Human Torpedo

by Tim Winton

  ‘Geez, Vick. You must be loaded.’

  Vicki squinched up her nose as she opened a fridge big enough to put a horse in. ‘Wanna Coke?’

  Lockie nodded.

  They sat at the kitchen bar and drank their Cokes. Lockie was still nervous.

  ‘Where’s yer oldies?’

  Oh, they must be out at the yacht club showing off the new boat. Here, I’ll show you something.’

  Lockie followed her through the living room and upstairs to a bedroom with a balcony that overlooked town. The room itself was ankle deep in pink carpet. The walls were pink, and the bed was round and pink like a powder puff.

  ‘Is that gross or is that gross?’ she asked.

  Lockie smiled nervously.

  ‘It’s the kind of people they are,’ Vicki said. ‘All money and no taste.’ She showed him the ensuite. ‘Look, they both keep spare sets of false teeth in the cupboard.’

  ‘C’mon, Vick, let’s get out of here.’

  ‘What are you worried about?’

  ‘I dunno,’ Lockie said, squirming.

  Vicki went back to the bedside and pulled open a drawer. She got out a packet of Marlboros and lit one up with a silver lighter. She looked like a woman now, but not the woman Lockie’d thought of. She blew a few chubby smoke rings and looked at him. ‘Wanna drag?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘I thought you had some brains.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Smoking. It’s stupid. It gives you cancer. Why worry about the ozone layer if you’re fagging yourself to death anyway. It’s irrational.’

  ‘Irrational. Like believing in God. Like being in love. Don’t be a dag, Lockie. Don’t you ever get sick of being sensible? Sure it’s dumb, but I’m smart enough to do dumb things sometimes.’

  Lockie turned and tried to head downstairs, but ended up getting lost. He found himself in a room with a big pool table and overhead lights. Against the wall was a long, black sofa. He sat down for a second. Maybe this girlfriend/boyfriend business wasn’t for him after all. It was flamin’ complicated.

  ‘Oh, there you are.’

  Vicki was at the door. The smoke was gone.

  ‘Are you mad at me?’

  Lockie shrugged.

  ‘Lockie-Lockie-Lockie, I should be so Lockie.’

  He couldn’t help but smile at that. Vicki came and sat on his knee. She put her arms around him and looked into his eyes. She smelled of smoke, but it was exciting somehow. She kissed him and the taste was bitter and his heart jumped. He pulled her to him and ran his fingers across her neck, through her hair. Her legs clamped around his waist and she put a hand up under his windcheater hot against his skin. Lockie felt her teeth and braces against his teeth, her tongue against his.

  ‘Hmm. Nice,’ she murmured, pushing him down on the sofa.

  She had a little waist and a pretty little bum in those jeans. Lockie pulled her down on him and felt her breasts crushing against his chest. So this is what they mean, he thought; this is what it’s all about. For a moment that booklet flashed into his mind. Secretions, labia, vas deferens. It didn’t seem entirely revolting.

  Vicki’s skin was hot and smooth where her sweater rode up from her jeans, and he slid his hands inside. Up across her belly to the rough fabric of her bra. It was soft under there, though he didn’t know what else he should have expected.

  Vicki slid down beside him and he felt inside the lacy edge. Was that her pulse in there, or his own fingertips throbbing? Her nipple ran under the palm of his hand and she breathed quickly. Lockie could have howled like a werewolf.

  Slam!

  A door.

  Suddenly Lockie was shivering like a cocker spaniel.

  ‘It’s me mum and dad! Quick!’

  Lockie was up, buttoning and straightening, running round in circles. Straighten the sofa, flick back the hair, grab a pool cue. Human torpedo.

  When Mr Streeton came heaving his beer gut into the doorway, Lockie was shooting at the eight ball with the fat end of the cue. He also had a stain on his Levis that smelled of beansprouts.

  ‘Oh, yer back. You two behavin’ yerselves?’

  ‘This is Lockie, Dad.’

  ‘Lockie?’

  ‘Yes. Sir.’

  ‘What sort of name’s that?’

  ‘It’s the name his parents gave him, Dad.’

  ‘Surname?’

  ‘Leonard, sir.’

