Lockie Leonard: Legend: Legend
Author: Tim Winton
Date: 2013-07-11T14:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Juvenile Fiction; Family; General; Love & Romance; School & Education
Description: Lockie's survived his first year of high school, settling into a new town and his first mad love affair - it's all behind him; he made it! But the world of weirdness hasn't finished with him yet. His little brother's hormones have kicked in, his baby sister refuses to walk or talk - but eats anything in sight - his Dad arrests a sheep and his Mum seems to have checked out of the here and now. As Lockie's world turns upside down, he learns that life is never as simple as it seems and along the way finds out a lot more about himself than he ever realised was there.
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia

Contents

Fins

Molten Turtles

Flushes

Earth to Mrs Leonard

Lashings of Toast

Midnight

Zig-Zag

Everything is Not Alright

A Bomb Dropping

A Bit of Fresh Air

Complete Worstatiousness

Nan and Pop

This Hoovers

In Golf We Trust

Birdseed and Laxatives

Family Support

Victory

Hospital

Spag Bog

Shambolic

Guardian Angel

Being a Butthead

Pride

Brothers

Cyril

A Fit of Rosiness

Lockie Leonard, Fishing Legend

Bumpy Ride

Save Yourself the Sex Change

The Usual Diabolical Pandemonium

Fourteen

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tim Winton decided to be a writer when he was ten. It seemed like a good idea at the time and years later he still hasn’t come up with a better idea. He is the author of twenty books and lives with his family in Western Australia.

ALSO BY TIM WINTON

Jesse

Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo

The Bugalugs Bum Thief

Lockie Leonard, Scumbuster

Blueback

The Deep

for Bron

black hole sun
won’t you come
and wash away the rain
black hole sun
won’t you come
won’t you come . . .

SOUNDGARDEN

ockie Leonard shook the spray from his eyes, adjusted himself on the board and kept paddling as the wave rolled past and collapsed with a bum-tingling thud on the sandbar. Out of the cool mist another swell rose all seething and motley-green and shot six glistening, giggling missiles into the sky. They twisted in the air and came spearing straight at him. Lockie stopped paddling and stared. As any halfwit knows, of course, this is not such a smart thing to do when a big horrie wave is bearing down on you like a cement truck. But the human torpedo couldn’t help himself. Dolphins! Alright!

He watched them stall and turn in perfect formation, cutting white slices through the skin of the water, curving back on themselves the way no human surfer could even hope to. They romped and skylarked. They arched their backs, pulled in their flukes and buried themselves deep in the meat of the wave until they were surfing underwater, riding the inner force of the wave. Now that was desperately cool, no question. Lockie was stoked. He hooted as the dolphins suddenly cartwheeled out the back of the wave, but no one heard him because half a second after he opened his mouth, the whole motley-green business fell on him with a roar and he went straight to the bottom, yodelling all the way.

He bounced along the seabed, his wetsuit filling with sand, seaweed and small marine creatures, as his board dragged him by its twanging legrope. Hmm, life as a prawn net. He startled several flathead, overturned a turban shell with the tip of his funny bone and began to make some sort of effort toward saving his own life. When he finally found the foaming surface and honked the entire Southern Ocean out of his left nostril, he simply couldn’t manage to feel sorry for himself.

The sea went calm. Lockie clawed back out into deep water and lay still. He panted like a spaniel. All of a sudden a dolphin spouted beside him, then another, and then a whole whooshing crew of them were around him, whirling and leaping. They surrounded him mischievously, teasing and skiting like a bunch of little brothers lit up on red Smarties and Coke. Diving, they disappeared for a second and charged up from beneath him to swerve at the very last moment and whack their tails on the surface. Then, to rub it in a bit more, they leapt in formation right over him again and again, wagging their heads and giving him the eyeball.

In the end they came back and lazed around, cheeping and clicking so close that he ran his hands down their slick flanks and began to laugh in amazement. It was just plain inspiring. There was no other word he could think of to describe it. In a brilliant, glassy swell, out on his own with a mob of mad dolphins. Did it get any better than this?

The past few weeks had been pretty grim for Lockie. His best mate Egg had left town because his oldies split up. Lockie missed Egg’s mad jokes and his terrible complexion; he just missed having him around. Then there was Dot, the girlfriend he thought he had for a week or two. She was back in the big smoke, pigtails and all, and so his love life was down the toilet. As if this wasn’t enough to put a dent in your day, his little brother Phillip had turned eleven and started wetting the bed again, poor mutt. Lockie was back to sharing a bedroom with someone else’s damp patch.

Still it was pretty hard to keep feeling sorry for yourself with half a dozen buzzed-up dolphins using you for hurdles practice. All Lockie’s glumness, all his loneliness evaporated. I tell you, you have to be a hard case not to dig dolphins.

Then, in one strange second they all peeled off, dived and were gone. In the long lull between sets, Lockie waited, still hopeful that they’d return and stir up some more fun. But nothing happened. With all the excitement gone he suddenly felt his aching body. He’d been surfing for hours and even his pains had pains and his rashes had rashes. He could feel the end of his nose shrivelling under its coating of zinc cream. What a shame they took off, he thought. I could’ve handled an hour of that.

Just as he was thinking it, he saw a shadow turning in a swell. Yes! And as a small set rose in the distance, Lockie saw the dolphin’s fin pop from the crest of the first wave.

Then he stopped paddling.

Lockie sat up. He stared again. Hard. His heart went small and cold as a leftover rissole inside his Rip Curl vest. Because, you see, as any grommet knows, there are fins and there are FINS!

There it was again.

Hooley-dooley, that was no dolphin. Lockie Leonard was no brain surgeon but he knew the difference between ‘Flipper’ and ‘Jaws III’. It was a Noah’s ark. A man in a grey flannel suit. The fish with a tax collector’s smile. A swimming lawyer. Five rows of teeth with a tail, an appetite and a seriously bad attitude. In short, it was a cartilaginous fish charactised by a pointed snout extending forward and over a crescentic mouth set with sharp triangular teeth, a creature quite necessary to the fine balance of the marine environment but not particularly welcomed by hairy young persons floating on tiny pieces of fibreglass in the middle of the cold, lonely ocean. It was, in fact, a S S S H H H H A A A A A A R K!

The fin turned Lockie’s way. A little bow wave peeled off it as it accelerated. Lockie could feel every tastebud on his tongue. His solitary pimple throbbed on his chin. The fin came steaming in and Lockie felt adrenaline rip down his arms into the tips of his fingers. He began to wish that he’d brought a brown wetsuit.

The shark closed on him and, without even thinking, Lockie pulled his feet out of the water and tried to wrap them around his neck. He tried to make himself the size of a cashew nut, but the effort was too much and he overbalanced and fell straight into the water right where the shark flashed under him. For a moment he lay stunned on the water, expecting to see his gizzards drifting around him and one of his legs floating by like driftwood, but he felt no pain, nothing at all.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the fin break the surface again, turning for another run. Aayayayayayayiii!

Lockie pulled himself onto his board, aimed himself at dry land and tried not to think about life with a wooden leg. Or worse: life with only one buttock. Lockie Leonard, Halfbum. No, it didn’t exactly ring in his ears like music. He stopped thinking altogether and went like hellfire.

He was still paddling when he hit the dunes. Lockie Leonard, human torpedo. Alive. On dry land. With both legs and all of his very small and waterlogged butt.

t was a long, hard walk up through the flash suburbs of town but Lockie hardly noticed it at all. Now and then a little rich person’s dog would scamper down a driveway to yap and rattle at him for a second, but after what happened at the beach today nothing could touch him. He was still tingling from his little meeting with the shark. Every time he thought about that dorsal fin hacking a U-turn in his direction Lockie’s toes curled up inside his Blundstones as though someone had hooked him up to a car battery. Yikes! He checked his board and various unglamorous bits of his anatomy for teeth marks but found none. He figured he must be in shock.

For a moment, at the turn-off to his place, Lockie looked up toward Vicki Streeton’s house and wondered what she was doing right this moment. Probably watching ‘Degrassi High’, he thought. And eating an apple. A red apple. There’d be bits caught in her braces.

He stopped in his tracks. Yes, he thought, I’m definitely in shock! Thinking about her! Lockie didn’t let himself think about Vicki Streeton anymore. Well, not more than twice a day, anyway. He kept his mind off those soft lips and the feel of that cool raspberry breath against his cheek. Best not to dwell on how her leg used to wind around his under the desk in Science, and there was no way known that he’d let himself recall those hair-raising passion sessions up in the pine forest behind the school. Let’s admit it, even if he can’t; Vicki Streeton was the love of his life. She was the sharpest, toughest, prettiest girl in his class, probably in the whole school. Geez, the things she said! The way she looked at you, the slide of her hips when she walked away. Aargh! For the whole of Lockie’s first year of high school, she was the Meaning of the Universe. He was just this poor sick puppy, the new kid in town, a nobody and a nothing and then suddenly she shone on him like a searchlight. Him. She chose him. And his life was different for ever.

Well, he didn’t think about any of that these days. He could hardly even recall the good times now. He just thought of how it felt to stand in a phone booth and hear the world coming to an end. Getting dropped like a hot spud. Seeing her cruising around with blokes with cars. Standing there, like some scrawny thirteen-year-old, knowing he was history. And the whole town knowing. Life in a country town—it’s like a soap opera sometimes.

Ah, it still stung like a mongrel to remember. So he put it out of his mind. But whenever he saw Vicki in the street—and believe me, in a town the size of Angelus it happened all the time—he broke out in a grimy sweat and felt his heart creep up his throat like a flaming fur ball.

Lockie was over it. He was cool about it. That was all behind him.

Sure.

Rrrrilly.

Hmm.

As IF!

He turned downhill towards his end of town, where the un-rich and the seriously un-glamorous lived, and tried to get a grip on himself.

As he got to the end of the driveway and looked across the vast boggy wetland that was the Leonard family’s front yard, Lockie relaxed a moment. It wasn’t much, that awful sinking homestead in the middle of the town swamp, but it was home. Actually, it was a disgrace but he’d lived here a year now and he’d just got used to the idea. It was a real copper’s house. Lockie supposed things might be different if the old man was a lawyer. Lawyers lived up on the hill whereas cops’ families were white trash in Angelus. Still, it was home. Anyway, after surviving a shark attack White Trash sounded good to him. It was his home now, this town, this house. At least it was safe. Quiet. Beautifully boring. Face it, after a shark attack a dog kennel would be enough.

Lockie loosened up and grinned. He had barely started squelching down the drive when a hideous explosion tore across the swamp. It pushed him back in his tracks and blow-waved his hair. The sky was full of smouldering bits of plastic and grubby smoke. Lockie began to run.

Just then Phillip, Lockie’s eleven-year-old brother, came tottering out from behind the big shed near the drainage ditch with his hair still smoking and his body and clothes all black.

‘What the hell was that?’ yelled Lockie.

Phillip smiled. His teeth were much whiter than usual, but then his face was usually pink. Hmm, pink trash.

‘Just as I thought,’ said Phillip. Truly excellent.’

The whole left side of Phillip’s head was singed bald but it didn’t seem to bother him at all.

‘What happened? What was it?’

‘What was it?’ said Phillip, getting that new scientific sound in his voice that Lockie was starting to hate. ‘That was two kilos of Ninja Turtles.’

Lockie’s jaw dropped and stayed down.

‘I got them cheap,’ said Phillip.

Lockie looked at the blackened wall of the shed. Sure enough, all over the ground there were bits of smouldering turtle. The boys’ parents came belting out of the house, squawking as mums and dads do.

‘Phillip!’ bellowed the Sarge with his copper’s tunic half out of his trousers and his handcuffs swinging. ‘Please explain.’

‘Two kilos of Ninja Turtles,’ said Lockie.

‘You alright, Phillip?’ said Mrs Leonard, looking strange.

Phillip smiled again and nodded.

‘What was all this in aid of? Getting the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle into space?’ said the Sarge, checking the shed for damage.

‘Sarge,’ said Phillip, ‘how many times do I have to tell you, it’s called Science. All you’re into is poetry.’

‘Here he goes again.’

‘Phillip, don’t you think these experiments are getting out of hand?’ said Mrs Leonard, still in her dressing gown at two in the afternoon.

‘Mum, this is only the beginning.’

The Sarge waved smoke away from his face. ‘Last week it was the letterbox and four perfectly decent oranges. And before that it was your mother’s cassette player being mated with her hairdryer and we all know what happened there. Not to mention the aerosol can we’ve still got buried in the ceiling of the living room.’

‘Science,’ said Phillip. ‘Face it, Sarge, you just don’t get it.’

‘Look at his hair,’ said Mrs Leonard, appalled.

‘Well,’ said the Sarge, ‘think of the money he’s saved us. Some kids want to pay for worse hairdos than that.’

Phillip suddenly got interested in the way a smoking Leonardo had melted itself against the handlebars of his bike.

‘I nearly got mauled by a shark today,’ said Lockie.

‘Nice try,’ said the Sarge. ‘But it hardly competes with an exploding box of plastic turtles.’

‘No, really, I did.’

‘Look, if I suddenly had a little brother who was a pyromaniac I’d probably feel a bit left out too. You’ve still got our attention, Lockie. Don’t worry.’

I’m not feeling neglected, Sarge, I’m saying I actually saw a shark while I was surfing.’

The Sarge ruffled Lockie’s damp hair with a huge, dorky grin on his face. ‘Yeah, mate. Course you did.’

‘It nearly ate my bum off!’

Lockie’s mum started bawling.

The three male Leonards just turned and stared at her.

‘They’re only turtles, love,’ said the Sarge.

‘And I did get them cheap,’ said Phillip.

‘I didn’t get bitten,’ said Lockie.

But Mrs Leonard just stood there in her dressing gown amid the battlefield of molten turtles and howled her eyes out.

ockie watched as the Sarge stumped out to the police car in the failing light. He was late for work now but he didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. There was a puzzled look on his face, a look that said he was almost worried. He looked quite odd without his usual daggy grin. You got used to the mad, cheerful look on the Sarge’s face; it was a surprise to see it gone. He’s a one-off, thought Lockie. They broke the mould after they made the Sarge. There he goes, upholding the law, protecting the good citizens of Angelus wearing one black sock and one green one. Hmm, nice look.

‘Lockie?’

It was Phillip calling from inside.

‘Out here.’

Phillip stood inside the flywire door looking truly shocking. He’d had a shower and scrubbed up a bit but it made him look worse. He looked like a bantam chook that had been set on fire.

There’s a letter for you.’

‘Okay. Ta. Where is it?’

‘Inside. Blob’s got it.’

‘Blob?’ said Lockie. ‘What’s she doing with it?’

‘Eating it, actually.’

‘Geez, Phillip, thanks for telling me.’

‘I s’pose it makes a change from lino.’

By the time Lockie got to the kitchen his baby sister had gnawed one end of the envelope right off and was trying to digest the stamp. Lockie tugged at it gently but Blob wasn’t letting go. She didn’t exactly growl but she was a bit like a dog with a bone; she wasn’t going to give it up easily.

Lockie looked around for a moment and saw the phone bill stuck to the fridge with dinky little magnets. ‘What about that, Blob? A nice bit of FINAL NOTICE.’

Blob looked back at him with her cheeks bulging. It was hard to tell if those cheeks were full of spit and lino and real food or if they were just naturally fat and bulging.

Lockie wasn’t about to volunteer to find out, that was for sure. Blob didn’t mind a chunk of index finger now and then. He wasn’t putting his hands inside that teething maw. After all, he’d survived one shark attack today, and one was plenty.

Quite abruptly, Blob let go of the soggy mauled envelope and went cross-eyed with concentration. Her cheeks bulged out even further and the veins in her temples stood up like speed bumps. Lockie knew exactly what that meant. He grabbed the letter from its drooly puddle on the floor and bolted before the fireworks really got going.

In his room he read the champed pages of the letter. Egg’s handwriting was truly awful.

Dear Lockie,

How’s life in Rainytown? Sputaginous 1 suppose, huh? I saw on the news that the harbour clean-up is under way already. Mate, we really showed ’em.

Things aren’t so bad here. I’m living with Dad in Fremantle. He’s on the dole. Mum’s living down the road and 1 see her on weekends. See how it goes.

Fremantle is a weird city, mate. Full of mung beans and has-beens. I don’t mind the hippies so much, but there’s a lot of loonies on the loose up here. Dudes who think they were Cleopatra or Einstein in a former life. Why doesn’t anyone think they were Richard Nixon or Sid Vicious? There’s even a houseful of people round the comer who swear they’re from another planet. Lockie, these people actually get to vote! X-Files stuff.

Anyway, I was really writing to say that I saw Dot Cookson the other day. She looked optically hurtful, if you get me drift. Oh, mate! Anyway, I rang her up. Seventeen times, actually. I had to tell you this because you’re my best mate. I can’t help meself. I’m history. I know she was kind of your girlfriend for two weeks but. . . I’m gargling nuts about her. The question is, will you kill me?

Yr shakin’ mate,
Egg.

P.S. Have you heard Storytime yet? Filthy good band. P.P.S. Do you know what colonic irrigation is? Our neighbour gets it done once a week. The city’s pumpin’! (SSSSIIIIICKKK!) Stay in the country, mate. They’ve lost their lugs up here.

Lockie sat in the rubbish pile of his bed and read the letter through again. Sheesh. Egg and Dot. He didn’t know what to think. Egg was a great bloke, the best. But this? At least he told me, Lockie thought. At least he wants to know if it’s alright. And anyway, why not? Dot lives in the city and we busted up anyhow. There’s not much chance of making it work again, not from this distance. She’s a total spunk and a hot surfer, and she’d be in high school this year. But I’ve missed my chance. Why shouldn’t Egg see her? Still, it did feel awkward somehow. Maybe he just needed to think about it.

Lockie got up and went into the living room where his mum sat staring out the window, a teatowel hanging off her shoulder.

‘Mum, what’s colonic irrigation?’

Mrs Leonard looked out at nothing. It was dark already. There was just her reflection in the window.

‘Mum?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

Lockie scratched himself. ‘Actually, I am sorta curious.’

Mrs Leonard sighed. ‘For bored, rich, stupid people.’

‘Yep, uh-huh. And?’

‘They get themselves flushed out.’

‘Right. Eh?’

‘Their insides.’

‘Hmm.’

‘With water.’

‘Right,’ said Lockie, not getting it at all. ‘They drink it.’

Mrs Leonard pulled the teatowel off her shoulder and looked at it. ‘No, Lockie, they get it pumped into them. Into their intestines, shall we say.’

‘Not down their throat, then,’ murmured Lockie, beginning to squinch his face up in horror.

‘No.’

‘The . . . the other way?’ Lockie got the picture. ‘Aw, gross. Grotesque!’

‘Cleans out all their problems, they say.’

‘Geez, I’d rather eat a bar of Lux!’

‘Stupid people,’ said Mrs Leonard, flicking at the reflection of herself in the window. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, bored silly people with no problems who need someone to tell them they have problems as if having a problem is a hobby.’

Lockie stared at his mum as she flicked and whanged at the glass.

‘Mum?’

‘Damn stupid stupid people.’

Lockie went back to his room, wondering what all that was about. And there on the bed was Egg’s letter again. Dot and Egg. Hmmm.

ockie lay in the bath tub a long time looking at the streaky mildewed walls and the scrunched up towels that seemed to be growing like fungi on their racks. He thought about what it would be like having his best friend going out with his ex-girlfriend. He floated. He held his breath. He blew a few thoughtful and quite interesting bubbles. He really missed Egg. If he was honest, Dot Cookson was already fading in his mind, shrinking steadily to a . . . well, a dot. But good old Egg was stuck in his memory like a splinter. Lockie missed Egg’s mad talk, the way he invented words and made you laugh. He remembered their Sharkproof Swimming Machine. Could have done with that today. He thought of the pair of them trying to save the harbour earlier in the summer. It seemed forever ago. What the hell. Egg sounded like he was over the lunar surface about Dot. Let him be happy.

Lockie did a couple of laps, practising his tumble turns until water dripped off the ceiling and the bathmat began to float out the door. He was really getting up some momentum when he heard his silverchair tape booming through the fibro wall. His silverchair tape. Which his little brother had swiped without a word.

Lockie launched out of the tub and tried every mouldy towel on the rack. Geez, this house was a mess! He lurched and skidded his way out into the hallway, planning his unpleasant revenge upon the young and stickyfingered being they called Phillip.

When he got to his room, Lockie saw Phillip on the floor, his eyes clamped shut, pounding on a pile of Tupperware bowls with a pair of plastic chopsticks. He stormed in, jabbed the tape player and retrieved his property. Phillip opened his eyes.

