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 (8 page)
The envelope hit Primo in the back of the head and bounced onto the desk.
‘Don’t spend it all at once,’ his brother said from the doorway.
Primo looked round and frowned. He’d been trying unsuccessfully for the past hour to concentrate on his prac notes for biology. The thought of Crystal telling Ari about where the dead dog might have come from made study impossible.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, picking up the crumpled yellow envelope.
‘Well, it’s not a dead dog, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ Adrian walked into the room. ‘And five hundred bucks is about what you deserve for this farce, Prim. Count it if you want.’
Primo opened the envelope gingerly. There were five crisp new hundred-dollar notes there. They even smelt fresh.
‘Think of it as me being generous, or as a consolation gift,’ Adrian continued. ‘Just don’t think me stupid, mate. It doesn’t work the way you seem to have figured it,’ he snarled. ‘Lucky for you I give you anything at all. A dead dog,
really?
’
Primo stared at his brother. Standing in the doorway, dressed neatly in a tailored grey suit, cut through by a stark dark blue tie over a crisp white shirt, Adrian looked like a man in control of his life. The image startled Primo.
‘You really think that for one minute I believed the bullshit about Tone’s dad asking for a grand, maybe two?’ Adrian went on, stepping into the room purposefully. ‘The man probably would get that for simply giving you the time of day and hearing you out.’
Adrian made himself comfortable on the end of the bed and carefully tugged on the knees of his pants, revealing black socks in polished black leather shoes. He sat forward, his hands between his knees.
They were both silent for what seemed to Primo a long time. Adrian tapped the tips of his fingers together and shook his head back and forth slowly.
When he finally did speak, Adrian’s voice was soft.
‘She found the dog, Primo,’ he said. ‘And surprise, surprise if she doesn’t connect the dots.’ Adrian paused to pull at the cuffs of his shirt. ‘It’s like she has this mental image of that scene from
The Godfather.
You know the one, little brother, where Don Corleone’s men lob a severed horse head in that movie mogul’s bed and he wakes up covered in the horse’s blood, and the Corleones get exactly what they’d asked for all along. That’s how I’m working it anyway. Remember the scene, Prim?’ Adrian asked, and touched Primo on the elbow. Primo squirmed. Adrian smiled. ‘A bit too obvious for my tastes. It’s the sort of thing kids do, when they think they’re ready to play with the adults. Not what people Tone’s father knows would do, Primo,’ Adrian added slowly, so there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding. ‘It’s a cliché.’
Undecided, Primo was tempted to tell Adrian that he was lucky Ari didn’t know about him, that if Ari made the connection between the dog and Adrian, Adrian would be dead. They would both be dead.
‘Don’t say a word, little brother,’ Adrian went on, his face stiff with a mixture of anger and admiration. ‘A dead dog dumped on a front veranda.’ Adrian laughed nervously. ‘I still can’t believe it. So beautifully simple. So beautifully effective. So lucky for you, and your mate. If you’d told me your brilliant plan ahead of time, Primo, I would have given you one across the back of the head.’
Adrian got to his feet and held a hand out to Primo. Primo looked at it but didn’t take it.
‘Sometimes you just get lucky, mate,’ Adrian said. ‘Me and you both, little brother.’
When Primo didn’t take his hand Adrian slapped it into the palm of his other hand and smiled.
‘I don’t know where you two clowns got the dog, and I don’t care.’ Adrian sniffed loudly and slapped Primo on the back condescendingly.
Primo stiffened. He felt Adrian’s fingers dig into his shoulder blades and winced.
‘You want to know something interesting, Primo?’ Adrian pressed. ‘Stella’s pregnant. So she has to take me back, right? She won’t cope with two kids. Not financially.’ He let go of Primo and punched the door. ‘I’m frigging twenty-four years old, and soon I’ll have
two
kids and a wife to support, and some bitch gives me grief over a nothing fling she knows she wanted in the first place. Go figure that set-up.’
A thought struck Primo forcefully. He faced his brother.
‘Stella wouldn’t be too rapt if she knew about the dog,’ he said, sensing a fissure he could exploit.
