The Legend of Kevin the Plumber (10 page)

Heavy darkness. Shadows.

‘Shaz?'

‘Over here,' my sister called, and I saw her and another body standing on the road under a huge ti-tree.

‘Sorry, Gaz. Sorry,' she said, as I hurried to them.

‘Sorry what?'

‘Sorry to drag you away from your mates and that,' said the other voice. It was Vanessa.

My guts tingled and without thinking, I wrapped my arms around my sister and kissed her cheek. ‘No worries.'

I hugged Vanessa, too. When I went to kiss her, she turned her head and I kissed the bridge of her nose and her eyebrow. Well, more like I headbutted her with my lips.

‘What's up?'

‘Have you got your keys?' Sharon asked. ‘We left Ness's
Cool Runnings
DVD at our place and we can't get inside. Could I borrow your key? I'll bring it straight back. Promise.'

‘I'll come with you, if you like,' I said.

‘Nah, it's cool,' Vanessa said. ‘We don't want to drag you away —'

‘It's fine. Don't worry about it,' I said, and started walking.

‘You sure?' Vanessa asked.

Sharon grabbed my elbow and huddled close. Vanessa took my other hand.

‘This joint is creepy at night,' Vanessa whispered.

I squeezed her palm. ‘Not if you know the sickos who live here.'

They hung on to me all the way home, which was handy. There were a few places where I would have stopped to get my bearings if I had have been on my own. The dope fucks with the magnet in my internal compass. Well, the dope fucks with my head.

I opened the back door to Trixie's wild yapping. The little shit jumped on my leg and licked at my hand. Sharon parked a noisy kiss on my cheek and pushed inside. Her runners squeaked on the lino and she flicked the lights on as she passed. I stood there and Vanessa held my hand.

‘Going in?' I asked.

‘Are you?'

‘Are you? I asked first.'

With a doped up fluffy brain, I didn't care if we stood there all night. With a fuzzy ‘everything's cool' head, I didn't care that she was thirteen.

I dragged her inside with me and she giggled.

‘I've got to lie down,' I said.

Vanessa held my hand through the kitchen and into the hallway. She held my hand past the bathroom and into my bedroom. She held my hand as I flicked the light on and face-planted into my unmade bed. She sat on the edge. She didn't let go.

‘Oh,' came Sharon's voice. ‘You guys make yourselves comfortable. I'll be in the lounge if you need me.'

Sharon flicked the light off and closed the door.

‘Shaaaron!' Vanessa bawled. She squeezed my fingers. I wriggled and gave her room. I rolled onto my side and she huffed and dropped onto the pillow facing me. I smiled. The faint streetlight from my window lit up her smiling teeth.

‘She's impossible,' Vanessa said.

I agreed. ‘You should try living with her.'

She pulled my hand to her mouth, kissed my knuckles and pressed them against her cheek. Soft skin. Warm breath on my wrist.

Instant hard-on.

‘Sorry about the other night,' she said. Her voice was a whisper.

‘God, don't apologise.'

She let go of my hand. I wiped my sweaty palm on the scrunched-up doona while she wriggled and squirmed in the half-light.

She rolled and backed her body into me until we lay like spoons in the kitchen drawer. Her shampoo-sweet hair tickled my nose and, without thinking, I kissed the back of her head. She drew my arm across her body and held my hand to her stomach. Most of my fingers landed safely on her top but my little finger touched the warm skin of her tummy. My breath got stuck in my neck. I had to force myself to breathe and breathe deep, so I didn't pant.

Vanessa filled her lungs and let out a musical sigh. ‘I could easily fall asleep here. Again.'

Sleep? My dick bucked at the waistband of my jeans. Ah, hello? Perhaps she couldn't feel that CB aerial in my pants.

But then she purred and pushed her bottom against me. My ring finger grazed against the skin of her belly and I was gone. She let go of my hand and I tucked it under her top, palm flat against naked skin. She rested her hand on top of mine and I could feel her moving my hand higher:
gently but surely. Heading for some delicious, bumpy terrain. Slip it into four-wheel-drive.

I kissed the back of her head and my room was filled with light from outside. I blinked and we both sat up.

Mum and Mario were home.

Sharon ran down the hallway. The door cracked as she shoved it open. She flicked the light on.

‘Mum and Dad are here,' she growled. Vanessa and I were standing at opposite sides of the bed like we'd been having a scruffy game of table tennis on the sheets, not the first set in a game of hide-the-sausage.

My heart was thumping in my neck.

