The Disrespect of Christopher Caruthers
A Novel
David Bath
Table of Contents
Title
Braydon
Liz
Chris
About the author
Contact
Braydon
As a reward for good behaviour, it was Mrs Loverly’s idea to grant Toby time to hang with me during last period on Fridays and play any sport of his choosing, which for Toby means basketball. Not a bad deal, for either of us. I don’t mind hanging out shooting hoops. When I pitched the idea to Ken, the Vice-Principal - and the fifth Wiggle - I turned it around and pretended it was my idea. Loverly didn’t seem too peeved when she found out. She wants to help the boy, unlike the rest of them, who’ve given up on him. Most blame his behaviour on his father’s weird condition, but the younger teachers, especially Mizz Mickels, call him Satan’s Son. Toby has a knack for telling teachers to fuck off or get fucked. Appalling language from an eleven-year-old startles many of the staff. It explodes from him so easily, without forethought and with an impersonal malice. I’m not sure why they’re surprised. You’d think intermediate school teachers in this area, on the fringes, have seen and heard it all. Except for Loverly and me, they want Toby expelled. Relocate him to another school where he’ll become some other fool’s problem… the end of a well-worn tiring story, ‘Goodbye Toby, farewell Satan’s Son’.
I’m not being completely honest; I pitched the idea before Loverly did to gain brownie points. Know the system work the system, that’s how it works around here. Back then I cared about being accepted by the staff and being good at my job. It was only a few weeks ago and I’ve since grown out of it, but it was already pissing me off the way they were treating him. Where is the feel good - everyone is included - warm fuzzy - empathy bullshit that staff bestow on the other students? No one loses, no one wins, and aren’t we happy Kiwis? Look at us, lumped together in our satisfying frothy puddle of mediocrity. And Toby? He isn’t any worse than the other little rotters and bad seeds in general circulation.
When word got out the administration had promptly accepted the proposal, the idea mutated and became ugly. The bastards saw it for something other than what it was: an honest attempt to help the boy and give him much needed positive reinforcement. Instead, the staff took it as an open declaration of war. The boy’s behaviour became our battlefield and his afternoons with me the prize. In no way will they let him have his special time, not without a fight.
This Friday afternoon the authorities granted Toby his recreation time with me in the hall, but only just, from what I’ve heard. He misses a hoop, a rim shot, and swears loudly. That gets Loverly up off her seat at the other end of the hall. We’re on the same team, but I can’t resist and lip-sync her word for word, ‘Toby, we don’t use language like that, do we?’ The little bastard sees me and laughs.
‘No, we don’t, do we Toby?’ I say loudly.
He smiles lop-sided, tries another shot and makes it clean. Now she’s in his face about an infraction with Mr O’Malley, an old-school ruggerhead who hated me on first sight and passionately hates Toby. My immediate superior, Mr Gent (head of the Physical Education department) also hated me on sight. That’s why we’re in here and not out on the courts, or out on the grass biffing a frisbee at each other as we should be on a summer’s day. Out of sight out of mind, I guess. Plus O’Malley has his class out there. The guy stands off to one side with his arms folded, looking sour and pissed off, while his jumped up brats play rounders. Rounders? It’s 2005 not 1955, O’Malley.
You can see their problem, can’t you? You just can’t trust any fool that waltzes into a teacher’s aide position off the Work and Income New Zealand (WINZ) program, especially when he’s been one of those ‘artists working for the benefit’ types. A writer! Ken loved it (of course), my writing thing. Ken considers himself a literary type by proxy because his wife holds an English Lit degree and puts on class plays and the annual school production. Although ‘writer’ is a loose term for me, if it even applies. I’ve published a handful of short poems in New Zealand lit journals. A brief writing course at the polytech - so in reality, lots of big talk and hot air. Take my screenplay: a psychic FBI agent tracks a serial killer and during the hunt discovers a fellow psychic investigator. My WINZ case manager, Cory, was less than impressed. ‘What will you do with it, will you sell it?’ she asked.
Putting it down to experience wasn’t the reply she wanted. She bullied me into accepting a part-time job trying to sell people chimney sweeps over the phone. I wasn’t much good at it. George, my partner, laughed at my calling lists and the phone on a ten-metre extension cord… so I could be at my leisure in the lounge, taking in the view of the city and the curve of the beach up to the heads. It’s hard to sell random chimney sweeps over the phone when (a) the randoms you’re calling don’t have a chimney, or (b) they have a chimney but don’t use the fireplace. Nowadays it’s electric or gas. You know those big gas bottles you see stuck to the side of people’s houses? Cooking. Heating. Hot water. Wood or coal burning fires pumping smoke into the atmosphere will be a criminal offence soon.
Snapping out of my daze, I notice Ken and a shapely woman conversing in the hall entrance. That doesn’t often happen, shapely women don’t normally show up here. She’s acting flustered and agitated though. She gives me an irritated squinty stare, so I stop looking at her. Ken impatiently waves at me. No. At Toby. It must be Toby’s Mum. He trots away and Mrs Loverly doggedly follows. Never one to miss an opportunity, Mrs Loverly, I’ve noticed. Blows hot air around about the boy. Keeps her in a job, I suppose. Special needs teacher. Jesus, she’ll never be out of a job, not around here. I try a shot from the free throw line but miss. Not stroking the ball. Toby trots back and grabs his bag.
‘Gotta go, Mr Begg. Sorry. Mum’s locked out of the house,’ he says.
‘And what are you supposed to do about that?’ I ask.
‘Eh? I climb through the toilet window. I’m still small enough,’ he says.
‘Don’t fall in. Until our next session, Toby,’ I say.
‘Yeah, be seeing you, Mr B,’ he says.
He calls none of the other teachers or aides by the first letter of their last name, only me. Mrs Loverly waves and heads off, her day done. Everybody around here makes an art of leaving early, except the younger teachers roughly my age. The earnest types like Jaffers, Miss Richards and big-arsed Mizzzzz Mickels, who are serious about spoon-feeding the syllabus to the inmates, can always be seen filling in their lesson planning notebooks should the dreaded B.O.E. inspector take a peek at the books. Thanks mostly to Ken they’ve every block of the syllabus, every section, every teaching point buttoned down tight. Jaffers showed me. ‘It’s mix and match, mate,’ he said, laughing. With the topic-folders indexed and the teaching material nicely bullet-pointed and outlined, only a fool couldn’t get his or her head around it. The prick drives a sweet Subaru Legacy and arrives in the morning still stoned from last night’s session. I’m on $9.10 an hour. Before tax.
