Wrath (11 page)

“Katy! What on earth…” It was Mum, standing there, drying her hands on a tea towel.

“It's nothing, Mum,” Katy said. “I just stacked it.”

Mum jumped down from the veranda and put her arms around Katy. “Come in, and I'll put something on your knees and face. Oh, Katy, look at those hands! ”

They stood there, Mum's back to me, her T-shirt loose over her tight jeans, and Katy's eyes burning into mine over Mum's shoulder. I wanted to run and put my arms around her too, even around Mum, so that everything would be good again and we'd laugh and go inside and have something luscious to eat and that warm, happy feeling of belonging would come back. But of course, I didn't move, and Katy's eyes closed as Mum turned her towards the house and they both climbed up the steps slowly and disappeared through the door.

That night in bed, I could see that Katy's bed lamp was on. I thought that she must have been reading or on her laptop in bed. I lay there, willing myself to say the words, and then out they came.

“Sorry, Katy.”

There was no answer. I thought she must have gone to sleep and left the light on, but a couple of minutes later, the room clicked into darkness. I lay there feeling cold. I was alone, and it was all my fault. I looked at the clouds scudding across the inky darkness. The moon shone clearly through my window, and I looked down at the white sheet covering me. I only seemed to make a small bump in the moonlight. I wished we were younger and Katy would come snuggling under the covers with me again as my other half. We made a fairly big bump together, but alone, I saw I was nothing.

If Katy had been caught in the middle, somewhere between understanding how I felt and at the same time understanding Mum, it was over. The lines were drawn. We talked again almost normally after a few days, but something was gone. The impossible had happened. Katy and I, once two sides of the same coin, were separate people.

*

We got into the back of Ray Reid's car the next day with him and Mum up the front like they were married already and drove to Geraldton. We went down the gravel road and then left past the Greenough flats, where the trees, bent almost to the ground by the strong sea winds, looked like women on a battlefield stretching towards the ground, looking at their dead, their shapes fluid and gaunt. We drove past them and past the farms scattered along the way till the houses started appearing near the road instead of set well back like the farms. The houses clustered thicker until we were in the town itself.

We drove through the main street, out past the memorial, and there, half-way up a hill, was a two-storey house with a ‘For Sale' sign and a short, fat man in a suit standing out the front. Reid pulled into the drive, and we got out. I turned away from the house and saw that there was a clear view of the ocean curving away from both sides of the marina.

I trailed along behind as we went through the house, with Katy and Mum ooh-ing and ah-ing at every turn. I had to grudgingly admit it was a nice place: there were four bedrooms and big windows at the front where you could see above the roof across to the ocean, which stretched away to the horizon, the sun glittering off the crest of each ripple. I sat down on the front step and gazed at that view and then got up and sat in the car. No matter how nice it was, I didn't want anything from him, although I imagined the money from the sale of our house—the house Dad had bought—would come at least part of the way to covering the cost of this one. Katy came bursting out of the front door, and Mum and Reid stood talking to the fat agent.

“Isn't it amazing, Luca?” Katy called out to me. “We've got our own bedrooms with a bathroom just for us in-between. I love it!” She ran in circles on the lawn like a little kid. I turned away in disgust. Well, he's bought her, that's for sure—and from the smile on Mum's face, the deal's done.

We packed up to move six weeks later. It was frightening how small the pile of packing boxes was from our home when we left. With the shed empty of Dad's stuff, there was really only our clothes and a bit of kitchen stuff.

“We're going to have all new stuff,” Reid said one night after tea. “New lounges, new tables, chairs, beds, everything—for a new life.” Katy and Mum sat snuggled up on the lounge, going through a pile of those house and garden-type magazines, their voices murmuring with the turn of each page.

We started high school two weeks before we moved, so we had those weeks of riding the bus to school with our friends. We'd clamber on each morning and rattle off down the road, past the waist-high wheat and past the dried pasture land dotted with clusters of dirty-white sheep and brown and white cows, skirting the main part of town till the bus pulled up outside the school gates. We'd jump down the steps, keen to be moving. Gary and I stuck together, feeling conspicuous in our crisp new uniforms and longing for them to look rumpled and worn-in like the older kids seemed to be.

