first one caught the old girl off guard.
‘Mrs Styles?’ She said the man had whispered her name at first. But his voice grew louder and louder, she said, ‘like he was doing something disgusting to himself.’ Then when he stopped, a loud noise screeched through the phone. ‘A real blood-curdling sound,’ she explained to me. ‘Like pigs at the slaughterhouse.’
Over the next couple of weeks the phone calls were more frequent and the messages varied. ‘I’m watching you.’ ‘Mrs Styles, I’m going to make you squeal.’ ‘I’m going to slit your throat.’ But what was always the same was the sound of squealing pigs at the end of the call.
Mum told me she was annoyed, not frightened. That she could tell it was the voice of a young man, probably with nothing better to do. But one morning when I was nicking fifty dollars out of her handbag, I pulled out a small can of fly spray. She was scared.
I bought an answering machine so the calls could be recorded. I counted twenty-nine messages, all left on one Thursday between 11 am and 12.30 pm. Two of them were from Aunty Yvonne in Adelaide. Mum wasn’t answering the phone at all. She was more than scared, she was terrified.
That afternoon as I sat there listening to every single one of their twenty-seven messages, I realised there was something else I could hear as the caller spoke. A distinct noise in the background that was cut the second the squealing pigs started.
The ascending whir and snap of the rattle gun used in the mechanics class at the school garage. I knew the sound well. Curtis Marshall and Darren Geraghty studied mechanics and they had a lesson every Thursday between 11 am and 12.30 pm.
It was Marshall and Geraghty, the scorching summer of five years ago when the sky felt like it was closing in on us, who labelled my mother ‘the sow’. A name that stood the test of time. They were the ones who started the chant: ‘I did the sow last night. You should’ve heard her squeal.’
I knew it was them. They were the callers.
So the next morning, with a belly full of confidence and the answering machine in my bag, I made my way to Pascoe’s office to present the evidence. Pascoe listened to the messages, commented that they must’ve caused my mother considerable distress and then stated that there was no proof it was anyone from Strathven High. He advised that if I was truly concerned I should take the matter up with the Strathven Police. It was nothing he could help me with. Then he stood up from the big chief’s chair and showed me the door.
The next day in assembly Pascoe gave a long sappy thank you speech for the new air compressor donated to the school’s garage by Mr Geraghty of Geraghty’s Smash Repairs in Mereton. That was the day Pascoe’s name landed itself in my book of lists. The day he sold me out for a new air compressor.
Thinking about Pascoe has my heart pumping in the back of my throat. I should’ve realised then that Pascoe never cared. He only stopped Mr Tebble pressing charges against me because he didn’t want bad press for his school. It had nothing to do with me. Everything he told me was bullshit. I didn’t count, I never did. It’s like realising that the punchline of a bad joke has always been at your expense.
‘You dumb fuck,’ I tell myself, yanking open the bottom drawer so hard that it jumps off its runners and lands on the floor. I’m chucking stuff everywhere – Christmas cards from Archie and Mum, porno mags, pens and clips, an old iPod with tangled earphones – and I don’t stop until I’m down on my knees and my hands are holding my seventh and most recent book of lists.
I open up to a fresh white page and run my palm along the paper, smoothing it down like it’s a piece of silk, then carefully I jot down the date and write the name ‘Pascoe’ until I feel my pen hit the carpet below.
Mum’s leg hangs off the couch. With every breath she exhales, her slipper taps against the floor like an impatient dancer waiting in the wings. I leave the TV on in case the silence wakes her.
If she was one of those ‘little mums’ I’d pick her up and carry her into bed. I’d slip her shoes off gently and tuck the blankets around her like a tiny bug in a cocoon. When she woke she’d feel so cared for. So special.
The old lady wasn’t always this fat. But after Archie left she started blowing up like a balloon. One day she’ll burst and Tim Tams and Coke and fat cells full of bitterness will leave an awful mess on her new carpet.
