Read Dead Dog in the Still of the Night Online
Authors: Archimede Fusillo
Tags: #Children's Books, #Growing Up & Facts of Life, #Family Life, #Friendship; Social Skills & School Life, #Emotions & Feelings, #Children's eBooks
Dead Dog in the Still of the Night (13 page)
Jimmy caught Primo’s eyes. Primo refused to look away, holding the young man’s stare. Jimmy nodded awkwardly and turned on his heels without a word.
Outside the guard house, clipboards at the ready to check the next vehicle arriving at the lowered boom gates, two men Primo knew only by sight stood shaking their heads in his direction.
‘Piss off, both of youse!’ one of them shouted. ‘Right now. Piss off or I’ll call the cops.’
The clusters of men dispersed with mumbled grunts and muted laughs, one even giving Primo the finger as a parting gesture.
‘Sorry, mate,’ Primo whispered when they were back in the hearse, ‘I’m sorry I got you into this.’ Tears streamed down his cheeks as he took in Tone, whose face had already started to darken and swell.
Tone turned the ignition, reversed the heavy car and dropped a burnout that swallowed the car in smoke and burning rubber, accelerating back toward the guardhouse and leaning right into the steering wheel as though it were a physical part of him.
‘Tone!’ Primo’s voice was a primal scream. It echoed in the cabin, but went no further because the car screeched against the sudden acceleration, the jerky fishtailing kicking the hearse’s rear end out just sufficiently to send the two men on the pavement jumping back in fear of their lives.
‘BASTARDS!’ Tone yelled. He punched an arm out the open window, gave a middle-fingered salute, and gunned the black hearse onto the road in a veil of blue smoke.
Minutes later, the car thundered into the crowded McDonald’s car park. When the hearse stalled, Primo exploded in laughter, punching the dashboard and almost howling in a fit of tears and lengths of saliva. The blood from his crunched nose smeared all over his face and soiled his hands.
‘It was the wrong brother, Tone!’ he said through a grunt of frustration. ‘It was a brother, but not Ari. When Ad said brother he didn’t mean Ari. He meant Stella’s brother, or brothers. She’s got two.’
Tone leapt out, slammed the driver’s door and walked off toward the entrance.
Primo wound down his window and leaned out, almost delirious with a mixture of self-loathing and regret. His head was thumping. He wanted to lie down and shut his eyes.
He needed to think, to consider, to go over what had happened.
‘We got it wrong again, Tone! We got it wrong!’ he groaned.
While Tone went into the restroom to run water over his face, Primo collapsed back in his seat and closed his eyes. The pain behind them punched on.
His mother had known all along who was responsible for Adrian’s beating, Primo concluded. That was why she had refused to call the police. Calling the police on family would only create more problems, and it would certainly end any chance that might still exist, no matter how slight, of Ad and Stella reconciling.
Unless Stella had condoned the beating.
‘You reckon she knew?’ Primo asked the moment Tone slumped back into the driver’s seat.
Tone didn’t answer immediately. He sat working his jaw gingerly between his hands. He was drenched in water, his hair pasted back against his scalp. He was breathing slow and hard.
‘Who?’ he asked finally.
‘Stella. You reckon she knew who had given Ad the hiding?’ Primo pressed. ‘She was so cool about it all when she came to see him. She even said he deserved what he’d got, didn’t she?’
‘You know what, Prims,’ Tone replied, turning to face him, ‘I don’t give a rat’s arse. Truly. I don’t care.’
Primo pushed back hard against the seat and put both feet up on the dashboard.
Outside the sky had darkened. From where they were parked Primo could see across the rooftops of his neighbourhood towards the city skyline. Faint lights peeped out from the windows of the skyscrapers, wistful blinks against the closing evening.
‘How’s the jaw?’ Primo asked, without taking his eyes off the distant skyline. Somehow the city looked a lot more vibrant, as though infused with new possibilities. Its silhouette was alive, shimmering, changing against the deepening crimson and black sky.
‘I’ll live, just,’ Tone mumbled. ‘Alison might still get lucky and have her way with me.’ He grinned despite himself.