  Mr Streeton scratched himself where the sun never shines. ‘New in town?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Hmm. The new copper’s a Leonard. Any relation?’

  ‘My father, sir.’

  ‘Wanna buy a car, does he?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, I’m off. Just left me smokes behind. Behave yourselves, orright?’

  ‘Yes, master,’ said Vicki.

  ‘Tell your father I’m an honest man.’

  ‘No worries!’ said Lockie, almost dying of relief as the big man left. They waited till they heard the car start before either of them dared breathe.

  ‘Cor. I need a kiss,’ said Vicki.

  ‘Not me,’ said Lockie. ‘I need an ambulance.’

  ou alright, Lockie?’ Mrs Leonard asked at dinner. ‘You look a bit feverish tonight, love.’

  Lockie scoffed his mashed spud and shook his head. ‘No, I’m fine.’ To himself he thought, I’m a nervous wreck, that’s what.

  The Sarge was on the late shift. Phillip left the table to watch ‘Alf on TV. Blob just sat there gobbing up her pumpkin.

  ‘You said you’d go to Youth Group tonight.’

  Gulp. ‘Did I?’

  ‘Come on, Lockie, you’ve got to meet some nice friends. What did you do today? Walk around on your own all day, I’ll bet.’

  ‘No, Mum.’

  Mrs Leonard hoisted Blob out of the high chair and onto her lap. Now she looked worried. He hated it when her mouth pinched up like that; she took everything so seriously.

  ‘I should have asked you before, I know, where you’ve been going, that is. I’ve always trusted you, Lockie, that’s why. I know you’d never do anything — ’

  ‘Mum, don’t get all — ’

  ‘I’m not getting all anything.’

  ‘I just went walking. Up Mount Clement behind the school. Through the pine plantation.’

  ‘On your own?’

  Here goes. ‘No, Mum. With a friend.’

  ‘What’s his name.’

  ‘It’s a she.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Lockie could hear ‘Alf’ blasting away from the lounge room. I should have said I was sick, he thought. Lockie’s mum looked like she seriously regretted giving him that little sex book. She was blaming herself already, he could tell.

  But she smiled. ‘You’ve got a girlfriend?’

  Lockie shrugged.

  ‘You must bring her home. Do I know her?’

  ‘Mum, do you know anyone in this town?’

  She grinned. ‘Okay, dumb question.’

  •

  Lockie went along to the Youth Group that night out of sheer gratitude to his mum. She didn’t get hysterical, she didn’t press the point, she left him in peace, so he went along as a favour.

  But there’s only so far you can take a favour. It was a horrible night. All these terrible, awful, spoilt, two-faced teenagers in a hall with two nice, unsuspecting adults. All their parents were straightlaced mega-respectable churchgoers and their kids pretended to be the same, but they were just acting. They infuriated Lockie somehow. They thought they were so cool. Why didn’t they just own up, he thought, and be who they were, instead of this false thing they were into? One kid tried to sell him a packet of condoms and a watch he’d stolen. The boys had scabs on their knuckles from fighting. They talked about ‘boongs’ and ‘slopes’ and ‘dagos’. They hated ‘poofters’ and ‘lezzos’ and ‘greenies’ and it made him sick to hear them. They even slagged each other when they couldn’t be overhear
d, and when the adults were round they were sweet as custard. It was like they were angels on the outside and dunny rats on the inside. And worst of all, they were boring as well, though they didn’t seem to notice. They seem to be full of hot stinking air. Lockie’d never seen anything like it before in his life.

  ‘Let’s pray!’ said the leaders at the end of the night.

  ‘Yeaahh!’ they all said.

  Lockie nearly puked in his pocket.

  •

  ‘How was it?’ the Sarge asked, driving him home.

  ‘I couldn’t even begin to tell you,’ Lockie mumbled.

  ‘Nice kids?’

  ‘They should be in South Africa running the government.’

  ‘Run that past me again?’

  ‘Send me to Sunday school, to gaol, but never send me there again. And if you go yourself, take your handcuffs.’

  The Sarge laughed. ‘They can’t be that bad.’

  ‘And your truncheon and a shotgun.’

  ‘And I thought coppers’ kids were rebels.’

