The Choke Page 8

  At the end of the day Michael’s father picked him up. He came to the front of the school where I waited with Dawn and Noreena. Dawn said, ‘He’s a teacher at the high school.’

  ‘Mum said it’s not fair they have to look after Michael,’ said Noreena.

  ‘He can’t do anything.’

  ‘So unfair.’

  I watched as the back door of the car opened. A little boy climbed out. He went to Michael, put his arms around his legs and held him. Michael gave the boy one of the crutches and then he swung himself with the other crutch into the car. Michael’s dad didn’t help him.

  I didn’t know why he was my friend. He couldn’t move properly or talk properly. Did he think I was the same? Was I? I wanted to look at his book with the maps. I wanted to sit beside him, and when we walked to the shelter sheds or to the yellow play squares or down the path to the gates to his waiting parents I wouldn’t help him either.

  That night, before I slept, I cut Michael a path that wrapped around my truck all the way to the top. I cut it smooth for his crutches. Nobody could open the truck and if I forgot the numbers for the code Michael would groan and stretch and nod when I guessed them right, and that’s how I would know. I put his book at the top on a podium the same as Headmaster Prentice used at assembly. Michael pointed at the pictures and the letters were in the right order so I could read every one.

  14.

  ‘Justine, you’re starting to smell,’ Noreena said.

  It was playlunch and I was in the square with Dawn and Noreena.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘You’re starting to smell like Michael.’

  Dawn walked along the yellow line, arms out wide as if it was a tightrope. ‘It’s true, Jussy,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I looked across to Michael, sitting at the benches.

  Noreena said, ‘You smell like wee. The same as him.’

  I felt my face turn hot and red. I watched Michael turn the page, his hand shaking.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I said, but I didn’t know. Did I smell?

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said Dawn. ‘We didn’t want to tell you. It’s not your fault you have to sit next to him.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not your fault, Justine,’ Noreena said. ‘But maybe you need to have a bath when you get home. Wash it off. Does your Pop make you have a bath?’

  I shrugged. Pop didn’t have much hot water; I only had a bath sometimes.

  ‘Yeah, you need to wash it off,’ said Dawn. ‘Michael probably can’t have baths; his arms and legs would break the sides. His mum probably has to wash him with a bucket. She probably can’t get to all of him. But you can have baths, Justine.’

  ‘Yeah, Justine, you definitely can,’ said Noreena.

  I nodded. But I didn’t know why.

  As we were going back to class I saw Matt Dunning and Brian Lawson cross to the benches where Michael was sitting. They stood in front of him. Since Mrs Turning put me next to Michael it was as if people noticed him for the first time. Other kids started moving towards Matt Dunning and Brian Lawson. They made a half-circle around the benches so I couldn’t see Michael anymore. Dawn and Noreena followed me towards them. I heard Matt Dunning say, ‘How did you get like that, spastic elastic?’

  I pushed through the crowds and saw Michael’s head jerking back.

  ‘Can I have a go of your crutches?’ said Brian Lawson. Everybody watched as he picked up Michael’s crutches and put them under his arms, then he swung around on them. Other kids laughed. Michael was breathing hard.

  I stood with Dawn and Noreena, who were laughing with the other girls as Brian swung around on the crutches, back and forth in front of them. My heart started to race. Michael’s body shook, his arm flung out, his eyes rolled back. He groaned. Spit came from his mouth, down his chin. Brian kept swinging. ‘Spastic elastic!’ he chanted. ‘Spastic elastic! Needs his mum to hold his dick so he can do a wee-ee.’ The girls screamed and laughed and Michael groaned. I thought my chest would explode. Matt Dunning grabbed Michael’s map book from the table. Michael’s back arched, spasmed, as pages from the book fell to the ground.

  I ran to Brian and pulled the crutches from him. I held one up like Thomas Dunson’s rifle and looked down the barrel at Brian Lawson’s face. ‘Every time you turn around,’ I said, ‘I’m going to catch up with you.’ I moved my gun around slowly; I looked in everyone’s face—the laughing girls and the teasing boys—right into their eyes, where the bullet would go. My hands were shaking. I kept the gun high. I went up the row and down the row, a bullet for every one. Bang bang bang bang bang bang. The bell rang and still I held the gun. Someone made a sound. Like a giggle, but scared. I kept the gun cocked, ready, and looked straight down the barrel at my targets.

