The Turning

7

7

He hadn’t realised that he was hungry until he saw the food. He ate two of the sandwiches, feeling bad that he was woofing down so much of the old bloke’s ham and cheese after what had happened, yet unable to refuse the sight of it. Brett sat across from him at his small dining nook, a table which seemed comparably tiny in contrast to the immense high building around them. His hands were folded and he watched on solemnly as the boy ate. Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Ponies were bellowing out Different Drum from a record player on the kitchen bench, music crackling from a set of speakers located at either side. At the far end of the bench where the sink was, a mountain of plates and cutlery were stacked, flies buzzing about and occasionally landing to pick at the scraps. Fragments of an awful smell wafting over from the sink, yet in his hunger he was oblivious to it.

“You eat like a horse,” Brett said, nudging his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He himself had warmed a tin of Harvest stew and while he had eaten a few bites, picking at the rest, it sat before him now while the flies buzzed and hovered above the bowl. He was almost through a long neck of beer and was belching now, eyes fixed on the kid, mildly fascinated in spite of his recurring frown.

Nothing was said during the meal and as soon as he'd finished, Brett took the plate, shuffled to the sink and stared at the tower of china plates. He slid it onto the bench and wandered back, somewhat reluctantly. Kyle surveyed the brightly lit kitchen, a fairly standard affair composed of a single bench, a sink, tiles and a window that faced the backyard and junkyard beyond. He could see a crest of moon hovering in the window, the world beneath it glowing a deep blackish blue, stars twinkling overhead as though they'd been dumped and dispersed. Brett fell into his chair with a creak.

“My hips ‘re hurtin’ like a bastard t-night,” he uttered. Kyle began to nod as though he understood and shared the plights of the seventy-year-old lifestyle completely.

"Well, I suppose now that I've fed ya, I can ask what I've been wantin' to ever since I brought you in," he said. Kyle's contentment vanished and he realised quickly that he should say something, break the edgy quiet that had fallen over them. The old man was looking at him, waiting for the kid to speak, to encourage him to continue on with what he had to say. But words had utterly abandoned him and all he could think about now was the old man's hip, as absurd as it was, the way it rolled like a loose cog under his pants.

“Well, what were you doing out the back of my house?”

Kyle licked his lips. The image of the boxes leaning against the shed flooded through his mind.

“Your boxes,” Kyle muttered. “I saw some in your yard out there and I thought you… mightn’t have wanted them.”

Brett’s expression crumbled into a frown.

“Boxes?”

The kid nodded.

“I dunno if I believe you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because… why? Why boxes? Sounds like an excuse to me. Were you after money?”

Kyle shook his head. “No way.”

“You locked my dog out.”

“Yeah.”

Brett shook his head, searching the boy’s eyes.

“I’m really, really sorry Mr Stevens, I wasn’t thinking-“
“You outsmarted my dog so you could get to my stuff. You outsmarted Buster.”

“It’s not like what you think. I didn’t mean to make him look stupid. I was gonna let him back in-”

“My pit-bull, my bloody-“

“-I’m sorry.”

“You deserve a medal,” the old man said, and then suddenly cried a hoarse cackle of laughter. Kyle flinched, heart skipping a beat. He watched the old man down the rest of his beer and shuffle to the bin where he dumped the bottle, glass jangling. He opened the fridge and dragged out another, unscrewing the cap with a hiss 
“Well, what’ere you gonna do with me boxes then?” Brett asked.

“Ah… I was gonna build a fort.”

“A what?”

“Fort. Like a cubby house.”

“I dunno,” the old man said, shrugging and pouring lager into his stein. He raised it, watched Kyle with anticipation.

“Clink it,” Brett said. “Haven’t ya ever cheers glasses before, you know when you celebrate Christmas and that?”

“Oh, yeah,” Kyle muttered and raised his water. Glasses chimed and Kyle took a sip, watching the old man down the long neck, mesmerised. Brett set the empty bottle down, pulled a battered pack of smokes from his pocket and set them on the table.

“You want one?” he asked, slipping the filter between his lips.

"I don't smoke," Kyle said, folding his arms and wondering how long he would need to humour this bloke before he could go home. He watched the old man strike a match and bring it to his face, the warm glow revealing the extent of his age in detail: glasses framing hollow eyes, liver spots crisscrossing his cheeks, one crooked, misshapen nose. The sulphur itched at Kyle's nostrils, threatening a sneeze. The air was thickening with smoke. He sat back, peering at the boy.

"Yeah I know you," Brett said. "I know a fair bit actually, with all the bullshit they carry on about round ‘ere. You'd think listening' to ‘em that you were a frigging arch-criminal. Lot of hotheads, some don't know how to vent themselves ‘cept talk s**t about other people."

