The Tax Inspector

22

When his little brother was being bashed up by Matty Evans behind the boys’ lavatories, Vish came running into the school yard from the hole in the fence next to the milk factory. He had a housebrick. He was not yet Vish – he was still John. He was nine years old. He was bigger than Benny but he still had to carry the brick in both hands. He pushed his way through the circle of yelling boys and threw the brick, point blank. It hit Matty Evans on the side of the head and he dropped so fast and lay so still that the little kids started crying, thinking he was dead. There was a dark red pool of blood glistening on the hot asphalt playground, and teachers were yelling and making everyone stand in line even though it was the magpie season and two kids were swooped just standing there. Johnny Catchprice vomited up his sandwiches, just as the ambulance arrived. It drove straight into the school yard and left deep ruts in the grass in front of ‘Paddles’ Rogers’s rose garden.

Matty Evans got six stitches and they clipped his hair like he was a dog with mange. Paddles paddled Johnny Catchprice for every one of those stitches. Johnny’s hand puffed up so much he had to be excused from English Composition and this was why Mort put on his suit and came up to the school to talk to Paddles during the double Algebra on Thursday afternoon.

Everyone thought he had come to threaten law suits, but Mort was not shocked by either the crime or the punishment. What panicked Mort was that he maybe had a ‘disturbed child’ on his hands, that a whiff of his home life could be detected in the open air. He put on his grey suit and went up to school, not to sue, but to plug the leak somehow. He was not sure how he would do it, not even when he opened his mouth.

Paddles was a little bald-headed man with a swagger and a hairy chest which grew up under his shirt collar. He felt himself an inch away from litigation and so he was chatty and pleasant and over-eager. He looked across at Johnny and winked.

Johnny laid his bandaged hand on his lap and looked out of the window at the ruts the ambulance had left on the green lawn.

‘No matter who bullied whom,’ Mort said, ‘I never saw him do anything like this in all his life. And when I say all his life, I mean, all his life. I don’t know if you know it, but his mother left us when he was five …’

‘Noo-na,’ said Paddles sympathetically. He was confused about what Mort Catchprice was up to. This gave him an odd ‘hanging-on-every-word’ look.

‘She just pissed off.’

Johnny shut his eyes.

‘At that time I couldn’t cook, I couldn’t sew, and I wasn’t seeing my kids as much as I should have. I was coaching the Under-fifteens in the football and the cricket. I was setting up the panel shop. But suddenly there were all these fucking bureaucrats – pardon my French – wanted to take my boys away, because I was a man.’

‘Isn’t that typical,’ said Paddles. ‘Sure. I can imagine …’

‘You can imagine,’ Mort said. ‘You can imagine I soon found out how to cook and how to sew. I was there for them in the morning and I was there for them at night, so when I say Johnny doesn’t do this sort of thing,’ Mort kicked Johnny underneath the desk, ‘hitting a boy with a brick. When I say this is not him, I know what I’m talking about. You understand me?’

‘Yes,’ Paddles said. ‘Sure. Hell, yes.’ The minute he said yes he thought he had made a legal mistake.

‘Good,’ Mort said, kicking Johnny again. ‘So you understand why I’m upset – I work for years of my life to give you a sweet, gentle kid, you give me back a kid who hits another kid with a brick.’

It was only then that Johnny got the joke – his dad was lying.

‘It’s not in his character. I hope you agree?’

Paddles thought he could see Mort assembling evidence for court. ‘Without prejudice?’ He saw the kid trying to hide his grin. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘It will never happen again.’ He meant the strapping.

Mort meant brick-throwing. ‘That’s your decision,’ he said, ‘totally, but if I hear of any more behaviour like this, you’re the man I’ll be holding responsible.’

Johnny and his father walked out of the school, making odd little noises up behind their noses, holding their laughter in like you keep water in a garden hose with your thumb. They walked out across the lawn, biting their lips and creasing their eyes.

They left a screech of rubber on Vernon Street that stayed there for two months. Mort was wailing with laughter, banging the wheel. Thump, thump, thump with the fat heel of his hand, and his lips now all big and loose with pleasure at the lie he had told. He grabbed Johnny’s thigh – a horse bite – and squeezed him till he yelped, and then Johnny laughed too, not at the lie, but at their shared experience, their complicity.

‘Not in his character!’

It was 100 per cent his character. That was the joke – this mild, sweet-faced boy could attack his father with a tyre lever.

‘You little bastard,’ his father said, admiringly it seemed.

They were like each other, twins, they had the same chin, the same ears, the same temper too.

He knew that when the time came, he would never be able to explain about his father – how you could want to crush him like an insect, how he was also almost perfect.

He’d drive them to wherever the Balmain Tigers were playing – 40, 60 K’s – no wuckers. He played Rock ’n’ Roll really loud – AC/DC, Judas Priest. He was the one who bought the Midnight Oil tape.

How can we sleep when our beds are burning

How can we sleep while our world is turning

He sang the words out loud. He was as good as Peter Garrett – he could have been a Rock ’n’ Roller. They ate potato crisps, hot dogs, twisties, minties, pies. At the game he did not abandon them for the bar. He was their mate. They argued and farted all the way home to Franklin. He cooked pancakes and served them up with butter and sugar and fresh-squeezed lemon juice.

He was a good father. He got up at six each morning so he could cook them a proper breakfast. He brushed their hair. He fussed over their clothes. He gave them expensive fizzy vitamins and did not over-cook the vegetables.

He was affectionate. He was never shy to kiss them on the cheek or hold them. He liked to kiss. He had soft kissing lips. And it was the lips which were the trouble, the lips that showed when things were going bad again.

Johnny looked like his Dad. Naturally this was not so interesting for their Dad to look at. Benny looked like the other person, the one they were not allowed to ask about and the bad nights always began with their father staring at Benny and looking sad. Then he would cuddle in to him and stroke his hair and kiss him on the neck. He was not ashamed of it. He said: ‘You see those other fathers, too scared to even touch their kids. They’re just terrified of natural feelings.’ He kissed them both, often, like you saw mothers kissing babies. Kissing their necks and backs.

Once he started kissing Benny’s neck, he would not stay soulful and doggy-eyed for long. Johnny could watch the mood-change coming like wind across a paddock full of wheat. His dad’s eyes would turn snaky. He’d start to talk sarcastic, spiky. He would laugh and say mean things about the shape of Johnny’s head or how fat his legs were. He did not mean them really – nasty and nice were all the same to him when his mood changed. He had only one objective: to get Johnny to leave the room so he could be alone with Benny.

Johnny slammed the door to counterfeit his exit from the house. He sat outside the blessed circle of affection, outside the blue centre of the flame, safer but more lonely, excluded but responsible. He became the ugly one. He became a peek, a sneak. He watched his father stroke Benny’s hair, waited for the moment when the mustard velvet cushion would be placed across his brother’s lap. It was then he would come in throwing darts or pillows.

Sometimes Benny just looked at him with wet open lips and a smile on his face, sometimes he needed him bad. Sometimes Mort and Benny both shouted at him, told him to piss off out of there.

The day they saw Paddles it was still seven whole years away from the night when he would smash his father’s bedroom window with a cast-iron casserole and cut him with the Stay-sharp knife.

He was not Vish yet.

He was still Johnny and when Mort said, ‘Come on, killer, I’ll buy you a quarter pounder,’ he looked at the big face and in spite of everything, was still proud to be just like his Daddy.