FLICKING THE FLINT

ANNA KRIEN

Dad smokes on the toilet. When he’s done, he parts his knees wide and drops the butt between his thighs, lets it whoosh past his balls. Listens to it sizzle. A laxative ciggie, he calls it. Most of his cigarettes are called something – there’s the post-wank ciggie, the knock-off ciggie, a keep-warm ciggie, the I’m-done-with-dinner-now-clear-the-plates ciggie. Sometimes he just stands in the yard, flicking the flint of his lighter under his thumb, cigarette burning low in the other hand, ghosts coming out of his mouth. The chip-chip-chip of the flint like a bird call. That’s a fuck-off-I’m-thinking ciggie.

I wasn’t sure if it was one of those ciggies when I stepped out the door, schoolbag in my hand, and found him on the porch. I froze like I’d seen a snake. He had been in the search party looking for a guest and we hadn’t seen him for a couple days. It was part of his job at the resort. Mum and I listened to the radio reports about it last night until Mum told me to go to bed. The collar of his orange fluoro work jacket was flipped up, covering the back of his neck, his beanie pulled low over his brow, laces of his work boots undone. Cigarette cupped in his hand.

‘Hi?’ I said, a puff of cold air coming out of my mouth. Dad turned, his jacket rustling, to stare at me. He was silent.

‘Did you find him?’ I asked. Dad sucked on his cigarette and turned away. I shifted my schoolbag onto my shoulder. Mum was hovering in the doorway now, peering out at Dad nervously. ‘The stupid idiot decided to go for a stroll in the blizzard,’ Dad said suddenly, starting to laugh. ‘He was so drunk he didn’t even notice.’ He described how they’d spotted the jacket, it was hanging on a branch, then a jumper, then a pair of boots placed side by side, and a little way off, a pair of jeans with socks peering out of the legs. Finally, under a mound of snow, there was the guest – curled up like a baby in his undies and a singlet, blue mouth stinking of sweet bourbon. ‘Frozen so hard you could knock on him like a door.’ Dad stood up, flicking his butt into the garden. It hissed as it landed in a patch of icy grass. ‘So was he dead?’ I asked, not wanting to break the spell but not quite getting it. Dad turned to look at me again, his eyes narrowing. ‘Of course, you dimwit, what do you think? Anyway, long story short, fuck off kid. Don’t you have any friends?’

*

Dad knew I didn’t have any friends. It was one of his favourite things to ask me. ‘Where are your friends?’ he’d needle, or ‘Who’d you play with at school today?’ On the weekends it was, ‘You got someone whose house you can go to so me and your mum can have some time without you?’ Once I tried to explain that there was no one to play with, that we lived on the side of a mountain in a row of three houses and that was it and the only people who came through were tourists, and I did have a friend once, remember, back in Preston when we lived in the city, but Dad snapped his head at that. ‘You sound like your mother, boy. I’d watch that if I were you. Soon you’ll be playing with dolls and growing a pair of tits.’

*

One day, I lied. I said I’d made a friend at school. School was at the bottom of the mountain. A few portable classrooms, an oval and about fifty kids. I caught the bus there. I called my friend Chet. Dad’s face lit up and he insisted on driving me to school the next day. I felt sick. I tried to lie awake all night, as if by some power I could hold back the morning with my eyes, but I couldn’t keep them open and when I woke it was light. I stayed in bed when Mum came in, clung to the sheets with my hands and said I felt sick. But then I heard Dad yelling at her, that she was too soft, that there was nothing wrong with me, that I was a mummy’s boy. I got up. I pulled on my clothes with a grim sense of being filled with cement.

We drove down the mountain in silence. I watched the sunlight jump across my seatbelt like an animation as Dad sped around the bends until he drew up behind a little maroon car, an old woman, her little white head hunched over the steering wheel, carefully navigating the turns. Dad beeped and revved, then dropped back and beeped, and revved close again, almost nudging her boot. ‘I don’t have time for this,’ he muttered. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he spat, grinding his fist into the horn. The old lady twisted in her seat, trying to look behind at us. ‘C’mon!’ Dad yelled. When the mountain levelled, he overtook her on a straight, almost skinning the side of her car. I sank low in my seat to avoid the old lady’s gaze at she squinted at us, trying to make out who we were.