‘We're not supposed to be here,' Sharon growled. Vanessa shot her finger through her hair and smoothed her top.

‘You just came to get the DVD,' I said. ‘You were just on your way out.'

Sharon jogged to her bedroom. Vanessa scurried after her. I threw myself onto my bed, put my hands behind my head and stared casually at the ceiling.

I could hear talking in the kitchen then the back door slammed. I heard the girls giggling as they ran down the drive, their runners drumming on the concrete outside my window.

Mum was in the doorway, scowling.

‘What?'

‘You look as guilty as hell. What were you up to?'

‘What?'

Mum just shook her head. ‘She's thirteen.'

‘We didn't . . . I wouldn't . . .'

‘Same age as your little sister.'

‘What do you think I am?'

Mario was calling out from the hallway. ‘Watch out, Gaz. She's jail-bait.'

‘Keep it in your pants,' Mum grumbled.

‘Jesus Christ!' I spat, and jumped off my bed. Mum backed out of the doorway. ‘Jesus fucken Christ.'

‘Gary!'

‘What do you think I am? A fucken no-hope loser
and
a fucken paedophile?' My hands had rolled into clubs and I stared at the floor in front of Mum's feet, the air whistling in and out of my nose.

‘Well,' Mum said, her voice was calm and even, ‘I didn't say that, did I? You said that. All I said was keep it in your pants.'

I felt like putting my fist through the door. Through the wall. Through Mum. I turned into the kitchen and towards the back door.

‘It's probably genetic,' Mum said.

The slam echoed around the neighbourhood like a gunshot.

It was shame I felt. It clawed under my skin and slithered into every cell in my body. Telford had been right when I was in grade three. Total fucken loser. Waste of fucken space. Totally fucken useless. What I wanted to do was blame someone else. Blame my old man. Blame my mum. Blame fucken Telford for my cursed life, but something had changed. The wind had changed. It was blowing in my face. If I tried to slag on Dad or Mum or Telford or anybody, it would slap back on my own forehead.

I
rode my bike to work on the Monday. I wished I could have set up a camera to capture the look on Muz's face when he came in to wake me up and I'd already gone. Made my lunch and tucked it in my old school pack. I decided, with a new day colouring my knuckles gold, that I'd just not say anything or do anything at home. Just keep my mouth shut, lay low, save my bucks and then vanish. They could think what they liked about me.

I coughed up half a cup of grey shit on my way across the Kellep River flats. I kept riding and hacking, spitting and thinking. They couldn't give me a job that I wouldn't be able to handle. Even if they had me shovelling trenches for three full weeks, I'd handle it.

It didn't seem to take as long to do the fifteen k's from Mullet Head to Christmas Bay. I arrived early. Only Phil Wasser's black SS ute was in the car park. I rode my bike right to the front door of the office but the door was locked. I looked across at the ute and I thought I saw a body moving. The heavy tint on the window made it hard to be
sure. There was a quiet clunk and the driver's door opened. Phil levered himself out of the car using the open door as a crutch. His hair was all fluffed up and his belt was undone. His shirt was untucked and he stretched like he'd slept in the car.

Heh, heh, I thought. Even beat the boss to work this morning. I watched him take a peek into his undies before he tucked himself in and tightened his belt. I watched him do his hair with his fingers in the curved mirror of his window.

I watched the passenger's door open.

I watched Pip the office girl climb out. She shook the hair off her face and adjusted her bra strap. She sprayed perfume on her wrists and neck and looked around. They couldn't see me clearly from where the ute was parked but I ducked anyway. I'd seen a lot more than anyone was supposed to. I pushed my bike beside the office and out of sight, crouching down beside it. I could hear them talking as they approached the office.

‘Need to order another hundred half-inch nipples today sometime,' Phil said.

‘They're on my list,' Pip replied, and I couldn't work out if they were talking sex or plumbing.

I sat there with my bike for a full five minutes, my heart rattling inside my rib cage, waiting for someone else to arrive. A car pulled into the lot. The other Commodore. Homer's car. I could hear the fat prick wheezing as he thumped up the path to the office door. I gave it another minute then locked my bike and went inside.

‘G'day, Gary!' Pip sang. ‘Can't believe you're still turning up to this madhouse.'

‘Huh! Yeah. I think I'm a bit sick in the head,' I said.

She smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘It helps.'

Nobody would guess, I thought. Nobody would guess that Pip and Phil — Philthy Phil — were at it. I looked at Pip with different eyes. Somehow the fact that she was probably humping the boss made her seem hotter. Maybe it was just that she was humping
someone
.

