Whole Wild World (17 page)

‘I can do it myself Brother, you've got other things to do,' I said before a game a few weeks into the season.

‘You don't want to get this greasy stuff on your fingers Thomas, you won't be able to handle the ball.'

I couldn't argue with that. On days that weren't cold I told him I'd play without liniment.

‘You'll pull a muscle Thomas, and won't be able to kick for touch.'

By the end of the season I'd bought my own deep-heat cream and rubbed it into my thighs at home before games.

‘I'm okay Brother, I put Dencorub on at home.'

Positioned to protect my condition.

8

Rule
Britannica

Whenever I found myself growing grim about the mouth and a game of footy or street cricket could not stem the yearning, I headed to the canals. Amid the press of houses and flats was a theme park of industrial decay, featuring makers of appliances, packaged food and mechanical parts. All the waste these small, soon-to-be smaller companies couldn't sell, cart away in drums or put in a bin found its way into man-made channels all leading to the Cooks River.

Our posse would set off down the hill and cross Canterbury Road, passing squash courts, which after a makeover and new spa, would become a ‘fitness centre'. These jaunts were spontaneous so we never carried supplies or money. If asked, we'd tell parents we were off to a park. After climbing over a wire fence, you shimmied six feet down into the smelly beast. It was a secret ecosystem, different every time. There was always new graffiti or the remnants of a teenage binge. My imagination would run away with images of druggies or bodgies on the loose. Tall for my age, I dreaded I'd be mistaken for being older, inviting the misfortune of being ‘bashed up'. I had a mental map of houses to avoid in the streets near the shops, but one-off excursions were simply too exciting to carry such fears.

Sump oil from car yards oozed from cracks in the concrete like black gold, Texas Tea. A whiff of formaldehyde hung in the
air, as if the hospital had burst a filthy organ. I loved it down in the trough; it told the story of what was going on above, you just had to imaginatively piece it together. Senses had to be set on high alert, for human and chemical menaces could lurk around any bend. We'd disturb barking hounds and hear on-edge mothers screaming at their children. Along the way you'd spy untidy backyards and the detritus of broken things tossed over fences. Abandoned cars would be legally ransacked, safe in the knowledge we weren't the first. You'd see kids you didn't know and so were naturally wary. Most likely you were on their turf; far from Chalmers Street, canal kids were viewed as traditional owners rather than explorers like us.

Early in any expedition you'd lose the Italian
mammas'
boys, always on a tight leash, trudging home to their lunch of fresh pasta or dainty Mio cheese. The younger kids were more trouble than they were worth because you didn't want to have to explain to fierce parents why their boys were covered in fluoro-green goo; they'd crap themselves at the sight of a mangy dog or be unable to climb a cyclone fence to get into a factory. The Lebanese were too tribal to join in; there were so many of them they made their own fun, the ones my age indentured to babysit younger siblings. The Greeks, as always, were hiding in the house doing homework or the books for the family business. Having invented everything from democracy to sewage canals, our Greeks were done with exploring.

But there were always three or four stayers, each taking a turn to lead or scout for rats, frogs and lizards. We'd roam the concrete gullies and tunnels for hours, crab-crawling over heavy slicks of iridescent blue, oops, an industrial chemist's little side project. If a plumber somewhere upstream released a torrent of waste, a flash dousing was in store. Sometimes you had no choice but to tippy-toe across a broad, thin shimmery spill, impossibly gaining purchase on a toxic suburban ice shelf with the top of your
runners. In places where the water was actually running we'd race sticks. I'd heard that Johnny Tapp, one of the big race callers, had learned his craft by racing painted Paddle Pop sticks along a rampant stormwater drain.

Up the hill at Clemton Park, on the way to North Kingsgrove, was a disused brick and pipe works. There was a huge chimney overlooking the footy fields, a structure out of time with suburbia and much taller than any of the buildings in the area. More than once I'd been in trouble from a coach for getting lost in the moment while staring at it. Why did it need to be so tall? Were there ever any guards near the top? Could a plane hit it? One time we broke through the fence and went into one of the dark, abandoned factories. The floor was earthen, the air cool; all the machinery was gone and it was remarkably clean. There was a vast, still pool, obviously not to swim in. We called out names and listened for the sound to bounce around the cave-like walls. It was our bunker to do as we wished; only the lack of things to throw meant we didn't trash the place.

I felt safe anywhere with Sam, sensible, cool in a crisis, fearsome when under assault, just like street-smart, billycart Steve. Once, in a canal running through a park in Campsie, the three of us came upon a wild six-pack of urchins on bikes. They bombarded us from above with rocks, both sides of the levee. This was proper battle, under fire from jagged, heavy projectiles, not your garden-variety ‘poof balls' that vaporised on impact. You couldn't run from trouble, no matter how ominous the hit squad. Stay and fight, even if you were shit-scared, because at some innate level you knew you weren't going to die. But if it got to hand-to-hand combat, which was rare, we'd spent years perfecting kung-fu kicks and Phantom Agents moves – in our heads. Missiles whizzed past my nose, making the hair on my neck stand up. But at least they were missing and we scurried around collecting ammo.

Blonde girls our age on new dragsters were hissing at us.

‘Ya poofters!'

‘Go home, ya dirty wogs.'

One threw a rock that hit me on the arm. I was a screamer and a swearer, scaring myself with out-of-body expletives. Faaarrrrkkk! The smaller girl was now a legitimate target. You had to hit her in the head, not to draw blood, just to knock one down to make them stop.

It was hot, nuclear warfare compelled to unload the whole arsenal. We got the upper hand. Steve and Sam had strong arms and great aim, and they drove the rest of the gang into retreat. We backtracked, knowing there would be no reprisals, today or tomorrow, as this was alien terrain and we'd never see those kids again.

