The Legend of Kevin the Plumber

Scot Gardner
lives with his wife and three feisty offspring in the hills near the Victorian town of Yinnar. He started his working life as an apprentice gardener with the local council, where he learnt the fine art of looking busy, a skill he has refined over many years in many jobs. He likes battery drills, digging holes and kayaking in the ocean.

 

Also by Scot Gardner

One Dead Seagull
White Ute Dreaming
Burning Eddy
The Other Madonna

SCOT GARDNER

This project wouldn't have been possible without the generous assistance of the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts

First published 2004 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
St Martins Tower, 31 Market Street, Sydney

Copyright © Scot Gardner 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Gardner, Scot.
The legend of Kevin the plumber.

ISBN 0 330 36498 7.

I. Title.

A823.4

Typeset in 11.5/15 pt Aldus Roman by Midland Typesetters
Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

These electronic editions published in 2004 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

The Legend of Kevin the Plumber

Scot Gardner

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For Dad and Mum

Thanks to my trusty agent, Pippa Masson at Curtis Brown Australia. Anna McFarlane, Brianne Tunnicliffe and Simone Ford at Pan, who were literary mechanics
par excellence
for this beast. Big thanks also to the clique of angels (Ruth Codlin, Tara Harle and Tania Zerafa) for helping me tickle a handscribbled manuscript into submission.

Thanks to Darren Pilcher (my almanac of cars), my brother Liam (the letter of the law), Dionne Sharman (the guru of counterculture) and Dr Darra Murphy (a dashing encyclopaedia of medicine). Thanks to Christian Alvear for the electrocution story.

And the plumbers . . . Darren Smith (The Bold Bearded Beauty from Blackwarry), Graeme and Leslie from Geraldton, David Reggardo, Bruce Mongan, Jim Greening, Kevin Meese, DJ Nicholls, Mike Turra at Reece Traralgon, Gary Watts and the apprentices at Gippstafe Plumbing. Enormous thanks to Jeff Patchell at
Plumbing and Mechanical Connection
magazine and all the talented tradespeople who contributed stories . . . you're the real legends. Thanks.

About the Author

Also by Scot Gardner

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Start at the Beginning

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

The End Bit

More Bestselling Fiction Available From Pan Macmillan

H
ow far back should I go?

I pissed on Telford's desk.

I know that sounds like I'm big-noting myself and if you were a school counsellor then you'd say I was freaking out with some bullshit attention-seeking behaviour.

You'd be wrong.

I wasn't being a rebel, I was taking a piss.

I was in grade three. Telford wouldn't let me go to the toilet and I was seriously busting. I needed to go when I snapped Christina Chalk's ruler over her head (the little incident that got me sent up to the office in the first place) and that was hours before. My grade three thinking went:

(Me) — Excuse me, Mr Telford, may I please go to the toilet?

(Telford) — No, Gary. You can stay right where you are.

(Me) — But, sir, I'm busting.

(Telford, getting up from behind his desk) — You can stay there until your mother gets here.

(Me) — But . . .

(Telford, leaving his office) — Don't move!

(Me, holding my dick, almost in a whisper) — It's urgent, sir.

(Telford closes the door)

(Me, alone in the principal's office. Alone and busting. I jiggle) —
I can't piss my pants. Mum will kill me. The pot-plant on his desk!

(Me, squeezing my dick) —
I think I'm going to explode. I can't reach the pot-plant.

(Me, spinning) —
I'll piss in the corner. No! It's carpet. Pissing on carpet makes your room stink for months.

(Me, spying a plastic rubbish bin with one screwed up piece of paper in it) —
Nah, it's got holes in it everywhere. It'll just leak onto the carpet.

(Me, funny little noises leaking from behind my clenched teeth)
— I'm going to die.

(Me, pulling my shorts and undies to my ankles in one panicked action) —
Sorry
.
Sorry, I have to
.

(Me, leaning back and aiming for the pot-plant on Telford's desk) — Ahhhhhhhh . . .

(There's a drumming sound and I realise I've shot straight over the pot-plant and landed on the diary that's open on Telford's desk. I correct my flow and I'm pissing higher than the filing cabinet but it's now at least landing in the pot-plant)

(Me, relief beyond belief) — Ahhhhhhhhh . . .

(The door opens)

(Telford, screaming) — My God, Gary! Stop! What are you doing? My God. My
God.

(I jump and piss on my hand. My shorts. The carpet. Telford. I pull up my shorts before I'm finished and the piss is warm in my sock)

(Telford, growling, hand full of paper towel) — You are sick, Gary Sleep. You are
sick
. Sick in the head. You should be in
jail
. Save the community the trouble of doing it when you are in your teens. You, my boy, will never amount to anything. If we lived in a sensible society, you would have been smothered at birth. Get out. Get
out
! GET OUT!

