Human Torpedo

by Tim Winton

  Something happened inside him. An electrical fault, some dippy microchip going on the blink, but whatever it was, he was over the barrier and onto the rink, right in the traffic, having his feet immediately run over and skaters coming a-gutser all round him.

  ‘Lockie! Lockie, you dickhead, what are you doing here?’ Vicki yelled as she ran him down and skidded across the floor with him till his head smacked into the barricade and stopped them both rather neatly.

  ‘I was . . . ouch . . . about to ask you the same question.’

  ‘I’d say mind your own business,’ she said, getting up off him. ‘Now get out of here before someone hurts you.’

  He got up and grabbed her arm, and that’s when the two bogans came down on him like a five minute burst of AC/DC. Lockie felt his nose flatten and blood spurt hot onto his chin. His head hit the boards and he saw (double) up several girls’ skirts. Maybe it was one girl’s skirt. He thought she should wear jeans skating, for safety reasons.

  ‘Get up, wart. You wanna fight?’

  Lockie knew these guys liked to fight more than anything; they liked it better than the smell of exhaust fumes in their faces. He got to his feet, but he didn’t even bother to make a fist.

  ‘Carn, you little surfie wanker, let’s see what yer made of.’

  Lockie stood there.

  ‘Fight, weed.’

  Lockie took one on the mouth, but didn’t fall.

  ‘I didn’t come here to fight,’ he said around his swelling lip.

  One of them swung, but Lockie managed to duck. The bogan lost his balance and landed on his backside, right on his tailbone. Lockie heard the little ball bearings ticking in the guy’s wheels. Someone sniggered. Lockie couldn’t see Vicki anymore.

  ‘I heard about you, smurf,’ the one with the Iron Maiden T-shirt said, head-butting him. ‘But I don’t wanna hear anymore, right?’

  Lockie took the punch in the guts and went down like a sack of discount spuds. Wheels rolled by. Hundreds of wheels.

  ‘Why didn’t you hit him, you idiot?’ It sounded like Vicki’s voice, but it might have been his own. He didn’t know if he was Arthur or Martha.

  mm,’ the Sarge said, ‘the hunter home from the hill. Here, use this. We’ll stop off at the surgery.’

  Lockie took the Sarge’s hanky and mopped his nose and lips. It felt as though bits of them were coming off every time he dabbed. His face felt like cornflakes glued to a basketball. He looked out of the window and saw they were taking the long way to the surgery round the mountain road high above the bay. There was a paperback on the dash. The Big Sleep. He’d never heard of it. Still, it was exactly what he felt like.

  ‘Orright, what happened, mate?’

  ‘I got a hiding.’

  ‘Did you fight?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you didn’t get a hiding at all. And I’m proud of you.’

  Lockie smiled and stretched a few cornflakes out of place. ‘Well, I turned the other cheek. And he smacked hell out of it.’

  The Sarge laughed. ‘Well, you had two left, you know.’

  ‘I think he sank the boots in there, too, by the feel of it,’ Lockie murmured, feeling his backside.

  ‘You did good not to fight.’

  ‘Half of me thinks it was really dumb not to. There must be a time to fight sometime.’

  The Sarge looked doubtful.

  ‘Dad, would you go to war?’

  ‘What’s this? Philosophy session? You’re in shock, mate. No, I wouldn’t go to war.’

  ‘But you’re a cop.’

  ‘So everybody keeps telling me. It’s my job to prevent or apprehend criminals.’

  ‘You carry a gun.’

  ‘I have to. It’s the law. Australians want to be Americans, it seems. Just like on TV.’

  ‘Would you use it? Like the other day?’

  ‘He did it himself.’

  ‘It must be right sometimes. What if you’d got to him and he’d had a gun on his wife and was about to kill her? Would you shoot him to save her?’

  The Sarge smiled. ‘Smart kids. Never have ‘em.’ He ruffled Lockie’s hair. Lockie tried not to wince. His head still felt like a cooking disaster.

  ‘Love your enemies, and Thou shalt not kill. No. It’s never right. Maybe sometimes there’s no right choice, though. Life sometimes presents us with only two or three bad choices. Have someone die, kill someone.’