All right. You know what pisses me off about this place? The older teachers that waddle in here and dump their classes on me - that’s what pisses me off. I hear them mutter, ‘No teaching experience, he has no bloody idea,’ but they give me total class control. A degree in physical education and a few medals in the two hundred and four hundred at the provincials and nationals, even if it was many moons ago, makes me a track athlete/physical education expert in their eyes. That’s what Mizzz Mickels called me the first time she dragged her ingrates in front of me, ‘Let’s see what the expert, Mr Begg has organised for you kids this morning’. I had nothing organised, I’
m a teacher’s aide not a bloody teacher. An exceptional sporting background is what it says on my C.V. so I’ve no one else to blame for setting myself up.
But I was, and am, nothing exceptional, unlike the Super 14 rugby star Gregg Craig, one of the other teacher aides. He’s supposed to be Gent’s butt boy, but it’s the other way round. Gent - a former club player - idolises Craig, the real thing. Craig spends most of his time at school reading the paper and munching biscuits and crackers he filches from the tins in the staffroom. That’s when he’s not sitting around rubbing his thighs. He might make an All Blacks tryout if he has a good season. Oh, God help me, imagine if he became an All Black?
I shoot a few more hoops. I can go home early like the rest of them, or I can be productive and pump up the new soccer balls Gent has stuffed in one of the hall storage rooms. It’s a satisfying process: the thrum of the little compressor; the taut, quick flow of air, the rapid expansion of the ball and a crinkling, creasing noise as the ball material expands. Ken spots me on his way through the hall. Only teachers shortcut through the hall to the office; students get read the riot act. Talk about double standards.
‘Braydon? Is that urgent, mate? Did Mr Gent ask you to do that right now?’ he asks.
‘No, I’m filling in time. Toby…’
‘Oh yeah, that’s right. Toby went home, didn’t he? Hey if I grab a handful of students, could you carry the crash pads into the equipment shed?’ he says.
Every day the high jump pads, awkward blue behemoths, need to be put away. Carrying them in from the field is the easy part; stacking them in the shed is the problem. That’s always a pain in the arse. Worse, the fool snatches a handful of O’Malleys boys coming back in from rounders. O’Malley doesn’t like it. He takes one boy aside and whispers in the kid’s ear. Gordan? I think his name is Gordan; a tallish blond-maned mincer with a wonky eye that slips away whenever you try to hold his gaze.
I drag the first one in with Danny, one of the better boys, but the others take turns jumping and wrestling on top of them, before rolling off them in howling fits of laughter. We get them inside and even get them stacked, but it’s just my luck, isn’t it? Gregg Craig, the thigh rubbing shithead, walks past and pretends not to take a gander. Gordan, wrestling with the others on the top pad, pushes Danny off, who lands right on his arse. Thump. I reach up and grab Gordan by the arm. I’m thinking, I don’t know; stern words or pull him down? And what does the cretin do? He shouts, ‘He’s grabbing my penis!’ I’m nowhere near his bloody penis, nor would I be. It’s one of boys scrambling over Gordan to get out of there. Danny’s crying. He’s acting as if he’s broken his arse if that’s possible. The tailbone? Can you break your tailbone? The coccyx? The sacrum? The bell rings and the boys disappear. Danny shuffles away, his hand pressed to his back, disconsolate as a lost puppy. Craig is nowhere to be seen.
The only real perk with this job is that it’s next to the beach and a short drive from the flat. By flat, I mean one of George’s parents’ property investments. They let us live there for a pittance in rent on the proviso we get someone, or a couple, to shift into the separate bedsit and overcharge them. We never have found anyone. There was talk for a time that George’s younger sister Claire would shift in with her latest, but nothing ever came of it.
It’s Claire’s fault George is steamed up over the whole Barcelona thing. George, my partner, has planned and mapped out a two-week holiday in Barcelona, and was relying on her parents to help finance the trip. Claire screwed it up. I was proud of Claire, to be honest. She footed more than a decent chunk of the expenses for her recent Colorado rafting trip: savings from her café jobs and cash from selling a bunch of her old shit. It changed the rules of the entitlement game, so now we have to come up with enough money to fund George’s Spanish vacation dream. Two weeks in Barcelona is a hard thing to do when your partner’s on nine dollars an hour and you’re a Tourism PhD student on a scholarship.
Guess who’s loitering in the office lobby with Gent when I finally make it out of the shed and get it locked up... Gregg Craig. I give them my best professional smile. Gent stops staring at me and turns to Craig.
‘So he’s a paedophile as well,’ Gent says, matter of fact.
I nearly stop in my tracks, but the momentum of routine rolls me round the corner and into the corridor. I lurch into the toilets, grab the sink, and look into the mirror, playing a pale and shaking American actor in a cheesy drama. No, that’s not it; I’m a rubber band stretched tight ready to snap and ping someone in the eye.
Then the real insult hits me.
As well? What the fuck? As well as what?
Out in the corridor, Gent and Craig walk past.
‘Where’s he gone?’ Gent says, laughing.
‘Maybe he’s seeing Andy,’ Craig says, without even a hint of apprehension or fear in his voice. The principal’s office is the first door on the left when you enter the corridor.
‘He hasn’t got the balls for that,’ Gent says.
‘Most definitely not,’ Craig parrots as if he isn’t a crap teacher’s aide, and has any game skills beyond charging into the opposition, instead of trying to step around them. They’ll be heading to the staffroom to raid the biscuit tins. I slip out and storm back up the corridor and out through the main doors.
George’s Camry is in the driveway. Home in the middle of the arvo means she cracked, and to shake off the tedium of her day’s Tourism PhD studies, she has come home and gone for a run. She calls it pulling a sickie even though she is a student and running gives her immune system a healthy boost. I secretly believe crunching data from her surveys depresses her and leeches life from her soul. It would do that to anyone; the relentless pressure to achieve significant results in a timely fashion has to be the ultimate soul-suck. I can’t believe how many surveys I’ve filled out for her. I’ve even left them in the staffroom at school. How much money do the good people of the fair old city spend on travel and travel-related costs, anyway? Someone wants or needs to find out.
