New Australian Stories 2 (40 page)

He goes back to the shelf and, tiptoeing briefly, brings down a bottle of Old Forester whiskey. I'm trying to show him my disapproval, but again he can't interpret it, so I tell him, ‘The sealed bottle.'

I can imagine he wouldn't last long at the Boatswain's Club. He's a man who doesn't like to be at a disadvantage. Now, as he swaps the half-empty bottle for the full one, he exhales, gentle and long, like I'm testing his patience. Like this is the last favour he does for me, and I should quit asking.

Before he offers me the bottle he says, ‘You
are
going to find him, right?'

The bell rings, and the fear is back in his face. He squints at the door like it's a horde of Indians come to ransack the camp. But it's two businessmen fresh from the office, dripping wet. They trot to the counter, and one of them says, ‘Two Johnnies, rocks.'

I yank the bottle from the bartender's grip, don't say anything. I feel his eyes on my back as I reach the door.

Tomlinson's red umbrella should stand out well enough.

The man says, ‘Hey barman, two Johnnies, on the rocks, please.'

As I step out into the rain I hear him say, ‘Hey barman, why the long face?'

And I hear the two men laugh.

Louis

CLAIRE AMAN

It's six forty-five in the morning. I ignore the police car outside my house and turn instead to the cage where Squizzy the cockatoo lives. Rain splashes on my hands. Carefully, tenderly, I feed the banana through the wire. Squizzy grabs it in his drab beak. Fast, I push six muesli bars through and they drop to the floor.

It's not strictly speaking a cage. It's a galvanised iron lean-to, about as tall as a phone box but narrower than a wheelie bin, with chook-wire from waist-high up. My son is in there, hunched down in the dark with his knees around his ears. The cops will never find him: I am his mother and wilier than them. If it would just stop raining I'd be able to think straight. But as the water trickles down the back of my neck, all I can do is wonder who'll look after our children when we're gone.

The silver Commodore was there when I woke up. I'm absolutely certain it's an unmarked cop car. In this drizzle I can't see how many detectives are sitting in it. My house is on a corner block. There's just a wire fence all the way around because my scab of a landlord won't build a proper fence. This means that from where the cops are parked, they can see not only my front and back gates but also everything in my backyard — my clothesline, the lillypilly tree, the dead washing machine and Squizzy's cage. Brilliant.

My boy pokes his head out from under an old bird-pellet bag. I whisper that the cops are outside but not to worry. I fill Squizzy's water dish with the hose, and my son holds up his water bottle. I overdo it and spill some water on him. He doesn't say anything but his mouth turns down like a sad beak. None of this is easy.

I go back inside and ring work. I say I have a migraine. It's close to the truth. We're stuck: my son in the cage, the cops in the car, and me in the kitchen listening to Elvis and chewing on my fingernails. To make matters worse, it's been raining for five days, rain's forecast for the rest of the week and it looks like we'll get a flood. I have a lot to worry about.

I'm not saying I've never broken the law, but I've never had anything much to do with the police. Apart from speeding tickets, I've always managed to stay out of trouble. I thought my son had too, until last night.

He gave me the fright of my life when he turned up sopping wet at my bedroom door at three a.m. I was so relieved it was only him that I burst out laughing. But he didn't laugh back; he just stood there hugging this green backpack and looking spooked, so I jumped up, hauled him into the bedroom and shut the door.

He plonked down on my bed, hung his head and dangled his hands, and he told me he didn't do anything, said it wasn't him. Then he said the cops might be looking for him. What does that mean, I asked, and he said he'd need to hide for a while because of the backpack. Then he dived under my bed, the great galoot, backpack and all, with his boots sticking out the end.

I grabbed his foot and dragged him out. I told him that's the first place they'd look, stupid. What's going on, I asked him. He just lolled back on the floor looking up at me all pale around the gills, waiting for me to do something. My poor son with his shining blue eyes, silly fool with the cops looking for him, a fool jumping under his mother's bed. I thought he'd been going alright in Coffs Harbour. That's what he'd been telling me for the three months since he'd left home.