  ‘It stinks.’

  ‘Yep. But don’t worry yourself, Lock, old son. You’re thirteen years old. There’s a whole pile of stuff, but it’s a long way away.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem like it.’

  ‘Listen, you’re already worried about the Greenhouse Effect, the whales, the seals, the dolphins, uranium, nuclear war and South Africa. Don’t worry about the ethics of when to kill people until it arises. You’ll give yourself a flamin’ ulcer. The adult world isn’t that fabulous you have to hurry for it. Enjoy being a kid.’

  Lockie looked at him. The Sarge always looked like he needed a shave and a long weekend. He should have been a teacher, not a cop. No, not true. He had too much going for him to be a teacher.

  ‘You’ve been reading my essays,’ said Lockie.

  ‘I gotta get an education somewhere.’

  They came down the sea side of the mountain. All the islands and bays and beaches stretched out into a misty horizon. ‘I was feelin’ pretty good a couple of hours ago,’ said Lockie.

  ‘Well, you’ll feel pretty good in a couple more. Tell me, did this little fracas have anything to do with your love life?’

  Lockie groaned.

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Dad, just — ’

  ‘And would the person or persons who made your face look like a half-cooked pizza happen to drive a panel van with a foreign motor in it?’

  ‘Dad, there’s nothing you can do.’

  ‘No, no,’ the Sarge smiled. ‘Of course not.’ But he changed gears like a man who’d just had a mint idea.

  •

  Lockie coasted past the cop shop on his old buckle-wheeled crate of a bike the next afternoon, and saw a black panel van. It was going over the inspection pits surrounded by traffic cops. Two bogans stood by, biting their nails. He managed to stop himself waving. He had a hunch, a fabulous hunch, that he wouldn’t be seeing that bucket of bogan bolts again for a while.

  Ah, police corruption!

  n the first day of the new term, the news was out. Vicki and Lockie were off. Well, they weren’t exactly on, anyway. Actually no one could say for sure what they were, but there’d been a fight and Lockie’d been floored by a seventeen-year-old bog. Two of them. With boots. And iron bars, bike chains and knuckle-dusters. And ten of their mates. Lockie’d lost some blood. No, an eye, a finger, all his teeth. The gossip went on and on, and got worse. Vicki was suddenly pregnant. She was having some bogan child. She’d had a miscarriage skiing. Lockie’d OD’d on Panadol . . .

  When Lockie slouched into school with his bag slung from his shoulder, it was:

  ‘G’day, Lockie!’

  ‘Hi, Lock!’

  ‘Oi, mate!’

  Owzit, Lock?’

  Other kids peered at his blue bruises and the scab on his nose, secretly marvelling at what an awesome job the plastic surgeons had done. He’s a pacifist, they told each other. A fruitcake, but you gotta respect him for it.

  In Woodwork, he sanded away at his famous block of wood that he’d decided to carry on with in Second Term as well, and the other boys winked at him like he was a hero. They knew that blokes with cars were the final enemy. Soon as a girl saw a set of car keys she went weak at the knees. Those driving guys with P plates would poach all the decent women and only leave the crumbs.

  He must be on pain-killers, girls said at recess. He looks too peaceful to be real. That Vicki Streeton was a real moll doing that to him, two-timing and getting him bashed up like that. It was romantic, but. Just a shame he couldn’t fight. They reckon he’s religious, but it’s just slan
der. She probably put that rumour out herself. And he’s free now, you know. Well, kind of. There’s gotta be a blow-up before it can be official.

  •

  Lockie took his seat in English and saw that Vicki’s seat stayed empty. She came in late and sat up the front in the other row. At the sight of her, Lockie’s heart jerked. Her hair was out and bouncing and he could almost smell the Alberto Balsam from where he sat. All period he stared at the back of her. He didn’t hear a thing that was said. He couldn’t have told you his name if you’d asked him.

  At the end of the class he caught up with her in the corridor and touched her shoulder.

  ‘Meet me at lunchtime behind the library.’

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he took off.