I pick the blanket up off the floor and drape it over her. All you can see is some hair, half a leg and a swollen foot stuffed into a faded blue slipper.
CLEOPATRA666, THE LIAR, SAID SHE wouldn’t be online tonight. But she is. She’s playing Halo with Falcon. She’s a prick tease. Right now she’s probably strutting around in her tight little suit with her M16, unloading on anyone that gets in her way.
Last night she told me she thought Falcon was a jerk-off. That’s probably what he’s doing at this exact minute, jerking off with one hand and playing her with the other. Whatever. I’ve got important things to do.
It’s been twenty-four hours since I opened the wardrobe again. That’s another thing I organised last night while waiting for Cleopatra666 to show up. I took out all the clothes I might need in the next few weeks and stuffed them under my bed, which means I won’t have to open the wardrobe at all. But I stupidly left Archie’s fatigues in there and tonight I need to wear them.
A fine piece of fishing line lies across the gap where the wardrobe doors meet. I stuck it there last night, pasting it down with my spit. Until I get a padlock, it’s my only way of knowing if the wardrobe’s been opened.
Carefully I remove the nylon thread. The space between the doors is tiny but behind that crack is where it all starts to go wrong.
The black gym bag and my schoolbag lie untouched on the left-hand side of the wardrobe. I don’t even turn my head in that direction. On the right, down the very end and packed up in a suitcase so Mum will never find them, are Archie’s fatigues.
They were hanging on the clothesline when he left. From my bedroom window I watched the sleeves rise and fall in the breeze. It was like Archie waving goodbye before a hunting trip, calling out, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come, Damon?’
His clothes sit on my lap now. I bury my face in the fabric, hoping to find just a trace of him. But I don’t have time for pain, so quickly I chuck them on the bed and start to undress.
The pants don’t fit and I can’t button up the shirt, but still it makes me feel in control. It makes me feel like I could take on anything.
I stare into the wardrobe, at the five coathangers draped with clothes that I’ll never need. There’s the suit Mum bought me for Aunty Yvonne’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I only wore it once and that was in the shop. We didn’t end up going to Adelaide because Yvonne never offered us a bed at her house. ‘I’m not forkin’ out all that money when me sister can’t even give us a place to st
ay,’ Mum’d said. But I think the old girl was scared of aero-planes. I remember her saying to Pat after the dust had settled and she’d stopped screeching around the house about her Mrs La-Di-Da sister, ‘Flyin’ up in the sky, like, that’s for them rich and famous, not me.’
The space between each coathanger is the same. I know because I measured it out last night, from the tip of my middle finger to the notch at the end of my elbow. Fifty-two centimetres exactly.
I check the measurements and, satisfied, close the wardrobe, lick my finger and paste the thread back across the doors.
There’s something else hidden in my room. The other exercise book squashed between the mattress and springs. I push the doona away so I can reach in and pull the book out. The coiled shapes of wire springs are imprinted across the first few pages.
There’s no list of names here, just the jumble of words plus the beginnings of a plan I scribbled down when I got home that day. My finger brushes across each line. Again I have the feeling that I want to wrap my hands around Pascoe’s throat and shake him until I feel his weight collapse. It’s his fault that I have to do this, not mine.
I close my eyes and start to count; promising that when I reach the number ten, I will open them and calmly go back to the task at hand.
The first page is a total rave. My writing is a mess, the grammar and structure all over the place. It barely makes sense. Finch wouldn’t mark it more than twelve out of twenty. I’d join the losers in the class. I imagine explaining to Finch why my work is so poor. As if she’d buy it. Who would?
But tonight the task at hand is to put the mess in order.
I go to the list and read every word twice just to be sure. I cross out what I’ve done and if something needs following up I mark it with an asterisk. These points will be transferred and numbered on a brand new to-do list. I want to curl into a ball and will myself to disappear. But tonight is a ‘doing’ night, not one for self-pity.
