Through the Cracks (18 page)

N
uts was at the window, taking down a notice. Hog had put on a singlet. Both men looked across when Billy and Adam walked out. Hog had swapped the slippers for a pair of thongs. He had a rag and bottle of pink spray and was squirting and wiping down the padded corners of the boxing ring.

‘What are the chances of getting some antibiotics?’ Billy said.

Hog looked through the ropes. He went back to spraying and wiping. ‘I’m not saying yes.’

‘Thanks, Hog.’

‘I wouldn’t thank me. You shoulda known better. I can’t fall out with them, you know that.’

‘I’ll be quick.’

Billy jogged down the hallway and took the stairs two at a time. Adam fell behind. Upstairs was a one-room apartment – a lounge and a foldout couch made into a bed; Hog’s slippers were on the floor. Adam caught up to Billy in the narrow kitchen. He’d pulled open the fridge. The shelves were mostly bare. In the door were boxes of tablets and foil-topped bottles, syringes and bags of coloured pills. Billy unwrapped a syringe, picked up a bottle marked with a green x; he pushed the needle in through the foil, drew up a dose, bubbled a little out of the top, pushed up the sleeve of his top and jabbed his good arm. Billy also took a blister pack of tablets, stuffed it in the backpack.

Waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs was Nuts.

‘Not quick enough,’ Nuts said and walked away.

Billy leapt down the remaining steps and veered in a new direction.

They jogged along a narrow passageway into a change room. Billy flicked on the lights. A wooden bench seat divided the room. On the right wall were showers, on the left wall were lockers. Billy went to the far end locker. Inside it were his clothes. The singlet top from the first day Adam had met him was balled in with other dirty tops and pants. Billy took the backpack from Adam, unzipped it, unloaded the last of the stolen food onto the floor and began choosing which of his clothes to take, cramming them into the backpack.

Brother Hayden walked in.

Around Brother Hayden, Billy turned into the most disturbing of all the people he could be. He played at being frightened, and he was so good at it that Adam had to keep checking his face, to be sure it was just an act. Billy swallowed, tugged the sides of his top. Brother Hayden had come from church. He was dressed in a black robe with a red sash around his shoulders and a white cord around his waist. Adam stepped over the bench and stood on the shower side of the room. He was giving Billy room to attack the man.

Brother Hayden stopped a few steps within the doorway. He didn’t look at Adam. He wasn’t ignoring him, he was pretending he didn’t see him, and he was so good at
that
act, Adam did feel invisible. Adam took a few more steps back, stopped at the edge of the sloping drain. The air in the room was cold. It smelled of damp towels. A showerhead dripped. Billy put the backpack in the locker and shut the locker door. There was no window in the change room. Something told Adam that the steel door they’d come through, the only entrance and exit to the building, had been locked.

Hayden turned and motioned up the hallway, the way he’d come. He began to leave. But Billy sat down on the bench seat.

For a while there was a standoff – Billy staying put, Brother Hayden wanting the conversation somewhere else, in private. It meant that Brother Hayden did see Adam there. And it meant that Billy was also pretending: he can’t have been too scared if he was willing to be so stubborn. There were no sounds from out in the gym.

Brother Hayden began to talk, stopped himself, cupped his face, looked along the lockers, around the room,
almost
looked at Adam – his gaze came across, the barest fraction from settling on him, then slid away.

‘The young man in the hospital,’ Brother Hayden said at last, ‘the one you said for me to look out for. Do you remember him?’

Adam looked at Billy, waiting for him to look across. He didn’t.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s troubling because he’s left the hospital, and no one has seen him since. Have you seen him?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘People are saying that you’ve been with him. I spoke to Sal last night. She tells me you had him at the park.’

‘Not like that, I didn’t.’

‘That’s not what Sal said. Little Benny too . . . It is what you do, Billy.’

He shook his head.

‘You haven’t told him your usual lies, have you?’

Straight-faced, Billy answered, ‘I’ve tried some new and unusual lies this time.’

Brother Hayden pressed his fingers to his temples. He closed his eyes and rubbed. He smoothed his robes. ‘Have a think. I’m not standing here having this conversation with you.’ A cold smile lifted one side of his mouth. ‘I’m truly not. Someone has to be blamed and it could easily be you. Asking me to look out for him at the hospital, involving me, was a foolish exercise. I am simply saying if you’ve done this deliberately, you’ve made a big mistake. If you think the limelight is going to help you, you’re wrong.’ He took a step to go.