‘But she
doesn’t
, and she
won’t
,’ Adrian replied, and pulled his head back like he needed to take Primo in with one glance.
‘It would break Mum’s heart to know what you did, Primo,’ he added confidently. ‘Even if you did it to help out your own flesh and blood. Better we keep it our little secret.’
One word to Ari and you’re dead, Adrian, Primo thought with cold resolve. But that would also put him in danger, he reasoned. After all, he’d put the dead dog on the doorstep. Not Adrian.
‘She’s got kids,’ Primo whispered. ‘And a brother. You don’t want to mess with him, Ad. You need to talk to her and tell her you’re sorry about the dog. And everything.’
For a moment it looked to Primo like his brother might lunge at him. He was surprised when Adrian shut his eyes and drew short breaths before muttering, ‘You won’t understand this, but I still love my wife. I never really meant for any of this to happen,’ Adrian went on. ‘That sounds pathetic though, doesn’t it? Like Dad when he used to grovel to Mum. And we hated him for it then too, eh? The way it made Mum feel.’
Primo looked at his bother closely. ‘You expect me to tell you it was okay, what you did?’ he said. ‘You waiting for me to tell you that it’s not your fault?’
The hairs on Primo’s neck tingled. He waited for Adrian to say something, anything, in his own defence so he could shoot him down. The way he ought to have done to the old man, Primo thought. The way they all should have shot him down, when he had repeatedly begged forgiveness from their mum.
But all Adrian did was hang his head, and a moment later he was sobbing quietly.
The sound sickened Primo. He grimaced with embarrassment for his brother. Suddenly he found he was unable to look at Adrian and turned away.
‘The deal was a thousand, maybe two,’ Primo said, trying his best to hold his nerve.
At his back there was a whimpering sound.
‘Stella’s family aren’t being understanding at all,’ Adrian said. Primo felt himself grabbed by the elbow. He shook himself free and turned to face his brother again. ‘Her brothers are in her ear about me. I know it, Primo. I know what they’re like. They’ve always looked down on me like Stella could of done a whole lot better.’
‘Maybe they’re right,’ Primo said before he could stop himself. ‘Maybe she could of.’
The silence that followed Primo’s words was heavy. It filled the room and made Primo claustrophobic.
‘Yeah, of course, you would say that, wouldn’t you, little brother,’ Adrian said finally. ‘You were always siding with Mum over Dad. You never stopped to consider that maybe the old man had a reason for doing what he did.’
Primo tensed. His eyes bored into Adrian.
‘You and Kath have always been Mum’s favourites,’ Adrian said. ‘The babies. Her little girl. Her baby boy.’
‘You’re full of shit!’ Primo spat and went toe-to-toe with his brother. ‘Whatever Stella thinks of you, you created this situation, Ad, no one else. Not Mum, not Dad. Not even me, Ad. It was always just you.’
For the briefest moment it seemed to Primo that Adrian would launch a fist and he stiffened in defence. But Adrian merely grinned knowingly.
‘The deal was, Primo, that real men were going to get the problem sorted,’ Adrian hissed, regaining his composure. ‘The reality is two kids with no idea got lucky. I’d say that about squares the ledger, little bro.’ He paused. ‘Imagine what Tone’s old man would make of this caper if he found out. Wouldn’t be too sweet for Tone is my reckoning.’ Adrian stared into Primo’s eyes for a few moments then left.
Primo stood where he was, feeling shell-shocked. He hadn’t expected to berate Adrian the way he had, or to bring up their father, either.
Adrian seemed to blame others for what their father had done to their mother by betraying her with woman after woman. What their father had done to all of them.
Primo wondered if Santo felt that same way.
He knew Kath didn’t. He and Kath had shared their resentment, talking in whispers and exchanging knowing glances whenever their parents had fought.
Maybe Adrian was right about one thing: there were two clear sides in their household, and to this day the fallout from their father’s behaviour had set them against each other.
Primo rubbed a hand over his face and sat for a long time on the edge of his bed, staring at the floor. The envelope Adrian had given him lay at Primo’s feet. He bent down and picked it up, stuffed it into the back pocket of his jeans and left the room.