At the school gates, I grabbed my bag before Dad cut the engine and opened the door.

‘Thanks, Dad,’ I said, jumping out. ‘See you,’ I added, hopefully. Dad pulled the clutch and put the handbrake on. ‘Oh no, Gerard, I’m coming in with you, remember? I want to meet this new friend of yours.’ He gave me a big smile. It didn’t reach his eyes. They stayed cold like a lake that gets no sun. ‘That still okay with you?’ he said, as if it was my idea.

I nodded.

He got out of the car and walked into the yard with me. He looked around slowly and then settled on a group of boys my age. ‘Chet?’ he called out in a singsong voice. ‘Any of you Chet?’ When they shook their heads, he walked over to them. ‘Where’s Chet? My son here says he’s friends with Chet.’ He smiled at them slyly, as if sharing a joke with them. They shrugged. ‘Never heard of him,’ said Billy, a boy covered in freckles. ‘That’s odd, son,’ he said, turning back to me. ‘Never heard of him. Maybe I’ll go inside and ask one of the teachers.’

I looked at my sneakers. ‘There is no Chet.’

‘What, son?’ Dad said in his chipper voice.

‘There is no Chet,’ I said, louder, still looking down.

The other kids had moved away, eyes on us. It felt like the whole schoolyard had stopped. Past Dad’s legs I could see Miss Munro next to the bin, her hand poised above it. Balls stopped bouncing. Even the litter flipping on the ground in the breeze – empty chip packets, fruit juice poppers, the leaves – had stopped.

‘Look at me when you’re speaking to me.’

I couldn’t get my eyes off the gravel. I had to haul them up, lift them like they were rocks, make them grab hold of Dad’s shoes and drag them up past his laces, his jeans, belt, his neck, thick with its tendons tight, and finally, his face.

‘You know why you’ve got no friends, Gerard?’ I shook my head. ‘Because you’re a liar. And no one wants to be friends with a liar.’ He looked over at Billy. ‘Isn’t that right?’ Billy quickly dropped his eyes, his face turning red. He shrugged.

Dad looked back at me. ‘So what are you telling me, Gerard? I took time out of my day to drive you here and this is what I get? Do you think I’ve nothing else to do? Do you?’ I shook my head, my schoolbag slipping off my shoulder and landing on the ground at my sneakers. Dad’s face folded in on itself as if he smelt something rotten, his nose flaring. He spat out a sigh. ‘We’ll finish this at home.’ He walked past me to the car, the back of his hand brushing against my shoulder, the shock of it making me stumble. Only when he started the car did it feel like the yard started to move again. Miss Munro dropped her litter in the bin. I heard the thunk of aluminium as it hit the bottom. A basketball ricocheted off the backboard. A fruit juice popper rolled onto its side. My knees were shaking.

*

We live in a weatherboard house halfway up the mountain. When Dad told us he had got a job here he said it was full-time, that he’d be getting paid more than Mum had been getting. ‘There’ll be lots of kids for Gerry to play with and you won’t have to get the train to work every day,’ he’d said to Mum. We were living in a red-brick flat and he bought a bottle of champagne, letting me uncork it on the balcony. I aimed it at the window of the guy Dad was having a fight with about putting the bins out. He liked that, ruffling my hair. My entire chest flushed with warmth at his touch. I nodded at everything he said. ‘Yeah! It’ll be fun, Mum,’ I said. Mum brought out two glasses, looked at them and went inside and came out with two different ones. She looked at them again, as if trying to judge them through Dad’s eyes, and turned around again to change them. ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Jean, they’re fine,’ snapped Dad. She put them on the table, her hands trembling. She was biting her lip, trying not to cry.

Mum had a typing job in a solicitor’s office where Aunty Bron worked. She got it at the start of the year. Dad didn’t like it. He said it was making her snobby, that she was starting to put on airs like her sister. But that evening, Dad had nothing but good things to say about Aunty Bron. ‘She can come and stay with us. I’ll make sure she gets a guest room, free of charge,’ he said generously. ‘And Gerry can learn how to ski.’ I nodded my head, up and down, at Mum. Dad put his arm around me and drew me into his lap. Mum looked at the street below us and sipped the champagne.