  She sat down the front again in Social Studies. He watched her pleated skirt, the way her shoulders moved. He imagined the feel of her braces and teeth against his lips.

  The girl next to Lockie passed a note. ARE YOU AND HER OFF?

  WHO? he wrote back

  THE ONE YOU’RE STEARING AT.

  YOU CAN’T SPELL.

  ARE YOU STILL IN LOVE WITH HER?

  Lockie snatched up his pencil. ARE YOU STILL HAVING YOUR PERIOD?

  She got the message. No more notes. But Lockie couldn’t get the question out of his mind. Did he love her? And what if he did? Did it help much?

  •

  Lockie ate his lunch in a hurry and headed for the library while his pie was still halfway down his throat. He pushed past a few gloomy-looking punkettes doing scab duty out front, and headed down the side to the car park.

  She wasn’t there. Lockie kicked the wall. He’d wait five minutes. Five minutes, dammit!

  It started to drizzle. He stood there shivering. One more minute.

  ‘You’ll get wet.’

  Lockie whirled around. She’d snuck up behind him.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘Still lunch, isn’t it? You didn’t say a time.’

  ‘Let’s get out of the rain.’

  In the library, up between the reference stacks, they folded their arms and looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes.

  ‘Well?’ she asked.

  ‘I just wanted to sort it out with you.’

  ‘What? Sort what out?’

  ‘Us, Vicki.’

  ‘I thought there wasn’t any us, that’s what I heard.’

  ‘Yeah, well if you went on what every turkey said, you’d be at my funeral.’

  ‘Your face looks awful.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lockie.’

  Lockie looked along the shelves and pulled out a book spine: Great Australians. ‘Sorry about what?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘About me getting my head punched in, or about you dumping me?’

  ‘I didn’t dump you.’

  ‘No, you didn’t even bother. What is it with all those greaseball spanner-heads. I s’pose it’s all the ideas, the intellectual chit-chat. You don’t go for dumb machos, you told me yourself, remember? They must be greenies in black, that’s what it’ll be.’

  ‘Lockie!’

  ‘Or maybe it was the foam mattress in the back of trie Sinbin . . .’

  That’s when she began to cry and the steam went out of him.

  ‘What do you want?’ she cried, smearing tears across her cheek.

  ‘You,’ he said. ‘The problem is what you want.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m ordinary, Vick. If you want a hoon or a headbanger, stick with the Chevy boys.’

  ‘They got a yellow sticker.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He nearly died from not smiling. Actually he’d hoped for a red sticker so they wouldn’t have even been able to drive it home, but it seemed the old Sarge wasn’t that corruptible after all.

  The bell went. End of lunch. The library started to empty. Vicki blew her nose and straightened herself up. ‘Funny thing, Lock. You’re a hero all of a sudden and I’m a leper. Why didn’t you fight?’

  ‘Fight? Aren’t you the one against war?’

  ‘Why didn’t you fight?’

  ‘My old problem. I believe in things, I guess.’

  ‘And you think I just say ‘em.’

  ‘Well, I thought you were different. Smart, you know. I always liked that about you, you weren’t just a schoolgirl.’

  ‘Listen, Lockie, you get sick of being one of die smart girls, orright? I want to be lots of things. Remember what you said – the only thing more boring than a clever boy is a clever girl.’

  ‘That was a joke, a dumb joke.’

  ‘Well, it rubs off and people believe it. Clever girl with the house on the hill. Too good for everybody. Too good for the bogans and the surfers . . . and the swamp rats.’

  Lockie felt those words thump him in the guts. Her parents! Was she doing all this stupid stuff to get back at her parents? Was that why she took him skiing, to show him off, to show them she was slumming around with a swamp rat? He felt vicious all of a sudden, but then he felt sorry for her. How sad could you get?

  ‘It’s your mum and dad, isn’t it?’

  ‘Brilliant, Lockie. Actually they said you were very nice.’

  Lockie squinted. ‘I thought you were kind of grownup,’ he said, not meaning to let his disappointment show.

  ‘Clever, maybe, but not grown-up. You should know the difference. My oldies aren’t even grown-up. You can be so dumb.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She sighed. They were late now, and they’d cop it from Old Squasher.