  ‘Dad, you’ve lived a sheltered life, I swear it.’

  They laughed all the way home, though neither of them really understood what was so funny.

  fter church on Sunday, the Sarge and Mrs Leonard stayed to talk with people, so Phillip and Lockie walked home to avoid getting mugged by Youth Group kids. Heading down towards the swamp, Phillip hummed something and Lockie skimmed stones across the road. Lockie was thinking about Vicki. He’d see her tomorrow at school. Home Room, Maths, Social Studies. Funny, he couldn’t remember being keen to go to school before. It was all he could think about, being with her, cracking jokes, swapping stories and ideas, holding hands, being a pair.

  Phillip rattled on about something or other, chatting, chatting, and Lockie thought of Vicki.

  ‘Is there something you always pray about?’ Phillip asked as they came into their own street. ‘The same thing always, I mean.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, you pray about bedwetting, right? No, Phillip, I don’t. I don’t have your stupid problem orright? It’s not my problem!’

  Lockie walked ahead, gaining ground with his bigger strides, leaving Phillip behind.

  You’re as big a turd as anyone, Lockie told himself. He felt like sticking his head in a blender.

  ids saw Lockie surfing and it was common knowledge that he was the hottest of the grommets. There were big kids who were better, but among the grommets Lockie ripped. At the first Year 8 meeting of the Angelus Boardriders Club, Lockie Leonard was elected President in a unanimous vote. The library seminar room was thick with paper planes, spitballs and Marlboro smoke. Ten boys and two girls joined. One of the girls was Vicki Streeton. About the only other business they got through in that first pig-swill of a meeting was to decide to meet at four every second afternoon on the main beach. That’s when Old Squasher came roaring into the room smacking kids’ heads together and causing a rapid evacuation.

  ‘What’s the matter, Lockie?’ Vicki asked as they sat on the verandah out of the rain. ‘You don’t look like someone who’s just been elected president.’

  Lockie shrugged. ‘None of them hardly know me.’

  ‘You’ve got a rep. People have heard you’re good.’

  ‘No, the only rep I’ve got is that I’m on with you.’

  ‘That’s crap.’

  ‘Look, you’ve always been popular; you don’t even think about it. You’re used to being good at everything and well known – I’m good at one thing and I’m used to being nobody.’

  ‘Until now.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what worries me.’

  ‘Ha! And you’re the one who reckons people think too much.’

  •

  Pretty soon, people saw Lockie and Vicki as the Year 8 couple. They might as well have been married. At the school elections they were voted onto the student council. They took submissions and gathered petitions, organized fundraising and oversaw the Year 8 First Term Disco where they danced together with everybody looking at them.

  ‘I used to dream about being like this,’ Vicki whispered in his ear as they danced to some soppy slow Chris de Burgh song.

  ‘Like what?’ said Lockie feeling her cool cheek against his.

  ‘In love. With a nice boy. Someone who cares about things, someone bright and gentle.’

  ‘Mills and Boon, you mean.’

  ‘I’ll be Mills,’ she whispered, ‘and you be Boon.’

  They got to be on speaking terms with all the Year 12 prefects. There wasn’t anybody who didn’t know about them now, not even a teacher. Teachers smiled tolerantly when they sat together and worked together. After all, they did work, and they worked well. They topped their classes in everything except Maths. Lockie was lousy at Maths. Teachers called them mature and responsible. Lockie figured he did better with Vicki’s help than he would without her, but it didn’t worry him. The Angelus Boardriders Club held five comps that term and Lockie placed first every time. Two other clubs started, a Year 10 and a Year 12. Lockie placed in the top three in all of them: he gave those older guys a run for their money. He even got asked to the Year 12 party on the beach. The older kids sat around trying to light a fire, passing round a joint. They passed Lockie the joint and he lit the fire with it. They thought he was the funniest little kid. Lockie didn’t even know it was a joint. He hated smoking. Smoke was for fires he lit the fire. Vicki didn’t laugh at all. She thought they’d punch his head in and hers, too, but lucky for them they thought Lockie was smart and funny. The fifty-buck beach fire, they called it. When Angelus surfers wanted spokespeople to talk on local radio about making surfing a school sport, they chose Lockie and Vicki instead of Year 12s. When term ended, they were famous.

