Pig Boy

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Pig Boy

  ePub ISBN 9781742744261

  A Woolshed Press book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Woolshed Press in 2011

  Copyright © J.C. Burke 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at

  www.randomhouse.com.au/offices.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Author: Burke, J.C.

  Title: Pig Boy / J.C. Burke

  ISBN: 978 1 74166 312 9

  Target audience: For secondary school age

  Quote on p. vi from Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, copyright 1937. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

  Cover photograph courtesy Getty Images

  Cover design by Christabella Designs

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Imprint Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Extract: The Story of Tom Brennan

  For Michael, who never doubted me

  A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you.

  —John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

  IT’S THE MORNING OF MY eighteenth birthday. Not that you’d know. The house isn’t exactly rocking with celebration.

  The old girl looks like she’s already had the party without me. Sticking out from under her bed is a half-finished mega bottle of Coke and three empty packets of Tim Tams.

  Her mouth’s wide open like she’s hoping for another biscuit to fall from the sky. Her latest Crosswords for Cryptics lies on the bed, the open page fluttering with each snore. I count a slow one, two, three, watching her chest rise, then hear her breath escape with a whistle.

  She’s alive.

  Carefully I close the door of the bedroom. For a second I wait in case the springs in the mattress groan with her rolling load. Maybe she’ll wake up and remember today’s Friday, my birthday. Bacon and eggs would go down a treat. It’s been a while. Like a couple of years.

  Nothing.

  ‘Happy birthday, Damon,’ I sing. ‘For you’re a jolly good tosser.’

  I slam the front door and her china cats rattle in the cabinet. Just this year I’ve unhinged two doors. But it’s never been enough to shatter one of those ugly cats. It’s comforting that there’s still something to aspire to.

  It’s unlikely the mailman’s been, but I check anyway.

  Across the road, Mrs Fryes stands on her porch striking a tin of cat food with a spoon, summoning Princess Anne the Second to breakfast. When she sees me she stops, the spoon poised in the air like the moment’s caught in a snapshot. I’m about to wave when she scoops up Princess Anne and scurries inside. My hands find my pockets instead and I go back into the house.

  ‘Happy birthday, love.’ Mum’s sitting at the kitchen table, sucking the life out of her first fag for the day. ‘I didn’ forget.’

  ‘Hmph,’ I grunt back.

  ‘Only got yaself to blame if ya tired, son,’ she says. ‘I heard ya growls comin’ outta ya room at 2 am.’

  I played Rage of the Mercenary 3 with Mad Bull till 4 am. He owned me, creeping around the outskirts of the map, killing my allies with single head shots then squealing like a girl: ‘Noobie! Noobie! No one likes you!’ The old girl was lucky I didn’t smash my room to pieces.

  ‘Ya probably should think about stoppin’ them late-night shenanigans,’ she says, starting the same old lecture. ‘With ya final examinashuns comin’ up and all.’

  ‘Yeah, all right!’

  ‘Oh, c’mere, me big boy. Can’t believe ya eighteen.’ She leans over to kiss me but it makes her puff. ‘Happy birthday.’ I want to lean away from her stale breath but I move my chair closer and let her dry lips press against my cheek.

  Mum points to a cupboard and tells me my present’s in there. I find a plastic bag with a shop name plastered all over it. One year she wrapped my present. On the paper were puppies rolling in flowerbeds, dirt smudged all over their faces.

  ‘Now, I’m goin’ to put money in ya bank account but this one’s a joke, just for you and me.’

  Inside the bag is a yellow t-shirt with the slogan ‘Look busy, Jesus is coming’. It’s too small. I can tell just by looking at it even though the tag reads XXL.

  Mum lights another smoke and laughs until it changes to a hacking cough. Every year she gives me a t-shirt that she thinks is hysterical. Last birthday I got ‘Sex Instructor. First lesson free’.

  ‘When I seen it,’ she wheezes, ‘I started killin’ meself. “Look busy, Jesus is comin’.” Love it.’

