Happy as Larry (24 page)

‘I . . . I needed a run. What are you doing here?'

‘Just hanging out. God, it's good to see you,' she said again. ‘It's your birthday!'

She hugged him and kissed his cheek. She recoiled and rubbed her lips. ‘Whoah, you need a shave, prickle-face.'

‘Are you drunk?'

‘Me? No,' she said, and burped quietly into her hand. ‘Tipsy maybe, but not drunk.'

‘It's Wednesday. What about school tomorrow?'

‘What about it? School's not going anywhere.'

Strong arms grabbed Larry from behind, hoisted him into the air, and spun him around. His hands were pinned at his sides and he kicked and struggled.

‘Are you finished?' he shouted at the darkness.

Jemma was laughing. ‘Put him down.'

Larry was dropped on his feet.

Tim Holland stooped and spoke right in his face. ‘He's mine. Aren't you, Larry?'

He playfully slapped Larry's cheek before rejoining the others under the streetlight. There was a rumble of deep laughter and Larry felt like a child.

‘Do your parents know where you are?' Larry asked.

Jemma nodded. ‘I'm with Tim. We're at youth group. Come and meet the guys,' she said, and hooked Larry's elbow with her own.

Larry pulled free. ‘No. I . . . I really have to go.'

‘Okay, okay. Suit yourself.' She dismissed him with the back of her hand, flicked her hair, and crossed the road.

Larry turned to run but tripped on something in the darkness. He came down hard on the concrete, skinning his left knee and the heels of both hands.

A dark form emerged from the shadows, laughing softly. Clinton Miller. ‘Woops. All fall down, Larry?'

The skin on Larry's neck and arms prickled. He sprang to his feet. ‘What was that for?'

Clinton shrugged. ‘I don't know. It's my mission in life to bring you down to earth. I'm the one who keeps it real.'

Larry rolled up the leg of his pants. Spots of blood smeared.

‘Larry Rainbow with his perfect house and perfect family.'

Larry's hands balled as he straightened. His breath came fast.

‘Can't have you getting a big head.'

Larry's chest grew tight; fury banged at his ribcage.

‘Not-so-perfect dog,' Clinton chuckled.

Larry exploded. He hit Clinton like a bus and rode him to the ground. The scarred boy's head bounced on the concrete and his hands came up to protect his face. Larry tore at them and gouged and punched, ripped a fistful of hair from his head.

Clinton yowled but it only spurred Larry on.

‘Fight!' somebody yelled.

There was nothing planned about Larry's attack; he just let his rage loose, and some of the blows found their mark. The smack and crunch, the yielding flesh. History erupted from him like lava. If he'd had a golf club, he'd have caved Clinton's head in. If he'd had his pocketknife, he'd have opened him up like a toadfi sh.

Clinton's face was slick with his own blood. Larry flailed on.

‘Stop it!' Jemma screamed. ‘Larry, stop!'

Larry wasn't ready to stop. Clinton's body had gone limp but Larry still thrashed at him.

Hands grabbed at his jacket and he was lifted up.

‘It's over,' Tim said. ‘Enough, Larry.'

He twisted free and turned on Tim, but the bigger boy stepped back, arms raised.

Larry's heart raced and he puffed like a wolf.

Clinton was unrecognisable, squirming weakly on the pavement.

‘Clinton?' Jemma squeaked. ‘You okay?'

There was no response.

‘Clinton?'

As the fire in Larry finally began to cool, the source of revenge cooled with it. What if he'd really hurt Clinton? What if he'd broken him? What if he died? His blood-spattered hands began to tremble.

Jemma touched Clinton's shoulder and he flinched.

‘It's me,' she said. ‘Are you okay?'

She helped him sit up. He spat and inspected the blood on his fingers. He gingerly wiped his face. Jemma tried to help him stand but he shook her off and got shakily to his feet. He spat blood on the grass then spat at Larry.

‘You're dead, Rainbow,' he snarled. ‘You're already dead.'

Larry watched him turn and leave. His threats had no substance, but Larry was already wishing he'd done things differently.

‘You're an animal, Larry,' Tim shouted. Larry couldn't tell if his tone was one of respect or disgust. ‘You were going to kill him.'

