The night throbbed with silence, or perhaps it was his own heartbeat. Nothing moved. The town was stone cold dead. Keeping away from Main Street and the streetlights, Thomas Spencer had ridden his bike out to Boundary Road, then cut back via the river road, his only light, a slim pen-light torch he’d helped himself to from the shop.
They won’t miss it, like they never missed the bottles that walk out of the liquor store, the youth thought. He had a good business going with black-market booze and cigarettes.
It was sort of eerie, riding through the trees along the river, sort of like a science fiction show, he thought. A sky of stars, but no moon. This slim channel of light slicing its way, like a laser knife, through the pitch blackness, leading him on, and into – ‘The outer limits,’ he said.
Rabbits scuttled from the road as he passed by. He swung his torch onto them, attempting to get their eyes, dazzle them. He nearly got one too.
He and Kelly had got a rabbit that way one night. Hypnotised it with the torch, then grabbed it and wrung its neck while its little chin trembled. They sprayed a yellow stripe down its back, and hung it from a noose on Kelly’s old man’s front porch – like a voodoo sign. Like saying ‘Lay off us, man, or we’ll send in the zombies to do you.’
The old bastard just cut it down and gave it to his dog – paint and all. Free tucker, he reckoned, or that’s what Kelly said. Kelly wasn’t a bad-looking babe, but how she got that way with her gorilla old man and his emu wife, Thomas never could work out.
He caught the eyes of a second rabbit, but it blinked, hopped. ‘If I used me big light, I’d could get you, you jumpy little shit,’ Thomas warned.
So far the calici rabbit virus hadn’t reached Maidenville. Maybe it never would. Nothing else ever got this far away from civilisation, he thought. ‘Flat, red, dusty, dead shit hole. Only thing it’s any good for is for bike riding. Look, no hills,’ he told the land around him.
The nearest hill was sixty kilometres away. Every year the state school took a bus load of first grade kids there for a picnic, just so they wouldn’t start believing the bloody world was flat and that they were all going to fall over the edge of the earth if they ever left Maidenville. He’d gone there with the school, and he’d wanted to see what was on the other side. He still wanted to see what was on the other side, and one day he would too. Just take off, and ride. That’s what he told his mother last night.
‘Fat old cow,’ he’d told her. ‘One of these days I’ll just take off and ride.’
Freedom. That’s what he needed. Cut loose. No more supermarket shelves, no whingeing, no-one telling him what to do and when to do it.
‘Freedom, man. Just gone, man.’
He shone his torch into the trees. ‘Pow. Pow. Pow,’ he said, picking up the twin green eyes of some night thing, probably a feral cat, also out after prey.
He had a big modern light on his bike. His parents only ever bought him the best, but he didn’t use it when he went wandering in the night. It was a dead giveaway – lit him and his bike up like a moving Christmas tree. Anyway, he liked the dark. He couldn’t see the flat, and the dust, and the pathetic bloody town that didn’t even know how pathetic it was. Tight-arsed bloody hole of a place, seething with secrets hidden beneath its respectable skirts. He knew its secrets, heard most of them from his mother, and nosed the rest out like a bloodhound.
Kelly was supposed to call for him at midnight. He’d waited out front until one, but she hadn’t turned up. Either she was trying to make him beg for it, or else her old man had locked her in again.
‘He’s jealous that she’s putting it out for everyone and he wants some himself, but he hasn’t got the guts to take what he wants. Gutless old shitter,’ he said. ‘I’d like to do him, cut him with my knife. Slit his fat old gut and let it all spill out. Here dog. Come and get some free food – choice gorilla belly.’
The river road brought him in at the top end of town. He circled Murphy’s block, but there was no sign of Kelly. Maidenville was locked up, battened down for sleeping. It belonged to him tonight. He rode down the main street, wishing he had a brick to toss through the supermarket window, but he didn’t have a brick. Then he was at Templeton’s hedge, and he skidded to a halt, leaning his bike against it while he peered over the top of a gate as tall as he. Just like old Templeton to have a two-metre gate nobody could see through. He’s got a privacy complex, old bull-moose guarding his virgin heifer . . . virgin no more. Thomas chuckled.
He liked old Stell’s garden. It was cool, green – like one of them oasis things that they have in the middle of deserts. You come on them when you’re dying of thirst and you bury your head in cool. Slake your thirst, he thought. He had a thirst tonight that needed slaking real bad, but it wasn’t for Kelly. He was glad she hadn’t shown. She was too easy, boring after a while. She’d do it any which way, and once you’d done it every which way, what else was there to do?
‘Plenty.’
He couldn’t get old Stell off his mind lately. The little breasts and the big hard nipples. ‘Wow. Power, man. You’ve got the power. May the force be with you,’ he said. With old Stell it had been like . . . like the power, like something else . . . like doing it to your mother, or to a little kid. ‘Yeah.’ Like watching a stupid little kid’s mouth tremble, its big innocent eyes blinking at you, pleading for one more chance . . . then you socked it to them, then crunched their necks. It would be like crunching a rabbit’s neck.
‘Snap. Crackle. Pop.’
Templeton’s house stood out like a tall dark lump against the lighter dark of sky. It looked like it was staring down its nose at the Wilsons’ and old Bryant’s low-brow squats, like old Templeton stared down his nose at half the town. ‘Superior fat old fart. You wouldn’t be looking so superior if you knew where I’ve been,’ he said.
