The Cartographer (27 page)

Once outside, I came to a tramline where it looked like all the trams going in one direction went to Coburg, and all of those going in the other went to the city.
In the absence of Dusseldorf, that'll have to do
, I thought.

I hoisted myself up onto the next city tram as quickly as I could without passing out from the pain in my head and eased myself onto the nearest seat. I was right near the door, where all the air was, because, to tell you the truth, from the minute I took that poison gas mask off, I'd been feeling a bit green around the gills. Straightaway the cool air rushing by made me feel better, and I quietly hummed a brief medley of show tune favourites, at least they were Mum's favourites. There was a bit of ‘Clang, Clang, Clang Went the Trolley!' Also some of ‘A Couple of Swells', but only because it mentions a trolley car, and finally a large piece of one of
my
favourites: ‘Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City', which made me think about that strange railway station I'd found yesterday.

Two trams later I was standing at the top of my street. What a bloody night
that
had been! And I still had to look forward to getting killed by Mum, unless, of course, my prayer had gotten through. I could see that there was a cluster of people outside my house. Probably, I thought, some kind of lynch mob enquiring as to the whereabouts of yours truly. I entered the house from the lane at the back and made it into my bedroom.
The front door was open and that meant Mum was probably outside instructing the lynch mob in the correct way to tie a hangman's noose. I had a plan, though it wasn't very nice, but that suited me down to the ground because I was going to do it to someone who wasn't very nice. A few minutes later I had the gun and a couple of cartridges and my trusty climbing rope, and was ready to leave. And I did.

I took the tram back up Church Street, and walked the rest of the way to the canal, going down the lane that followed it. When I came to the back of the bodgies and widgies' place, I spotted something on the ground. It was a copper's warrant card. I pocketed it and headed off to the spot where I'd seen the coppers toss the body in.

I looked over the rail, and saw the body still lying there, face up. I tied the rope to the rail and slid down it. At the bottom I sat down on an old pillow and loaded the gun.
One cartridge should do it
, I thought;
we wouldn't want any accidents
.

I picked up the pillow and walked back to the body and looked up and listened, but it was quiet, except for the sound of traffic and trams. I took out the warrant card, which was in a little brown cover, like a tiny book, and put it in the hand of the body. Then, to muffle the sound, I folded the pillow around my hand that was holding the gun, a trick I'd heard about from Barney, and pointed the muzzle at the body, where I thought his heart might be. After taking a quick look up to the lane above me, I closed my eyes and slowly pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. I unfolded the pillow and looked at the gun. It looked normal, and my finger was tight, but it just wasn't pulling the trigger — it was frozen. Slowly, I relaxed my finger and put the gun down. I suddenly wondered if the man
could be alive, because that would change everything. I gave him a shove with my foot, but he didn't move. I tried to lift one arm by the sleeve, but it was stiff. Finally, I tried to take his pulse, but he was cold. His shirt had been torn off, and his chest and stomach were pale, while his back was purple. He was dead. Granddad had told me about rigor mortis, as he'd seen it in the war, and I reckoned this was it.

I picked up the pillow and started again, and this time I willed myself to pull the trigger backwards. The bang wasn't half as loud as I had expected, though it still scared the daylights out of me. And just after the shot there was a hollow reverberation that told me that the sound had travelled up and down the canal, trying to find a way out. Quickly, I dropped the pillow, got the last cartridge out of my bag, gave it a wipe and dropped it. I had plans for the gun.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, I found myself surrounded by a cloud of wonderfully exciting but evil-smelling smoke, which I graded as a seven, the highest score I had ever given to an evil smell. Its sting was like a little reminder from the Devil that he had his eye on me —
Yeah, get in line, mate
, I thought.

Just then my knees gave way, and I fell on top of the body, which now had a big smoking hole in the front. Before I could make a move to stop myself or even move off the body, I started to vomit and moan really loudly at the same time, until the body, including the big hole I had made, was covered in spew. I rolled off the body, and looked at the sky. It was a pretty blue at the time, but it made the concrete sides of the canal look old and miserable, like prison walls. I was freezing cold and nauseous, but I had to get out of there. Only, just then, I didn't think I could climb the rope if my life depended on it. And I was right.