I know why she’s really home. A Barcelona summit has been brewing this week. She is inside crunching numbers, but not from her surveys. My latest savings account totals have barely changed from the last time she checked, and I’ve since renewed my pool pass. Unless someone else wants to pay my end of the bills, I’ll wear George’s wrath.
I’m an economic failure… as well.
The anger hits me again. That word - the P-word - makes me nauseous. As if branded the P-word isn’t shocking enough, I’m something else… as well. But what?
George is in the kitchen and munches a sandwich as she hears me out. The kitchen is a mess; breakfast and lunch dishes clutter the sink. The lunch dishes are mine, anyway. Yes, I come home for lunch. I’m not sitting around in the staffroom for an hour every day, and I’m buggered if I’m going out on lunchtime duty. They don’t pay me enough, and they’d only hold it against me. I tell her I want to quit. I tell her I’m not going back next week.
‘We need that job, Bray. How long will it take to get another one? You can’t go back to WINZ, can you?’ George says.
‘Why can’t we go to Aussie?’ I ask.
‘We’re not going to Aussie, we’re going to Spain. Do you know how unreal Europe is?’ she asks.
‘Have you ever been to the Daintree rainforest? It’s probably unreal too,’ I say.
‘I’ve been to a rainforest, remember? I want to go to Gaudi’s cathedral. You don’t want to go, do you? Is that what this is about?’ George says.
Sandwich consumed, her blood sugar levels are rising to the attack. The fact of the matter is I’ve been nowhere. For a guy who has been nowhere, the difference between Spain and Aussie may as well be a coin flip, except one destination requires mortgaging your grandmother’s granny flat and the other stings but is doable. I prefer doable to impossible. And I prefer quitting the job and the people I work with that I hate, and hate me, over sticking it out for a two-week trip to a European city I’m sure is unreal i
f it weren’t so unrealistic.
‘Gent called me something nasty today, bloody nasty,’ I say. I’m mumbling and she hates that.
‘Like what?’ George says.
‘You know…’
‘You’re always complaining about the people at that school? Are they that awful?’ she says.
‘There it goes, the I’m making it up clause,’ I say, my voice rising on that bubble that expands from deep within the intestines, rushes to the periphery and increases the heart rate. We get into it. The usual stuff: I’m too sensitive, too personal. I hear things. I make things up that people don’t even say…
‘Braydon? Please Bray, we’re doing it again…’
‘Thanks for understanding, George, thanks for…’
‘Oh please, grow up.’
‘Being there, you know, being there when Mum died, and not bloody, fuck, bullying me…’
‘Bullying you? Bullying? I’ve never…’
‘Into taking the first lame job that came along.’
‘You didn’t want to take any job! Shit Bray, you don’t even want to work,’ George says.
‘Because you’ve got travel plans, and yeah, thanks for respecting my decision to write full-time…’
‘Well why don’t you sell your psychic FBI screenplay then?’ George says, mottle faced.
‘Yeah, there it goes, thank you, George, thank you for showing your true colours,’ I say.
‘Go on, quit your job. Can’t have people calling you names now, can we?’ she shouts.
She storms out of the kitchen. The bedroom door slams so hard the framed Klimt print - the gold one with the lovers (the kiss?) - falls off and the glass frame smashes over the floor.
‘Don’t worry, George, I’ll walk your bloody dog for you, like I do every day,’ I shout, sweeping the glass up against the wall with the sole of my shoe.
‘That’s such shit!’ George screeches from the bedroom.
Shit or not, I grab the lead off the hook and leg it to the lounge. Every arvo I arrive home and find the poor bugger curled up on the couch.
Jacques, the standard poodle.
He unfurls - whining, yawning, and gumming - and clambers off and stretches each hind leg out behind him as if he’s warming up for brisk 200 metre sprint repeats on a windy Saturday morning at the track. Then he’s all energy, nudging my hand with his dry nose and giving my crotch a cursory once over to see if I’ve been anywhere interesting. Sorry Jacques, I haven’t.
If he’s anybody’s dog he’s Rennie’s, George’s Mum’s, or at least he will be when George’s post-PhD plans manifest and she heads overseas. Rennie gave Jacques to George a year before she met me. A cure for loneliness, although George insists she wasn’t lonely.
I walk him every workday afternoon. I’m not full of shit. To be fair, George takes him for a short stroll later, after tea, and for big walks in the weekend. He’s bigger than your average standard poodle, with a big, regal chest on him. But the dainty stepping - the way he trots along, as if he’s in that ‘Best In Show’ competition, the one on telly - it’s comic even though he’s big and powerful enough to tear your nuts off if he decided to, but at least he’s not one of those puffball types, a pom-pom poodle. I wouldn’t walk him. We clipper him ourselves, which means he allows us to go at his matted coat with a set of old barber clippers, but only for as long as he can handle. And he’s black, shot through with grey streaks. It would be worse if he was white or apricot; I can’t say why. White. Black. Brown. He’s still a poofter’s dream come true. Dad and Jamie, my older brother, pissed themselves when I first told them about Jacques. ‘He keeps biting my arse when I turn around,’ I said. ‘He thinks he’s the alpha male you bloody idiot,’ Jamie said. ‘You’re gonna have to take that dog to task if you want to stay with the girl,’ Dad rumbled from his Lazy Boy. Mum was laughing. She loved Jacques. The last time Mum visited, she kidnapped him and drove off into a downpour. I had no idea where they went until they arrived back at the flat, soaked but smiling from a courageous walk along the beach. Jacques hates walking in the rain. Things were better between us all when Mum was alive. The family glue. I haven’t talked to Dad or Jamie for ages, but they don’t talk to each other either, as far as I’m aware. What would they do if Gent and Craig called them the P-word? They wouldn’t have hid in the toilet.
Walking is good for anger. At least, it works for me. I’ve wound through the dead afternoon streets and onto the beach track before I’m aware of the distance I’ve covered. Jacques pants more than usual though. A perfect hot summer’s day: unless you’re wearing a thick black wool coat. Christ, he must be thirsty. His water bottle! It has an ingenious plastic spout that folds out and provides a lapping trough. Ingenious, except today I’ve forgotten it. I let him off lead. He pelts away along the track and cuts across the top of the dunes. An expert stuntman, he takes a steep drop-off and surges to the beach in a rich shower of sand. Once he recovers at the bottom, he trots into the water but backs off when surf breaks and rushes him. He’s supposed to be a water dog. I’m thankful for his caution. Rips are powerful along here and trying to save gangly-legged, floundering Jacques and myself, might be beyond me.
