The Turning

5

5

Barry Davis certainly wouldn’t.

Stepping into the shop and seeing Barry puttering behind the counter and glancing at the clock made him feel as though the balding man had been expecting him. In some ways he had. He knew it was school break and had wondered when Dennis the Menace was going to pop in and terrorise him and his customers. He was six-foot-two with a swollen, beefy face the bright red of a tomato. His arms were thick and round like a gorilla, deeply tanned and covered with a wild sprawl of black hair.

A seething blackness crept into his stomach when he saw that it was Kyle Yates and that he had a curious vague grin running from ear to ear. It was the smile of a youth after they have accomplished something particularly nasty which will only to be found out about later. Barry nodded at the boy, unsmiling. What was the little arsonist up to today, he wondered, straightening. He knew the kid was twelve, four years shy of fifteen when the s**t would really hit the fan and he’d be on his learners permit and driving around, doing donuts and flogging road signs from his shop. All just to spite him of course. Barry had had an eye on Kyle for a while, even before the fire of last year. Whenever his mother had brought him in he had run amuck in his shop, knocking over magazine stands and bottles off the isles. One time he had driven finger holes in Barry’s watermelons when Barry hadn’t been looking and he had dumped twelve of them as a result.

Davis scratched his hand for the fifth time that morning, clawing at it just below the thumb knuckle. Some bloody thing had bitten him while he'd been running stock from downstairs minutes before. Now it had swelled and was being to itch.

Instead of his usual manner of heading straight into the second aisle where the comics and magazines were, Kyle began to approach the counter with timid reluctance. Normally he’d duck out of sight to sabotage things a little before buying a drink or a bag of chips, and by the time he’d left Barry would discover his markings. He’d put the comics in the wrong place or leave them on an entirely different shelf, perhaps fold the pages back and get gritty fingermarks on the covers. Davis supposed he was probably doing what most kids did at that age, subtly checking out the copies of Penthouse Pet or Hustler. He couldn’t have cared less about any of that, not when they lived in the age of computers that gave you anything from naked girls to recipes for bombs.

He recalled a month or so ago when the kid had gone down there and had spent almost half an hour carousing the four small aisles, and in the back of his mind Barry had known he was up to something. He'd been counting the till, unable to move from his spot, however. Kyle had finally wandered back to the counter with a bottle of lemonade in one hand. He'd paid without saying much which should have been the first clue because Kyle Yates liked to spill his life story to anyone. Then he had hurried out a little too quickly, coins jangling in his pocket, and he had closed the till with a sharp rattle of change before darting down the end to see what the boy had done.

At the base of the racks was a coarse, dark green rug that his wife had brought from a car-boot sale in Tormon for $2.50. She had insisted on having it laid somewhere nice in the store some years back, thinking that it would add a decorative touch to what was otherwise a clumsy, ordinary town supermarket. So he had laid it down in front of the magazine racks to make her happy. That rug had now been smeared black and brown with dog-s**t. He’d been able to smell it half-way along the aisle and, peering down, gaping, he hadn’t known whether to shout or laugh. He chose the former, especially when he realised Kyle had smeared it across the floorboards leading into the next aisle as well. The boy had trod in dog-s**t somewhere in his travels and had decided that the best way to get rid of it would be to leave it with Davis. As a result, the rug had gone in the big bin out back much to his wife’s dismay, and as soon as he had told her what had happened she had scoffed and had wondered aloud why they couldn’t just ban him. He wished they could, but then his mother would kick up a fuss just like the way she had with Lynette Rose and everyone knew how that had turned out.

“What can I do for you?" said Barry, a world of warning in his tone. Kyle took no notice of his vehemence, and that was perhaps one of the boy's strengths that Barry found nonetheless troubling and infuriating about him. The kid didn't seem perturbed when faced with resentment and aggression, and certainly, he had been as cool and calm as a summer breeze when Barry had finally gotten around to having a go at him about the matt the next time he'd popped in. His stupid little smile, a knowing smile Barry thought, was persistent under whatever circumstance and it boiled his blood each time.