Billy lowered to kneel, both knees on the concrete, his back rounded, his head hanging low. If it was to stop Brother Hayden, it worked. He paused to stare at him.

‘You don’t even know who he is, do you?’ Brother Hayden said. ‘You need to quickly separate yourself from this. No one can be associated with you, can they, Billy? You’d best let that boy return to his family on his own. Get up.’

Still kneeling, Billy said, ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

‘Don’t do this.’

‘I have to tell you.’

Brother Hayden eyed him harshly. There was cheek just in the way Billy knelt there. But it was as though Brother Hayden couldn’t resist.

‘What?’

‘It’s just,’ Billy scratched the top of his head, ‘well, out of all the Brothers, you’ve always been the one . . .’ Billy looked up and smiled sweetly, ‘with the ugliest cock. Plain fucking ugly. If I had a dick like that I’d look down each day and wonder what the hell I did to deserve it. I wonder if that’s what you pray to God for? A cock that’s not like a strangled maggot. Is that what you pray for, Brother Hayden?’

Brother Hayden said, after a second or two, ‘It’s all going to come back on you. You’re vulgar and offensive. You’re delinquent and immoral. When you’re not talking filth and selling yourself on the street, you’re taking boys and pushing them to it. That’s what will come out. Anything else from you, or from anyone who has been in your company, will be seen for what it really is – lies to save your skin.’

‘Fair enough. But God’s honour, your dick is a maggot of a thing.’

Brother Hayden stormed forward. He grabbed Billy by the hair, leaned down and hissed in his face, ‘It’s not in your control. It’s in our control. Say one word about the Mission and you will drown in what we pour on you.’

‘Promise? Because you know I love those water games.’

Brother Hayden’s lip curled. ‘You haven’t set this up. You’re too stupid.’

Billy put his hand on the Brother’s knee and slid it in between the folds of the robe. Brother Hayden stumbled back, swatting Billy away.

‘Get off me!’

In an athletic, energised move, Billy got to his feet without using his hands, went from kneeling to squatting in one swift muscular motion. Getting up like that meant he didn’t need to say anything or act in a threatening way – the ease, the casualness of his strength was enough. The Brother’s eyes widened. It was as though he’d never seen Billy move that way before, or seen him stand at full height. Did it only dawn on the man then that he’d come to a gymnasium to find Billy, a place with two boxing rings in it? What had he been thinking? Hayden was strange. He moved through the world in the oddest fashion, as though he was untouchable. Maybe in some places it worked, but not in the locker room, not on that day, not with Billy.

Billy grabbed Brother Hayden by the throat, walked him backwards, until he got to the concrete pillar beside the door, and he slammed him against it. Held him there with one hand. The Brother had clearly never experienced that. Not from Billy. If he had he wouldn’t have pulled Billy’s hair a moment ago, or hissed in his face or spoken to him the way he had. Brother Hayden’s expression was now blank. Billy’s example of keeping low, keeping it in, ducking and weaving, until you explode and surprise them, was happening then. He didn’t hit Brother Hayden, though. He didn’t choke him, not properly. He made him cough, partly crushed his windpipe, squashed his body to the wall; he got right up in his face.

‘Another thing – you gotta do some exercise or get outdoors a bit – you always fucking stink. I don’t know what it is, but you always smell like you’re decomposing. I know – let’s fix that.’

He dragged Brother Hayden by the hair, around the bench and over to the showers. The man was coughing, gasping. Billy turned on the cold tap. He kicked the Brother in under it. He spluttered, slipped under the stream. He went to crawl out but Billy kicked him back under.

‘Not till you’re clean.’

Brother Hayden sat on the bench seat in his saturated robe. He shivered, coughed and recovered. Billy went to the locker and carried on choosing things to take. Water pooled under the bench seat. Brother Hayden touched his throat. Billy finished, shut the locker door, zipped up the bag, and winked.

‘Always fun catching up, Haydo.’

At the door, Billy took a set of keys from his shorts pocket and rattled them. Brother Hayden felt his pockets through his wet robe.