I call him back from the top of the dunes and when he doesn’t return I start our little ritual. I duck into the tussock grass, and out of sight, wait for him to sprint up and try to find me. Dune repeats, I proudly said to George after I stumbled on the technique. Eleven is our record. I don’t think we’ll break it today. He’s getting wiser. He stops halfway up, but his slobbery hard breathing reaches me and I pop up waving my arms and shouting. Jacques isn’t surprised. He turns and trots off on another sniffing circuit of the beach.
There was no need for that tradesman to call me a homo, was there? I think he lives at the bottom of the hill. A plumber. For whatever reason he always sees me walking Jacques, and he always gives me one of those smug, contemptuous, fucking mug expressions that comes with being a tradesman; a bloke (a real man) who works with his hands and wouldn’t be seen dead walking a poncy poodle. At least I don’t have to deal with other people’s shit every day. Why didn’t I say that to him when he pulled up at the give way? Instead, I hit him with my best stone-cold Steve Austin. He didn’t bat an eyelid. A big guy wouldn’t, I suppose. Gingerish and stubbly, he wound down his window and in a gravelly voice from too many smokes and pies at lunchtime, said, ‘Nice dog, homo.’ Even though the street was clear both ways, he waited for me to say or do something.
Ahhhhh, Gent and Craig’s jibe clicks: ‘as well’. I’m the P-word as well … as a homo.
Nice dog, homo.
That’s it. Gent and Craig think I’m a homo. Thanks world.
But what could I do about the plumber? Call the guy out of his van and scrap him on the pavement? What would I do with Jacques? How would I tell George I got beat up by a passing plumber? In a fucked up way it might make her happy, even proud of me. No. Nothing I do will make her happy, except saving enough money over the next few months.
I’m a P and an H.
Ph.
Acid.
I’m a fucking litmus test for every dumb-arsed nasty thing anyone - Gent, Craig, O’Malley, Mickels, Richards and Sanderson - could think up to try on, or say to another person. I overheard Sanderson, an old bat with a big caboose like Mickels,’ complain to Gent and O’Malley that I was perving at one of her students. What’s her name? Miranda? Amanda? Sanderson contended I was perving at Amanda’s boobs during physed. That’s not strictly true. For starters, for a young girl, Miranda/Amanda’s boobs are ginormous. I turned my head at the exact moment Miranda/Amanda, wearing a skin-tight physed teeshirt and looking straight at me, was jumping on the spot a metre away. Miranda/Amanda’s boobs were like bloody bouncing soccer balls. I immediately glanced away to see Sanderson, with scandal and disgrace written on her face, boosting out of the hall and heading towards the office, which means Andy’s office. I didn’t see her for the rest of the period. I guess she was too busy complaining
to teach her class. They want me gone, to quit and go. It’s only Toby’s crap situation and George’s will that’s keeping me there.
I’m a rubber band.
I’m the p-word, a homo, AND a pervert.
I work my way along the top of the dunes following the track. Jacques touches base before racing off again. His distance from me decreases as we continue along past the soccer/rugby fields and the clubrooms.
Farther along, he stops ramrod straight in the middle of the track. There’s an enormous Polynesian man looking out to sea from the top of a dune. The man stands so still he looks carved out of brown marble; a sculpture left warming in the sun. He doesn’t so much as budge when Jacques, overcoming his apprehension, busily sniffs his feet. I get closer. He doesn’t look or acknowledge me. How sad the man looks, a genuine sorrow. If I stopped and looked out to sea, I’d experience nothing, or everything. I wouldn’t trust myself to do it for too long. As I pass by, he makes me think I have no home and no understanding of the idea. That’s why I never stop and look out to sea. I mean, I’ve no claim to even being here other than the obvious; my ruddy-faced blue-eyed ancestors that came over by the boatload, and took it for themselves, their new world.
What did Curnow write about islanders and their relationship with the sea? They become deaf to the breaking surf? I’m not an islander; I’m not so accustomed. This isn’t home. There’s nothing in my bones: not the crash and rush of surf, not a seagull’s cries, not the sting of sand on my wet skin, or the sharp cuts of tussock grass on my shins. I wonder if young Toby feels like this. Darting this way and that at school, always scruffy, weedy and bereft, but not as bad off as his younger brother, they say, who hides under a large brown cardboard box he carries around everywhere. Kids at school say the wee guy believes the box teleports him to other worlds. I wonder if that business started before or after their father got his weird thing. I wonder if Toby’s ever tried to use it.
I bet he’s tried to flatten it.
Mum might have used that box near the end and teleported herself into an alternative reality, where her youngest son was a teacher as she was and wanted me to be. That was the plan. Physed school, then teacher’s college, and then on to a rosy, comfortable and comprehensible future. This was before - what exactly? A literary awakening involving mostly Indian authors: Roy, Rushdie, Seth - and the Sri Lankan, Michael Ondaatje. I read Ondaatje for the first time on a train trip home from Varsity. It felt as if I were reading for the first time and couldn’t believe it when I heard the city station announcement; I hadn’t looked up once. Now, I don’t know. ‘That’s a gay looking book,’ Jamie said when he saw me reading on one of my summer holidays. My father and Jamie looked perturbed when they saw me reading Rushdie’s, Satanic Verses. Poor old Mum, she just wanted to show them. The brutes, she sometimes called them. Now, I’m not sure how becoming a teacher would’ve been showing them anything. Borderline academic dropouts, at least that’s what the younger ones fresh out of teacher’s college appear to be. Why would my father, a self-employed auto-mechanic for most of his working life, and Jamie, with his very own auto-body painting business, give a shit if I became a teacher? And she might have called him a brute, but she was proud of Jamie making his own way in the world.
I work my way out of the dunes and out onto the cul-de-sac that ends by the soccer club. I try to give Jacques water from a tap by the clubhouse doors, but he won’t drink from my palm. He tries a few licks, and skips away when I try again. He won’t drink straight from the tap, so it must be the water. ‘Time for the lead now, boy,’ I say, ‘time to head home.’ He skips away. He doesn’t want to face George either. Once I get Jacques back on lead, he is noticeably more subdued. This stretch of exposed road heading along the flat bakes in the intense sun.