“Mr. Davis, I don’t suppose you got any spare boxes lying’ around?” he said, glancing at the refrigerators filled with soft drinks. He was sweaty and out of breath and Barry had a mental image of the boy rubbing his gritty fingers all over the glass. He’d be dirty, no doubt, after being out at the tip doing god knows what. Barry’s eyes followed him, his blood simmering but escalating quickly as the boy opened the fridge and stood there glancing from rack to rack, muttering, “What do I want? What will I have today?” Barry could feel the refrigerated air billowing over him, the equivalent of burning money fluttering in his face

“Don’t stand there with that frigging door open!”

Humming, the kid selected a lemonade and allowed the door to bang closed. He sat it on the counter and then rooted through one pocket for his money.

“Mr Davis, do you-”

“I’m thinking ‘bout it,” Davis muttered. It was a lie of course; what he was really thinking about was the satisfaction of booting this little s**t up the ass with one of his steel-cap boots. It was Barry’s belief that Australia would die, slow and harsh and sometime in the near future, and it would be at the hand of little s**t-kickers like this.

“Whaddya want boxes for? Something to light up?” Barry scoffed. Kyle smiled, rolled his eyes.

“No,” he said, chuckling. “I need it for fort making.’

"Fart-making?" Barry boomed. The kid burst out laughing. Barry shook his head, popping open the register with a clang and sliding the kid's money off the bench, his face glowing.

“Oh yeah? What’re you want ‘em for? I’m not stupid, you know, I’m not giving you nothing unless you tell me in case you wanna do something s**t-for-brains with it.”

“I just want to make farts. I mean forts.”

Kyle held it in as well as he could but there was something about Mr. Davis’s screwed up expression, both bewildered and angry, that made him want to bawl with laughter.

I know how I’ll make you fart, I’ll jump up and down on your f*****g head, then we’ll see who’s laughing, Barry thought, almost muttering the words aloud under his breath. His hand gripped the bench so hard that it creaked slightly, though Kyle didn’t hear it.

“So you wanna make a cubby house with it. Right, that’s all ya had to say. But if I hear ya went burning the bush down with a bit of ripped cardboard, you’ll be dealing with me. Right?”

Kyle's humour evaporated. "Mr. Davis, I don’t light fires.”

“Yeah, right, we all know that,” Davis muttered, wandering out back with the slow, mournful grace of one who has worked his job for far too long.

He happened upon two or three Steggles chicken boxes and a partially soggy carton that that morning’s bananas had arrived in. He slammed them on the counter, grunting and then sat on a stool, scratching at his hand absent-mindedly. Kyle knew immediately that they were no good; the chicken boxes were too small with no flaps to tape up, and the banana box was soggy with mildew. Still, he took them off the counter so as to be polite, smiling.

“Don’t you forget what I told you,” Barry said, pointing a finger at him like an old sausage. It occurred to Kyle for a moment that Davis was looking the way an animal in a shelter would. There was an aura of near despair about him and his eyes were rimmed with deep, dark blotches. The temple in his forehead was clearly visible, throbbing, while sweat ran down his face, matting what hair he had to his forehead. To Kyle, he looked sick.

“Remember what I say. If I hear anything funny, you’ll be hearing from me,” Davis called, but his anger was giving way to amusement as he watched the boy try to juggle the boxes and the lemonade bottle.

“Careful,” Davis muttered, chuckling. Now it was his turn to have a laugh.

The kid stopped at the door, juggled cardboard and then pried the door open with his foot. The hinges squeaked in the still afternoon as Kyle slipped out. A moment later, Davis heard the imminent ring of glass shattering on the pavement, as familiar to him as the rattle of keys in a lock. He folded his big arms and laughed.