Show me the backpack, I said, and he pulled it away. He said the dude next door gave it to him to look after. What dude? I said. Mick. Mick who? Dunno. Mick said he'd give him three hundred bucks to keep it safe. What's in there? I asked, and he said just a bit of gear. I know what gear is. I grabbed the thing and pulled down the zip. Surprise, it was chock full of dope, all bagged up in Glad bags. He told me he saw the cops take Mick away last night, and he got scared when they returned later and drove up and down the street. He thought Mick must have dobbed him in. So he jumped over the rear fence with the backpack and ran. Ran off to Grafton to see his mum.

Well. Why would he think I'd know what to do? I asked him where his car was, and he told me he'd caught the train, pleased with himself for this strategic thinking. Pity he hadn't been strategic to begin with. Pity he's so hopeless. He watched me thinking this. It made me feel like crying, and I held his big sad body close and hammered at him with my fists, and he held me tight. He'd grown a billygoat beard since I last saw him. I gave it a little tug. He pushed me off and told me again he never did nothing.

I told him those bags were going down the toilet now, and he said no Mum, and I said yes, and I took hold of the backpack, but he snatched it away and headed for the front door. I'm fine, he said. You don't have to worry.

Okay, I said, come here. There wasn't enough time for all that. We went into the kitchen, and I gave him leftover spaghetti bol and eight slices of bread and butter. While he was eating I checked outside for unfamiliar cars. I made him change into a pair of my black trackie pants and my big black jumper. Then I gave him a blanket off my bed and a bottle of water, and I led him out to the backyard and unlatched Squizzy's cage, and he squeezed inside with the pack. Squizzy didn't mind.

It was the only place I could think of where they wouldn't get my boy or the backpack. Squizzy's a psychopath when it comes to other people. He would have shredded anyone else. Then I went back to bed. I must have gone to sleep in the end, because I didn't hear the cop car pull up.

Now it's seven-thirty a.m. and I'm still waiting for the knock on the door. I don't know why they're taking their time. One night on
The Bill
they were parked outside a house waiting for a drug dealer to come home. Maybe these ones here are waiting for back-up. Or they need the okay for a search warrant. They want to go strictly by the book. This is serious.

I pour my third cup of coffee. The rain's a tapping patter. I didn't get enough sleep. I should be at Caroona Villa now settling the oldies for breakfast, not this. Elvis is singing ‘Kentucky Rain'. It's a forlorn song, and the little trembles of piano sound like raindrops. I wonder if they have cameras at Coffs Station. Watched my boy get on the one forty-five a.m. train to Grafton. I should have driven him out to the state forest last night and left him there with a tent. Too late now. At least I can keep an eye on him here.

It's just a matter of time before the cops get the okay for the search warrant. My son must be very uncomfortable by now. He might not be Einstein and he might not even be innocent, but he wins the prize for sheer fortitude. That cage is far too small for an adult. That's the beauty of it.

I go into his old bedroom and find his wet t-shirt on the floor where he dropped it last night. My heart thuds into my stomach. If the cops found it they'd be like a cat with a mouse. You're not keeping up with your housework if you haven't seen your boy for three months, Mrs Gargan. Still finding his dirty clothes lying around? Well, no, I'd say. It's mine. My Big Day Out shirt. And it's Ms Gargan. Mzz.

I press the shirt to my face and inhale the sweet reek of my son. I know that in his numbskull brain he thinks all this is worth three hundred bucks. Through the venetians I see they're still out there with the water streaming down their windscreen. It's a cop car for sure. No one in this street would have a car like that. I poke the shirt behind my wardrobe.

Would you hide your child from the law? If you thought it would help? I have a hot shower and put my pink dressing-gown back on. The car's still there. I wait for them to come splashing up the path. They'll never get anything out of me. I'll pull a shawl over my head and slip on big spectacles and act like a poor old gran, don't know anything. Sit up in bed in my nightie clutching at my heart. I'm a crafty old thing, cunning as a wolf 's mother. Too clever for them.