Jemma's hand was at her mouth and she stared at Larry as if she didn't know him.

Larry looked at the blood on his knuckles and wanted to be somebody else. He
had
been going to kill Clinton. Perhaps not intentionally, but there had been a moment in the seething mess of the fight where he wouldn't have cared if he did.

‘That's been coming for years,' Tim mumbled. ‘Ever since I can remember. Didn't think you had it in you.'

Larry ran.

The house was quiet when he got home. Too quiet. He washed at the tap in the front garden. He snuck back in the window and lay on his bunk, shaking and still in his clothes. His jaw ached from grinding his teeth. It was 10.42. He wished himself a happy birthday and the irony made him shake his head. He thought about the gifts on the desk below him. Somehow the stuff just didn't matter. So much more had been taken away.

When he woke – shivering and thirsty – in the pre-dawn of the next day, his anger and confusion had matured into a fierce self-loathing. He slid off his bunk and filled a glass at the kitchen sink in the gloom. He felt the water chill all the way to his stomach, soaking the desert that had formed in there overnight.

‘Where did you get to?'

Water went down the wrong hole and Larry coughed and spluttered.

Mal had slept on the couch.

‘Nowhere. I went for a run.'

‘You're allowed to use the door for those sorts of exits,' Mal said. His words were sharp and clear, as if he'd been awake for hours.

‘Sorry, I didn't want to disturb you and . . .'

Mal dragged himself into a seated position with a hand on the back of the couch. ‘You missed Guillermo. He came around last night to wish you a happy birthday.'

Yes, Larry
missed
Guillermo. If he'd been home when Guillermo had visited, things would have turned out differently.

‘I'm sorry, Larry,' Mal said. ‘Your mother and I are going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment.'

Larry nodded.

‘As if you hadn't noticed.'

With his father acknowledging the battle, the thought of them breaking up suddenly slipped from being something Larry had wished for in his darkest moments to a very real thing that was just around the corner. A real thing he had no desire to know. He wished he'd been more careful with his wishes.

‘Are you separating?' Larry asked.

Mal drew a breath, rubbed his face and sighed. ‘Well, I'm not going anywhere. I can't speak for your mother.'

Larry made breakfast for them all in an attempt to cover the shame that was churning in his guts. He assembled Denise's on a tray – eggs, toast and juice – and was about to deliver it to her room when she appeared in the kitchen. She ate with them at the table, but reached for the sauce rather than ask for it to be passed. When the silence got too much, she grabbed the remote and let the news in. Another murder in a US jail – a sex offender bludgeoned with a claw hammer by another inmate. The violence made Larry's eggs taste strange. He knew it wasn't a matter of
if
Clinton would seek revenge, just a matter of
when
.

FRAYING
FABRIC

T
HE LOADED SILENCE
in the Rainbow household lasted several months. Mal lost his licence. Lost both jobs. He slept on the couch while Hurricane Katrina killed more than a thousand people in America. He was there when Hurricane Rita gave the Gulf States another dose of mayhem scarcely a month later. His body healed and the bandages were rolled up and tucked in a bathroom drawer. He was camping on the couch in October when an earthquake in Kashmir killed more than eighty thousand and left four million people without homes.

Larry couldn't bear to sit beside his father. Mal was a broken man and he wore his sloth like an unwashed shroud. Denise shifted her computer into her bedroom, and the door was closed more than it was open. She'd started taking odd shifts and she ate at odd times. Mal offered to make meals for Larry, but they were all variations on the theme of eggs and something from a can. Larry ate them most of the time and packed his own school lunches. When the night closed in and his father slumped in front of the television, Larry ran.

He could run faster and further under the cover of darkness. The shadows made him fierce; his pumping arms became punching fists. When it arrived – whatever it was he was waiting for – he'd be ready.

He wasn't ready. It crept in sideways and caught him off guard, just after nine on a warm Friday evening. Larry heard sirens while he was running along the breakwater, but they didn't register in his consciousness until he turned into Condon Street and saw the flashing blue-and-red lights in front of his house. All his bravado, all the cultured indifference to his mother and father, was stripped away in a single breath.

