Through the Cracks

by Brown, Honey

  ‘I think I’m gonna spew,’ Billy murmured.

  The sky was whitish-blue. It was hard to see where the sun was. Adam’s head had begun to ache. The gun was digging into his back; sweat trickled down around it. He found a tap, but didn’t know how to get the water across to Billy, who was trying to stand. He’d get to his feet, sway, and sink down again. He closed his eyes, and you could see he was working up the energy to try to stand again. Adam had no experience with cuts and blood loss, no experience with outdoor heat. He guessed that a cut shouldn’t bleed that much or for that long. He took cues from the hush of the neighbourhood, the way it was deserted, not even the birds seemed keen on getting about, and he remembered the advice on the radio: keep indoors.

  The windows at the back of the house were locked. Adam shaded his eyes and put his face close to the glass. The living area and kitchen were one big room. The furniture was low and brown. Adam tried the sliding door. It was locked. The toilet window wouldn’t budge. The sun swapped sides. Billy’s shade was gone. Adam stood on the steps at the laundry door and thought about what to do. There was a sound down by his feet. A big tabby cat pushed its way outside through some flywire covering a hole cut in the door. The cat looked up at him, casually turned around and went back inside. Adam knelt and lifted the flywire, looked in through the hole. It was a big gap for a cat. Adam had squeezed through smaller. The cat flopped onto its side on the tiled laundry floor. Its tail snaked. The animal lay there staring at him. Adam put his head through the hole, began to try his shoulders, he pulled out and checked on Billy. He’d propped himself against the brick wall. His good hand was against his neck, tipping his head back, as though to hold it up. His eyes were closed. Adam stuck his head in the animal door again. He wriggled and twisted. The cat got up and wandered off down the hallway.

  The house wasn’t as cool as it would have been had the owners shut the blinds, but it was cooler than outside. Adam walked down the wide passageway and unlocked the sliding door.

  He put his arm around Billy. Together they stood up.

  ‘We can’t go in here.’

  Billy’s words ran together. There was no conviction in his voice. His legs buckled under him. Adam took his weight and they struggled up the steps.

  Adam steered Billy through the kitchen and over to the couch. Billy managed to stretch out and lift his head onto the cushion. Straight away he looked more at ease. Adam’s nose was running from exertion, also a precursor to tears. He sniffed determinedly. He was not about to cry.

  The cat flopped onto its side on the carpet. It watched, tail flicking and winding. Adam looked over into the kitchen.

  He took the tea towel from the handle of the stove, used it to wrap around Billy’s arm. Adam returned to the kitchen and got Billy a drink.

  Billy groggily sat up, sipped the water. He nodded and lay back down.

  ‘What will I do? Should I wave a car down?’

  ‘What? No. Jesus.’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘I’ll be right in a tick.’

  Within seconds he was asleep.

  To keep awake Adam stayed on his feet.

  Starting in the kitchen he did a slow lap of the house. The pantry was filled with what seemed like every single supermarket item. There was an entire row of boxed breakfast cereals, all different types. The fridge was crowded too. There were casserole dinners, half eaten, foil over the top. Plates and bowls in the cupboards matched, brown with green and yellow swirls. Mugs were lined up in rows. The glasses were etched with a pattern of vines and flowers. There was a picture of the family: the dad, the mum, a girl, a boy. Adam stood in front of the photograph. He looked from one face to the next, the way each person was dressed, the smiles on their faces. The father was young. The only deep lines were those either side of his mouth. He had no grey hair. The mother had glasses. She was pretty. Her smile was the nicest.

  Their TV was in a long low cabinet.

  They kept their things very tidy.

  Down the hallway were more photographs. The girl was older in them. She played sport. Her legs were long, slim and tanned. The boy had a freckled face. Adam went into the parents’ bedroom. The bedcover was blue. Lampshades were blue. A picture of a glittering gold sunset hung on the wall.