‘Lockie!’

Before Lockie could say anything, he caught sight of his ransacked tape box. Right in the midst of Cruel Sea, Pearl Jam, Björk and Soundgarden was a crumpled photo. He went absolutely rigid.

‘Phillip’ he said in a dangerously quiet voice, ‘where’d you get that?’

‘The photo? It was in that Lemonheads tape, folded into the cover. Lemonheads, urk. I can’t believe you’re into them.’

‘It was a present,’ said Lockie.

‘From her, I bet.’

Lockie picked up the photo and smoothed out the creases. There she was, Vicki Streeton, in a plain white tee-shirt, her green eyes half closed beneath her kinky brown fringe.

‘What’s it like, kissing someone with braces?’

‘Phillip, haven’t you got an explosion to be at?’

‘Don’t get cranky, Lock,’ said Phillip in his most irritating, wheedling, skincrawling way.

‘If you touch my stuff again I’ll pound your head in. It’s bad enough sharing the room with you, but my stuff is mine. Get it?’

‘Hmm,’ said Phillip, looking at the photo. ‘That girl’s got more wires than the back of the telly.’

‘Rack off, Phillip.’

‘Be like sticking your tongue in a birdcage. Bleck!’

That was it. Lockie shirtfronted him and they went crashing to the floor in a welter of skittering Tupperware. But before Lockie could inflict any satisfying violence on his little brother, Phillip got an attack of the giggles and Lockie couldn’t go on with it. Besides, Blob came crawling in, screaming her head off, bringing with her an outrageous stench of unchanged nappy.

Phaw,’ said Phillip, between giggles. ‘Saved by the smell.’

‘You’ll get yours.’

Blob crawled over and sat beside them, reeking. A bunjee cord of dribble hung from her lip. Blob was her own person. She stubbornly refused to walk or talk. For two months she crawled backwards. There was nothing wrong with her. She just had her own ideas. And could she yell, or what.

‘Haven’t you got a mother? Stop screaming.’

But Blob wailed and moaned.

‘Mum!’ yelled Lockie. ‘Can you come and get Blob? She’s pooped herself.’

‘Yeah, Mum,’ called Phillip. ‘It’s interfering with me getting pulverised. I’m kind of anxious to get me head kicked in.’

Blob came closer. Lockie felt the sweet rain of warm drool on his arm.

‘Mum? Muuuuuuuum!’

Nothing. Just the chainsaw noise of Blob screaming. Lockie got up off Phillip and lifted Blob by the back of her jumpsuit. She hung in the air like a methane bubble. She stopped crying.

‘C’mon, Blob. We’ll go find her. I’ll deal with your other brother later.’

‘I’ll stay right here, then, will I?’ said Phillip. ‘Wouldn’t want to miss out on being viciously brutalised.’

‘Who gave you a dictionary?’ muttered Lockie as he headed out with Blob swinging in front of him. ‘Mum?’

Lockie checked his parents’ bedroom, then the kitchen. Everything was a pigsty. In the end he found her in the loungeroom still standing in front of the window with the teatowel in her hands.

‘Mum?’

She didn’t turn around.

‘Earth to Mrs Leonard. Are you receiving, over?’

Even the loungeroom stank, now that he noticed. This whole house was a mess. It was suddenly really embarrassing.

‘Geez, Mum! You’re gettin’ a bit slack, don’t you think? You could show just a little bit of interest.’

He put Blob on the ragged sofa for a moment and went up to the window. That’s when he saw the terrible sad look on his mum’s face. Her eyes looked faraway, almost empty.

‘What’s up?’

She didn’t look at him. Her gaze stayed outward. She was staring into the night.

‘Where’s the baby?’ she murmured.

‘Here.’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s crapped herself.’

‘Yes.’

‘She needs changing. You’re the mother, remember.’

‘Does she have all her fingers and toes?’ asked Mrs Leonard in a flat, toneless voice.

‘Unless she’s eaten them off since last time I looked.’

‘There’s something wrong with her.’

‘She’s not so bad when she’s not wearing a poop parcel. Hint, hint.’

But Mrs Leonard didn’t take the hint. Lockie just hung there, not knowing what to do. His mum was always on the ball, on the prowl, on the case. She wasn’t the dreamy type. This sort of thing wasn’t what he was used to; it just wasn’t in the script.

Blob started bawling again. He couldn’t stand it. He hoisted her up and took her into the kitchen.

Phillip was there already, scrounging in the fridge, which was pretty optimistic. He was hoping for five chicken drumsticks and a metre of Hungarian salami but when Lockie came in he was looking seriously at one lonely pickled onion.

‘You’ll have to gimme a hand, Phillip.’

Phillip looked up from his pickled onion. ‘You look like you seen a ghost.’

Close, thought Lockie. ‘I need some help.’

‘What?’ said Phillip, warily.

Lockie lay Blob on the table, right there on the open newspaper and started unhitching her babysuit.

‘What, Lockie?’ said Phillip looking nervously at the great pukesome bulge of Blob’s nappy.

‘We’re goin’ in,’ said Lockie.

‘You must be jokin’!’

‘She’ll get a rash if we don’t. It hurts.’

‘Get Mum. That’s what she’s for. It’s her job.’

‘Well, she’s taken the night off,’ said Lockie, suddenly angry. ‘Get the egg slice, a wooden spoon and some Kleenex.’

‘How about some of Dad’s Brut 33?’

‘Good thinking.’

‘This is ridiculous.’

‘Phillip, just do it, willya.’

Phillip looked at his solitary pickled onion and
changed his mind. Blob started to coo and giggle. Lockie got to work. He wasn’t smiling.

ockie’s evening didn’t get any better. Mrs Leonard stayed in the loungeroom saying nothing at all and by seven o’clock the Leonard kids were ready to go off. They were starving and Lockie was totally rattled. He rummaged through the kitchen for something he could cook, but all he could come up with was twenty-seven slices of high-fibre bread, the kind of stuff the Sarge liked to call Bowel Blaster. So they had toast on toast, with a bit of toast to follow.

‘Ah,’ said Phillip, ‘lashings of toast. Me favourite.’

‘Shut up and eat,’ said Lockie.

Lockie could smell nappy cargo under his fingernails and not even the smell of Vegemite could overpower it. At least Blob was happy. She ground away at her bread and ate all Phillip’s crusts. Lockie just sat and stewed about his mum.

What is it? he thought. Is she trying to make a statement about how much we take her for granted? Is she just browned off with us all, or what? Doesn’t she know she’s got responsibilities?

‘Mum’s looking at herself in the window,’ said Phillip.

Lockie ignored him and wiped Blob’s face with the dishmop. She lunged at it, got her teeth into its sopping strands and had a bit of a chew. But she was too sleepy to do any real damage. A detergent bubble blew out of the corner of her mouth.

‘You clean up, Phillip. I’ll put Blob to bed.’ ‘You’re not the boss of me.’

‘That’s original.’

‘All you had to do is ask. You’re giving me orders.’

‘Okay. Please, Phillip.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

Lockie took the dishmop out of Blob’s mouth and held it in his fist so tight that soapy water and baby drool ran down his arm. He thought of inserting it into various parts of Phillip’s anatomy but somehow managed to pick up his sister and leave the room without blowing a valve.

Blob’s cot was in a corner of their parents’ bedroom. Lockie waded through the crumpled clothes on the floor, glanced at the unmade bed and lowered Blob into her cot. Her eyes fluttered and she whined for a moment as he patted her back gently. He sniffed her nice, strange baby smell. For a lino-chewing, pilcher-packing little dude, she still smelled amazingly sweet. He kissed her on her mostly bald head and watched her quickly go to sleep. He turned the light out and sighed.

There was yelling from the kitchen.

When Lockie got back to the kitchen, Phillip was trying to push a metre-high mountain of bubbles back into the sink. The great sudsy mound had toppled against the window and was sliding down the benchtop, heading for the back door as though trying to make a getaway. Lockie figured it was better to leave it with Phillip. He went into the loungeroom to look in on his mum.

Mrs Leonard had the TV on and was watching the news. There were scenes of some disaster somewhere else in the world. Ambulances, stretchers, bodies. Mrs Leonard had tears all down her face. The twitching light of the TV lit up her shining cheeks. She didn’t make a sound. ‘Mum? What’s the matter? What is it?’

‘So many people dying.’

The news story changed to something about a cat up a tree. A cat being rescued by the fire brigade. Everyone celebrating, hugging, laughing. Mrs Leonard cried right through it and somehow it made Lockie mad.

‘Mum, that’s a happy story, you know.’

Mrs Leonard bawled.

‘It’s not really a crying matter, Mum.’

She cried and cried. In the end Lockie stood up in front of the TV and looked into her eyes.

‘What, Mum?’

‘Where’s my baby?’

‘In her cot. She’s asleep.’

‘She’s doomed.’

‘She’s snoring.’

‘She’s retarded, you know. She won’t walk or talk.’

‘Blob’s just stubborn, Mum. It’s a Leonard thing.’

‘Oh, my baby!’

‘Blob’s fine, Mum.’

‘But not my baby. My baby’s not.’

‘Geez, Mum! Get a grip, why don’t you? Get a grip!’

That was it. His mum just howled and howled, letting out great, awful sobs until Phillip came in all soapy and shocked and gave Lockie the filthiest look possible.

Lockie split. He crashed out the back door into the yard and kicked the heads off weeds. He wanted to scream.

hen the Sarge got home from work at midnight, Lockie was still out in the yard with the frogs and mosquitoes. The lights were on inside. His mum was still prowling around. Lockie couldn’t figure it out. He was bitten all over and his skin felt lumpier than Phillip’s marble bag. The lights of the Sarge’s paddy-wagon caught him as he slumped on Blob’s swing.

The Sarge groaned as he heaved himself out of the car.

‘Can’t sleep?’

Lockie shrugged but a shrug doesn’t communicate a lot in the dark.

‘Test-driving the swing, then?’

‘It’s Mum,’ said Lockie. ‘She’s giving me the horrors.’

The Sarge closed the car door and leaned against it, rattling his lunchbox. ‘Shoe’s on the other foot for a change, is it?’

‘Maybe. She’s not doing anything.’

‘Know how she feels. I arrested a sheep tonight.’

‘I’m serious, Sarge.’

‘So am I. Caught it coming the wrong way down a one-way street. Right in the middle of town.’

‘It was probably looking for a drink,’ said Lockie.

‘No, the pubs were closed.’

‘Very funny.’

‘It’s back at the lock-up. Let the blokes on the next shift deal with it. They’ll probably eat it. By dawn there’ll be nothing left but some chump chops and a few strands of wool. They’re savages, the night shift.’

‘You don’t expect me to believe you, do you?’ said Lockie, crankier than ever.

‘You’re on holidays. Come down to the lockup and see for yourself.’

‘Sarge.’

‘Can’t wait to see the look on your face.’

‘Uh-huh. I suppose I’ll look real sheepish. Okay, let’s do the bad jokes.’

‘Geez, you are dark on the world tonight.’

Lockie climbed off the swing. ‘Mum left me to do all the work tonight. I had to feed ’em, bath ’em, put ’em to bed—’

‘Well, now you know what it’s—’

‘She won’t talk to me.’

The Sarge sighed. ‘Lockie, I’m dead on me feet.’

‘She cried all through the news.’

‘Mate, sometimes I reckon crying is the only sensible way to respond to the news. You sit there every night watching this horrible stuff happen. After a while you don’t feel a thing. Starving kids, burning people, bleeding people, homes washed away, blown up. I’m ashamed of feeling nothing sometimes, aren’t you? In my job you’re not s’posed to feel. Scares me, that.’

‘Sarge, she didn’t lift a finger.’

‘One night of responsibility won’t kill you.’

‘What’ve I done wrong? She could just tell me. Why the silent treatment?’

‘If you’d done something wrong she’d tell you, Lockie. Your mum’s a straight shooter, you know that.’

‘Well, I don’t get it.’

‘Everyone has a bad night. Ask the sheep.’

‘Sarge.’

‘I’m off to bed. Get some shuteye.’

‘She keeps talking about her baby.’

‘Oh?’ The Sarge paused.

‘Sometimes I think she means something else.’

‘Not Blob?’

‘I dunno, Sarge. She’s not making sense.’

‘Okay. Orright. Go in and get some rest.’

But Lockie didn’t sleep. He lay awake in his room with Phillip snoring and tweeting and lip-smacking over the sound of the frogs grumping out in the swamp. About three in the morning he heard sobbing from his parents’ room and he knew that something serious was going on. He thought of Egg whose parents bickered day and night before their separation. He couldn’t stand the thought of that happening in his own family. Lockie wanted his life to stay the same. He didn’t want trouble. But any idiot could see something was up. Something bad.

hen Lockie woke, Phillip was pulling wet sheets off his bed and sniffing back tears. It was nine o’clock and Lockie’s eyes felt gritty and sore.

‘You orright?’

‘No.’

‘It’s just a wet bed.’

‘Another wet bed,’ said Phillip through his teeth. He wiped his face on a dry patch of sheet. ‘I’m eleven years old. It’s not s’posed to happen. Anyway, it’s not that.’

‘What then?’

Phillip leant against his Simpsons poster and looked at the floor. ‘It’s Mum. She’s saying weird things. She keeps on counting Blob’s fingers and toes. Mine too. She said . . . ‘Phillip sucked his lips in, trying to speak without blubbing.

‘Said what?’

‘Oh, she thinks everyone’s gonna die. She says you’re already dead.’

‘What?’

‘I said you were just sleeping in. But she said no, you were dead. Didn’t you hear it all? I kept coming in to see if you were breathing. It scared me.’

Lockie was stunned. Just hearing this, it hurt. Lockie couldn’t believe it. His own mother saying he was dead. He lay back on his bed and watched the sunlight flicker on the walls.

‘The Sarge looks shockin’. He’s been up half the night. He took Mum and Blob for a drive.’

Lockie got up and pulled on some shorts. ‘Let’s get out of here for a bit. Get your skateboard.’

‘I better wash these,’ said Phillip holding up his sheets.

‘We’ll do it when we get back.’

Phillip didn’t look sure. The poor kid looked sick with worry.

‘C’mon, let’s get out for a while.’

‘But why?’

Lockie found his things. ‘I don’t wanna be here when Mum gets back.’

The day was cool and cloudy with a foul breeze blowing off the harbour. Lockie and Phillip walked up through the winding streets around Mount Clement until the roads petered out and they had to bushbash their way to the summit. From the top of Mount Clement they looked out over Angelus with all its beaches and bays and fingerlike roads that spread towards farms in the distance. Lockie thought for a moment of the first day he came up here with Vicki Streeton, when he was in love for the first time and the whole world felt like it would last forever and always be perfect. That was nearly a year ago. Lockie felt older and no wiser and nowhere near as happy.

The breeze cooled the sweat on their faces. The two brothers stood there a long time without speaking.

‘D’you think Mum and the Sarge’ll get a divorce?’ said Phillip in the end.

Lockie was taken aback. He was secretly thinking the same thing.

‘I don’t know.’

‘When wives are miserable there’s always a divorce. You see it on telly all the time. And there was Egg’s mum.’

‘I dunno, Phillip. I’m dead, remember. How do you like that. I’m dead all of a sudden.’ Even as he spoke, he got a silly idea he couldn’t ignore. ‘Speaking of death, you ever skated the Zig-Zag?’

‘Garry Pooley has. Ten kids saw him.’

‘Why don’t we?’

Phillip grinned nervously. ‘Zig-Zag? That’s a hell-ride. Like, past vertical.’

‘Garry Pooley is a dweeb and a drongo.’

‘A wacker, actually.’

‘So what d’you reckon?’

‘We’ll get pulverised. Even if we make it the oldies’ll kill us.’

‘Hell, Fm already dead.’

‘You’re s’posed to be the responsible one, Lockie,’ said Phillip, getting a dose of the giggles.

Lockie felt all feverish and mad; he felt reckless and stupid and hurt and exhilarated all at once. Right now he really wanted to do something major, to max out completely.

‘Today’s the day, Phillip. We’ll call it Big Wednesday.’

‘But it’s not even Wednesday.’

‘Shut up and follow me.’

The Zig-Zag was the kind of street that only a true space-case could design. It was only a hundred and fifty metres long but so steep and hairpinned that it would give a mountain goat a migraine. People hated driving down it and simply refused to drive up it. Even the yuppies who lived on it gripped the wheels of their Saabs and BMWs with ivory knuckles every time they nosed out of their cobbled driveways. The Zig-Zag ran like a ragged lightning bolt down the harbour side of Mount Clement and ended in a T-junction. On the other side of that junction was a slope of thick bush and trees all the way to the septic shores of Angelus Harbour.

Lockie stood at the top. He spun a wheel of his skateboard with his hand and listened to the ball bearings hiss. It looked worse than he remembered. His left leg started to wobble a little.

‘Is this dumb or what?’ said Phillip, hugging his skateboard to his chest.

‘This is dumb like no dumbness you’ve ever known.’

‘Should we leave . . . you know, like a suicide note?’

Lockie chuckled. ‘No, too sensible.’

‘Geez, Lockie, you’re such a good influ—’

Before Phillip could finish his sentence, Lockie was gone. He launched himself out and down like a slalom skier in the Winter Olympics. Phillip saw the wind streaming in Lockie’s sunstreaked hair, heard the terrible scratchy roar of the wheels on the asphalt; he wondered if this really was the best way to get a bedroom of his own. Having your older brother die to get it seemed a bit extreme.

Extreme is more or less how Lockie saw things as he zigged into a turn that made his knees shudder and his skateboard creak with stress. He missed the first letterbox by a good metre and stayed clear of the deadly kerb but he could feel himself picking up speed second by second.

The road did a murderous switchback the moment he came out of the first turn and then the whole Zig-Zag became a frantic, mindblowing blur. Trees. Parked cars. Blow-waved lawns. DANGER. CAUTION. STEEP INCLINE. Everything ripped by and the road howled beneath him. Lockie simply aimed out of instinct; he couldn’t even tell where he was going anymore. He was more interested in the sound he made as he shot down the hill. It was a truly odd noise, rather like the whistling that an artillery shell makes before it lands unpleasantly in someone’s backyard. Lockie discovered that if he closed his mouth the whistle died away. He opened his mouth again and there it was: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! That shriek was the wind going through him. He was a bassoon, an oboe, a clarinet, a flute, a plummeting piccolo. What a sound you could make with wind coming out your ears, your pores, your every embarrassing orifice. Well, you learn a little every day.

And then before Lockie could even decide how he was going to manage the hellish final turn into the T-junction of the Angelus Scenic Drive, he found himself already there, safely slowing down in the gentle uphill slope where everything was calm and quiet and sane. Lockie pulled a long broad turn to brake himself and then stepped off his skateboard. His legs were so trembly he could barely stand. He couldn’t believe what he’d just done. He’d survived the biggest hell-ride in Angelus. But there was no rush of triumph. He just felt like a stupid, thick-brained idiot for even trying.

‘I am a LUNATIC!’ he bellowed. His knees knocked. He wanted to be sick.

He looked uphill to where Phillip stood shunting his skateboard back and forth underfoot.

‘Don’t do it, Phillip. Just walk down!’ Lockie waved his arms crazily, jumping on the spot like a cheerleader. ‘Walk down!’

Phillip waved or shrugged and then heaved forward. Lockie stopped jumping and let his skateboard roll to the kerb. No! Absolutely, positively NO! His little brother came scorching down the bends, uprooting letterboxes and council signs, setting off car alarms and collecting rear view mirrors like a cyclone.

Lockie watched Phillip’s eyes get big as soup bowls. He heard the roar of wheels and the flapping of Phillip’s tee-shirt as he barrelled miraculously down towards the junction.

‘Turn, Phillip!’ he yelled in awe. All Phillip had to do now was make the final turn and be safe. ‘Go now, go now!’

But Phillip came out of the last zag with a serious case of the death wobbles. There was no way he’d make another turn. He’d be lucky to stay upright for more than a few more seconds. As he careered past, Lockie made a lunge but couldn’t get more than a fingertip to him. A moment later the board hit the kerb and stopped dead. Phillip, however, did not stop at all. He flew quite silently across the grassy verge and into the treetops down the slope.

Lockie started to run.

I’m a fool, he thought, a mad, insane, lunatic idiot. I should be locked up and fed dog biscuits. I’m a damned disgrace.

Lockie crashed blindly down the slope through scrub and trees, scrambling over boulders and burnt-out logs. There was no sign of blood or major organs, which was encouraging.

In the end he came to a tree that had his little brother dangling from it like some hyperventilating fruitbat. A branch had ripped through his Rip Curl tee-shirt. Only 100% COTTON and some nice screen-printing held him up there.