Outside, Kyle watched the lemonade fizz and branch downwards along the cracks in the footpath and into the gutter. He considered going in, asking Davis for another but knew it wouldn’t be worth his time. His drink was gone, that week’s allowance wasted.

“Bugger,” Kyle sighed and glanced around. He dropped the boxes on the pavement in a heap and started towards his bike, leaning against one white paint-flaked mailbox. He stopped, regarding the front door of the shop for a moment. Then he popped on his helmet and took off peddling, never looking back in case Davis should come out, yelling. Considering that Davis hadn’t bothered to help him out the door, he vowed not to clean the mess that had been left. He was thirteen and had a good understanding of what was fair, perhaps the best he ever would. At twelve, it seemed fundamentally important to know when you were right and where you are wrong, and where you stood amongst the adults.

He crossed Giles Street, the main artery that ran through town past the broken down, forgotten businesses, and peddled around the corner and out of sight. He came upon the back lane that ran behind what little shop-fronts there were in Wilton and glided onto it. His upper thighs and calves ached the dull ache of worn muscle and his ass was once again resuming its numb, board-like feel. Having not had a drink, his mouth was now sandpaper, his tongue coarse and rough as it swiped at the roof his mouth. He peered over fences and into backyards. An old woman was listening to her headphones and watering her dying plants, oblivious to him and the world, and next door some young kids were splashing and playing in an inflatable pool while a very large, middle-aged woman hanging out her laundry, squinting up into the afternoon sun. Next door to her, an old Beetle Volkswagen was shrouded in the semi-darkness of a dingy old shed, a pair of work-boots and some blue, paint-splattered pants poking out from beneath the grill. An aged hand was reaching for a spanner from the pile of tools set to one side, cricket commentary reverberating through the shed. To Kyle it looked as though the car was in the process of devouring him.

The lane led him down two blocks of houses before opening out onto Tiffard Street, not far from the temporarily abandoned school and still three blocks from his own home on the far south edge of town. This was followed by the vacant block that served as the schools weedy, yellowed cricket pitch and then the Wilton Community Swimming Pool. He thought of how he was banned from the pool and felt the old tug of guilt in his stomach. He really hadn’t meant to bomb anyone, there had just been so many in the pool at once and he had wanted to jump in, not slide in slow and easy like the way some elderly women did, goggles and head-caps and all. It had been harder dealing with her than Mr Davis when he was pissy because at least at one time she had been quite nice to him. The fact that her and his mother had gotten into such a huge argument and now didn’t so much as look at each other up the main street, didn’t help things. He reckoned that if she hadn’t been there, he might have been able to apologise and bury the hatchet, perhaps save himself from being banned. But no, his mum had needed to make things worse, and as a result, he would probably never look the pool lady in the eye again.

He made his way past Brett Stephens's old junkyard, what was commonly referred to as Wilton's second dump. Stephens owned the old commonwealth bank building, what had at one time been Wilton's only bank and which had long been renovated and converted into a home. Stephen's pit-bull was lying in what space there was amongst the dusty, earth-bitten terrain of old machinery, and Kyle didn't see it raise its head, nor glanced in time to see it bolt to its feet and start hurtling towards him. It struck the fence, bounced off and reared up again, jaws gnashing, spittle flying, ears pulled back in malice. Kyle cried out, twisting the handlebar sharply to the right in an effort to flee and ran fair into the corrugated iron fence across the narrow lane. He watched, fascinated while the animal leaped and growled and bit at the wiry brackets, blood oozing from its gums and he suddenly thought of what his mother had once said about most of the dogs in town, how they were old and cranky because their owners were either at work or at the pub or at home watching TV and paying little to no attention to them. During summer, people didn't want to have to walk their dogs in the heat and by the time twilight had come on and the land had begun to cool, these same people were either drinking beer or having barbecues or down at the club or pub, feeding the Poky machines their pay-checks. The pets were chained up at home, left to become more and more restless. And when they barked, they were punished and then they became angry and hateful. His father had chipped in on his mother's opinion, saying that that outlook was rubbish, and he himself thought it was a bit glum and depressing, but he had seen enough dogs tied up in the yards of the neighbourhood houses to know that it might have held some truth.

