Human Torpedo

  ‘You love me, Lockie Leonard.’

  ockie sat on his own at school for a week. After school, he walked along the beach, looking out over the dead-flat bay. Sometimes there was a school of dolphins out there chasing bait-fish, but mostly there was just rain and a pretty obvious lack of swell. Usually he went home to lie on his bed and listen to Van Halen or Stevie Ray Vaughan instead of doing his homework. Almost every day his mum would come in with a soggy envelope and say: ‘There’s another note for you, love. Found it under the door.’ And at dinner, he’d slip it unopened into the woodstove. Phillip would sip his banana juice and shrug. Blob would goo and gaa and sick up sympathetically. A pretty cheery scene.

  ‘You’re still not signed up for the school camp, love,’ Mrs Leonard said, at the end of the week.

  ‘I’m not going, Mum. Save your money.’

  ‘Come on, mate,’ the Sarge said hacking away at a piece of steak. ‘You’ve pulled out of Youth Group and the Boardriders, you can’t file for divorce against the whole of Year 8.’

  ‘Know a good lawyer?’

  The Sarge laughed. ‘Can’t say I’ve ever met a good one. Come on, don’t be a dope. Sign up. It’s at Ocean Beach, isn’t it. They’ll probably let you take your board. Best surf for miles. Kilometres. You’d be mad not to.’

  There was a knock at the back door. The Sarge sighed.

  ‘That’ll be one of my least brain-dead constables come to ask how to spell “Breaking and Entering”. Hop up and see, will you, Lock.’

  Lockie went out to the back door and hauled it open. Outside in the rain stood Vicki Streeton.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Standing in the rain waiting to be asked in.’

  ‘Well . . . come in then.’

  She came inside and stood dripping on the purple lino. Lockie could hear the frogs belting out their favourite rap numbers. He closed the door.

  ‘You better come in by the fire,’ Lockie said. Inside he was going Aaaaarrrgh! ‘Everyone, this is Vicki. Vicki, this is everyone.’ Aaarrrghh!

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hello, Vicki.’

  ‘You’re the one he loves,’ said Phillip, matter-of-factly.

  ‘Phillip!’ Lockie groaned. Aaaaaarrrrgh!

  ‘You’re all wet, love,’ Mrs Leonard said. ‘Stand by the stove. Lockie, get Vicki a towel from the linen press.’

  ‘You like a cuppa?’ the Sarge said. O r Phillip’U fix you a Milo.’

  ‘No thanks, I’m fine. I just came by for a word with Lachlan Robert Louis Stevenson Leonard.’

  Phillip cracked up.

  ‘You must know him pretty well, then, if you know his whole name,’ said Mrs Leonard. ‘He doesn’t exactly spread that around.’

  ‘It’s a perfectly decent name,’ said the Sarge.

  ‘It’s exotic, that’s for sure,’ said Vicki.

  ‘You read books, Vicki?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Don’t call me sir,’ he grinned. ‘Call me Sarge.’

  ‘Yes, Sarge.’

  ‘I read Treasure Island and Kidnapped when I was ten years old, down on the farm. It changed me life. Once you’ve read a book, you’ve experienced it, you’ve lived it, and no one can take that experience away from you. It’s the bee’s flamin’ knees as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ Lockie said, coming back with a towel. ‘We lock him up at night to keep the town safe.’

  Vicki took the towel. ‘You’re just like him, Lockie.’

  She said it right there in public. He was so embarrassed he expected internal bleeding.

  ‘That’s true enough,’ said Mrs Leonard.

  ‘I just came to see if Lockie’d be at the camp next week.’

  ‘He’ll be there,’ said the Sarge. ‘You try and keep him away. Right, son?’

  Lockie opened his mouth, but all that would come out was a feeble little ‘Aaah’.

  hree to a seat! Down the back of the bus! Pull your head in, Watson. Whose blasted guinea pig is that?’

  Lockie stowed his board and bag at the back of the bus and flopped gloomily onto a seat. Kids who’d sucked up to him last term sat all around him, but not on his seat. He looked out the window. His oldies waved, and he tried to crank up a smile for them but it came out looking like the zip on a fat boy’s jeans. Someone sat next to him. The whole crowd went ‘Whooaaaaa!’ and he turned and saw that it was her.

