Ghost River (9 page)

From the day Sonny started his job he developed a work ethic that hardly seemed possible. He even lectured Ren on the best approach to selling newspapers.

‘You will need to be here when it's busiest, so you have to come straight after school. And it's important that you learn to smile at the customers. That helps a lot, specially with the women buying magazines. He held up the latest copy of
Woman's Day
, with a picture of Elizabeth Taylor on the front.

‘Brixey's been doing this for most of his life and he told me that hard work is number one in the newspaper business. Manners is number two, and a smile is close third. People are buggered after a day's work. The last face they want to see on their way home is one that looks like a smacked arse, Brixey says. And it's the best way to make tips.'

‘How much you earn on tips?'

‘Depends on the night. Thursdays, pay-night, is best, followed by Friday when people are out on the street. Early in the week it's not so good, especially in the pub. Most of the drinkers are near broke, and a tip would cut them out of a beer. If the
Truth
didn't come out on Tuesdays it wouldn't be worth showing up. It's dead.'

The boys played handball against the wall under the rail bridge while they waited for the trains to pull in to the station. When one arrived they worked fast, selling the afternoon
Herald
and magazines to the workers pouring from the trains. The
Truth
newspaper, which came out twice a week, was a bestseller. It carried pictures of topless women and stories of girls who'd been caught by police in the back of a car or a telephone box, sometimes naked with an older boy. The stories were not all that different from each other. All that changed were the names and locations. It didn't matter that none of the stories were actually true. They were read religiously.

Ren would recite the stories aloud to Sonny as he sat on a stack of newspapers, smoking a cigarette and nodding his head up and down like he knew what was coming next. Ren had only started reading a story about a
Fourteen-year-old topless girl discovered in wardrobe
when Sonny interrupted him.

‘I bet a dollar she comes from St Kilda.'

‘It don't say that here. There's no address with this one. It says her name's Ursula. That can't be a real name.'

‘Don't matter if it says where she comes from or not. I bet she's from St Kilda. Things are different on the other side of the river. You been over that way?'

‘Nah. You?'

‘Nup. Maybe we could go sometime? You can catch a tram to the beach. And to Luna Park. It's over that side of the city too. I heard they have river boats and caves at Luna Park.'

‘A real river?'

‘No, a fake one.'

‘We don't have to go then. We got our own river.'

Ren also helped out by dropping a bundle of newspapers on the front bar of the pub next door to the station, The Railway Hotel. On the way back to the paper shop they'd call into the pub, collect the takings and any leftover papers. The barman, Roy, would shout them a lemon squash each, and sometimes a packet of chips between them.

The first time he went into the pub Ren couldn't take his eyes off a group of men, sitting around a table in the corner of the room. The light above the table was out, making it difficult to see their faces through the haze of smoke. Ren soon worked out that the seating arrangements around the table never changed. The same man always faced the double saloon doors that opened into the street, and whenever the doors swung open he'd look up while the other men went on talking and drinking. He had his hair in a pony-tail, a moustache and a goatee, and wore a suit coat like he was off to a court case. Sitting opposite him, with his back to the room, sat a man wearing a similar coat, except his jacket was too tight for his heavy shoulders. He had no neck and an ugly purple scar, the shape of a half circle, in the back of his shaven head. The barman would regularly load a tray of drinks and take it over to the table without the men having to ask for them.

After the boys had left the pub one night Sonny grabbed Ren by the arm to stop him from walking on. He poked him in the chest as he yelled at him. ‘Don't be looking over at the table like that.'

‘Like what? I weren't looking at no one.'

‘Bullshit. You gawk every time we go in there. You want your throat cut, keep staring.'

‘Throat cut?'

Sonny squeezed Ren's bicep, tight. It hurt.

‘This is serious. You go looking at that table too long and one of them will pop your eyes out of your head and stomp on them.'

Ren squeezed his eyes tightly together just thinking about it. ‘How do you know so much about them?'

‘The other paperboys. They hear stuff all the time. That's a gang round that table.'

