Happy as Larry (10 page)

The stairs led to a picnic area with five wooden tables among tall ferns.

‘This place is beautiful,' Denise said. ‘Have you been here before?'

Mal shook his head.

They followed the signs to the weir and could feel it before they could see it. The river, fed by the recent rain, escaped from the grey concrete spillway with considerable force and generated a breeze that carried the cool mist halfway to the picnic area. A large moss-flecked sign warned of sudden changes in the water level and advised against swimming beneath the overflow. Another sign urged visitors to keep to the tracks and carried a picture of a cartoon man teetering on the edge of a mine shaft.

Gilligan ploughed into the roiling waterway and licked at the surface. Mal stopped and removed his boots and socks, his feet pale and wrinkled on the river sand. Denise and Larry followed suit and soon the three of them were hand in hand, ankle deep and gulping at the cold. Mal led them downstream over slippery-smooth rocks to a beach littered with river-smoothed pebbles and warmed by the afternoon sun. Denise sat on the shore and the boys threw stones – big stones and small stones, rough stones and smooth. Gilligan yapped and splashed and chased every rock. He bit at the water, and once plunged his head beneath the surface trying to pick a stone from the riverbed. He coughed and snorted and then galloped through the shallows after another. Mal found a perfect palm-sized disc of rock and sent it bouncing across the water's surface all the way to the opposite shore amid sounds of astonishment from his wife and son. Larry wanted to know how to do it and together they hunted for the perfect stone, worked on the boy's grip and throwing technique, and groaned with disappointment as the stone arced through the air and disappeared with a single plop less that ten metres from where they stood. Mal trudged out to retrieve the stone, but froze a metre short of where it had broken the surface and stared at something in the water.

‘What?' Larry asked.

Mal put a finger to his lips and edged forward.

‘What is it?' Larry whispered.

Mal slowly reached into the water and, at the last minute, lunged.

A brief rippling–splashing commotion ensued and Denise sprang to her feet, then Mal was striding through the water with a freshwater crayfishpinched at arm's length.

‘Whoah!' Larry sang. ‘It's a crab. Dad caught a big crab!'

Denise brought a hand to her mouth.

‘Crayfish, Larry,' Mal said, and lowered the animal to seven-year-old height. ‘Good one, though. I haven't seen one this big before.'

Larry's eyes were huge. The crustacean hissed and flapped indignantly, its finger-sized pincers snapping at the air. Its tail was spiked like a medieval mace and every joint and surface of its body was knobbed with hard warts, and glistening.

‘Is it a boy or a girl?' Larry asked.

Mal flipped it over to inspect the underside and the crayfish convulsed, spiking him in the wrist and breaking his grip. It fell against his shirt and one of its pincers closed like a pair of pliers around Mal's left nipple. Mal yelped, jumped and spun around. He staggered out into the river with the crayfish dangling from his chest, trying unsuccessfully to grab it and pull it free.

‘Ow . . . ow . . . ow . . . get off . . . get off me!'

Larry was shrieking with laughter when his father finally lost balance and fell onto his hands and knees. As soon as the crayfish hit the water, its grip broke and it powered into the deep.

‘Are you okay, Mal?' Denise said.

‘Fine,' Mal said, peeved. He stood up and rubbed his chest but there was a smile on his lips.

Larry was bent over and slapping his thigh. His eyes were wet and he struggled for breath. ‘Do it again, Dad. Do it again.'

Mal shook the water from his hands and waded to the beach. ‘ “Do it again,” he tells me.'

He strolled close and scooped his boy triumphantly into the air. Larry squealed and giggled and pleaded. Mal threatened to drop him into the river, and then held him cradled and panting in his arms. He strafed his son's chin, his forehead, his cheeks, and his lips with bristly kisses.

‘Where's Gilligan?' Denise asked.

Mal propped Larry on his feet on the stones.

They looked along the river and called for a full minute but there was no sign of the dog. Mal and Denise traded looks crinkled with worry. It was getting late. There were mine shafts.

‘What was that?' Denise said.

They stopped breathing and listened. Over the thunderous surge of the outflow came the muffled yapping of their mongrel – a frenzied bark of distress or excitement.