“Do they?” Kyle muttered sheepishly. Of course, he had long been accustomed to the vibes of what most people thought of him. He had always combated this by thinking that adults were full of s**t anyway, boring people with boring lives who worked all day and slept all night and lived in this hole in the ground. But hearing it confirmed aloud sent a twang of remorse through him. Again he wondered how it had gotten this way. He was just a kid for god sakes. For how long would he be reacquainted with this old stigma?

“You’re the one that set fire to your mum and dads place last year aren’t ya?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. He supposed he could have lied, told the old man that he was thinking of someone else, but that wouldn’t have worked. The old man knew that it was him and to lie would be only to further shame himself and worsen the situation. Brett’s stern features, set into that wild net of wrinkles, his blue eyes fixed and piercing, made Kyle feel very small indeed. He was not just an old man after all, he was an adult. And a hard one, maybe even as hard as his father.

“Why’d you do it?” Brett asked. Kyle shrugged.

“I dunno, some stupid reason. Wanted to have a fire, something to do. Just got out of hand.”

“Yeah but on a warm night? You could have burned the whole bloody town down, not that that would have been a first.”

Brett blinked, wincing as though realising he had said something he shouldn’t have or had recalled a memory that was unpleasant.

"I'm sorry about trespassing," Kyle said. "I just wanted some boxes. I didn't want to touch anything or break anything, just thought you wouldn't want them. No one ever seems to want cardboard that's laying about."

“Well, funny that, I do need ‘em,” he replied. Kyle’s stomach sank, guilt brimming at the back of his throat like acid indigestion.

“Sorry,” he muttered. The old man sat his glass down, burped.

“Well, I would have given you some boxes. Those ones out there I keep for the dog to sleep on. But I’ve got others I grabbed for the move. You probably seen I got diddly squat in the house didn’t ya?”

Kyle nodded. “Where are you moving?”

Brett took a swig of beer, and smiled, peering at the ashtray.

“Dunno yet.”

“How can you move away without knowing where you’re going?”

“Easy. Back-packers do it all the time. Yeah, I s’pose I don’t know but then I’ve thought about going up to Byron to live with my daughter. ‘Cept I hate them hippies. Heap’a stinking dope smokers, tree hugging bastards, singing peace and love and shaking their d***s. Everyone thinks they’re John Lennon these days but John Lennon was John Lennon and he was shot so that’s peace and love for ya.”

He sighed, scratching his forehead. “I’ll figure it out I suppose. I dunno.”

Kyle, who had no idea who John Lennon was or why anyone would want to shake their privates, nodded as though understanding completely. Brett took a long gulp and re-lit his cigarette.

“Why so far from Wilton? You don’t like it here?”

“I hate it,” Brett said. A few flecks of spittle struck Kyle’s cheeks. “And I have my reasons”

“What reasons?”

Brett had the urge to tell the boy to mind his own business but couldn't quite bring himself to. It wasn't like telling a grown person to shove it, in which case they probably would have shrugged and left him alone, but this was a kid and kids kept asking and badgering until you either told them or killed them. They were never satisfied with the short, dubious answers made by adults- if anything it would only ignite his curious. Maybe he had let the cat partially out of the bag now. He sighed and put the cigarette out. He had had the equivalent of a six-pack and if he were sober he might have been able to talk around the question more easily. He might have been able to shrug it off or lie even. It wouldn't have been the first time.

Except, what stopped him was the realisation that if he lied to the kid it would, in effect, be like killing him. It would be like what he had done during the war. He had left that three-year-old Vietnamese boy with his right leg blown off in a hut that had caught fire and had been burning while the yanks had filled the jungle with bullets. Instead of grabbing the kid and hurrying to safety, he had left him to bleed and burn to death. Like so many things from that time, he'd never spoken of it nor forgotten it. He closed his eyes and tried to put it out of his mind. As soon as one thing came back it was usually followed with a succession of mini-movies on the topic, an endless film reel, and trying to keep them at bay, to pack them back into their lockboxes was like trying to herd a hundred cattle into a single pen.

Maybe it was this, an effort to wash away those old nightmares from his mind's eye which had led him to start talking. He supposed he could do it without too much consequence. What difference would it make anyway? Should he live through the next few months, perhaps he would be able to tell people about what had happened here in the town of Wilton. If the boy was smart he might even be able to provide some forewarning. Though Stephens doubted it. Whatever was going on here was happening fast. He could feel it, almost taste it on the warm breeze. Wilton was quieter than normal. A lot quieter. Dogs had stopped barking and cars had ceased moving back and forth out the front of his house.

Cause they walk, he thought. They walk at night now, that's why there's no cars.

He reckoned the boy would think of him as a crazed loon, which was far more likely. But what difference would it make? Either way, it wouldn't throw a spanner into the works. So he decided to tell him.