Ghost River (8 page)

Archie looked over the top of his paper at the bird. ‘An eagle. A beautiful bird, that one.'

‘It's a wedge-tail. It's taken with a special camera, isn't it, Mum?' Ren said, looking to Loretta for support.

She glanced from the TV to the photograph and up at her son, wondering where he was heading with the conversation.

‘I seen some cameras in the shop at the train station,' Ren explained to Archie. ‘I'm going to save up and buy one.'

‘But you don't have any money to save,' Archie said. ‘A photograph like this one would need a decent camera. And it would cost a packet. Then there's money for film and developing. How would you save money for that?'

‘With a job,' Ren answered.

He told them about his plan to work with Sonny on the morning paper round. Loretta turned the volume down on the TV.

‘I don't know, Charlie. How you going to get out of bed so early in the morning?'

‘Sonny'll wake me. He's got an alarm clock. He's been getting up early for a month now. At five-thirty.'

‘But it's dark out that early.'

‘Not for long,' Ren countered.

Archie picked up the photograph from the table and studied the bird. ‘You really think you could take a photograph like this one?'

‘One day. I've been looking in the library next to the town hall. They have books on birds and others that are all about cameras. I could teach myself.'

‘Books.' Archie laughed. ‘You mean you're looking at books that aren't for tests at school, for your own interest?'

‘Yep. I borrowed one. A book about birds that move from one part of the world to the other. Every year. Some of them come all the way here from above Russia. And other places.'

‘Loretta?' Archie asked.

While she knew it was her decision that counted most, Loretta could see that Ren's enthusiasm had already won Archie over. ‘Sonny's behaving himself?'

‘Yep. He works in the morning and afternoon and is saving up too. That's what gave me the idea.'

‘I let you do this, you save every cent. No wasting money on lollies and comics.'

‘Every cent.'

The next morning it was raining. Sonny hopped out of his window, crossed over the roof and knocked at Ren's bedroom window. When he couldn't wake him, he opened the window, jumped into the room and tore the blankets from Ren's bed. Ren rubbed the sleep from his eyes with the sleeve of his pyjama top and looked up at Sonny. He was soaked through.

‘You wash with your clothes on?'

‘It's pissing down. You try walking across a roof in the rain without getting wet. Come on, we have to go. You wanna work for me, Ren, you can't be late. Or I'll get my arse kicked off Brixey. Meet you out the front.'

Ren dressed, went downstairs and grabbed two rolls from the bread-bin, which the boys ate as they rode through the streets in the rain. At the shop they swapped the bike for an old pram. Sonny loaded it with the morning papers and magazines and covered the pram with a plastic sheet. He picked up an elastic band and flicked it at Ren, stinging his neck.

‘Sonny!' Brixey called. ‘If you want your mate helping you out here, don't be fucking around.'

‘I won't.'

He handed Sonny a raincoat. ‘Take this.'

One raincoat between the two of them wouldn't be much help keeping them dry. It was fortunate that, as they were delivering the first papers, the rain eased to a drizzle, and had stopped completely by the time they got round the first
block.

The early morning streets were dead quiet except for passing trains, the tinkling of Mick O'Reagan's milk bottles and the clip-clopping shoes of his sturdy horse, Tim, hitting the bitumen. During the first week of the paper round Sonny had been stealing milk from the back of the milk cart, until Mick caught him tearing the foil cap off a bottle. Rather than clip him behind the ears he offered Sonny an exchange, the morning paper for a half-pint of milk. A fair deal, Sonny reasoned. As he drank from the milk bottle he asked Mick why he was still using a horse when most other milkmen drove round in vans.

Mick patted the horse along the mane as he answered. ‘I been with this old fella for ten years, and was the last milky left using a horse a year back when they offered me one of them electric trucks that make no noise. I was about to change over. Then my eldest boy, Daniel, he'd been grooming that horse in the milk yard since he was younger than you, he got conscripted. Last thing he said to me before he got on the bus to start his Army training was
look after Timmy for me.
And that's what I'm gonna do. Look after this boy until he gets back.'