Lockie clawed up the trunk and picked his way across boughs until he got close.

‘You orright?’

‘Will I land soon?’

Phillip’s eyes were still soup bowls. His skin was grey-on-white. Lockie braced himself to grab him, but just as he reached out, Phillip’s shirt gave way and he was gone. Lockie heard the crash in the undergrowth below.

‘I think you’ve landed.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No worries.’

‘Can we go home now?’

rom the end of the drive Lockie saw that the rusty, asthmatic Falcon was back. As he helped Phillip limp barebacked down the ruts towards the house, Lockie wondered how he could explain his brother’s cuts and bruises. There was also the matter of a shredded shirt and an entirely knackered set of skateboard wheels. Lockie was in deep doo and he knew it. The Sarge would handcuff him to a passing bus.

The house was quiet inside. The boys crept in uneasily. They found the Sarge at the kitchen table staring at a cup of tea. Blob sat on the floor with a Weetbix box on her head. She sounded as though she was gnawing her way out.

‘Where’s Mum?’ said Lockie.

‘Asleep.’

‘Oh, okay. Everything . . . everything alright?’

The Sarge pursed his lips, as though considering his response. Then he slowly shook his head.

Lockie stood there waiting for the Sarge to notice the shape Phillip was in. His little brother looked like he needed a visit to the panel beater but the Sarge didn’t notice. He was staring at that cup of tea. After a few moments he took a sip at it but found it was cold. He pushed it away from him. He looked pale and worn out and the pouches under his eyes were big as teabags.

‘I took your mum to the doctor. He gave her some . . . medicine. She’s . . . well, she’s upset. I think she’s depressed.’

‘I get depressed all the time,’ said Phillip, trying to sound understanding.

‘You get sad, Phillip,’ said the Sarge with a sigh. ‘Miserable, even. But depressed, that’s different. She can’t cope.’

‘Mum always copes,’ Phillip said.

‘It’s a shock, I know, but right now she can’t face anything. We’ll have to pull together a bit this week until things look better. She probably just needs a rest.’

Lockie couldn’t speak. A terrible feeling had come upon him. He remembered last night yelling at her to ‘Get a grip!’ as though his poor mum was fooling around, as though she was bawling her eyes out just to cause Lockie some inconvenience and get a bit of attention. Geez, what a pig of a thing to do. He hated himself. He was a dickhead. His mum was having some kind of meltdown and he was stamping his foot like a complete buttface. What was wrong with him?

‘I’m taking the week off,’ the Sarge said. ‘We need to give her a huge rest, some peace and quiet.’

‘Okay.’ Phillip’s lower lip quivered.

‘Lockie?’

Lockie struggled up out of the tangle of his thoughts. ‘Yeah, Sarge. No problem.’

‘We’ll get on top of it,’ said the Sarge pulling the box off Blob’s head. ‘Things’ll come good in a few days.’

But things didn’t really come good at the Leonard place. Not the next day, nor the day after that. Lockie and Phillip and the Sarge tiptoed around the sagging house doing their absolute best to keep things running smoothly that week while the rain roared on the tin roof and the swamp swelled and gurgled around them. The boys worked without complaining, taking turns with Blob and the endless housework, helping the Sarge with washing and cooking and keeping things calm.

Blob’s cot was moved into the boys’ room. She shook its bars at dawn to get them up and she didn’t stop being Blob all day. She made spaghetti out of Lockie’s tapes and gnawed Phillip’s basketball cards into compost, but neither lost his temper. Lockie’s back ached from carrying her on his hip and Phillip’s face hurt from smiling. They piggybacked her, rolled on the floor with her and built entire planets out of Lego and Duplo and Play-Doh. They watched ‘Play School’ with her and laughed themselves sick at all the jokes. Out in the shed they found an old shopping trolley and they pushed her around the verandah in it like she was the Pope in the PopeMobile. They played Thomas the Tank Engine’, doing all the dopey English voices. They took turns at being Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. They did it all like heroes.

The Sarge hung wet washing in every room and along the verandah because of the endless rain. When he got desperate he dried nappies with a hairdryer and salad tongs. The only meals he could cook were curried sausages and fried rice. Blob liked to spit the rice all over the joint and all week little puffy grains of it turned up on the wallpaper, between someone’s toes, or in the toaster where it promptly caught fire. Sarge ironed and vacuumed, dusted and dabbed with a grey look of worry never leaving his face. The phone rang every hour or so with some problem down at the station. Lockie watched him roll his eyes and spell words out slowly to the constables at the other end, casting looks now and then toward the closed door of the bedroom where Mrs Leonard stayed day and night.

For a couple of days they all worked so hard the house started to look fairly civilised, and while all the novelty lasted Blob was happy as a lark (if you can imagine a lark looking like a pint-sized Buddha with seven and a half teeth and a passion for gobbing rice great distances). But then there suddenly weren’t enough hours in the day. Lockie kept falling asleep in the middle of ‘Bananas in Pyjamas’. He caught himself tossing nappies into the kitchen sink and hoiking food scraps into the nappy bucket. When things went wrong the Sarge started to get panicked and cranky. The rain drove everyone crazy and the situation began to get on top of them.

At first Mrs Leonard stayed in bed, pole-axed with tranquillisers. Blob scraped at her door and banged on the wall, too small to understand. When their mum woke up and came out it was as though she’d gone somewhere else behind her eyes. She stared out of windows and cried quietly. Sometimes Lockie stood in the hallway to watch her walk in slow motion to the bathroom. Phillip and Lockie caught each other watching and shrugged and said nothing. Lockie went through every day in a state of shock that just wouldn’t wear off.

‘She’ll be right,’ said the Sarge, tucking them in at night as though they were still two little boys in Bert and Ernie pyjamas. There was a desperate, hopeless sound in his voice that scared Lockie. ‘Don’t worry, fellas, everything will be okay.’

It went on all week until everyone was exhausted and the house was a pigsty again and Blob cried half the day and bashed on Mrs Leonard’s door. The phone never stopped and the Sarge shouted into the receiver like a man about to burst into flames.

On Friday morning, for no reason he could think of, Lockie woke at dawn with a start. His heart slapped madly inside his ribcage. He checked Blob and Phillip who were still asleep, both of them in their warm, wet sheets. He went to the window and pulled back the curtain to see his mum on the driveway in her nightie in the pelting rain.

Slipping straight out through the window, he stood on the verandah a moment and waited as she pushed Blob’s pram through the mud on her own. Her hair hung down in strings. Her legs were like sticks in the bleary light. Lockie sprinted up the driveway in a splatter of mud. It was cold. At the end of the drive Mrs Leonard stood with the empty pram, singing quietly.

‘Mum?’

Hair hung all over her face. She hardly looked like his mum. He glanced back at the house. It looked like a rusty old junk floating down a muddy river, floating away from him, leaving him behind. Lockie touched his shivering mum on the arm and knew for sure that everything was not okay at all, not by a long shot. And something told him that things would get worse before they got better.

ater that miserable day, Lockie watched the Sarge come splashing down the drive in the Falcon. Alone. Sometimes when you have a hunch you’d much rather be wrong. Back in the loungeroom he could hear Phillip trying to explain the planets of the solar system to Blob. She wasn’t quite catching on but Phillip wasn’t the sort of kid who gave up easily. The Sarge stomped up onto the verandah, his face speckled with tears of rain.

‘What now?’ said Lockie.

‘She’s in hospital.’

Lockie whirled around and smacked the wall with his fist. A great crack appeared across the fibro panel.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, his knuckles throbbing.

The Sarge shrugged. ‘Looks better that way if you ask me.’

Lockie grabbed hold of his dad and smelled the leathery, whiskery smell of him. He felt the Sarge’s huge hand on the back of his head as they hugged hopelessly.

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Lockie. His teeth hurt
from trying not to bawl.

‘None of us believes it. Not even your mum.’

Lockie pulled himself free. ‘She’s in a mental hospital, right?’

‘The local hospital.’

‘In the mental ward.’

The Sarge leaned on the ant-eaten verandah rail and sighed. ‘What did your mate Egg used to say? Don’t look at the uniform, look at the person. I liked Egg.’

‘Is she crazy?’

‘She’s depressed, Lockie. She’s worn out.’

‘This is a nervous breakdown then. This is what they mean.’

The Sarge shrugged. Big, wise-cracking, dumb-joking, loveable Sarge. Looking like a grey old man with no laughs left in him, his watery eyes so full of sadness.

‘I guess this qualifes as a breakdown, yeah.’

‘It’s like a bomb dropping. Everything suddenly smashed to bits.’

‘Well, it’s sure rearranged the furniture, Lock.’ ‘Will she be in there long?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What are they going to do to her?’

‘For her, you mean.’

‘Whatever.’

‘I don’t really know, Lock. They need to assess things.’

‘Can we visit?’

‘Soon. There’s a lot of things to figure out. I have to talk to Phillip.’

‘Oh, geez.’

The Sarge squeezed him again. Lockie felt five years old. He wanted to cry, to go running to his mum, to lie on the ground and kick and squeal until everything came back to normal again.

‘It comes to bits real quick, doesn’t it.’

‘Nothing’s gonna come to bits.’

‘But why’s this all happening? It’s our fault, isn’t it. Me and Phillip. We drove her to it. We wore her out.’

‘No, that’s a load of bollocks. It’s nobody’s fault.’

‘This morning she was crying like her heart was broken. It was awful.’

‘Well, we’ve seen you do the same, remember? After Vicki? You know what it’s like to have a broken heart.’

‘But this . . . this is different, like there’s no reason.’

‘Maybe,’ said the Sarge pulling back the screen door and wiping the rain from his face. ‘Maybe.’

After the Sarge went inside, Lockie stood a long time alone on the verandah. It was weird but it was hard to imagine his mum with a broken heart. Still he’d seen it with his own eyes. It was a shock, suddenly not knowing as much about your mother as you thought. Had he ever thought about her at all? Really thought about her? She was always so . . . together. His mum was an absolute brick. Man, she was rock solid. She was the kind of parent some kids must dream about. All that energy and optimism. Sometimes she drove him mad the way she cared so much. Oh, he remembered those sex talks last year when she kept talking about pubic hair until he wanted to just die. Whew, did she love a Deep and Meaningful or what! She was so conscientious she embarrassed him. Other kids’ oldies were so offhand, as though kids were just a pain they had to endure. He felt like a scumbag for taking all that love for granted. And now she was too busted up to even talk sense, too hurt to look after herself let alone anyone else. It just killed him to think of it.

After a while the screen door squeaked. Phillip came out and stood beside him. His face was shiny with tears.

This sucks.’

‘Yep.’

‘You cracked the wall.’

‘Yep.’

‘Does it get any worse than this?’

Lockie didn’t have an answer to that. But he had a horrible feeling about the possibilities.

ext morning the Sarge went back to the hospital to see how things were. Lockie looked after Blob and Phillip experimented with the microwave, trying to make icecream soup. When the Sarge got home he didn’t say much. A kind of quiet came over the house. It was Saturday and on the breeze you could hear Saturday sounds: kids playing cricket, some bogan tuning up his gas-guzzler in a driveway, a model plane with a mosquito whine. The rain had finally stopped and the sun looked like a half-squeezed lemon.

The Sarge started stuffing sheets into the washing machine. He really rammed it down the throat of the old Whirlpool.

‘Okay?’ Lockie murmured.

‘Nope.’

‘Anything I can do?’

‘Maybe you should get out for a while. Get yourself a bit of air.’

Lockie watched him shove in another sheet. Any moment now that washing machine was going to gag.

‘I won’t be long,’ he said, passing Blob across. The Sarge shrugged, his mind elsewhere.

Lockie grabbed his bike and racked off.

The fresh air ripped through Lockie’s hair as he rode. He pushed his old crate along until all he could feel was the breath burning in his lungs. He didn’t think about school or the town or the end of the summer holidays looming; he just powered down through the streets till he found himself outside the hospital.

For a long while he sat on his bike watching the sun on the joint’s tinted windows. With its flesh-coloured bricks and those airconditioners sprouting all over it like warts, the hospital looked like a great blind, ugly giant. Someone had designed this place and got paid for it. Lockie wondered how they slept at night, these architect blokes.

He rode round the wasteland of the carpark for a while, watching people come and go with wheelchairs and crutches and walking frames. How brilliant it must feel to have something simple wrong with you, to come out of that humming joint with a nifty little plaster on your arm knowing you’re all fixed and that’s that. To come out smelling the fresh air and hear the birds and know you’re alright and going home. He sat back and watched the main entrance for a while. Those big glass doors hissing open and clicking shut made his skin prickle. Lockie couldn’t even dream of what his mum might be feeling now. Maybe you needed to be mad in there so you could tell yourself you were somewhere else. Clouds slid across the tinted plate glass. Lockie shuddered and rode off. As he passed the entrance the doors whooshed open and he caught a nasty cold whiff of antiseptic, like mouthwash, yes, like Listerine, and it reminded him of something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. That smell gave him the creeps. He cranked those pedals and got out of there.

Lockie coasted through town towards the stink of the harbour. Families were doing their Saturday shopping and cars were double-parked all down the main drag. A couple of times he heard kids call out to him as he breezed past but he didn’t look back. He just couldn’t think of school life starting up for another year. More class gossip. Hundreds more laps of the athletics track. Another year in chains.

He glided under the hundred tiny flags of Streeton’s car yard. He most definitely didn’t look over in case he saw someone he knew he couldn’t bear to see, a particular someone of the female variety. Not today—he couldn’t bear it.

He got to the rotting boards of the town jetty and the dungsome stench of the harbour. The sewer pipes and factory outlets were stopped up for good now and there were Environmental Protection guys in white overalls on barges out there even now, but there was a long way to go before the harbour was clean again. That was where his summer had gone, now that he thought of it, into saving the harbour. Him and Egg. And his mum, of course. She was unbelieveable. She ran the whole campaign in the end. Angelus people started to call her Captain Planet; they didn’t care for greenies much around here. All those long days and nights on the phone hustling up support, smoothing over eco-egos, screen-printing shirts and banners, taking the heat from local business types and rednecks. It felt great being in on all that, but Lockie knew that while he was wimping out and disappearing for a surf in the middle of the campaign, his mum was busting her buns to get the job done. It hit him then, thinking of the summer she’d had. It was no long hot season at the beach for her. She’d done it tough. And he’d been carrying on as though it was business as usual. It made him so ashamed he couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t escape thinking about her.

He spun on his back wheel and took off, nearly collecting an old lady and a dog halfway back down the jetty.

In the end, Lockie arrived where he was always going to end up: at the beach. Mister Predictable. He rode up the grassy back of a dune and looked out over the bay. There was no swell and the water was bronze with sunlight.

Out in the distance the surface broke now and then. There were fish jumping like tiny platinum darts. Lockie watched them flash in the sun, leaping madly, turning and swerving. And then he saw a great splash in their midst and out of the water came a dolphin wriggling into the sky with a gobful of silver. The grinning dolphin crashed back into the sea and the bay was still.

Lockie rode back uphill with his head buzzing.

et’s face it. Just when you think nothing worse can possibly happen, when you think your bum is bouncing on the bottom of the barrel and you can’t go any lower, something always comes along to really rub your nose in it. As Lockie was soon to discover. Riding up the muddy driveway, Lockie still felt a little thrill from seeing the dolphin. He’d left feeling lower than a snake full of ball bearings, but now he wasn’t so bad. Phillip sat on the edge of the verandah and as Lockie swung off the bike he saw that his little brother’s lower lip was the size of a hot air balloon.

‘What happened to you?’

Lockie had a terrible thought. For a moment he wondered if maybe the Sarge had belted him one. But that was stupid. Their dad wasn’t like that.

‘Soof,’ said Phillip glumly.

‘Sorry?’

‘Souf. I vurnt vy lif on the souf.’

‘Do I get a translation?’

‘Icecreeb souf! Vicroway souf!’

‘Microwave? Oh, man. Icecream soup. What happened, did you blow up the machine or the icecream?’

Phillip shook his head. ‘It worked perveckly.’

‘So what about the fat lip?’

‘Icecreeb souf, Lockie. Hotter ’n it looks.’

‘Yikes. You need ice on that.’

‘Had it.’

The Sarge came to the door with Blob asleep against his shoulder. He was smiling at them but you could tell he was trying too hard to look cheerful.

‘Hey, you got a licence for that blister, Mister?’

Phillip rolled his eyes. You could hardly see his eyes behind that great swelling, throbbing lip. Obviously he’d been taking lip jokes for a while already.

‘Well, Sarge,’ said Lockie, smelling some unlovely announcement in the air, ‘what’s up?’

‘More lif jokes,’ said Phillip folding his arms. ‘Oh goody.’

‘That’s enough lip from you,’ said the Sarge lamely. None of them even cracked a smile. ‘We gotta make some plans, boys. With all this happening we’ve got to organise ourselves differently for a while.’

‘We’re coping alright, aren’t we?’ said Lockie, knowing it wasn’t strictly true.

‘Lockie, we need to get some help here. I can’t take another week off and I can’t afford to pay a housekeeper or nanny or whatever, so I’ve got some big problems.’

‘Sarge—’

‘Look, you blokes have done a great job and I’m really proud of you, but in a week’s time you’ll be back at school and there’ll be no one here for your sister. I can’t take her to work—she’d eat all the lino and frighten the crims. Gawd, there’d be a stampede in the lock-up. So, I’ve called your Nan and Pop.’ The boys gasped and looked at each other in absolute disbelief. ‘They’ve been very good about it. They’re coming down from Perth on tomorrow’s bus.’

‘Are you serious?’ said Lockie. ‘Nan and Pop? I’d rather go into an orphanage!’

‘You wouldn’t know an orphanage if it snuck up and bit you on the bum. Don’t be silly.’

‘But—’

‘I really haven’t got much choice, Lock. If I lose my job things won’t get better any faster. Think of what we’d lose. The huge paycheck. The mansion the government so kindly provides for us. All this high living will have to go. No more caviar and champagne, no more penthouse in the swamp.’

‘Very damn funny.’

‘Yeah, a scream. But I’m serious. If I’m unemployed we’re all in the poo. So, it’s the grandparents. That’s the deal.’

The Sarge took Blob back inside to lie her in the cot. That left the Leonard boys a few seconds to stand there and do their imitation of a pair of stunned mullet. Nan and Pop?

‘I think this is called from bad to worse,’ muttered Lockie.

‘Worst,’ said Phillip with some lip trouble.

‘Worstest.’

‘Worsterest.’

‘Worstedness.’

‘Worstatious.’

‘Now you sound like Egg. He’d call it complete worstatiousness. With a twist of lemon.’

Phillip laughed. It was a hopeless sound.

Brushing his teeth gloomily that night, Lockie opened the bathroom cabinet and caught a whiff of antiseptic. Phew, that smell again. What was it that it reminded him of? The stink of hospital. But he’d hardly ever been into a hospital in his whole life. Never had his tonsils out, nor his appendix. He’d never swallowed scissors or hacked himself open with broken glass. He sure as hell never had to go to Emergency to get his whatsit cut out of a zipper like Egg.

He went to bed and lay awake thinking back.

When Blob was born? Nope. Never went to the hospital.

Nothing. But it haunted him, that Listerine smell.

ow you’ll agree there are grandparents and there are grandparents. Lockie Leonard’s Nan and Pop played in a league all their own. In fact, all Lockie’s Nan and Pop ever did was play. They were golfers. Once upon a time they must have simply been keen golfers. This was obviously before they became mad keen golfers. Later they graduated to being mad golfers. But in all the years Lockie had known them his grandparents were straight-out hard-core single-minded completely nutso golfers.

After they retired from whatever it was that kept them from fulltime golf in their early years, they moved to a dinky retirement estate that not only had its own golf course but where the houses were more or less on the links itself. They could lie in bed and listen to the swish of a five iron at the first tee. They could sit in the spa and hear sweaty businessmen trying to hack their way out of the sandtrap that backed onto their house. At breakfast they could sit on their terrace and watch caddies getting brained by sliced shots and diving magpies. All of this probably made Nan and Pop think they’d died and gone to Heaven early. After all, they were golfers with genuine nutso status. If you were someone else, someone not exactly into golf, say Lockie Leonard for instance, it was enough to make you slip into a coma and never come back.

When he was a youngster and the family lived in Perth, Lockie used to visit them at Silver Links with his mum. The Sarge called it Missing Links and found ingenious excuses not to go. Whenever Lockie visited them, his Nan and Pop were always kind of distracted. They talked about handicaps and pars and bogies and buggies and hardly noticed he, their first grandson, was there at all. He could never imagine his mum as their child. Had she been born on the eighth hole in a severe cross wind at two over the card? Did Nan pull her shot, sky the ball and end up in the rough? Was the baby wrapped in a gym towel and stuck in beside the putter on the back seat of the motorised cart until the end of the round? Mrs Leonard wouldn’t even say the word GOLF and Lockie didn’t blame her. How did people so . . . well, so Nan and Pop-like produce such a daughter?