Adrian was nowhere to be found. Primo called after his mum but there was no reply. He looked out to the driveway and saw that her car was still parked in its usual spot.
When his mobile went off in his pocket Primo answered it without bothering to see who was calling.
‘We need to talk,’ Maddie said immediately.
Primo tensed, staring at the photos on the refrigerator.
‘I’m sorry about the car,’ Maddie went on in his left ear, even as Primo lifted the phone away, fingers already moving to cut the call.
But then he changed his mind. ‘I’m sorry about acting like a jerk,’ he mumbled. ‘I never meant to scare you like that. I never meant for this to happen.’
‘We need to talk, Primo.’
Primo nodded.
‘Primo?’
‘We should do that,’ he answered.
‘You want me to come round and pick you up?’
‘No. No. I’ll be round to your place,’ Primo said. ‘Soon.’
Maddie was silent. A few moments later she cut the call.
Primo stood staring at the photo of his parents dancing, fixated on his youthful dad. A wave of regret washed over him, as though the photo was of a man already dead.
Primo hung his head and allowed himself to sob. His mother would be bitterly disappointed in him if she ever came to know about the dead dog. And his father would be shattered too, for there was no honour in what he and Tone had done. It was a shameful act of cowardice, and for a moment Primo’s mind reeled.
If the woman did point the finger at Adrian, Ari would come after Adrian, and he’d come after Primo as well. The thought stopped his tears and Primo exhaled loudly.
‘Where are we going?’ Maddie asked.
‘Like I said, I want to show you something,’ Primo answered.
‘You said you wanted to
tell
me something,’ Maddie said flatly.
Primo licked his bottom lip. Yeah, he did have something he wanted to tell her. Something that would probably make her think him a sick freak. He’d listened to her talk about how she felt about what had happened, hadn’t he? Well, now it was her turn to listen to him. To see what he wanted to show her. He wanted Maddie to understand where he was coming from, Primo told himself.
His mother’s car was so smooth to drive compared to the Fiat that Primo drove it almost distractedly.
‘So, what did you want to tell me, then?’ Maddie asked.
‘I put a dead dog outside the front door of the woman my brother Adrian had troubles with,’ Primo admitted in a rush. ‘Tone had accidentally run it over the night before and killed it, and I thought it was a way of scaring her away from my brother. Thought that she would see the dog as a warning to back off.’
Primo looked across at Maddie. She was staring at him, forehead crimped, mouth slightly open.
‘I know. I know. It was a stupid thing to do,’ Primo found the voice to say. ‘I wish I could take it back. I can’t, you know, take it back. She found the dog. Have to be glad her kids didn’t, I guess.’
‘There were kids?’ Maddie’s voice was shrill, disbelieving.
Primo nodded. ‘They didn’t see any of it. I wanted to take it back the moment I realised there were kids, but there was Tone, and the dog was all stinking and stuff.’
‘What were you thinking, Primo? Who put you up to it?’
Maddie wasn’t getting it. Primo swallowed hard.
‘No one put me up to it, Maddie,’ he protested. ‘It just sort of happened. One minute there was my brother going on at me about him being in the shit, and the next there was this dead dog and the chance presented itself.’ Primo punched the steering wheel. ‘I thought it would help Adrian.’ He couldn’t bring himself to utter the truth: he’d done it to prove to his father that he could take charge, make things happen, the way the old man had always done, rightly or otherwise.
Primo pulled up outside the double doors of his father’s old workshop, the words, ‘Clear Zone All Day Every Day’ painted in now fading white strokes across them.
‘Some things can’t be taken back, Maddie,’ he said. He almost started telling her his fears about Ari, but decided not to involve her in that. There was nothing Maddie could do about it anyway.
‘What is
this
?’ Maddie asked.
Primo didn’t answer. He stepped from the car and approached the tired façade of his father’s once thriving workshop. Behind him, the rattle and clunk of a passing train pulling into the nearby station pounded in his head. Primo breathed the sound in. To him it was fused to the gritty stench of old grease and matted rubbish that hung in the air all around him. He looked at Maddie and nodded purposelessly. She had stepped out of the car and was looking bewildered.