‘What's conscripted?' Sonny asked.

‘For that war in Vietnam.'

Sonny barely understood what Mick was talking about. He'd seen images on the TV, of the war, but had paid little attention.
‘Why'd they pick him to go to war? Your son?'

Mick looked into the horse's eyes, as if searching for an answer. ‘Part of it's luck, like playing the lottery. His number come up and he never got a prize. And part of it is because he's a milkman's son and not a politician's.'

‘I got to tell you, Ren,' Sonny said, as they took it in turns pushing the pram through the streets, ‘you see some weird stuff round the time the sun's up.'

‘What sort of stuff?'

‘Keep your eyes open. It won't take long.'

They were walking up the hill behind the Catholic Church when a woman coming from the opposite direction limped towards them. She was wearing a pink dressing gown, slippers and a white turban on her head. She had a smoke in her mouth and was carrying a cage with two small birds inside. Zebra finches.

The woman blocked Sonny's pathway and jabbed a pair of nicotined fingers in the direction of the pram. ‘You got my
Women's Weekly
?'

Sonny lifted the newspapers and pulled out a copy of a magazine he'd hidden earlier. ‘It come in this morning, Vera.'

She rested the birdcage on the ground and stuck a hand in her dressing gown pocket, like she was going for her purse, Ren thought, watching her. She pulled out a packet of cigarettes, took three smokes out and handed them to Sonny. He put one in his mouth and the other two in his shirt pocket. Vera took a silver lighter out of the other dressing gown pocket and lit Sonny's cigarette for him.

‘There you go, lovely boy. Have a good suck on that.'

‘Ta. What about my best mate here? He likes his smokes.'

‘I just give you three, you cheeky bugga. If he's your mate you can look after him yourself.'

‘One
Women's Weekly
equals three cigarettes, Vera. I can't be sharing on that. I give him one and I've only got one left. Maybe he can do you a favour?'

Vera looked Ren up and down. ‘You're only a little fella, aren't you? Poor urchin. They forget to feed you in the orphanage or something? What do they call you?'

‘Ren.'

‘Wren. A beautiful bird that one.' She picked up the cage, brought it to her face and tried making bird sounds, which wasn't easy with a cigarette hanging from her mouth. She blew smoke over the finches. ‘Look at this boy,' she said to the birds. ‘Here's another birdie for you, lovelies. He's a wren. Hold on to this for me.' She handed Ren the cage, opened the packet and silently counted the number of cigarettes she had left. She took a cigarette and handed it to Ren along with the lighter, in exchange for the bird cage. She watched closely as he lit up and took a decent drag.

‘Now, nothing's free in this world. You remember that, lovely boy. That ciggie I just give you is all about incentive. You want a big smoke from Vera, you got to work for it. You bring me a magazine, like my number one paper boy here, and I'll take care of you.'

She reached across the pram and tried stroking Sonny's face. He pulled away from her.

‘I love my
TV Week
,' she said, turning back to Ren. ‘You bring me that one.'

She stuck a hand on the back of his neck, pulled him into her body, took the cigarette out of her mouth and slopped a wet smoky kiss on his lips. Ren wouldn't have admitted it to anyone, even Sonny, but he felt his dick jump in his pants.

‘Don't you forget. One magazine a week and I'll look after you.' She winked and laughed out loud, then turned around and headed back up the hill, chatting to her birds.

‘She's mad,' Ren said.

‘You're telling me. First time I give her the
Weekly
she stuck her hand down the front of my pants and squeezed my balls.'

‘What did you do?'

‘Told her it would cost her more than three cigarettes if she wanted to be doing something like that.'

‘What did she say?'

‘Nothing. But the next morning she gave me a packet of Viscount twenties. Unopened.'

‘What did you have to do for them?'

‘Can't say. You'll get jealous.'

‘How old is she?'

‘Old old. Maybe thirty.'

‘And you let her play with your dick?'

