The Tankermen (3 page)

Bodgie was standing at the shop doorway, trying to look as
if he wasn’t paying Finn any attention. And after a moment he wasn’t, as a gaggle of women in party dresses and high heels staggered past the shop, busting out of their bodices with laughter.

Finn would have watched them himself if he hadn’t been aware of Bodgie’s gaze running all over them like fiddling fingers. He tensed up for the bikers’ reactions and was wincing at the first shouts and whistles when he saw two giggling street kids, their eyes glazed and their limbs uncoordinated, barge out of the chemist’s next to the TV shop. They knocked over the highly polished BMW at the end of the stack of bikes, practically upended a beefy biker who’d been wandering around it admiringly, and stormed through the traffic yelling their heads off.

Out of the pack of wolf-whistles came a loud ‘Hey!’, and an even beefier bloke leapt up and strode towards the big guy. ‘Whathafuckyathinkyadoin’,
mate
?’ His voice sounded like a chainsaw, and Finn felt everyone within hearing distance pause and prepare for an incident.

The big guy stood there looking guilty as anything. ‘I didn’t do nothin’, mate. These two kids nearly knocked me over—’ He cocked a thumb over his shoulder, glancing hopelessly at the crowd on the opposite side of the street. Finn could see the two kids hanging off the kerb down at the corner, holding each other up while they looked back and laughed, but neither of the bikers noticed them.

‘Sure they did, ya great fuckinidiot. Don’t touch the bikes, mate, that’s the rules round here!’ He was closing in on the other guy. People got quieter and walked more slowly to catch the action.

‘I tell you, it wasn’t me. Why would I want to knock your bike over? I was just having a look—’ He was getting a bit pissed off himself, the guilty look wearing through to self-righteousness.

‘Good question, mate, good question.’ The bigger guy was ramming his face right up to the other guy’s, doing scary things with his teeth and eyes. Any minute now he’d bring up his knee, Finn knew. He’d seen this guy in action before.

‘Hey!’ Finn’s voice sounded high and piping, like Peter Pan’s. Hot blood pushed up into his head as he ducked through a line of onlookers to the kerb. He took a flying leap over the spilled bike and grabbed the big guy’s elbow, expecting it to crunch back into his face. ‘You’ve got the wrong bloke, mate.’

The guy didn’t move. ‘This a friend of yours?’ he said aggressively to a point just above the other guy’s eyebrows.

Finn tugged on his leathered sleeve. ‘He doesn’t know me. I saw those kids. They’re over there.’ Finn hauled on the elbow and fixed the two kids with a finger. The big guy turned in time to see the two of them gape, then clutch each other and dash across the far intersection against the lights. They disappeared in the crowd. ‘They were pissed as newts,’ Finn said. ‘They couldn’t see where they were going.’

The guy’s shoulders dropped, and Finn sensed the onlookers shifting about and beginning to move on.

‘Here, mate, give you a hand lifting the bike up,’ said the other guy, his face slack with relief. They looked at each other warily, then Finn stepped out of the way while they grunted the bike upright again. The big bloke swore a blue streak at the dented tank and the scratches on the muffler, but he wasn’t spoiling for a fight any more. Finn and the other guy swore sympathetically and clicked their tongues.

‘You won’t catch ’em in a million years,’ said Finn.

The big bloke’s mates started gathering around and trying to work out how much it would cost to restore the Beemer to its former glory.

‘You saved my nuts, mate,’ muttered the beefy biker into
Finn’s ear.

‘Yep, I did.’ Finn grinned up at him. He was all red hair and ginger whiskers, with sharp blue eyes and a round bump of a nose like Santa Claus’s.

‘I’d shout you a beer if you weren’t under age. Can I buy you a juice or something instead?’ He held out a big red-freckled paw and Finn’s thin hand disappeared inside it.

‘Okay,’ said Finn. He felt tiny and slender, just a scrap of flesh and bone next to this mass of black-clad man.

The big man bought two cans of lemon squash, and they took them out on the street to drink as they walked. Finn usually managed on bubbler-water; a soft drink was a real novelty these days. He tried not to show it.

‘Well, my name’s Jed, anyway,’ said the biker after the first swig.

‘I’m Finn.’

‘You live around here?’

‘Yeah, I hang out here. What about you?’

‘Oh, I’ve got a place with some mates in Darlinghurst.’

‘What, a squat?’

‘Oh no, it’s legit. We pay rent and that.’