  ‘And the bogs?’ he murmured. ‘Were they just to get up your oldies?’

  ‘And you.’

  ‘Me!’

  ‘You’re just as much of a snob. A surf rat’s too good for a bogan, eh? Even though you listen to bogan music. Van Halen. Heavy metal, hah!’

  ‘It’s not that!’

  ‘Anyway, you didn’t come and see me. Ever since the skiing you were in a stink. My friends weren’t good enough for you. Well, as you can see, I’ve got other friends.’

  ‘So you were tryin’ to make me jealous?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

  Lockie was hurting and angry inside now, but he could have kissed her at any moment. ‘So what’s the situation?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ he said, trying to sound offhand. ‘We’re thirteen years old — it can hardly matter.’ But he wasn’t convinced. He felt sure it mattered. He loved her and it didn’t make any difference that they were thirteen. It was love, and you couldn’t help but feel it was important — not unless you were a flamin’ robot.

  he meeting of the Angelus Boardriders Association was a wipeout to say the least. Everyone saying fifty things at once, and the air full of paper and farts and spitballs. Copies of Surfing World, Tracks and Waves got rolled up and used as clubs. A desk got overturned and someone took Nat Young’s name in vain. Naturally, it started with a discussion about the club Secretary, Vicki Streeton.

  ‘I move we strip her of her rank!’

  ‘That’s not all you’d like to strip, Wacker!’

  ‘“What for?’ shouted Lockie, trying to keep the riot down.

  ‘You know what for, ya silly suck! For hangin’ around with bogs! Fraternizin’ with the enemy. And betrayin’ the club President.’

  ‘Yeah, she’s not fit for this crew!’

  ‘Besides, she doesn’t even surf. It’s a joke, anyway. She’s only in because of Leonard.’

  Lockie stood up. ‘You voted for her.’

  ‘Arr, get out. Surfers only.’

  ‘Well, how many of you can surf, eh?’ There were howls of outrage. ‘I mean well enough to be in a club? Come on — who out of you farm boys and towel tuggers has got anythin’ to brag about? Come on, hot-shots!’

  ‘Maybe we need a new President as well!’

  ‘That’s a fact,’ said Lockie, sitting down.

  ‘She’s out of order!’

 
‘She can see anyone she wants. Geez, the dogs you guys hang out with, you’d think we were the German Shepherd Club.’

  ‘You prick! Sack him!’

  ‘Too late, scumbags, I resign! Take yer Coolites and yer rubber duckies and get stuffed!’

  Hero for a day, he thought, as they turfed him into the corridor. Funny how you don’t know what you believe in till it jumps up and bites you. Politics!

  •

  Kids poured out at the last siren like rats off a sinking ship. Lockie walked into the drizzle with his bag on his shoulder, thinking about how quick things changed.

  ‘I heard.’

  Lockie looked up. Vicki sat on the wall where those dorky animal hedges finished.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Looks like we’re both lepers now.’

  Lockie smiled. ‘Yeah, I reckon so.’

  ‘Thanks, anyway.’

  ‘For what?’ he asked.

  ‘For stickin’ up for me.’

  ‘Oh, you know me. Always doin’ the dumbest thing possible. I can’t help meself.’ Strange, but even after sticking up for her she was the last person he wanted to see. Hell, he’d liked being President. Lockie Leonard, hot-shot.

  ‘Where you going? Hey — ’

  Lockie called over his shoulder. ‘I’m late for “Roger Ramjet”.’ It was the best line he could think of, but it wasn’t much.

  ‘I love you, Lockie!’

  Lockie stared at her. He believed her. Geez, it took guts to say a thing like that in public. But his heart was still hard with hurt.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘So does Bob Hawke.’

  Striding off into the rain, Lockie had to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other so he didn’t just fall over and explode in a million pieces. When he got to the road he gave in and turned around. She was still there, and she came running like a ballerina on a racecourse.

  ‘And you love me,’ she blurted, smacking into his chest.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘But — ’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I’m all screwed up, Vick. I need some time to think.’