  ‘We’ve made an impression,’ she said.

  ‘Not hard to impress this lot of defectives.’

  She put her hand on his leg. The bus ground forward. They were off.

  ‘Glad you could make it.’

  For some reason he wanted to say something really cutting, but all he could do was smile.

  •

  Everyone cheered when the bus rolled down the last long hill to Ocean Beach. There was a river estuary and a broad sandbar, and behind the bar you could see the spray of surf. At the campsite there were about twenty timber chalets, a dining hall, and ablution blocks, all beneath peppermint trees with grass all around. A week of this. Even Lockie softened at the thought.

  He purposely bunked in one of the boys’ chalets where there were no surfers – only science boffins, the sort of kids with calculators and soldering irons. They sat around nutting out problems and rigging up circuits. They hated girls and music, so he figured he was safe enough. This’ll be alright, Lockie thought. And it was. The whole camp was alright.

  It was a pretty slack time. They made kites, went on nature walks, learned photography and about weather; they played games and saw videos. John East was running the camp, and Lockie was impressed. He didn’t run it like a teacher, more like an ordinary human being. Like for fun.

  Lockie kept pretty clear of Vicki, best he could. He could sense her hurt and he knew it was cruel, but when he came down to it he was scared. He’d been hurt himself – these last weeks were murder – and something in him told him not to get hurt again. He really didn’t know how to figure it out.

  But on the second last night, after that Watson kid poled himself on the flying fox and that Brinkley kid set fire to his jockettes doing blue flames, Lockie went for a walk and got himself ambushed.

  ‘Hey, spunk,’ a voice hissed from the bushes. ‘Wanna bite of me Cherry Ripe?’

  ‘Vicki?’

  ‘Scared you.’

  ‘Give us a bit, then.’

  ‘I’ve got a dry pozzie. Over here.’

  Lockie picked his way through ferns and bracken. Suddenly he was on his back with the stars above him and she was laughing.

  ‘You tripped me.’

  ‘Poor Lockie,’ she giggled.

  He felt her against him. Her hip against his ear. He didn’t move away.

  ‘When you gonna stop going round like I’m invisible?’ Lockie sighed.

  ‘This is my punishment, I s’pose, is it?’ she said.

  ‘No. Maybe. I dunno, Vick.’

  ‘It’s off, then?’

  ‘Give us a bite.’

  Vicki picked up his hand and sank her teeth into the heel of his palm.

  ‘Ouch! Smart arse.’

  ‘It’s off, then?’

  ‘I thought you’d called it off ages ago,’ he said. ‘That’s the message I got.’

  ‘That’s bulldust, Lockie Leonard. You know different to that. I told you what I thought. Seven letters. You didn’t read one of ‘em did you? Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You rotten mongrel.’

  She started to cry. He felt her body shaking.

  ‘I’m sorry, Vick.’

  ‘You hate me, don’t you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Liar.’

  He put his arm around her waist. Her big, sloppy sweater was damp with dew. She’d been out here waiting for ages.

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Give us a bite.’

  She sniffed. ‘I haven’t got a Cherry Ripe, dumbo.’

&nb
sp; ‘False promises,’ he said.

  He felt her roll across his arm and then on top of him. She bent down and he felt her teeth in his neck. It hurt, but he didn’t mind it. He pulled her mouth to his and felt her hot, wet face against his. She ran her tongue across his lip, she kissed his eyes, and her hair fell across him. Lockie could smell the sweet vanilla of her, the ground, the dew, the bracken. Her hands were smooth and cold beneath his windcheater. She pushed it up and pulled up her own sweater and their skins met, hot and moving, her breast to his, and Lockie nearly crying himself. She kissed his chest and his neck and he felt her nipples on his belly, her tongue snaking across his skin, and something broke in him. It was too much. He liked her, loved her, but this . . . it seemed too rushed. It was great, but she was talking about love, they both were, but this wasn’t love and somehow it seemed important to him, the difference.

  ‘Vicki?’

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Come here.’

  She slid up to his shoulder.

  ‘You don’t need to do this.’

  ‘I want to.’

  ‘Tell me something smart. Impress me with your mega-superior girl’s brain.’