The first day, we were gathered together onto a grass quadrangle, and then in a long, tedious calling out of names, we were allocated to various classes according to how smart the teachers thought we were. My name was called out early, and I went into the top class. I glanced across at Katy, but her head was down. She was clearly going into a lower class.

Luckily, a few kids I knew were in my class, so we grabbed desks near each other. Part of me longed for the familiarity of my old school, but the sense of strangeness here was overcome by the excitement of change. I had thought I'd feel grown up going to high school, but we were at the bottom of the food chain here. The other boys were big and loud, and a lot of the girls looked like women, gathered in squealing groups or walking quietly in pairs.

Within a week, though, I felt more comfortable. The moving from room to room and teacher to teacher took a bit of getting used to, but as I got to know my way around, I started enjoying it.

We moved soon after. The last thing I packed into the trailer was the tool chest Dad had left me. It was too heavy for me to lift alone, so I lay a cloth down on the shed floor and carefully put the heavier things on it. As I dragged the chest awkwardly towards the trailer, Reid came out into the backyard.

“Here, give that to me,” he said.

“I'm okay,” I mumbled. As I walked back to the shed to pick up the other tools, I realised he was behind me. I crouched down on the ground, wrapping the cloth around the tools to carry them out too.

“Just a minute, Luca. I want to talk to you.”

I stood, Dad's long Philips screwdriver still in my hand, and turned to face Ray. He'd never been in here as far as I knew, and I hated that he was leaning so casually on Dad's old bench.

“I've just about had enough of you. You'd better change your tune, or things are not going to be too good for you when we move. I don't have to put up with a bad-mannered little shit in my own home.”

“I have to put up with you in mine,” I answered as calmly as I could.

Ray took a step towards me, his fists clenched by his side and his face twisted in a sneer. “That precious father of yours should have given you a few clips around the ear to knock that attitude out of you.”

“Don't you mention my father,” I growled, starting to breathe hard. “I had no ‘attitude', as you call it, with him.” I was panting now. “And you shouldn't even mention him. You didn't know him, never met him. All you did was sneak in here like a mangy dog when his back was turned.” I couldn't believe what I had said, but it felt so good saying it.

Ray stepped closer, and his hand shot out. I was slammed into the tin wall of the shed with a clang, and I fell to my knees. My head was spinning, but I stood up and faced him, the screwdriver turned towards him and my arm raised.

“Keep away from me!” I rasped. Hot tears of rage mixed with pain blurred my vision for a minute, but I brushed them quickly away. We stood there, facing each other, his fist still up and my screwdriver pointing right at his stomach. I saw the fury in his face, the redness spreading down his neck, and the seconds ticked on, our breathing loud but slowing in the cool dimness.

His fist dropped. “You just go on thinking he was such a saint. Where is he now? How much of a father was he just to take off and never see you or your sister again? How much do you think he cares about you if he doesn't even bother to pick up a phone and talk to you, let alone actually come and see you?”

There was no answer. What could I say? The pain of hearing those words actually said out loud was worse than the throbbing in my face and neck.

“He just slid out of here like a mangy dog,” Ray said slowly, a nasty little grin on his face. “Who's really the dog, eh?”

I lunged blindly at him, my hand tight on the screwdriver. He leapt to one side and shoved me hard. I fell awkwardly, and then I felt his big body crushing me under him, one hand pushing the side of my face into the rough floor of the shed, the other one holding my wrist. The iron taste of blood was in my mouth, but the greatest pain was in my hand. He'd bent my fingers back till I could hold on no longer, and the screwdriver slid to the ground. He flicked the screwdriver away and twisted my arm up behind my back, his hot breath blasting me as he shoved his face down to my ear.