‘The big one, with the mark on the back of his head, is he the boss?'

‘Nah. It's not him. He's the bodyguard. Wide enough to take a bullet. That would be his job. Number one is the fella with the long greasy hair. I was in there last week picking up the papers when two men come in. Every head in the bar turned round like in a Western movie, when the gunslinger comes to town and crashes the saloon. I looked over to the table. The one with the big head stood up and spun round. Wouldn't have believed he could move as fast as that. He stuck his hand in his jacket pocket. Ready to go for his gun, I reckon.'

‘What happened?'

‘Nothing. Turned out they were only the health inspectors. Went back in the kitchen, snooped round a bit and come out. Roy opened the till, give them their sling and they left. Everyone went back to their drinks like nothing had happened.'

‘The boss, the one facing the door, who's he?'

‘Vincent.'

‘Vincent who?'

‘Just Vincent. Every one of them at the table are killers, but Vincent is the biggest killer of all. The other paperboys whisper about him. Won't speak his name out loud.'

‘Who's he supposed to have killed?'

‘For one, some debt collector they found in the waiting room at the railway station last year before I moved here. Had cut his throat from ear to ear. They say that was Vincent that did it. Did you hear about that?'

Everyone knew about the bloody crime. It had been in the papers and on the news. Boys couldn't stop talking about it in the schoolyard. Nobody seemed to know who had done it and there hadn't been anyone charged over the crime. ‘I remember Archie saying the reason they got no one for it is because debt collectors have so many enemies the police would have to go through the telephone book to rule out suspects.'

‘Well, it was Vincent that did it.'

‘Yeah? And why'd he kill him?'

‘Over money is all I heard.'

‘You're telling me you know he's the killer?'

‘Yep.'

‘And all the paperboys, they know he's the killer?'

‘Yep.'

‘But the police don't know? They can't be that stupid.'

‘Course they know. The police always know. They would have been paid money to leave it be. They don't own the streets. The crooks do. So don't you be looking across at that table when we go into the pub or it will be your neck. And mine. Don't even speak his name.'

‘
Vincent … Vincent
,' Ren whispered, teasing Sonny.

‘Stop fucking round.'

Despite Sonny's warning, Ren couldn't resist a sneaky look across at the corner table when he next went into the pub. A few nights later the boys were at the bar enjoying their free lemon squash when one of the men from Vincent's table walked over and stood between them. He had the ace of spades tattooed on the back of his right hand. The man called out for Roy, who was down in the cellar tapping a fresh barrel of beer. Ren slowly counted the newspaper takings as he looked at the man out of the corner of one eye. Roy came up from the cellar and the man took a brown envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it across the bar.

‘What time's he coming across?' Roy asked, placing the envelope under the bar.

‘Due any minute,' the man answered, and walked away.

As the boys got up to leave, Ren bumped into a man coming into the pub. It was the Mercedes driver from the Greek club he'd seen on the first morning he helped out on the paper round with Sonny. The man pushed Ren to one side with an open hand. He was back out of the door a few seconds later, tucking the same brown envelope into his inside coat pocket.

‘You see that?' Ren asked Sonny, once they were in the street.

‘I seen nothing. And neither did you.'

‘I bet there's money in that envelope.'

‘We don't know what's in it, so don't be thinking about it.' He slammed the pram into Ren's knees. ‘Push that for me. And learn to mind your own business.'

‘Learn yourself, Sonny. Between you and the other boys at the shop you have more news to tell than is in the papers. If minding your own business was so important you wouldn't listen to them in the first place and you wouldn't have told me.'

‘I was just trying to save you from trouble. Sticking your beak across the bar at them.'

‘You worry about your own beak, Sonny, and I'll take care of mine.'

CHAPTER 6

The summer had officially ended but the hot days continued. No one, even old timers, remembered heat like it. The falls slowed to a trickle, and as the level of the water dropped the river gave up some of its old secrets. The skeleton frames of car wrecks reappeared, along with the footings of a pier between the bridge and the pontoon that had collapsed decades earlier. Some of the swimming holes along the river were reduced to mud, forcing Ren and Sonny into the middle of the river for a decent swim.

