The Rest is Weight (UQP Short Fiction) (16 page)

Heat

Ant finds the apprentice sleeping in his Mazda out the back of the shop. His first reaction is to bang the ratchet driver he’s holding on the bonnet of the kid’s car in the hope it’ll rouse him, but when he looks again the boy hasn’t moved. His head has sunk into the collar of his polo shirt. For a second Ant worries he might have died in there, but when he shuffles up to the window he can see the kid’s chest rising and falling under the shirt. The light is dull through the tinting and the kid’s face looks puffy and vague. Ant scuffs at a tyre, steps back and clears his throat. The boy wrinkles his nose but he still doesn’t move. The young do sleep long, Ant thinks, inhaling, holding the air in his chest until it hardens. Something about their hormones. He leaves him be.

Half an hour later the kid comes in the front door, hardly straighter, yawning.

‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘I overslept.’

‘Yeah,’ Ant says, and checks his growl. ‘Doesn’t matter now.’ The slouching annoys him. He wonders how you’re supposed to tell if it’s drugs.

Later, he is close to asking the kid what the story is, even clears his throat to start a couple of times, but first the phone rings and then he’s having trouble with the lines on a genny, a simple enough problem that he shouldn’t need the kid to help him solve. After he’s seen the boy suck diesel from the hoses, watched his lips pinch, his cheeks hollow in, watched him spit, he doesn’t feel much like talking. So he leaves it, hopes the kid gets his shit together for Monday.

There are seven mechanics in Airdale and everyone has more work than they can take. Sometimes he thinks about packing up and making it six. God knows he’s almost old enough. But he can’t refuse the work and, anyway, he’d go batshit rattling round a house all day.

This particular kid has been around for four months. He might last and he might not. The last one took off after a fortnight, the one before that almost managed a year. In a highway town the work’s never-ending but the kids are all romantic. Not interested in staying with the work and making a go. They’d prefer to hood their haircuts and head out elsewhere. This one started good, enthusiastic even, but that’s been tarnishing. Lately he’s been getting that drifty look they get, the tapping foot and odd little frown. A couple of times Ant’s caught him staring up from an engine, hands still, eyes on the empty road. Away with the fairies.

The kid doesn’t show up Monday, Tuesday and when he does come early on Wednesday it’s on foot and looking scurvy.

‘Where the hell have you been? I called you a dozen times.’

‘I lost my phone.’

‘What happened to your car?’

‘Sold it.’
The boy shrugs and disappears under the bonnet of a Falcon. His movements are slow and focused, beyond reproach.

‘What for?’

He means why but the boy says, ‘Eight hundred.’

Ant reckons he’s lying, probably wrapped it round the cenotaph on Friday night, but he retreats. You can’t push them, they just up and go. You have to let them fail. But only to an extent. Because if the kid fails too much then they both do.

The boy’s ten foot away, beyond contact through the perspex window that separates the shop from the office. Ant watches him, his own hands dangling out a bit from his waist. It’s the habit stance of a muscular man, but he’s lost most of his form since he gave up fighting. The job keeps you fit, but with the kid around to take the grunt work he’s dropping bulk. The kid’s shoulders, round and hard as apples, hang in the air over an engine. He’s broadening up. Ant sniffs and plonks down on the wonky swivel chair to squint at the computer. There’s a stack of paper invoices and handwritten receipts waiting to be transferred into the system and he needs to get the wages done. Without the boy around the last couple of days he hasn’t had time to go near it.

The kid has mocked him for keeping paper, for his one-finger typing. Not openly – he’s still the boss – but sometimes he catches him watching with a slight smirk. Ant won’t let the boy run the invoices through the system. It’s not that he’s unreliable, or no less reliable than anyone else has been. He’s got to learn at the right pace is all. Spread things out. If I needed an office girl, I’d get one, he’s thought of saying, but he does need one. He just can’t afford it. God knows he put off hiring an apprentice for as long as he could, and then only did it because of the incentives. Nothing about the kids he’s had through has made it seem like the right decision.

Ant starts running papers through his fingers, counting with his calloused thumb. He takes a phone call from a guy who wanted his
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back last week; he promised he would have it yesterday. Angry guy, now. Testy voice.

‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘My fault. Off my feet.’ He raises his voice to say this, loud enough so the kid can hear he’s being covered for, but the boy doesn’t register. Ant hangs up the phone, goes to the office door and lingers, watching. The boy dangles over the engine, loose like he’s not really concentrating. Sometimes that’s the mark of a good mechanic and sometimes it’s the mark of an idiot. Ant still hasn’t made up his mind with this one.

‘You taking your sick leave?’ he calls out. There’s no reaction. He walks over to the kid, repeating himself. Still no response.

The boy’s face leers out from the dark across the engine. It’s blank and hard, strangely grey. Ant wonders again if he might have a drug problem. But the kid takes out his earphones and the blank look goes. There’s a rattle of that music he listens to. Ant bites down on his back teeth.

‘What?’

The kid looks nervous. Ant can smell something on him, fear and something else. His hair is sticking up at a strange angle. It might be deliberate. But it also looks like he hasn’t washed for days.

‘Just –’ Ant feels his chest tighten. Some buried reflex runs along his arms. He lets it go, pass through the fingertips and away. ‘Those last couple of days. You want that on your sick leave?’ He can’t make eye contact with him. It’s too dim.

‘Yeah.’

Nothing more from the kid. No explanation. Ant’s not really angry; the anger’s in his body, just a habit, how it’s run. He should ask him if he’s all right, play the old dad, the kindly mentor, but he’s inundated, he can’t afford the time to listen to their problems. Can’t go getting involved in their girl trouble or hearing about their binges. So he gives him a stern look, and as he returns to the refuge of the office with its mess he feels the boy’s expression at his back. Ant sits down hard in the swivel chair, nearly tipping it. He takes two days off the kid’s accrued leave in the back of the wage book and goes out to the yard to work on a truck so he can be alone.

At day’s end, Ant is still hours away from finishing the truck’s hydraulics and the phone has been ringing off the hook. The kid won’t answer it, especially not with the earphones in. There he is, in the garage doorway, making for his car. About to lay into him for skiving off early, Ant checks his watch. It’s gone five-thirty.

‘You want me to stay back with you?’ the kid says.

‘Nah. Go home. Have a shower.’

The boy flinches briefly and Ant wonders if he’s using too hard a tone with him. But really, who gives a shit. The kid stinks.

On Thursday Ant makes sure they both go home at five, and on Friday Ant comes in early. He’s early enough to see the sunrise on the way in, to hear the magpies waking up. Early enough to drive past his apprentice walking down the road, moving away from the workshop, hands buried deep in his pockets, head down. He waves but the boy doesn’t look up. The shop is out on the highway, there aren’t any houses to the north, and there’s no reason Ant can think of as to why the kid would be walking around so early.

He checks the shop, but there’s no sign of anything missing. An hour later the boy comes strolling in the front door. Ant almost lets it go again but the kid is still wearing his clothes from Wednesday and he doesn’t want to seem like he doesn’t care enough to notice.

‘Did you forget something?’

‘What?’ That sullen smile again, one hand stuck in the greasy hair. The kid leans back against the door of the Ford, his hips at an angle. His long-suffering expression, maybe, or the bend in one leg, gives him the air of a woman. His eyes seem not so much set back as drawn in, like a coiled spring. He has this irritating trick of not using them, not to show his feelings.

‘Did you go home for something?’ Ant should say what he knows but he wants to give the boy an out. Don’t make him deny it. Don’t set him up to lie.

‘No,’ the kid says, shutting down. He turns his body away, moving at the pivot point where his hip joins the vehicle, until his groin is pressed into the fender. Ant wants to reach out and touch him, a pat on the shoulder is all. Wants to say he saw him leave. But he doesn’t want to get caught up in a situation.

‘Hey,’ Ant says. The boy’s face flicks around, his lips pressed closed. A ripple in Ant’s fingers again.
‘You can have a shower here if you want. Whenever you want.’

‘Okay,’ the kid says, and turns back to face the Ford.

Ant heads for the office, rubbing his hands on his jeans. He’s sure he hears the kid say one short, unflattering word under his breath. Maybe he’s misjudged it.

At the end of the day Ant dismisses the kid and watches him walk down the dusty verge in his Blunnies and jeans, his long stride casting a longer shadow. Making sure he leaves.

