The Tankermen (2 page)

He turned and ran again, his body wildly relieved at getting away. His arms felt wilted, clasped around the baby
clothes. He wondered if he had contaminated the clothes, passing them through the cloud of poison—if he had damaged
himself
, going through it unprotected.

He headed back towards his bin. Useless as it was, it was still his home, his claim. He stepped across the broken glass and dropped the bag in the flap. There was a thump and scuffle from inside.

‘Hey, get out of there!’ he yelled, knocking. ‘This’s my bin!’

A sleepy voice told him where to go.

‘Come on, get out!’ Finn set up a heavy kicking on all walls of the bin.

After a lot of protest and kicking back, the occupant opened the flap. ‘Jesus Christ, okay, okay!’

Finn stuck out his narrow jaw and scowled at the wasted face and filthy hair. ‘Come on, move!’ He wasn’t a tough guy, but he knew the etiquette.

‘’S not such a great one anyway,’ mumbled the kid, a crumbling Reebok appearing beside his head. He hauled himself up on to the ledge and hung there a minute, resting, smelling strongly of sweat. He raised reddened eyes to Finn. ‘You the jerk who wets his bed?’

‘You’re no bunch of roses yourself,
brother.’

The kid shrugged, slipped to the ground, and let loose an immense yawn that showed a mouthful of black and white teeth. Finn’s own teeth, yearly checked and passed filling-free, clenched in disapproval. Then the kid sloped off down the street, hunched up against the dawn light.

It would be a while before anyone else came along. Finn undid the knot in the blanket and began to hang the clothes along the churchyard railing, trying to choose rust-free places. He took a lot of trouble to hang them straight and flat, so they’d dry as close as he could get them to their pristine neatness.

Seeing the tankerman had been a shock—for a moment his common sense had been blown right open and he’d been perfectly prepared to believe that aliens had landed. There’d been terror, pure and simple, but also wonder, and a feeling of being privileged, being the first witness, being perhaps the welcoming party—Finn smiled to himself. It takes an alien to know one. He liked the thought of a reject like himself being translator of the whole world, explaining everything to them from his own point of view, off-beam from everyone else’s.

But boring reality, and a remembered flash of his father’s outrage, told him otherwise. These were plain old Earth-criminals, dumping muck into the storm water system. He’d heard about something similar the year before: a waste-oil disposal company off-loading into a drain behind a Chinese restaurant, where it had gone straight through to the harbour. His dad had read out the news articles with horror, over his toast and coffee, as part of his anti-pollution campaign. For that reason alone, Finn rather liked the tankermen and their scam. Anything that annoyed Dr Richard Finley was all right by Finn these days, anything that could bring on that purse-mouthed, eyes-averted awkwardness. He liked to think of his father being like that all the time, completely thrown by Finn’s disappearance, all his theories about family loyalty shaken to pieces. It was the only way Finn could imagine him without getting angry.

And Finn felt he had plenty to be angry about. The guy was hardly ever home, for a start, and when he was he was charging about doing things, fixing and renovating and washing the car or the windows, cleaning out the gutters, cooking, all in such a hurry, and such a foul mood, that Finn and Janet and Alex were scared to go near him. Then he’d plant himself down at the dinner table and deliver his lectures, sparked off by some idle comment of Finn’s or Janet’s. Janet would listen politely, and
Alex would sit wide-eyed, swallowing every word, but Finn had heard it all before, in another family—he ate on under the unstoppable flow of words, giving the right answers to the questions his father always fired at him at the end of the lecture.

‘It starts with a tidy body,’ he preached to himself. A yellow-beaked mynah fluttered down to the road and stalked about among the glass shards. Finn shook a finger at it. ‘It starts with a tidy mind and a tidy heart. You must know what you believe is right. Then it flows outward from you. A tidy
room
, for example!’ Finn eyed the bird accusingly, pausing just the way his father did to let Finn’s failure sink in. ‘A house in order, in more than one sense.’ Finn rubbed his chin and cheeks; he’d begun to suspect, lately, that they were softer, downier. A tidy body. He snorted softly. A tidy body busting out all over.