  She licked his neck. ‘You’re scared.’

  Lockie’s heart beat faster. ‘What of?’

  She slid her hand into his jeans to give him an answer.

  ‘Of that?’ He wanted to lie his face off right now, to sound like Tom Selleck instead of Lockie Leonard. It was too much, being yourself, sometimes. ‘Of sex?’

  ‘It’s love, Lockie. You’re scared of love.’

  He took a big breath. Go on, say it. ‘Sex. Yeah, I’m scared of sex, orright. But you’re the one who’s scared of love, Vick. I don’t know anything about sex and you don’t know anything about love.’

  She pulled right back from him. ‘You sayin’ I’m a slut, then?’

  ‘No, don’t be an egg.’

  ‘You think I’m slack, don’t you?’

  ‘I hate that word.’

  ‘If you were a girl they’d call you frigid.’

  He laughed. ‘Probably.’

  ‘It’s easier for boys.’

  ‘You think so?’ He wondered.

  ‘It’s your religion, isn’t it, that stops you.’

  ‘No, not really. Well, believin’ those things helps me believe in love.’

  ‘But this is natural.’

  ‘Not for me. Not if it doesn’t feel natural for me right now. Geez, Vicki, six months ago I was in primary school. I’m a kid. I’m not in a hurry for all this stuff. We’re not grown-up, you said it yourself. Geez, I look at seventeen year olds, twenty-five year olds and they don’t look so blissed that I suddenly want to be like them. I care about you, Vick, you’re me best friend, but you probably won’t even remember my name when you’re seventeen. You don’t know what you want.’

  ‘You talk like a fifty year old already. I don’t know what you’re worried about.’

  ‘I love you, Vick. But I’m too straight for you, or something. It’s like the word “love” means something different to us. I like you. I care about you.’

  ‘I want you.’

  Lockie kissed her eyes. ‘Me? This is old Lockie, dumb Lockie, straight Lockie, remember? Nice Lockie who does everything slower than a wet week.’

  ‘I hate being thirteen,’ she said.

  ‘See? I’m weird,’ he murmured. ‘I love it.’

  •

  In the morning on the last day of camp, Lockie woke feeling happy for some dippy reason he couldn’t figure. He could hear the swell pounding down at the bar like he’d never heard it before. It throbbed and pulsed like a headache. He slid out of his bunk and pulled on shorts and wetsuit. No one else was up. That surf was hammering, pumping down there. He couldn’t believe no one else could hear it.

  He grabbed his board and snuck out of camp.

  Down at the point, great grinding right-handers were twisting around into the bay, throwing out fat, heavy barrels that hissed and gurgled like nothing he’d ever seen before in his life. It was huge. Absolutely insane. He let out a crazy mad-dog howl and a mob of seagulls took off for a safer place.

  ‘I’m nuts,’ he told himself, climbing across the rocks down to the water’s edge. ‘I am a flamin’ fruitcake!’

  He leapt out off a rock and hit the surging water with his arms already paddling. The rip along the point took him quickly and the granite boulders slid past like he was in a speedboat. He headed for the breakzone and saw the lumbering walls peaking around the corner. He waited till he was almost past before he paddled furiously to cross the rip and come out at the surging area with its trails of suds from previous waves.

  Lockie sat up on his board and steadied himself. This is serious, he thought. This is as serious as it gets. There was no one else out. He figured the swell was just a hair’s breadth away from being out of control. Maybe that’s how he was himself. All it needed was a sneaking close-out set and he mightn’t make it to the beach in one piece.

  A set came rumbling through and Lockie paddled over each wave, just making it through. They fell behind him like demolished buildings and their spray stung the back of his neck. He watched them breaking across the bay, five hundred metres to the sandbar at the mouth of the estuary. He’d never seen anything like it before in his life.

  Another set came, and then another, and he passed on both. You’re gutless, he told himself; you can’t do it.

