Human Torpedo

  ‘I’ve always taught you to believe in yourself, right?’

  Lockie closed his eyes. ‘Right, right.’

  ‘Well, there’s a difference between believing in yourself and having tickets on yourself.’

  ‘Ah, geez, what is this?’ Lockie said, heading for the door.

  ‘Lockie!’

  He stopped. ‘What?’

  ‘We still trust you, you know.’

  He kicked his way out through the door. Happy holidays ahead.

  ockie burst out of bed. Aaargh! He was late! Skiing. Today he and Vick were going water-skiing up the river. He looked at his watch. Hell, they’d be leaving without him in a minute. With a single movement, Lockie swept back the blankets and jackknifed into his own clothes. Phillip was gathering up his own stuff, wet as usual, his bottom lip quivering. Lockie said nothing, charged into the bathroom. Quick squirt of Colgate straight into the mouth . . . squish-squish . . . hark it back into the basin . . . off we go. Phillip calling: ‘Lockie! Lockie!’

  •

  He was sprinting flat-rap up the main road when he saw the big Landcruiser and powerboat pass. The wind of it rushed in his face and he stopped dead. That was them, the Streetons. The rotten sods! Then he saw the brakelights go on. They were pulling over. Lockie turned around and ran towards them. A door was opening. A figure got out and waved. Vicki. It was her and mm-mm, she looked awesome.

  •

  It was a long drive to the ski spot, past paddocks full of splotchy cows, big stands of timber and thick bush. The sky was grey and so was the inside of the Streeton Landcruiser. It was so grey with cigarette smoke in there that Lockie could hardly see the half-bald head of Mr Streeton in front of him. Definitely not breathing territory. As they drove, with Vicki’s oldies bitching at each other and the cows going past, Lockie felt her hand on his leg. It was a comfortable feeling. They knew each other, all about each other. She liked Sting and Whoopee Goldberg. Cherry Ripes. ‘Dr Who’. Tom Selleck. Hot chips swimming in vinegar. She barracked for the West Coast Eagles. She liked hands on her bum. And flowers. Hand-painted Reeboks. Yahoo Serious (that wally). She liked to be a leader. In a school full of Kylie Moles and Kylie Minogues (barf!), she was real class.

  They didn’t say much, bouncing along in the big 4WD. Funny, he thought, we don’t talk as much anymore. Maybe it comes from being close. Maybe we don’t need to. Especially when you compare us to those two going at it up the front.

  ‘Look, will you just leave off, woman!’

  ‘Yairs, everyone leaves off on old Swifty Streeton!’

  ‘Don’t call me that, dammit!’

  •

  Vicki streaked out in a long, sweeping fan of water and came bouncing across the wake of the outboard. The wind blew her hair back; she hadn’t even got it wet. She glistened in her wetsuit and leaned back on her single ski. She was good, alright.

  As the boat swung round at the big, shady bend of the river, Vicki cut out wide and let go the rope to whoosh into shore where the others were fixing boats and skis and picnicking on the grass in the sun.

  ‘She’s good!’ Lockie yelled to Mr Streeton next to him in the boat.

  Mr Streeton twitched his fag round his mouth. ‘She’s my daughter.’

  Lockie smiled blankly. End of conversation. They swerved back across their own wake and headed in for lunch.

  There were plenty of people all along the river-bank at lunch, and they all seemed to know each other. The kids didn’t look familiar – Lockie figured they went to posh private schools. Their parents talked like Mr Streeton, about money and business and the way to get things done. They talked about cash-flow the way Lockie might talk about waves. There was something about the whole picnic that gave him the creeps.

  Mrs Streeton kept offering him food, but she never actually spoke to him. She was scrubbed up to look young, but she was kind of scraggy and worn-out, with hard, thin, smoker’s lips. He could tell she was smart, smarter than any woman here, but she was mean with it, as though being clever had made her bitter somehow. The men all stood together holding their sausages and talking with their mouths full. The kids seemed. . . something. Shallow, maybe. They were confident, real confident, and hard. Some of them looked him over, especially the girls, but they didn’t say much.

  ‘What’s the matter, Lock?’ Vicki whispered. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

  ‘Yeah. A whole batch of ‘em.’

