Bleakboy and Hunter Stand Out in the Rain (4 page)

8

HUNTER

On the long walk home, Hunter stops at the intersection of Ficus and Burnley Streets. He looks east along Ficus Street to where Saint Stephen's Church is surrounded by a stone wall and flowering shrubs. That's where his parents got married. His mum told him it was a perfect summer's day and they took photos under a wattle tree in bloom.

And then the wasps flew down from the tree and
stung the bridesmaids, the groom, the best man and most
of the wedding party. Everyone except the bride and the photographer. The wedding album at home is
packed with photos of people slapping themselves. The reception was held at the local conference centre and instead of passing around glasses of champagne, they shared ointment for the bites. Everyone was red and blotchy, except Hunter's mum. His father had swollen lips for days, Mum said. He could barely speak and they couldn't kiss. Hunter liked that story.

The old man on the scooter from the park pulls up alongside Hunter. He reaches into his pocket for a box of matches to light his pipe and cups one hand around the flame. He puffs and Hunter smells the acrid smoke. Hunter waits for him to move on, but he doesn't. He just sits on the scooter looking down the street.

‘I used to walk to the shops every day,' the old man says, more to himself than Hunter. ‘Now I drive this contraption, like an invalid.' Hunter notices the shopping in the basket: pasta, tinned sauce, a bottle of milk and dog food.

‘What sort of dog do you have?' Hunter asks.

The old man laughs. ‘One that doesn't yap all night. One that knows when to sit at my feet and,' the old man takes a puff, ‘when to leave me alone.' He reaches into the shopping basket and holds up the tin of dog food. ‘Deefer doesn't need much.' He drops the tin back in the basket. ‘We both eat out of tins.'

‘Deefer? What sort of name is that?' Hunter says.

‘D for dog. Deefer,' chuckles the old man. ‘Something easy to remember.' He taps one finger against his temple. ‘In case I start losing my marbles as well as my mobility.'

‘Where's your wife?' Hunter asks.

The old man looks sharply at Hunter. He studies his pipe for a few seconds before answering, ‘She's passed on'. He holds up the pipe. ‘They say this thing will kill me.' He scoffs. ‘It's the heart that kills us in the end. One way or another.' The old man coughs into his handkerchief. ‘All the same, laddie, I wouldn't be taking it up if I were you. The smell scares away the ladies!' He reaches down and taps the smouldering contents out onto the grass. ‘Step on that for me, will you?'

Hunter walks around the scooter and presses the ash into the grass with his shoe.

‘Was I interrupting something,' the old man says, ‘back there in the park?'

Hunter shakes his head.

They both stare down Ficus Street. The wind suddenly picks up from the east. Storm clouds colour the horizon. A flock of starlings swoop across the sky, like a mottled fan unfolding. A soft-drink truck pulls up a few metres in front of them. The driver jumps down from his cabin and lifts a yellow plastic crate of assorted drinks from the tray top, carrying it into the house with a green-painted fence.

‘When I was a kid,' the old man says, ‘a bloke around the corner drove one of those trucks.' He looks cheekily at Hunter. ‘He kept crate loads of soft drinks under his house.' The old man winks. ‘Whenever I got thirsty, I knew just where to go. Even now, I can hardly resist the desire to just scoot alongside the truck, reach in, grab a bottle and be on my way.'

Hunter laughs at the image of a pensioner thief puttering away on his scooter. ‘I'll keep watch, if you want,' he says.

The old man chuckles. ‘We'd never make it, laddie. The battery on this thing is on its last legs. Much like me.'

The truck driver comes out from the house, carrying an empty crate. He pulls the tarp over the full crates on the tray top and ties it down with rope, ready for the approaching storm.

The old man turns his scooter, preparing to cross the road. ‘I never ride down this side of Ficus,' he says. ‘Going that close to the church gives me the screaming willies.' He waves the pipe at Hunter and speeds across the road. Hunter watches him reach the other side and scoot up the gutter, the food in the basket shaking, the old man intently holding the handlebars as he surges forward.

Hunter turns away and walks slowly down Burnley Street. Lightning forks in the distance. He practises spitting between the gap in his teeth, first for distance, then for accuracy. He's an expert by the time he reaches his house.