‘Wait there,' Mal called as he waded across the river.

‘Be careful,' Denise said, and took Larry's hand.

At its deepest, the river swiped at Mal's navel and threatened to shove him off balance. He held the hem of his shirt high and spread his elbows like wings, concentrating on every step and cursing the dog. He clambered up the bank and into the undergrowth.

Denise and Larry stood on the beach and watched the bush intently. Denise's mind kept throwing up disaster scenarios full of broken limbs and death at the bottom of deep holes. Larry grew bored and started throwing stones at the water again.

The strain of waiting reached fever pitch for Denise. The dog had stopped barking and she drew breath to shout for her husband when his head appeared above the ferns. He was carrying Gilligan.

‘Is he all right?' she shouted.

‘Fine,' Mal said. ‘You've got to check this out. It's amazing.'

‘What?'

‘Come across.'

‘I'm not going through that.'

Mal dropped the dog into the river.

‘I'll carry you both across.'

Denise tutted but smiled as Mal bore Larry aloft to the opposite shore.

She finally agreed to cross herself but screamed right in Mal's ear when he stumbled partway over and her bottom got wet through her shorts.

Hand in hand they pushed barefoot and gingerly through the undergrowth and up a short rise. Gilligan barged at their legs and ran on ahead. Mal tugged a soft-leaved shrub aside to reveal a cave of sorts. Hand-hewn and a few inches taller than Mal, the old mine shaft had been dug straight into the rocky wall of the valley. It extended beyond the reach of the light and swallowed Mal's voice when he shouted. The pebbly floor had been flattened by considerable traffic in the past but now moss and soft grasses grew, some freshly bent and squashed by the passage of a man and a dog.

Mal stepped inside.

Denise moaned nervously.

‘Come in. It's completely safe. I want to show you what Gilligan was barking about.'

Denise and Larry took two steps into the mine shaft.

In the middle of the floor of the tunnel sat a black-brown lump the size of a deflated soccer ball, and as their eyes adjusted Denise thought she saw it move. She squatted and pointed, whispering to her son.

‘Do you see it?'

‘Yes.'

‘What do you think it is?'

The boy shrugged.

They stepped closer and the creature sensed their movement and curled itself into a tighter ball.

‘It's an echidna. They dig themselves into the dirt when they get frightened.'

Gilligan shoved through, sniffed the spiky lump and barked so long and loud that Larry had to cover his ears.

Mal scolded the dog and broke its obsession by pressing a bare toe on the animal's rump. Gilligan skipped off into the darkness, deeper into the mine shaft.

They squatted around the echidna and Mal stroked its spines. The animal shrugged and scrabbled harder at the earth.

‘You can pat it. It won't hurt you.'

Larry hesitantly ran his fingers over the rigid spikes. ‘Feels like a comb.'

Mal chuckled. ‘Would you do your hair with an echidna, Larry?'

‘Yes, can we take it home?'

‘I was joking,' Mal said.

Larry smiled. ‘Me too.'

The family crossed the river, collected their shoes and bikes and rolled homeward.

‘That was fun,' Mal said.

‘It was,' Denise agreed, a little unconvincingly.

Abandon infected the trio as they continued homeward. Gilligan raced ahead. The track opened up and Mal – and eventually Denise – followed Larry's lead and sought out the puddles to ride through. The splashing and carrying on was addictive. Larry hit each puddle harder and faster until a deceptively deep pool swallowed his front wheel. The bike tipped and delivered its passenger – par avion – face-first into the gravel.

Larry was on his hands and knees, spitting crimson, when his father swept in and lifted him to his feet.

‘Where does it hurt, Larry?'

Larry spat into his hand and his parents gasped.

‘It's a tooth,' Denise cried.

A rootless baby tooth.

‘Your first tooth!' Mal said. ‘About time. Give us a look.'

Larry forced a grin.

The bloodied piano in his mouth had a new black note.

CRACK

I
N THE MONTHS
that followed, Larry lost a steady stream of teeth, though none so violently as the first. They typically wobbled for a week, and Larry would worry their rough edges with his tongue, and eventually pop them free.