  The girl’s bedroom door was closed. There was a long piece of red cardboard stuck on it, handwriting all the way down it, and pictures from magazines cut out and stuck in amongst the writing – a pasted-on picture of a skeleton, a pair of eyes, a knife. Warmth increased the perfumed smell in her room. A wave of dizziness stopped Adam. The lightheaded feeling kept returning. He felt it again walking into the room, and at different times while looking around. She had posters of men on the walls, on the ceiling. There were clothes on the floor. Half the drawers were open, clothes shoved in and spilling out. Her bed wasn’t made. She had a full-length mirror. In it Adam saw how sunburnt he was – arms and face and neck. He turned to look at his jeans from the side, pushed his fringe back, straightened up his shoulders.

  Stacks of books were on the shelves and handwritten things were everywhere, taped to the walls, in photo frames, in open books, things written directly onto her wardrobe doors. She’d written things on the posters of the men, words in love hearts, followed by crosses and circles. Adam went to the girl’s bed. He touched her pillow. He was dizzy doing that. It felt wrong and right to do it. He looked at a bra on the floor. Suddenly, vividly, the image of the woman on the back of Scotty’s toilet door filled Adam’s mind. He could recall the woman’s arms, her legs, her waist and neck and, most of all, her eyes. Yet he didn’t think he’d taken that much notice. In his mind the woman moved, she slid off the bonnet, smiled at him. A spear of feeling travelled through Adam. Followed by slow spreading warmth. He drew in a breath. The closest thing he’d felt to this was the energy, the magic, of the tiger – that same thrum and thrill, coupled with light-headedness, giddiness. He tingled. The feeling was as private as the tiger one had been. And as removed from Joe as all good things were. It occurred to Adam that there were things in him too intricate and mysterious for Joe to ever have known. If it had been about ownership, Joe had not succeeded. If it had been about destroying Adam, Joe had failed.

  Adam went into the boy’s bedroom. On the mat was a racing car track. The constructed track had a loop. There were cars in a basket, train carriages, some soldier figurines. On the shelves were more toys. The bed had a stripy doona. Adam turned to see the tabby cat had come in. It jumped up onto the boy’s desk and stretched out on an open picture book. Adam leaned down and picked up a matchbox car from the basket. It was detailed inside: a tiny steering wheel and seats. The wheels were rubber. When he turned the car over to look underneath, one of its doors opened. Adam discovered the bonnet opened too, and the boot. In the basket he found other cars with doors that opened and closed. He found a truck with seats inside filled with plastic soldiers, stuck down, all with rifles and wearing army clothes. Adam looked at each car separately, rolled the wheels on his palm.

  Tired of the weight of the gun, he took it from the back of his jeans and put it on the rug. Annoying too, was the tight squeeze of the tiger in his pocket. He took the toy out. Put it beside the gun. He knelt and kept looking at the cars.

  When Adam stopped, looked up, it took a second for him to remember where he was. For a moment he’d forgotten everything about himself, who he was. His mind a blank slate, facts filled Adam’s head in a way they never had before. He could see a different set of matchbox cars, a different rug, he was in a different house – clean tidy rooms, cream carpet, sun streaming through the windows. He could remember a crowd and the tops of tents, he could hear the people’s voices, and he saw his own feet, small and in bright-yellow sandals, his hands were pushing through bushes, long ferns brushed past his face, and beside him, taller than him, was a boy, walking fast . . . the pale bottoms of the boy’s bare feet, slim dark ankles, and in the boy’s hand, a flash of yellow and black . . . the tiger. The backroom me
mories flooded in then; they came like the safe door closing – heavy, dense, locking everything out, locking everything in – but then the safe door just as quickly lifted, and it was as though all Adam had was one heartbeat of darkness, one suffocated second of time, and then there he was, in the present, sweating, kneeling beside the boy’s bed. Over on the desk, the cat swished its tail, eyeing Adam. Adam breathed, blinked and swallowed. He looked at the tiger on the rug, stared at it.

  ‘These people are gonna come home any minute.’

  Billy had found him. He was standing in the doorway, holding the frame for support. His eyes were bloodshot.

  Adam picked up the handgun and pushed it down the back of his pants, got to his feet.

  He left the tiger there; didn’t want to, but it was the right thing to do. Like Monty and Jerry, the tiger couldn’t come. A child’s bedroom was where it belonged.

