Page 66 - 2017 WTP Special Edition

Drive-By (continued from preceding page)
I swat the blossoms from her hand, and Rosie goes placid in my arms. There’s not an iota of squall nor devilment in her.
But this boy, he could affect all the shapes of man- hood, and he dipped an ear onto a shoulder, ad- justed his weight around the AK, closed one eye, and shot this malignant wink down the full dark length of it. I heard the clatter of gunshot noise. And I shit myself, figuratively, as you would.
So here I am, in situ now, kneeling on the side- walk, beneath the jacaranda, scrubbing at Rosie’s chin with the wadded cuff of a spit dampened jumper. Just like you see me in the video.
Screech of rubber then, next a screech of laughter. The rip of a V6 engine and Rosie starting to wail. In the back seat of the Commodore, there was an- other youth, a girl this time, with a camera phone held up, blotting one half of her face. And that there, the camera phone, I didn’t know it then, but that there, was the real weapon.
No doubt, I’m still high-strung from the ruction with Thomas, but I’ve fell into some class of reverie too, remembering our own children, at Rosie’s age, and how it’s strange to think what might’ve been coded into them. For whatever reason, I don’t notice it. Edging unmercifully slow up Hubert, past the Franklin Tavern carpark, the late-model black Holden Commodore.
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Nor do I notice the front passenger-side window rolling down.
Following evening, I jack the Corolla on the verge and I don’t know precisely what it is I’m expect- ing. I’ve been on the brush-cutter all day, and I can feel it all throughout. I feel like a rat that’s been shook by a terrier, and I sit with my legs outside the car for longer than it takes, dusting the bottoms of my trousers, which are smattered with the usual mulched-up bits of shrubbery and bugs. But even worse than the smattered bugs, is the near-daily occurrence, morning times, when
Nor the boy in the white Arabic getup shaping to hang from it.
I give Rosie a kiss on the forehead. And I’m getting to my feet, when I see, finally, and much too
late, the black Holden Commodore coming near abreast of us. Across Rosie’s head, I see a boy, same age as Thomas, or not far off, with that same physique, leaning from a car window.
I come across a blue-tongue, or a bob-tail lizard, hissing beneath a bush at the blades of the brush cutter. Scared shitless no doubt, but they’ll give you a jolt, the way they’ll bluff all set to attack, making anger and fear look one and the same. And then of course, in whatever percentage of cases, I end up mowing a lizard with the blades. And it’s always too late when you know it, there’s nothing to do but pass over again and try to call it a kindness. Sometimes you’ll see the little ones drop their tails and that’s the first and the last movement you’ll see of them, the camouflaged tail flicking about in the undergrowth.
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And this boy, he is hefting a gun.
The gun is exactly as you’d imagine. An AK I’d suppose, with the wood trim on the stock, and the rest of it all bulky and black.
The next moments felt like a small kingdom of stillness. They felt like something that was queued to implode: This stretched-out moment of eye-contact; a wisp of Rosie’s blonde hair, lifting; the jacaranda, I’d near swear, drawing a breath.
I gather the lunch box and accoutrements from the passenger seat. And there’s an echo to ev- erything I do. I have that sense of seeing myself, being myself. I’ve had it all day, like I’m my own puppeteer. I open the latch to the courtyard. Rita and Thomas are there, sitting on the two-seater
The boy was hanging from the passenger window. He was got-up in the full billowing-white Arabic regalia. But he was a cartoon. And I can tell you that in retrospect. He was a character from Alad- din, right down to the golden braided rope that was looped about his head.
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