‘You work, then?’

‘Sometimes—but not at the moment. I’m a motorbike mechanic when I can get the work.’ Jed looked down at him sidelong. ‘What about you? Still at school, are you?’

‘Nope.’

Jed raised his eyebrows. Finn, flattered that the guy was even bothering with him, went on, ‘I should be still at school, but I’m not.’

‘Ah.’ Jed nodded. ‘You flunk out?’

‘Nah, I just . . . got sick of it.’ They were having to work a bit to stay together in the press of people. Someone jabbed Finn in the back with an elbow, and he and Jed turned and
said ‘Watch it!’ at the same time. Finn felt companionable. His head was a mess of hopeful thoughts and warnings, all of which he tried to ignore. He hadn’t talked to anyone else today except the bank teller.

‘Know the feeling,’ said Jed. ‘I went to tech. Even doing stuff you like—like I was learning all about bikes—it’s hard to get motivated some mornings, hey.’

‘You’re not wrong.’ Finn had a sharp picture of himself striding along the street in the dead hours, and the bad air stopping him in his tracks. It had been a long time ago—he looked out over William Street from the overpass and saw the last light greening the western sky.

Jed stopped beside him. ‘You just get sick of living at home, too?’ he said.

‘How’d you know that?’ Finn was put out. He’d thought he kept himself pretty clean and civilised-looking.

‘Just the hours you keep, for someone so young. And I dunno, there’s something about street kids. Like, I don’t think a kid coming up the Cross with his mum and dad would’ve stepped in back there, between me and that joker.’ Jed glanced at Finn’s face. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I won’t tell anyone. Heaps of kids go on the loose these days. You into drugs?’

Finn looked closely at him, ready to back off if he made any offers. ‘Nope.’

‘You pinch stuff?’

‘Only apples, from the fruit shop.’

Jed laughed. ‘Well, at least it’s not smokes, I guess. I used to pinch things. A few years ago I went through a stage where I couldn’t stop myself. Stuff I didn’t need, mostly, from big department stores. DJ’s was best, sneaking stuff out past that nice, polite doorman. It felt good at the time. I wouldn’t dare now.’ He chuckled, gazing out over the whizzing traffic. ‘I’m
old now. I’m all mellow, you know?’

‘Sure. I noticed all the grey hairs in your beard, before,’ Finn joked, pleased—the guy seemed all right, not a kinkoid or anything. It didn’t seem to make any difference that Finn was so much smaller and younger.

‘Yeah, once you hit twenty-five, you go soft in the head, I reckon. You stop blaming everyone else for your own problems.’

Finn glanced at him, wondering if that was a put-down. Was that what he was doing, blaming everyone else? Was that what his running away was all about, a criticism of Janet, Dad and Mum? He guessed they could easily take it like that, but on reflection he didn’t think it was. It was some new part of himself wanting to be heard, and he couldn’t hear it while his dad was hurling opinions around the place, while Alex was asking ‘Why? Why? Why?’, while his mum was rushing about from work to supermarket to kitchen, trying not to think about Gran.

‘Hey, wanna go for a ride?’ said Jed.

Finn’s defences snapped up again. ‘Ah, what d’you mean?’

‘On my bike. Let’s go out to the beach. Bondi. How about it?’

He seemed so straightforward that Finn said okay before he could stop himself. ‘Where’s your bike?’

‘Just along this street here. Somewhere where kids and cars won’t knock it over.’

Finn followed him across the road, feeling, underneath his natural guardedness, more and more light-hearted. The sugar from the soft drink spun in his brain. A change of scene! He hadn’t been out of the Cross for weeks, had begun to forget there was anywhere else in the world, he’d been so busy finding out how the place operated, how to tell who was safe and who wasn’t, where to get the cheapest food, how to
read the signs of approaching trouble. He’d like to see the sea again, and it would be neat to go with a new mate, on a bike.

‘You doubled on a bike before?’ Jed asked him casually, handing him a black and red full-face helmet.

‘Not since I was really little.’ Finn tried not to listen to his five-year-old self screaming with happy terror as he and his dad burned down the dirt road along the Hogarth Range, the cool air pushing hard into his chest.

‘It’s a breeze,’ said Jed. ‘Just remember to lean the way I lean when we’re cornering, that’s the main thing.’ He fastened the strap of Finn’s helmet for him.