The heat sucked the life from the city. The streets were deserted and Ren struggled to find a bird in the sky. On Easter Saturday, Sonny sat on a pile of newspapers reading a magazine, having dragged the newsstand into the shade of the train bridge. He'd had only three customers the whole afternoon. People seemed too tired to even read the news. Only the pub did a good trade, packed with thirsty drinkers. Ren nursed a milk bottle full of water. He took a long gulp, passed it to Sonny, who took a drink of his own and handed it back. Directly across the street from where they were sitting, a narrow lane ran beside the railway tracks. Ren watched as a car drove into the lane and stopped in the middle of the road, blocking the street.

‘Hey, Sonny, look at this. It's the Mercedes from the Greek club.'

The driver's side door opened and the man who'd picked up the envelope from the hotel got out, rested against the bonnet and lit a cigarette. Sonny poked Ren in the side, nodded, and whispered. ‘Look, here comes Vincent.'

Vincent was walking along the footpath on the other side of the road. He was with one of his off-siders, the one who'd handed the envelope to Roy, the barman. They turned into the lane where the Mercedes was parked. As they neared the car, the front seat passenger unwound his window.

‘What's happening?' Ren asked.

‘Dunno.'

Vincent's mate hung back as he spoke to the man in the car, quietly at first. A few moments later the boys watched as Vincent threw his arms in the air and began shouting. The driver of the Mercedes left the bonnet and slowly walked around to the side of the car. Vincent had already turned his back on him and was walking away. The driver watched closely until Vincent had exited the lane. He got behind the wheel of the car and reversed out of the lane. Neither Sonny nor Ren spoke as Vincent walked back along the main street. He stopped on the other side of the road and looked directly at Sonny and Ren before walking back to the pub.

‘What was that about?' Ren asked.

‘Not sure. None of them looked happy. I know that much.'

‘Maybe it's the hot weather.' Ren laughed. He poured what was left of the water over his head.

‘It says here,' Sonny said, pointing to the newspaper, ‘that the weather will break and it's gonna turn cold, maybe even by Monday or Tuesday.'

‘Weathermen have been saying that for weeks, Sonny. They know nothing.'

‘Maybe they're right this time. If they are, then tomorrow is gonna be the last hot day we get until next summer, which means our last swim. You know what we have to do, don't you, Ren?'

‘No, I don't. But I'd bet a million it's one of your crazy ideas.'

‘We have to jump from the Phoenix.'

The Phoenix was the highest bridge over the river. The boys had stood on the bridge many times, looking down at the water, a little fearful of even talking about what they were both thinking. They'd been on the bridge the day it was being repaired, and watched a carpenter sawing fresh planks of wood to replace the rotting ones. Sonny had asked the carpenter if he knew how high the bridge was above the water.

‘Not sure, boys. Why don't we find out?' He dropped a lead weight and string line over the side of the bridge and lowered it until the weight touched the surface of the water. He marked the line and hauled it up, counting each knot in the line under his breath. ‘It's sixty-two feet. Why you want to know?'

‘Just wondering,' Ren answered.

The figure had stuck in Ren's head. Sometimes he thought sixty-two feet would be a suicidal jump, but on rare days he almost convinced himself that if he conquered such a jump he could turn to thinking about leaping from the cliff-top. In a story he'd written for an English class, one of the only subjects he enjoyed at school, Ren had mentioned the name of the bridge. The teacher, Miss Wills, told him that it was likely that the bridge had taken its name from a
classical legend.
Ren, who liked the teacher a lot and didn't want to disappoint her, said nothing, although the teacher was wrong.
His
bridge had been named after a factory, Phoenix Biscuits, that had been built many years earlier in the shadow of the bridge. Whenever Ren and Sonny visited the bridge they would smell the biscuits being baked in giant ovens and their stomachs would rumble with hunger pains.