There’s nothing else to do along this road but think, and there’s no way to combat the slow heat that draws the poison out and frames my dark thoughts with uncomfortable sweatiness. My rational mind reiterates - again - that last week’s bus incident wasn’t my fault. I had nowhere else to go and in no way instigated, encouraged or willingly participated in it.
Bloody swimming lessons are everyone’s headache, including the kids, but only a small group of determined students wriggle out of it with forgotten togs, the sudden onset of inexplicable rashes, or a spate of fictitious injuries. It’s not that the actual swimming lesson is a problem for students, or the teaching staff. It’s getting everyone on board and not leaving anyone or any gear behind - and keeping the whole operation within time - that’s the real problem.
We were rushing to get back before the lunch bell, but I waited to get on the bus as students get priority seating. A teacher has to be on board to supervise, which in this case was Mr Richards, an older, bald and insanely energetic guy with constant chronic body odour, who reckons he dabbled in fiction writing awhile back, but gave it up due to disillusionment (my conclusion, he didn’t provide one). Uncharacteristic and entirely unhelpful, he nabbed a seat against the window, maybe two, three seats back from the front. The seats were full when I shuffled on board and stood in the middle of the aisle. Students that should have waited for the second bus kept piling on and squeezing past me to fill the aisle. I was doing everything I could to move out of the way, without putting my crotch into the face of whoever sat below me. Awkward? Yes, and there’s nothing wrong with that so far, until… Dominique? That’s right, Dominique; a cheeky, bright-eyed girl, with maturity beyond her years, tries to get past and squashes right up against me. A bottleneck forms and then we’re jammed, and what does she do? Pressed against me, while I’m hanging onto the bag compartment rail above me with both hands, the cheeky wench wedges her knuckle right up there.
The horror.
Not even a tentative quick jab ha ha I stuck my knuckle into a teacher’s arse, oh no.
And in slow motion.
I tried to lean even further forward; an impossible feat to achieve without further compromising myself with the student seated below me, but the little bitch burrowed deeper. The horrible thing, the real, genuine horror is I said nothing. I couldn’t. Should one expect this behaviour from a twelve-year-old girl jammed behind you in a bus aisle? But the real, genuine, and unexpected horror, other than the shame of being knuckled on a bus by a little girl, was how, for a few seconds, was how mind-blowing-ly, exquisitely good it felt.
Did Richards see Dominique knuckling me? He gave me funny, squinty glances over his shoulder for the rest of the trip back. If he did, why hasn’t he said anything? Wouldn’t he be professionally obligated to report that (a) a female student knuckled one of the staff, and (b) the staff member involved did nothing to prevent or stop said knuckling?
In my defence I was trapped, and I was wearing my snug-fitting brown pants that inspire random spanks from George on the way past, but no one’s ever knuckled me before, nor have I heard of such a thing. Do I enjoy knuckling? What if one of the boys had done it? Would I have reacted differently? And what twelve-year-old girl goes around knuckling grown men? How does someone that young know what to do with her knuckles? Her knuckle, I should say. I imagine it was her index finger’s middle knuckle, with her thumb curled up below it. What would Richards have done if he were trapped and knuckled in that bus aisle? Or Gent?
Gent.
I should’ve known. She is one of Gent’s students, and she told one or more of her classmates and Chinese whispers or not, word of Mr Begg’s knuckling on the bus reached Gent’s ears, and if it reached Gent’s it reached Craig’s. In no way does a random knuckling in an extremely awkward and unavoidable predicament testify to any P-like, H-like, or the second P-like tendencies. Face it… it wasn’t my fault. But I enjoyed it? What does that mean? How do you know you will enjoy a knuckling until you’ve received one?
We stop for a breather on the esplanade in the shade of the trees outside the shops. Leaving home in a huff, I forgot to bring money with me today. Sometimes I sit in one of the cafés, sip a latte, and watch the surf
and the moody weather. If I remember my notebook I try to write a poem. I usually leave Jacques over by the fountain. I’d take him over there now for a drink, but it’s scorching out on that concrete pad. Good old Jacques. I give him a scratch under the ear but he’s too busy panting and taking a gander to get into it. In this heat it’s better to get home sooner than later and I get him up and moving, albeit slower.
Nice dog, homo.
I awkwardly give him another petting as we trudge. He is a nice dog. I’m bloody lucky to have him in my life. I couldn’t afford to keep a big dog with those enormous bags of expensive dog nuts he crunches twice a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks of the year. No wonder he goes on strike for a day or two every other month. George switches brands. Different day, still nuts. I cut through the narrow streets and head up the hill the front way. This route has more shade and it’s less steep, but the last stretch is always a ball-breaker.
So, every once in a while, I’ve noticed small cages stacked up on the side of the street. Inside the cages, mangy stringy cats and medium sized dogs of indeterminate breeding protest their incarceration by the RSPCA. They always look suspiciously like the same cats and dogs the RSPCA rounded up on earlier sweeps of the neighbourhood. I don’t know why they leave them stacked on the side of the street. I suppose it’s more convenient as the RSPCA officers continue their rounds.
I walk around the corner right into the stench.
Jacques, already acting cagey, baulks and rears up onto his hind legs before trying to bolt. You know how disgusting it smells when you singe your arm hair with a cigarette lighter? The screaming is worse than the smell. Impossibly high-pitched mewling screams come from inside four or five cages; it’s hard to tell how many animals are alive in them. They're cats. Writhing and thrashing all movement inside the cages suddenly stops. They’re dead. The petrol fumes hit me. I see a red plastic dickey can beside the cages. I want to vomit and Jaques starts up a strange barking cough.
People finally step out of their drowsy houses. Over Jacques’ barking, I hear sprinting pounding footsteps. I see them. Two boys sprint away, and one is Toby. I can tell. I’ve seen that running style often enough to recognise it from fifty metres. It’s Toby, and another kid taller and bigger than Toby.
‘You fucking little cunts! Stop! Stop!’
I give Jacques a tug on the lead, but he isn’t moving forwards. Frantic, he tries to plunge backwards, away from the mess. I drag him out into the street and he consents to pass around the stinking cages in a wide circle. A woman is wailing, and a guy is yelling at me, but I can’t be sure he is: I’m that focused on the little bastards sprinting round the corner into Foster Street I’m zoning everything out. I kick hard into a fast lope and Jacques complies, happy to distance himself from the horrifying scene.