  She gave him a queer look. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

  •

  High above the river on a ridge thick with trees, Lockie and Vicki sat on a sunny patch of ground. She still had her wetsuit on, and she looked sleek as a seal in it. The ground smelled of eucalyptus. Birds called to each other like old ladies on talkback radio.

  ‘You’re the strangest guy I ever met,’ Vicki said, smiling.

  Lockie nodded. He believed her.

  ‘What is it? You look like you just stepped on a dog turd.’

  He sat there feeling the sun heating through the legs of his Levis.

  ‘C’mon, they’ll be wondering where we are, Lockie. Are you gonna tell me?’

  They, he thought; they, they, they.

  ‘You don’t like them, do you?’

  ‘I hate ‘em,’ he said. ‘I hate the way they all act as if they’re about to rule the world. Not the oldies, the kids. They make me sick.’

  ‘Jealousy’s a curse, you know.’

  ‘I don’t want anything they’ve got,’ he murmured. ‘They don’t have anything, they don’t think anything, they don’t believe anything.’

  ‘Aren’t you a bit up yourself?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You always have to have people believing in things.’

  ‘Well, don’t you?’

  She shrugged. ‘I can take it or leave it.’

  Lockie couldn’t believe it. This was the girl he’d found with brains, who cared about things even more than he did. He’d thought about things more because of her, he felt more grown-up from having known her. Was it all some act?

  ‘I just wanna have a good time, Lockie. Orright?’

  He reached across and touched the wetsuit over her breast. It was cold to the touch. His hand moved up the zip and drew the zip down to her belly. She had a bikini on under the suit and she shivered in the sudden cold rush of air. Inside, her skin was hot and smooth. He slipped his hand inside her top and felt her nipple harden from the cold. Maybe it wasn’t talk and love and ideas after all; maybe it was just this he wanted.

  Vicki’s head was back and her eyes were closed. Her neck was white and graceful. He kissed her there and felt sad, sad like he’d never been before.

  •

  ‘Lockie wants to try it on skis,’ Vicki said, when lunch was being packed up. ‘He says it should be a cinch for a surfer.’

  Lockie froze. He hadn’t said anything of the sort not a flamin’ whisper. All these people sat round with their eyebrows up, looking him up and down. You bitch, he thought. I couldn’t ski for all the poo at Bondi.

  Orright, son,’ Mr Streeton said, lighting up another fag. ‘Let’s see what you’re made of.’

  They fitted him up with skis and he sat shivering by the bank in nothing but his Speedos. Mr Streeton took the boat out into the middle of the river, letting the rope run out behind. The seventy-horsepower Evinrude purred away out there. Lockie held the wooden handle and tried not to piddle himself.

  ‘Let’s see if the swamp rat can stay afloat,’ someone said.

  ‘Just keep leaning back,’ said Vicki.

  ‘Thanks. Mate.’

  The boat roared and stood up in the water and he was off. Well, his arms were, anyway — the rest of him took a moment to catch up. It was like riding two skateboards behind a bus with your arms caught in the pram rack.

  Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!

  Lockie burst onto the river and swung out precariously, trying all the time to keep his feet together but not too together. The boat started zigging and
zagging and to his amazement, he found he could stay with it. Even go out wide and pull himself across the wake. He was absolutely hooting along. After a couple of minutes they came to the wide part of the river where he knew he’d have to make a turnaround. His knees were getting weak now, but he held on and went round swinging like a rusty gate, across chop and wake and weird afternoon reflections, until he was headed back towards the crowd. He could hear them now, those dorky, tightbum, rich kids, sitting on their mums’ and dads’ Audis and BMWs. Swamp rat, they called him. It was the house they were talking about. How did they know where he lived? Unless they were told. By Vicki. What else was she telling them? That his old man was a copper? That his brother wet the bed? That he – Lockie – had all these crummy ideas? Swamp rat. Well, they hadn’t got a laugh out of his skiing yet. Not yet. Oops. Oohh. Ooeer. Yet. Whooaaaa!

  Lockie’s left leg decided somewhere along the river to go left, but the right leg had other ideas. When he hit a ridge of backwash, the rest of him settled on going down. He hit the water like a meat pie dropped from a balcony. Splat. He forgot to close his mouth. Boring along underwater, he realized, too, that he’d forgotten to let go of the rope. Lockie Leonard, human torpedo.