We'd been on foot for several hours and had reached the boundary of Canterbury Racecourse, near the pool, or ‘bars' as our migrant ears had designated the baths. It would be at least an hour at marching pace back up the main drag to get home. But we were pumped, bouncing up the road, recalling the near-mortal hits we'd taken and embellishing the severity of the wounds we'd inflicted in the skirmish. We hunted – without luck – through every bin on the way home, hoping by chance to find a used bottle so we could claim a deposit to buy lollies or gum. It would have tasted like victory.

A new boy arrived midway through an innings in the front yard of the flats next door.

‘Can I play?'

His name was Seneka. He had the quiet air of a prince and a surname so long you'd never get it onto a scoreboard. He bowled express pace with a little leap at the popping crease
à la
Dennis Lillee (he'd say Andy Roberts) and batted in the manner of Viv
Richards, ‘Smokin' Joe': bum out, eyes hungry, decadent as a man chewing a silver toothpick. Seneka was visiting family at the flats. His ancient great grandmother reminded us how he'd gone to a prestigious school called St Thomas's in Colombo. (We thought St John's was pretty flash.)

Seneka was closer in age to Sam than to me, but he was in my grade at school. To escape the war in Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as the family called it, Seneka's mother had brought him and three sisters to Australia. Soon, more of the clan would arrive – aunts, cousins, great grandmas, with as many as a dozen people living in two two-bedroom flats. Like the Lebanese, but more flamboyantly, they brought noise and spectacle to an Anglo- Mediterranean street. They ate exotic, aromatic food, pungent curries and rice, with their hands, clasping the tiniest morsels in their fingertips without making a mess. Just like
Number 96
, there were eight flats in the complex and a rolling cast of tenants. Each time someone moved out there was fresh hope a family with kids our age, up for cricket or footy, would move in. That was a rarity; the tenants tended to be couples without kids or younger families with infants.

Every afternoon the Chalmers Street boys – Frank, Carlo, Seneka and me – dawdled home from St John's, on a stroke rate of banter. I told the story of a distant cousin, a tale I'd heard second-hand by eavesdropping on adults, which was ripe for improvement. Cousin Wally had got a girl pregnant, stolen cars, done drugs, gone to prison, cheated on his wife and made his parents' life a misery. All those elements were in the mix, more or less. Wally stood as the prime example of the road to perdition if you did not do your homework, respect your parents, get your haircut, go to church and Croatian school or fell into the company of loose Australians.

In an inspired moment Frank decided the legend of Wally should be celebrated.

‘You're just like Wally,' he said to Seneka.

And Wally stuck. That mix of free spiritedness and louche swagger implied in cousin Wally's challenge to authority was a perfect fit for our mate. The Belmore boys had a bad boy on which to project our racy fantasies.

Wally had a metallic red Brumby dragster, with raised handlebars, a curved seat and a sissy bar at the rear. I was on a Cyclops scooter with pneumatic cream-coloured tyres that I could scoot, goofy foot, as quickly as a bike. The two of us covered a lot of territory alone, as the Italians and younger kids didn't have wheels. By the next Christmas everyone had caught up, with another half-dozen scooters joining the fleet. There was a path around the apartment building that we used as a velodrome, but with moving obstacles like unpredictable kids in nappies and women carting the washing to the clothesline at the back of the flats.

We'd line up on the race track in formation then wait for the traffic lights on Canterbury Road, 150 metres away, to change. When the lights turned green, we'd burn off the grid; scooters had a significant start advantage and on tight turns. But in the two long straights Wally would come into his own if he could push through the pack. The aim was to beat the red light that would change after thirty seconds and everyone who got through would ride a victory-like lap and be at the back of the grid for the next light change. It was Formula One and roller derby combined and Wally was the champ; even from the back of the pack he could muscle through the little kids and be rolling as the lights turned green, a master of anticipation and guile.

The peloton was a whirring ball of energy and competition; one false move, one bend taken too tight or too wide by the leaders could set off a catastrophic pile-up. Fingers became jammed in spokes and chains, knees were skinned by concrete, heads scraped against the rough red bricks of the complex. Pile-ups brought blood, wailing, parents and consequences for the older boys like
Wally and me, deemed protectors of the little ones.

‘Who is Volly?' Mama demanded one time when I was telling Sam about a colossal stack. ‘Volly, Volly, Volly.' Undaunted by peer pressure, sly and cool, Wally was the boy most likely to stray.

In my family, morality plays were built around the exploits of older kids – too old to either pay attention to us, or for Sam and me to check the truth with them. Their broken-hearted parents admitted they'd brought miseries upon themselves by sending their kids to a public school, allowed them to mix outside the community or, worst of all – a sure path to debauchery – allowed them to sleep over at a friend's house. This last point was the common link for the heroin girl who had been kicked out at eighteen and the boy who had joined the Hare Krishna.

My parents allowed us free rein in the city, but there was never any possibility of sleeping away from home. The threat of
popravni dom
, reform school, was ever present as a deterrent, but we pushed the boundaries all the time, especially as Tata was at work and ‘wait till your father gets home' was not something that would carry over until the next day when we saw him at breakfast time.

Tata's temper was fearsome. There'd be a tremble in a distant time zone, a mild comment that said beware or back off. But we would carry on, oblivious to the coming calamity. Our warning systems had not caught on that Volcano Joe was about to blow. Smoke would rise, the table would shake, the volume would blow off the dial, the
kajiš
, or belt, would come off. Only once or twice did Tata forget himself and use the buckle on us, a breach of international law I was sure to look up in
Encyclopaedia Britannica
.