There's a trick to everything. I left school at fifteen but I'm no mental slouch. I'm a person who likes to have a plan. I'm trying my best here.

If they show up at the door I'll be okay. I'd let them in, lounge room, sit down nice and calm. Discuss the rain. The cops'd be on the sofa, me sitting up in my chair looking concerned. Oh, really? I'm sure it's a mistake. They'd ask if I knew where he was. Your son, able to assist us in our inquiries. Maybe he's here, one of them might say. Could have reason to believe, and they'd stare at me, but I'd keep steady. I'd stare right back. I hope he's not in any trouble, I'd say.

I'm a steamroller baby,
sings Elvis,
roll all over you
. The rain changes pitch.

Whatever happened to my laughing blue-eyed boy?

The bastards are playing mind games with me. Why don't they just come in? When they do, I'll ask them to hand over the search warrant and I'll have a good read. That'll stall them. I suppose they'll search the house first. Then they'll go marauding about in my backyard. Squizzy would scream blue murder if they go anywhere near his cage. But they might shine a torch into the cage and see my son's ginger hair down there, all mussed up like a nest.

What if I had a gun? I wonder if I'd shoot them. Kapow. A bucket of trouble. I wouldn't know what to do with a gun anyway. It'd probably go off in my face.

A black Falcon with an outsize spoiler fishtails on the wet road and skids around the corner, straight past the cops. They don't bother with him. This town is full of hair-trigger boys with hot cars.

Our street is filling with water. The low spots are joining up and turning into small lakes. I'm sure the river's going to pop its banks. We haven't had a flood for years. It'd be just my luck to get one now. I get out of my dressing-gown and put on my jeans. It's ten to eight.

I knew something bad would happen ever since last Monday morning when I found a little silver baitfish lying on the Grafton Bridge. The dead eye stared up as if to say this is the world: this is how it goes for a small fish. And further on, a baby's sock lying there. Dead fish, baby sock. My son's a Pisces. Think about it. I'm not superstitious, but there are some omens you can't ignore.

Under the bridge is a footway with a steel deck and chain-wire sides. You can walk over to South Grafton in three minutes with the cars and trucks rumbling above you. There's a good view over the river, but most people don't like to go there, especially at night.

One thing I have always protected my son from is this: I conceived him on the footway under the Grafton Bridge.

He's nineteen years old. That makes him three years older than the boy who fathered him up there. He doesn't know his mother was a drunken girl on the bridge, and he'll never find out either. I wonder how many girls still get pregnant on summer nights up against the chain wire, with the river below. The wire leaves red diamonds on your skin. Everyone looks down their nose at you. Deep down, there's only ever you and your kid.

These things pierce me about my boy. He never had much. At school they said he was impulsive. But he'd never harm anyone. Life is more complicated for some people. None of us are bad; some of us born at the wrong time or in the wrong place, but never bad. I haven't always been the best example but I'm glad I had my baby.

It's eight o'clock. I switch over to the radio again. It's weather on all stations and they're saying the Clarence River's at seven-point-five metres and rising. They're saying everyone who lives between the showgrounds and the river should evacuate. That's me. I go to the back veranda and look up. The sky's like a big weeping backdrop to my life.

Once was enough. Getting pregnant rattled me; I made sure I never got caught again. And anyway, I have a habit of getting into relationships with bastards. No one's been nice enough to be a dad. Dave, my last ex, said I should have thrown my boy out of the nest when he was born. What did you call him Louis for anyway, Dave asked me one day. No reason, I said. Louis the fly, I said. Joe Louis. Louis Armstrong. Louis waste of space, Dave said.

Someone's knocking at the front door. I bang my knee as I run to the window. But it's not a detective, it's a fireman. There's a fire engine outside. The fireman at the door tells me the levee's going to fail at nine o'clock this morning. Everyone has to leave. Didn't I listen to the radio? He tells me to go up the South Grafton hill to the high school. He asks if there's anyone else in the house. Any pets? He says to go now while there's still time. It'll be a big one.