The Legend of Winstone Blackhat (13 page)

The right thing to do was always the thing you didn’t want to do at all. Winstone learned that from
Bonanza.
So he couldn’t stay at Zane’s from after school until the small hours of the morning. He had to go home in between. Every night he made sure he was back at his house from the start of
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
until the ten o’clock news so that if Bic came in he’d see Winstone right away and never even have a chance to wonder where he’d got to. It hadn’t mattered where Winstone was when he had nowhere to be but things were different now that he did, and Winstone was very afraid that Bic would find out about Zane’s and take it away from him or ruin it the way Bic ruined lawns and walls and TV sets and Ginger.

Besides, there was Marlene. There was only so long she could be by herself before she got into trouble, cut her hand on the can-opener or started a fire or boiled pot noodles in the jug. It paid to find Marlene something to eat before she went looking for it herself.

One particular night, a night in July, about a month after the Hasketts had moved to the house in Rahui Bridge,
the night in question
as it came to be known, Winstone had made tomato sauce sandwiches, three for Marlene and two for him since he’d already had chocolate eclairs and chips and a steak and cheese pie at Zane’s place. Marlene had wanted her sandwiches toasted
so he’d turned the grill on and then gone back into the lounge to watch the end of
Killer Roads.

It was cold, so they’d lit the rubbish in the fireplace and Marlene had liked the flames so much he’d gone out to the shed and found some wood and chopped it up and he had the cruddy old burner making a pretty good blaze. The light of it was jumping all over the walls which was maybe why he didn’t notice the headlights outside or if he did he just thought the flash of them through the holes in the curtains had come from the TV where the action was coming thick and fast. A big painted truck had one wheel over a precipice just out there in space a million miles up and if the driver got out maybe that would tip it over. Winstone was trying to decide if he wanted the truck to fall and he thought so long as the driver jumped first it would be pretty cool to see it tumble and smash and whether it went end over end or side to side and how many times it did and whether it would explode when it finally hit the bottom.

When he heard Marlene scream he thought she’d burnt herself on the grill and he wondered if she could wait and he thought about just yelling out to her to run it under cold water. The truck was about to go and the music was getting loud but he could still hear Marlene’s high-pitched little girly cries so he did the right thing and got up off the floor and went into the kitchen to see and it wasn’t until he did that he even realised Bic was home.

The kitchen looked like a paintball range. There was tomato sauce up the walls and over the cupboard doors and Winstone thought hard about who’d had the bottle last because whoever it was hadn’t put the top back on it right. Bic was holding the open bottle of sauce in one hand and Marlene’s arm in the other and he was shaking her hard and she was trying to pull away from him which made him shake her harder. What did
I tell you, he said all down in her face and it was worse than a yell, what did I say? Fucken
leave
shit
alone
. He whacked the bottle into her legs and dropped it and made a grab for her hair but she panicked and twisted away and that’s when Winstone knew it was going to be bad because he could see how scared she was, and when Marlene got scared her brain didn’t work and she forgot about the rules which were never fight back never raise your arm or duck or try to get away.

Don’t you fucken run away from me, Bic said and he got a good grip this time. I’ll tell you when you can fucken go.

Bic wasn’t looking at him, Bic didn’t even know he was there. Winstone’s hand closed around the phone in his pocket.

Why can’t you do as you’re fucken told?

Marlene’s eyes were rolling about in her head and a streamer of snot flew out of her nose and got stuck across her eyebrow.

Jesus, Bic said, look at this mess, and he did, like that was the first he’d seen of it and now he knew why he was angry.

Winstone didn’t even have to take the phone out. He knew where the buttons were.

Bic let go of Marlene’s hair and shoved her backwards, maybe not that hard, but she was having some trouble standing up by now and she fell against the cupboard. Just get the fuck out, Bic said, and he kind of shook himself a bit and it looked like it was over. But Marlene didn’t get out. Maybe it was because her brain was all jumbled up or maybe she couldn’t believe her luck or maybe she thought she was cornered, but whatever it was she just froze up there on the floor with Bic looking down at her and Winstone’s emergency phone dialling out unheard from the darkness of his pocket.