I catch sight of them heading into Thompson. Toby’s quick off the mark but he doesn’t have one shred of stamina. I don’t know the other kid, but Toby will be buggered. Jacques is all over the place now and I drag him with big surging tugs on the lead.
I’m considering giving it up as I struggle into Lemond when I almost crash into the little shit. Doubled over and his back turned, he’s breathing as if he’s sprint finished a record-breaking mile. I kick him up the arse. He topples over swearing, and Jacques makes a go at him, which sends Toby scrabbling away from us on all fours, crab-style. I snatch Jacques back. Here’s an awkward moment: Toby eyes up Jacques and I’m at a total loss. What am I going to do? Sirens blare in the distance. Toby swipes snot from his nose with the back of his hand.
‘Where’s your mate?’ I ask.
‘He buggered off and left me,’ Toby says.
Squad cars sweeping the area will find Toby, and his runaway mate. Minutes away, if that. Could he reach his house in that time? Why am I even thinking this? He’s poured petrol over a bunch of living breathing cats and lit them on fire.
‘Did you do it? Did you fucking do it, Toby?’ I shout.
He’s snotty tears and misery now.
‘I poured the petrol but Darren lit them up, honestly,’ he says.
Darren? Ahh, Darren. I place him now; a borderline delinquent Richards took on when nobody else wanted him.
‘Why in God’s fucking name did you do that?’ I shout.
The sirens sound louder, closing on our position.
‘Why? Why Toby?’ I shout. My shouting makes him cower and cover his head and face with his arms.
I can smell the shit-fest that’s descending on him; it’s ingrained in my clothes from the smoking cages. There’s no coming back from this, for any of us. Me. Mrs Loverly. Toby. Game set and match.
‘They’ve taken Dad,’ Toby shouts, scrambling to his feet. With enough of his breath back, he’s ready for another go. The sirens sound on top of us.
I grab his shirttail before he’s off again. I yank him back and grip him hard on the arm with my best policeman’s grip, although, he might experience that first hand from a real policeman soon.
‘Toby,’ I start, but he’s shouting again.
‘Dad. I saw them. They’ve taken him away’ -
‘Who took him, Toby? Is it the hospital? Was it an ambulance?’ I ask. It must be his Dad’s thing, his condition or whatever.
‘No! Bloody Mum and Nessa,’ he snarls, and stumbling backwards to the nearest fence, he slumps to the ground with his back against the wood. He covers his face with his hands and sobs.
I crouch beside him and Jacques, now concerned for the boy’s welfare, gently snuffles Toby’s shoes and knees.
‘Toby? You’re in a whole world of shit, mate,’ I say.
‘I don’t care. Dad’s gone. He’s not coming back,’ he says.
‘Were they taking him to the hospital?’ I say.
He mumbles about a suit and Lego. Lego of all things? There’s so much snot and mucus, I can’t make any sense of it. It sounds as if a fire engine has arrived at the scene. At the bottom of Lemond, a police car races through an intersection. Has someone tipped off the other boy?
They will expel Toby. They’ve been waiting for this, an explosion so huge the shockwave will flatten anyone that could stand up and defend the boy, and Toby fucking handed it to them. Fuck it. Why give them the satisfaction? The Gent’s and Craig’s, the O’Malley’s and Mickels, and the Sandersons?
I don’t even like cats.
‘Toby, Toby? Get your shit together,’ I say.
‘Dad’s gone,’ he whimpers.
‘Toby! A police car will come by any second, mate,’ I say.
I have his attention now.
‘Get up, quick,’ I say.
‘Eh?’ he says.
‘Clean yourself up, will you? Wipe your face,’ I say. I take off my shirt and hand it to him. I’m wearing a teeshirt underneath. I’m not heading off topless with a small boy and a standard poodle in tow. I wipe his face myself.
‘What’re you doing, Mr B? I’m in the shit,’ he says.
‘I want you to act natural, okay?’ I say.
‘Eh?’ he says.
Jesus Christ.
‘For fuck’s sakes, Toby! We’ll pretend we’re out walking the dog together, all right?’ I say.
‘Yeah?’ he says.
‘Yeah. We bumped into each other after school, by the beach. Got it?’ I ask.
He nods, but I can’t tell if he understands.
‘You were out, I don’t know, we’ll work that out. You went to the beach,’ I say.
‘Umh, yeah?’ he says.
‘Yeah. After your Mum picked you up, you went to the beach. Okay? Where do you live? Not far from here, is it?’ I ask.
‘Tanner Street,’ he says.
‘Tanner? Great, I know a shortcut through private property, is that okay?’ I ask.
‘Okay, okay. Thanks, Mr B, you’re the shit,’ he says.
‘Bloody hell, we’re not out of it yet,’ I say.
Sirens scream nearby. It’s a miracle they haven’t driven along here.
??
?We’re out walking the dog,’ I say, more for my benefit than Toby’s.
He reaches past me and pats Jacques on the head. I catch the unmistakable reek of petrol on his clothes.
‘Walking the dog. Got it. What’s his name?’ he asks.
‘His name? Jesus, Toby. Jacques, it’s Jacques,’ I say.
We’re screwed, but if we can make it over to Gershon, I can send him through Old Man Gamble’s property. I don’t think that will be the end of it though.
The squad car roars past with an intense bullet-headed Gorilla-type at the wheel. For all his speed, he takes a good gander at us and for one impossible second I think he will carry on, but even the poodle can’t cover for Toby’s uniform. Two boys in uniform are all they’ll have to go on at this stage. And a man out walking a standard poodle. Jesus. Some cover. The Gorilla slams on the anchors and performs a fast flawless three-point turn, the fastest I’ve ever seen. Gamble’s mansion is in sight. That’s bloody cruel.
‘Keep walking, keep walking,’ I mutter.
Toby whimpers. One moment he’s ready to sprint, the next crumple into a heap on the ground.
The car pulls up alongside and the cop gets out, flagging us to stop. Don’t take our fucking names, please, not our names.
‘You two been anywhere near Croft Street?’ he asks.
‘Croft? No, what’s with the sirens, what’s happened?’ I ask.
Toby, suddenly artful Toby, buries himself in petting Jacques.
‘He’s pretty hot now, eh?’ he says, loud enough for the policeman.
