A Small Free Kiss in the Dark (5 page)
I tried to outrun the planes. My throat was raw. Every breath burnt like a blowtorch. When I got to the Queen’s Elbows only the front wall was standing. Behind it was a pile of rubble big enough to fill thousands of skips. I bit my teeth together, hard, so there was no space for that flapping bird to get in. Billy’s room was in the basement. I got down on my knees and shovelled away the rubbish with my hands until I found the grate where they used to roll beer barrels down to the cellar. I pulled a pitchfork off the fence and belted the rusty catch until it fell apart. Clinging to the edges, I lowered myself into the cellar until my freezing fingers gave way and I dropped down into the darkness. It felt like my leg bones had rammed through my shoulders. I lay on my back, hugging my legs, trying to stop the pain. Through the hole in the footpath I counted the planes – seven dark arrows against the gingerbread sky – and I wondered how much longer it would be until morning. But I couldn’t wait until then; I had to find Billy.
I imagined Bradley Clark hiding with his potato peeler, thinking I was the devil. I shivered, but sweat or blood, or both, dripped off my face. I had to find Billy’s room. I stuck my hands out like a sleepwalker, feeling my way. My foot clipped something – a ladder, and it clattered to the floor. I froze. No one came. I felt my way to a door and tried the handle. It was locked, so I hurled myself against it like the police do, but the middle was already busted and I fell through into the corridor.
‘Billy!’ I was past caring who else might be there. ‘Billy!’ My voice bounced back like it couldn’t escape. I crept forward.
A corridor is meant to be straight and narrow; that’s how I visualised it. I didn’t know that the chimney from the ground floor had fallen through to the basement and blocked the corridor. Luckily I was going so slow I didn’t fall over, but there was nothing I could do except sit down and wait until morning.
Then it was easy: I climbed up and over the bricks, calling Billy’s name. He’d showed me his room the day he moved in. It was the first on the left. The two beds against the wall, where Shorty Long and Irish Kelly usually slept, were empty. A massive steel beam had collapsed. There was plaster and concrete everywhere but I saw a space underneath it; a cave just big enough for a bed to fit; Billy’s bed. Since Shorty and Irish were gone, I guessed Billy would have made it out too but I had to be sure. I crawled in on my hands and knees. Waterfalls of sand and plaster trickled between the cracks. Everything was covered in white, like it had been snowing. There was just enough light to show Billy’s coat and the still shape of a body underneath. I couldn’t see his head on the pillow, only blood and the fallen beam.
I crouched in the corner crying and sleeping. Time had no meaning. I only got up because there was something I wanted to do before it got too dark. I took Shorty’s blanket and cleared dust away from around Billy’s bed. Then I drew yellow flowers because yellow is the colour of happiness and that’s what Billy made me feel. It’s also the colour of kindness, and Billy was kind even though he pretended not to be. Next I did a white cross at the bottom and wrote ‘RIP Billy’. Last, I drew a dog on the wall because Billy told me he used to have a dog once. It was a sausage dog called Pablo, after Picasso. Picasso painted a picture of a sausage dog on a plate. The dog’s name was Lump. Lump and Picasso both died in 1973. Sometimes, if two people really love each other and one of them dies, the other one does too. I wonder if it’s the same for dogs. I’d like to have a dog. I drew books for Billy, too, and a pair of glasses so he could read them when he got to wherever he was going. The books made me think of the State Library and Michaela and the smashed columns that looked like the ruins of ancient Rome.
It was hard to see inside the room by the time I finished drawing. I felt bad leaving Billy there by himself but I didn’t think I could stay all night next to a dead person. I climbed back over the hill of bricks and into the storeroom where I could look out without being seen. I shifted the ladder underneath the hole in the footpath and stepped up a few rungs. The sky was still a dirty orange, as if earth had got stuck somewhere between day and night. Sirens howled like wild dogs, swarms of planes swooped, fast and low, and bullets bombarded anything left standing. The ladder started vibrating so I jumped down and watched from the shadows as twelve pairs of boots marched past. I was still trying to decide if it would be safer to stay where I was or go somewhere else when a dark figure crouched beside the hole and I thought I heard my name, whispered like a question.