On those long ago visits, if Nan and Pop ever did notice Lockie’s presence they usually sent him off to ferret for lost balls in the bush. He wondered if that’s how his mum had grown up, fossicking for lost Slazenger Sevens. Sometimes he thought if he looked hard enough he might stumble upon Nan and Pop’s lost marbles out there in the rough. But it never happened and he never really got to know them. Since moving to Angelus last year, Lockie had forgotten they even existed.

And now they were coming to stay. Yikes. Still, it was possible that this was the chance they might have been waiting for all these years to show how much they cared. Maybe Pm too cynical, Lockie thought next morning after breakfast. We need the help and they are family. I’m gonna keep an open mind.

An hour later, as his Nan and Pop got off the bus at the Angelus bus station, Lockie’s heart sank like a bunjee jumper with greasy ankles. The Sarge and him and Phillip stood there in the cold breeze to watch the oldies get off the bus in their checkerboard slacks and yellow cardigans. Lockie saw the two-tone shoes and bit his lip. Phillip looked as though lip-biting was out of the question. Overnight his fat lip had burst and now it was a black scab, like a cockroach parked above his chin.

The moment Lockie saw the golf bags being unloaded from the guts of the bus he knew in his heart that this would never work. Two huge tartan golf bags. Two teeny overnight bags just big enough to get a toothbrush and some denture glue into. Uh-uh, These people couldn’t be for real. A family crisis and they bring the golf goodies. The Sarge seemed to have the romantic notion that Nan and Pop would be staying a fortnight. Lockie gave it three days, max.

‘Lockie!’ said his dear old Nan looking straight at Phillip.

‘Ugh!’ said Pop. ‘He’s got herpes.’

‘Lookin’ good, Lockie,’ said Phillip under his breath.

‘Quick, Sarge,’ said Lockie. ‘Put ’em back on the bus. We’ll pay.’

But the Sarge smiled like a condemned man and took the golf bags and the overnight bags with Blob still on his hip. All in a day’s work, his smile seemed to say. Lockie knew better, but he kept his mouth shut.

‘Phoo,’ said Pop, lifting his veiny nose into the air. ‘This town stinks, doesn’t it?’

‘It’s the phoo hitting the fan,’ said Phillip.

‘What’d he say?’ said Pop. ‘Can’t understand him with that scuzz on his lip.’

‘It’s real good to see you and Nan,’ said the Sarge, glaring at Phillip.

‘Hmm,’ said Pop, climbing into the Falcon.

Lockie leaned against the car and thought he might faint with laughter. His life really was a mess.

s soon as the Sarge settled everyone in he headed off to the hospital. Lockie and Phillip and even Blob sat around expectantly, waiting to see what remarkable thing would happen. The oldies padded around the house in their two-tone shoes, sniffing and rolling their eyes. They looked out at the dismal swamp that was the Leonards’ yard. The whole place was awful the way only a government-supplied house can be. Lockie supposed he was used to it. He remembered the first day the family moved here. His mum cried that day too.

The oldies opened and closed the fridge, peeked in cupboards and sighed.

‘Put the kettle on, Mother,’ said Pop.

‘That’s your Pop,’ Lockie told Blob. His little sister was admiring Pop’s shoes. She probably wanted to eat them. Suddenly she belched.

‘Borp!’

‘Hear that?’ said Nan. ‘She’s talking. She’s not slow at all.’

‘Slow?’ said Phillip. ‘Who says she’s slow?’

‘Oh, your mother,’ said Pop opening the microwave. A great waft of burnt icecream put a few more wrinkles on his not very smooth face. ‘The kid crawls backwards, won’t walk or talk, I hear.’

‘Joy has these silly notions,’ said Nan. ‘The baby is perfectly normal. Well, fairly normal.’

Joy. Lockie never thought of his mother as Joy. Joy Leonard. Joy. It was a happy name. He always thought of her as Mrs Leonard, his mum. It rocked him a bit, the difference a name made.

‘Blob’s fine,’ said Lockie. ‘She just has weird eating habits.’

‘Well, it’s not a big enough thing to go and drop your bundle over. Your mother used to eat flies and Nan didn’t flip.’

‘Butterflies, Father.’

‘Oh, yeah. Well, that’s not so bad then.’

Lockie detected a kind of tone in their talk that he didn’t like. Drop your bundle. Flip out?

‘Well,’ said Nan. ‘What do you normally do today?’

Lockie ran his hands through his ratty blond hair. ‘I don’t even know what day it is, Nan. We’re sort of out of routine. We’re a bit freaked out with all of this.’

‘It’s Sunday.’

‘Oh.’

Phillip piped up. ‘Church. We usually go.’

‘We’re not churchgoers,’ Pop said firmly.

‘We’ve missed it anyway,’ said Phillip.

‘Good. What about homework?’

‘Nan, it’s the summer holidays,’ said Lockie.

‘Hmm.’

‘We’ll need to buy disposable nappies for the baby,’ said Pop. ‘I’m not washing diapers.’

‘Mum doesn’t use them,’ said Lockie proudly. ‘Disposables are terrible for the environment. They don’t break down, you know.’

‘We’re a bit old for washing nappies,’ said Nan in her best little old lady voice. ‘We’ll all have to compromise.’

‘Mum’d be really upset, Nan,’ said Lockie.

‘Well,’ said Pop, ‘what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, eh?’

Lockie bit his tongue. He shrugged. Then he piped up. ‘I’ll wash the nappies. No disposables and I’ll wash.’

‘You’re on, junior.’

What a victory, thought Lockie. I just signed up for crud-scraping duty.

Blob headed for Pop’s shoes. A silver thread of drool dropped sweetly onto his sexy two-tones. Pop looked down in horror.

‘Mother, quick, bring a tissue!’

‘Borp,’ burped Blob.

Til give you bop.’

Get me outta here, thought Lockie.

When the kettle boiled Nan and Pop made a cuppa for themselves and headed straight for the telly.

‘Look at the size of that putter!’ groused Pop. ‘It’s like a damned flagpole.’

‘Ah,’ coohed Nan, ‘there’s that big lunk Daly. They reckon he’s off the turps but you’d think he could tuck his shirt in.’

‘Whoo, but can he hit a ball, Mother. Yes indeedy.’

Lockie and Phillip stood behind the couch making unkind hand signals and pulling faces that weren’t exactly respectful. Blob got the giggles. In the end the boys took her out onto the verandah and took turns at being horses until their knees ached.

‘I never felt like running away from home before,’ muttered Phillip.

Lockie shrugged.

‘It’s a disaster, Lockie.’

Lockie pursed his lips.

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Not yet.’

But it would be. Lockie knew that much. It had disaster written all over it.

As the Sarge rolled in from the hospital, Lockie went out to meet him at the car. There was that smell again, that Listerine smell of the hospital. The Sarge had brought it home in his clothes.

‘How’s it all going, Lock?’ asked the Sarge looking washed out.

‘No one’s dead yet,’ Lockie said. ‘But it’s only a matter of time. How’s Mum?’

‘Not good.’

‘But what does that mean? I feel like I never know what’s going on, Dad. I’m nearly fourteen, you know. You should trust me more.’

The Sarge looked surprised at this. ‘But I do trust you.’

‘I’m not a kid anymore.’

‘Lockie, I can’t talk now. I’m nearly . . . I’m too . . . Another time, okay? We’ll talk.’

Lockie kicked the Falcon’s front tyre and stalked out to the shed.

‘This sucks!’ he yelled to the tools and the cardboard boxes and trunks and teachests and the wreckage of Phillip’s mad experiments. This Hoovers! It suuuuuuuuuuuuuuckks!’

He was too busy spitting the dummy to notice the Sarge still out in the Falcon with a hanky squashed into his eyes, crying without a sound.

ockie and Phillip gave up their not very salubrious bedroom to the golfing grandparents and moved into the loungeroom. Lockie wasn’t thrilled about the idea of sleeping on a couch but you couldn’t really expect old people to be sofa campers. Besides, he wanted to keep the peace as long as possible. The trouble was that, not only did Nan and Pop need his room, they also badly needed to watch the Blah-blah Open and the Whatsit Masters on the telly most hours of the day and night. So it was pretty hard to get any privacy in the loungeroom.

The first night Lockie tried to tough it out by unrolling the sleeping bags at ten and laying heavy hints about how tired he and Phillip were after bathing Blob, washing the dishes and clearing out their room, but Nan and Pop were glass-eyed with the hot action at Palm Springs or the Vines or some other bit of green grass with holes in it and they didn’t move a wrinkle.

‘Phillip,’ said Lockie in his least subtle voice, ‘I think we’ll go to sleep now in our sleeping bags.’

‘On these couches?’

‘Golf willing.’

‘By golf, you’re right.’

‘Yes, brother Phillip. In golf we trust.’

Phillip wriggled into his sleeping bag and lay tittering on the free couch. Lockie stood up in his bag beside his riveted grandparents and waited for them to get the message.

‘Hey, Pop!’ said Phillip. ‘Lockie’s getting teed off.’

‘Shh! It’s Craig Parry.’

‘Golfdammit, Pop,’ said Lockie. ‘I should have known better. Hey, he’s got erotic two-tones like you.’

Phillip shrieked and fell off his couch.

The Sarge came in looking shocking.

‘Phillip, hop into my bed. Come on, Lockie. Show a bit of maturity.’

‘Yeah, right Sarge.’

‘I’m off to bed now,’ said the Sarge to the hypnotised retirees.

Nan waved a half wave but she might have been scratching her ear or practising her swing. The Sarge looked at the wild, blood pumping action on the TV and shrugged. He headed off. Lockie flopped onto the other couch and hoped for a power blackout. He fell asleep while grown men in baby clothes hit little white balls across grass.

Lockie sat waiting with Phillip in the back of the car. He fooled with the ashtray and heard Phillip hum a nursery rhyme beside him. Both of them were small again. Their feet stuck out from the seat and their sandals clacked together. Magpies flitted across the sunny carpark. Wheelchairs rolled by. For a long time nothing happened, nothing at all, but they didn’t muck around or play up because they were on their best behaviour. Absolute very best behaviour.

Then, after a long time Lockie looked up to see the big doors opening and out came their mum in new clothes, looking pale and leaning on their dad a bit. Lockie and Phillip sat up like two dogs, alert and trembling. She got in the car carefully and a strange Listerine kind of smell came in with her. The smell of hospital. And a kind of quiet sadness. Everyone said hello, still on their best behaviour and it was a long, puzzling trip home with no one speaking much, not even Phillip who was small. Even he knew something was wrong. Lockie wanted to ask, but he was on his best behaviour.

‘Lockie! Hey, Lockie!’

He sat up with a grunt. The Sarge was in full uniform. He was holding a cup of tea.

‘Here, drink this.’

Lockie stared at the cup and saucer, not quite awake.

‘You were dreaming.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Seven.’

Lockie sat up in his steaming sleeping bag. So that’s what it was, that hospital smell. She had been in before.

‘I’m on days this week, Lock. Make a big effort with your grandparents, okay? Help ’em out. They’re sort of outta practice.’

‘If you get home and find two unmarked graves in the yard, don’t ask any questions.’

‘I’m depending on you to be responsible, son.’

‘I want to talk about Mum.’

‘Tonight. I’ve gotta go.’ The Sarge checked himself in the dead reflection of the TV. ‘Cuffs and holster, hat and handbag—I’m set.’

‘You forgot your book.’

‘It’s in the car. Wutbering Heights.’

‘I’ll bet that’s a babe-fest.’

‘Hm, you’d be surprised. See you tonight.’

Lockie didn’t know it yet but that was the last sane moment of the day.

t breakfast dear old Pop got all antsy about the fact that there was no bran, no wheat-germ and no double-strength bum-blasting prunes.

‘I’m a self-funded retiree whose bowels actually work,’ he said, shaking his blotchy little fist. ‘None of that happens without care, planning and hard work.’

‘Oh, he’s a proud one,’ said Nan admiringly.

‘Well,’ said Lockie as cheerfully as he could manage, ‘Monday’s shopping day.’

‘Have eggs ’n’ bacon, Pop,’ said Phillip. ‘It’s good gear.’

‘Cholesterol! Fat!’

‘Taste!’ said Phillip.

Nan came over to Phillip with a little brown tin, ‘Give me a look at that lip. Hmm.’ She popped the tin and dug out some greasy grey goo which hung off her fingertip like something unspeakable from someone’s infected sinus.

‘I was only jokin’,’ yelped Phillip. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’

‘Goanna Oil,’ said Nan. ‘Just the thing for that lip.’

Nan coated Phillip’s scabby lip with the vile reptilian goop.

‘Urrrrggggghhhh!’

‘Exactly. Feels better already, doesn’t it?’

‘Smegma!’ cried Phillip.

Lockie smiled. ‘Well, it does look a lot better, mate.’ Actually it looked too awful for words but Lockie was trying to be a diplomat. Anyone put that on my face, he thought, I’d be laying charges.

They spent the entire morning trudging the streets of Angelus prospecting for the kind of food that Nan and Pop could eat without getting bunged up or barfed off. As they cruised the shop aisles looking for bean curd, rice cakes, alfalfa sprouts and dried fruit that looked like shrunken body parts, Lockie prayed that no one he knew would see them. But of course everybody saw. How could you miss an entourage like that? Two overtanned oldsters in canary tracksuits shouting about their bowels? The little brother with the nuked lip dripping lizard grease? The baby in the stroller screaming like a band saw? Not exactly inconspicuous. Lockie slunk around the shops trying to be invisible. Without success.

When they all got home, flustered, hungry and cranky, Lockie realised that there was no milk, no bread, cereal, butter, Vegemite or meat in the house. In all the ruckus they’d only managed to bring home birdseed and laxatives. There wasn’t even any Napi-San left, and Lockie knew from hard experience that you couldn’t exist without nappy wash.

He tried to break the news to the oldies without sounding disrespectful, but they were too pooped to even be embarrassed. Besides, Pop was already itching to get back to the golf coverage. They flopped on the couch. Phillip locked himself in the toilet. He refused to come out until the lizard lard wore off. So Lockie changed the bawling Blob, grabbed the grocery money, turned the stroller around, and headed back to town.

Blob yelled and thrashed in the stroller all the way back up the drive. Lockie pulled a few wheelstands and handbrake turns but she kept on lunging it out. All the way up the street he surfed the kerb with the stroller, pulling reentries and cutbacks for her benefit. He even sang nursery rhymes, but nothing worked. In the end, she simply went to sleep, sweaty and red-faced, as though her batteries had finally given out.

Lockie stumped on in relief. His nerves were shot.

In the cool, peaceful aisles of the supermarket, Lockie hung plastic bags from the stroller and loaded up on serious food and supplies. He liked the way his Blundstones cheeped and squawked on the shiny floor. It drowned out the sick, dinky muzak trickling out of speakers in the ceiling—Kenny G does Soundgarden Favourites.

At the sweet-smelling baby section, Lockie scooted nobly past the piles of disposable diapers and looked for a hot bargain in the world of nappy washes. There were tubs, tins and tanks of the stuff, all with fuzzy pictures of shiny-haired mothers kissing their rosy-cheeked babies. No mention of bottoms or baby gravy anywhere.

Lockie picked up a big pink five-litre bucket that was on special. It looked like pool cleaner. He was reading the weird instructions on the side when a tremor ran along the aisle. The shelves shuddered. Flowery pink and white boxes rippled and teetered in a whole wall of swaying cardboard. It was an avalanche. Boxes began to pour and tip and tumble out onto two shrieking people further down. They tried to beat it off. It sounded like rain at first, but soon it had the rumble of a wave breaking and the two women gave up and let themselves be buried. In the end, when the commotion was all over, Lockie saw them giggling waist high in a pile of boxes. A woman and a girl. A woman and a girl he recognised with such a start that he cried out. It was Vicki Streeton and her mum.

Vicki.

Looking at him. Him behind the baby stroller with the pink safety pins hanging from his Mambo shirt. Him, Lockie Leonard, holding a five-litre bucket of nappy treatment. Poop wash! Aaaaaarrrrrrrgggggh! Embarrassment!

He saw those green eyes suddenly turn on him and widen in recognition and before he could get his mouth to work Vicki turned and bolted.

Lockie stood there like the last living idiot. It was then that he looked down and saw why she ran. She’d been standing waist deep in the shop’s entire stock of tampons, pads and panty shields.

‘Don’t you hate this end of the shop, Lockie?’ said Mrs Streeton climbing out of that great pile of personal hygiene.

‘I was looking for a frozen chook,’ he said.

‘Of course you were.’

Lockie was pushing the overloaded stroller back home when a paddy wagon pulled in beside him and the Sarge and a constable wound down their windows.

‘What’s up?’ said the Sarge.

‘Shopping,’ said Lockie.

‘Where’s everyone else? You look white as a sheet.’

‘I’m okay.’

The Sarge got out and opened the back door to the van. ‘Here, pile it in. We’ll run you home.’

Lockie shrugged. The back of the cop van smelled of sick and sweat and Pine-O-Clean. He rested his head against the grille that separated him from the cab. As they took off, he held onto the stroller. Blob slept on, her cheeks bunched up under her eyelids. She looked peaceful and he felt a stab of envy.

As they pulled into the squelchy driveway, the van’s windscreen exploded. The constable hit the brakes and Lockie’s head whanged into the grille. Blob teetered out and fell back into her stroller, still asleep. The Sarge and the young constable spilled out of the cab, reaching for their holsters.

Lockie got up on his knees and peered out, terrified. An armed siege. Just what he needed to settle his nerves. And here he was, locked in a cop car like a sitting duck.

Out through the fractured windscreen Lockie saw a man running. He had something long and shiny in his hands. A glint of metal. A canary yellow blur. He wore two-tone shoes. He looked a bit like Pop. Something else caught Lockie’s eye, something closer. On the dashboard, amidst the little frosty cubes of shattered glass, sat a golfball. Slazenger No. 6.

There was a certain amount of coarse language outside the van at this point. Then the rear door swung open and the Sarge leant in, his face dark as doom. Lockie smiled and gave him the old spastic eyebrow routine.

‘We’re having the same kind of day, Sarge. Only difference is, you’re armed and I’m not.’

‘We’ll talk when I get home.’

‘Why don’t you just put the cuffs on him and do the right thing?’

‘I said we’ll talk later.’

‘There’s a shovel in the shed.’

‘Lockie—’

‘No one’ll ever know.’

The Sarge hauled the stroller and all the shopping out. Lockie felt himself hoisted out by the collar, smiling all the way.

op got the hiccups. He said the morning’s little incident with the windscreen had shattered his nerves and when he got nervy, dear old Pop got hiccuppy as well. They weren’t the cute kind of hiccups that Blob got when you made her giggle too much. They were huge racking jobs that sounded like a fifty-kilo rooster waking up in your loungeroom.

‘Erkk!’

‘Eerrkk!’

‘Eeeeerrrrrkkkkk!’

Old Pop could really hiccup. Man, he could represent his country at the Olympics. He hiccupped all afternoon, erking and arking and groaning and moaning until Lockie and Phillip and Blob locked themselves in the laundry and made monster faces out of Play-Doh. But it was hard to make any progress at Play-Doh with Blob around because she tended to eat whatever you were building before you could get it finished.

‘You remember collecting Mum from hospital once when we were little?’

‘When Blob was born?’ said Phillip.

‘No, before. Way back.’

Phillip squinted, thinking. ‘Nope.’

‘Funny.’

‘What was she in for?’

‘No idea.’

Phillip moulded a particularly awful-looking ear to fit on his ghoul’s head and was reaching over to stick it on when Blob lunged and half the ear was instantly gone.

‘Hate to see you in a feeding frenzy, Blob,’ said Lockie. ‘Someone could lose an arm.’

‘Aren’t the tofu kebabs enough for you, Blob?’ Phillip muttered.

Blob looked at each of them, her jaws working, cheeks balled up. And then a change came over her features. She gobbed the gumhacked Play-Doh onto the floor and said, ‘Mumma?’

The boys stared at her.

‘She talked.’

‘Mumma?’

‘Her first word, Phillip.’

‘Better late than never.’

‘Mumma?’

Lockie and Phillip looked at each other, each thinking the same thing. Their mum wasn’t here to see it.

After dinner that night, which wasn’t much of a success because Lockie had never cooked lamb chops before and Nan wouldn’t touch meat with a forklift, the Sarge pulled Lockie aside for a moment. They went out into the yard.