Larry found a solution to the Sunday conundrum. He rose early with his father, watched the men fish until ten, went home to wash his hands and face, then changed his clothes and went with his mother to eleven o'clock church. The most interesting part was the people. He watched them when they weren't watching him, especially during prayers. He saw them hiding a yawn and picking their noses. He saw them fidgeting and scratching and staring at the floor. He saw them falling asleep. When they were eating cake and chatting, they all smiled and talked and looked the same. When they didn't know they were being watched and their faces grew slack, he could see inside them. Jemma's dad sat behind Miss Tremaine the schoolteacher and stared at her bare neck. Mrs Clarke, the lady who played the organ, looked as though she was about to cry. His mother became unrecognisable. Her brow wrinkled and she squinted as if she was angry.

Technology crept into the Rainbows' world as the turn of the century approached. Stan's brother made Mal an offer he couldn't refuse on a digital camera and, two weeks later, a mobile phone. Then Mal bought a second-hand games machine for Larry and set it up on a salvaged TV in the boy's bedroom. Denise read and wept about the massacre at Columbine High School on her brand-new, internet-connected computer. She downloaded and printed photographs of the devastation after the earthquake in Turkey and linked to a site that was counting the dead. It clicked through seventeen thousand before she deleted the link. She and Mal continued to watch the news and knew that the world – as they understood it – was going to end at midnight on the thirty-first of December 1999. The millennium bug. American university professors and police officers were shopping up big and moving into the mountains in preparation for the inevitable social collapse that would ensue when all the computers in the world stopped working. Mal brought home boxes of bottled water and canned food. He dug up the front lawn and planted potatoes. Larry grew bored with the games machine and wondered what the grey-muzzled Gilligan thought of Mal's strange behaviour.

The New Year came and nothing happened.

Fireworks on the foreshore. ‘Auld Lang Syne' on the television. The world did not end.

But it did continue to change.

‘Why would you even think of doing something like that?' Mal fumed.

Larry just sat there – arms crossed, chin on his chest. ‘I don't know,' he mumbled ‘Was it Clinton?' Denise chimed in.

‘No.'

Yes. It had been entirely Clinton's idea to steal the sookie doll. At first they used a short piece of rope from the shed to pull it up into the low branches of the liquidambar on the front lawn. Clinton said they could hide over the fence in the Hammersmiths' bushes and scream out when someone walked past on the street – yell as if they were stuck. It was a good plan and they sniggered in the shrubs for five minutes, but it was getting late and nobody walked past. Three cars
drove
down Condon Street, though, and it was the passing vehicles that gave Clinton the idea. It was Clinton's idea but it was Larry who dragged the doll onto the road. They crouched behind the Rainbows' fence and didn't have to wait long for their first victim. The newish Ford slowed then drove around the figure and tooted kindly as it passed. The second car – a big grey four-wheel drive with its headlights on – didn't really slow down but it didn't have to swerve hard to avoid the doll, either. Clinton scampered out from their hide to reposition the doll, just as a rust-marked white Peugeot cruised into Condon Street. It drove slowly but purposefully and mowed the doll down before the driver found the brakes. The polystyrene head with the hat glued on top bounced into the gutter. The car skidded briefly and stalled before the door burst open and Vince Hammersmith scrambled out.

‘Oh god, no. Please, no. No. Are you okay?'

The desperation in his neighbour's voice made Larry feel sick. He stood up from behind the fence, the blood draining from his face. Clinton pulled at his sleeve then swore in a whisper and ran blindly across the road.

By this time, Vince had realised that the child he'd killed was actually a doll. His panic turned to rage at the retreating form of Clinton.

‘Hey! Stop! Did you do this? Is that your idea of a joke?'

He ran after the boy, but Larry's voice made him stop and turn around.

‘It was me, Vince. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, Vince. I didn't mean it. I . . . I didn't think.'

Vince's brow was still furrowed in shock.

‘What a stupid thing to do. I thought I'd run over a child. I thought I'd hit
you,
for goodness sake.'

He parked his car and they collected the doll pieces. Larry stood penitent beside the old man as Vince explained to his mother what had happened.