“Listen, you little prick, I'm here to stay. I've got your mother, I've got your sister and unfortunately, I've got you. But it's not me who doesn't belong here; it's you. The rest of us get on just fine. You're the only rotten apple in this particular barrel. All I can say is hurry up and grow up and then piss off. You're not wanted here. We're happier when you're not around.” The weight suddenly lifted from my body as he stood up. I pushed myself up painfully but kept my face blank. I slowly brushed away the dirt that had been ground into the side of my face, clenching my teeth and glaring at his sweating, smug face.

“So, sonny, get a few things clear. I pay the bills. Remember that. You're just a snotty little kid who I can't stomach and who came with the package. Keep out of my way. Stay out as much as you like. You can sleep under my roof and eat at my table, but as soon as you finish Year Ten, piss off and don't come back. Go off and try to find your loser father, live under a bridge in Perth—I don't give a damn. I'll put up with you till then, but I tell you one thing.” He paused, stepping closer to me, pushing that face I loathed so much right into mine, and to my horror, I'd involuntarily flinched away.

He laughed and then went on. “You raise a hand to me again, and I'll break your neck.” He turned away then, brushing the dirt from his trousers and tucking in his shirt. Bending to the ground, he scooped up the screwdriver from where it lay against the leg of the bench.

“I'll keep this one as a souvenir,” Ray said, and without another word, he stepped out of the shed. I stood there, pain shooting through my hand, my head and my face, but the greatest pain was knowing how powerless I was. For one mad moment, the thought surged through my brain that I would run away, thumb a lift to Perth, find Dad somehow. But the little fantasy dissolved at that point. What if I couldn't find him? Or worse, what if I found him and also found that he didn't want me around anymore than Katy and Mum did.

I stayed for a long time in that shed, so many feelings coursing through me at once that I couldn't think clearly, and then a shadow flickered near the door and stopped. It was Mum, standing there, peering into the dimness. She never came in here.

“There you are, Luca! Hurry up! We're in the car, waiting to go.”

I lurched across to the tools, bending down stiffly to finish wrapping them up. God, it seemed like hours ago since I'd started this. I picked up the bulky roll clumsily and put it in the trailer and then slid in beside Katy, who just kept reading her magazine.

“Right then,” Reid said, his voice chirpy, “We're on our way.” We pulled away from the house, and I willed myself not to look back.

Life has become almost, well… pleasant. I don't really know if that's the word, but instead of feeling I'm being tossed around in some wild storm at sea—getting battered, going under, wondering if it might just be better to give up and sink to the bottom—now it's like I'm floating on calm water. Nothing much really disturbs me like before. I don't have time to think about what's happened. I have an answer for every rotten thought that pops into my head: be too busy to think. The dark days and nights going over and over what I had done are gone. Every waking minute is taken up—no slack time, no time to brood, no time to feel.

Straight out of bed when I wake up, stretches, push-ups, sit-ups, lunges, breakfast, school, lunch, trades, gym, duties, clean-up, tea, hanging out with Aaron and Archie in the rec, lockdown at 7.30, showering, studying or reading till 10, falling into bed, and sleeping like a rock till it all starts again the next morning. I'm getting through the work so quickly that Mrs Shiels calls me aside and says, “You're moving so far ahead of the class that I think you would do better working towards doing your Tertiary Entrance Exam. I've mentioned it to Mr Khan, and he wants to talk it over with you. Would you like to see him now, or do you want to think it over?”

I'm a bit stunned, really. I know I'm way ahead of the other kids, but I'm pretty comfortable in this class. The idea of actually getting stuck into all the subjects at TEE-level is pretty mind-blowing. But then Archie's words in the gym that day echo through my mind: “You got something better to be doing, white boy?” Maybe this is something to divert my mind even more. The idea of those exams at the end of the year is scary; it's one thing to feel you're doing well in a small group, but it's different to actually putting yourself to the test against thousands of other kids who've been plugging away without interruptions like court and remand centre! What if I totally bomb? I shrug inwardly. So what? Who'd know or care? Only me.