*

That was two ski seasons ago and I haven’t put on a pair of skis yet. And for a full-time job Dad does a lot of standing in the yard, the flint of the lighter going chip-chip-chip. Aunty Bron hasn’t visited either. I don’t think her and Mum talk anymore. The last time I saw her was in our flat. She stood in the tiny kitchen, her tall reedy frame like a plant that had outgrown its surroundings, arms bent and trying to fit in awkward places, the gap between the counter and the cupboard. Mum sat at the Laminex table, hands tugging at a paper napkin, face bent over a mug. Aunty Bron wouldn’t take off her coat or sit down.

‘Jean, just fucking once, I want a phone call from you that doesn’t involve a cup of chamomile fucking tea,’ she said, pacing. Mum nodded, eyes filling with steam from the tea.

‘What I’d kill for a phone call like that. Instead I get the same old broken record. You know the rest of us have problems too, only we try to do something about them.’ Mum put her hands on the mug. The napkin was in shreds. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I didn’t know things were hard for you too. How is Stuart? The kids?’

*

So when we moved here and Dad was only working a few hours a week, not full-time like he said and we had to go back on benefits, Mum didn’t call Aunty Bron to complain. When Mum brought it up with Dad one night, he put his knife and fork down real slow.

‘You calling me a liar, Jean?’ he said, chewing each word before spitting it out. I edged my chair back from the table and thinned my eyes so everything started to blur.

‘No! I jus—’

‘You think I’m not working hard enough?’

Even with my eyes like this, I knew how my mum looked. Her eyes wide, fingers clasping the edge of the table, mouth stammering.

‘No—’

‘You don’t believe me? You want to check up on what I say?’ He stood up and grabbed the portable phone. He started pressing numbers. I could hear them beep a little longer than usual, the buttons slowly recovering from the force of his fingers. ‘You want to ask them at the resort?’ He thrust the phone at her. ‘It’s ringing. Ask them if your husband is a liar. Go on.’

I opened my eyes. Mum was shaking, her mouth open, hands splayed over her heart. Dad stood over her, the phone thrust in her face. A little tinny ‘Hello?’ was coming out of the receiver. ‘Hello? Breakfast Mountain Resort. Hello?’

With the phone still in her face, Dad pressed the hang-up button with his thumb, then swung it back, making out as if he was going to hit her with the phone. Mum and I screamed, the phone stopping an inch from her face, and Dad looked at us as if we were the most pathetic, predictable animals he’d ever seen. He dropped the phone on Mum’s lap, her skirt swallowing the dial tone, and walked out.

*

I’ve started doing this thing when stuff like that happens. When Dad starts circling us like a shark. I crimp my eyes thin so everything is blurry and imagine I’m on the school bus, coming down the mountain with school still a way to go, and Miss Munro is sitting behind me. Her blonde hair short and neat like a helmet, folded over her ears and those red dangly earrings. She saw me looking at them once as I twisted in my seat to speak to her, and she took one off to show me, and let me run my finger over its chalky surface.

‘It’s coral. From the sea,’ she said. ‘I suppose they dye it.’ When she put it back on, her fingers fiddling and fixed around her lobe, she tilted her head and the morning light flickering through the trees touched her cheek, tiny white hairs glowing for a moment before the bus turned round a bend. ‘You ever been to the beach, Gerry?’ she asked.

I snorted. ‘Course I’ve been to the beach,’ I said, turning back to face the front so she couldn’t see my face. ‘Oh, you’re lucky,’ she said. ‘I never saw the beach till I was an adult.’ Amazed, I turned back around.

‘Really? Why?’

She shrugged. ‘Oh, you know. We lived in the country and my family wasn’t one of those families that did things together.’

It was the first inkling I got that other families weren’t what I thought they were – perfect and having barbeques and going on holidays together.