  Matt said softly, ‘Weirdo.’ Then Matt and Brian walked away. The girls followed. Only Dawn and Noreena stayed. I lowered the gun. My arms were still shaking. I leaned the crutches against the bench near Michael.

  Noreena said, ‘Justine, what’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  Dawn said, ‘Are you coming?’ I looked at Dawn and Noreena, green ribbons, smooth dresses, eyes I couldn’t see inside.

  ‘No,’ I said. I sat down beside Michael Hooper.

  Noreena frowned. ‘Come on, Dawnie.’ They walked away.

  Soon Michael’s movements and his breathing slowed. I bent down and picked up the torn pages from the map book. I smoothed them and put them back in their place in the book. They were maps of the world, all in different colours—green, blue, pink. I saw a mountain range and a volcano. Michael groaned as if he was trying to speak. I said, ‘What?’ He pushed words through the sound. But I still didn’t understand. ‘What?’

  He said, louder. ‘Stupid idiots!’

  Michael took his crutches and pulled himself to his feet. We walked to class. Matt and Brian left us alone in the classroom. They didn’t say anything to me about Michael; they didn’t call him my husband. When it was lunchtime I sat with Michael and he didn’t make me be a gorilla. He spread his lunch in front of us on the bench; there were strawberries and bread and cheese, and a cold sausage. Michael tore the sausage in half and he passed one half to me. When Dawn and Noreena walked past us, Michael pointed to a picture of two sharks in his map book.

  And then I didn’t need other friends; I only needed Michael. I didn’t want the school bell to ring; I didn’t want the day to end. I learned the code of his sounds and it was an easier language than the one Mrs Turning was trying to teach. In a day I forgot that it had ever been hard to understand what he was saying. He was Michael. I didn’t help him to walk or to sit or to stand. I didn’t help him do anything. I stood and waited while he picked up his books and his bag and opened doors and took out his lunch. But he helped me—he helped me with the order of the letters, the order of the words, which circles to tick, which lines to join, which numbers to add. There was less and less he had to do for me to know he was helping me. It was in the smallest movement. It was easy. Easier than anything at school had been before.

  One morning he didn’t come to school. I waited and waited and there was no one to ask, When is he coming back? When will Michael be here? The sharks circled and I turned away.

  When he did come back on Friday, he said to me, ‘I hate nurses.’

  ‘Nurses? Why?’

  ‘They make me move my legs.’

  ‘Bitches,’ I said. Michael’s head shot back, his eyes went wide and he sucked in air. It exploded from him in snorts. I had never seen him laugh like that before.

  Bitches! Dawn and Noreena didn’t look at me, as if we had never been friends, and we hadn’t; we hadn’t ever been friends.

  We walked along the row of pine trees by the fence. ‘What do you want to do when you leave?’ he asked me.

  ‘Leave where?’

  ‘Here. School. When you grow up?’

  I shrugged. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if there was anything I could do.

  ‘There
must be something you want to do,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What if you could do anything?’

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anything at all?’

  ‘Yes, Justine. Anything at all.’

  ‘I’d drive a truck.’

  ‘A truck?’

  I didn’t want to tell him anymore. Maybe it was wrong. Stupid.

  ‘What sort of truck?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on, Justine. What sort of truck?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘A semi?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘A truck to transport things?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You do know. Come on, Justine, tell me!’

  But I couldn’t answer. My answer would be wrong.

  ‘Justine, if you don’t tell me then…I don’t know! I don’t know what I’ll do. I won’t tell you.’

  We walked in silence. His breathing was huffy. He kicked at the pine cones in the grass and didn’t look at me. A long time went by.

  ‘A big one,’ I said. ‘One you can live in. With a cabin behind the driver’s seat.’

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘White and silver. It would go fast. A lot faster than any other car on the road. It would be big enough to live in. You could go a long way. You could follow the Murray to New South Wales. You could cook in it. You’d need a ladder to get to the cabin it would be so high.’