The ladder shook as a foot came down on the top step and then another. When a man stepped off the bottom rung and turned around I bolted, up over the hill of bricks and into Billy’s room. I crawled back in next to the broken body on the bed and made myself as small as I could. Torchlight flashed across the walls where I’d drawn Billy’s favourite things, then it fell on the yellow flowers and the white cross, and I felt it on my face, and the inside of my eyelids was dangerous red. Then the man’s arms went around me and I knew he wasn’t a ghost and I knew I wasn’t damaged like my dad.
‘It’s Bradley Clark.’ It was Billy’s voice. ‘He had one of his seizures, turned on someone, a new bloke who didn’t know what was going on. He laid Brad out cold. I told them to put him on my bed till he came good. I loaned him my coat and left. I thought I’d bunk in with you for the night but I couldn’t find you, Skip, I thought I’d lost you.’
Sometimes I can see colour without opening my eyes. I saw that Billy’s heart was no colour and every colour. Like water or diamonds or crystals, it’s pure and reflects the light.
Billy and me took two grey blankets from the Queen’s Elbows. We rolled them up and tied them tight with Bradley Clark’s bootlaces. Then Billy shut his eyes and bowed his head and I saw him touch his fingers to his forehead and to his heart before he took back his overcoat that he had loaned to poor, dead Bradley.
I wondered what it would feel like to be Bradley Clark when he was alive. My dad told me once that there are worse things than being dead. I wondered if Bradley Clark ever wished he was dead. I rubbed out the ‘Billy’ under ‘RIP’ and wrote ‘Bradley’ instead, but I left the dog there because I heard that dogs are man’s best friends and I don’t think Bradley had any human friends.
After that, Billy and me climbed to the top of the bricks. The city was a sea below us. Pockets of light pooled in the dark like oil slicks. We were lost sailors with no stars above to guide us. I thought about Chief Seattle who said: ‘The Indian’s night is dark. Not a single star of hope hovers above his horizon.’ And I wondered if Billy and me would ever see the stars again.
‘They would have been aiming for Parliament House,’ said Billy. ‘Wars are all about politics.’
I didn’t know much about war. I only knew I didn’t want to talk about it or even think about it. Up until then I thought war only happened in other countries.
‘Where are we going to sleep?’
Billy looked at me, but didn’t answer.
‘Let’s find something to eat,’ he said after a while.
Even when you haven’t got arthritis in your hip, it’s hard to walk across a heap of broken bricks. It’s like waking up and finding there’s a war on. Nothing’s the way it used to be and it’s difficult to get your balance. That’s why I held Billy’s hand.
We kept to arcades and alleyways, short-cutting and soft-stepping past intersections like black cats. Tanks crashed through the wreckage like giant armadillos. The city was like a movie set. There were fronts of buildings with nothing behind them. In some places, whole blocks were left standing while others were flattened. Billy warned me to keep away from the ones that were standing in case they fell, but I reckon he meant in case they got bombed. I didn’t like going near the ones that were already down either; that’s where you saw the most bodies and heard the awful moans and cries. I looked at Billy.
‘Nothing you or me can do for them poor souls,’ he said.
I knew he was right, but it still seemed wrong, just walking past. I concentrated on stepping over cracks in the concrete, and repeating words. Hit-and-miss, I said, hit-and-miss. They were poor shots, these soldiers. Hit-and-miss. They’d never hit all the tin ducks at the fun park; they’d never win a giant panda.
I saw the broken neon sign blinking on and off above the food court and remembered I hadn’t eaten all day.
‘Stay here,’ whispered Billy and he limped down the blue, white and green tiled steps.
