Comfort Zone

1

Rescue

Why is life mostly just standing around doing nothing?
Jack flicked away a dead leaf caught in a windscreen wiper of his taxi and gazed into the distance, pondering this unfortunate fact. His shift was nearly over. One more fare would be good, but preferably nothing too far. He'd had a good day — a few airport jobs, several good tips — so the pressure to earn enough cash was off for one more day. Now he just had to wait for a bit more.

He didn't like being on Elgin Street in Carlton. It was always noisy, dirty, and blustery, and right now it felt a lot colder than the temperature update Jack had heard on the cab radio just a few minutes before.

A biting wind hustled down the hill from around the university, cutting right through him. Leaves, lolly wrappers, and leaflets tumbled along gutters and footpaths. The red-brick tower blocks next to the rank looked grey. They were starting to show their age.

Jack shivered, drew heavily on his cigarette, and kicked a discarded Styrofoam coffee cup along the footpath in the direction of Fitzroy.

As far as Jack was concerned, driving cabs wasn't much fun at the best of times, but late winter in Melbourne was the absolute pits. Jack's was the only cab on the rank, so he didn't even have another idle driver to complain to. Most of them were Indians and Somalis these days, so it wasn't the same anyway.
Can't even find their way to the MCG, most of them
, Jack muttered to a stray pigeon waddling along the footpath.

Jack van Duyn didn't exactly cut an impressive figure. He was quite tall, but a gently protruding potbelly was accentuated by Australia's least imposing set of shoulders. Jack suffered from the shoulder equivalent of the weak chin. His shoulders were so pathetic they were virtually concave. It was as though a mad scientist had transplanted a jockey's shoulders onto the body of a six-foot-three labourer. The frayed epaulettes on Jack's taxi uniform only highlighted his deficiency.

In his teenage years, Jack had earned the unfortunate nickname ‘skittle'. As he grew older, the tag had become even more appropriate.

He wasn't a great deal more attractive above the shoulders. Jack had a large head and longish face, crowned with unkempt, curly dark hair fading to grey at the sides, and thinning on top. His nose had an awkward shape to it, his lips were thin and chapped, his teeth were crooked, and his skin was weather-beaten. He was not a regular user of male vanity products.

Jack noticed a handful of dark-skinned children romping in the playground on the other side of a line of shrubbery that separated the grounds of the public-housing estate from the footpath. A slim, dark woman swathed in flowing robes of varying shades of purple stood guard beside a bright-yellow slide.
Bloody Somalis
, he muttered to himself.
Why can't they stay in their own shithole of a country?

Jack ground the remains of his cigarette into the crumbling edge of the pavement and glanced along Elgin Street as he leaned back against the cab. There was no sign of likely passengers.

Suddenly, a piercing, high-pitched scream made him look back at the playground. A fight had erupted, involving a couple of older kids and two smaller ones. He saw the smallest one slip from the grasp of a tall, slim youth in jeans and hoodie, and run towards the woman in purple.

Jack took little interest in the affray. Big kids hassled little kids all the time, all around the world.

He wasn't looking back up the street, but he could sense that someone was walking towards him. Experienced taxidrivers have a sixth sense for the presence of potential fares. He adjusted his gaze just in case.

The newcomer certainly looked like a passenger worth having. He wore a nice suit, fancy shoes, and striped shirt, and walked like a self-satisfied young professional.

As this picture of success and power strolled towards him, Jack amused himself by guessing his name and occupation. Definitely a lawyer, he concluded. Few things annoyed him more than successful, attractive men parading the evidence of their status, especially when they were young.

Jack wondered what his name might be — maybe Sebastian, Luke, or Oscar. The man called out to him: ‘You free?'

‘Yeah, mate — hop in,' Jack mumbled.

His passenger reached for the front-door handle on the passenger side, and Jack moved himself into a fully upright position with exaggerated effort.

He'd only taken a couple of steps when another scream, this time too loud to ignore, came from the playground, followed by much yelling and wailing.

Jack and his passenger both stopped and stared, unable to ignore the minor riot that had erupted about ten metres away.

A very tall boy had hold of one of the smaller boys, and was banging his arm hard against the side of the monkey bars. The other small boy was being held in a headlock by a second teenager, while the woman was struggling to dislodge him. It was difficult to work out what was happening, with the amount of noise and thrashing around that was going on.