‘What’s the story, Lockie?’

‘With the oldies?’

‘They reckon you’re being sullen. Uncooperative.’

‘Geez, Sarge!’

‘Take it easy. What’s going on?’

‘What’s going on is this. Our flamin’ grandparents—’

‘Just inside the house there, so bring it down a bit.’

‘Sorry. But it’s hopeless, Sarge. It’s more work with them than it was without ’em. They’re driving me crazy.’

‘They can’t help being old.’

‘I don’t mind them being old. Let them be old. Let ’em be two hundred and forty six in the shade. The thing is, they’re no help!’

‘They’re your mum’s parents, Lockie.’

‘Well, you can’t get a refund, I know. But it’s wrong, Sarge. It won’t work. I promise you it’ll be better without ’em. They’ve got their minds on other things. They seem to have the idea that Mum’s just slacking off. In their day they were made of better stuff—that kind of stuff. Anyway, how was she?’

‘So-so.’

‘I hate all this.’

‘Me too, mate.’

‘Blob said a real word today.’

‘Yeah, Phillip said. Your mum would’ve been over the moon.’

‘Can we visit her?’

‘Soon.’

‘Can we stick the oldies on the morning bus?’

The Sarge sighed. ‘Look at it from my position. It’s gonna be horribly awkward if I tell ’em their services are suddenly no longer required.’

‘I don’t think they’ll be offended, Sarge. They’ll be relieved. They can hit the greens the moment they get home. You know today I half expected them to be gone off for a round of golf when I got home from the shop. They’ve got some kind of addiction thing. And it’s like they can’t quite get interested in us. Or Mum. If I was them I would’ve broken down the door to see my sick daughter.’

‘Thankfully that hasn’t happened,’ said the Sarge. ‘It’s a delicate time, mate.’

‘But you know what I mean.’

The Sarge kicked at a bit of gravel. ‘Yeah, they’re different alright.’

‘Put ’em on the bus. Please.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘I love it when you say that.’

‘What?’

‘We’ll see. The parent’s classic answer.’

The Sarge grinned. His teeth showed white in the half-light. ‘Would you prefer a straight “no”?’

‘Has a chicken got lips?’

Faced with another big night of you-know-what on the telly, Phillip joined Blob in the Sarge’s room and Lockie made up his bed in the laundry. Lockie knew he was safe wherever the nappy buckets lived. That stink was like a force-field and the oldies wouldn’t come within coo-ee. So he stacked a pile of cushions and pillows in a corner on the lino and made himself a nest. Homeless in his own home. Homeless on the Range.

He listened to tapes on his battered Walkman for a while, lonely, sad songs by the Cranberries and Joan Osborne, things that made him think about his mum. He wondered what was going through her mind, if she was awake somewhere in a hospital room thinking about home. He wondered if this—all this—was how things would be from now on. Maybe everything had changed forever. He couldn’t bear to think of his life going on like this.

Lockie pulled his earphones off after an hour or so when he heard raised voices over the boom of the TV.

‘I don’t think you understand, Barney,’ the Sarge was saying. ‘She’s not away on a holiday, you know.’

Pop muttered something Lockie couldn’t hear over the TV. Lockie got up and opened the door a crack.

‘In my day,’ Nan said, her voice dipping under the golf now and then, ‘a girl who got married and had kids was expected to be independent. We didn’t look for excuses. We couldn’t afford to get sick. Sometimes I think the whole country is going soft.’

‘Well,’ said the Sarge, ‘we can’t afford it either. Sickness isn’t exactly Joy’s hobby, you know.’

‘Everyone complains about stress, stress, stress. We’d never even heard of stress in those days. No one wants to work anymore. Everyone’s slacking off if you ask me.’

‘Look,’ said the Sarge, ‘maybe the world doesn’t look real stressful from the fairways of a golfing resort—’

‘Now look here, young man!’

‘—But I see things from the other end every day,’ said the Sarge all fiery, ‘and I can tell you that life is tough on people. People don’t look so soft from where I stand. I see the worst in people, in my job. I see the worst that life does to them. It’s enough to break your bloody heart. You people have . . . I think you’ve forgotten what it’s like, that’s all.’

‘The whole country’s spoilt and soft.’

‘So that’s our problem! We’re just soft. Your daughter’s soft?’

‘You need to be tough to get ahead,’ said Pop. ‘If you’re soft you’ll always live like this.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like losers.’

‘Look,’ said the Sarge, his voice trembling with barely controlled anger, ‘I think Joy deserves a little more respect and support. That goes for the kids, too. It’s been hard for them with this transfer. They’re not spoilt or soft. They’re heroes, as far as I’m concerned. All of them. They could teach you a thing or two.’

‘Well,’ said Pop. ‘That’s gratitude.’

‘No wonder the kids give us lip,’ said Nan. ‘With your example.’

‘Yeah, no wonder,’ said the Sarge.

‘I don’t appreciate your tone.’

‘I’m tone-deaf, ask Joy.’

‘You’ve worn her down,’ said Nan. ‘With all this squalor.’

‘I warned her about you,’ said Pop. ‘I knew you’d be unreliable, reading all that poetry. Not enough steel in you. No guts.’

‘Well,’ said the Sarge, ‘on that cosy note I’ll bid you goodnight and thank you for your wonderful support. It’s been a pleasure and an education.’

Then there was just the sound of the golf on the telly. Lockie closed the door and lay in the dark, his heart thumping. Go Sarge!

Before breakfast the Sarge woke Lockie quietly.

‘Um, listen mate. Nan’s not feeling too good. It’s her . . . her arthritis. She needs to go home.’

‘Oh’ said Lockie keeping a straight face. ‘What a bummer.’

‘Well, they’re packing now.’

‘Both of ’em?’

‘Hmm.’

‘Arthritis, huh. I hear stress makes it worse’

‘Stress, eh?’

Lockie kept a straight face. It wasn’t easy.

t was a long, slow, silent ride in the car to the bus depot. Now and then you could hear the clank of the oldies’ clubs in the back as the Falcon hit a pothole, but no one said a word. Lockie’s grandparents sat like statues. The Sarge looked like he’d been holding his breath since breakfast. But for Lockie it felt like a second stab at Christmas. He could barely keep the grin off his face long enough to load the oldies on the bus.

The Greyhound snorted and heaved itself onto the road. The Leonards waved like they were suddenly the Brady Bunch.

‘Well,’ said Phillip, ‘looks like we just won the Golf War.’

Everyone cracked up, even the Sarge.

‘I must be mad,’ he said. ‘I am mad. I’m already up poop creek and I’ve just thrown away the paddle. And I’m late for work. I’m an irresponsible idiot!’

‘But that’s what we like about you, Sarge,’ said Lockie.

When the Leonards got home there was a casserole sitting on the front step. Beside it was a bunch of daisies. They just stood there for a while like Japanese tourists gawking at a kangaroo. At first it was really strange. Lockie felt a bit unnerved by this sudden appearance. It meant someone knew about his mum. Lockie hadn’t told anybody, that’s for sure. He was kind of uncomfortable about people knowing. But bit by bit he felt a bit of a glow inside him, a warm patch, as he realised with relief that they weren’t alone. Someone had thought of them. Geez, it felt good.

That day Lockie tried to get the house back to how it was before the fateful arrival of Nan and Pop. The Sarge went to work, leaving behind him a bomb-site, and in four hours Lockie had it back to being a simple, ordinary shambles. He put two loads of washing through the machine, scrubbed the bathtub, vacuumed the curtains the way his mum did and cooked Burgers à la Human Torpedo for lunch. He swept the kitchen, mopped the floor, bulldozed Blob’s toys into one corner of the loungeroom and tried to get Blob’s hamburger patty off the ceiling.

Then he thought—what the hell—so, he went the full distance and scrubbed the toilet. He put the Spindoctors on the tapedeck, stuck a peg on his nose and really gave that S-bend a tickle. The house boomed with music Blob hung onto him from behind, pulling the hairs out of his legs and tugging on his shorts.

‘Say Ah,’ said Lockie to his porcelain patient. ‘Now, Mr Sir, this won’t hurt a bit.’

Later in the day he watched Phillip pulling Blob round the yard in an old shopping trolley. Washing hung all wonky and cock-eyed from the line. Golf balls stood around like hail stones in the weeds. He wondered who it was who’d left the food and flowers on the step. Was it all over town in a single week? Joy Leonard in the loony bin. Captain Planet becomes a space-case. Lockie hadn’t heard anything at all. No one had phoned. So who was it? One of his mum’s environmentalist friends, maybe? They weren’t exactly the casserole-and-daisy type. Most of them were coffee and nose-stud vegetarians. Besides, none of them had been around since the harbour campaign ended. Lockie’s mum had wondered aloud about being too straight for them. Married to a cop and everything. You could tell she was a bit disappointed about it. One week the house is full of dreadlocked sisters and the next week nothing. No, thought Lockie. It wouldn’t be them.

Someone from church? Not likely, not after all that eco-fuss. Most of the people from church loved their neighbours like the Good Book said. As long as their neighbours weren’t hanging around with greenies and hippies and women with hair under their arms.

Hmm . . . maybe he was being too cynical. But he couldn’t for the life of him think who it could be. Whoever it was, he’d like to say thanks.

While the house was quiet he went into his parents’ bedroom and opened the wardrobe on his mum’s side to sniff the vanilla smell that hung there. He pressed his face to her clothes and thought of her. After a little while he sat on the bed and opened her bedside drawer. There were a few earrings in a cut-glass bowl. Some library cards. Paperbacks about raising kids by people with initials before during and after their names, mostly American women with Big Hair. There was a drawing by Phillip—one of his big golden suns from last year when he seemed to have beaten the bedwetting business.

Lockie closed the drawer, suddenly feeling like a snoop. What was he looking for, a clue, a reason for all this weird sadness that was drowning his mum?

When he came out into the kitchen again, Phillip and Blob had a swatch of happy snaps on the table.

‘Mumma,’ said Blob, fingering a photo of their mum at the beach.

‘She’s always smiling,’ said Phillip. ‘Look. Every picture.’

Lockie wanted to look away. It was almost more than he could bear just now, but he looked at the laughing, smiling photos and nodded gravely.

‘That’s . . . that’s her alright.’

The Sarge came home tired and grey-faced. He had no funny stories to tell. He looked knackered. When the others were in bed, he helped Lockie with the dishes.

‘You going to see Mum tonight?’

‘I sneaked around there today.’

‘How is she?’

‘She’s so happy her parents are looking after us.’

‘Oh.’ Gulp. That bad.

‘I can’t go in tonight, Lock. I really need some sleep.’

‘That’s cool.’ Lockie looked down into the suds.

‘Sarge?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Is it the baby blues that Mum’s got?’

‘Post-natal depression? Seems a bit late, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know anything about it. I saw something in the Women’s Weekly, that’s all.’

The Sarge sighed. ‘No, I don’t think it’s that. Women who get post-natal depression come down with it pretty soon after having the baby. Blob’s been around more than a year. No, I reckon it’s other things, like a whole pile of stuff ganging up on her at once. You know she hasn’t slept well since Blob was born.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Actually this was news to Lockie.

‘So she’s always running on empty. Kind of makes you vulnerable to other strains. Like moving here to Angelus last year. That’s been very tough on her. Starting cold in a new town, especially in this palace. When you’re home with a baby it’s hard to meet new people. All the other police wives play darts and bowls—you know the sort. She doesn’t fit. She doesn’t see herself as a police wife and who can blame her. Well, you know what it’s like to feel you don’t fit. I feel the same way myself. Some days I feel like the only emu in the chookhouse.’

Lockie chewed on all that for a moment.

‘It just hasn’t been easy,’ the Sarge went on. ‘She’s been a bit down since the harbour business. Flat, exhausted, you know. And all her greenie mates are nervous about me, of course. I’m a copper so I must be a beer-swilling racist male thing. She takes things hard, your mum. She feels responsible for everything. Like Phillip starting to wet the bed again. As though it’s her fault.’

‘You mean, like the stuff with Blob? Not walking and everything.’

‘Yeah, that most of all.’

‘That’s just crazy,’ said Lockie. He blushed crimson even as he said it. ‘Um, well, you know what I mean.’

‘Well,’ said the Sarge with a sigh, ‘there’s a reason for that.’

‘Oh?’ said Lockie in a tiny voice.

‘You see, your mum lost another baby once. A miscarriage.’ Mum coming out a bit pale and wobbly with that Listerine smell. That day in the car. The sad, quiet calm ride home with something just not right.

‘Oh, man. I remember. Before Blob.’

‘Yeah. Gee, you’ve got a memory. We didn’t tell you boys. I s’pose we thought you were too young. Losing a baby before term . . . it’s tough to live through. Maybe you just never quite get past it, not if you’re the mother. So when Blob came along your mum was extra careful, you know. She just wanted everything to go right. But Blob always had her own ideas. She weaned herself very early, whereas you and Phillip breastfed till you were nearly voting age. Your mum was anxious about that. Blob crawled late, got teeth early, still doesn’t walk or talk. She’s perfectly fine, but your mum worries about her. And with all the hoo-ha about the harbour this summer she just got exhausted and all these things piled on top of her. Seems you go from coping to not coping pretty quick. That’s how I see it, but Fm no shrink. Anyway, I shouldn’t be burdening you with all this stuff.’

‘You’ve got no one else to talk to,’ said Lockie. Geez, a baby. A baby that died. Now it made some kind of sense.

‘You’re right. There isn’t anyone else. And suddenly you’re old enough. Look at you, you’re nearly a man. Anyway, it’s all beer and footy and boob jokes down at the station.’

‘Sounds like school.’

‘I just feel rotten. Guilty, you know. Like I should have seen it all coming and done something about it. And maybe that it’s my fault anyway.’

‘Oh, don’t listen to Nan and Pop. That’s crap, Sarge.’

‘You heard all that then? I thought you were asleep. Oh, gawd.’

‘Anyway,’ said Lockie, pulling the plug, ‘can I see her?’

The Sarge sniffed at his ragged teatowel, thinking it over.

‘We’ll go in tomorrow.’

‘Really?’

‘What do you want me to say, “We’ll see”?’

ext day, while Lockie was feeding Phillip and Blob soggy pikelets, the Sarge pulled up in the paddywagon and came inside with an armful of paperwork. He had a young constable with him, a bloke who looked like he should still be in high school. The Sarge beckoned Lockie toward the bedroom.

‘Okay,’ said the Sarge with the door closed, ‘I’ve got it teed up with the hospital. They’re not thrilled but they’ll let you go in and see your mum for a little while. Wingnut out there will run you round in the van and bring you back. I’ll stay here and hold the fort. But don’t be long, though, mate. I’m stretched as it is.’

‘Thanks, Sarge. I really—’

‘Go on, git!’ Lockie was halfway out the door when the Sarge caught his arm. ‘And Lockie, just remember’

‘What?’

The Sarge chewed his lower lip. It looked about as appetising as one of Lockie’s pikelets.

‘Doesn’t matter. Hop to it.’

It wasn’t far to the hospital but to Lockie it seemed like a drive across the Nullarbor Plain. Constable Wingnut didn’t say a word. Lockie looked out through the shiny new windscreen and tried to convince himself that he didn’t desperately need to go to the toilet. He told himself he was sweating because it was hot in the cop car. He wasn’t packing death at all.

When they pulled into the hospital carpark Lockie had a sudden urge not to get out of the car. Maybe I could sit here for a bit and chew the ole fat with Wingnut, he thought. Play a long game of Monopoly, perhaps. Practise my multiplication tables backwards. Anything.

‘In you go,’ said Wingnut, doing his best to sound like a grown-up and a policeman.

‘Yeah, right,’ murmured Lockie. ‘Okay.’

‘I’ll be back in half an hour.’

‘Great.’

‘That silver thing there is the door handle.’

‘Ah’, said Lockie, quickly deciding that Wingnut was a butthead.

Lockie got out and walked up to the auto doors. He saw his face in the glass and it wasn’t a pretty sight. He looked crook and pale and his single lonely pimple stood out like a streaker at the footy.

The doors opened. A gust of antiseptic air blew in his face and he felt six years old again, six years old and not quite understanding what was going on around him, puzzled by so much sadness.

Lockie shuffled up to a huge glassed-in desk that looked like a sentry post. A woman with wide-screen specs looked down at him. Her eyes swam like goldfsh.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Urn, I’m here to see me mum?’

‘Oh. You must be Lockie.’

‘I must be.’

‘Well, are you?’

Lockie’s mind went blank. ‘Can you repeat the question?’ Man, he was nervous. He didn’t know whether to throw up or faint.

The woman behind the specs smiled at him kindly. ‘Don’t worry. You’re thinking it’s going to be like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, right?’

Lockie stood there open-mouthed.

‘You know? The movie with Jack Nicholson.’

‘Sorry. Never heard of it.’

‘Maybe you’re too young. Anyway, just relax. A nurse from D-block is coming down to get you.’

A huge bloke the size of a fullback came into the lobby.

‘Lockie, is it?’

Lockie nodded.

‘I’m Bob.’

‘Oh,’ said Lockie. ‘They said there was a nurse coming.’

‘I am the nurse.’

‘Oh.’ Aaaarggghhh! Death and untold embarrassment!

‘We’re heading out this way,’ said Nurse Bob, pointing down a corridor.

‘Right.’

Lockie followed down the long, lifeless corridor.

‘Your mum’s down here in Room 5. She’s terrific, isn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ said Lockie with feeling. ‘She is.’

Suddenly, a wheelchair lurched out of a doorway into their path.

‘Archie! Bob, it’s Archie!’

The guy in the wheelchair was grey and skinny. He had a ratty beard. His wiry arms were covered in tattoos and he had a pirate patch over one eye. He laughed madly and Lockie saw there were three teeth left in his head. And bad breath you only dream about.

‘Alright, Monster,’ said Bob the nurse. ‘We’ll be back in a minute.’

They worked their way round him and headed on down the hall.

‘Who was that?’ said Lockie.

‘Monster? Oh, he’s a bit of a regular. Used to be a big biker. He’s kind of fried his brains with drugs and booze.’

‘And who’s Archie?’

‘Whoever he is, Monster’s always real glad to see him. He’s harmless, Lockie. Just lonely.’

They came to Room 5. The door was open. Inside there were two beds. In the bed closest to the door was a girl sleeping with a tube going into her arm. She was a skeleton. Her face was all bones. She looked dead. Beside the second bed, in a chair by the window, was his mum, Joy Leonard. She wore a pink robe and a pair of sheepskin boots. Her hair was neatly brushed and when she turned from the window and saw him her face lit up like a pinball machine.

‘Lockie.’

Lockie stood there. His heart did a drum solo in his throat. He didn’t move.

‘Well, Joy,’ said Bob. ‘He’s something, isn’t he?’

‘He’s something alright.’

‘I’ll be back in a while,’ said Bob slipping away.

Lockie stood there like a one-legged seagull. His mum looked a little puffy in the face but she seemed normal enough. But what was he expecting, a lunatic in a straitjacket? He’d been wanting to see her so long and now he was absolutely stuck for words.

‘Come over here,’ she said, smiling a little. ‘Sit here by the window. Look, you can just see the ocean.’

Lockie went over to the window. A wedge of green sea showed between rooftops and trees and hills.

‘It helps, you know. Being able to see it.’

Lockie understood how it would help. Just the sight of the ocean could calm his nerves. But right now he felt totally weird. He was scared of his own mother. When she took him by the hand he flinched.

‘It’s okay, Lockie. I’m still me.’

Lockie blushed like a stoplight. ‘I’m just scared of saying the wrong thing,’ he blurted. Then he grabbed her and hugged her and did his best not to bawl all over her dressing gown. After a while he pulled back, wiped his eyes and laughed at himself.

‘Geez, what a dork I am.’

‘Is everyone alright at home?’

‘Yeah, yeah we’re fine. Well, actually it’s a real battle you know . . . well of course you know because you’ve had all that practice and . . . and I’m just crapping on, aren’t I?’

Lockie’s mum held his hand and squeezed it.

‘I . . . I just wanted to see you, Mum.’

She nodded.

‘I was just so ashamed of myself for yelling at you that time. I was an absolute buttbrain and I sort of had to tell you I was sorry. I just didn’t know. Not that it should make any difference. Anyway, you just take your time and get some rest, okay?’

‘Okay.’

They sat there with the light of the outside world on their faces.

‘What’s it like?’ asked Lockie. ‘How you feel.’

She looked toward that tiny slice of sea and sighed. ‘It’s like a bad dream you can’t seem to wake up from. You know it’s a dream, you know the things you feel aren’t quite real, and you want to wake up from the dream but you can’t.’