Ant goes into the yard when he’s out of sight, and weaves through the cars. Past the few he’s fixing are a couple of his own projects: an old Dodge truck he’s had for yonks, which barely runs, and an
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ute body, stripped and waiting for parts. There’s no sign of any tampering. He checks inside the Holden, feeling like a trespasser, even though it’s his car, his yard. In the late sun the worn metal looks like it still has a shine, like it’s finished.

There’s another shed behind the vehicles, a line of car doors leaning against it, and though he keeps it locked it’s worth checking. He steps over a tail shaft, kicks something soft. It’s a pair of sneakers lined up neatly, toes tucked under the front wheel of the Dodge. He bends down. Under the truck tray there’s an unrolled swag, an empty packet of smokes. A small backpack. A half-rolled footy sock. A pen torch taken from the office drawer.

He’s not angry. No shiver of rage in his hands, which is good. He kneels there looking at the boy’s things, smelling the musty teenage smell of his nest. He wonders how many days it’s been and what’s happened to his family. What the kid might think about under there. What he does to himself, if he fights to get to sleep beneath the rusted axle. The light drops calmly out of the sky around him and he lingers on.

A magpie talks from the roof of his shed as Ant stands. The feathers ruffled by a chill breeze. It looks like it’s losing its balance, rights itself, then flies off. Adolescent, you can see the grey on its neck. What can you do?

He shoves his hand in his pocket for the keys and opens the back shed. Just inside the door he clears a space for the swag. It’ll be warmer at least. He turns on a light, props the door open with a jack, then locks up the rest of the shop and goes home.

Ant comes in on Sunday to finish the minibus from the spastic school. He wants to have it done for Monday like he said and this is the only way. He goes straight out the back to check the yard, but there’s no sound when he calls the kid’s name. He bends to look under the Dodge and finds the space has been cleared. In the shed the swag’s been spread out just inside the door, a rubbish bag with it, but no shoes and no kid. On the bench there’s a phone charger plugged into a wall socket, but there’s no phone on the other end. Ant scratches at a mozzie on his arm and thinks. Tomorrow he’ll bring in a heater, should have thought of it before.

He goes back out to the van and works all day. All day there’s no sign of the kid. He finishes up, wipes the windscreen, even tidies up the office for a while on the off-chance the boy will come strolling in. But maybe he’s seen the car out the front.

Early again Monday, bright and cool, he takes out the bus to test the brakes. Around the block, past the scrap yards, the town camp, the storage place. The sensitivity is better. Another side road. This part of town makes it seem like a dump, uninhabited. At the back of the rail yards he finds the kid walking fast with his hands in his pockets, holding a cigarette between his lips. Ant pulls over just in front of him; he won’t recognise the plain white minibus.

‘You want a lift somewhere?’ he says, fighting a smile.

The kid stares at him. His eyes hidden. Might be laughing at him, but you can’t tell.

‘Come on,’ Ant says. ‘Hop in.’

They go the two blocks back to the workshop and then they stop. Ant sits in the van with the engine on, his hand holding the handbrake. ‘Look,’ he says. They both stare through the windscreen.

‘I’ll shift tonight, all right,’ says the kid, hardly more than mumbling.

‘Nah, nah, don’t,’ Ant says. The fingers on his handbrake hand lift as if they’re going to touch the boy’s thigh but get no further than a stretch. He clicks the button with his thumb. ‘Look, whatever it is . . .’

The boy makes a subtle groan that might be pain or disgust. He drags on his cigarette. His long legs lift in the jeans.

‘I don’t mind.’ Ant clears his throat, grips the handbrake hard. ‘I put a heater in there for ya.’

The boy exhales out the window.

‘You should’ve asked, is all.’ Ant’s eyes sting at the corners and his hand on the brake is faintly shaking. Shouldn’t let him smoke in the bus. What is he thinking, for God’s sake, the kids are disabled. He opens his mouth, but the boy throws the butt out the window. Ant looks the length of him. The boy sits chastised, his torso bent at an angle. One leg jumps.

Ant turns off the engine. The boy looks across at him. Frightened of him. Electrical impulses in his hand, must be from the keys.

‘Here, it’s cold. Cuppa tea,’ Ant says, and his voice isn’t shaking.

Inside he goes to the sink, glad for something to do with his hands. He washes them first, but the grease still stains prints on the mugs he finds.