Primo nodded, drew his eyes to the end of the huge car’s bonnet and smiled. He had the feeling that he, Tone, the hearse, everything around them, were miniscule and hanging on by a thread to something much more significant.
Fate maybe, Primo told himself. But no, he reasoned, it wasn’t fate. His mother knew as much. She’d shown as much. It was something far more brittle than fate.
It was about choices. Having them. Making them. Taking responsibility for them, irrespective of the outcome.
Primo laughed, in spite of his throbbing head. He was content to put up with the pain for the relief laughing gave him.
‘What are you so smug about?’ Tone asked and slapped Primo’s feet off the dashboard. ‘I got a smack on the jaw for no reason. You got a whack for about as much, and we confessed to Ari about the dog for no reason that means very much right now. So, I ask again, what are you happy about, Prims? Because I don’t see anything funny in any of this, you know.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong, Tone,’ Primo replied after a moment. ‘We were owed what we got, maybe more.’
‘Yeah, right. That helps.’ Tone shook his head dismissively and turned the ignition. ‘Grab a pizza?’ he asked.
Primo wasn’t listening. He was thinking of his father.
The old man hadn’t escaped the consequences. Not really. No one did.
As they rounded the corner into his street, Primo reached across and touched Tone lightly on the left wrist.
‘So, you think maybe I can have a drive of this beast?’ he asked.
Tone shook his hand off.
‘We’re almost at your place, Prims,’ he said. ‘What’s the point? I’ll come by tomorrow maybe. Let you have a drive then, eh?’
‘We’re not going to my place, Tone,’ Primo answered. ‘I want to go see Maddie. I want to tell her my decision.’
‘Decision? What decision?’
‘Guess you can be the first to know. I’m going to repeat Year 12,’ Primo announced.
Tone brought the lumbering vehicle to a stop and turned side-on in his seat to stare at Primo.
‘What? Why?’ he asked. ‘Just get through the next few weeks and collect your piece of paper, Prims.’ Tone pinched two fingertips together, then drew them ever so slightly apart. ‘You’re this close, mate.
This
close to having all that school bullshit behind you. You’re smart enough to bluff a few exams, Prims. I know you, man.’
Primo shook his head wearily.
‘You see, that
is
the point, Tone,’ he said heavily. ‘I don’t want to have to bluff it. It’d kill my mum for me to just bluff a pass and that’s it,’ Primo went on after quick reflection, the vision of his mother standing before him, knowing he had not put in his best effort, grinding in his mind. He couldn’t let his mother down again. ‘It’s crazy, even to me, so I don’t expect you to get it, not fully.’
And not just his mother, oddly enough. His sister Kath, too. She’d always supported him, sided with him, taken the time to listen to him. Primo didn’t want to let her down again. Neither of them. Not after the dead dog.
Tone pushed Primo out of the car and climbed into the passenger seat as Primo jumped behind the wheel.
‘He can still find out, you know,’ Primo said as he eased the hearse back into traffic. ‘Ari can still discover the truth behind the dog.’
Tone sniffed loudly, wound down the window, and rested his elbow on the sill. He looked off into space.
‘Yeah to that,’ he whispered finally. ‘Got to pray he doesn’t.’
Primo nodded.
No one answered the door at Maddie’s, so Primo texted her a message to say he had news he thought she’d be pleased to hear.
‘Mind if we swing by the old man’s?’ Primo asked. He didn’t wait for a reply and took off. ‘Mum and Kath were taking him back to the Home this morning. Might go by and just see how he’s doing.’
‘You might want to wash off some of that war paint first,’ Tone suggested.
Primo reached up and touched his face. He looked at his reflection in the rear-view mirror. His nose hurt, but it wasn’t broken. He tweaked it back and forth just to make certain. There was blood smeared on his chin and splattered on his school shirt, but nothing pulling his school jumper over wouldn’t hide.
‘Drop by the house a sec, then,’ he said, and did a U-turn without bothering to indicate.
Adrian was asleep on the couch in front of the TV when Primo and Tone entered. He was twitching slightly, but otherwise quiet. Still dressed in pyjamas borrowed from their father, Primo thought Adrian looked much older than he actually was. Perhaps it was the swelling and the bruising.
