The Boy Under the Table (16 page)

The people in the line scratched and twitched and jumped depending on whether they were on their way up or down. They all wanted breakfast. The body was strange that way. Regardless of what you did to it, it wanted to keep running. Unless, of course, it turned on you.

In a fair world the people who set out to destroy themselves would be the ones to get the diseases and little kids would get to grow up without worrying. In a fair world . . . but fuck-all in the world was fair.

The wait seemed to go on forever but eventually the doors opened and they were greeted by the smell of eggs and porridge. Tina’s stomach turned. She was not used to eating breakfast.

Lockie stood quietly in the line but she could feel his body vibrating with impatience. For kids the whole world revolved around food. Their days were divided up by breakfast and then morning tea and then lunch and then afternoon tea and then dinner. It used to drive Tina mad when she was home alone with Tim. She would have just finished clearing up after lunch and he would be back asking what was coming next.

She wondered if Lockie had been a fussy eater before the uniform got to him. Tim was fussy as hell. He would only eat Vegemite toast for breakfast and then it had to be cut into perfect triangles. He hated the crust. At the end he even hated Vegemite.

Lockie made his way slowly through two bowls of porridge with milk and heaps of sugar, and then through two plates of eggs and toast. There was hot chocolate to drink and he had two cups of that as well. Tina hoped he wasn’t going to throw up. The uniform must have known what he was doing. He had fed the kid just enough to keep him alive. Tina felt the heat rise in her body again as she thought of the man.

She was happy to watch Lockie eat while she worked on getting through some eggs. She felt the same way she did when Tim had managed to eat something she cooked for him. She sipped her coffee and longed for a cigarette. There was no smoking inside the Chapel. Passive smoking was dangerous. Ha ha.

There was a television on in the corner and Tina glanced at it, then looked again when she caught sight of the house.
The House
.

Her heart leaped around in her chest. How had they found him so soon? It had only been two days. Had someone seen them leaving the house? Did someone know? Were the police looking for her right now?

‘Stay here, Lockie, okay? Don’t move. I’m just going over there to see what’s on television.’

Lockie stood up, still holding his toast. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘No, Lockie, I’m only going over there. Oh, Jesus. Okay.’

There was a lot of noise in the hall but Tina managed to catch a few words. ‘Unknown assailant.’ ‘Respected by his colleagues.’ ‘Brutal beating.’ Tina moved closer, straining to hear, and bumped against a woman shovelling oatmeal into her mouth.

‘Careful there,’ said the woman. She was large and dressed in so many layers she could barely move.

‘Sorry,’ said Tina.

‘Careful there,’ said the woman again, and Tina realised she was talking to herself.

There was a gap in the talk in the room and Tina heard the words the neat-looking blonde reporter was saying.

‘Police were called by the victim’s mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. They did not respond at first because the victim had not been missing for twenty-four hours, but after repeated calls from his mother someone was sent to the house.’

The uniform’s mother must have driven the police crazy. What a piece of work she must have been before her brain started dissolving. Who produced a son like that?

The house was cordoned off with police tape. A policeman with microphones shoved in his face was talking about ‘investigating all avenues’ and ‘calling for witnesses’.

It meant they had fuck-all idea about what had happened. The reporters would be all over the place, digging up the nastiness.

Tina’s picture had been in the paper for about a day. She had been leafing through an old copy left on the pavement when she came across her own face.

The article had contained every juicy detail of her family’s life. The reporter seemed overjoyed to discover a dead younger brother and a divorce. Tina could almost feel him salivating over her exposed life. That night she had let Ruby convince her to dye her hair black.

She wondered if Lockie’s face had been in the paper. She read the paper whenever she could but she couldn’t remember Lockie. There was always some little kid missing.

There must have been a huge search on.

The police were always all over the missing-kids cases. Missing children made the community uncomfortable. It meant the castle walls had been breached. It meant that anything was possible. In a world where anything was possible the only real possibility was chaos.

Tina is a strong student of history and science. She has shown remarkable ability with essay structure. We hope that she will consider taking these subjects for the HSC.

If no one knew the man had Lockie, then no one knew who had been in the house. The television camera panned across the gold sedan. Someone could have seen her get in the car, but no one would say anything. It was hard to believe anything your average junkie said.

It was possible that one of the boys would talk if they were desperate enough. It was possible, but it probably wouldn’t happen. Even the youngest kid in the Cross knew not to trust the police. Hopefully the police would look in the wrong direction. Hopefully.

The man’s face flashed onto the television. Tina felt Lockie tense and hold his breath. His hand was sweaty and trembling in hers. His eyes were wide and disbelieving. The toast was forgotten.

‘Stop staring, Lockie,’ she whispered. ‘People are watching us.’

‘We killed him?’ whispered Lockie.

‘Quiet, it’s time to go.’

Outside Lockie repeated the words again and again.

‘We killed him, Tina. We killed him.’

Lockie had seemed to understand the word ‘dead’ in the house. He had asked her if the man was dead. But now Tina could see that he had not really understood that there was a human being on the floor and that he would never breathe again. Television fucked up kids’ heads. You died one week and came back the next, and even though Lockie was smart it was still hard for him to see ‘dead’ as being real.

Tina sighed loudly. She was irritated that she had to deal with this and terrified that she had somehow been seen.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, kid, you didn’t do anything. I killed him. You swung the poker a few times. You’re just a little kid. You couldn’t hurt a fly.’

Lockie looked at her with his big blue eyes. His lips moved around the words and he whispered to himself, ‘Couldn’t hurt a fly, couldn’t hurt a fly.’

They started walking again and Tina could hear him repeating the words over and over. Finally he said aloud, ‘That’s what my mum always says.’

‘What?’