‘Oh, we do everything together,’ I said, quickly. Miss Munro nodded at me, her eyes – they were green, I realised, not blue as I first thought – betrayed nothing. I turned to face the front, feeling my cheeks go warm. Did she think I was a liar? It was true though, we never did things on our own. Dad always found a reason for all of us to go to the shops when Mum needed to go to the supermarket, and at my last school, when Quentin Riley asked if I wanted to go to his house, Dad insisted on meeting him and his mum first. My heart sank when I saw Quentin’s mum waiting at the gate to meet us. She was tall with short grey hair and thick black glasses. Her lips were painted bright red and she wore men’s suit pants. Dad said right in front of them there was no way I was going to some lesbian’s place to play with her fat kid. So in a way, we did do everything together; we weren’t allowed to do anything else and we didn’t do much.

*

The school bus collected Miss Munro and then me. We were the only ones on the bus until Jackson and his sisters who lived about a quarter way off the bottom of the mountain got on. The bus driver’s name was Kevin. He was a sleaze. He was always looking in the rear mirror at Miss Munro. I think she was relieved when I got on. When she first started teaching she sat up front, to be polite probably and chat to Kev, but later she sat towards the back of the bus. She gave me a big smile when I got on, patting the seat in front of her for me to sit there, placing me between her and Kev’s mirror.

*

She liked travel brochures. ‘I love going into travel agents,’ she once said. ‘It’s like going into a newsagent but all the magazines are free.’ Brochures on Egypt, New York, the Aztecs, the Great Barrier Reef, Switzerland, Rome, African safaris, she had them all. With a pair of scissors she carefully cut the photos out and pasted them into a scrapbook. Scrapbooking was big around here. In the city it was all about making slideshows and movies on the computer. At school, the popular kids were always holding auditions and filming at lunchtimes before commandeering class time for special screenings in which they’d give each other standing ovations. But here, it was scrapbooking. There was a shop in the main street that sold only scrapbooks, glue, pens in different colours, puff paints, stickers, patterned borders, sachets of glitter and sequins. One Saturday, while Mum was in the supermarket and Dad was watching her from the footpath, I looked in the shop through the window. It was full of women, bustling with their purses and bags. There were scrapbooks on display in the window – pages filled out with photographs of grandchildren and babies, tiny handprints and paintings by five-year-olds. Others were scrawled with family trees and histories, and old black and white postcards. One had a pair of booties sewn onto the front cover. None were like Miss Munro’s.

If the glue was dry, Miss Munro let me flick through the scrapbook. The pictures bubbled where the glue hadn’t been put on properly and some of the pages stuck together. She had a map of the world at the start with dots made with a purple marker showing where she wanted to go. There were pictures of lions, great big turtles floating in blue water, black people with the whitest teeth and houseboats on old brown rivers. She had a section for places to stay. Fancy hotel rooms with fridges and minibars, thatched huts on an island somewhere. Even then, the scrapbook had seemed to me a bit of a dream. No way was she ever going to be able to afford those classy hotels and big cat tours. But even though it felt a bit like play-acting, I liked our time on the bus. When there was a good photo on both sides of a page, she asked me to decide which was best. I liked the discussions that went into that decision. ‘I like this zebra,’ I’d say, turning it over, ‘but this picture of the village could be handy when you’re there.’ Or, ‘The beach looks better in this picture, but you don’t have the hut in the background.’ Or, simply, ‘The rodeo or the burger and fries?’

Sometimes Miss Munro handed me the scissors and covered her eyes with her hands. She was the only adult I knew who had no rings on her fingers.

‘You decide, Gerry, I just can’t choose,’ she’d say. I’d nod solemnly, silently making my decision. Then after cutting out the picture, Miss Munro would take her hands away and beam. ‘Good choice, Gerry, good choice.’

It got to the point that I started dreaming too. Dreaming of going places, though not the places Miss Munro mostly marked out on her map, places where the people looked strange and the food looked like it was still alive. I wanted to go to America with Miss Munro. I lay awake thinking about the big plates of chips we’d order, and burgers with thick buns and heaped with pickles and tomato sauce and melted cheese. The cowboys – men who looked like my dad but they smiled easy – would take one look at me and decide that I had talent. They’d come over to us in the diner, their jeans held up by belts and wide metal buckles, walking as if they had invisible horses between their thighs, and we’d finish our burgers and then we’d go to a ranch. I’d have my own horse and the cowboys would ruffle my hair as we rode out together. Sometimes I dreamed so hard I could feel their fingers in my hair, catching on the odd knot, my head tingling.

