was a contraction of the world between him and Sonny, as though a vacuum had drawn them together, pushed everything else into the background. It had always been this way – a battle of flesh and wills – and Tom had never bothered to question it before.
The sounds of the world faded and soon he could hear only the blood roaring through his ears, the sky now nothing but a silent exhibition of blue and grey overhead. Sonny leapt at him and grabbed his wrist with one hand and twisted the ice block free with the other while Leonard nipped in and out like a cattle dog and pinched him – hard enough to leave little half-moons of broken skin. Then Sonny used his weight to push him backwards and he teetered, flailing his arms, until Leonard stuck his bony shin behind his knee and sent him sprawling.
‘Good, Leonard, good!’ Sonny shouted.
He sat down hard on Tom’s chest before he could squirm free and proceeded to eat the remains of the ice block. Tom struggled for breath and felt his face grow hot and sweat break out on his forehead. Leonard alternated between looking at Sonny for cues and giving Tom’s wrist Chinese burns.
‘You … fat … bastard … Steele!’ he managed to spit.
Sonny didn’t answer, but dribbled red-stained spittle across Tom’s face from his pursed lips.
‘Open his mouth, Len.’
Leonard tried, cautiously, but Tom bit his finger and he retreated, cursing. Tom tried to wriggle free from underneath Sonny, but when he failed miserably it occurred to him that he had other weapons he could use. He thought of a question, something to distract him. The question he came up with seemed straightforward and reasonable, and something he wouldn’t have minded having the answer to.
‘Why do you do this, Sonny?’ he spat, panting.
Sonny stared at him for a moment and then looked up and down the street. The time limit on his fun was fast running out. There were adults about who might spot him at any moment. He looked down at Tom again. He seemed to be giving the question serious consideration, but then he flipped Tom over onto his stomach and held his head down in the grass and gravel. He pushed harder and harder and when grit had worked its way into Tom’s eyes and nose, and tears were running down his face Sonny leant in close so his smooth, clammy face – lips edged in sticky red, teeth holed by brown decay – filled Tom’s field of vision like a noxious moon.
‘Because your father’s a drunk and your mother’s a rotten whore!’ he hissed, his face contorting.
Tom blinked, frozen for a moment by the malice in Sonny’s eyes, but then a car came rolling down the street and in a second Sonny and Leonard were up and away. Tom sat up and rubbed the gravel off his cheek and out of his hair. The old farmer driving by slowed his car to better see him there on the verge, then waved slowly when he saw he was none the worse for wear, just the victim of schoolboy rough-and-tumble. Tom nodded at him and the farmer lifted his finger off the steering wheel and straightened his head. When he’d passed, Tom looked down the road at the backs of Sonny and Leonard. Every so often Sonny would turn and glare at him and spit onto the road.
He brushed the dust and grass off his clothes and walked home along the river, looking across at the water as he always did, just in case something interesting was floating by. When he reached his house after fifteen minutes or so he bent by the tap in the front yard and washed his face and rinsed out his mouth and spat a lot. He ran cold water over the places where Leonard had pinched him. Chicken bastard! he fumed, under his breath.
He went inside and set the pack of cigarettes on their end on the kitchen table. They were a little crushed but he knew that a bent cigarette was a smokeable cigarette so he didn’t worry about it too much – and at least Sonny hadn’t found them. He went and sat down in front of the television and had only been watching it for a few minutes when Mrs Clark from next door came over with Flynn.
‘Hello, Mrs Clark. Hey, Flynn.’
‘Hey,’ said Flynn.
‘Tom,’ said Mrs Clark. ‘Flynn’s been a good boy today. Haven’t you, Flynn?’
Flynn nodded. He was only four and not due to start school until the new year. After Mrs Clark left he promptly fell asleep on the couch with his mouth open. Tom set the fan in front of him and turned it on and then he went into their room and pulled his Junior Dictionary from the bookcase and went and sat out on the verandah in one of the busted cane chairs and opened up the book on his lap. He didn’t have a clue what whore really meant but the fact that Sonny had said it meant it couldn’t be anything good, and was probably some sort of disease or something, maybe something that killed you. He looked up the word in the dictionary, but, as he wasn’t sure how to spell it, struggled. There was hoar, which was to do with frost, and there was horology, but that was the art or science of making timepieces or of measuring time. Under the silent w’s there was only whole, which meant a whole lot of things, and who’re, a contraction of who are, which seemed close, but he was fairly certain Sonny had not meant his mother was a who are because that didn’t make sense. He put the dictionary down, locked his hands behind his head like Henry sometimes did and looked out across the river. The long reeds by the bank dipped in the breeze but apart from that nothing much else was moving. He sat and looked and his eyelids were just beginning to droop when he heard a car coming up the road from town. It was the Holden, with his mother at the wheel. He bent and picked up the dictionary and took it back to his room, a feeling of guilt flowing through him like it was one of the magazines Henry kept in the shed.
When she came up the stairs he was back sitting in the cane chair by the front door. She bent and kissed him on the cheek. He thought she looked very tired.
‘Where’s Flynn?’
‘Asleep.’
‘Good … listen. I have to go back to work in an hour or so. And I have to work tomorrow. When Henry comes home could you get his tea?’
Tom looked down at his toes and frowned at them. His mother put her hand on his head and stroked his hair.
‘I know. I’m sorry. But I have to go. We need the money. You know we do.’
He nodded. ‘Yep.’
‘Good boy. I bought some sausages. Just do some potatoes and some peas with them. Make sure Flynn eats his peas.’
‘Yep.’
‘All right. I’m going to have a shower now and change my clothes.’ She kissed him on the forehead. ‘You’re a good boy, Tom. What would I do without you.’
He looked up at her. Sometimes just the smell of her was enough to make him feel better, but when she smiled the way she sometimes did – a little sad, yet laced with mischief – it made him remember how it was when it had just been the two of them; before Henry, and before Flynn. He liked to think she remembered those times too, at least once in a while.
He followed her inside the house and went and sat down beside his little brother. He listened as his mother moved around the house and watched as the fan lifted Flynn’s fine yellow hair and set it down again. After a while his mother came back and put her hand on his shoulder.
‘All right, Tom, bye now. Be good. Henry shouldn’t be long.’ Before she had finished the sentence there was a knock at the door, loud enough to wake Flynn.
‘Bloody hell,’ his mother muttered.
‘What?’ said Flynn, half opening his eyes.
Tom glanced at him. When he turned back to his mother she was already halfway up the hall.
‘Yes? Hello?’ he heard her say.
Flynn, sleepy-eyed, slipped off the couch and headed for the door. Tom followed him. There was a man standing on their verandah. Flynn stopped in his tracks and stared at him and Tom did the same. The man had thick, grey whiskers and long matted hair to his shoulders. His hands were large and brown, the nails yellow, a black semicircle of dirt at their ragged ends. Even though the afternoon was still very warm he wore a woollen