  They were cacking themselves on the bank when he lurched ashore. He smiled. And vomited on die first person he came to.

  ockie didn’t see Vicki for a few days after the skiing business. He hung around home, reading and listening to the radio, or he spent hours down the beach, sitting out in the cold water waiting for waves that just never came. He missed her; he knew it. He wanted to see her, crack a few dumb jokes, talk about things. Away from school, he didn’t have anyone else to muck around with, even though he was popular. Kids figured Lockie was always going to be with Vicki. No one actually came to see him at home. If they saw him down the beach they’d stick around, maybe go halves in a bucket of chips, but it was as if the guys knew they could never be Vicki Streeton, so they didn’t try any harder to know him.

  •

  In the rain, he stood out the front of the Streeton house. The dog barked. The rain fell. After a while he went.

  •

  He thought about her all the time. He wondered if she’d started the Geography project they were going to do together. He thought about her sharpening pencils, about her having a bath. He wondered what she was reading, what records she was listening to.

  ‘Geez, Lockie,’ Phillip said one night, wiping that goopy banana juice off his lip, ‘you look sadder ‘n a dog.’

  Lockie didn’t even hear him.

  he day the Sarge came home early, Lockie knew something had happened. All of them knew. The sound of the patrol car coming up the long drive made them suddenly alert. That’s coppers’ families for you.

  Lockie went to the verandah and saw the Sarge pull up.

  ‘Shit!’ Oops, he covered his mouth.

  The car was full of holes. Bullet holes. Lockie knew what a bullet hole looked like. One of the big blue lights was smashed. There were holes in the windscreen, in the bonnet, along the door.

  ‘Dad?’

  Lockie belted down to the car. The Sarge sat behind the wheel. Lockie saw the hole in the seat upholstery beside his father’s head. The Sarge looked green in the face and kind of faraway in the eyes. Lockie opened the door.

  ‘You orright?’

  The Sarge sighed. ‘Put the kettle on, will you?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Want a hand?’

  That’d be nice.’

  ‘You hurt?’

  ‘Nope. I just can’t stop me legs shakin’.’

  Lockie helped him out of the car. It was scary, having to help him like this. ‘What happened?’

  Mrs Leonard came to help.

  ‘Oh,’ said the Sarge. ‘A farmer, you know.’

  They got him to the kitchen.

  ‘I could do with some brandy, I think.’

  The Sarge never drank, and the only grog in the house was some cheap brandy Mrs Leonard used to stoke up the Christmas pud a bit. She poured him a slug while the kettle was coming to the boil.

  ‘Ugh. Now I remember why I don’t drink.’

  ‘What happened, love?’

  ‘Oh, a domestic. The wife called us. Farmer was beatin’ her up, wouldn’t let her out of the house, so I took young Snowy out to see her. He must’ve been expectin’ us. Started shootin’ as soon as we drove up. Went mad, the silly bugger. Mad. He had enough ammo to start World War Three.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Yeah, Dad, and?’

  ‘Snowy got one through the big toe. We got behind the car. We were stuck orright. I started talkin’ to him. With some help we might’ve even been able to grab him. But we didn’t get time. He blew his brains out. Just a couple of minutes of hullaballoo. Just a lot of fuss, and then his brains are all over the living room. Funny, all the time I’m thinkin’ of ways not to shoot him, and he . . . well. I think I’ll go to bed. Ah, it’s a sleepy little town, this, eh, boy?’

  Lockie didn’t have a lovesick moment for twelve hours after that. He went out and put his finger in the hole in the car seat next to where his dad’s head would have been. He felt cold and thankful. Life was a tiny, flickering light, sometimes. He thought about it that way all night.

  n the end, Lockie went up the hill to see Vicki. He just couldn’t wait any longer.

  It was a grey old day in Angelus, that morning, but Lockie felt good about it, for some reason. He’d kind of gotten used to being in a little country town. You could see it all from the top of a hill: where you lived, where your friends lived, the beach, the school, the main street, the parks. Lockie didn’t see it as so boring now. Yeah, he’d been a snob thinking the city was automatically better. After all, what would he be doing on his holidays in Perth right now? Sitting around in a shopping mall probably, watching kids shoplifting U2 records. Here at least there was some natural stuff to see: all the granite cliffs and the sea crashing against them, the old whaling station, the mountains out east, and kilometres of beaches. Hell, it was a good place to live.