The boy is a low functioning genius. The cop takes one look at Jacques and smiles for a split-second before he looks concerned. A dog-loving cop. No, a poodle-loving cop. Who’d have thought?
‘Been out awhile have yez?’ he asks.
‘Along the dunes as far as the clubhouses and back along the beach to the pool,’ I say.
‘Shit mate, how long’d that take? Get that dog water and get him in the shade, soon as, eh?’ he says, ducking back into the driver’s seat.
‘Yeah, will do,’ I say.
Another warp-speed three-point turn and he’s growling away up Lemond, racing through the gears.
‘He is pretty hot, Mr B,’ Toby says.
‘Worry about your own skinny little arse,’ I say, heading towards Gamble’s at a near trot.
Unbelievable.
Artful genius or not, cat-killer, cop-dodger, we’re still in a world of shit. Toby’s crying again, blubbing now. I want to believe it’s from the heat, his guilt, and the sky’s weight crushing his pea-knuckle head, but I can’t be sure.
‘I don’t want to go home, Mr B,’ Toby says.
‘Your father will be okay,’ I say, checking for curtain twitchers or approaching cars. These mid-afternoon suburbs are so deathly quiet I often want to scream to see what would happen. Turns out everything happens, although that’s only when we’re dealing with screaming cats.
‘No, he’s not,’ Toby states.
He understands my plan. Without a word he glances round, moves in front of the Gamble’s big stonewall, and motions at me for a foot up. I boost him so hard he barely touches stone on the way over to the other side. He falls but doesn’t cry out. I wait: for shouts, calls for help, or shouting from people inside the house. Nothing. After he slips through the Gamble’s property, he’s a shortcut away from home through a small park and on to Tanner. He’s gone.
I wander along to the esplanade. I try to give Jacques water out of my palm at the fountain and I’m more successful this time. It’s a pitiful amount compared to how he normally tucks into his water bottle, or his water bowl at home.
I don’t want to go home.
On top of this afternoon’s dark deeds, I guess Toby doesn’t want to go home and face his family, either. My stomach turns over at the memory of those stinking, oozing… how much petrol did he pour over them? The entire can? I can imagine the stories in the newspaper next week - state of the nation stuff: Look at the crimes our kids commit today! My face burns red hot, even my ears. And who helped one of them evade the police? His physical education teacher aide. Fucking hell, that’s the state of the nation right there.
George. What’s George going to do when I tell her, but what if I didn’t? What if I can’t?
I pull up a seat on a bench overlooking the beach. Jacques collapses with a loud hrumph, panting hard. I can’t face her. Not soon, not this arvo. What supposedly responsible and mature member of society does what I just did? Caught by a moment’s weakness… what if it had been yesterday, or tomorrow? I mean, if it had been dogs in those cages, I would have chased those boys down - letting Jacques free to fend for himself - while I beat the crap out of them and then turned them in. Honestly. But I didn’t, and it was cats not dogs. I caught up to Toby and helped him get away with what rates as one of the more disturbing juvenile criminal acts committed around here in a long time.
How can I pretend nothing has happened? How can I show up at school on Monday? Questions will be asked of students and teachers. They’ll have a special staff meeting over it, even if they didn’t pick up Darren, or nab Toby. And everybody round here often sees the guy walking the big poodle and wasn’t he out walking the afternoon it happened? That cop won’t forget seeing us. Wasn’t someone shouting at me at the scene of the crime? What is that guy’s name, they’ll wonder. That afternoon poodle-walker, and who was the student with him? And on and on, onion layers of lies will peel away as the police apply pressure. I’ll crack before Toby does. He’s used to interrogation. And what’s his name? Darren? Will he hold out for Toby? And will Toby, when they catch up with him - which they will, either the school or the police - will he hold out for me?
I’m walking back along the beach track before I’ve even thought about it. I have to do it. I’ll be in the shit even if I do. I’m exhausted and so is Jacques, but I’m marching back to school.
Andy has his blinds pulled in his office, but his blinds always stay pulled shut. I tie Jacques up to the flagpole on the lawn in front of the office block. It’s shaded now the sun has moved on, but Jacques pants, fully tapped. He crumples and lies on his side. The school is silent and empty except for the goodie-goods catching up on marking, and the cleaners unblocking the crappers and vacuuming the classrooms.
I stand in front of Andy’s door, heart and head hesitant. Will a night’s sleep change anything? A weekend? The whole P-P-H thing? Will a weekend's break change the fact this might be the best thing for everybody? No, I’ve lost the war. Toby’s made sure of that. I experience a shot of the purest, most vile hatred towards him.
Fuck you, Toby Caruthers.
I don’t care how fucked up your father is. People counted on you and you shat in their letter boxes, no, their pillowslips.
Andy is on the phone. He waves me into a seat. Jacques worries me - half dead outside on that fussy lawn - I want to get this finished.
Ruggertalk. Coming into form. Long season. Looking sharp? Oh hell yeah, isn’t he though? God, he’s talking about Gregg Craig. Doesn’t anything concern them other than rugby or sport? He finishes the call.
‘Braydon, what can I do for you, mate?’ Andy says. Brisk and efficient, he was a halfback and in his day represented the province.
‘I’m resigning,’ I say, smiling.
‘You’re joking?’ he says, looking genuinely surprised.
I shift forward in my seat and my hands grip the chair arms.
‘No, Andy, I’m not,’ I say.
‘This isn’t about what happened out in the lobby this arvo, is it mate?’ he says, smoothing his hands over his clear desktop.
This is why nuggety little bastards like him end up in positions of power, always one step ahead with two hands gripping the rug under your feet. And I guess that’s why delusional little bastards like me sit on the other side of the big desk, wringing their chair arms. I force calm over myself and claim possession of my territory.
‘What exactly did you hear?’ I ask. r />
‘Genty, Mr Gent... ’
‘Gent?’ I say, unable to stifle my surprise.
‘Braydon, you look exhausted, mate. Do you want a cuppa? Glass of water?’ he says.
‘No, thanks, I shouldn’t stay long, my dog’s out on the lawn. We’ve been out walking, he’s a bit hot,’ I say. Why, oh why, did I mention walking?
‘Dog? What breed? I didn’t know you had a dog,’ he says. Moving over to the window, he snaps open a blind and takes a gander at Jacques.