‘That I couldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘You’re a good kid, Lockie. Don’t ever think anything else.’

‘I’m a good kid,’ Lockie repeated, and then he went quiet. Tina looked over at him and his lips were moving, repeating the phrase again and again. She could see it becoming a habit, but what the fuck. He was dealing with all this shit the best way he knew how.

They walked along in silence for a few minutes. The cold air was almost refreshing after the fetid heat of the Chapel.

‘Why did you kill him, Tina?’

‘You ask a lot of questions, Lockie.’

‘Sorry.’

‘You don’t have to be sorry, Lockie; you just have to know that some questions aren’t meant to be asked.’

‘Don’t you know why?’

‘I know why, Lockie, but I don’t want to talk about it. I had to get you out of the house. End of story.’

‘End of story,’ said Lockie.

She took him back to the squat because she couldn’t think of anything else to do with him.

They had to be quiet. Mark and the other boys were still sleeping. Tina knew they would probably sleep all day and then they would wake up in need of a hit and some food.

Lockie sat on the floor making paper aeroplanes out of McDonald’s bags. Tina sat on the mattress and tried to figure things out. She watched his hands move but she knew his head was somewhere else. He was making the aeroplanes on automatic. Tina remembered the bed of newspapers he had been lying on under the table. There were things behind him, bits of paper, and now that she thought about it she had seen the shape of a boat and an aeroplane. Had he been making toys to play with? What had gone through his head while he was under that table?

He needed to be home, where he probably had a roomful of toys. Tina wondered if, after he was safe, he would ever make another paper aeroplane again.

‘Look, Lockie, I know you don’t like uniforms but you must know they’re not all bad, right?’

‘Pete’s not bad.’

‘Who’s Pete?’

‘He’s the policeman at home. He has a beer with my dad on Saturday night.’

‘There you go. And has Pete ever hurt you?’

Lockie considered this for a moment. ‘He gave me a football for my birthday. When I turned seven. He gave me a book on trains when I turned eight.’

‘Okay, so he’s a good guy, yeah?’

‘Yeah, Pete’s a good guy.’

‘Okay, so there are a lot of good guys who can help you. The police, the real police, are good guys.’

Tina tried hard to keep her voice light and high. She needed him to think she believed what she was saying.

‘They probably know all about you. I bet your parents have told everyone that they’re looking for you. The police will take you home. They’ll take you back to your mum and dad. If we go right now you could probably be home by tonight, or at least tomorrow. Didn’t they teach you at school that if you were lost you should find a policeman?’

‘Yeah, they did. Mrs Watson said that you can always trust a policeman. And Pete came and told us too. Pete said he would always help. Always.’

‘She was right, teachers are always right. Pete was right too, and I bet he’s friends with the police in Sydney. I bet they would help you get home.’

‘Teachers aren’t always right. Not always. She was wrong about trusting the uniform.’

‘Yeah, but she didn’t know him so she wasn’t wrong—she just didn’t know.’

‘I knew.’

‘You knew? What do you mean you knew?’

‘When he bent down to talk to me, I just knew.’

‘Why didn’t you run away? Why didn’t you kick and scream or something?’

‘I was lost and Mrs Watson said.’

‘What exactly happened, Lockie? How did you get lost?’

Lockie sighed and smoothed out another empty bag. He concentrated on folding the edges, creating another aeroplane to join his fleet. He didn’t speak while he worked.

Tina watched him for a while but she didn’t ask the question again. Maybe Lockie was working out the story in his head.

Finally Tina lay down on the mattress and closed her eyes and that was when Lockie began to speak.

‘I went to look at the rollercoaster. It looked so cool. I wanted to go fast like everyone else. I wanted to feel like I was flying. They were making speeches and it was so boring. Sammy was asleep and I had nothing to do. I went to look at the rollercoaster and then I got lost so I found a policeman.’

‘Okay . . . but you found a bad guy. That happens sometimes. You found a really bad guy wearing a uniform. He wasn’t a real policeman, just a security guard. I’ll take you to see some real policemen.’

‘They’ll be uniforms.’

Tina chewed her nail in frustration. ‘I know, Lockie, but I’ve explained about that. The uniform you met was a bad guy.’

‘The uniform said he would take me back to Mum and Dad. But he didn’t.’

‘I know, but he was a really, really bad guy. You know the difference between bad guys and good guys, right?’

‘Sometimes . . .’ He paused.

‘Sometimes what, Lockie?’ Tina worked to stay calm. It was a frustrating conversation.

‘Sometimes the bad guys look like good guys.’

‘Oh Christ, Lockie, I know that but . . . look, if you want to get home you’re going to have to go into the police station. If you don’t go to the police, you can’t go home.’

‘You could take me home,’ he said quietly.

‘Me? No, Lockie, I have to stay here. I can’t go rushing across the country to take you home.’

‘Why?’

Tina almost said, ‘Because I said so,’ but she knew that wouldn’t satisfy the kid. It had never been the right answer for Tim either.

Instead of saying anything, she chewed on a piece of skin on her thumb. Why couldn’t she take him home? It wasn’t like her diary was full.
They won’t miss me at work
, she thought with grim humour.

Well, she had no money for a start. She also had no idea where it was that he actually lived and fuck-all idea of how to get there. It was a stupid idea. She needed to take him to the police station and just shove him through the door. But she couldn’t go in with him. She couldn’t keep all the lies straight and the police would figure it out and then she would be in jail for the rest of her miserable life. No. There was no way she could take the kid into a police station. But what if he ran away and some other weirdo found him?

She hated having this fucking responsibility. She should have just left well enough alone. After Tim she swore she would never have kids, never get attached to anything that could die. No kids and no pets. Now here she was right back there again and without even thinking about it she knew it was all going to end badly. Everything always did.