The pit-bull followed him along the fence line as he walked his bike along the gravel, having calmed a little yet with a growl still rising from deep inside like some caged, wild monster. The dog was just another hating member of the township, its bared teeth no better than the uncertain smiles of those who saw him on his red bike. They expected the worst from him, and perhaps so did this dog. Kyle diverted his eyes and concentrated on the road. When he looked back once more to check that the mutt hadn’t somehow gotten out, he spotted the collection of collapsed boxes leaning against the side of a small, demountable shed. He squinted, shading his eyes with a hand. There had to be at least ten there, stacked against each other.

Kyle surveyed the lane, searching for adults or other kids who might have been heading into town, but there was no one around. The woman next door had gone inside and the kids in the pool had fallen quiet, talking idly and occasionally splashing. The pit-bull, still growling, was the only other being aware of his presence. Kyle began to contemplate how he might go about getting into Brett Stephens yard without being caught by Brett or eaten alive by this mangy mutt.

He slipped his backpack off his shoulders and sat down on the road. Inside he had an array of paraphernalia for which only boys prior to adolescence could find amusing enough to stow away. There were cigarette lighters, a slingshot he had made using the fork of a gum branch, some slugs for a sawn-off slug-gun nicked from his father's shed and which he played with occasionally while both parents were at work. He had rubber bands, he had paperclips that he had unwound and had figured might be handy for picking locks (though considering his reputation, he'd steer clear of ever needing to do so), a bike pump for his tyres, thumbtacks, old MNM's which had lost their colour and had seemingly begun to sprout hairs. There were old rusty coins, a lined A4 exercise book with scribbled plans for his forts and other amateur constructions. He had a pocket knife he had found out at the tip which he prayed to god his mother would never find. Somehow the six inches of cold, lethal steel seemed a lot worse than a few slug-gun pellets or a slingshot.

Despite his treasures, he found nothing that could help him in this situation. He zipped the bag up, twisted around to check for anyone approaching the vicinity. The dog had ceased barking and growling now but was leered through the fence, awaiting Kyle's next move. Kyle's eyes focused on the boxes leaning against the shed, a gust of dry air rapping them lightly against the corrugated iron wall. They were perfect for what he needed. But they were in Brett Stephen's yard.

Brett Stephens was something of a local legend, one which circulated through the tiny hamlet community like a bad smell. According to Kyle's dad, he had been in the Vietnam War despite the fact that he never came out on Anzac Day when they would march down Giles Street in his school colours as the loud, boomed instructors voice sounded from a stereo player in the boot of a car, leading them to the memorial site at the town park. Local speculation was that while at war he had had something go wrong upstairs, namely due to seeing so many of mates killed. When he had returned, he had moved to Sydney and had apparently gotten into a lot of trouble for drink-driving. He had never really had a job, aside from his tour of duty in the late 60s. Kyle's dad had said that it didn't matter if he had no job-the army had a responsibility to compensate veterans after any war.

Brett's father had owned land on the outskirts of Wilton, which was how Brett had ended up moving here in the first place. There had been a two thousand acre block of land just outside of town, some of it overlooking the Murrumbidgee River. It had been a tranquil spot, only the house out there had been old and reduced to a paint flaking ruin. It had burned down during the fire of 1988 which had come close to destroying the town. Brett Stephens had been one of the firemen. He had managed to save a woman and a little girl from a house before the fire had swept through, but for the most part a lot of people on farms had perished, including children. Some who had been present from that time recalled that whatever had been wrong with Brett Stephens upstairs had worsened after the fire and that he had been a recluse ever since. He had sold his fathers two thousand acres of smouldering, barren land to overseas investors before purchasing the old Commonwealth Bank building in town and converting it into a home. And there he remained. Nowadays he was regarded as a recluse who barely ventured out. If anyone in town ever did happen to see him hobbling up the street towards the pub, they wished in some ways they hadn't. His clothes were always speckled with vomit or occasionally blood, his eyes blood-shot and barely open as though he had been served a couple of rough blows to the face over the years. He drank constantly and had a severe walking disorder brought about by an undiagnosed hip-problem.