‘That’s some dog all right. Yeah, he looks buggered,’ he says. He slumps into his big chair. The sight of Jacques’ exhaustion apparently also exhausts Andy.
‘I’m not sure what Mr Gent told you, but what he called me…’
‘Is absolutely unacceptable,’ Andy says, pepping up. ‘I’ve got to tell you, Braydon, the guys round here, Genty, O’Malley? They’ve got shocking senses of humour, mate.’
‘So he was joking?’ I say.
Yeah right. The as well bit rankles. For a second, taking in Andy’s apologetic smile, it makes me wonder if he knows about the bus knuckling incident. No doubt the bastards sit around in the staffroom after school, drinking coffee, scoffing biccies and laughing over my latest escapades. He’s covering arse, I know he is. Joke or not, I’m sure teachers round here, or anywhere, don’t go round calling each other the P-word. What if Mum were in my position? She’d leave nothing but razed ground, but that word - razed - reminds me of smoking cages and the sudden stillness of roasted cats.
‘I’m always getting good reports from the others. The kids love you, mate. You’ve been working wonders with Toby Caruther’s,’ Andy says.
At the mention of Toby’s name, I get stuck into the chair arms. Wonders all right, bloody miracles.
‘Look,’ he continues, ‘I admit you’re not getting paid proportionately to the work you’re being asked to do, and I can look into that for you, but it’d be a bloody shame to see you head out the door over something as trivial as this, wouldn’t it?’
‘I don’t enjoy being called a paedophile, Andy, I don’t find it funny,’ I say, enjoying his face blanche. He recovers and his attitude hardens.
‘Nobody does of course,’ he says, looking over at the blinds.
‘Why don’t you give it the weekend?’ he says.
‘I’m here to resign, Andy, I’m… not a good fit. This isn’t where I see myself,’ I say.
‘That’s right, you’re into writing poetry, aren’t you?’ he says, again smoothing his desktop.
‘Creative writing, in general,’ I say, wincing at my pomposity. They’ll laugh over that tomorrow… in general.
‘Writing? Oh yeah. So what job will you get now? I’m just thinking, the hours can’t be that bad, eh? You must have time up your sleeve?’ he says.
Either he doesn’t want to see me go, or he’s pointing out the bald truth - I’ve nothing, no job. WINZ? Maybe… if they’ll take me. If they do, I’ll soon be back where I started: nowhere. After a waffly few months, I’ll take on another lame job, but it’s worse than that, worse than Andy realises, cat burning incident aside.
I’m staring at the end of my relationship with George.
This resignation alone will end it. God knows what happens when the rest of it sprays me. It will be the end of Jacques too if he doesn’t die from heat exhaustion before I get him home.
Starting over. Square one. Or not…
The cheery bastard’s put me in a spot. The staff will be nicer if I stay on, or at least treat me as if I’m packed in cotton wool. I could handle that. Couldn’t I stick that out? George will get her Spain, and shit, who doesn’t want to go to Barcelona? I’d get to keep my walks with Jacques, and Andy’s right, the hours aren’t terrible; I have no excuses. I could do with a kick up the arse. Start another story or write a decent poem…
A kick up the arse.
I kicked Toby up the arse this arvo.
‘I’m, yeah, I’m firm about this decision, Andy. To be honest, I’ve no idea what I’m going to do, but I want to take the time to decide,’ I say.
Andy slaps his palms on the desktop.
‘Okay then. What are we going to say, Braydon? How will we explain it, mate?’ he says.
‘Couldn’t we say I’m leaving for personal reasons, or to write full time?’ I say.
‘Sure, sure, that’s fine, you’d be happy with that?’ he says.
‘Is there paperwork? Or…’
‘Nuh mate, I’ll take care of it. I’ll contact your case manager,’ he says, getting up and coming round the desk with his hand extended.
‘Thanks, I’m sorry…’
‘Nuh, nuh, don’t be. I’m the one that’s sorry. It’s a bloody shame to lose a good staff member over rubbish like this,’ Andy says.
‘I’m letting you down though,’ I say, accepting his hard grip. He gives me a quick look, dead centre.
‘Yeah, it’s the last time we’ll accept anyone from the WINZ program, eh,’ he says, with a harder edge in his voice.
Oh.
Concentric circles. Shit always ripples outwards in concentric circles.
‘It seems to me, Braydon, the best thing for you to do right now is float along for a while, mate, have a good think about where you see yourself going, like you said,’ Andy says.
He ushers me towards the door. I’m yesterday’s news unless I make tomorrows, or next weeks.
‘Thanks for the opportunity, Andy,’ I say, but he closes the door on me.
Jacques perks up when I walk over and crouch beside him. ‘Will we walk, or call George?’ I say. His ears twitch at the mention of walk, so that’s a good sign. We’ll walk, I decide. George might be out looking for us in the car, we’ve been out that long. What will I tell her? This is usually how long I walk Jacques?
Concentric circles. Shit-ripples. Shit ripples, always.
‘Hey, Braydon?’ Andy says.
It’s Andy. He comes out of the staffroom’s side door and walks towards us carefully carrying an old white ice cream container.
‘Braydon? Are you walking home, mate?’ he says.
‘I haven’t decided,’ I say.
‘I can give you both a lift,’ he says, placing the water filled container in front of Jacques.
Jacques gives it a tentative sniff then whacks into it, a lapping frenzy.
‘Thought your dog could use it,’ Andy says, and crouching on the other side of Jacques, he scratches under his ear.
‘His name’s Jacques,’ I say, trying hard not to sound sniffy.
‘Thirsty eh, Jacques? Good boy, good boy, Jacques,’ Andy says, scratching under Jacques’ other ear.
‘Thanks Andy,’ I say.
One last scratch and Andy stands. I stay where I am. I can’t be bothered.
‘Second thoughts?’ Andy says.
‘No, sorry, it’s the best thing,’ I say.
‘All right. Leave the container there, eh? I’ll pick it up later,’ he says.
‘Okay,’ I say.
‘Good luck, mate,’ he says, and heads back towards the office block.
I stroke Jacques’ back until wool threatens to come away. Jacques keeps lapping and lapping, and despite everything; the stench of petrol and burnt cats, police cars and sirens; George waiting at home, a home I may no longer have, I realise it’s a truly beautiful afternoon, truly beautiful.
I wait until Andy is inside, and then I cry.
***