‘I’ll drop it back when I’m done. Keep up the prayers; you never know.’

H
og and Nuts weren’t downstairs, perhaps not upstairs either. The lights in the building had been turned off. The steel door was locked. Deadlocked. They went to the kitchen and Billy took the key hanging on the cabinet door. Adam saw that the photos of Billy had been taken from the pin board. Thumbtacks were scattered on the floor beneath the board. One photo of him had been missed, though, the one in amongst the other pictures, where his gloved hands were resting on his head, his mouthguard smile.

The day had got warmer and windier. Brother Hayden’s car was a white sedan. The interior smelled of citrus air freshener. A small scented pine tree was hanging from the column gearshift. Brother Hayden’s satchel was on the passenger seat, along with a newspaper. Adam sat both things on the floor. He put his seatbelt on. Billy backed the vehicle up. The motor whined with the speed at which he did it. His sneakers squelched on the pedals.

Out on a straight stretch of road, as he drove, Billy tuned the radio to different stations, listening for a second or two to each song or to the announcers before he turned the dial to the next channel. His driving was erratic because of it.

‘Is that the paper?’

Adam unbuckled and leaned down to get it. On the front page was a sketch of a boy with a heavy side fringe, short back and sides, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, a small plaster on his forehead, thin lips. He wasn’t smiling. It was Adam. Adam laid the paper sideways on his lap, so Billy could see it as he drove. Billy glanced across. The heading, printed in capitals, was three words and a question mark. Billy looked from the paper to the traffic.

‘What does it say?’

Billy didn’t answer.

Adam turned the paper around to face him. On the next page was a second sketch, of a man – dark skin, dark eyes, a broad face and a wide, flat nose, full lips and curly hair. He was scowling. Billy looked across at it. He pulled a pained expression and looked to the road again.

‘Is that meant to be you?’

Even if they’d drawn the picture with Billy smiling, it was still completely wrong. Billy wasn’t as dark, his eyebrows weren’t as thick, his jaw wasn’t heavy, his hair wasn’t as curly and his nose was not half as wide.

‘Why have they drawn you like that?’

Billy didn’t answer.

Along with the sketch was a photograph of a toddler dressed in overalls, and a picture of a riverbank. The next page had more pictures of the toddler, sitting on the bottom of a slide, on the hip of a woman, holding hands with an older child – a girl in a dress. The biggest photograph was of the toddler standing on the lap of a young man; the little boy’s arms were outstretched, the man was helping him balance, the boy was smiling, chubby-faced, the man had light-brown hair and sideburns, he wasn’t looking at the camera but off to one side. The man was, Adam realised, his real father.

Billy hadn’t switched off the radio after searching. The station was broadcasting the cricket. The announcer said, ‘We’ll go now to an update on the unfolding Market Boy search.’

Billy switched the radio off.

Adam turned to the next page. The photographs from that point on didn’t seem related. He turned to the family pictures again and lifted the paper close to study each photograph. The car listed around a bend. Billy braked hard at a stop sign. Adam studied his parents’ faces, tried to put a finger on what he felt. Couldn’t. Seeing them wasn’t helping him remember them. Billy accelerated. Adam kept the paper open on his lap. His mother was holding Adam on her hip like the boy had been carried in the supermarket. Adam had no memory of being carried that way. He wished he did. They drove over a bridge and passed a line of police cars. Billy didn’t talk; he kept snatching his hand from the wheel to scratch his head, or he’d reach back to rub between his shoulder blades. His breathing was irregular.

Heading up the hill to the caravan park, Adam closed the paper.

He took it into Scotty’s with him.

Billy had the backpack. He tripped up the steps.

‘Scotty!’

The TV was on in the lounge room. The radio was on in the kitchen. Adam put the newspaper on the kitchen table. He opened it back up to the page with the family photos.

‘Scotty!’

The toilet flushed. Scotty came out, wound up, ready to go, drawing in a breath and about to let fly. He was hoicking up one side of his shorts. But he saw Adam and he stopped. It was probably both their faces that made him change what he’d been about to say. Scotty closed his mouth and pushed his glasses up his nose. Billy put his hands together on top of his head, no boxing gloves on, no mouthguard in.

‘I’m fucked.’