The gate was easier to scale from the inside, but he wouldn’t let that stop him. Grasping the top, he heaved himself up, the soles of his sneakers walking wood. He gained a toehold in the slot for the letterbox and in the hole where the bolt ran. Then he was straddling it, and jumping lightly to the ground on the other side. He laughed. That miserable old fart’s gate couldn’t keep him out. Not any more. No-one could keep him out – not if he wanted in, wanted to slake his thirst.
His sneakers on gravel made no sound; he crept down the drive until he could see Stella’s bedroom window, sort of ghosting with the light from the street. It was open too. He knew which room she slept in, he’d been in there with her plenty of times when he was a stupid little kid. He stuck a toy mouse in her knickers drawer once, hid it under her frilly knickers. She always wore frilly knickers – black ones, pink ones, blue, and soft little bras that made his mother’s look like they were made to hold up a cow’s udder.
Only the night before last, he’d sat for hours in the big jacaranda, watching Stell brush her hair, watching her take off her little bra, and put on a nightie. The light played her shadow on the blind and it was like watching a giant television screen. It turned him on, just watching her. It was sort of like watching blue movies in black and white, but knowing it was all there behind the screen waiting for you, waiting for you in true and vibrant flesh tones, and when the show was over you could walk around to the back of the television and go for it. Stick it to her while her trusting old eyes blinked and begged. Give it to her until she went limp.
He started wanting it real bad, wanting it at the back of the television, wanting it in colour, wanting it so bad he had to take her once-white knickers from his pocket and create his own patch of colour with them.
He’d kept the knickers with him for two weeks now. Kept them in the pocket of whichever jeans he was wearing. Used them for –
‘Remembering,’ he said. They were getting past their use-by date.
Standing now beneath her window, he unzipped his jeans, and he remembered the Packard and the dirt floor again . . . remembered it good.
The knickers were silky stuff. Real slow, he rubbed them up and down, up and down, building the vision in his head, building it until he was ready to explode with it, but he held on to it, never wanting it to end. Sometimes, lately, the visions in his head were better than the real thing with Kelly. He couldn’t get rough with her, or she’d set her old man and uncles on him, but in his head, he could get as rough as he liked with old Stell.
Tonight he was changing the story. He’d tamed her with his knife, and now she was licking him, licking him good. He sucked in a long breath and let the pictures grow. She was up on her knees now, straddling him . . . backwards, and he’d put his knife down, and his two hands were around her, pinching her little boobs with their big nipples sticking out like stalks out of green apples. He was driving her into a frenzy, and she was moaning and begging him and licking him, up and down, up and down, her tongue was silk . . . warm silk. She was –
‘Shit.’
He finished too soon, and held the knickers high. I ought to put them in the wash for the old man. Might bring back pleasant memories, he thought. Placing his foot in the fork of the jacaranda closest to Stell’s window, he began his climb, high into the tree, his pen-light gripped between his teeth.
They were good climbing trees. He knew where the branches forked, and which branches leaned across to her room. He could easily get in her window from this one. It was wide open tonight. She always left her window open, except in the rain, but even then she left the top down. Still, it might be pushing his luck with her old man only three rooms along the passage.
He thought of the top floor layout as he moved further out on the limb. There was a long dark passage with rooms both sides. Old Templeton’s room was over the front door, Stella’s at the other end of the passage, down the back. Plenty of space in between, as long as he shut her up fast.
The limb swayed. His weight gain in the past twelve months had its downside. Too thin to hold him, the branch groaned and its leaves swished against her window.
Then it cracked.
‘Shit!’ he hissed, moving quickly back, her knickers in his hand.
‘Maybe I’ll hang them on the tree,’ he thought. ‘Or . . . or nail them on the church door. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nail them on the church door next Sunday.’
A light came on at the front of the house, in old Templeton’s room.
‘Shit man. Must have a hundred-watt globe in that bed lamp,’ Thomas muttered, freezing back against the trunk. He clung there, watching the window, half expecting to see the old bull-moose’s head emerge, almost hearing the bellow. The town kids knew that bellow well. It used to be a dare in grade four, to climb in and pinch the minister’s apricots.
The light in the bathroom was turned on. It bathed the foliage above Thomas, turning it from black to a bower of soft green, scattered with jewel-like blue.
A long intake of air and a slower release. ‘Far out,’ he whispered. ‘I’m in the magic faraway tree, Aunty Stell, with old Saucepan Head and what’s his name. Far out, man. Far out.’
In silence he waited until he heard the cistern’s hiss, heard the water sluicing down the sewerage pipes only feet from him. He waited until the bathroom light was off, and the night, and the tree, black once more before he began the climb down.
But the soles of his expensive runners were thick, spongy; his left foot wedged in the fork of the jacaranda and Thomas, thrown off balance, fell heavily to the earth, his ankle twisting as his foot was dragged free of the shoe.
‘Fucking tree. Fucking old maid bitch with her fucking tree,’ he hissed through gritted teeth as he rubbed the ankle, soothed the raw skin. Minutes passed before the pain abated and he was able to stand, to climb, to retrieve his shoe then limp slowly down the drive.
It wasn’t until he was on the footpath and mounting his bike that he thought of it. He pushed the frilly knickers into the letterbox. Still cursing, he peddled away, one shoe on, and one shoe off, the bike labouring now as it followed the slim pencil of light home.