Miss Munro started to save the brochures on America for me. ‘It’s not just cowboys,’ she’d explain. ‘There’s cities with famous buildings and celebrities. Mountains too, like we have here – but bigger.’ I nodded, fingers holding the glossy pages tight, but my eyes kept shifting back to the middle of America where I knew the horses and the cattle and the cowboys were. I put the brochures in my bag carefully and took them out again at night, looking at the photos in bed as the TV blared cop shows from the front room. Sirens and guns and yelling got in the way of the clop-clop-clop of horseshoes, the spit of whips and ‘whoa, whoa’ of cowboys. Usually I kept an ear out for footsteps so I could hide the brochures and pretend to be asleep but one night Dad came in quietly. The TV was going and I was staring at a picture of a cowboy on a horse trying to corral a cow back into its herd. ‘What’s this?’ he said, grabbing a corner and pulling it toward him. I looked up at him, mouth open. I didn’t even hear him come in. He started to flick through the brochure and stopped at the page where the tours were listed with prices. I’d circled the three-week tour, which involved sleeping out with cowboys and riding alongside them.

‘$4320,’ he said slowly, ‘plus taxes.’ He looked at me. ‘Who gave you this?’

‘It’s for school,’ I said, stammering slightly.

‘And you think you’re going to go? Leave your mother and me while we work and pay for you to have a good time?’

I shook my head. I was going to pay for it. I was going to find a job.

‘You reckon you could earn this kind of money, do you? You reckon someone would give you money? To do what? What can you do, Gerry?’

I shrugged.

‘No, really, Gerry, I want to know. What do you think you can do?’

I looked out the bedroom door into the hallway. I heard the volume go down on the television. I could feel Mum sitting up straight on the couch, straining to hear what was happening.

‘Answer me, Gerry. What. Can. You. Do?’

I smelled grass. Cow shit. I could see the red and white chequered shirt of a cowboy, his flanks sweaty with horse. I saw Miss Munro sitting beside a campfire.

‘Nothing, Dad. Nothing.’ The smell disappeared. The cowboy too.

‘You got any more of these?’ asked Dad, holding up the brochure. I nodded and reached under my bed. I pulled out the other brochures Miss Munro had given me and handed them to him. Again he flicked through them and again he stopped at the pages where I’d circled what I’d planned to do. He laughed and walked out of the room with them. I lay there staring at the black rectangle of the open doorway.

In the morning when I stepped outside, Dad was chopping wood. I watched as he swung the axe high over his head, his jacket riding up and showing his white back, and his legs bowed like a cowboy’s. He stopped when he saw me and leaned the axe up against the porch. He bent over and pulled the brochures out from behind the chopping block. Then the bus pulled up. Not saying anything, he walked towards the bus, Kev opening the doors and looking out, confused. I followed slowly. Dad nodded at Kev and stepped onto the bus. He looked down the aisle at Miss Munro. She looked up at him. Dad held up the brochures.

‘This what you’re teaching my son?’

Miss Munro opened her mouth but Dad wouldn’t let her speak.

‘That life is just about holidays? That while the rest of us are breaking our backs working, he can gallivant around the world?’

‘No, Mr Colpitt,’ Miss Munro started. ‘It’s about understanding different cult—’

Dad cut her off. ‘Don’t give me that bullshit. It’s about leeching off the rest of us who are busting our balls trying to make a living.’ He looked at Kev. ‘Right, Kev?’

Kev had his hands on the steering wheel. They were knotted white around the plastic. He stared at Dad and nodded. Miss Munro peered around Dad at me. I looked at the floor.

‘Don’t give my son any more of this bullshit!’ Dad flung the brochures at the floor near Miss Munro’s seat. ‘Teach him something fucking useful.’ He turned around and I was in his way. I panicked, my schoolbag getting jammed against the seats. Eventually I tugged it free and moved to the side.

When Dad was off the bus, Kev cleared his throat and looked back at Miss Munro but she avoided his eyes. He closed the door and let out a low whistle, trying to catch my eye in the mirror. I looked away. The brochures lay on the floor until we got near Jackson’s house. Then Miss Munro leaned over and picked them up, and put them in her bag.

