Port Vila Blues

Seventeen

‘The weather in Sydney today will be fair and mild, light winds, with an expected top of twenty degrees. All you peak-hour crawlers out there in radio land, stay tuned for today’s Rego Reward. If your plates are announced, you could win one thousand dollars.’

Baker stayed tuned, but they didn’t call his rego number so he slid in a cassette of Jimmy Barnes and lit a smoke. Then he took his foot off the brake, moved one car length along with everyone else, braked again. Judging by the scream-scrape whenever he braked, it was metal against metal on all four wheels. Still, it wasn’t his car. The cow had a job-let her fix her own car. He helped in plenty of other ways.

Baker twisted around on the collapsed springs of the driver’s seat. The brat was standing on the back seat, bumping his skinny rear against the torn vinyl of the seat upright, the same movement over and over again. Mouth open, shoelaces already trailing, vacant look on his pinched face. Baker’s arm, thick and gingery, shot out and grabbed a pitiful wrist. Skin and bone. ‘What’d I tell you? Eh? What’d I tell you?’

The brat seemed to wake out of a trance, showing confusion and fear. He stopped the bumping motion but wouldn’t look at Baker.

‘Fucking can’t keep still. I told you. What’d I say?’

Troy wouldn’t meet his gaze, just looked down at the UDL cans, parking infringement notices and McDonalds cartons on the seat and the floor. The cow was on early shift this week, so Baker had had to dress the brat himself: jeans, skivvy to hide a couple of fresh bruises, cornflaked windcheater, runners that wouldn’t stay tied. Baker stabbed a finger into the boy’s collarbone. He did it again. He hated the way the kid’s face would just shut him out. Never any gratitude, never acknowledgement of any kind. Like his flaming mother that way. Seven years old and Troy screened Baker out of his life as though Baker didn’t exist, was no part of the family at all.

Then the cars moved again and Baker turned back to the wheel. Why couldn’t the brat walk to school? He’d done that at that age. Hadn’t hurt him either. No geezer ever tried to snatch him off the footpath and play with his dick, and he’d grown up knowing how to look after himself. But oh no, not our precious Troysie Woysie.

Baker wondered who the father was. He bet Carol didn’t even know herself. Claimed he was an American naval officer, but that was more of her bullshit. Liked to say how she’d struggled for seven years, not easy bringing up a kid by yourself, blah, blah, blah. Which meant that Baker had a dream run when he first showed on the scene. She was starved for sex, just crying for it.

Now the rot was setting in. Wanted to know his job history, like she was his fucking dole officer or something. Kept looking in the employment pages, circling jobs for him in red biro. Told him it wouldn’t hurt to get out there and look, no job was going to come knocking on the door. Just lately she’d get pissed off over little things, like if he hadn’t cleared up or done any shopping by the time she got home. And she was really getting on his back about his addiction, as she called it, to dope and booze. Said he had a problem. Said he was getting worse, more unpredictable, his fuse shorter. Fucking bitch. Baker’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, as he thought of her scrawny neck.

He turned around. ‘Fucking keep still, will ya?’

Turned back to the wheel again. She was starting to get prune-mouthed about the brat, too. It was okay at first, told him she knew Troy could be a handful, encouraged him to use a bit of discipline, but now she’d turned a hundred and eighty degrees and last weekend she’d ordered Baker into the bathroom and pointed a quivering finger at the brat: ‘Those marks weren’t there yesterday, he’s my son and I’ll deal with him,’ etcetera, etcetera.

The traffic was stalled again. Baker cranked down his window, letting in a blast of Sydney traffic fumes. It cleared his head but he badly needed a hit of something, speed for preference. He could try that bloke in the side bar of the Edinburgh Castle; he was generally holding.

That’s if Carol had put forty bucks in the kitty, like she’d promised. He’d check when he got home.

Which would mean doing the shopping at some no-frills supermarket, generic tins of spaghetti and meat sauce for dinner, and another tirade when she got off work this arvo.

