Roman numerals on our clocks, we put them there. If it did exist and I could reach out and strangle it in two hands, I would. I would grab time in my hands and bring it under my arms in a headlock where it couldn’t move and time would be frozen under my armpit for eight years and I could catch up in age with Caitlyn Spies and she might consider kissing the lips of a grown man her age. I’d have a beard because hair would have finally started growing on my face by then. I’d have a deep voice that would talk to her about politics and homewares and what sort of dog we should get that might suit our small backyard in The Gap. If we didn’t put those numbers on the clock then Caitlyn Spies wouldn’t age, Caitlyn Spies would just be, and I could be with her. I’ve only known bad timing. I’ve only ever felt out of step with time. But not this day. Not this moment by the front living room window of 5 Lancelot Street, Bracken Ridge. High noon. Where’s the rolling tumbleweed and the old granny closing the shutters on the town saloon?
Dad standing nervously with his axe handle in his right hand. August standing here with a thin metal bar we normally use as a lock chock on the kitchen window. Me standing with my Gray-Nicolls single scoop – the Excalibur-in-the-stone of cricket bats – that I bought from the Sandgate pawnbrokers for $15. Feeble, potbellied warriors in singlets, thongs and shorts before battle. We’d all die for our queen, locked safely in the book room down the hall that we’re slowly emptying of books. Even Dad would die for her, I reckon. Maybe he can prove his love to her. Maybe this is his road to redemption, a few steps into his front yard and an axe handle into Teddy’s temple, and Mum falls gratefully into his thin arms and tattooed Ned Kelly on his right shoulder gives a hearty thumbs-up to true love.
‘Why the fuck did you say I would break his face?’ Dad asks.
‘I thought it would scare him off,’ I say.
‘You know I can’t fight for shit, don’t ya?’ he says.
‘I thought that was just when you were pissed.’
‘I fight better when I’m pissed.’
We’re fucked. Such is life.
*
Then the yellow Ford Mustang pulls into the street and – lump in my throat, wobble in my knees – pulls into our driveway.
‘It’s him,’ I gasp.
Black hair, black eyes.
‘That Teddy?’ Dad asks.
‘No, it’s the guy I saw outside the train station.’
He cuts the ignition and hops out of the car. He wears a grey coat and slacks, black shirt under the coat. He looks too formally dressed for someone visiting Bracken Ridge. In his left hand he carries a small boxed gift wrapped in red cellophane.
He walks across the front yard towards the living room window where the three of us – the Bell boys – stand with our dumb ogre weapons locked in our sweaty palms.
‘If you’re one of Teddy’s mates you better stop right there, mate,’ Dad says.
The man stops.
‘Who?’ the man replies.
Then a second car pulls up at the kerb by the letterbox. A large blue Nissan van. Teddy climbs out of the passenger seat. The driver of the van climbs out too, and a third man slides the van’s rear passenger door along and slams it shut behind him. All three are as large and lumbering as each other. They look like the Tasmanian woodchoppers who always win first place at the Ekka. They have the unmistakeable knuckle-dragging, plus-plus-sized-arse gait of the Queensland long-haul truck driver. Teddy probably called them on his CB radio, called for back-up like a seven-year-old boy playing with his cops and robbers play set. What a fuckin’ haemorrhoid. Maybe one of them is The Log, the big dickhead with the big dick. I’ll be sure to kick him in the balls. I would laugh out loud at these buffoons if they weren’t all carrying aluminium baseball bats.
Teddy marches to the middle of our front yard and calls through the window, oblivious to the man in the grey coat standing beneath us holding a wrapped gift in his left hand.
‘Get the fuck out ’ere now, Frankie!’ Teddy hollers.
He’s got the bluster of drugs in him again. The mania of long-haul speed.
The man in the grey coat steps casually and calmly to the side of the scene, watches Teddy with a