Get out, Bic repeated, very low.

Marlene did try. She got herself into a sideways sort of sprinter’s crouch and she made a run for the door but she was
just in her ankle socks and as she went past Bic she hit a patch of sauce and slipped and her feet made a big red smear across the floor.

For fuck’s sake, said Bic and he was yelling this time, I said get out of it, and he took two steps over fast and bent down and grabbed Marlene and chucked her out of there like he was Bodun clearing the bedroom floor but Marlene was more than just an armful of smelly underpants and jeans and socks and she didn’t fly that way, hanging up in the air floating down, she went backwards straight and hit the bench like a stone. A lot of noises happened on top of each other all at once something breaking cups plates head bench splintering socks on the cupboard door a rattle a slide and a thump and Bic turned and that’s when he saw Winstone standing there with the red phone to his ear.

Or maybe he didn’t. Winstone was never completely sure. Bic did look at him, and then he looked down at Marlene and his mouth was open like he still had something to say and Winstone looked at her too and now she did look a bit like a sock half caught up on the kitchen drawers.

Hello, said his phone. Hello.

And Bic left. He turned and walked right out the back door and Winstone saw the Commodore’s headlights heading backwards fast but all he could hear was a Powerball ad on TV and the voice in his ear. Hello?

He took a couple of steps around Marlene while he waited for her to wake up and for the first time he noticed the open parcel of chips going cold on the bench and Bic must have been in a good mood when he got to the burger bar because there were onion rings and hotdogs.

Hello?

It’s Marlene, he said. She’s hurt the old man did it it’s bad this time I don’t know what to do. Come and get us. Hurry. Please.

Winstone squatted down on the floor in front of Marlene and touched her shoulder with his free hand and she opened her eyes and sat up and looked at him like he’d given her a fright.

It’s okay, he said, you’re all right, and he thought it was going to be true.

Then Marlene fell back again hard and she started to judder. She was banging her head on the cutlery drawer, boom, a hollow sound, sliding rattling forks and knives and spoons inside it. She was still looking at Winstone, straight into his eyes, and it looked like she was falling backwards down something narrow and deep, her arms and legs trying to catch a hold, and it wasn’t too late he could pull her back up if he just had the right thing to throw her.

Tell me, he said into the phone, what to do.

Hang up, Zane said. Hang up right now and call 111. Winstone, are you listening?

What do I do? he said. I don’t know how to make it stop. He pressed the phone hard to his ear but Zane wasn’t there. There was nobody there.

Marlene stopped scrabbling. Apart from the little twitch in her foot and the pool of pee spreading under her it looked like she’d gone back to sleep. It’s okay Lenie, he said, it’s okay now you’re all right.

Dr Mike said she wasn’t really looking at him, it was just an illusion, she couldn’t see or hear or feel anything, no pain no fear, not a bit, but Dr Mike hadn’t been there and he didn’t know Marlene. When she opened her eyes again she looked for Winstone and it was no illusion or trick and he could see she thought he was going to help her. But he couldn’t hold her there with him, she was falling again a long way down grabbing and clutching with all she had and although she was only a little girl he wasn’t strong enough to pull her back or even catch her hand.

He tried to get her away from the drawers so she’d stop hurting her head and she made another big sticky red smear and Winstone knelt on the floor beside her as close as he could not noticing that his knees were wet and he waited for Zane to come.

When the cops arrived they took Winstone outside and made him sit in the squad car. The front seat. The younger cop sat with him. He offered to let Winstone play with the lights and Winstone did a bit to be polite though he wasn’t in the mood. He hadn’t been expecting the police, but it was good to see them. After a while there on the floor with Marlene not knowing what to do he’d got worried that Bic might come back and by then the kitchen really was in a hell of a mess and he didn’t know what to do about that either. He felt like all that not knowing had eaten him out and there was just a big hole inside now and he’d never know what to do about anything ever again, but the cops did, they knew just what to do. They knew what he should do, too, which was sit right there, and that was easy, he could do it. The squad car was locked. The cops had tasers and guns. They’d deal with Bic when he came home.