  Michael turned to me, his face serious. ‘Can I come?’

  He wasn’t laughing at me; my answers weren’t wrong or stupid. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You can come.’

  ‘We could go anywhere.’

  We could go anywhere. A highway stretched out before us. All we had to do was make it through the school gate and there the truck would be, waiting, its fenders gleaming, its big silver body ready and fast, with a slot for the crutches and two seats: one for Michael and one for me.

  When I saw Mrs Hooper driving up to the gate in the morning, I wanted to run down to her car. I wanted to say, Can I help you, Mrs Hooper? But I couldn’t find the words to speak them. Can I help you, Mrs Hooper? Please let me help you. Even when she smiled at me, not minding that I didn’t help, even then, I couldn’t speak or move or do anything except be glad Michael, her son, was there. Thank you for Michael, Mrs Hooper.

  15.

  While he was away Dad had missed Kirk’s thirteenth birthday. Kirk had come to Pop’s to wait, just in case Dad called on the telephone, but the telephone never rang. Pop said this Saturday night could be the birthday instead. Dad was going to be home at five o’clock for a barbecue. Pop bought steaks and bread rolls and corn on the cob. He poured lemonade into paper cups while we waited for Dad. Kirk and Steve sat against Pop’s woodpile; they both held sticks and shot at the lizards and ants that crossed the dirt. I sat beside Pop on one of the camp chairs. Kirk said, ‘Dad’s going to teach me how to shoot.’

  Pop stirred his fire with a stick. ‘No, he’s not.’

  ‘Yeah, he is. He told me.’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ said Pop. Sparks flew from the flames.

  ‘He said he’s going to show me on the Mauser.’

  ‘The Mauser stays where she is. You’ll learn to shoot when you’re sixteen.’

  Kirk threw a bottle top towards the chickens. Missy warbled and jumped. ‘Danny’s uncle will show me before then.’

  ‘Good for him,’ said Pop. ‘Leave my chickens alone.’

  ‘When he gets back from Gympie. He’s got his own guns,’ said Kirk. ‘He’s got a rifle and a .22.’

  ‘Sure he has,’ said Pop. ‘Get me a beer from the esky, will you?’ Kirk went into the laundry. Pop looked at his watch. We drank the lemonade. It was still hot from the day. Mosquitoes flew around our heads. Pop slapped at his legs. He got up and brought more wood from his pile then he threw a plank into the flame and I watched the nails glow orange. The lemonade left a coat of itself on my tongue. I pushed my tongue in and out of the hole, in out in out.

  Kirk came back with the beer. Pop looked at his watch again. Then he went into the chook run. ‘Here, chook chook chook,’ he called. Kirk made a gun with his fingers and fired it at the chooks as they followed Pop through the gate.

  The water from the Murray seeped up through the ground. Even in summer, when it was hot. The trees’ branches moved in the warm air. The flames of Pop’s fire jumped and danced. ‘Cockyboy!’ Pop called. ‘Get in here.’ Pop walked down to Cockyboy and shooed him from the top of the gate. ‘Come on, Cockyboy, get in there. Go look after your girls.’

  ‘Get in there, Cockhead, get in there,’ Kirk said.

  Steve pulled out his blade. ‘Run for your life, Cockhead,’ he said.

  Pop came out of the run and walked up to the house. Kirk said, ‘Danny’s uncle is going to show us how to shoot as soon as he comes back from Gympie. Danny will come and get me; we’ll go straight over. We’ll head up to The Choke and shoot at the roos on the other side. Danny’s uncle hunts pigs, too. Pigs are harder to see. They’re the same colour as the trees. You have to tell the difference then kapow.’ Kirk held up his finger and shot the pigs.

  It went quiet. Kirk and Steve dug holes with their stick-guns, and I watched the fire as we waited for Dad. It felt like we had always been waiting for him; since we were small, before the fall-out, back when Donna was still my mother, we had been waiting. Even when he was here we were waiting—for him to look at us, talk to us, laugh at the jokes we made, notice the things we did.

  Pop came out of the kitchen with the steaks and chops. He spread the fire with his stick, put the grate over the flames, then laid out the steaks and chops. We watched as the steaks sizzled with black lines from the grill.

