Lena. They took a reckless joyride in the truck, maybe the happiest six minutes of both their lives. Lyle let Teddy out at a corner store before he returned the milk truck, wearing the consequences on his own. Because Lyle Orlik was a good and decent boy who happened to grow up into a suburban skag pusher.
‘I miss him,’ he says.
And his thoughts are interrupted by two large German shepherds barking at the driver’s door of the truck.
‘Hey boys!’ he beams out the truck window. ‘Come meet my boys,’ he urges us.
He slips out of the truck and play wrestles with his dogs in his backyard.
‘This bloke is Beau,’ he says, vigorously rubbing the head of one dog, his left hand reaching out to tickle the belly of the other dog. ‘And this feller is Arrow.’
He looks lovingly into their eyes.
‘These boys are the only family I got now,’ Teddy says.
August and I say something to each other we do not say. What a fuckin’ loser.
‘Come see their house,’ he says, giddy.
Beau and Arrow’s kennel beneath the house. Less a dog house than a two-level dog retreat set on a concrete slab. Hardwood palings with flourishes of shaped plywood for windows and doors resembling the kind found on a cottage Hansel and Gretel might stumble across wandering lost in the woods. The whole thing is built on stumps and Beau and Arrow have a ramp with foot notches to access their blanketed and cushioned dream home.
‘Built it meself,’ Teddy says.
August and I say something to each other we do not say. What a prize fuckin’ loser.
*
It’s all peachy perfect here at Teddy’s house for the first three days of our stay. Loquat perfect. Teddy smiles at Mum to show us he cares and he buys us Paddle Pops to win us over and tells us trucker jokes, almost all of which are deeply racist and end with an Aboriginal/Irishman/Chinaman/woman being found in the front bullbar of an eighteen-wheeler. Then Dustin Hoffman makes everything go south on the fourth night of our stay.
We’re driving home from the Eldorado cinema in Indooroopilly when something about Dustin Hoffman’s performance in the movie we just saw, Rain Man, reminds Teddy of August.
‘Can you do that sorta stuff, Gus?’ Teddy asks, looking through the rearview mirror at August in the back seat.
August says nothing.
‘You know,’ Teddy pushes, ‘can you count up a pile of toothpicks in a single look? You got any special powers like that?’
August rolls his eyes.
‘He’s not autistic, Teddy,’ I say. ‘He’s just fuckin’ quiet.’
‘Eli!’ Mum snaps back at me.
The car is silent for a full five minutes. Nobody talks. I watch the yellow glowing of roadside lights. The glowing is the fire inside me, forging a question out of flame. I ask it flat, not a hint of emotion.
‘Teddy, why did you rat on your best friend?’
And he says nothing. He just stares at me in the rearview mirror and he doesn’t look like Elvis from any kind of era or time or place or context any more because Elvis never went to hell. Elvis never had a devil phase.
*
He says nothing for two more days. He wakes late in the morning and trudges heavily past Mum and August and me at the breakfast table eating Corn Flakes and Mum says, ‘Good morning’, and he doesn’t even look up as he silently walks out of the house.
Dad does this sometimes to August and me after we’ve had a big blow-up in the lounge room during one of his benders. He’s the one who picks a fight with us, he’s the one who keeps slapping us across the backs of our heads when we’re trying to watch 21 Jump Street, he’s the one who always pushes August too far and he’s the one August punches in the eye just to get a moment’s respite. And yet it’s us who get the cold shoulder. Most of the time Dad wakes up the next morning, assesses the bruising on his face and apologises. But sometimes he gives us the silent treatment. Like we’re the arseholes. Like we’re the dicks in all this. Fuckin’ adults.
Teddy’s acting like we’re not in his house, like we’re ghosts, spectres in his living room playing games of Pictionary and The Game of Life while he plays the wrongfully persecuted mute inside his bedroom.
Then I feel shit for making Mum feel shit and when she asks August and me to help her cook some lamb shanks for dinner August gives