‘Sounds like my love life.’

‘No, I’m not that crazy.’

They laughed quietly, hugging for a moment.

‘Today’s a good day,’ she murmured. ‘It goes up and down. The drugs make me all woozy—I hate it—but it’s been a lot worse.’

Bob reappeared at the door. Lockie’s heart sank. There were so many things he wanted to say, things to ask.

‘Maybe I could come again?’

‘Come every day. And twice on Tuesdays.’

‘Why Tuesdays?’ he said, puzzled.

She smiled. ‘Why not Tuesdays?’

‘Yeah,’ he grinned. ‘Why not?’

‘I’ll take you down, Lockie,’ said Bob.

‘What’s wrong with that girl in Mum’s room?’ said Lockie to Bob as they walked back through the ward.

‘Anorexia. Poor kid’s starving herself to death.’

‘But why?’

‘Ah, now there’s a question.’

Out into the corridor came the hurtling wheelchair.

‘Archie! I knew you’d come.’

‘Come on, Monster,’ said Bob. ‘Leave us some room.’

‘Good ole Archie, eh?’

Lockie tried to smile but it was a sad effort.

‘Archie’s gotta go now, Monster. He’ll be back tomorrow.’

‘Bring the boys, Arch! We’ll tear the place up. Rock and ROLL!’

‘No worries,’ said Lockie uncertainly. ‘See ya.’

Bob took Lockie back to the reception area.

‘What’s wrong with Monster’s legs?’ asked Lockie.

‘Nothing.’

‘Well, how come the wheelchair?’

‘Reckons he needs to be on two wheels. It’s not exactly Easy Rider, but it makes him happy.’

Lockie looked out through the glass doors to where Constable Wingnut was waiting. ‘Life’s weird, eh.’

‘My oath it is,’ said Bob.

ll afternoon Phillip sulked about Lockie’s visit to the hospital. He wouldn’t come out of his room, refused to help with Blob and played ‘Three Blind Mice’ on his recorder until Lockie was ready to nail up the bedroom door and leave him there for archaeologists to find in a thousand years. See how they run, see how they run . . . Aaarghh!

You couldn’t blame poor Phillip, though. It was a major bummer being a younger brother and getting left out of things, but Phillip made such a bodacious bottom-head of himself about it that Lockie just ran out of sympathy.

By four o’clock Lockie just couldn’t stand it any longer. The endless ‘Three Blind Mice’ sent him out onto the verandah with Blob on his hip. It was time for a walk. Let Phillip blow himself blue. As he stepped out, he nearly tripped over a big silver pot on the doorstep. He bent down and lifted the lid. A gust of sweet, garlicky richness rose in his face. Spaghetti Bolognese.

‘Ah, spag bog! Blob, it’s me absolute fave. We got ourselves a guardian angel.’

Lockie looked out over the hideously depressing swamp that was their front yard and wondered who it could be. He felt Blob drooling down his arm. She bucked and wrassled and wriggled to get at the steaming spag but Lockie clamped the lid shut.

‘Not now, Blob, We’ll wait for dinner. This’ll smoke the Pied Piper out.’

Lockie hid the food in the shed and took Blob for a walk around the gorgeous wetlands of the yard. The fresh air and the swamp gas did him some good.

When Lockie put the pot on the stove that night, Phillip came shooting out of his room like a rat from a waterpipe.

‘Hmm,’ said the Sarge with bolognese sauce all over his uniform. ‘The mystery continues.’

‘It’s probably those Meals-on-Wheels people,’ said Phillip. ‘Now that we’re a charity case.’

‘Phillip’s been cracking a sad,’ said Lockie. ‘Don’t pay any attention.’

Blob sneezed and an oily strand of spaghetti shot out of her nose. Lockie, Phillip and the Sarge stopped and stared in amazement. She really was a wonder, that kid.

‘So, how was she?’ the Sarge asked when Lockie and he were alone.

Lockie pulled his fingers through his hair. ‘Okay, I guess.’

‘She’s heaps better. Take it from me.’

‘Anyway, it was great to see her. I feel kind of better about it. Can I go back?’

‘The staff said it was okay. I’ll send Wingnut around again at lunchtime.’

‘Cool.’

‘It’s a strange thing, life. All you want is some simple answers, but they don’t always turn up.’

Lockie looked at him. The Sarge looked so much older these days. It hurt to watch.

he rest of that week before school was complete chaos. Life at the Leonard place was utterly shambolic. Lockie ran from stove to nappy bucket to washing machine while Blob bawled and Phillip whined. Just to make things perfect, the rain fell day and night. Ah, the sultry southern summer!

‘Archie!’ yelled Monster from his wheelchair. ‘Me ole china plate, I knew you’d come!’

Lockie bolted down the corridor nearly cleaning up the lunch trolley in his haste.

His mum cried for half an hour and didn’t talk at all.

Blob got her head stuck between the bars of her cot and she screamed so hard Lockie and Phillip had to use a hacksaw to get her out. Blob was delighted by the new gap. Her own private escape hatch. After that there was no way of keeping her in. Serious bummer.

‘I think I’ll be home tomorrow,’ said Lockie’s mum next day. ‘I feel good today. Like the cloud has passed.’

Outside it was raining endlessly.

Lockie grinned. ‘That’s great, Mum! Can’t wait to tell the others.’

But Mrs Leonard’s cloud came back and she stayed in the hospital and the fog of the pills.

Phillip brought home a stray dog with one eye and horrible BO. Lockie wasn’t keen but Phillip really took to the mutt so he let him keep it. Phillip washed the filthy black mange-mound in the bathtub and the whole bathroom was splattered with foul hound-pubes. Then, when he was trying to rub the pooch down with his own bath-towel, the dog bolted out of the bathroom, tore through the house, ate the lounge curtains and hacked a hole through the screen door, never to be seen again.

‘What a mongrel of a thing to happen,’ said Lockie.

Phillip was not amused.

Lockie gave up pretending that he wasn’t Archie. Monster and he had little talks about the intricate workings of the Harley Davidson organism and about the bad ole days when the two of them had cruised on down the highway, trashing everything in their path.

‘Remember Pig, Arch?’

Lockie leaned against Monster’s doorframe. ‘Uh, oh yeah. Pig. What an animal.’

‘Hundred and eighty kilos. Complete animal. But one of nature’s gentlemen.’

Whatever you say, Monster, thought Lockie.

‘And that time we rode into Bunbury?’

‘Sure,’ said Lockie, making it up as he went along. ‘I . . . uh, I stacked my hog.’

‘Did you?’

‘Uh, didn’t I?’

‘What a time.’

‘Yeah, what a time. Listen, Monster, I gotta go and pick up some . . . uh, spare parts. You know . . . grease nipples and stuff.’

‘No problem. Cop you tomorrow, Arch.’

Lockie strode on down the hall like Mister Biker. He was getting to like being Archie for a couple of minutes every day. Born to be wild. Well, wild-ish.

‘Lockie ?’

‘Hm?’

Lockie watched his mum staring out at her little wedge of green sea. She looked bleary today. She moved in slow motion.

‘If anything happened to me, would you stick by your dad and help him with the kids?’

‘Nothing’s gonna happen to you,’ said Lockie, feeling sick.

‘But you’d stick by the Sarge?’

‘Course.’

‘Good. That’s good,’ she murmured.

Lockie stared at the skeleton of the anorexic girl. She never said a word. It freaked him out.

Nurse Bob put his head in the door. ‘How’s tricks?’

Lockie shrugged. ‘Okay. I s’pose.’

‘She’s getting better,’ said Bob in a whisper.

‘Yeah,’ said Lockie. Sure.

At two in the morning, Lockie got up for a drink. He found the Sarge standing in front of the open fridge in his PJs.

‘If you’re looking for a lamb roast and half an apple pie, you’ll be disappointed,’ said Lockie.

‘Hm?’

The Sarge’s face was white from the light of the refrigerator.

‘What’re you doin’?’

‘Thinking.’

‘Nice spot.’

‘Yep.’

‘You alright?’

‘No,’ said the Sarge. ‘I’m coming to bits. I feel like I’m gonna lose my family.’

‘You’re doing good, Sarge.’

‘No, I’m not.’

And right there in the cold light of the empty fridge, Lockie saw his dad break down and cry. A grown man. A police sergeant. Sobbing like a baby. In his jarmies.

A storm howled in off the Southern Ocean. It sent the sea into convulsions and ripped at the trees and rooftops of Angelus. Purple clouds heaved in from the south and the air turned cold and nasty.

Lockie steered the baby pusher down the windtunnel of the main street. Phillip and he did their best to keep the plastic bags of groceries from blowing away entirely. When the rain came and quickly turned to hail they were stranded between the windswept war memorial and the old convict church. In three seconds flat they were drenched and sore and Blob was nearly floating out of her stroller.

They found themselves in the doorway of the church and Lockie barged right on in. For a few moments they stood in the little vestibule making puddles while their eyes adjusted to the dim light. They looked about at the religious gear on the walls. There was no one in the quiet old church. Faint light poured in through the high stained glass. Everything smelled of incense and floorwax.

‘Least it’s dry,’ whispered Phillip.

Lockie watched the great, twisted limbs of the trees outside waving against the stained glass windows. They were like the figures of people out there. Tormented people. The wind whistled and moaned. There were pictures of Heaven in the window panels. All those pretty colours. Kids sitting with lions and lambs. Rainbows. Doves. It looked beautiful, the idea of a Heaven like that. But Lockie kept seeing the mad, thrashing shadows of the trees outside. The storm against the walls. He just wanted to bawl, he felt so lost and miserable.

Under his breath he said a prayer. He didn’t know what else to do anymore.

ith the rain still driving into their eyes and the wind in their teeth, Lockie and Phillip and Blob came up the flooded driveway and the baby pusher lurched through the mud like an amphibious assault vehicle. Lockie felt the water pouring out of his ears as he shoved the stroller along to keep it from bogging. He hardly felt a thing now. He was numb with cold and blank with desperation. This, he thought, is the absolute lowest point of my life.

He was at the verandah steps before he saw the figure hunched beside the front door. A raincoat. Someone bending at the doorstep with their back turned. The person straightened up. A check teatowel hung from one hand. A yellow raincoat with a yellow hood. When she turned around it took Lockie a few seconds to realise who it was up there at his front door. The rain was in his eyes and the hood of the raincoat made it hard to see properly, but it was her alright. He knew those green eyes anywhere. He stood there, sinking in the mud, stunned.

‘Hello, Lockie Leonard.’

‘Vicki?’

There was a big saucepan on the doorstep.

‘What’re we doin here?’ said Phillip. ‘Playin’ statues in the rain? Lockie, pick up your end of this thing, willya?’

Lockie stood there a moment longer. A great drop of rain hung off the tip of his nose. He went cross-eyed to watch it hang and lengthen and then kamikaze into the mud. Phillip kicked his shin, so he bent down and helped him haul the pusher up the steps to the shelter of the verandah.

‘You caught me by surprise,’ said Vicki Streeton, pulling off her plastic hood. All that kinky brown hair fell free and Lockie’s pulse went spazzo. ‘I didn’t hear you coming.’

‘So,’ said Phillip, ‘it’s you leaving the grub. You’re our guardian angel.’

Vicki smiled nervously and blushed five kinds of crimson.

Phillip went straight to the saucepan on the step. ‘Cor! Meatballs!’

Lockie just stared helplessly.

‘You’d better come inside,’ said Phillip.

‘I think I should just go,’ said Vicki, looking at Lockie with those big green eyes.

‘Don’t be a dork,’ said Phillip. ‘It’s cattin’ and doggin’ out there.’

Lockie chewed his lip and managed a nod.

‘Okay. Just for a sec’

So Phillip picked up the meatballs, Lockie took Blob and Vicki embarrassed them all by picking up their drenched groceries and they all went inside in an awkward convoy. Lockie wished there was some secret trap door he could slip into and simply disappear.

When Lockie came back into the kitchen all dry and changed with Blob on his hip, he found Vicki making everyone steaming mugs of Milo. Lockie felt all torn up inside, thinking one thing but feeling something entirely different. He could see Vicki was trying to be kind but it was dead embarrassing. It made him feel like a geek, as though he was too stupid to look after his own problems.

‘I just found the stuff and thought—’

‘Uh-huh,’ Lockie mumbled ungratefully.

‘I didn’t mean to take over or anything.’

Lockie wanted to tell her it was okay, that it was great to see her, that he really appreciated her kindness but all he could do was shrug.

Vicki bit her lip and pushed a mug towards him. Phillip came out wearing his pyjamas.

‘Don’t laugh. Everything else is wet or dirty. It’s a disaster area around here. Ah, Milo. Cool. Thanks, Vicki.’

‘You’re welcome, Phillip.’

Lockie gave Blob a hunk of bread and let her grovel about on the floor for a while.

‘So.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Hmm.’

Lockie drank his Milo. His hands were shaking. It was unbelievable. Vicki was in his house and he couldn’t think of one halfway intelligent thing to say. He sipped at his Milo and snuck a glance at her now and then. She was just the same. Kinky brown hair, those eyes. With her raincoat off he saw that she wore an old pair of Levi’s with the knees knocked out, a pair of Docs on her turned out feet and a sloppy grey pullover. She looked senSATIONAL. It gave him a headache just to look.

‘It’s, ah . . . it’s . . . ’

‘He means it’s really nice of you,’ said Phillip blushing.

‘Well, it’s just Milo.’

‘He means everything else. The food on the doorstep all the time. See, we’ve still got all the pots and pans. Didn’t know who to give ’em back to.’

‘My oldies think someone’s stealing it all. The Angelus Casserole Bandit.’

‘She’s an angel, Lockie. Aren’t you glad you kept her photo all this time?’

‘Go watch TV, Phillip.’

‘So you can get rid of me?’

‘Phillip.’

‘I’m not gonna miss this.’

‘Miss what?’ said Lockie through his teeth, growling like a bull terrier.

‘You two, stupid.’ Phillip’s eyebrows went up and down. ‘Like old times, eh.’

Lockie just died. He looked for a handy bit of kitchenware to brain him with but there was nothing lethal enough close by.

‘Okay, okay,’ said Phillip. ‘I’ll go, Romeo.’

Lockie lunged at him.

‘My life as a middle child, Vicki,’ said Phillip heading for the door. ‘It’s left me damaged!’

‘Yeah, brain damaged!’ yelled Lockie after him.

Vicki laughed. ‘Gee, he’s really grown since last year.’

Lockie nodded, trying to cool off. ‘Well, we’ve all had to grow up since last year.’

‘Ain’t that the truth. Anyway, it must be really tough for you.’

Lockie shrugged.

‘Look, I’d better go. Looks like the rain’s easing.’

Don’t go, he thought. Don’t go now. Look at me, the smoking ruins of your old boyfriend. You dump me for some bloke with a driver’s licence and then come back making charitable handouts. I’ve gone from being your boyfriend to your little brother or something. Me heart’s all over the floor like a 500 piece puzzle. Look, I’ve got nappy pins in me shirt. You just feel sorry for me and it’s so humiliating.

‘I’ve been watching you go through this, Lockie,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I think you’re doing an awesome job of it. I really admire that.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ As if.

‘I think you’re a total legend. Even if you do hate my guts.’

Lockie didn’t say a thing. He just wasn’t capable. He knew what an ungrateful pig he was and he just watched as that beautiful creature pulled on her raincoat, grabbed up her pots and pans and clattered out into the weird world without him.

Aaaaarrrrrrggggggghhhh!

ockie lay all evening on his bed. He listened to Soundgarden and silverchair for a while and sank deeper into his own misery. He used to dream about a day like today. Vicki showing up at his door. Geez, for months after they broke up he would have paid lunch money to get within spitting distance of her. He used to plan the speeches he would make, the tragic figure he’d be: the misunderstood bloke. But now that it had finally happened he was a mess.

The Sarge appeared and leant against the doorframe. ‘So we ID’d the guardian angel, I hear.’

Lockie shrugged.

‘Phillip’s rather browned off at you. Reckons you weren’t real friendly to her. Says you’re jeopardising his new food supply.’

Trust him to think of his guts first,’ Lockie murmured. ‘Stupid little idiot.’

‘What’s the problem?’

Lockie shrugged.

‘Saw your mum after work. She’s good today. I think she’s making real progress.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Well, don’t get too excited,’ said the Sarge, a bit hurt.

‘Just leave me alone, willya?’

Lockie stared at the ceiling. The Sarge gave up with a sigh and went to bed.

Phillip came in and climbed into his PJs.

‘Turn the light out, Lockie. I wanna go to sleep.’

Lockie heard him over the hiss and crash of the Walkman but he didn’t move a hair.

‘Fine, dorkbreath,’ said Phillip snatching up his pillow and quilt. ‘I’ll sleep on the sofa. I bet you’ll take up golf, next.’

Lockie lay there half the night thinking about Vicki Streeton. He knew he should be happy and grateful that someone had cared enough to help out. But her, the girl who dumped him in front of the whole school. It was too humiliating taking charity from your own executioner. He supposed he should be flattered that she cared about him and his family. After all, last year he’d loved her till his toenails ached. Just the idea of her had made his ears twitch and his hair crackle with electricity. Even after it was all over a hot tremor went through him at the sound of her name. He couldn’t ride past her old man’s car yard without a shiver of longing. There was something special about her, something that set her apart from other girls. The rest just seemed like . . . like schoolgirls. Vicki was already a woman somehow. She was so strong and self-possessed. She made him feel like a snail in a borrowed shell with a cheap paintjob. He would never match up to her. And now this. Having her come around playing Mother Teresa. It made him angry. Like she was rubbing his nose in his own snail trail. It chewed at him, that anger, and he didn’t even understand it. He lay there burning hour after hour. Lockie Leonard, Angry Snail.

In the morning Lockie woke late. The Sarge had gone to work and Phillip came in to rip the blankets back and snap the curtains aside.

The first thing Lockie saw was Phillip’s hair.

‘What the hell have you done to yourself?’

Phillip hoisted Blob onto the bed. She stank like a compost heap. Phillip ruffled his hair and looked at it in the mirror. It was crimson. Stark raving crimson.

‘It’s my protest, Lockie.’

‘What protest?’

‘About you being a butthead to Vicki and all of us. I saw what you did to her yesterday. She went home bawling, if you care to know. You made a complete turd of yourself and we’re real embarrassed. So, two can play that game—’

‘What’s that got to do with crimson hair?’

‘You’ll see. I found this stuff in the bathroom. Hawaiian Sunset. Reckon it suits me.’

‘You look like a safety match, you ignoramus.’

‘Do you hate it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does it really, really annoy you?’

‘Got it perfectly.’

‘Does it bring shame and embarrassment to your name?’

‘That covers it. Yeah.’

Phillip beamed. ‘Brilliant. Most excellent, dear butthead brother. You can suck eggs till you start being nice to Vicki. The Hawaiian Sunset stays.’

‘Whatever you say, Phillip.’

Phillip called it civil disobedience. Lockie had other words for it.

Lockie was loading disinfected nappies into the washing machine when he heard a familiar whistle. He looked out through the laundry window and saw Phillip running out to the back shed. He disappeared around the corner in a horrible crimson flash and came back a minute later with a casserole dish wrapped in a teatowel. A second later, Lockie caught a glimpse of Vicki Streeton heading out through the marshy grass towards the road.

He wiped his stinging hands and headed for the kitchen.

‘Apricot chicken!’ yelled Phillip. ‘Yee-har, pardners!’

Lockie stood there, scowling.

‘Don’t worry, she’s gone. She doesn’t wanna hurt your feelings. Poor sensitive thing.’

‘Shut up, Phillip.’

‘Shh! Blob’s asleep, you know.’

The phone rang. It was the Sarge.

‘Wingnut’ll be over in a minute to take you to the hospital. Everything okay there?’

‘So-so.’

‘Lockie?’

‘What.’

‘Try not to make a butthead of yourself today. At home and the hospital. Everyone else has feelings, too, you know. Get your act together, alright?’

Ouch.

ockie looked around the hospital room trying to see what it was that was wrong about it.

‘It’s Julia,’ said Mrs Leonard. ‘The girl with anorexia. They’ve taken her to Perth.’

‘Oh. Will she be alright?’

‘No.’

‘Geez.’ Lockie looked at his cracked and peeling hands. They hurt now every time he opened or closed them.

‘That’s dermatitis you’ve got, Lockie. Too much detergent. You’ll have to start wearing rubber gloves when you wash.’

Lockie sighed. Rubber gloves. You beaut. My life’s complete.

‘What’s the matter?’ she murmured.

‘Nothin’.’

‘You look terrible.’