I had thought that if the bloke was dead, it would be a bit of a stroll in the park shooting him. But all of a sudden, he was just the last in a string of dead people I'd been involved with, beginning with Tom, the only one I'd known, and the only one I missed, and, for all I knew, the only one who was not supposed to die in the first place. For a few minutes I listened to myself moaning uncontrollably, and prayed to my old enemy to stop me doing it, so that I wouldn't draw a crowd. I mean, how would it look?

Finally, when the coldness started to wear off, I got to my knees and crawled around looking for something to wipe the gun, and my face and clothes, clean. There was some water in the canal, so I used it to wash. Then I shoved the gun into my bag with the spent cartridge still in it. The body I left as it was. I hadn't planned on chucking all over it, but there it was. Finally, slowly, I went up the rope. When I reached the rail, I expected to find a crowd made up of all the people who hated me the most. Instead, I saw Gary Turner.

He was leaning on the rail where the rope was tied, staring at me. As I reached the rail he stepped aside, so that I could hop over. I didn't know what you were supposed to say on these occasions, so I just said: ‘G'day Gazza.' I thought he'd nick the gun for sure, and I was worried that if he did he'd get caught with it, and get into a ton of trouble. But he only continued to stare, as if I was the Creature from the Black Lagoon. We stood there staring at each other for another few seconds, then he said: ‘Christ!' That was all. I could have read about a dozen things into that, if I'd wanted to, so I did. It wasn't all bad.

So I went on my way, knowing that the last thing Gary Turner would ever do would be to mention the incident — I
think you could call it an incident — to a living soul, especially if that soul was a copper.

Five minutes later, I was on the Prahran tram, and finally getting what Jerry Lee Lewis had meant when he sang ‘Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On'. Baby, I was shaking worse than my Uncle Bert that time he turned up on our doorstep badly in need of a snifter or two. I would have bet my dog —
you heard
— that I was the only person on that tram, adults included, who was carrying a sawn-off shotgun, even though Granddad had assured me that a lot of those Italian trammies went to work whistling ‘Volare' and carrying a little something in their Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board bags just in case they ran into an old acquaintance whose second cousin had insulted their second cousin in Napoli and who was now in need of a spanking.

I thought again about Gary Turner. I had decided that his exclamation was one of admiration for a fellow outlaw. But now I wondered if I had got it wrong. Perhaps when he had spoken, God had used him to speak to me of his son, because I needed reminding. Was I a bad bastard, like Turner? Did I need telling? Or punishing? I told myself I was imagining things, that I might have misheard, that he might have said something entirely different, which was what I myself often told Sister when I swore at school. Was he a messenger of some kind, or simply a surprised person?

Jesus Christ
, I thought,
what's happening to me
?

Back in my street, the crowd I'd seen had dispersed, and I wondered if the cops had to use tear gas, because if there was one thing the people in my street liked it was standing around discussing the price of fish. I know the cops would have needed it if my Aunty Betty had been there, as she was a crowd all by
herself. Before going in, I cased the joint, to see if the cops were still lurking, waiting to ask me a few questions about the night in question, and what I was up to at the 134th Light Aid Detachment Workshop, RAEME. But there were none, and I guessed that was because they had not known who I was. So I decided to fake it; you know, walk in with the big
Hello!
and act as if I had just spent the last twenty-four hours being bored to tears over at the Sandersons' place. But one look at Mum's fizzog and I knew two things, knew them as well as I knew Sister Benedict was keen on Sister Bernadette and that you can't wash treacle off a cat: first, something very bad had happened, and second, she was not going to kill me.

She had her hands folded in front of her, and her face was about as soft as I knew she could manage these days. I put my bag down on the floor. She was scaring me.

‘What?' I said, but what I was thinking was: ‘
Now
what?'

‘It's Biscuit,' she said. ‘God has taken him back.'