Hunter sits on his front fence, watching the storm bruise the horizon. A curtain of rain folds toward him. He hears the rain on the corrugated roof of Mrs Betts's house before he feels it. He closes his eyes and turns his face to the sky. Pock. Pock. Pock. The raindrops drum on his forehead, soak his hair and channel down his back. He opens his mouth to catch the drops and says, ‘I'm eating the rain.' He giggles.

Hunter remembers when he was five years old, being caught in a thunderstorm with his dad. How his dad lifted a newspaper above their heads as they scurried for cover. They were soaked before reaching the safety of a bus shelter. While he watched the rain gush down the gutters and turn potholes into puddles, his father read the wet newspaper, peeling each page away from the other. Hunter marvelled at the sky, amazed that clouds could hold that much water. With one of his father's discarded sheets of newspaper, Hunter fashioned a boat: a newsprint canoe. He stepped from the shelter and launched it in the gutter. It swept away, riding the stormwater waves. Hunter knelt on the footpath and laughed. His father told him to come out of the rain.

A car horn sounds and Hunter opens his eyes, startled. Mrs Betts is pulling into her driveway. He hops off the fence and rushes across the road to where his neighbour is about to get out of her car. Hunter calls, ‘I'll do it, Mrs Betts.' He quickly reaches over the gate and unlatches it, pushing it wide. He stands back as she drives through into the garage. He closes the gate and runs back across the road to his home. Mrs Betts waves in thanks.

Hunter leaps across his front fence and looks at the gutters, gushing wildly. If only he had a newspaper.

9

jesse

The problem with the internet is one moment I'm learning all about the campaign to stop the Japanese killing whales in the Southern Ocean and within two clicks, I'm staring at a starving boy from Ethiopia.

His name is Kelifa. He's eight years old and lives with his dad and four sisters. His mum died giving birth to his youngest sister, Mubina, last year. He looks at me with sad eyes from the computer screen. The cursor hovers over the ‘DONATE NOW' button in the bottom right-hand corner. My hand shakes on the mouse. Anybody with four sisters deserves all the help I can offer.

I've checked my piggy bank and I have exactly nine dollars and sixty cents. If split six ways with his sisters and dad, that amounts to one dollar and sixty cents each. Which is not even enough to give him clean drinking water. My eyes wander to the water bottle on my desk. If only I could push the bottle through the screen and all the way to Kelifa in Africa.

I look out the window. The storm has cleared and Dad is tending his peach tree in the garden. He sees me watching and waves, then plucks a ripe peach from the tree. He tosses it into the air and catches it before taking a big bite. The juice spurts into his eye. He laughs and walks robot-like around the garden, his arms reaching out in front of him, feeling the way, pretending to be blind. Then he opens his eyes and takes another bite.

I wonder if hunger can cause real blindness. Kelifa appears to nod from his village in my computer. My throat is dry. Absentmindedly, I reach for the water bottle. But Kelifa is watching. I get up from my desk and walk down the hallway, taking a guilty drink as I go.

On the kitchen table is Dad's wallet, a twenty-dollar bill poking out.

I glance down the hall to my bedroom. Trevor looks blankly at me, through the doorway, his arms spread as if to say, ‘It's your decision, Jesse'.

Mum and Beth are out shopping for groceries. In thirty minutes they'll arrive home and Mum will complain that she spent over two hundred dollars at the supermarket as she stores cans of food in the pantry. I doubt Kelifa has ever seen a pantry.

I quickly open Dad's wallet and take out his MasterCard. Running down the hallway, I avert my eyes from Trevor. ‘Forgive me, Trev,' I whisper.

Kelifa is waiting. He looks thinner than a few minutes ago. I click on the ‘DONATE NOW' button. A screen appears with all the details I need to fill in: name, address, card number, expiry date. I do it as quickly as my shaking hands allow.

My finger hovers over the mouse. One click and fifty dollars is on its way to Kelifa and his family. I hope his sisters share.

I hear the crunch of car wheels on gravel in the driveway. Beth's voice is loud, ‘One chocolate bar!' I lean across and close my window.

My right index finger clicks the mouse.

Kelifa smiles.