  •

  Lockie and Vicki saw each other every few days and had passion sessions in the dunes at the beach, behind the skating rink in town, up in the pine plantation – which were usually interrupted at a critical moment, and half the time Lockie was grateful for the interruption. It’d rain, or somebody’d come along, or a dog would discover them and want to join in the fun just when Lockie thought something uncontrollable might happen.

  In his head he didn’t want to go all the way. He didn’t want AIDS or a baby or a wife. And he didn’t want to stick one of those condom things on. He was thirteen, he didn’t want to do anything that serious. But down there, in his gonad-secretion-zone, in all his business bits, he was on autopilot, same as anybody else. When someone’s got their tongue in your ear and their hand on your zip, it’s kind of hard to fly straight. He loved passion sessions; he just wished it didn’t get complicated.

  •

  ‘Still seeing Vicki?’ Lockie’s mum asked, well into the holidays.

  ‘Fair bit.’ Ar, Mum, he thought, can’t you be a bit more ignorant and uninterested?

  ‘How come you don’t bring her home?’

  Lockie stirred his cup of tea, trying to figure it out himself. Just then, the Sarge came in, all uniformed and spruced up for the afternoon shift.

  ‘This the girlfriend we’re all looking so serious about? Is that the “her” I hear?’

  ‘Not now, love.’

  ‘What’s her name again?’

  ‘Streeton,’ Mrs Leonard said, ‘Vicki Streeton.’

  Lockie winced. The old girl never missed a trick. She’d only ever heard the name once.

  ‘Not the car people.’

  Lockie nodded. ‘Yes, Sarge, the car people.’

  ‘Just between you, me and the magistrate, he’s a flamin’ crook. She a nice girl?’

  Lockie squirmed. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I was trying to get him to bring her round one day,’ said Mrs Leonard.

  The Sarge laughed.

  ‘Mum,’ said Lockie, ‘it’s not like we’re gettin’ married or anything!’

  ‘No,’ said the Sarge, still cacking himself. ‘You’ll have to wait till you’re fourteen before you can marry. House rules.’

  Lockie managed a smile. Parents ar
e excruciating, he thought, and good parents worst of all.

  ‘He’s probably embarrassed,’ said the Sarge.

  ‘Well, she’s probably used to better,’ said Mrs Leonard, trying to be understanding.

  ‘Better than Lockie? No fear.’

  ‘Don’t be facetious, dear.’

  ‘You mean the house, then? Nah, Lockie wouldn’t crack onto a snob. No, what he’s embarrassed about is us.’

  ‘Oh, leave off, will you!’ Lockie smacked out through the back door and into the rain.

  •

  After a while there were more door-slamming episodes at the Leonard house. Lockie went all prickly and couldn’t take a joke. The more the Sarge and Mum and Phillip tried to laugh him out of it, the snakier he got. To Phillip he started sounding more like the President and the school councillor and the bigknobs than like the old brother he used to have, the one who didn’t take himself so seriously, the one who mucked around and listened to what you had to say. Nowadays he talked like he was used to having people hang on every word, as if now he was a VIP.

  ‘Mum?’ Phillip asked one night. ‘What’s wrong with Lockie?’

  ‘What d’you mean, what’s wrong?’

  ‘He’s like somebody else.’

  ‘He’s growing and changing. It’s the time of his life for changes.’

  ‘It sucks.’

  ‘Drink your banana juice.’ ‘He doesn’t care about us anymore. All he does is look in the mirror. Anyway, he’s getting zits.’

  ‘What zits?’ Lockie said, coming in.

  There was an awkward, squirmy silence.

  ‘Yer always lookin’ at yerself in the mirror, Lockie. All you see is you. You’re really impressed with yerself all of a sudden.’

  ‘That’s big talk from a small worm.’

  ‘Lockie,’ Mrs Leonard said.

  ‘Mum, I don’t have to put up with that.’

  ‘See.’

  ‘Lockie, why shouldn’t you have to put up with that? He is your brother. If it’s not true you can tell him so yourself. Everybody gets a say in this house. Or have you forgotten how things are in this house?’

  Lockie groaned. ‘Oh, Mum – not you too.’