‘G
et out!'

Mum was going ballistic and shoving me out the front door. I tripped on my shoelaces and landed elbow-skin first in a little squat of Trixie's shit on the lawn. I washed it off at the front tap and tucked my school shirt in. I swung my bag on my back and walked across the road and three doors down to Ash's place.

I could smell incense coming from Ash's bungalow window and I knew I was in time. Mum's green Hyundai screamed past on the street. I still smelled like Trixie shit.

Ash sat on the floor in a black bra and singlet. Her bra was like a dam for her tits. The rolls on her tummy had swallowed part of her singlet. She had her school pants on but they weren't done up. She was packing a bong. She'd finished her standard breakfast milkshake and the red-pen lines in her eyes suggested that the cone was for me. I chugged and bubbled my way through it as she finished getting dressed.

Eye drops. Bus stops.

My sister Sharon was already there. She pulled her bag off the seat so Ash could sit down.

‘You stink like bong water, Gaz,' Sharon said.

‘Nah, it's dogshit from your mongrel,' I growled.

She laughed.

Ash's body shook and she smiled but no sound came out. ‘Should get a new aftershave, Gaz. That one's a bit too earthy.'

I started walking as the bus arrived. Walking along the street.

‘Where are you going?' Sharon asked.

‘Home,' I said. ‘I've got to go to the dunny. And I stink like dogshit.'

‘Gaz, no. Mum'll kill you.'

‘She won't know, will she?'

‘Gaz, don't. Come on!'

I walked.

Sharon swore at the dreadlocks on the back of my head.

I did need to go to the dunny. And I'd deal with Mum when I had to.

The public dunnies on Blaxton Drive were built when I was in year seven. I remember the smell of paint when I first had to use them and how amazing it seemed that there was no graffiti on the walls. I've learned stuff from those dunnies. Stuff about myself, like how I always need a bog one minute before the bus arrives. Those dunnies have saved me from having to use the cans at school. It may be hard to believe but the dunnies on Blaxton Drive smell better than the ones at school, despite the public using and abusing them over four years. Someone had
drilled a hole through the wall between cubicles so you can watch the wanker next door getting off. If you were that way inclined. The backs of the doors don't get cleaned. I've seen the fat guy from the council, Ruby, pushing soap bubbles onto the footpath with a broom, but he doesn't clean the doors.

Behind the door in the loo I use — the one with the seat — there's a picture of a dick and some bum cheeks done in thick black texta. The shot spots have been collecting in the corner over the years. The dust sticks to them and they dry into crusty tear tracks. None of them are mine. I pray I never find a fresh one.

I made a Vegemite sandwich after my shower. I stuck my video on and sat in front of the teev, couch springs twanging. My pirate of the original
Mad Max
. The movie that made two people famous: Mel Gibson and Darcy Sleep. Mel was a boy in that movie. So was my dad. Movie stuntman extreme. He didn't hang around long enough to tell me which stunts he actually did so when I finally saw the video at the age of ten, I just filled in the gaps. Every stunt was my old man. He was ‘Mad' Max Rockatansky, he was Toe Cutter, Night Rider and Cundalini, but Dad didn't lose his hand. The film came out in 1979. Dad was eighteen. Mum was sixteen and an assistant make-up artist. They met on the set.

They got married when Mum turned eighteen and I was born at Christmas Bay Hospital five years later. Dad went up to Sydney for work and didn't come back. I still talk to him on the phone on my birthday and Christmas
and that but he fell in love with The Slut — Bernie Clymo— and they moved to the Gold Coast. We never watched an episode of
Sea Change
in case Mum saw Bernie and . . . I don't know . . . smashed the television.

Mum runs a salon in Christmas Bay. Deep Skin Beauty. She lives there and comes home to cook tea and have a shower. She must sleep at home sometimes, too. That's probably how she and Mario made my sister, Sharon. Mum met Mario when I was four and she fell in love with his long curly wog hair. She became Mrs DiMartino. I stayed Gary Sleep and got dreadlocks in year seven. We moved to Mario's house in the shithole of Mullet Head. Mullet Head is the lump of rock, sand and beach houses that makes one end of Christmas Bay. It has one dodgy road in, one pub, two churches and a jetty. I don't surf. Swimming and surfing are for the tourists. You reckon you'd get excited about theme parks if you lived next-door to one?

I stopped the tape before it had finished and I pulled the cassette out of the VCR. For some reason I felt like chucking the thing through the window. I didn't. I ripped the label off the spine and ate it. Something was going on inside me. Something a bit freaky. It was my seventeenth birthday in a few days and I should have been getting revved up. I couldn't give a fuck. About anything.