Kyle had overheard all of this from his father one night as he had spoken to his mother who had seen the old man in the post office, yelling at Stanley Price, the owner, about his mail having been lost in transit. She had mentioned to Ben about how she had never seen him around before. When he had overheard his father speaking about this, Kyle had asked if it was because he had been shot over in the war. His father had shaken his head.

"No, it's a car crash I heard. But he's probably never had it looked into properly so he walks like that everywhere he goes."

Kyle saw the obstacle in his way of the boxes as being this: that the only method of getting to them would have to be to go around to the front and ring the doorbell to ask, a task that required considerable balls considering he had no idea what sort of shambling thing might greet him there. After all, he had heard a bit about Mr Stephens but had never actually seen the man, let alone met him. His name was synonymous with legend in the schoolyard and even the adults tended to treat his subject as something like taboo. No one seemed to want anything to do with him. He was, in his mother’s own words, a dark stain in the fabric of the community, and if that was true then there were a fair few dark stains in Wilton. Himself included, he supposed.

The breeze picked up and sent whirly columns of brown dust spinning along the back lane, dissipating almost as soon as they’d begun. The peppercorn branches rattled and whispered and amongst it all there was not a hint of a car engine anywhere. The town was silent.

He sighed, played a reel in his head about what he anticipated happening if he knocked on Stephen Brett’s door. Would some old bloke dressed like a scarecrow step out holding a gun, screaming at him to go away? Or was he just exaggerating? Didn’t that sum up the sort of man everyone in Wilton spoke of, a crazed loon, mad on the drink? When Kyle thought of mad people, the word dangerous blazed across his mind in red iron letters because crazy people sometimes killed people. Especially kids. They liked to do things to kids and then kill them so nobody found out. That was what constable Craig Morris had told the pupils of Wilton Public when he had given his sermon on stranger-danger earlier that year. They were the sort of people that followed kid’s home, always asking if they wanted a lift, driving slow, the passenger windows rolling down, inviting children to an early death.

Mr Stephens seemed to fit that category. If he thought he was going to go to the front and ring the frigging doorbell he was mad. Kyle watched the dog and thought, but is it as mad as trying to get past him?

How would he keep that dog from killing him? The dog wasn’t tied up, allowed to roam wild throughout the yard. There was a collar around his neck like a medal, the dog’s name inscribed: BUSTER. The name itself seemed to sum it up perfectly as it gawked up at him, a name that conjured images of crumbling cinder blocks and demolition derby freeways, shattered glass, blood and bone splintering between toothy jaws.

Kyle leaned his bike against the corrugated fence across the lane from Stephens’s yard. Then he walked until the chain-link curved and run back up towards the back wall of Stephen’s building. He saw what he was looking for, a side gate, beaten outwards so much that it hung precariously at an angle. A network of repairs had been woven into the frame of the gate where Buster had obviously chewed his way through over the years. Beside Brett Stephen’s property was a vacant lot with a bed of grass and weeds before a high brick wall. Kyle supposed that he wouldn’t have bothered walking through it if the grass had been knee-height instead of only reaching his ankles. Still, there was a good chance a snake could be lying in there somewhere, perhaps cooling in the shade of the late afternoon. He saw that the vegetation thinned around the edges and he supposed he could stick to that so as to keep watchful for snakes. More than likely there were none.