The Good Samaritans would come late this afternoon, he knew. Maybe they’d replace the bin if they noticed how much it stank, but Finn suspected they wouldn’t. Anyway, what did it matter, with summer coming on? He could learn to sleep out in the open. Plenty of kids already did. Up the back of the churchyard there was a whole camp of them some nights, laid out on the slabs like so many patients in hospital, once the yelling and the bottle-smashing were done with. He didn’t really want to go up there. But there were other places, a bit further into the residential areas, places with gardens or those alcoves for garbage bins, which would hold heat most of the night. It was time for a change, perhaps. Maybe the drunk and his bottle had just been a sign.

Finn certainly felt different, very awake and busy-minded. He walked up and down the fence fighting off a bored, waiting-for-the-shops-to-open restlessness. He wished the sun was high and the world was hard and noisy and real again. He wouldn’t leave the clothes until they dried; he didn’t want
anyone pinching them, or knocking them off the railing just for the fun of it. He wasn’t going to wash them twice. They were like a trap, being so clean and damp—

And so small. He picked up the singlet and spread it over his knee. His half-brother Alex had been a baby once, responding to Finn’s tickling and face-making with spasms of delight. And by the end of last year he’d been up and toddling, smearing his drool on the TV screen, climbing all over Finn if he lay down on the floor. Alex had liked head-banging; he’d drop his skull on your nose so you saw stars and almost cried from the pain, and then sit back and laugh like he’d won the lottery. He’d thought Finn was the coolest thing on two legs.

For a while Alex had been enough to make up for living at his dad’s place every second year, for Janet treating him so politely, like an honoured guest. Finn had felt almost useful. He’d take Alex off Janet’s hands after school so she could have a nap, he’d wheel him around Strathfield in the stroller, read him stories at bedtime. From looking after Gran he’d gone to looking after his brother, and Alex gave him the same feeling of being essential, golden, capable of anything.

At Alex’s second birthday party Finn had been the games leader, the centre of the whole circus. But then his father had come home and been unable to stop talking. ‘Don’t be so rough with those kids, Donny. Can you keep the noise level down a bit, son? Lois, is it okay if Donny throws Aaron in the air like that? It looks so dangerous. Don, just
cool
it! Someone’ll get hurt if you don’t watch out!’ His dad just didn’t know, or had forgotten, what rubbery, relaxed bodies two-year-olds had, how they could flop and fall about without hurting themselves. He was like a man who couldn’t swim, hovering anxiously at the edge of the pool while his kids porpoised around in the deep end. Finn had felt all the
other parents grow more and more tense with his father, whereas before they’d been happy just sitting and laughing at Finn and the kids tumbling around the yard.

Ah, it was bad news, that place. He’d been a dinosaur, a relic from an extinct world. His dad didn’t really want to be bothered with him, and covered it up by bothering too much, needling and lecturing and pushing every point home too far until Finn felt like a beetle pinned alive to a specimen board, squirming. Things didn’t matter
that
much, surely. The world was a big place. There was space in it for a messy room, for clothes with holes in them and hair that was too long, for people to dither a bit before deciding to act. But his dad was so certain he was right, it drove Finn up the wall.

Then there was this other thing. When Finn had turned up this last time and rushed in to greet them all, Dr Finley, neatly dressed in his work suit, had stood up from the breakfast table, startled, as if about to grab a weapon and defend Janet and Alex from the intruder.

‘Oh. Don. It’s you.’ And he’d stuck out a hand, as if Finn were a colleague at work or something. Finn had had to stand there for half a second with his arms out ready for hugging, then drop them and submit to a formal handshake, wondering what terrible mistake he’d made, that was sending him so deeply red.

Suddenly there was this new rule—back off from Dad. Janet and Alex still kissed him goodnight, but his father did not. Finn had tried to do what he always did with his father—keep the annoyance hidden away and go along with him—but this time it felt like too much of a concession. He could feel the hollow it had carved out of his insides.

It must be the change in himself, he’d thought. He shouldn’t have let himself grow so skinny and gangling. He was all wrists, ankles and neck—well, that was hardly
huggable material, was it? There’d been the same changes in Alex; he was a ‘big kid’ now, all traces of babyhood gone from his face. But his skin was still perfect, while Finn’s was troubled by the occasional spot. Alex still said cute, ignorant things, whereas if Finn didn’t know something his dad seemed to think he had to tell him, and tell him once and for all. This time around the lectures had been relentless and angry, the quizzing questions almost constant.

Janet, that last day, had appeared at Finn’s bedroom door while the tidy body, tidy mind tirade was being delivered to Finn’s bowed neck.