The following afternoon, the boys took a short cut through the golf course and met the winding river on the other side. Ren's heart was banging away with excitement. He was in a hurry to get to the bridge before he talked himself out of the jump.

‘You know with the river running low, Sonny, we have to jump from the middle of the bridge.'

‘Don't be thinking too much about this, Ren. Straight in,' Sonny said.

‘Straight in, but from the best spot. No landing in a couple of feet of water.'

They reached the bridge and hid their clothes and tobacco in a tree hollow. Sonny raced ahead of Ren in his underpants. He reached the centre of the bridge and climbed over onto the wooden rail and balanced on the narrow ledge for only a second or two before he threw himself off, screaming his lungs out as if he was Tarzan. Watching from the safety rail Ren noticed that the long drop took more time than he'd expected. Sonny hit the water with a splash, surfaced quickly and waved up at Ren.

‘Fucken easy!'

Ren climbed over the rail and made the mistake of looking down at the water. He froze. He'd never quit on a jump before, but then he'd never felt fear the way he did standing on that ledge. He felt as if his legs might collapse under him. If he'd been on his own he might have climbed back over the rail, but he had no choice but to jump. With Sonny screaming out, ‘chicken, chicken', and clucking like a demented hen, Ren looked up to the clear blue sky, took off and fell through the air.

The mighty gum trees lining the riverbank rose above him. For a moment he was sure he was flying and that he would never touch the water. He looked down at the exact moment he shouldn't have and smashed his face against the surface. Water shot up his nostrils with a rush, his eyeballs felt like they'd exploded and the river felt like ice against his skin. As he plunged towards the bottom, a belt tightened around his lungs. His feet hit the muddy silt of the riverbed and he pushed off as best he could. Looking up, Ren scrambled towards the light, desperate for air. When his head broke the surface, except for a circle of light around the edge of a red bullseye, he couldn't see a thing. The best he could manage to do was to swim in the direction of Sonny's hooting and clapping.

Ren felt for the muddy bank with an outstretched arm.

‘Jesus fuck me, Ren! You're crying blood!'

Ren wiped his eyes until he could see a little better.

‘You head-butted the water.'

‘Don't have to tell me.'

‘And your face is battered.'

‘Don't need to tell me that either. I can feel it.'

River water spewed from Ren's nose and mouth. He pushed the tips of two fingers from each hand against the swollen cheeks under his eyes. More water ran from his eyes. He could see Sonny well enough to know his friend was laughing at him.

‘You think it's funny? Almost fucken killed myself.'

‘But you didn't.'

Sonny seemed as happy with himself as he'd been in a long time, getting the Phoenix jump finally done. Ren may have felt the same way if it weren't for a pounding headache and a swollen face.

‘Not much left for us to do, is there?' Sonny said, as they walked home across the golf course.

Ren thought about the cliff-top again but was in no state to talk about it.

Sonny filled the silence with talk about his father. ‘I think he's gone right off with the grog. Not like what Tex and the others go through. I mean really fucken mental. He hasn't been to work for two weeks. He got the sack I reckon, and won't tell me. He falls asleep drunk on the couch most nights and is still there in the morning. The house is a pigsty. It won't be worth living in soon.'

‘Do you have other family you could stay with?'

‘Only my uncle Rory. He'd take me in, but I don't know where he is. Him and the old man had a blue about a year back.'

‘What was the fight over?'

‘Nothing. They don't need a reason. One minute they was drinking together and the next it was on. Ended in a swearing match in the kitchen, Rory thumping the table and my old man shaping up to him. He barred Rory from the house and I haven't seen him since.'

They left the golf course behind and were about to take the track away from the river when Ren noticed someone laying outside the wheelhouse.

‘Look, Sonny. It must be one of the fellas.'

The ruin was collapsing in on itself. The cellar was home to river rats, snakes and eels that thrashed about in the oily water, making terrifying noises as they went at each other. Three levels above the cellar the wheelhouse roof had long gone. What was left of the open floor was covered in bird shit, solid as a lump of plaster and half a foot deep. The birds, perched in the open roof of a day, left the rafters around dusk, bullied by the arrival of the thousands of bats that wrapped their bodies in leather wings for the night. They hung until sun-up when they took off as one, blackening the morning sky.