The scrapbooking stopped after that. Well, my helping out did. I could hear Miss Munro cutting out the pictures with her scissors and gluing them into her book, but she never asked me to help her choose a photo. From that day on I sat closer to the door and Kev went back to glancing at Miss Munro in his mirror.

*

The mornings got lighter and the snow beside the road melted away. Dad started working on our car in the driveway. People stopped needing chains for their tyres and he took ours off, hanging them on a hook on the side of the porch. He let me stand and watch while he worked under the bonnet so I’d learn something useful.

He showed me how to change the oil. As the days got hotter, Mum would bring us cold drinks. She’d sit with us as we drank them and she and Dad would smile. He would drain his glass and tip it at me. ‘You better appreciate your mum, Gerry,’ he’d say, ‘Ain’t another one as good as her.’ Then, ‘Got any biscuits, honey?’ and Mum would run inside and return with a plate of biscuits. Sometimes the man next door would lean on the fence and try to chat. Under the bonnet Dad would roll his eyes at me and I’d grin. Once I even made as if I’d fallen asleep at the man’s boringness and Dad laughed out loud. Then one Sunday it was so hot that sweat poured off Dad’s face as he leaned over the engine trying to tighten a bolt that kept slipping out of the spanner’s grip. The man next door leaned on the fence and peered over at us.

‘Hot enough for ya, son?’ he asked me.

I turned to answer him, then heard the spanner slip again and Dad swear. I looked back and Dad was out from under the bonnet, his face shining with oil.

‘Would you stop leaning on the fucking fence, you fat fuck?’ The man looked at Dad, startled. ‘Well that’s a bit—’

‘It’s not gunna hold you every goddamn day.’ Dad bent down and scooped up a burnt-out spark plug from the ground. ‘Fuck off,’ he yelled and threw it at the fence. The man ducked and disappeared. I started to laugh but then Dad walked up to me, whacked me over the head and went inside.

*

It was Mum’s small tight smile that warned me, her eyes shifting to the side like a horse’s do when it gets skittish. I was in my pyjamas, standing in the corridor when she stepped out of the kitchen to look down the hall at me. I could hear Dad in the bathroom, his belt shifting on the floor as he sat on the toilet and smoked. I stood there for a moment. I needed to pee but when I heard him flush, cough and the mirror cabinet door slam shut, I quickly stepped back into my room and hid behind the door. I listened to his footsteps go past and into the kitchen. I dressed and went to the toilet, trying not to breathe in the stink of shit and smoke.

In the kitchen I kept my head down, only looking at him sideways. His eyes were black. It was as if he was growing in his chair, gathering and growing and getting darker by the second. Mum looked at the floor as well. She carefully placed his toast on a plate at the edge of the newspaper, but it was either going to be her or me. I poured the milk over my cereal, careful for none of it to splash over the side of the bowl. I balanced the spoon on the inside rim of the bowl where there was no chance of me accidentally knocking it out of the bowl and splattering cereal on the table. I made sure my schoolbag was out of the way so he couldn’t trip over it. But then, as I was leaving I took an apple out of the fruit bowl for lunch. It was the last one. I don’t think I’d ever seen Dad eat an apple.

‘What about the rest of us?’ Dad snarled, looking up from the paper, his top lip curling. ‘Ever consider that someone else might want that apple?’ I looked up, the waxy soft not-worth-it apple in my hand. Then I felt something snap, like the jaws of a trap, or the clasp of an elastic band. Dad had found what he was sniffing around for. And something else snapped into focus. I realised it didn’t matter what I said, it didn’t matter if I opened my hand and let the apple fall back into the bowl, none of it mattered. Dad had made his choice and set his sights on me. So I dropped the apple into my schoolbag, hefted it onto my shoulder and ran.

It all went fast and slow at the same time. I heard him leap up, tipping the chair onto the floor while Mum let out a low moan. I pushed open the door and jumped off the porch, over the steps. I could see the bus pull up at the kerb, its engine shuddering as Kev, not seeing me, wondered if he needed to shut it down and wait for me. I hollered to get his attention, and kept running.