‘This is Dad’s workshop,’ Primo said. ‘It’s been closed for years. I haven’t been here since I can’t remember. And Mum never comes. No point, now that Dad’s not here, eh?’
When he looked back at the building, Primo felt disoriented for the briefest moment. He stepped forward and crawled his hands over its flaking frontage as though it were Braille to his touch.
This place was a part of him, yet not. He had been shut out of it. He and Ad, and Kath.
The windows were barred, the panes of glass opaque from spiders’ webs and trapped dust, the curtains sagging under their own weight.
Primo took slow breaths. He reached into a pocket and withdrew the chunky metal key that he’d taken from the top drawer of his parents’ dresser.
A few moments later the padlock yawned apart, the chain dropped away and Primo pushed open one of the heavy wooden doors. He was greeted by a thick veil of sun-dappled dust, and the crude stench of stale oil and grease.
He had never been there alone before. His father had never brought him to watch him work, to listen to the mechanical, metallic grind of the machinery that underscored their lives.
The thought punched Primo hard in the guts.
Yet, as he gazed at the benches littered with the dried carcasses of flies and the dregs of withered cobwebs, at the racks of tools, Primo felt a spasm of uneasy familiarity. Once flexible hoses lay taut and shedding their outer skins, air gauges sat cloyed with smut in dank corners, and buckets that had been used to carry sump oil still hung on the hoist in the very centre of the rectangular space.
Primo felt he knew this place with an intimacy that was visceral, unsettling.
He swallowed. He hadn’t expected to feel like this, to feel this sudden haunting vortex of emotion.
It was as though the ghost of his much younger father, the one from the photos, dressed proudly in grey overalls and solid workman’s boots, holding a wrench in one hand and a spanner in the other, standing by the stripped-back body of someone’s precious car, was smiling back at him.
‘Primo!’
Primo spun around. ‘Maddie?’ he asked, almost surprised to see her standing against the light coming in from the open door. He reached out a hand to her. She folded her arms across her chest.
‘Let me understand this, Primo,’ she began. ‘I want to talk.
You
agree to it, and then you take me to see a filthy garage. Really?’ Maddie shook her head.
Primo didn’t bite. He knew too well how it would finish if he did.
‘This is about all that’s left of my dad,’ he said. ‘This and the Fiat 500. Now my brother Santo wants to take both and make them his. But they belong to all of us. Mum included.’
‘Primo,’ Maddie said, taking a few steps toward him, her arms dropping to her sides. ‘Can we go somewhere and talk about
us
, please? This place is creepy.’
‘It’s okay,’ Primo said. ‘We’re safe here.’
Maddie frowned. ‘Safe?’
Primo looked past Maddie, then stepped round her. ‘You’ve been really good to me, Maddie,’ he began. ‘You’re right. I did promise to come to Europe with you as soon as I’d finished Year 12. But things have changed. Big things. Important things. At home. With the family.’
‘Things change for all of us, Primo,’ Maddie countered. ‘With me too, you know? I waited a whole extra year for you, so that you could get through Year 12 and come to Europe with me. But now I figure you were never going to come anyway. That you sort of just strung me along.’
Primo clenched his eyes shut momentarily in frustration. ‘I never meant for that, Maddie. I had every intention of saving up enough to come with you. You have to believe me. Things at home ... I don’t know. They just went out of control. Like the dog and everything.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I really care about you, Maddie.’
‘And I really care about you too, Primo,’ Maddie said. ‘But you’ve changed somehow.’ She paused long enough to step close to Primo and gently touch his chest with the palm of one hand. ‘You seem confused, Primo. Are you? Are you confused about us, about me?’
The question caught Primo off guard. He narrowed his eyes, gazed down at where Maddie’s palm rested on his sternum. Then he looked directly into her eyes.
‘I meant what I said about being sorry about the dog,’ he said simply. ‘I
am
sorry about that. I wish I could take it back.’
