Theft: A Love Story

18

I would not mind a quid for every time the Butcher judged it time for me to piss off to my bed but in the case of Marlene Leibovitz no words were needed, their BUSINESS DISCUSSION being so urgent that I said cheerio before I got embarrassed for them both. God save them. When I stood to go she kissed me on the cheek and said something in a foreign language it must have been good night. I had no reason to get myself excited in spite of how I felt.

Having left them to their NEGOTIATIONS I sat on the stairs between the first and second floors but then Butcher came bursting out like a BAND-DOG who has broke his chain. What did I think I was doing? I could have punched. him in the nose but our father had correctly taught us the folly of fighting on a staircase and so I descended until I heard him close the upstairs door and slide his bolt, wad, load, what did I care?

From the time I was cast out of state school number twentyeight THROUGH NO FAULT OF MY OWN I occupied a grey steel chair purchased from AR-BEE Supply Company, and on Sunday evenings in the summer I would sit and watch the line of traffic that descended on us from Ballarat and the Pentland Hills, vehicles made of steel but for all the world like flesh and blood, dogs on heat, each one sniffing the tail of the one in front, an unbroken chain of men and women, boyfriends, girlfriends, the females with their heads on the shoulders of the males, sometimes a slender arm stretched out along the top of the backseat. One after the other they travelled in their mating myriads, their red behind-lights stringing a glowing necklace through the gloaming and depresh. Afterwards I went to the sleep-out which was what we called the part of the verandah Blue Bones walled in with asbestos sheets now generally against the law. Nothing much there after my brother ran away—steel bunks, old brown sticky tape the only evidence of the missing HOLY PICTURES by Mark Rothko the one who passed away.

On Bathurst Street I carried my JERRY-BUILT chair to the bottom of the stairs all the time feeling the great BLAME of the Butcher settling on my neck and that got my engine churning, pumping, and all the muscles in my forearms began to ELECTRIFY and then I must take a little stroll. I do not like the dark but had no choice. I pushed through the boys and girls, the drunk men shouting suck my dick. Cast-out angels, imps and demons of the bottle dark. Did I make them? Was it my fault they were there?

On another subject—I know not what the Butcher did to his missus but who could blame her for tiring of him in the end?

She was not like anyone you might meet if you were a Bones.

She was always kind to me, or was until I gave her reason not to be. Also she delivered up a magnificous little boy a MUCHIMPROVED MODEL of anything the Butcher could have done of his own accord. And I was promoted to be the MAJORDOMO, the factotum, the dogsbody, the nurse, the doorman, the butler, the waiter, the chief bottle washer, and my SIBLING often got it in his head that this was an insult to me to be a servant but he had no idea of who I was, bless me, I was now busy, from dawn to night, continually occupied in useful labour until suddenly GODDAMN ME.

That's enough.

In any case.

Was never so busy as when I was Uncle Hugh.

That's enough, although I wish they had cut my throat and buried me that's it.

Not being a brave man I was alive and so I fled from the fornicators on Bathurst Street and I pushed down through the WINE-DARK crowds towards the Quay and soon the footpaths were lonelier and I liked it much better though keeping an eye skinned, as instructed, for THE HOMOS. If I had half a brain I would have returned to the safety of our Development Site but I can be a COMPLETE BLOODY MORON and headed into the criminal shadow of the Cahill Expressway and then the tomato sauce and stink-water of Circular Quay where the deckhand was about to withdraw the gangplank from the Woolwich Ferry. I arrived on board so urgently the plank sprung up in the air, crashed down like a clown-stick on the wharf. The deckhand was thin and ugly with a tattoo on his nose but he shook his head like he was SOMEONE OF IMPORTANCE. Thank Jesus the Butcher was not here to take offence.

I could not go home. All that was lost to me six hundred miles away. Even before we were round the corner of Dawes Point I could smell the bilgy oily air blowing from the container ships moored behind Goat Island, and the seagulls were like a whiteant hatch swarming around the pylons of the bridge, also the angry traffic locked in noisy upset above my head. Thus—the ferry—calm and clear, and the northeast wind lifted the shirt clear off my skin as if I was a human clothesline, no other burden on my soul. For a moment I was happy and then, suddenly, that's enough.

That's enough.

I folded up my chair and walked to the lower deck the big diesel engines never ceased beneath my feet, sending me back to places known to Bill Bones and me, into our OLD HAUNTS.

Best not thought of.

Having rashly jumped aboard I had no more choice than dishwater down the giddy drain. The first ferry stop was the Darling Street Wharf at Balmain East and here the WELLKNOWN CRIMINAL had always had his waterfront mansion with canvas blinds. Before the COURT ORDER I often came here with Butcher's little boy and lifted him up to spy across the wall although we never saw a living soul certainly not the criminal himself. From here we might walk to the market up on Darling Street or return to the wharf and catch a SILVER BREAM or board a later ferry to LONG NOSE POINT and there visit STOREY AND KEERS the shipyard and if there were no COMPANY DIRECTORS in the office our mate would permit us aboard the FOREIGN SHIPS or onto the low brown WORK BOATS and we were once smuggled out to Cockatoo Island, Billy Bones and I, where we could have been gaoled for TRESPASS. Here we illegally visited the island power station which was like the inside of a valve radio, purple light, sparks, and also a TOP SECRET tunnel, cut by men from one side of the island to another. Billy had the Bones constitution he never tired. If I was a servant I was happy. Every day was something new. We might take the ferry to Greenwich and go swimming in the baths—BELLY WHACKERS and JELLYFISH and the bloody wonders of the good old DOG PADDLE. It does no good to remember. Better not. Stupid for me to have gone to Circular Quay.

By the time the ferry was coming into the Darling Street Wharf I did not trust the UNFRIENDLY DECKHAND to permit my escape. I jumped before he got a rope across the bollard, did not even glance at the CRIMINAL HOUSE but instead rushed up the Darling Street hill with my chair under my arm. Doubtless I looked like some kind of lunatic speeding up the hill into Balmain, my goodness, my blood must have been vermilious. The streets were empty of all but DRINKERS spilling from the pubs like innards from a mortal wound. There was not a street that did not hold a memory Bill Bones and I built the biggest Lego house ever constructed just there, in the park by the emergency ward where I took him when he burned his little hand through no fault of his own.

Outside the Willy Wallace they were drinking their SCHOONERS on the footpath and I did say sorry when I bumped, but then I departed rapidly with the chair held tight a SHIELD AGAINST THINE ENEMIES. I knew exactly where I was, bee-pop, shee-bop—the smell of gas and cat's piss and oil from Mort Bay all around—when the drinkers confronted me I was close to the site of the 1972 payroll robbery. I had taken young Billy there more than once A HISTORIC SITE where the bagman danced around the bullets RAT-TAT-TAT.

My brother says I draw trouble on myself but how could I attack myself from behind? Being set upon, I was compelled to smite my assailants with my shield. CAN'T STAND THE THINGS THEY DO TO ME. WON'T WAIT FOR JESUS TO PROVE TO ME. The thugs ran limping and howling down the street like curs wombats possums vanquished pudding thieves. As far as I heard later they never lodged complaint or charge and there would have been no trouble but for the actions of that very same unfriendly deckhand—this is not proven but how else were there police waiting for me at the Quay. These officers wished to learn how I got so much blood on my shirt and chair.

All's well that ends well by midnight I was home in bed. It was Marlene Leibovitz who cleaned my chair with Windex. In Butcher's version I was his cross to bear, God bless me, I must be an IDIOT SAVANT, a bloody big disaster.