  And then came this great green thing hissing out of nowhere and Lockie knew he’d either ride it or drink it, so he turned and went for it and felt it power him out forward as though he’d been shot from a cannon. He went screaming down the face. Aaaaaaarrrgh! With his bouncing, vibrating, bottom turn, he thought his board would snap, or maybe his legs, but he held to it until he was fading to the shoulder again . . . up . . . up . . . until he was aiming down the long, long curving wall of the wave. He crouched to save his knees breaking and the whole world went green as the inside of a cave. He was swallowed up. Not a cave, a sea monster. All ribbed and snaky, cold and deadly with its trapped breath on the back of his neck. He held on and it kept curling across in front of him and above him until he thought it was getting to be a dream. And then he shot out the end into the light and let out another hoot before working the rest of the diminishing wave all the way into the beach. He fell to his knees on the sand and yelled:’Thank yoooooooou!’

  No one had seen it, not a soul, and he couldn’t care less.

  •

  All day, Lockie tried to get Vicki alone, but there always seemed to be something stopping them. A crowd of girls, the lunch bell, a look she gave him, some-damn-thing.

  The big sensation of the last night was the girls short-sheeting the teachers’ beds. It was Vicki who organized it. Word was that there was some dope around and then they discovered Vicki Streeton had been handing out little plastic bags of parsley and lawn clippings mixed with Drum. Kids were impressed.

  On the way back to Angelus, Lockie sat up the front of the bus and Vicki up the back where the fame always is. Lockie felt kind of numb and tired. He dozed off alone, and only woke up when Jenny Friendly’s guinea pig made a leap to freedom through the window. The bus stopped. Everyone but Lockie got off to look for the escapee. Good on you, mate, thought Lockie; go like hell and don’t look back. He felt peaceful in a weird kind of way, as though someone had moved a tonne of bricks off his back.

  he night be got back from the school camp at Ocean Beach, Lockie found himself some change and stepped out for a while. It was dark and raining, and as he walked out along the stony, puddled driveway, the frogs croaked and groaned in the swamp all around him. You could see the phone box lit up at the end of the street and it took forever to get up there. It was cold inside the booth, and it stank of stale cigarette smoke and damp phone books. There was graffiti on the walls: I LOVE YAHOO – KAREN IS A MOLL – SAVE THE OZONE LAYER, FART NO MORE.

  Streeton . . . Streeton . . . Streeton. He found the number and dialled. Hi
s heart started sounding like the music from Jaws. If I get one of the oldies I’ll hang up. It rang, it rang, it. ..

  ‘Hello. Streetons’.’ It was her. He sighed with relief.

  ‘Give over with the heavy breathing, pervert.’

  ‘Vick, it’s me.’

  ‘Oh, Lockie.’

  ‘Sorry to give you the wrong impression.’

  Awkward silence.

  ‘Listen, Vick, I. . . ‘

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I just wanted . . . to say hello.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I’m glad they didn’t find the guinea pig.’

  ‘Yeah, that’d be right.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the pollution in the harbour, you know the mercury John East was talking about. I thought maybe you and me could start a group, you know, get a petition going, heavy the fat cats in this town, you know, the business people . . . um . . .’

  ‘Forget it, Lockie.’

  ‘Forget what? The mercury?’

  ‘Us. Forget it. It’s over.’

  ‘Over? People are never over, Vick. We don’t have to be romantic or anything, but we still like each — ’

  ‘Lockie, watch my lips.’

  ‘Must have a bad line. I can’t quite make ‘em out. Ah, there we are. Great lips. Now there’s memories.’

  ‘I am finished with you. No friends crap, orright? Don’t come round anymore, don’t speak to me, don’t even smile at me in the quadrangle.’

  ‘Am I allowed to remember your name?’

  ‘No, don’t even think about me.’

  He felt all shaky and busted. ‘Fair enough. I accept the mission.’

  He heard her sob.

  ‘We’ll laugh about this when we’re old,’ he said.

  ‘Oh Lockie.’

  ‘Maybe next year?’

  He listened. She didn’t hang up. She was crying. She loves me, he thought, but it won’t work.

  ‘This phone booth will self-destruct in five seconds. Let’s hope I score the loose change. I love you.’

  He hung up and burst outside into the rain and sprinted up against the wind until he felt like losing his lunch right there in the street. Under the solitary streetlight the rain looked like confetti falling. He tried to laugh, but it came out as tears, and he cried till he thought he’d die from it. He’d never get over this. Never. His life was over. It had to be.