‘He won’t, you know, try to get even with Stella’s brothers now, will he?’ Tone asked suddenly. ‘I mean, that would just create a whole new steaming pile.’
‘Doubt it,’ Primo offered. ‘Not if he’s still keen on getting back with her.’ The house was silent, save for the TV softly spilling canned laughter into the lounge room. Primo gazed about him.
Where was everyone? Surely Ad wouldn’t have been left alone?
As though in answer, Santo stepped out of the kitchen and into the hallway.
‘Mum? That you?’ His voice was shrill, bothered.
Primo froze. After everything, Santo still made him nervous.
‘It’s me,’ he answered.
‘Where you been? It’s late,’ Santo called, pounding down the hallway, stopping at the lounge room door. ‘Oh, you’re here too,’ he said to Tone.
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘With the old man.’
Primo pushed past his brother. He wanted to wash his face and neck and get out of there as quickly as he could. He didn’t want questions from Santo, especially not about why he was bloodied.
But Santo seemed to have other things on his mind.
‘She left me here to look after this loser,’ he spat. ‘I’ve got things to do. You can stay with him now that you’re home, Primo.’
Santo turned on his heels, already walking away, reaching into his pocket for his car keys.
‘No,’ Primo said firmly. ‘No, I’m not here to look after Ad. Mum asked you to do it, so you do it. I’ve got to get back to school.’
Santo stopped, then faced Primo, getting a good look at his younger brother’s face.
‘Get into a bitch fight, did you?’ he goaded.
Primo headed for the bathroom. ‘Yeah, something like that.’
Behind him he heard Santo curse, then heard Tone say, ‘Soccer match gone wrong.’
Primo grinned. He loved Tone. How could he not? The guy was a gem.
The Home was busy with activity when Primo and Tone walked in. Although it was almost snack time, the ‘guests’ were being entertained by an elderly magician in an elegant black dinner suit, complete with top hat. His assistant, an equally elderly woman in garish makeup and fishnet stockings under a vast and cumbersome tulle skirt, posed by his side.
Primo caught sight of his father. He was positioned to the left of the magician, propped up in his wheelchair, slightly leaning to the right, his hands folded on his lap. Beside him in a proper chair was Deloras. She was smiling brightly, her dulled eyes focused like a child’s on the conjuring of the magician, her lipstick a haphazard red paste that failed to follow the contours of her puckered mouth.
Her right hand was gently resting on Primo’s father’s left knee.
The sight startled Primo. He hesitated in his stride.
‘Primo? You okay?’ Tone asked.
Primo nodded faintly.
He stared at his father’s face, at the dark brooding eyes, the narrow dry mouth, at the loose jowls that were knotted with thin sinews under papery skin.
‘Who’s the woman with your old man?’
Primo was spared answering as the magician brought howls of delight from the assembled throng by pulling a white rabbit seemingly out of thin air.
When the magician gave a whoop of triumph and mock surprise at finding the rabbit on the end of his fingers, Primo noticed the flicker of delight cross his father’s face.
For just a fraction of a second, for the amount of time it took the magician to reveal his surprise, the old man in the wheelchair, the fingers of another human being on his wasted knee, was the young Southern Italian staring out at the vast possibilities of life laid out before him.
‘Primo?’
Primo looked at Tone.
‘I wanted to kill him,’ Primo said. ‘So many times, I just wanted to kill him. For all the pain he caused Mum. All of us.’ He paused. ‘Does that make me a lunatic? A bad son? Both?’
Tone shrugged. ‘My old man makes me want to take him out sometimes, too, you know. They can get under your skin,’ he said.
Primo spotted his mother by the medicine trolley. Kath was beside her, an arm around her shoulders.
His mum was looking at his father, her husband, with a smile on her small face as the magician brought his act to an end with an exaggerated bow. To Primo, his mother looked serene, as though there was nothing troubling her, nothing causing her grief.
Primo went to his father who looked up at him as he approached.
Santo could have Bambino, Primo decided as he knelt before his father and smiled into the slightly bewildered grin. He didn’t want the car anyway. Bambino had nothing to do with where he wanted to go, what he wanted to do. Or even who he wanted to be.
It wasn’t his dream. Never had been.