  The Sarge was back at work now, as though nothing had happened. He read his books and stayed cheerful enough, and Mrs Leonard looked relieved. Everything was alright. All he had to do was suss out Vicki and he could rest easy.

  He went shambling up the hill, feeling pretty cosy with the world, when he saw the car parked out the front of the Streeton place. It was a black panel van, a Holden, and it was jacked up with air shockies and sitting on a set of tyres with more bulge than Dolly Parton. As he got closer, Lockie could read the stickers on the rear window.

  Lockie stood there in the street out the front of Vicki’s place and took it in.

  Bogans. This was definitely, undoubtedly, UNBELIEVABLY a bogan car. Bogs. Rockers. Petrolheads. Black T-shirts, ripple-sole desert boots, grimy jeans. And they obviously weren’t there to doorknock for the Mormons. Those guys had to be seventeen, eighteen. Lockie thought about it. That meant they had money, jobs maybe, or the dole. They’d be big as full-grown men. Forget it.

  He headed back down the hill, but halfway down he decided to cut back towards town. There was a cold kind of anger burning in him like dry ice, and it pricked his eyes with the rotten beginnings of tears. He hated this. He hated all of it!

  When he hit the main street, Lockie headed down past shops and banks to the harbour. He got to the crumbling town jetty where grass grew in cracks in the planks and birds sat watching. He looked out over the water.

  That’s it, he thought; you can’t compete with blokes who are twice your size. Who’ve got money and cars. Funny thing was, he wouldn’t have thought Vicki’d be impressed by all that bogan crap, or even the thrill of hooning around in a Chevy-powered panel van. Geez, he thought, if she can lower herself to bogans, why not dive to the bottom and try bikies, or worse, skinheads. She could go out and bash Aborigines with them. Dammit, dammit, dammit. Aargh, damn!

  He wandered back up to the caff across the road from the roller rink and bought himself a Cok
e. He sat in the window, peering out through the flyspecks at cars passing, at kids wandering by with roller skates. Geez Lockie, he thought to himself, you’re really a prize wally. You think you’re in love with this girl, you think you know everything about her, but you haven’t got a clue. You don’t know a flamin’ thing about her. And you probably don’t know a flamin’ thing about love, either. Yer a thirteen year old cretin. Fair dinkum, yer a loser.

  Then he saw the Chevy-powered van cruise past, pull a squealing U-turn and slide to the kerb across the road outside the skating joint. Lockie blurted Coke all over the caff window.

  ‘Hey, you little knob!’ called the guy behind the counter. ‘Get outta here before I make you lick it off.’

  ‘Sorry! I choked!’

  ‘You wanna demo of choking? Come here.’

  Lockie hit the fly-strips at the door like a dive-bombing mozzie. Out on the street, he watched Vicki Anne Streeton, thirteen, of View Terrace, Angelus, recent girlfriend of one Lachlan Robert Louis Stevenson Leonard (loser) get out of the jacked up black van and head for the doors of the skate rink with two straight-out-of-the-seventies bogans. One had an Iron Maiden T-shirt, and the other had on a pair of — wait for it — cowboy boots. Their Levis hung down so far you could see the tops of their bum cracks from across the street. They walked like scrap metal, and there she was, walking between them.

  Go home, Lockie, his brain was saying. But his gonads had other ideas. He found himself crossing the street and forking out a buck to get in the door. It was dim inside; the place used to be a cinema, but now all the seats were ripped out and the place was full of the roar of wheels on wood. He had forgotten that bogans like skating and tenpin bowling as well as their diet of violence, so he was a bit shocked to see all the black T-shirts and beetle-crushers in there.

  Feeling awkward and wheel-less, he moved around to a spot in the shadows and watched Vicki rigging up. Maybe they’re old school friends, he thought. Cousins? Friends of the family? Sunday school chums?

  When they came around on their first circuit, rolling and sloughing along, Lockie saw one bloke with his hand in Vicki’s back pocket, and the way he was squeezing around in there didn’t look all that cousinly.