Any residual doubts Finn might have had about Jed dissolved in his relief at having someone so massive and confident to hold onto as they whirled through the night. But he wasn’t used to being so close to other traffic, unshielded by the door of a family car, or to having a wheel spinning between his feet, perched on tiny pegs—he was afraid his heels would somehow get caught and chopped up. The padded helmet was no comfort when his ear was just a metre or so from a roaring semi trailer. Jed, of course, rode on completely unfazed, and unreachable inside his own helmet.

Finally the road dropped away in a curve down to Bondi, and Finn relaxed enough to take in a view of the near-deserted, floodlit beach before they were down among the shops, nosing around for a place to park. He tried to steady his knees as he got off the bike and fumbled with the helmet strap. Jed lifted his visor and grinned out. ‘How’d you go?’

‘Fine,’ said Finn through a dry throat.

They walked along past the shops for a little while, Finn calming down after the ride, Jed idly watching the other people who strolled along in loose, bright-coloured summer clothes. It was a different crowd from the Cross—fewer dead-beats and weirdos, more wax-heads and bodies-beautiful.
Finn looked around him with the eyes of a tourist in a foreign land.

Jed bought fish and chips, waving aside Finn’s money. They crossed the road and went down to the beach to eat, the traffic noise gradually becoming obliterated by the sound of the light surf throwing itself on the sand. They sat on the beach and stared out to sea as they ate, to where the lights of the freighters, anchored offshore, gleamed like low stars.

‘This is the life, hey mate?’ said Jed, leaning back on his elbows. ‘Whatever happens, you can always come out here and let the sea wash away your worries.’

Finn nodded and filled his mouth with chips.

‘So what are
your
worries?’ Jed asked.

Finn turned and found himself being looked at very curiously. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Why’d you decide to leave home? Your old man beat you up or something?’

Finn grinned, shook his head and took some more chips to delay having to talk.

‘Your old
lady
beat you up?’

Finn chewed and swallowed. ‘Nah, Mum and Dad broke up years ago.’

‘Ah. And you live with which one?’

‘Both. They take it in turns to have me for a year.’

‘Yeah? I thought most families had a sort of every-second-weekend arrangement.’

‘Yeah, but my mum lives up north. She got the holiday house, up near Casino, when they split up, so I go up there every second year.’

‘That’d be okay. I could handle that. So when do you swap over?’

‘Round New Year, usually.’

‘Very neat. So you’re about to head off again, hey? Or
should you be up among the bananas with your mum?’

‘I should be with my dad. It’s actually my mum’s year for me, but she dropped me at Dad’s early, this time.’ Finn could hear the resistance in his voice, the way he was holding back. He didn’t feel much like explaining all this right now.

‘So why aren’t you home at your dad’s?’ Jed’s voice was curious but distant. It didn’t matter to him—he needn’t see Finn ever again if he didn’t want to. The fact that he was bothering to ask made Finn feel a bit strange—he wasn’t in the habit of discussing himself.

‘My dad has this other kid, and another wife now. He’s not all that interested in me.’

‘You reckon?’ Jed looked closely at him. ‘What’s the stepmother like?’

‘Okay. Friendly enough, I guess. It’s just that I don’t matter much to her, you know? When I see her with her kid, she acts different to the way she acts with me.’

Jed sat up and brushed the sand from his elbows. ‘Different how?’

Finn didn’t want to say. The words rattled around in his head. Sometimes she hugs him so tight he can hardly breathe. It doesn’t matter how disgustingly he behaves, she always looks at him as if he were a big present she was really excited about opening. ‘Just different. Like with me she’s kind of shy. Especially when I first get there. By the time Christmas rolls around we’re usually getting on okay, but then I have to go, don’t I?’ He didn’t want to go on about the Christmases tainted with everyone’s New Year plans that never included him, with that air of relief about his going. Christmas was the low point of the year. It signalled upheaval, another round of adjustments to make, different ones each time.

‘Why don’t you stay there?’

‘I couldn’t stand it. My dad goes on at me all the time. “What are you going to do, son?” Like, what am I going to do with my
life
—I’m not even fifteen and he wants me to have my career all mapped out. “You don’t want to close off your options, do you? What are you aiming for? What’ll you do in Year 12?” Geez, I couldn’t give a
stuff.
That’s two
years
away! I don’t wanna
think
about it! But he’s so organised, you know? That’s the way he did it and that’s the way he reckons I should do it. But I’m just a different kind of person.’