The police cars and the ambulance weren't at his home; they were at the playground next door. His parents were part of a small crowd looking on as a gurney bearing a body – like that boy taken from the wreckage of the Kobe earthquake – was loaded into the ambulance. But the body on the trolley wasn't dead: it put up a hand from beneath the sheet to shield its eyes against the clinical glare. Larry only got a glimpse of that face, darkened with blood and bruising, but he recognised it.

Guillermo.

Denise had been crying. ‘Larry?' she yelped, sweeping him into a hug.

The embrace caught Larry off guard and he hugged her back.

‘Thank God you're all right,' she breathed in his ear.

‘I'm fine,' he said. ‘What happened?'

‘Guillermo,' she said. ‘Someone beat him half to death.

Right here. In our park.'

They broke apart and Mal moved in, looked Larry up and down then hugged him quickly.

Torchlight was suddenly in their faces.

‘Larry Rainbow?' someone called from behind the light. It was a deep, unfamiliar voice.

Larry shaded his eyes. ‘Yes?'

‘Senior Constable David Tomlinson. Could I have a word?'

Larry was led by the elbow to a place where the light was better. The policeman clipped his torch to his belt and took out a pen and notepad. ‘Where have you been for the last hour or so?'

‘Running. Down the breakwater and back. Before that I was at home.'

‘Where's home?'

Larry nodded to the driveway behind them.

‘Do you know Guillermo Perez?'

‘Of course. He's my friend.'

‘When was the last time you spoke with him?'

‘I don't know. Last week. Maybe Thursday.'

‘Tell me what you saw.'

‘Saw? I saw nothing. I just told you, I was running. What's going on?'

The policeman wrote notes and, for a moment, Larry thought he hadn't heard his question.

‘We received a phone call earlier this evening from Larry Rainbow. He said he'd just witnessed an assault in the park.'

Larry swallowed hard. ‘It wasn't me,' he said.

He realised he was playing chess with Clinton. If he told the police what he knew and they fronted Clinton, the story of their fight by the jetty would come out and somehow Clinton would be the one they believed. Clinton could lie so convincingly that he could give Larry a plausible motive, a history of violence.

‘He's my friend,' Larry pleaded. ‘I love him.'

The policeman stopped writing and stared.

Larry could feel him searching his face, looking for the meaning behind his words.

Finally, he nodded. ‘We'll need to talk again.'

The interrogation continued behind the closed doors of sixteen Condon Street.

‘
Did
you phone the police?' Mal asked.

‘No,' Larry said.

Mal was searching his face.

‘Did you have an argument?' Denise said.

‘No! It had nothing to do with me.'

He stomped from the room and slammed his door as a full stop. He climbed onto his bunk but couldn't lie still. In a minute, he was pulling a jacket on and heading for the door.

‘Hey! Larry? Where are you off to?' Mal snapped from the couch.

‘To the hospital.'

‘It's late. You can go in the morning. I'll come with you.'

His mother stepped into his path.

Larry stared.

Maybe she felt the fi re. Maybe she could see the heat of the confusion and rage he was feeling. In that moment he saw the fabric of his family: three pale threads, each strand spun from the past, plaited together by their memories. It used to be so neat, so tight.

Denise grabbed his shoulder. Larry twisted and his jacket ripped. He grabbed his mother's wrist and their eyes met.

Larry's grip tightened, and Denise let go. He dropped her wrist and left, with his father shouting at his back. He broke into a run. There was no way Mal would catch him.

There was a nurse in Guillermo's room. She smiled when Larry entered.

‘Is he okay?' he asked.

‘Bit worse for wear, but we think he'll live,' she said. She patted Guillermo's hand. ‘You've got another visitor.'

He was on his back. One eye was bandaged; the other had swollen closed. The swollen eye opened a slit and he sat up in a panic.

‘It's okay,' Larry said. ‘It's me.'

Guillermo's mouth had been beaten out of shape. ‘Get out!' he screamed. ‘Get away from me.'

The nurse grabbed him. ‘Whoah, it's okay. Calm down, Mr Perez. Calm down!'

She scowled at Larry and he backed from the room, straight into Guillermo's father.