‘I am terrible. Vicki Streeton keeps coming round. Makes me wild.’

‘Ah.’

‘She keeps bringing food around.’

‘Hmm. I see what you mean. That’s bad.’

Lockie looked at her. There was a bit of a smile on her chapped lips.

‘What?’

‘You tell me, Lockie.’

‘I can’t stand it.’

‘A while ago you were so in love with that girl you were a fire risk.’

‘Yeah, well’

‘I know, she dumped you. The whole town knows that.’

‘Well,’ he admitted, ‘it wasn’t that simple.’

‘And here she is next summer bringing around Spaghetti Bolognese, your favourite. That’s pretty tough.’ She grinned at him.

‘Whose side are you on?’

‘Well, you could show a bit of kindness. I happen to know she’s had a pretty rough time of it the past few months.’

‘What, cruising around in souped-up cars? Man, that’s hard labour.’

‘I think you’ll find she’s been hurt badly. And you know how people talk in this town.’

‘Well, maybe she had it coming.’

‘Don’t talk like that.’

‘Sorry.’ He was sounding like a pig and he knew it. ‘I just wish she’d keep her charity to herself.’

‘A girl shows a bit of concern and you’re angry. When you need all the help you can get and your family is struggling—’

‘We’re not struggling. We’re perfectly fine.’

‘Gawd, Lockie, I’m depressed, not stupid. I can see you all traipsing in here looking like zombies every day. Your poor father looks like the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.’

‘Who’s Edmund Fitzgerald?’

‘It’s an old song, forget it. The point is I know everyone is under a terrible strain. I feel rotten about it. I know you’re all trying to keep it from me so I won’t feel worse than I already do but I can see it in your faces. I know I should be home. I want to be home. I’ve got kids. I’ve got my little baby girl at home without a mother.’

She was crying now and Lockie got panicky. Man, this was getting out of hand. It was too hard. He wanted to run off and talk to Monster, someone mad enough not to know what was going on at all.

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and sniffed. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry.’

‘I’m scaring you off.’

‘No,’ he lied.

‘Oh, God. All I’m saying is, don’t throw someone’s kindness back in their face. Why would anyone knock back some help?’

‘Because I’ve got some pride left, Mum.’

‘Hmm.’ Mrs Leonard wiggled her feet in their sheepskin boots. Her shins looked pale and skinny. ‘Pride.’

‘Oh, man, now everyone’s off at me.’

‘It takes real guts to do what Vicki did. A lot of people would be too up themselves to bother. I like her. She’s got real spirit.’

‘Oh, great.’

‘Yeah,’ said Mrs Leonard. ‘She reminds me of you.’

hat afternoon Lockie had to collect his textbooks for the new school year. He pushed Blob and dragged Phillip all the way up the hill to the dreary old hulk of the high school and stood in line at the bookshop with fifty others. Some kids came with their parents, awkward and nervous. Year Eights. First years. They looked too young for high school. Did he look that green last year? Surely not. What a nasty thought.

There were others he knew, kids ahead of him or behind in the queue or just hanging around with skateboards and blades and bikes. And there he was with a baby stroller and his crimson-headed little brother. Death!

‘Oi, Lockie!’ someone called out from the balcony. ‘Haven’t you and Vicki heard of contraception?’

A ripple of laughter went down the line of bored kids. Even Phillip laughed. Lockie could have throttled him. He blushed until his cheeks matched Phillip’s hair. Hawaiian Sunset to the max.

‘Can’t wait to get to high school,’ said Phillip.

‘You must be joking.’

‘No way. Look at these chicks. They’re so . . . developed.’

‘Oh, spare me, willya.’

‘I think Pve grown hormones. Man, look at that.’

Lockie looked around. There were some great-looking females, he had to admit. Hair like fairy floss. Legs and bums and lips and chins and . . . oh, man. But there was also the rest of it. The maudlin shadows of the building. The stink of squashed bananas and the sweet smell of urinals were still potent after six weeks’ break. All the closed doors like eyelids. The dead echoes of the joint. Lockie sure as hell didn’t look forward to another year of it. There’d always be some wacker yelling from the balcony. He couldn’t wait.

Lockie got to the head of the line eventually and collected his parcel of books: New Geography, New Intermediate Maths (revised), Science: a fresh look, New Ways of Seeing II. Everything was New and Improved. It was like grocery shopping. He half expected to see algebra in Economy Size. Or a Family Pack of William Shakespeare.

‘Geez,’ said Phillip, ‘you guys get everything except New Idea.’

‘Well, I coulda done with the recipes.’

‘The Sarge says education is fifty per cent fashion.’

‘Yeah, well, when you get to high school it’ll probably be fifty per cent flashin’. Let’s get out of here. Next week’ll come soon enough.’

At the school gate Vicki Streeton stood with her hands in the pockets of her shorts. Her books were piled on the wall beside her. Lockie’s heart didn’t exactly sink. Actually his pulse revved just a bit. Don’t muck it up, he told himself. Redeem yourself.

‘G’day, Vicki,’ said Phillip. ‘Nice . . . shorts.’

Lockie winced. His brother was becoming a primary school perv.

‘That hair,’ she said. ‘It still looks like a bushfire, Phillip.’

‘Brothers,’ mumbled Lockie. ‘Don’t have ’em.’

Vicki stared at her feet for a moment.

‘Lockie and I were just checking out the talent,’ said Phillip.

‘Phillip’s just taken delivery of his hormones, apparently,’ said Lockie rolling his eyes.

Vicki smiled. Oh, it cut right through him, that smile.

‘Anyway.’

‘Yeah.’

Blob woke up in the stroller and began to wriggle and whine.

‘Well, seeya,’ said Vicki.

‘Right.’ Nice work, Leonard, he thought. That was a million bucks worth of smooth talk. Not!

Lockie and Phillip walked on a few paces but then Lockie stopped. I must be mad, he thought, but here goes. ‘We’ll be home this arvo. If you’ve got nothin’ on.’

She turned back to them, frizzy hair swinging across her cheeks like in some shampoo commercial. ‘Yeah?’

Lockie shrugged. ‘Yeah.’

They headed on down the hill. Phillip beamed like a lighthouse.

‘What’re you grinning about?’

‘Aw, nothin’,’ said Phillip. ‘Nothin’ at all.’

Lockie tried on his mum’s pink rubber gloves and found they were a perfect fit. Destiny, he thought. I was meant for the scrubbing life.

‘You’re nervous,’ said Phillip.

‘Bulldust.’

But he was. Lockie scurried around the house, cleaning and tidying and wringing and pegging to keep from thinking about Vicki. Would she come? Did he really want her to? Should he be totally awful to her? Was he that big a butthead?

At four o’clock he picked up the phone and dialled half of Vicki’s number before slamming it back onto the wall. Then he heard the knock on the door.

‘Yessss!’ said Phillip, bursing from his room.

‘Phillip, please disappear.’

Phillip hesitated. He licked his scabby lips and scratched his awful hair. ‘Okay. But I want a full report.’

Before Vicki could even get a foot in the door Lockie started blathering away like a complete idiot. Phillip scuttled off in shame and Vicki just stood there admiring the fly poop on the screen door.

‘Look, about the other day, Vicki, I’m just I really it’s just I really I was a total mess and I didn’t well I couldn’t but I should’ve when I . . . anyway it’s no real excuse it’s just that I’m . . . sorry. Really.’

Vicki let go a half smile. ‘Can I come in now? Or is there more?’

‘There’s more but I’m kinda stuck—’

‘I’ll come in then, will I?’

Lockie blushed and tried to retract his head into his ribcage. ‘Yeah. If you like.’

She stepped inside and looked around nervously. ‘So Phillip’s hair thing worked?’

‘A few things, I s’pose. Sorry about the mess.’

‘I didn’t mean to freak you out the other day.’

Lockie grimaced. ‘Well. I s’pose I was surprised. I mean, I kept wondering how you knew about us, about what was happening with Mum.’ He stepped back and nearly stumbled over a pile of fresh laundry. ‘I mean, you showing up with food like our fairy godmother and everything. It kind of cooked my circuits. I mean, of all people. You know.’

‘Yeah, me of all people. Nasty surprise, huh?’ Vicki looked at the huge basket of clothes. You could have strung a hot air balloon to it, it was so big. ‘Are you going to iron this?’

‘Sarge irons at night. I keep burning stuff.’

‘I’ll show you.’

‘No, it’s okay.’

‘Come on, we’ll save him a job. He looks terrible.’

‘Alright,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Why not.’

It was uncomfortable having your ex there doing your family’s ironing—all those saggy undies with faint skidmarks still ghosting through—but the hot, dreamy smell of the iron calmed him after a while and he began to feel a little more talkative.

‘How’re your oldies?’ he asked.

‘Oh, the same. Miserable with each other.’

‘That’s a bummer. Sorry to hear it.’

‘Oh, it’s just the usual. You know how they are. A couple of Nylon Pirates.’

Lockie smiled. They were shockers, alright. Loud and nasty.

‘You’re lucky, you know. I was always jealous about your parents. When I used to come here in the old days, when we were . . . I used to just watch you all wishing it was my family. And you hardly ever invited me round, like you were embarrassed by them. Your mum and dad are pretty cool people.’

Lockie laughed. ‘No one’s ever called the Sarge a cool dude before.’

‘Well, they only made one of him. Think of that—a poetry-reading cop. Your mum loves him to bits. And he loves her. They’re both lucky. You’re all lucky.’

‘Well I’m not feeling real lucky just now.’

‘Your mum’ll get better. She’s got something to come home to. Face it or I’ll hate you, you’ve got a great family.’

‘You didn’t answer my question before,’ Lockie said, setting shirts on hangers. ‘About how you knew Mum was sick and things were like they are.’

‘I know,’ said Vicki.

‘So?’

‘I reckon I know you real well, Lockie. Better than almost anyone.’

‘Is that your answer?’

She blew steam and hair off her face and stood the iron up. ‘Can you say the same about me? Do you know me? Really well?’

Lockie hung the shirts off the door and looked out at the verandah where Phillip was rolling and wrestling with Blob.

‘I thought I did, once. But you’re full of surprises. You’re a bit cagey, I think. You keep secrets. Maybe I wasn’t curious enough. Is that the wrong answer?’

‘I saw your mum in the hospital the day she was admitted.’

Lockie dropped a wire coathanger. It bounced across the room with a boing.

‘You know Monster, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Lockie, he’s my big brother.’

‘I—’

‘Yeah, I know. You didn’t even know I had a brother. Monster’s pretty versatile in our family. He’s the black sheep and the skeleton in the closet.’

Lockie trod on the coathanger trying to pick it up. He tried bending it back into shape but it looked like a drowned seagull.

‘Wow. It’s kind of hard to believe.’

‘I’ve seen you on the ward, you know. Lunchtimes and stuff.’

‘You mean you hid while I was there?’

Vicki took up the iron again and slashed away. ‘Well, I thought you looked unhappy enough without you having to deal with me.’

‘So you see my mum every day?’

‘Not every day.’

‘And you’ve watched it all happen.’

‘Well, I’m not snooping or anything. I was going in to see Monster and she was down the corridor. I’ve always looked up to her, you see. I go in and talk to her. Geez, I tell her things I’ve never told anybody in my life. She’s been a kind of shrink for me. Think of it—I’m visiting a patient for advice. She’s the sanest person I know.’

Lockie sucked his teeth and chewed his lips, trying to take it in. ‘That’s . . . that’s why she knew so much about you. She said you’d had a bad time. I didn’t know.’

She shrugged. ‘And the food, bringing the food was just . . . I was just trying to help. There’s nothing else in it. I’m not sucking up to you or trying to pressure you or embarrass you, Lockie. It was supposed to stay a secret. Now it’s made things worse.’

‘No. Wow. But it is kind of radical. It’s all just a bit unexpected.’ He rubbed his head. ‘I guess you answered my question, then.’

‘And you answered mine.’

Lockie looked at her. ‘I don’t know you that well, do I?’

‘Mate, you haven’t got the faintest. Trouble is, I’m not so sure about me either.’

Lockie laughed. It was probably the wrong thing to do in the circumstances, but he just couldn’t help himself. This whole business was hilarious. He laughed till he got hiccups and made a complete knob of himself.

hat night Lockie was in a daze. Food simmered on the stove, the house smelled fresh and clean and Phillip and Blob splashed happily in the bathroom. His hands hurt with the cracks the dermatitis made in his skin but Lockie felt different somehow, as though something new had happened to him. He saw the Sarge’s headlights bobbing and probing down the long driveway and when the paddywagon pulled into the yard he went out to meet him.

‘Big day?’ asked the Sarge, opening his door.

‘A large one, Sarge.’

‘Kids alright?’

‘In the bath.’

‘Cool,’ said the Sarge, doing his Bart Simpson impersonation. ‘Now give us a hand for a sec, willya? I’ve got someone in the back.’

‘A . . . a prisoner? Here?’

‘Yeah. He’s not dangerous, just a bit confused.’

‘Is he gonna be—’

‘Yeah, he’s full of surprises, this fella, so just keep your wits about you, orright?’

‘S-sure.’

‘He just needs somewhere to stay. I thought he might help us keep this grass down a bit.’

‘A prisoner? Sarge, this is completely—’ There was a rattle and a thud inside the van and Lockie felt a sudden urge to pee.

‘Sarge—’

The Sarge unlatched the door and grabbed the handle. ‘Now, get ready, Lockie.’

‘Umm.’

The doors flew open and a terrible greasy stink rushed out. From the darkness a big grey shape reeled and surged towards Lockie as he tremblingly held his hands out. And then a dirty great merino sheep poked its head out and looked around.

‘You gotta be—’

Lockie went backwards as the ram leapt out and shirtfronted him into the mud before clattering off into the grassy darkness of the yard.

‘See?’ said the Sarge. ‘He likes it already.’

‘A sheep?’

‘You didn’t believe me, did you? I arrested him weeks ago and no one claimed him. Started to annoy the other blokes in the lock up, so I thought—you know—we’ve got the room. Need the grass cut. The kids’ll love him.’

The Sarge pulled Lockie up out of the clinging goo.

‘A ram?’

‘Fifty kilos of ruttin’ mutton.’

‘Lovely.’

‘I’ve named him Cyril.’

‘Sarge, you amaze me.’

‘Son, I startle even myself.’

ext day was Friday. While Phillip and Blob followed Cyril around the yard, tempting him with toast and marmalade, Lockie thought about tackling the black mould that had grown all over the bathroom since Mrs Leonard had gone to hospital. He had his wicked pink gloves on when Vicki dropped by.

‘Ah, those rubber gloves really do it for me,’ she said. ‘Need help?’

‘Actually, yes.’

‘Yuk. Why did I offer? Look at this stuff. Fungus farm.’

They worked all morning, scrubbing and airing the place, amusing the kids, watching poor Cyril trying to mate with Phillip’s BMX. Must have been the sheepskin seatcover.

In the afternoon they walked downtown to buy Phillip some new shorts for school. Janis Abernathy and Petal McCrum saw them in Woolworths and a bunch of grommets from the Surfriders Club checked them out in Target. It was all over town like swamp gas. Lockie and Vicki were playing Happy Families. There’s nothing like a bit of goss to bring a town together.

That Friday Vicki and Lockie didn’t talk about much. There wasn’t time really and Lockie was glad. It was good to just do things and not talk for a while. He really didn’t know what it meant, him and Vick like this. He didn’t want to spoil it with talk. Besides, he needed the help so badly, why cause an argument. Vicki gave him some serious cooking tips and his culinary repertoire doubled in one hour. He showed her how to deal with Blob; she didn’t have the faintest about babies. In the end he was too tired to talk anyway.

The Sarge knocked off early. He rescued Phillip’s bike from the amorous Cyril and drove Vicki home.

‘She’s a great kid, that Vicki,’ the Sarge said when he got back.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘It’s like havin’ a big sister,’ said Phillip. ‘Besides, she’s got a great butt.’

Thanks for sharing that with us, Phillip,’ said the Sarge. ‘Lockie, why don’t you take the weekend off? Look at this house. A legendary performance. I smell a change in our luck.’

That’s Dettol, Sarge.’

‘Quite bracing it is, too.’

‘How come the fit of rosiness, Sarge?’

Sergeant Leonard pulled off his cuffs and holster and swung them around his head. ‘I visited your mother today.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘She told me she loves me.’

‘Of course she loves you.’

‘Still, it’s nice to be told. I was beginning to think she just wanted me for my money.’

‘Phillip, our father’s a basket case.’

‘Yep. And I’m armed and on the loose. Hmm, lamb chops! Let’s not tell Cyril; he might think less of us.’

ockie dreamt he was a baby in the bathtub. He floated in warm water like a pink cloud. He wiggled his toes and kicked his legs and felt the warm glug of bathwater in his ears. Then he felt the comforting thrill of someone soaping him and scrubbing him down with a golden sponge. Someone spoke soothingly to him in a familiar, friendly voice. He lay back, just a helpless and happy baby, enjoying the rub and scrub. Until he recognised who it was peering down at him with her sleeves rolled up and her braces glinting. There he was buck naked and toothless, being washed by Vicki Streeton. Aaaaarrrrrrrghhhhhh!

‘Lockie! Lockie?’

Lockie sat up, dry and dressed, in his PJs. ‘Whaa? Wharrisit?’

The Sarge ricked the curtains back. ‘Phone for you, Sleeping Beauty. It’s Vicki.’

‘Ah.’ Yikes!

‘What’s the matter, Lockie? It’s Saturday.’

‘Right.’

‘Get out of the house today, orright? Go surfing.’

‘No swell, Sarge.’

‘Well, do something. You need a break.’

Lockie stumbled to the phone. ‘Lo?’

‘G’day, lazybum.’

‘Hi, Vick.’

‘Wanna go fishin’?’

‘Um, I didn’t know you were into fishing.’

‘Meaning you’re not into it.’

‘Well.’

‘Come on,’ she coaxed. ‘You’ll have fun.’

‘I haven’t got any gear. Tackle. Whatever.’

‘I’ve got stacks.’

He was trapped. Fishing. Yuk.

The Sarge swept by and grabbed the phone. ‘He’ll be there in ten minutes. He can’t wait.’

When the sun finally came out it warmed the smooth grey rock where Lockie and Vicki sat and it turned the sea into tinsel. There were birds in the bush behind them; they crashed around in the trees like delinquents. Lockie looked at Vicki out of the corner of his eye. She wore denim shorts and sneakers and an old tee-shirt that should have been a mechanic’s rag by now. Sun lit her hair and skin so that she looked like hot metal. Her eyes were on the sea as she concentrated fiercely. Man, she really meant business. She obviously intended to take home some fish.

‘Whew,’ he murmured in the end, ‘I forgot what the sun looked like.’

‘I s’pose you’d rather be surfing.’

‘No waves.’

Vicki went all tense, became totally still for a moment, then jerked back on her rod. ‘Ah, gotcha.’

Lockie watched as she stood with the rod bucking and whipping. She skipped to and fro across the rock, following the force of the line until there was a flash in the water and the fish came out curving and sparkling like a silver slipper. She laid it on the rock beside him.

‘Skippy,’ she said, panting a little. ‘It’s a kind of trevally.’

‘Uh-huh?’

She took the hook out and slipped the fish into a wet flour bag. Lockie held his own rod as though it was a flagpole. Vicki baited up again, wiped her slimy hands on her shirt and made a long, graceful cast.

‘You’re pretty good at all this, aren’t you?’ he murmured.

‘Yeah. Actually I am. When I was really little I used to come down here with Monster. His real name’s Colin, by the way. I did more things with him than I did with my oldies. He’s fifteen years older than me.’

‘He looks older than that.’

‘Well, he hasn’t exactly looked after himself,’ said Vicki, reeling in some slack line. ‘I dunno what happened. He just went off and did stupid things. Dumb biker things. You know, like Duh! Time in gaol. Lots of messy stupid things. And then he gradually went off his rocker. Drugs and stuff. Mum and Dad were sick of him even before he lost it. They don’t visit him anymore. He comes and goes between loony bins and hospitals. Now and then he comes out and goes to a hostel, but it doesn’t last long. He busts up stuff or clobbers someone. He hasn’t been in town for a year or more. Turned up a month ago from Perth, completely out of his tree. He’ll never get any better.’

‘Geez.’

‘You’re lucky, Lockie. Your mum’ll get over this. She just needs some time. She’s not damaged forever like him. By the way, what are you staring at?’

‘Nothing,’ he lied.

‘Don’t stare at me.’

‘Sorry. I was just thinking. About last year.’

‘Listen, Lockie, let’s just leave it be, okay?’