Jack and his well-dressed companion stood frozen to the spot for a few seconds, and then the other man reacted.

‘Hey, that's not on! Come on, we've got to break this up!'

Jack wasn't the Good Samaritan type — for him, personal survival always came first — and, anyway, this sort of stuff wasn't in the taxidriver's manual.

But there was something insistent, almost irresistible, in his passenger's voice. It was a tone of command, expressed with an air of natural authority. The usual, easy option of ignoring the fight was being denied to Jack. Refusing to get involved now required an overt decision, and an admission of selfishness — even cowardice. And he might lose his fare.

‘He'll break the kid's arm, for Christ's sake!'

Jack's decision had been made for him. If he didn't intervene, he would effectively be guilty of breaking a small boy's arm.

The young man didn't wait for Jack to respond. He bounded effortlessly over the small shrubs separating the playground from the street. With much less athletic elegance, Jack followed.

His new partner leapt on the youth who was torturing the small boy, and wrestled him to the ground. Jack went to the aid of the woman. Within a few seconds, they had freed the second boy from the headlock. The crisis was averted, but the raucous yelling and crying continued.

The woman was sobbing, panting, and abusing the small boys' tormentors. Jack couldn't understand the language, but he noticed a smooth richness in her voice. In his more idle moments, he sometimes associated voices with different kinds of alcohol. Most men had beer voices, some had whiskey ones, and the better-off had wine ones. Plenty of women had wine voices, too, some even had beer voices, and there were lots with gin and vodka voices. This one was relatively unusual: it was a liqueur voice. Bailey's, maybe.

Jack grabbed the older boy around the waist and dragged him away from his victim, carefully avoiding his flailing arms. The child's mother — surely only a mother would have responded with this level of agitation — shepherded him away from the danger zone, like a billowing purple shroud protecting him from the elements.

Definitely Somalis
, Jack thought, as he and his wrestling partner stumbled in an ungainly dance around the playground, never quite managing to fall over, but always appearing off balance. Their heights were similar, and Jack's advantage in weight and strength was offset by his opponent's youth and fitness.

They came to a halt next to the slide, close to where Jack's companion was grappling on the ground with the other youth. The playground was covered with grey woodchips that had absorbed a good deal of rain recently, so it wasn't as bad as fighting on concrete.

As Jack wrestled his opponent back and forth, he glimpsed another figure emerging behind him to his left. He half-turned his head, and saw a contorted, dark face and, a little below it, the unmistakable glint of a knife. The person holding it was not a skinny teenager but a grown man, and was also apparently Somali.

This new assailant screamed something at Jack and leapt at him. Jack tried to fend off his attacker with his left arm while his right remained entangled with the teenager. They stumbled and fell to their knees on the woodchips, panic surging through Jack like an ice-cold wind as he realised he was at the mercy of a knife-wielding maniac.

As bits of his life exploded in flashes through his mind, Jack heard a loud voice barking from the direction of Elgin Street:

‘Alright, break it up! A night in the cells for the next one who moves!'

This threat came from a tall, solid man in police uniform who was hurdling the shrubs and heading towards them. He was followed by a youthful-looking policewoman. Jack could see a police car parked behind his cab. For once, it was welcome.

The teenager scrambled to his feet, made as if he were about to run for it, and then thought better of it. Jack was still holding his antagonist's arm, and was now grunting and wheezing from his exertions. The man with the knife was nowhere to be seen, almost as if he had never existed. Jack's heart was beating wildly, and his mind was racing.
Since when did breaking up a kids' fight in a playground mean getting attacked with a knife?

Jack's well-dressed passenger had also risen to his feet and, after straightening his clothing, placed himself right next to the other boy to make sure he didn't escape.

As he recovered, Jack began to absorb the sights and sounds around him. One of the small boys was cradling his left arm, wailing and sobbing. The other was clinging to his mother's leg. Jack was now convinced that she was their mother.

‘Explain yourselves fast …' the policeman began, but the woman interrupted with great passion.

‘They are cowards, jackals! They fight little boys! You are dirty and disgusting …' Her English had a peculiar, formal quality that suggested she was well educated.

‘Enough, enough!' the policeman yelled back at her. He now had a tight grip on the arm of the taller boy. Jack still had hold of the other attacker, and they both looked as if they didn't quite know what to do about it. The policewoman took a light hold of his other arm. He was shaking, doubtless apprehensive about any encounter with the police.