 

When Mum told me that Biscuit had kicked the bucket, I got about two dozen feelings at once, but the main one was actually a smell, the same one you get from a mild dose of smelling salts. It sort of cut into my chest like a razor blade, stinging as it went, and came out my eyes, making them water. You had to hand it to Mum: she knew how to break it to you gently. I had other feelings too, of course, some of them familiar and some of them brand new with no name I could put to them, though they all had smells. I was immediately ashamed, because one of the feelings was that it was a pretty good joke that God had played on me. But there it was: I had said it, hadn't I? And here I was, standing there as free as a bird, while Biscuit was, like Old Shep, gone where the good
doggies go … where was that? Some place where there were no dunnies for cats to hide on top of, I hoped.

‘What happened to him?' I asked.

‘Tram,' said Mum quietly. ‘Go down to the laundry and get those clothes off — they smell like Dynon Creek.'

I came back wearing only my hat. Mum looked at it for a long time, deadpan, but in the end didn't say anything, which meant that I still had a good fib for a rainy day.

‘Get cleaned up and we'll have some scones.' The one thing Mum could make without the Metropolitan Fire Brigade turning up.

‘Where is he now?' I asked.

‘He's been taken away.'

Mum was a mine of information. If she kept this up, she had Buckley's chance of winning that Nobel Prize.

But if Biscuit got creamed by a tram, I didn't want details. I went to turn away, then remembered something.

‘What about his collar?'

‘It's on your bed.'

Well, it was something, and I needed something.

‘Thanks, Mum.'

And thank you too, God, you bastard.

‘Off you go.'

Which just about said it all.

 

During the following week, about sixty-five things happened at once. First, Granddad said that he'd been talking to the bloke he got Biscuit off, and the bloke was willing to let him have Biscuit's young nephew, another Labrador. He suggested we go over there and have a look. I said okay, because Biscuit's nephew was probably a bit of a killer, like his uncle — these
things tend to run in families — and also, I needed a dog. I was getting sick of laughing at my own jokes when I was out adventuring, and Biscuit used to laugh his head off at everything I said, even if I just sneezed, for Christ's sake. Also, I could name this dog whatever I liked, so he wouldn't end up with a name like Biscuit.

It was settled. We caught the train over to Footscray to see this bloke and it turned out he owed Granddad a favour — surprise, surprise — so I knew we would get the dog cheap,
very
cheap.

‘So,' said Granddad. ‘What d'yer think, boy?'

‘He's a bewdy, I reckon.' I said to the bloke: ‘What's the damage?'

‘Well …' he starts off.

‘Why don't we call it quits,' says Granddad.

The bloke laughs like hell, as if Granddad has just said that the Liberal Party is the best thing that ever happened to Australia.

‘Now just a minute, Archie, that dog's worth a bit more than
that
! Look at him: he's got breeding written all over him.'

‘Now how the hell would you know what breeding looks like, Blakey? You live in Footscray, for God's sake.'

Then Granddad turns to me and says: ‘Got a zac?'

And the bloke says: ‘What —?'

‘Yeah, Granddad, here.'

‘No, don't give it to me, give it to Mr Blake.'

So I give the bloke sixpence. But he looks at me and winces, as if I'd just reached down his dacks and grabbed him by the nuts.

‘Jesus, Arch, what're yer doin' to the kid?'

But Granddad just says: ‘Thanks, Jack. That's it then. See you at the Valley.'

‘Christ, and they say
I'm
a hard bastard,' says Mr Blake. ‘Go on then, take the bugger.'

Well, he was a terrific dog, and looked the same as Biscuit, except he was pitch black. He definitely had the look of a mad killer about him, too. He had it all: the floppy ears, the wagging tail and the tongue that hung out all the time. If you were a thug, you'd think:
What a nice doggy
, and get sucked into his vicious trap. And the next thing you knew you'd be lying in the back of an ambulance, thinking to yourself:
What a revoltin' development
this
is!
And wishing you'd taken your father's advice and joined the navy instead of signing on with a network of Bengali smugglers. He didn't have his own collar, but I had Biscuit's with me, and with a bit of rope threaded through the metal ring, he was laughing, and I mean it.