Dad was behind me. I could feel his weight, the bulk of him, the jangle of his belt, his keys and lighter and coins, his shoes on the gravel, the rasp of his breath and the sound of something else, something heavy clunking along the ground. I looked behind me and his face reared up like a wolf, his features all jumbled, mouth torn, eyes twisted, nose flared. And in his hand, the axe. He’d grabbed it on his way. I felt everything catch, the air in my throat, my legs against my shorts. My stomach heaved. I somehow lost time, the rhythm of my running, two steps became one. The bus doors were open and I scrambled in, falling on my hands and knocking my chin against the gear-stick.

‘Go!’ I yelled at Kev, who was staring past me at Dad. ‘Go, go, g^o!’

Dad was halfway down the drive. ‘Don’t you fucking drive away, Kev!’ he yelled. ‘He’s my fucking son, don’t you dare fucking drive—’

‘Just go!’ I screamed. I stood up and started pummelling Kev’s shoulder. ‘Go, go, go!’

Miss Munro was standing up. Her face was white, lips pink like the underbelly of a shell. She stared at Dad through the window.

‘Go, Kevin,’ she said, quietly, and then louder when he didn’t respond. ‘Go, for Christ’s sake, Kevin! He’s got a fucking axe!’

With that, the accordion doors squeezed shut and we lurched forward. Dad was running beside us now and he swung the axe into the side of the bus. The sound of it made me want to vomit. A strip of metal tore and was flapping furiously as Kev put his foot down on the accelerator. Miss Munro and I looked through the back window at Dad who stopped, threw the axe onto the road and then picked it up and threw it into a tree where it stuck.

‘You’re dead, Gerard!’ he yelled at us. ‘You too, Kevin! And you too, you fucking bitch!’

*

I began to shiver. I was still standing, holding onto the back of Kev’s seat. My arms shook. I wanted a cigarette. I’d never wanted a cigarette before but now I wanted one. I closed my eyes and imagined one in my hand. Felt its heat lick my fingers. Miss Munro came up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. I jumped and she turned me around, sat me down.

Kev wanted to call the police. It was a one-cop town so that meant he wanted to call Gary. The thought of Gary hauling Dad down to the station made me wish I’d not run and simply laid my neck down on the wooden block for Dad. Miss Munro looked at me and then back at Kev. ‘Can you hold off calling him?’ she said.

Kev jerked his head angrily. ‘How am I gonna explain the side of my bus?’

When we were sure there was enough distance between us and Dad, Kev pulled over on the road and got out to inspect the gash. Dad had managed to swing the blade right through the panelling and had torn a strip of it away.

Miss Munro shrugged. ‘Look, the last thing Gerry needs right now is Gary.’

Kev spat out his window, shifting the gears down as we took a corner. ‘Yeah, and the last thing I need is a bloody gash in the side of my bus. What the hell have you got against Gary?’

I curled my hands into fists and leaned forward, letting out a moan. Dad had a run-in with Gary not long after we’d arrived when Gary had pulled us over. He’d made us sit in our car beside the road waiting for ten minutes or so, not getting out of his patrol car, lights flashing until Dad got jack of it. He got out and stretched, relaxed and easy like a cat. Then he lit a cigarette and strolled up to the police car, leaning in Gary’s window as if he were the cop. ‘You got a problem, mate?’ I heard him say. Gary was furious. Mum and me watched as the cop pushed his door open and sprang out, yelling so much we could see the spray of spit from where we sat. Dad loved every second of it. ‘Best thousand bucks I’ve ever spent,’ he said later that evening, Gary’s traffic fines proudly stuck on the fridge.

Oh God, not Gary. My knees jerked up and down they were trembling so hard. Miss Munro put her hands on them and forced them still. She looked at me, bending so her eyes were level with mine and I could see Kev watching us in his mirror. ‘Gary’s a shit, Kevin. He’ll make things worse for Gerry.’

Kev sneered. ‘And you? What are you going to do for the boy? Getting cosy?’ Miss Munro reddened and pulled her hands away from my knees. When Jackson and his sisters got on, we rode the rest of the way in silence.