Winstone had just thought that when the lights came hooning up behind the squad car. But it was the ambulance, not the Commodore. Winstone got to sit in the ambulance too. They shone a torch in his eyes and gave him a blanket which was good because although he’d hardly noticed it till then the night had started to freeze.

He didn’t see Marlene come out. The ambulance lady, who was really the canteen lady from school, wanted to show him all the buttons her ambulance had in the front, so they sat there for a while, and after that the cops drove him back to where the older cop lived in the house behind the station.

Where is she? he asked Ros-your-social-worker-from-CYF when she got there the next morning.

Your sister? Ros-your-social-worker looked wary.

Marlene, Winstone told her. Did they leave her behind?

No. No, they didn’t leave her behind. They’re looking after her, don’t worry.

Where?

At the hospital, Ros-your-social-worker said, and then she seemed to think of something and she stopped for a while and frowned. A special part of the hospital, she said, and that’s when she told Winstone about the place you went when you died where nobody could hurt you, and Winstone was glad Marlene had made it into a place like that because she’d hurt such a lot getting there and any more would have been too much for such a little girl.

The service they had for her in the Clintoch church was a bit like being on the school bus. Him and Marlene by themselves up the front, everyone else behind them, whispering and pointing. Bic and Bodun weren’t there. The young cop had brought Bodun round to the old cop’s house behind the station later the same night that Marlene died, and Bodun had stayed there in the bed beside Winstone’s for a couple of hours but then he’d said fuck this and left through the bedroom window. Winstone hadn’t seen him since.

Bic wasn’t allowed to come. Winstone hadn’t seen him either.

Aunty Ruth said his mum was really sorry she couldn’t be there but she was in Australia getting her life straightened out and she had a job now and she was saving up and when she had she’d come and see them.

Where? said Winstone. Where will she come?

But Aunty Ruth just rummaged about in her bag and blew her nose and pretended not to hear him.

Winstone couldn’t stay long. It was a long drive from Clintoch to where he lived now and he and Ros-your-social-worker had to get going. On the way out of the church he looked around for Zane, just in case, but he couldn’t see him. He’d tried texting over and over, even calling him, but something had happened to Zane’s phone and his Facebook account and Winstone couldn’t go looking for him at his place after school because he didn’t go to school in Clintoch any more.

Winstone wasn’t stupid. He understood that Zane was hiding from him. He just wasn’t sure why. What he’d done. Which thing. Sometimes he dreamed he was back at Zane’s wrapped up in the white duvet and he was happy until something went bang beside the bed and he looked down and it was Marlene bashing and thrashing and rubbing her brains all over the floor. Other times the start of the dream was the same but the bang was Bic breaking down the bedroom door. The dreams weren’t real, just dreams like Dr Mike said, but they clung to Winstone even in the daylight. Sometimes it felt like the dreams were bigger than him and maybe they’d laid their eggs inside and were going to eat him alive like
Aliens
and he’d end up just a husk of a boy around the dreams and if dreams jumped like nits and preferred a clean host he could see why Zane wouldn’t want him coming over.

But of course it wasn’t that because Winstone couldn’t find Zane to tell him about the dreams so Zane didn’t even know about the latest Haskett infestation. It wasn’t difficult to think of other reasons. Most people hadn’t wanted anything to do with the Hasketts before their old man was a murderer or manslaughterer which still sounded worse even though the cops had explained it was better. Winstone didn’t know much about other people’s lives except what he saw on TV, but he was pretty sure shit like this didn’t happen to them and they probably didn’t
even want to think much less hear about it, and he didn’t blame them. He didn’t want to either. To hear or think or especially see, because once you knew what certain stuff looked like you couldn’t get the pictures out of your head, they hatched into dreams and no amount of scratching could get rid of them, you couldn’t cut them out with a knife, which turned out to be something not to tell Dr Mike because next thing you knew you weren’t even allowed to put spread on your toast without Mrs De Jong watching.