‘What you did with the dog is repulsive, but it’s got nothing to do with us,’ Maddie said without hesitation, dropping her hand. Seeming to reconsider, she added, ‘Well, maybe it does. And maybe I’m the one who’s confused, I don’t know. I don’t like what you say you did but ...’ She shrugged. ‘Primo, I do care about you.’
It
is
to do with us, Maddie, Primo thought. I put a dead dog on the doorstep of a house where kids could have found it because I wanted to score cash off my cheating brother. What sort of girl wants a boyfriend like that?
‘I heard you changed your Facebook status. Why?’ he asked.
Maddie sighed. ‘I’m angry with you, Primo. You’ve let me down.’
Primo nodded. He’d let a lot of people down lately, including himself. He pressed his lips together. ‘I can’t come to Europe, Maddie,’ he said. ‘And not just because of the money. I can’t leave Mum alone.’
‘I don’t buy that, Primo. Your mum has Adrian,’ Maddie tossed back. ‘And Santo too, you reckon. And besides, it’s just for three weeks.’
‘I can’t leave her with
them
,’ Primo said flatly.
Maddie turned her back on Primo.
‘Can I tell you something?’ he asked, not expecting a reply. ‘I was going to get you to help me load up the car and take the lot down to the freight yard and sell it off to the boys there, Maddie. You see, it would be so easy to do. I bet my old man doesn’t even remember this stuff is here. He’d never miss it.’
‘And that would give you money to put toward the trip?’ Maddie asked and faced Primo again. ‘You’d do that, for me?’
‘Yeah, guess so,’ Primo answered.
Maddie looked round the workshop.
‘This is it,’ Primo said. ‘This is all my father has left. It’s all Mum has, apart from the house, and the Fiat – which she never wanted in the first place.’ Primo bit his bottom lip. ‘My plan was to gather as much of this stuff as I could and then sell it.’ He paused. ‘Until I walked in here.’ He looked around.
The outside world seemed not to have disturbed the workshop since the day his father had padlocked the front door. It was as though his father had finished off his last job, wiped his hands on one of the many discarded rags that littered the various benches and empty oil drums, and walked out.
Primo kicked a metal bucket and sent it catapulting across the concrete floor. It came to rest against one cobwebbed leg of the main workbench.
‘I can’t do it, though,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘I can’t do that to Mum. I wish I could. I really do.’
‘Maybe me going to Europe without you is a good thing,’ Maddie said. ‘Perhaps it’ll give us some time to sort out a lot of stuff between us. This business with the dead dog. It’s sick.’ She turned away, then quickly turned back to stare fixedly at Primo. ‘I don’t think I could enjoy the trip knowing you sold this out from under your dad without him knowing, Primo. And you couldn’t either.’
Primo nodded.
After dropping Maddie off without a further word between them, Primo went to his afternoon shift at the freight yard. The moment he made eye contact with Ari, the big guy ambled over.
‘Juice. Listen up. The next time you want some shit you know to not come round the house, eh? You don’t need to go hanging round my sister’s place, you know. Ari thinking maybe you there for some other reason.’
Primo feigned surprise. ‘Why would I hang around there, Ari?’ he asked casually. ‘Not even anywhere near my neighbourhood.’
‘You right on that one, Juice,’ the giant answered.
Primo swallowed hard before speaking. ‘Your sister found a dead dog you said,’ he began. ‘Stupid prank probably, you reckon?’
Ari looked askance at Primo, sussing him for a long moment.
‘Some dumb-arse think maybe sister figure Ari bringing problems to the house so Ari move turf if she complain loud,’ he answered finally. ‘No way, man. Crystal, she lost her job. She got nowhere to go. The kids’ dad, he don’t spring a cent to help out, so she staying where she is, and Ari do what needs to be done, eh? She don’t like it, she can hit the street, my man. And the littlies too.’
‘You know who did it then?’ Primo tossed the question out, hoping to catch Ari off guard.
The big man smiled crookedly and squared his shoulders, his thick neck flexed, looking right at Primo. Primo held his gaze, too scared not to.
‘You got work to do, Juice,’ Ari said slowly and indicated the conveyor belt that had started up behind Primo.
Ari walked off and Primo let go of the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.