  They took a backpack of things with them. Billy told Adam what to take – cordial, a drink bottle, chocolate, chips, crackers and fruit. He made Adam look for tablets in the cupboards. Adam found bandages and bandaids. He put them in the backpack. There was a black cap hanging on the back of the laundry door. Billy indicated that Adam should put it on. Billy was leaning against the wall, cradling his arm and speaking in short sentences. He kept glancing towards the front windows. Adam put the gun in the backpack. Zipped it up. He pulled the bag onto his back and they set off, left the sliding door wide open, left the tea towel bunched and bloodied on the couch.

  The tabby sat in the front window and watched them leave.

  They walked the way they’d come, to a sports oval they’d passed earlier. Billy was unsteady by the time they got there. They found a patch of shade behind the clubrooms. Bushes sheltered them from the sun. They settled in. Billy lay on his side and closed his eyes. Adam could see under the clubrooms. The building was raised on stumps. Mesh barriers stopped people from getting under there. A wooden ramp to the back door was beside them. Fixed to the corner of the building was a tap.

  Adam mixed them some cordial in the drink bottle. He opened a packet of chips.

  Cooling gusts came through the bushes. Two sparrows fossicked close by.

  After a while Billy struggled up. His exhausted expression didn’t change, though. Sounds of cars on the roads started returning. A bee buzzed and hovered around a sticky icy-pole wrapper caught in the grass. Billy dragged the backpack closer to him. He popped two tablets from a packet, swallowed them. He re-counted the money.

  Adam lay on his back. He put his hands beneath his head and looked up at the overhang of green leaves. He thought about the house cat, the tail-up swagger of the tabby compared to the low-to-the-ground stagger of the caged cats. Who’d willingly put their hand up as having come from that? What the house cat had displayed was a complete and utter lack of fear. It didn’t know to feel fear, because it had never felt it. Adam closed his eyes.

  Sleep came like water, cooling Adam’s thoughts, eddying away the whispers; it lifted him up, took him, solid, steady, certain.

  Clouds had gathered in the sky: thick white ones billowing and building. Billy took a banana from the backpack. He peeled it and tossed the skin down by the mesh. He saw Adam was awake.

  ‘What’s the story with the gun?’

  Billy had re-bandaged his arm. The T-shirt strips were a blood-soaked pile beside him. He’d taken out the weapon. It was in the grass.

  When Adam didn’t answer, Billy said, ‘You’re pretty shit at explaining things.’

  Adam sat up. Billy finished the banana and took out the chocolate. It had melted and stuck to the wrapper. Billy licked the chocolate from the foil. He offered Adam some when he saw the way he was watching him; Adam declined, shook his head.

  Billy tried again. ‘Did Joe show you how to load it? Was it a game? Was it for real? Was he testing you? Was it a way to spin you out?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘A way to spin you out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He let you load it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he tell you why?’

  ‘He made me think I couldn’t leave the house, or be seen by anyone. He told me I’d be taken away. He said he was the only one who could look after me. If anything happened to him I’d have to kill myself. He showed me how to do it.’

  ‘He was messing with your head, all right.’

  ‘Do you know cracker nights?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘He used to let me watch them.’

  ‘The bonfire nights across from his place?’

  ‘Yes. Every cracker night he’d take me out into the yard. He’d put down a rug and we’d have takeaway. The last time, he made me sit right up the back of the yard. He didn’t have a rug or any food. It was dark. I couldn’t really see. When the fireworks lit up I saw he’d sat me in a hole. A hole he’d dug. I saw him take the gun from inside his jacket. He pointed it at me. He put it right against my head.’

  Billy stopped licking the chocolate wrapper. ‘And?’ he prompted after a moment.

  ‘He couldn’t do it. He said it was my fault because I looked at him.’

  Billy wiped his lips clean of the chocolate, threw away the wrapper and took out a cigarette. Lit the smoke. ‘Fucken hell.’

  ‘I realised later that he chose that night, the fireworks, to hide the shot. He was going to bury me in the hole. He must have drugged me too, because I wasn’t thinking properly, I wasn’t acting right. He just led me back inside and I fell asleep . . . I’d had the gun all those times when he’d taught me to use it and I’d never pointed it at him. I don’t know why. After that night he didn’t bring the gun out anymore. I was hardly allowed out at all. If he did let me out of the backroom, he’d tie my feet, he’d hit me for the slightest thing. He’d tie me to the table to eat dinner, tie me to the chair to watch TV. After that night he got much worse.’