Phil came out of his office and my body straightened automatically like someone had stuffed a broomstick up my arse. The boss was in the room and I wondered what Pip could possibly see in the podgy forty-year-old with acne scars on his neck and hair in his ears. Maybe he had a thumping great . . . bank balance.

‘G'day, Gary,' he said. ‘You'll be out with Homer again today. How's it going? Keeping up with him?'

‘Yes. Easily,' I said.

‘Easily? Can't have that. Have to have a word to Homer. Get you digging a few trenches or something.'

‘That's all I've been doing.'

Phil raised an eyebrow, looked me up and down, then nodded. ‘Keep up the good work.'

‘Kev left a message on the machine, Phil,' Pip said. ‘Said he'd be back this week sometime and that he'd give us a call after he'd been to the doctor's today.'

‘There's my lackey,' Homer said. He was standing in the door to the shed, grey stubble on his chin and a bright yellow glob of something from breakfast hanging on the corner of his moustache. Mustard pickles, I thought.

‘Give us a hand to load up the van,' he said.

I gave him a hand and didn't say a word. We drove over the bridge where I'd taken the short flight off my bike and up to a massive new house with about six bedrooms and a view of Mullet Head and the bay.

Another trench. I dug and sweated while Homer banged around inside the house. He'd left the radio on in the van and cranked it up so he could hear the adverts and the shitty boy/girl radio bands.

That day I saw something that may well have scarred me for life.

Homer was working on a spa and I could see him through the window. He was bending over, with five centimetres of bum crack poking from the top of his shorts. Five centimetres of sweaty, hairy arse cleavage, complete with a little tuft of blue lint.

Looking at that coin slot was like seeing Sharon's spew when she had gastro in grade five. I knew it was disgusting and I knew that just looking at it was going to make me feel sick, but I had to look at it anyway. And it was so disgusting that I couldn't take my eyes off it. Until Homer moved. He stood up slowly and I dropped to my knees, digging at the bottom of the trench with my bare hands, hoping that he hadn't seen me staring at his butt. There's only one thing sicker than looking at a fat plumber's bum crack and that's being
caught
looking at a fat plumber's bum crack.

There was a knock on the window. I looked up.

‘Brew time,' Homer yelled at the glass. His brow was shiny with sweat and the gob of mustard pickles from
breakfast still hung in his moustache. Maybe it wasn't from breakfast?

I know it sounds like bullshit, but every trench is different. The dirt is a different colour. Sometimes the dirt will have three different colours in the one trench. Sometimes there are rocks and sand and clay, sometimes it's muddy, sometimes it's dry. Sometimes the dirt stinks like rotting fish, sometimes it smells good enough to eat. I came to a mad understanding later that morning. I realised I liked digging trenches. My body got hot and sometimes it ached. My green Australia cricket hat had a tidemark of salt inside the front. When I sat in the shade of the carport at lunchtime that Monday, the whole brow of my hat had been darkened with sweat, my dreads were still damp and my scalp was itchy. I wolfed down my sandwiches and sat there staring at my hands. Homer had taken his little esky inside. I guessed he'd eat like a hyena then snore for a good half-hour before he'd come back out to the van. I still had twenty minutes of my official lunchtime to go. I remembered the little scandal I'd seen that morning. Pretty sick. Mum reckoned
I
was a paedophile. Vanessa liked
me
. I didn't like her. She's only four years younger than me. Pip would be twenty years younger than Philthy Phil. Dirty old bastard. Vanessa wanted
my
body. I couldn't help that.

Thinking about it made my knob buckle in my undies. I decided to get back to my trench. I was well over halfway finished and Homer could hardly tell me off for going back into it.

I couldn't find the yellow-handled shovel. I was certain
I'd left it pushed into the soft stuff I'd dug out of the trench but it had gone. I checked the van and the front yard. No shovel. The bright yellow handle wasn't exactly camouflage. I doubted Homer would have taken it inside. I thought he was allergic to shovels anyway.

I found the shovel on a lap around the house. On the shady side between a concrete water tank and the house, Homer was using it as a crutch. He was squatting, back towards me, bare-arsed, preparing to crap in a hole he'd dug with
my
shovel. The shovel that he leaned upon as he strained. I backed away holding my breath. Holding my hand over my mouth. Holding my lunch down.

It's one thing to see a bloke's hairy arse cleavage, but to see it in action . . . Like I said, scarred for life.