‘I was just trying to get it straight in my mind,’ he murmured. ‘You went so wild and angry and strange. Self-destructo.’

‘Well. Maybe Monster and me have a few things in common.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘With parents like mine you find yourself doing stupid things just to get up them, even stuff you know is totally thick. Like kicking in your own sandcastle just to crap someone else off. Like you can’t help yourself. I dunno.’

Lockie shook his head in amazement. ‘You always seemed kind of confident to me. Like you were older. You know, how they say girls mature faster than boys.’

Vicki shrugged. ‘I was crying myself to sleep. Five days a week I hate myself. All the confidence is a front, Lockie. I’m a mess.’

‘Wow.’ Lockie felt a nibble on his line. He tried to ignore it. ‘Last year—’

‘Lockie, don’t muck up the day talking about all that.’

‘I’ m just confused. With you coming round again.’

‘Really, Lockie, I don’t wanna talk about last year. I just need a simple nice day.’

‘Maybe some other time?’

‘See how it goes.’

‘When I saw you that day in the shop—’

‘Standing in a mountain of tampons—Oh, God!’

‘Life is always so embarrassing. Every little thing has to be excruciating. Remember that day the Sarge took me to the beach in me own bed?’

She laughed and the sun flashed in her braces. Suddenly, Lockie had a fish on and he had his hands full. The fish swerved and dived and carried on until he got the better of it and hoisted it up onto the rock beside them.

‘Now take the hook out.’

‘Urk.’

‘Don’t be a sook.’

Lockie fiddled about until he had the hook free and then he held the fish up proudly. ‘Hey, I could get into this!’

‘Umm, you better watch out.’

‘What?’

Before Vicki could answer, the fish had its final revenge. The green streak of poop squirted down Lockie’s arm and spattered his chin. It stank like nothing on earth could. You could taste it in the air.

‘Okay,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve changed me mind.’

As they walked back around the rocks with their bag of fish in the afternoon, Lockie saw a dolphin leap from the water and hang in the air with the light on its back. It seemed to hang in the air forever. And when it finally hit the water again it hardly made a splash. That was the kind of thing he wished his mum could see. Those kinds of things stirred your soul and gave your heart a boot. One day, he thought. One day.

hen they got back to the swamp palace the place was deserted. Vicki showed Lockie the rather lovely business of scaling and gutting fish. He nearly threw up his toenails but he saw the job through.

Vicki was supervising the fish-frying when the phone rang.

Lockie passed the spatula to Vicki and grabbed the phone. ‘Lo?’

‘Lockie? It’s Egg.’

‘Egg. Mate! How the hell are ya?’

‘I’m nervous, what d’you think.’

Lockie wiped his battered, floury fingers on his Billabong shirt. Damn, it’d need a good soak now. Warm water wash, gentle spin. ‘I’m not up with you, Egg. What’s on?’

‘Dot Cookson, barf-brain.’

‘Oh. Aw, yeah. I forgot to write back.’

‘Forgo? Mate, I’ve been sweatin’ testosterone for weeks waitin’ for an answer, and you forgot? Lockie, I’m in love up to me follicles and I have to have an answer.’

‘Oh, geez, Egg. I’m so sorry, mate.’

There was a squirmy pause.

‘Is that a no, then?’

‘Egg, I gotta tell you something.’

‘Hell, I’d appreciate it if you did.’

Lockie looked over to where Vicki was turning fillets in the pan. She blew a bit of hair from her face and he suddenly realised that he was happy, happier than he had any right to be.

‘Oh, man, say somethin’, willya? The suspense is killin’ me. Gimme the bad news. Just put me outta my misery. You hate me, right? I’m in love with Dot Cookson and you wanna roast my lungs with a hairdryer.’

Lockie laughed. ‘Actually, you won’t believe this.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ said Egg with a hopeless resignation.

‘Vicki Streeton’s here.’

Egg squawked with laughter. ‘Least you haven’t lost your sense of humour.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘Get away.’

‘You wanna say hello?’

‘Man, I’ve got enough trouble. She’s in your house? What the hell’s happening down there?’

‘My mum’s in hospital, Egg. She’s had . . . she’s had a kind of breakdown.’

‘Man. Oh, mate. She’s so up. So together, I can’t believe it. Why didn’t you call me? You shoulda told me. Everyone loves your mum.’

‘I guess I froze up,’ said Lockie. ‘Scared to talk about it, maybe. And then I had all this work to do. Mate, I’ve been workin’ like you wouldn’t believe. You have to be from Krypton to do what my mum does in a day.’

Egg sighed, thinking about it all. ‘So what’s with you and Vicki? Are you two back on?’

Lockie looked at Vicki again. ‘I dunno, mate. Actually, right now I don’t even care. Weird, eh.’

‘Sounds like you got bigger things to think about.’

‘Egg?’

‘Yep?’

‘Just go for it with Dot, okay? And say hello to her for me.’

‘Hallelujah!’ screamed Egg. ‘Praise the Lord and pass the peanuts. I hear the angels singing! I gotta go. Write me a letter, you slob.’

Lockie hung up.

‘So how’s Egg?’

‘He’s in orbit as we speak.’

‘Lucky him.’

Lockie grinned madly.

‘And lucky you,’ said Vicki. ‘It’s good to have a friend, a real mate. You know, to talk to, share stuff with.’

There was a strange sound in her voice. It burned Lockie just to hear it.

‘Vick?’

‘You just haven’t got a clue how lucky you are. I know you said you don’t feel real lucky just now, but honestly, Lockie, you haven’t the faintest idea.’

She turned the gas off and slid the pan back from the heat. Her hands shook a little and a shock went up Lockie’s spine. Man, she was bristling with hurt and he desperately wanted to say something to help her. He hesitated, feeling so dumb and clumsy, frightened to blow it and make things worse for her.

Just then the old Falcon eased up the drive and Lockie heard singing. Doors slammed. He looked at Vicki and chewed his lip. Phillip came storming in with a grin like a piano accordion and then the Sarge followed him in with Blob chirping on his hip.

‘Mamma!’

‘Guess where we went?’ said Phillip.

‘Give in,’ said Lockie.

‘The hospital! We saw Mum. We all walked in the garden and sniffed flowers and cracked bum jokes and hung out on the grass. You know, with the sun shining and birds singing. It was unreal.’

The Sarge laughed and tossed his keys down on the counter. He looked pretty springy; he looked like his weird old self. ‘Unreal, yes. Unreal, with a twist of lemon.’

‘Man, the sun comes out in this town and things really go off,’ said Lockie, breaking into a bewildered smile.

Blob blew everyone a kiss.

‘Someone’s learnt a new trick,’ said Phillip.

‘Someone’s mum taught her,’ said the Sarge.

‘Mmmwah!’ kissed Blob.

‘Great day,’ said Phillip. ‘It was like. . . like before. Our old life.’

‘Fantastic’

‘I think we’ve turned the corner,’ said the Sarge. ‘They’ve reduced the medication again. She’s a lot stronger. She really looks good.’

‘Like a movie star,’ said Phillip. ‘Hmm, fish. Whacko!’

‘Vicki,’ said the Sarge, ‘you’re a genius.’

Vicki shook her head. She pulled her apron off fiercely as tears came down her face. ‘I . . . I have to go.’

‘Is everything alright?’ said the Sarge.

But Vicki left without answering. The front door slapped shut and the Leonards stood there like furniture.

‘Don’t just stand there growing moss, Lockie,’ said the Sarge.

‘Huh?’

‘Get going. After her.’

‘Ah. Yeah. Absolutely.’

‘Whew,’ said Phillip, tasting a bit of fish. ‘Life’s a bumpy ride, that’s all I can say.’

hen Lockie caught up with Vicki, she was on her hands and knees in the driveway with the fishing rods in a spastic tangle and her tackle box spilled open across the dirt and she was sobbing.

‘Vicki, what’s wrong?’

He tried to pick up sinkers and lures for her but ended up with hooks in his fingertips. She shoved him away.

‘Go back inside, Lockie.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Go back to the house.’

‘No.’

The sun was going down now. It streaked her tears pink. It killed him to see her like this. She sat back and cried like an abandoned kid, like she was five years old.

‘I really want to understand,’ he murmured.

‘Go in and celebrate with your family. I’m so embarrassed, spoiling things for you like this.’

‘You haven’t. It’s cool, Vick.’

‘I mean, I’m happy for you, you know. All of you. But . . . but I hate you too, you know.’

‘Us?’

‘Because your mother’ll get better and my brother’s gonna be a loony the rest of his life. And my family will stay the way it is, cold and horrible.’

Lockie watched her fight for breath and then surrender to another bout of sobbing. She smelled of fish and flour and soap. He saw the last light in the golden hairs of her arm. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. Vicki put her head on his chest and cried. He held her and felt her hair brush across his lips. Man, how much sadness could there be in the world?

‘This is so stupid,’ she cried. ‘I’m such a stupid cow.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘I am.’

‘That’s crap.’

‘Face it, Lockie. I’m just jealous.’

‘Well, you were right, though. I don’t know how lucky I am. And I don’t blame you for feeling the way you do.’

‘Lockie, I’m a mess. I’m so lonely. I’m alone. Don’t you get it? I feel like I’m dying from the inside.’

Lockie hugged her to him and felt his eyes burning and his throat go raw. ‘Come back inside with me, okay? We’ll have dinner and the Sarge’ll drive you home. Hell, you can stay with us if you feel like it.’

‘Oh, I wish I was a boy.’

Lockie sighed. ‘Geez, Vick. It’s not that great. I guess you get to pee standing up. But why be a boy?’

Vicki wiped her eyes on her sleeve. ‘Then we could be friends. You know, mates.’

Lockie laughed into her hair. ‘Save yourself the sex change, girl. We are mates.’

‘Well, blokes say anything to stop a girl from crying. Talk about wimps—you lot can’t hack a bit of bawling,’ she sniffed. ‘I take it all back. Who wants to be a bloke?’

‘Well, like I said, you do get to pee standing up. Anyway, I meant what I said. About being friends.’

‘Well, it was nice of you to say it.’

‘I wasn’t saying it to be nice. I really mean it.’

‘Oh, gawd, don’t you start blubbing.’

A low flying cloud swooped down the drive in the sunset. It thundered and shook and rattled and then stopped dead, right above them. It was Cyril. He tilted his horny head to check them out. Fishing gear all over the joint. Arms and legs sprawled across the drive. Tears, tissues, the lot. Cyril stood stock still racking his tiny brain for an explanation for such strange behaviour.

he first day of school was the usual diabolical pandemonium. Lockie was late because Blob had chewed the handles off his schoolbag and he had to make some out of ocky straps. Cyril, who had decided that Phillip was his long lost twin brother, followed him to the primary school and caused an under-age riot. Everywhere that Phillip went the ram was sure to go. At the high school there was the standard friendly welcome for First Years. Lockie trudged through the war zone of kids getting their heads flushed and their tricky bits painted and their lunches set on fire. He overheard the goss on which teachers got divorced over the holidays, who had transferred, who’d moved in with whom. Angelus was a small town and a secret had a short life here.

Kids clustered in little platoons. They bounced basketballs, compared suntans and clothes and haircuts, swapped magazines and gave back the borrowed tapes they’d accidentally taped over and told horror stories about Christmas and New Year. Some kid got a rope and swung like Tarzan from the balcony and got sent to the Principal and the hospital two and a half minutes into the school year. Boys checked each other for emerging whiskers; girls searched for breasts. Someone let off a rotten egg bomb during Assembly and the hall had to be evacuated. You know, the normal first day of school.

Lockie’s second year of high school began with him overhearing two girls talking in the library.

‘Vicki and Lockie are back on.’

‘I can’t believe her. What a moll.’

‘Gets him back round her little finger.’

‘His mum chucked a mental, you know. Went straight to the Loony Bin. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.’

‘Lockie’s turning into a bit of a loser.’

‘Cute, but yeah, he’s way losing it.’

Lockie stuck his head around the bookshelf. ‘Thanks for the reference, girls.’

One of them was so surprised she inhaled her bubble gum. That produced a bit of drama in the non-fiction section.

Lockie just let the day pass over him like a big dirty wave. The word was out. His mum was an axe-murdering loony. His dad was a sheep rustler. Vicki Streeton had needed about fifty-seven abortions and Lockie had paid for only seven of them. After the past few weeks he felt that nothing at school could really touch him. It all felt so teeny.

At lunchtime he found Vicki alone by the Science Block.

‘Looks like it’s us against the world.’

She looked up from her John Marsden book. ‘Ah, they don’t stand a chance, then, do they. Hardly seems fair.’

‘You okay?’

Vicki nodded.

Lockie sat beside her with his back to the cool wall. ‘School again, eh.’ From here you could smell the gas from the bunsen burners. It reminded him of the kitchen at home, scene of many horrible experiments lately. Still, he now knew about bleach and fabric softener. He understood the complex organisation of scheduling. He knew how many hours’ sleep he needed to avoid being a zombie. He knew the price of groceries and how to fold a fitted sheet. Yikes, he’d learnt so much over the holidays that he figured
school might be relaxing. ‘You feel older, Vick?’ ‘Yep.’

‘And wiser? I gotta tell you, I feel wiser.’

‘Well, that’s not much of a stretch. Zero to one in six weeks.’

‘Aw, nasty.’

‘You still can’t iron a shirt, Mr Older and Wiser.’

He laughed. ‘I’ll get the hang of it. Have faith, Streeton. Think of the future.’

‘This is the future.’

‘No, this is lunchbreak.’

A few whispering girls shuffled by. You didn’t need a bionic ear and a Rhodes Scholarship to guess what they were gossing about.

‘Apparently, word has it—’

‘I know, we’re on again,’ Vicki sighed. ‘What is this, ‘Melrose Place’?’

Lockie felt his knee knock against hers. ‘Well, are we?’

Vicki shrugged. ‘I dunno, really. You losing any sleep over it?’

‘Geez, Vick, I’m too tired for that. I’m nearly fourteen and I’ve got dishwater hands. I’m past romance.’

‘Yeah. You’re cute, Leonard. But I like a man who can iron his own shirt.’

She leant in and kissed him on the ear. His hair stood on end and a ripple of agitation went through the quadrangle.

‘Ssso, where does that leave us?’ Lockie breathed.

‘At lunchbreak, where else.’

he school year was slow out of the blocks but it got rolling eventually. The Sarge worked afternoon shift so he could be home for Blob and hand over to Lockie at four with the dinner cooked and the house all tidy. For a good long stretch the sun stayed out and dried up some of the boglands of the Leonard estate so Cyril could graze peaceably without taking swimming lessons.

Mrs Leonard saw her family every day and watched the bit of the ocean she saw from her window as if it was a chink of light in the darkness. Her good days got better and there were more of them. Her smile came back for longer periods and the spark returned to her eyes. It wasn’t all laughs, but the good days crept up on the rotten ones until it was at least an even fight.

Lockie rode down there some days and they walked in the hospital gardens and talked. He felt like they were getting to know each other all over again. He remembered why she was so special and what it was about her that Vicki envied so much. His mum had been there for him every step of the way, even when he wished she wasn’t. She took the world seriously; she loved life and drew people to her. Even if she hadn’t been his mother she would have been the kind of person Lockie would look up to.

Blob got more teeth and had a few stabs at walking. She pulled herself around the room, hanging onto chairs, curtains, and the odd leg hair, but she seemed to prefer life on all fours for the moment.

Phillip wet the bed twice a week. There was the occasional explosion in the shed. And a note home from the teacher saying that he was obsessed with sex. Business as usual for Phillip.

Lockie and Vicki hung out together and ignored the gossip. They really didn’t know what to make of each other, these days, but they had a few laughs. See what happens, thought Lockie.

The day Lockie turned fourteen the Sarge wangled the day off. After all the little presents were opened and the candles sprayed out, he drove Lockie down to the beach for a surf.

‘See you in an hour, Birthday Boy,’ said the Sarge. Til take these two for a drive.’

Lockie hit the water running. The surf was small but beautifully formed. He rode long, sweet left handers out on his own with the sun coppering his back and his board and the whole rippling sea. The ocean hissed in his ears and made him sleepy with happiness. He carved and floated. He crouched and flew with spray and rumbling at his back. He was as stoked as a grommet gets. Out off the point the dolphins leapt like a fountain.

After a long while Lockie looked back to see the Sarge and Phillip waving him in from the beach. He waved back to show them that he’d seen. They waved back harder, they jumped up and down, their mouths open with yells he couldn’t quite hear. The Sarge signalled him to come in; it seemed urgent now.

Lockie’s throat tightened just a teensy bit. What exactly were they yelling about back there? He glanced over his shoulder at the broad sea. Hmm. Don’t suppose they’re yelling something scary, he thought. Like maybe they can see something I can’t. Something bitey, perhaps. Something of the toothy sort. Like . . . the S-word.

He hunkered down and headed for shore, paddling hard. He hacked and dug at the water, toes and fingers tingling. He made a bow wave like a navy destroyer, he went so fast. He saw his family running down the beach. Aw no. They were still shouting and jumping. Their eyes like dear Pop’s golfballs. Even his mum was yelling. His mum?

Lockie stopped dead and sat up in the shore-break, heaving and puffing.

She stood there in a cotton dress, barefoot with her hands on her hips. ‘C’mon, slacker,’ she called. ‘Can’t you make it?’

He hit the beach and chucked his board and soaked her with a bear hug.

‘I don’t believe it.’

T m home, love.’

‘Happy Birthday,’ said the Sarge.

They all hugged and jiggled and laughed and bawled. In the end they rolled around in the sand like seals until they were exhausted and quiet.

‘Look at that,’ said Joy Leonard, pointing at the wide rolling sea big as life itself. ‘I’ve looked forward to that.’

‘I’ve got something better still,’ said Lockie, looking over towards the point. ‘Just step this way, madam.’ Lockie led them down the end of the beach to the granite point and up the bush track between boulders.

‘Where are we going, Lockie?’ whined Phillip. ‘Darwin?’

‘Mum’s going for a bit of a dip,’ said Lockie.

‘No, I didn’t bring any swimming things, love.’

The Sarge heaved up the track with Blob hanging off him like a sack of A-grade spuds. You could see he had serious doubts about all this.

At the end of the track they came to the wide flat rock above the water where Vicki had brought him fishing. The sea glittered and shifted. Everyone pulled up puffing.

‘You strong enough to swim?’ Lockie asked his mother.

She smiled. ‘Yeah, sure. But I’ve got nothing to wear.’

‘There’s no one around,’ said Lockie with a grin.

‘Only the police, Lockie,’ said Phillip. ‘Like, duh.’

‘Lockie, I don’t think I—’

Just then a dolphin reared out of the water and hung in the air like a thought.

‘Figured you might wanna swim with a few of the locals,’ said Lockie. ‘They’ve only got their birthday suits on.’

Joy Leonard dumped the frock and bombed in with only her knickers on.

‘Go, Mum!’ said Phillip in awe.

Lockie dived in behind her and saw the dreamy grey bodies of dolphins shooting up from the deep towards them.

He listened to his mother’s laughter as they leapt around her and that laughter was the sweetest sound he ever heard.

‘Lockie, love,’ she said, treading water behind him, ‘Vicki’s right. You’re a deadset legend.’

Lockie Leonard, hot surf-rat, is in love. The human torpedo is barely settled into his new school, and already he’s got a girl on his mind. And not just any girl: it has to be Vickie Streeton, the smartest, prettiest, richest girl in class.

What chance have you got when your dad’s a cop, your mum’s a frighteningly understanding parent, your brother wets the bed and the teachers take an instant dislike to you, and then you fall in love at twelve-and-three-quarter years old? It can only mean trouble, worry, mega-embarrassment and some wild, wild times.

Nothing’s easy for Lockie Leonard. Dumped by his girlfriend, he’s back to being the loneliest kid in town and life looks bleak. That is until he meets Egg – who might be the weirdest human being he’s ever met.

On top of all that, Lockie decides to save the planet; at least the bit of it he lives on. Then he falls in love again, which would be OK except she’s younger and surfs better. Can a thirteen-year-old surfrat have a headbanger for a best mate? Will he save the town from vile pollution? Will his love outlast the school term?

Another gnarly situation for Lockie Leonard, Scumbuster!

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First published in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd., 1997

This edition published by Penguin Group (Australia),2013

Text copyright © Tim Winton 1997

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Cover Design by Brad Maxwell

Cover photography © Getty Images

ISBN 978-1-74348-120-2.

Lines from ‘Black Hole Sun’ by Christopher Cornell, courtesy of Mushroom Music on behalf of You Make Me Sick I Make Music/BMG Gold Songs

Publication of this title was assisted by the Australia Council, the Federal Government’s arts funding and advisory body.

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