The boys walked to where the body lay, curled into a tight ball, across the wheelhouse doorway. Ren recognised the burned sleeve of the Doc's suit coat. He bent forward and shook the Doc's shoulder.

‘Doc. What are you doing out here?'

Sonny helped Ren turn the Doc over onto his back. He opened his eyes. They had clouded over, just like Tex's did whenever he drank metho. The Doc tried moving his mouth to say something but no words came out. His cracked lips were caked in dried blood and his breath stank of metho. Ren gave Sonny a hand sitting him up and resting the Doc against the wheelhouse door.

‘You stay here with him, Sonny, and I'll find help.'

Ren sprinted along the track towards the iron bridge, calling out, ‘Tex! Tex!'

Sonny wasn't sure what to do. The old man's eyes opened and closed a couple of times. The Doc reached out and took hold of Sonny's hand and gripped it tighter than Sonny thought possible for an old man in such a poor state. He gasped for air, closed his eyes, released Sonny's hand and slumped against the door. Sonny was sure there was something terribly wrong with the Doc and nervously looked over his shoulder. He could see Ren helping Tex along the track, followed by Cold Can and Tallboy.

When Tex reached the Doc he stepped forward, stooped down and gently shook him.

‘Come on, old boy,' Tex urged.

The Doc collapsed onto his side, his head hitting the dirt. Ren had never seen a dead person before, but he knew straightaway the Doc was gone. Sonny must have known as well because he backed away from the body. Tex sat down in the dirt and put his arms around the Doc and cradled him against his chest. Tallboy, standing behind Cold Can, looked over his shoulder.

‘What's wrong with him, Texas?'

‘He's dead. Simple as that.'

Nobody moved or said a word until Tallboy lowered his head and whispered a few words of prayer. Tex eased the Doc's body to the ground. Laying among the weeds, Ren thought he looked like a small child, with chubby sausage fingers and a fringe of white hair falling across his softened face.

‘You boys best leave us be,' Tex ordered. ‘We got work to do and you don't need to be witness to it. Tallboy, you go tell that fucken bludger, Tiny, to get along here and give us a help with the body.'

Tallboy couldn't get himself moving. He sniffed a couple of times, let out a breath and sobbed. With Cold Can's help Tex struggled to his feet and put an arm over Tallboy's shoulder.

‘There's feeling in your heart, I know. But we got to do this. And in quick time. I'll keep old Doc company while you go and fetch Tiny for us. Need the four of us to shift him.'

‘Where you moving him to?' Sonny asked, after Tallboy had taken off.

‘We gonna carry him to the river. Send him off there.'

Ren wasn't sure what Tex meant. ‘Do you mean put him in the water?'

‘Where else would we put him?' Tex answered, with a look that implied the boy had turned stupid on him.

‘The Doc will get nothing but a pauper's burial otherwise. He would want no part of that. None of us want that end. We made a promise to each other it won't happen that way.'

‘What's a pauper's burial?' Sonny asked.

‘We got no money for a burial in the ground. Not in our own place, anyhow. And we got no family to pay for us. No one to pray at our graves even if we could pay. Anytime one of us dies up there in the street, or the emergency, he gets put in a hole with all the rest no one wants. With the newborn babies that never made it. Saddest of all, they are. Then comes the hacked off arms and legs from the operations there in the hospital. In one big hole. Together.'

Big Tiny came waddling along the track after Tallboy. He was wheezing and coughing. He looked down at the body. ‘Tallboy was telling the truth. I thought he was being tricky on me. The Doc
is
dead?'

‘Dead as they come,' Tex lamented. ‘Come on. Got to do this quick. Anyone comes by, police will be on us and steal the Doc away. Be no getting him back. Unless he can raise himself up.'

‘Don't reckon the Doc would be up for it,' Tallboy said, as if resurrection was a real possibility. ‘He believed in nothing but the drink.'