‘Didn't you hear me? A full pack of Viscount.'

‘Why's she carrying the birds round with her?'

‘They need the fresh air, she says.'

‘She shouldn't be smoking round them, then.'

The last delivery of a morning was to Stumpy's place. Sonny knocked at the door of a house on a dead-end street by the railway line.

‘Put your ear to the door and listen for the noise.'

Ren heard a low rumble in the distance, a sound that appeared to be coming from miles off. If he didn't know better he would have said it was a train. The noise grew louder until it came to a halt on the other side of the door.

‘He's here,' Sonny whispered.

‘Who?'

The door opened with a creak. Ren looked down at a man around the same age as his stepdad, Archie. He was kneeling on a wooden trolley and the knuckles on his hands had thick yellow calluses on them. Ren looked closer. He wasn't kneeling at all. The man had no legs.

Sonny handed the man the morning newspaper.

‘There you go, Stump. This is my mate, Ren. He'll be helping me out from now on. You need anything from the shops this morning? I could call by later on.'

Stumpy didn't give Ren a second look and never bothered with Sonny's question.

‘Okay, Stump. Tomorrow then.'

Stumpy shut the door on them. Ren listened again, to the fading sounds of the cart.

‘What happened to his legs?' he asked, as they walked the empty pram back to the shop.

‘It's a long story, that one.'

‘I've never seen him up the street. Wouldn't miss someone getting along on a cart.'

‘He don't go up the street. Says he don't want people seeing him that way, without any legs. He does some work in his garden, crawling round on what's left of his legs. Nobody goes to the house except a woman from the church who drops off his food and does some cleaning and pays his bills.'

‘Why don't he get some artificial legs so he can get about?'

‘He did have wooden legs one time, when his mother was around. Stumpy liked a drink and would put his legs on and get out to the pub. He'd finish up so pissed he'd fall off them on the way home. Sometimes the cops would give him a ride home. But if no one come across him he'd stay in the gutter until his mum come and found him. In the end she got jack of it. One night, after he went to bed, she threw the legs on the fire and burned them to ash. The next morning she told him he wouldn't be going up the pub any longer. Laughed at him, Stumpy told me.'

‘Does she live at the house with him?'

‘Nah. She died a few years back.'

‘He could get himself some new legs. From the hospital.'

‘Yeah, I know. But he says he can't be bothered.'

‘Where'd you hear this?'

‘He told me himself. Stumpy gets lonely and likes to talk. When he gets used to you, you won't be able to shut him up.'

The boys reached the intersection a block away from the paper shop. They waited at the red light to cross the street. A car pulled in to the kerb, an old blue Mercedes, highly polished and not a scratch on it. The young driver hit the horn and an older silver-headed man came out from a curtained shop front. He got into the passenger seat of the car. As the car crawled to the intersection, the man wound down his window and called Sonny over to the car.

‘You have paper?'

Sonny handed him a newspaper. The man offered him a twenty-cent coin, double the price of the paper.

‘Keep the change.' He smiled, and ordered the young driver to take off.

The building the man had come out of had originally been a fruit shop. After it had shut down, the blinds were drawn on the windows. Men came and went from the building day and night, although they never seemed to buy anything.

‘What's that place?' Ren asked.

‘The Greek club.'

‘What do they do inside?'

‘They run a card game. And the radio's turned up loud on race days. An SP on the horses, I guess.'

‘You sell papers in there?'

‘Never stepped foot in the place. That bloke who just got in the car, just now is the first time he's bought a paper from me. Usually sends a kid down to the shop of an afternoon for his paper.'

Sonny's job kept him so busy Ren was soon helping him out at the newsstand as well. At the end of the school day Ren would race home, drop his bag in his room and head down to the station. Passing by the Reverend's house he'd often find Della sitting on the front verandah reading from a book. It looked just like the Bible the Reverend had held in his hand in the stable. Her mother would be sitting nearby, also reading, and there was no chance for Sonny to talk to her, which he'd been desperate to do since the day they'd spoken in the lane.