‘Killer’ Rhodes is Harvey’s best mate this week. It’s not easy making friendships stick when loyalties shift and fray every lunchtime on the school oval, but Killer seems as keen as Harvey is to take this ragged pairing beyond the cricket pitch. They both barrack for the Swans, are stingy with their favourite tombowlers, and share a fervent comic dislike of their year-five teacher, an American woman called Mrs Sass (Harvey prefers the Aussie pronunciation).
It’s a blowy Friday afternoon and Harvey orchestrates a stilted conversation between his mother and Killer’s in the schoolyard, the goal being to have his mate over for a play. As Killer lives on a farm out of town, it isn’t a simple matter of riding a bike over to Harvey’s. The two mothers swap addresses, pick-up times and polite discussion while nearby Harvey and Killer kick each other’s feet as if to stub out their mounting excitement.
It’s a great afternoon and Harvey is secretly thrilled at the spectacle he is providing for his sisters: a kid at their house who’s not from the neighbourhood. Harvey has a real friend. Penny and Naomi have each other, Bryan has his books and his microscope, now Harvey has something too. Something even better.
Killer happily launches himself into the neighbourhood cricket game, an almost daily event held in a patch of cleared bush behind Harvey’s house. Anywhere from four to twenty kids descend upon the parched turf each afternoon, a silver bin at one end, someone’s shoe at the other, and it’s an unspoken race to see who will score the first six or hit a passing car.
Killer is an average batsman but a gun bowler with the dramatic crease-marking cred to match. Harvey watches him bowl a near-perfect yorker with a pride that collects around his neck and rises up to his cheeks, turning them red. The kids in his street look on in quiet admiration. It’s the best day, and it’s still going.
When the game starts to dissipate—the last available ball is lost in the long grass—Harvey suggests a bike ride and Killer is keen. Harvey tells his friend to use Bryan’s bike. In his best-day excitement, Harvey forgets—just doesn’t even think of it—his father’s rule about not riding beyond the end of the block where the Beams’ street meets a busier road. The two boys ride another two blocks, crisscrossing each other’s paths, one-wheeling it up kerbs and yelling manly jibes at the darkening sky.
Harvey doesn’t see his father’s car pass them by.
It’s the best day.
Out of breath yet somehow still full of energy, Killer and Harvey slide their bikes into the courtyard at the back of the Beam house. Immediately his mother exits the rear screen door and softly, without looking squarely at either boy, tells Harvey that his father wants him inside.
It must be after five, Harvey realises. The best day has flown by, almost gone.
Killer stays behind with Harvey’s mum, starts prising an imaginary stone out of his wheel tread. Harvey walks through the screen door. And now, now he remembers the rule and his head turns inside out and his gut tightens and his jaw locks and he knows what’s coming, knows what’s coming, knows what’s coming.
Lionel Beam is standing at the end of his bed, leather belt in hand, steel weight swinging by his trouser leg.
‘You know the rule about where to ride,’ Harvey’s father says. ‘Get on the bed.’
Harvey stands, can’t move. Lionel pushes him down, the back of his hand on Harvey’s head.
Harvey doesn’t scream this time, doesn’t say stop, doesn’t reach his hands behind him, which only makes Lionel go harder. The pain ricochets through his back, down his legs, like being burnt, like stepping on coals and then falling into the campfire. Twenty times. Thirty times. One rule to remember. One friend. His face is jammed tight into the mattress, wet and on fire.
And all Harvey thinks this time is Killer … Killer … Killer. Don’t hear this.
When it is finally over, night has descended and his friend has gone. Harvey’s mother is stirring something on the stove. His father tells him to fetch a beer. There are no beginnings or endings to anything, anywhere in the world.
He goes to sleep on his stomach that night, no sheet. His skin is still alight. His brain is banging inside his skull. He wonders what Killer heard, what he will tell the other kids. What he heard, what he heard.
Bryan is in the bed opposite Harvey. He says nothing, still seething no doubt about his bike’s role in the afternoon’s activities.
Through the wall Harvey can hear his father remove the cap off another beer.
At last, well after all the lights in the house are off and doors to bedrooms closed, he goes to sleep by trying to think about something good. He thinks about those two blocks beyond the end of his street.