  ‘Thirteen will be a good year,’ said Kirk. He flicked dirt into the air.

  ‘Better than twelve,’ said Steve.

  ‘Yah! Yah!’

  What was that?

  ‘Yah! Yah!’

  Kirk and Steve and me got up and ran down the side of the house, towards the sound at the front.

  ‘Yah! Yah!’

  There was Dad and he was riding a horse! A big silver horse!

  ‘Dad!’ we called.

  Dad smiled at us and lifted his hat. The horse pranced beneath him.

  ‘Dad!’ we called. ‘Dad!’

  The horse was trying to pull him one way, then another. Kirk stood taller beside me; it was better than a telephone call, better than Danny’s uncle, it was his own dad on a horse for his birthday! Dad came up on the big silver horse, holding the reins with one hand. He made a gun with the fingers of his other hand and held it in the air.

  Where did he get the horse?

  ‘Stick ’em up!’ said Dad.

  Dad’s legs hung low on either side of the horse, his black boots pressing hard into the stirrups, pushing them outwards, as he rode it towards the house.

  Pop came out the front. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Ride ’em, cowboy!’ Dad said, pulling on the reins.

  The horse reared back, its mouth open wide enough for me to see the gleaming metal across its tongue. Its legs and shoulders and thighs were tight with muscle and strength.

  ‘Who does that belong to?’ Pop called to Dad.

  ‘She’s all mine,’ said Dad. He twirled the horse around, with the reins against her neck. The horse went in the circle whichever way Dad pulled. ‘What do you think, kids? Do you like her?’

  ‘Great horse, Dad,’ said Kirk.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Steve. ‘Great.’

  ‘Can I have a ride?’ Kirk asked.

  ‘Where’s she from?’ Pop asked.

  ‘Let’s just say somebody owed me.’

  The horse kept moving this way and that. It threw its head and pulled against the metal in its mouth. Nothing moved in Dad; his body was solid and still in the saddle as the horse pulled and twitched and fought him. The horse was the movement and Dad was the stillness. />
  ‘She yours?’ Pop asked.

  ‘She is.’

  ‘Can I have a ride?’ Kirk asked again.

  ‘She’s a wild one, mate. I reckon she might try to run straight back where she came from with you in the saddle.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ Pop asked, frowning.

  ‘Nowhere land,’ said Dad.

  ‘Tea’s ready,’ said Pop. ‘You going to get off that thing and eat? We’ve been waiting.’

  ‘Can I have a ride?’ said Kirk.

  It was as if Dad couldn’t hear Kirk. He said, ‘Coming for a ride, Justine?’

  ‘It’s Kirk’s birthday,’ said Pop.

  ‘What, today?’ said Dad.

  ‘Not today,’ said Pop, ‘but…’

  ‘Justine can fit behind. Come on, Justine.’

  Kirk’s mouth fell open. I saw covers slide over the tops of his eyes, blocking the light.

  ‘Come on,’ said Dad. ‘Climb up.’ He rode closer to me, leaned over and held out his hand. The horse was so big, shining and grey, its eyes so dark. My dad was big too, above the horse, muscles down his arms and muscles down the shoulders of the horse, strong across its back.

  I didn’t know what to do. It was a barbecue for Kirk’s birthday.

  ‘Justine,’ said Dad. ‘Come over and get on the horse.’ The horse smelled of sweat and grass and earth, its breathing heavy as it pulled my dad one way and then another. ‘Come here,’ said Dad, holding out his hand to me.

  Kirk watched. Steve stood, caught, inside the ditch that ran around him. He couldn’t move. There was no chance for him. Pop said, ‘It’s Kirk’s birthday, for Christ’s sake.’

  Dad said, ‘Be there in a minute. Come on, Justine.’

  ‘Leave Justine here, Ray,’ Pop called. ‘She can’t ride a bloody horse.’

  ‘She doesn’t have to,’ said Ray. ‘She can sit behind.’ Then he sat up in the saddle and called back to Pop, ‘Remember when we went with Mum to Swan Hill? Remember that, Pop? We rode that day, didn’t we? Mum rode too, remember? You haven’t forgotten that day, have you, Pop?’