10

HUNTER

The house echoes with emptiness when Hunter closes the front door. He walks to the kitchen and hangs his schoolbag on the hook. There's a personal assessment task in the bag and that's where it's staying. He opens the fridge door and reaches inside for a handful of grapes. When his mother brings them home from the supermarket, she pulls each grape from the stalk, and puts the fruit in a bowl, to encourage Hunter to eat them. As he crunches down on the skin, he wonders how far he could spit a grape. He closes the
fridge door and notices the puddle he's created on
the kitchen floor. He walks into the laundry and takes off his jeans, socks and t-shirt, tossing the squelchy bundle into the laundry basket.

He runs to his bedroom, where the blinds are rattling in the wind. He left the window open this morning. Hunter slams the window shut and looks out to the road, slick with damp. The storm has passed but the gutters are still surging. He wonders if the old man made it home in time. He tries to remember if the scooter had a roof.

Hunter leaves his bedroom and walks up the hallway to the closed door of the second bedroom. He reaches for the doorknob and a sudden clap of thunder booms in the distance. He quickly removes his hand from the knob.

‘Ha!'

Even though he's only wearing undies, Hunter is sweating as he turns the handle and opens the door. In the corner is a single bed, covered with a doona. A pile of pillows is scattered along the bed, like a sleeping figure, round and pudgy. Next to the bed is a dresser and beside that are cardboard boxes, stacked three high. The weight of the boxes is forcing the bottom carton to sag and the stack looks about to fall at any moment. Hunter walks in and shoves the stack tight against the wall. Scrawled across the lid of the top box in his father's handwriting is the single word: ‘Charity'.

He rips the masking tape off the box and reaches inside. He pulls out a long-sleeved business shirt, white with thin blue stripes, and holds it up to his nose. It smells of camphor mothballs and faint traces of his father's aftershave. He reaches into the box again and pulls out another shirt. And another. All white, with pinstripes. He wonders why his mother keeps all this stuff. Why his father didn't take it to the charity shop before he left.

On the opposite wall is a full-length mirror. Hunter goes to the window and looks down the street. No sign of his mother. He checks his watch. Thirty minutes until she arrives home from work. He puts his arms into his father's shirt and pulls it on, slowly fastening each button, leaving the top one undone. The shirt hangs down a little too far. Quickly he searches in the box for a pair of his father's slacks. Sure enough, at the bottom, neatly folded, are a few pairs. He pulls the dark blue pants up over his waist. They're baggy and too long. Hunter leans down and rolls up the cuffs before searching in the box to find a leather belt, frayed at the edges. He threads it through the belt loops and tightens it as far as it'll go. He takes a deep breath and stands in front of the mirror.

He looks like a ragdoll with a scowling face. He tries to smile, but it turns out all crooked and forced. Hunter stares at himself for a long time, looking for any resemblance to his father. He has brown eyes and olive skin, like his mum. Nothing like his father's blue eyes and pale skin. Hunter stands straighter, with his shoulders pulled back. His dad always leaned forward, as if he were trying to sell you something, as if he wanted to be your friend.

The fabric of the shirt itches at his neck and is clammy against his skin. He puts his hands in between the buttons and rips off the shirt. The buttons fly across the room, bouncing off the mirror. He unbuckles the belt and lets the pants fall to the floor, kicking them away. They land on the bed. He throws all the clothes back into the box and closes the lid. He hates the smell of mothballs and aftershave. It clings to his body. He rushes out of the room and slams the door.

Hunter shrugs into trackpants and a t-shirt. He wonders if his mum ever goes into the room and opens the boxes. Why doesn't she burn them? She can't still be hoping he'll return, not after the postcard he sent her last week.

New Zealand.

Hunter remembers his dad going there twice a year on business. He'd send postcards of sparkling harbours and daredevils bungee jumping and he'd promise that next time, the whole family would go. Hunter wanted to ski, to experience the thrill of sliding down a mountain. He imagines it must be the greatest feeling, even if you have to dress like an Eskimo.

Hunter walks into his mother's room and goes to the second drawer of her dresser. He opens it and pulls out a woollen jumper. Underneath is a photo of the three of them at a coffee shop. Hunter is sitting
in the middle. On the table near him is a thickshake in
a tall glass, topped with chocolate ice-cream. To the left is his mother, smiling at the camera. To the right, his father, looking past the photographer, across the street. His eyes are hooded and he's leaning forward, like always.

The front door slams and his mother calls his name.

Hunter puts the photo back and covers it with the jumper.