Kyle ventured into the vacant block and swiftly glanced both ways, paranoid of spectators. What he was doing felt wrong and was wrong in many ways. He would be trespassing and he was only able to justify it in the same way as he had justified going through his mother's bag for the key to the laundry cupboard on the night of the fire. He hadn't even touched her purse, had just wanted the keys which had seemed like such a mundane item. In this case, it seemed the same, just some cardboard which he thought the old man would never miss. Still, if Constable Morris happened down this back-lane or if anyone else saw him and phoned the local cop, he would be in a world of trouble indeed. He took a deep breath, checked again for anyone who might be watching, and started forward.

When he got to the gate he saw that the padlock was bolted. He opened his bag and took out one of his paperclips, the big one he had used to scratch his name on the side of his house yesterday: KYLE WAS HERE. He had no idea how to pick locks though he had seen youtube videos of it. He could always try, and perhaps if it didn't work that would be a good thing. He could leave this brazen business and go back to the tip tomorrow, or the shop if he could muster the courage.

Kyle began to pick the lock. For a time, the dog seemed to doze. He was still sitting in front of the fence where Kyle had been standing, now resting on his haunches. Now, even with the subtle sound of the paperclip scratching against metal, the dog spun his head and leaped to his feet. He bolted at him, tongue lolling from its side with stupid menace as though the only thing it was programmed to do was kill. He reared up and for a split second, Kyle imagined the gate toppling outwards. Instead of backing away at the thought, Kyle began to pick the lock more hurriedly. He reminded himself that they were just boxes. Stupid cardboard boxes left to ruin in the rain and wind, boxes he could get anywhere if he looked hard enough. Perhaps his mother could get some from the supermarket in Leeton next time she passed through.

He almost couldn't believe it when the padlock clicked. As though sensing what he had done, the dog began to bark louder. Even later he would wonder if he had actually done it or whether the lock had simply been so brittle and weather-worn that all it had needed was a little fiddling. Either way, he slid the padlock from its place and leaped up onto the chain-link fence beside the gate, clawing at the brackets and scurrying upwards. The bolt that held the gate in place was jammed, but he had been able to tell that enough force could pop it open. The gaps in the fence were small, too small to compensate his feet fitting through, but thanks to all the ceaseless exercise on his bike that summer, Kyle was in good shape.

He climbed to the top, a height of about four meters, and peered down. The dog had done exactly as he had hoped it would, having bolted straight through and out into the vacant lot, barking at everything, bewildered by the boy's sudden escape. It would take just a second for him to realise that he was now making his way down the other side of the fence, and when Buster finally did turn and started to bark, Kyle lunged at the gate and pulled it shut. The dog leaped through the air, head-butting the gate so that it crashed back into its original position. Kyle slid the bolt across and stumbled backward, panting. The dog went berserk at having been fooled out of its yard, attacking the fence and barking, jaws snapping.

He turned and started towards the shed where the boxes were leaning, knowing he would have to be quick or else Brett would come, lured by the commotion.

He had stopped and was just reaching out a hand for the cardboard when he heard the back door slam and a dry, rasping succession of coughs fill the air. The scrape and drag of slippers ensued. Kyle searched frantically for a hiding spot but there was none despite the old heaped rubbish. There was nothing that could hide a boy of his size, nothing he could spring to in that instant. Over at the gate, the dog threw back its head and began to howl.

“What the f**k do you think you’re doing?”

He saw Brett hurrying from around the corner of an old water tank, a hunched man wearing a dark green dressing gown and little round specs on his nose, eyes wet and bloodshot, peering intently at him. His face was covered with white stubble, his hair wispy and fluttering in the steady breeze. He had seen him, was coming at him and was opening his mouth to say something when suddenly everything began to drown away into the gloom, the world fading to murky grey and white. He had the sensation of falling, of hitting gravel and then there was nothing. Even Busters howls and his own rapid heartbeat dissolved.