At recess I was sitting on the bench next to the drinking taps when Miss Munro came and got me. ‘Gerard, can you come with me?’ She tried to smile at me but I could tell something was wrong. When I followed her back into our classroom, I froze in the doorway. Gary and Kev were sitting in there, Kev talking fast and his hands flailing. ‘My bus, it’s bloody ruined, the bloody psycho—’

Miss Munro coughed. ‘That’s enough now, Kev, Gerard’s here.’ Both men looked at us, Gary’s eyes running the length of Miss Munro, then me, then back to Kev. ‘Keep going, Kev,’ he said, ignoring us. I felt Miss Munro stiffen as Kev picked up where he left off.

‘So bloody Colpitt, he fucking put his axe through the side of my bus. Tore the panelling off. Going to cost me a thousand at least.’

Gary raised his eyebrow. ‘An axe?’ A smile ghosted around the corner of his mouth. He turned to me, his blue leather police jacket squeaking as he twisted in the desk he was sitting at. ‘An axe?’ he asked again. I shrugged. I had liked it on the bus when Miss Munro emphasised axe. Kev had kept saying, ‘Man, what did you do, kid?’ But Miss Munro would correct him each time, ‘It was an axe, Kev, no kid does anything to justify an axe.’ But the way Gary was saying ‘axe’ made me nervous. He was excited. He was practically jumping-out-of-his-seat happy.

‘We were just mucking around,’ I said quickly. ‘It was just a joke.’

Kev snorted. ‘A joke? A fucking joke?’ His voice was high and whiny. Miss Munro put her hand on my shoulder. ‘Gerry, you don’t have to—’ I flexed my arm, made it hard and tense and shrugged her off. Gary thinned his eyes, slats of grey in his small face, acne scars like rat bites clustering around his mouth.

‘Well, your dad’s a pretty funny guy, isn’t he?’

I nodded. ‘Sure is. Made you laugh a couple times, hasn’t he?’

It went quiet when I said that. No one said a word and scraps of the schoolyard came in through the window. A group of girls were singing the lyrics to a song I’d heard a hundred times on the radio, then started screaming at one of them for getting the words wrong, a boy kept yelling, ‘Here, here, here,’ and the sound of a footy being kicked, the boy still yelling, ‘Here! I’m here! Pass it to me!’ And then Mr Thacker, the school maintenance man, and his dog wandered into view. A bunch of kids ran a wide berth around him and the dog, a brindle with clumps of its winter coat still hanging off its ribs. It was mean to everyone but Mr Thacker and he kicked it and it still loved him.

‘Gerard?’ It was Miss Munro. It felt like she was calling to me from a very long way off. ‘Gerard?’ she said again. The classroom sucked back into focus. Gary was standing now, his fists clenched at his side. Kev was staring at me. ‘Gerard,’ said Miss Munro, her eyes pleading, ‘tell Sergeant Henning why your father was chasing you with an axe.‘ And I started to laugh. I thought it didn’t matter why, I thought that because it was an axe, nothing else mattered.

‘You rude little prick,’ said Gary and suddenly his face was right there, his mouth with its teeth all overlapping as if crowding for a better view. I breathed it in, the taste of his uselessness, and laughed harder.

‘Stop grinning, you little shit,’ he spat. I bent over, holding my ribs it hurt so much, and when it didn’t stop hurting, I turned and ran out of the room. It was dark and cool and hushed in the corridor, jackets hanging off hooks, bags piled into unlocked lockers, an open packet of orange Twisties strewn and stamped into the carpet. In the classroom I could hear Miss Munro and the men start to talk, their voices muffled; I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I touched my face. It was wet. I walked over to my schoolbag and took out the apple.

*

In the yard I stood near Mr Thacker as he dug out the dirt from around a fence post, swearing each time his spade got stuck in the clay. The dog sat a metre or so away, eyes on his master. I stepped a little closer to it and it lowered its bottom lip, baring its yellow teeth. I rolled the apple in my hands before shining it on my shorts. I took a bite and spat it out. The apple was bad. It was brown and floury. I took another bite to check and spat it out again. I looked down at the apple in my hand and held it out to the dog. It looked at me, then warily over at Mr Thacker who was engrossed in the fence. Getting up on its legs, the dog stepped towards me and the apple quivered in the flat of my palm.