I didn’t like him going without me. I stared at the black between the tiles and made my eyes go skinny so I could concentrate on the reverse pattern. A siren screamed close by. Lights smeared across the entry of the arcade: ribbons of dangerous red and ice-cold blue. Voices drifted up from the arcade. I listened for Billy’s, but I couldn’t hear him. Then he was there in the flickering pinkish glow at the bottom of the stairs, signalling for me to come down.
I guess there were about twenty people down there. They were street people. I’d seen most of them before, at free food places. They huddled around a pile of smashed chairs they’d set on fire for warmth and light. The roller doors on Sam’s shop and all his neighbours’ were locked. The shiny, silver containers were empty, the warming lights were off and the television screen was blank. I wondered where Sam was. Would he come back another day, when all the mess was cleaned up?
The bins hadn’t been emptied, but as usual there weren’t many leftovers in the one outside Sam’s Kebabs. Even the Chopstix bin didn’t have much in it that night, but I found a Number 51, which was lucky because that’s my favourite. It’s lemon and honey chicken and there was nearly half a large serve. A good thing about Chinese leftovers is that they’re in plastic containers. Billy doesn’t care about odds and evens. He had some Number 38, which was pork in black bean sauce, and we shared some special fried rice.
The people around the fire were talking about what had happened and trying to figure out why and what they were going to do. I didn’t want to listen. I sat outside Sam’s place to eat. Billy was reading a newspaper. It was two days old. I didn’t mean to read the headlines but they were there, in bold black letters. I could see them afterwards, even with my eyes shut, as clear as if the words were stamped inside my eyelids: ‘ARMED FORCES GEAR UP AS PEACE TALKS FAIL’. I got down from my seat. I needed to walk.
‘Too much fried rice,’ I told Billy.
As soon as we left the arcade, the sounds of war invaded my ears and I started making a list in my head to block them out. It was a list of the sounds I couldn’t hear: buses, brakes, banging bin lids, buskers, bells and footpath sweepers. I was thinking about Archimedes when Billy grabbed me and pulled me into a doorway. A truck pulled out of a side street. The driver looked right at us. We stood still. He changed gears and drove around our corner, looking hard at Billy and me, then he pointed two fingers at us like he was aiming a gun. There were soldiers in the back with real guns but they didn’t shoot us.
We watched the truck till it disappeared, then Billy said, ‘Come on, let’s find ourselves a place to stay.’
‘Can we go to the library?’
‘There won’t be any heaters on, Skip,’ Billy said.
‘I know.’
‘And Michaela won’t be there.’
‘I know.’
‘She’s probably home, somewhere out in the suburbs, safe and sound.’
I hoped what Billy said was true but I couldn’t help wishing we’d see her again, just to make sure she was okay. I didn’t tell him I’d seen the broken columns on the ground, in case he said we musn’t go.
The library steps looked like a river of rocks, and only three columns were left out of the eight. The roof had caved in over the halls at the front of the building and the windows were smashed, but the dome over the reading hall looked okay which meant there must still be places inside where we could go. I was glad it was pretty dark and we couldn’t see any dead people.
When we got inside the reading room there were a few lights on, but they were far apart and dim, like candles in a fog, and I kept blinking to make sure the people I could see weren’t ghosts. Even the sound of their crying was ghostly. It was thin and high and made you wonder if you’d really heard it or just imagined it. Billy shone his torch around and I saw someone curled up under one of the tables. He wore a grey jacket and old-man pants with pleats, and a belt to hold them up. At first I thought he was dead, he was so still. Billy knelt down on the floor and rolled him over, like a slater, on his back. He was holding a book even though he was asleep. The book was big and his hands were small like the rest of him, and I saw that he was a little boy. The writing on the cover of his book was made from letters cut out of magazines and newspapers. It said: ‘Max Montgomery’s Book of After-school Activities’. The boy was wearing glasses, and when he opened his eyes they were big and round and shiny, like a possum’s.
‘Are you Max?’ Billy said.
The boy sat up and stared at us for a while, like he was trying to decide if he should talk to us or not, and then he said, ‘Yes. Has my mother sent you?’