Baker flicked the turning indicator as he approached the next set of lights, signalling a left turn. He had to hold the lever in place or it would jump out. He couldn’t actually hear the ticking sound so he had no way of knowing if the thing was working or not. Just another item in the list of little helpful things Carol thought he might get around to doing for her one day, along with taking Troy to school all this week.

Something made Baker glance in the rear-view mirror. Some bitch in a Volvo was behind him, flashing her headlights. She had a pointing finger pressed to her windscreen and she was mouthing things at him.

‘So, the turning light doesn’t work,’ he muttered. ‘So fucking what?’

Still she kept shaking her finger at him. ‘Well, what?’

Baker said, talking to her image in his mirror. He shrugged elaborately, lifting empty hands in the air, signalling what? to her. Fucked if he knew what she was on about. As for Troy, he’d turned around and was looking out through the rear window at the woman in the Volvo.

‘Hey, Troy, whyn’t you give her the old finger?’ Baker said, little puffs of amusement escaping him as he accelerated toward the corner, yanked on the wheel, and steered the barrelly Kingswood into the street where Troy went to school.

The thing was, the Volvo woman stayed with him. Now the bitch was tooting her horn, stabbing her finger at him, flashing her lights. Her face was twisted with outrage and after only a few seconds of that Baker thought: Right, slag, I’ll fucking have you.

There was no one about. This part of the street had a deserted factory on one side and a wrecker’s yard the size of a football ground on the other. The school was another kilometre away. Baker pulled over to the kerb. The Volvo pulled in behind him. He stayed where he was: let her make the first move.

In the wing mirror he saw the woman get out, close her door carefully, stand watching him. After a while she seemed to make up her mind. She walked toward him, her image growing in the mirror: plenty of bouncy hair, Reeboks, red tracksuit. Baker knew her type. Young mother, plenty of money, full of fucking opinions.

He got out and leaned on his door. ‘Got a problem?’

She actually stamped one foot and stood there shaking in the grip of a powerful emotion, bent forward at the waist. ‘That child should be properly restrained.’

Restrained? ‘Speak English, lady. What are you on about?’

She pointed. ‘Your son-’

‘Not my son.’

‘Your ward, then. He should be strapped into a seatbelt.’

‘So?’

‘What if you have an accident? What if you have to stop suddenly? He could be seriously hurt.’

Baker uncoiled from the door. ‘Any of your fucking business?’

That got to her. Her little fists were clenched and her eyes were fiery. ‘Yes, if you like, it is my business. When a child is at risk it’s everybody’s business.’

Baker closed the distance a metre or two. ‘Listen, slag.’

The woman retreated a couple of steps but wasn’t backing down. ‘It’s against the law for a child to be unrestrained like that.’

‘I’ll give you unrestrained,’ Baker said, and he hit her hard, just once, dropping her like a stone.

He watched her. She shook her head as if to clear it. When she touched her mouth and saw blood on her fingers, she yowled and scrabbled away from him, dragging her backside along the street. Baker imagined that she wasn’t wearing much under the tracksuit. He caught up with her. Surprisingly, she curled into a tight ball. He hesitated, weighing it up.

‘Who gives a shit,’ he said.

He stepped over her. Yeah, he knew it. There was a little kid in the Volvo, strapped in the back seat, singing to herself. Little satchel, dinky little dress and socks and shoes. ‘Precious koochy koo,’ Baker said. ‘Daddy’s princess.’

He opened the driver’s door of the Volvo and grabbed the woman’s purse. Eighty bucks, wacky doo. Enough for a hit, plus he could treat Carol and the brat to Pizza Hut tonight.

He folded the money into his back pocket and that’s when a car came out of nowhere and two guys in plain clothes pinned him against the flank of the Volvo. One of them, a blocky character in need of a shave and a mouthwash, got in a few punches before cuffing him. ‘You’re nicked,’ he said.