‘And look me in the eye, boy, when I speak to you!’ his dad had suddenly yelled, making Finn jump. Finn had looked up and seen Janet, her head on one side, looking back, quite serious. His dad had glanced over his shoulder.

‘Is there something you want, Janet?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d like a word with you in private, Richard.’ She hadn’t taken her eyes off Finn.

They’d gone off, and it was in the despairing quiet that followed, with their muted voices in the next room, that Finn had made his decision. He stuck his wallet and bank book in the back pocket of his jeans and walked out. And the farther he walked the less he was inclined to go back. He’d listened to his last lecture. It was Alex’s turn now—Alex could cop the lot. The air of late spring was mild and kind; it promised to remain so for an infinite number of nights, while the great size and the complex, grubby ways of the city claimed him.

Finn replaced the singlet on the churchyard rail. By now his father would be up, dressed and breakfasting. He would be barely noticing the fruit salad and yoghurt he ate, scowling intently at the newspaper. Finn’s belly groaned and he shook his head free of the breakfast image. He was always hungry; as a rule, he tried to banish food thoughts quickly. When the
bank opened, that’d be soon enough to eat.

He figured he had about three hours to fill. The baby clothes would be dry and packed away in the bin by then, ready for collection. He’d be free, provided he ran into no police, and kept his eyes peeled for trouble. He would go to the bank for a fresh ten dollars, and scrounge around for some cheap food. It was Monday; this afternoon he’d sidle into the TV shop and find out what was happening on
Paradise Row.
The day would firm up nicely. It was only now, at the tail end of the dead hours, that there was too much time for chewing over things best forgotten and mentally fending off the future. At times like this Finn was scared of going crazy, of ending up like a lot of the old guys around this place, muttering or yelling as angry memories ran wild through their drink-rotted brains. He had to tell himself it wouldn’t happen. He tried to live entirely within the present moment, mindless as the mynah birds that strutted and swore in the sun.

The TV shop, crammed with goods, was almost empty of people. Out of the corner of his eye Finn saw Bodgie, of the shiny blue suit and narrow tie, turn from flirting with the saleswoman to adjust himself for attack. Finn idled past the on-special fans towards the door. A dozen Todd McIntyres, some a bit greener, some a bit greyer than others, raged along the wall beside him: ‘I should never have married you! You never think of anyone but yourself!’

Finn slid out on to the pavement. Monday nights were a chore. The other days of the week, Frank, a nice guy, let him stand and watch TV as long as he liked, but Bodgie was the ruthless type, wanting to see either your money or the back of you. He knew Finn, so Finn could only catch up with
Paradise Row
when he was tied up smarming with a customer or looking down Michelle’s blouse. Sometimes Finn had to spend the whole episode outside, gathering what he could
from lip-reading and people’s expressions.

The thing that held him to the show wasn’t so much the story, anyway, or even the characters, who were pretty colourless. What he liked was knowing that all the Greenlawns people were clustering around the TV up there near Casino. He liked concentrating on what they were concentrating on, losing himself the way they did in the silly dialogue and the world of cardboard sets and contrived situations. Some days he could almost smell the freshly laundered cotton-cell blanket over Gran’s knee, feel the wheel of her chair curving against his shoulder-blade, see Mrs Stanwick’s crocheting idle in her lap, hear the tiny clopping sounds of Barney fiddling his false teeth with his tongue. Even from the centre of the Cross, hemmed in by specials bins and ambling customers, with the usual madness going on outside, he could escape for an hour to the dim stillness of the TV room at Greenlawns.

But when dinnertime rolled around, Finn’s belly reminded him all too clearly that he was there no longer. He turned from the shop window, forcing away memories of watery mashed potato and peas, thin grey slices of roast beef.

The Cross was twitchy tonight; the heat brought its hidden nastiness closer to the surface. Finn watched the bikers confabulating, all tattoos and studs and black leather, their machines in a gleaming regiment along the kerb. They spent a lot of time glancing around, over their shoulders. A girl wasn’t safe from appraisal or wolf-whistles unless she was covered from chin to ankle, and on such a hot night few girls were. Finn watched the boyfriends’ heads come up, the girls’ go down, the decision not to react to the hassling almost visible in the air around them. There were a lot of bikers, and they weren’t exactly weedy.