There were sign posts marking the road to hell, but Balga or as he called himself now, Bodgie ignored them. He had missed work for two days now; but with money in his kick what cared he. Perhaps tomorrow he might turn up and explain to his boss that he had been very sick or that his Mum had turned up out of the blue. Whichever; but today was Wednesday, his birthday and he needed to celebrate the event. He felt on top of the world and even went to the Cathedral to say “hello” to God, though he was almost certain the blighter didn’t exist. This seemed true as the big bloke didn’t return his greetings or even wish him a “Happy Birthday”.
He put a ten shilling note in the poor box then bounced along the street as rain began to fall like tears from a huge face in the sky. He hated having the drops spotting his threads so he ducked into a shop to wait for the shower to stop. The woman behind the counter stared at him as if he was the devil himself. Balga merely grinned at her and to show her that he had cash ordered a big cake and a large bottle of pop to take to his mother. He wanted to celebrate his birthday with her. It had been so long since he had done so that he couldn’t remember if it had ever happened.
“Such a dump,” he thought as he entered the hostel and went down and into his Mum’s desolate room. He found her really down in the blues. She slumped there a little dowdy figure, sad as hard times, neither moving nor acknowledging her son placing the bottle of soda and the cake on the table. She didn’t even wish him a happy birthday. This depressed him into wondering if she even remembered the day when she had birthed him.
‘Hey, Mum, I’m seventeen today so we have something to celebrate,’ Balga said trying to raise her spirits as well as his own. ‘I know, let’s go and get some tucker, chops and sausages and later you can cook me up a big birthday dinner, eh?’
His Mum brightened up at this and they fled the room to Charlie Carters’ Supermarket where he spurged on whatever she fancied. Tea, sugar, milk, steak, sausages, bread, butter—she wished it and he got it. He saw and he bought only one thing for himself a big screw driver that he might find a use for. The groceries were packed in a cardboard carton and he carried it back to that dreary house and into that dingy room where his mother suffered all alone; but not today because it was his birthday and a time for celebration.
Balga put the carton on the table and his Mum started unpacking it. The lad knocked the cap off the bottle of soft drink and poured out drinks in the new glasses he had bought for her. They sat at the table and his mother talked about her last days in Shiloh.
And as she talked an idea came to him and he asked if Priors had changed much.
‘Priors owned me home,’ she moaned. ‘I think a son took over or something like that and scat he said and I scatted. Been there ages, years and all that and rent not much and I as quiet as can be, but one day the man comes and he says they want the land and out I go out.’
‘Mum,’ he interrupted her, ‘So it was t’em t’at hardware place, t’ey still have it?’
‘Yep and they owned me place. I stayed on paid the rent mostly always on time too. Years and years and now only a heap of bricks. They only wanted to be rid, get me out and then they broke the house so I couldn’t creep back and camp there. Yeah, them Priors did that.’
‘And they didn’t do anything with the paddock?’
‘No, na, nothing, not a thing, you go and see. House a heap of bricks; the paddock still empty. Just a heap of bricks.’
Balga urged cake on his mum to cheer her up. They ate cake and drank pop then she said that she needed to rest and went to the bed. He replied that he would go and meet some friends and return later. She was already asleep and so he rushed out and to The Royale. He needed some cheering up as his Mum had turned his day sour. It was quiet. Only a couple of kids were hanging there. No Audrey. He turned to Ted the Ted for company standing at the counter, ordering a vanilla spider then telling him that today was his birthday and he was all of seventeen.
‘Ah, yes, the magical number seventeen,’ Ted began in his gregarious Pommy fashion. ‘No one sings about eighteen or sixteen, well, Chuck Berry does, but no matter, an exception proves my point, but seventeen, everyone has a shot at it. She was just seventeen and beyond compare, and before too long I fell in love with her etc, and so on. Now just for you, in celebration of reaching this magical number I shall play a song and I’ll give you one guess at what it’s called. Well?’
‘Seventeen?’
‘Right on and now dig it.’
Ted the Ted was trying his best, but Balga wasn’t in the mood for his banter and when the man went to the god, he drifted off to a booth. The platter began grating and the song sounded.
Seventeen and got that hit
To get my kicks at seventeen.
Yeah, seventeen graduated and got that bit
Juke box baby at seventeen…
Well, it went something like that and Balga sang it as that while thinking of Audrey and what was keeping her. After ten minutes she still hadn’t arrived. Keeping away from Ted the Ted and his garrulous mouth he got into a few words with a Chinese kid from Broome who was more Aussie than Chinese though his nickname was Chinkee. He mentioned that he had roomed with a bloke from Beagle Bay mission and he didn’t get on that well with him.
‘That was most likely ‘cause he was not used to ya. If you had stayed there after a month or two you most likely would have been the best of pals,’ Chinkee replied.
‘What matter he was square,’ and Balga snarled at the thought of the awful shirt he had tried on and been caught in it.
‘Well, they dig cowboys and hillbilly up there just as we dig rock’n’roll down here,’ Chinkee retorted.
‘But not Indians or Chinese for that matter,’ Balga said and moved the chatter into his dream of going east. Balga had only been to the milk bar a couple of times; but had picked up the dream along with his new hair cut and bodgie threads. It was natural that the talk drifted onto money and Balga remembered the idea that had come to him when his Mum had been gabbing. He knew where to get some. In his old home town; and he could take revenge on the bloke that had done Mum out of her home. Balga shouted Chinkee a soda and hunkered down with him in a booth. He stared at Balga as he launched into a spiel: ‘Listen, man, I know you ain’t fixed with cash and I ain’t loaded eit’er. You know, I’ve been just talking to my Mum. She’s just come from this town called Shiloh. She used to live next to a hardware store called Priors. It’s on the main street, but on a corner so that we won’t have to park right out in the open. Well, she got to talking and you know in their office is t’is safe, small, easy to move. It’s a hardware store too so we can get what we need to open it A sweet, easy job with hardly a risk at all, ‘cause these towns only have one cop and he’s usually tucked up in bed with his wife early on in t’e night. You wanta get in on t’is wit’ me. ’
‘I dunno, I don’t want to drive half the night to some bush town and then we got to get back. Sounds risky to me!’
‘Man, it’s only a couple of hours from Perth and it won’t take t’at long to open the safe. We’ll be having breakfast back here in t’e morning.’
‘But opening that can?’
‘A hardware store will have all that we need.’
‘I know how to use an oxy torch.’
‘So t’ere, knew you were t’e bloke for t’e job.’
‘Need the dough, ya know.’
‘Yeah, you got a doll back home. With dough in your kick she’ll do you right.’
‘Yeah I got a chick.’
“T’e right time is t’e now time. We go okay?’
‘You mean you wanna do it tonight?’
‘Yeah, why not; but my frail’s just come in. Keep everyt’ing quiet and we’ll get toget’er here, later, after ten. Yep!’
‘Yep.’
And so it had been decided and Balga moved into a pulp fiction story forgetting that the crims in them never came out on top.