  ‘Yeah, because he knew you knew. The game was up. When there’s a line in the sand, when you’ve worked out it’s you or them, then they can’t lie no more or play their games. They know you’re not gonna believe them. Put the gun in your hand then and you’ll know what to do. You won’t even think twice about it; you’ll cross the line without even thinking. But up until then you didn’t know.’

  School must have got out. Shouts and laughter carried in the breeze. There were some older voices too, some swearing. On the other side of the bushes was a fence and behind that was a walking track. The sound of the children got louder. Some scuffed their way along the gravel and others skipped and ran.

  Adam waited until they’d passed.

  ‘He knew how much I like the fireworks. It was a night he was always nice to me. But he wasn’t being nice to me. He was setting it up.’ A waver had crept into Adam’s voice. He swallowed it. ‘I’d had the gun and I hadn’t used it. I had other chances and I didn’t take them. I should have screamed when I was outside, all the times he’d let me stay in the front rooms, I should have known to run away.’

  ‘You thought he was your father. Give yourself a break.’

  ‘I should have tried harder.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that. You were trying hard.’

  ‘For so long I believed the things he told me.’

  ‘Heaps of people spend their lives believing crazier things. You were little – kids believe in the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. Don’t even get me started on the shit adults believe. You did nothing wrong. You gotta know that. Of course you did nothing wrong – you’re here, right? You’re alive. You see? That tells you. Everything you did led to you being alive right now, sitting here with me. They might have been shit things you had to do, but they got you here, didn’t they? That’s all that matters.’

  ‘No one will understand.’

  ‘Nah, they probably won’t.’ Billy inhaled and held the cigarette a little way in front him. He looked at the burning tip. ‘Chances are they’re never gonna be sitting in a hole on Guy Fawkes night with a gun pointed at their hea
d, so . . . yeah, we’re all a bit alone like that. You might not understand half the things I’ve done. You’d have to go back and be me, to understand them, and even then we’d probably see it different and do it different. Some things no one is ever gonna get. But what I can understand is how you hate the things you had to do and you wish you hadn’t had to do them. If other people have lived any sort of a life, they’ll understand that too.’

  ‘What do you wish you hadn’t done?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘What would you go back and change?’

  ‘What wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Did they lie to you?’

  ‘Different lies, I guess.’

  ‘I think I remember something, Billy.’

  He glanced across.

  ‘The man in the shed, I think I remember him. I think I remember a river and a market.’

  Billy licked his lips and looked away.

  It hadn’t been school getting out. The children who’d come down the track had gathered out the front of the building. Adam could hear them laughing and talking. There was the sound of a car arriving. The gun remained in the grass. Adam looked at it. He looked at Billy. Billy put out his cigarette, got up and crept down alongside the clubrooms. Adam returned the gun to the backpack, closed the zip. Billy came back, shaking his head and pointing down. Adam moved lower, closer to the mesh. Another car arrived.

  They had to wait. Footsteps and voices came from inside the clubrooms. Heavy things were being dragged about. Sports equipment was carried out onto the oval. If not for Billy’s arm they’d probably push through the bushes and climb the fence; if not for his arm they’d probably make a dash across the quieter side of the oval. Cars dropped children off. Kids were in shorts and T-shirts. All ages. They ran around in bare feet. Activities were set up for them. Billy and Adam sat side by side, knees up, chins resting on them. They didn’t return to the conversation. Too much talk took too much getting over. Adam sensed that in Billy too. Truth was best in bouts. Time in between to let it settle. It was there between them, though, what they’d talked about. It was like the money and the gun – another thing they’d collected, something that could, maybe, bring them undone. Or save them. It was tucked away for now. A whistle was blown. Watching through the mesh, Adam had a view of one of the outdoor activities, made up of mats and a springboard and a tall padded bench. The kids ran up the springboard; they either jumped with their legs apart over the bench or they did a handstand or they cartwheeled. One boy didn’t touch the bench at all and managed an airborne somersault. The whistle signalled a shift from one activity to the next. The closest Adam and Billy came to being discovered was when a man came to the corner tap and plugged in a hose. He was so close they could hear his breathing. It was dusk now.