  I head down to the mini-mart for my birthday breakfast. Across at the intersection our school principal’s shiny new green car is pulling away at the lights. Once Pascoe would’ve pulled over, checked if I was okay, maybe offered me a lift. Now he can’t even be bothered to lift his hand in a wave. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I walked out in front of his car. Would he stop then?

  The tarts from Year 9 are draped outside the mini-mart reading magazines. I wink at one and her cheesy smile contracts into something that resembles a prune.

  I push open the glass door, making sure my chuckle is loud enough for them to hear, living up to my reputation as Strathven High’s psycho boy.

&
nbsp; ‘Hey Damon. How’re you doing, man?’ Moe says. He’s leaning on the counter doing the sudoko. Moe’s the only one in this town with half a brain. That’s why in one week he was promoted from ‘fruit and veg’ to Manager. ‘It’s the diabolical today,’ he tells me while he rolls the pen between his palms. ‘I’ve nearly got it out.’

  Moe’s also the only one at the mini-mart – or in most of Strathven for that matter – who talks to me. I stacked shelves here on weekends for almost a year. Then Miranda from ‘frozen foods’ caught me walking out with a porno stashed inside my coat. The way she shouted and pointed at me you’d have thought it was a semi-automatic I had tucked in there.

  All shift I’d been trying to keep it together but the chick on the cover was staring at me. At home on the net I’d only find a poor substitute and that wasn’t good enough. It had to be her.

  In the end I paid for the magazine just to shut Miranda up. She said she wouldn’t tell but I didn’t believe her. So I resigned before she could kick up a stink.

  After that little incident, I was lucky even to get served. But it’s been different since Mum won $144,000 in Powerball last year. We could afford to buy every single thing in the mini-mart. If we wanted to.

  Now they serve me.

  ‘Going to the grand final tomorrow?’ Moe asks as he takes my steaming pie out of the microwave.

  Our footy team’s only suffered one defeat this season. In assembly Pascoe boasts about them like they’re gods who bestow pride and glory on his hicksville little school. Yet a few weeks ago, I represented Strathven High as the region’s finalist in the state writing competition and Pascoe was so uninterested he didn’t even mention it.

  ‘Are you going to the footy?’ I ask Moe.

  ‘Of course,’ he answers. He’s scanning my breakfast supplies. ‘I’m helping my parents out. I know we’re the under-dogs but do you reckon we’re in with a chance?’

  ‘We?’ I scoff. Moe left school in Year 10. He was the skinny towel-head with no friends. Still is. ‘So is your old girl selling gozlemes at the game?’

  Moe gives me one of his stupid grins.

  ‘Well, maybe I’ll go down for one of them,’ I say. ‘Won’t be staying for the game. They’re a bunch of arseholes. Although it’d be good to watch Parker and Geraghty get the shit kicked out of them. Actually, that’s almost a good enough reason to go, I’d say, Moe.’

  Moe shrugs like he doesn’t get what I’m talking about. But if anyone should it’s him.

  There was a time when Moe and me were the focus of Andrew Parker and Darren Geraghty’s favourite pastime: picking on the weak. But by Year 10 it was just Moe because the fat kid that people made pig noises at and called ‘Damoink’ graduated to a more sinister position thanks to the Year 10 camp. The arseholes didn’t come near me after that. Moe copped it all.

  But Parker and Geraghty are just wannabe arseholes. It’s the Marshall brothers who are the real deal. They take ‘picking on the weak’ to a whole new hemisphere. Like the time in Year 8 when Steven and Billy Marshall, the eldest two who’d left school, locked us in the boot of their mother’s car while they got up to something at the river.

  Moe and I were pulling in the yabby nets we’d set that morning when we heard a car pull up. At first we thought it was Moe’s dad but when we counted two doors slamming we knew that trouble had arrived.

  The Marshall brothers said we were snoopers and couldn’t be trusted. By then I knew what they were capable of. So an hour with Moe in a dark, smelly boot wasn’t such a bad option.

  ‘Hey, Guns of the Patriots 4’s out this week,’ Moe says, drenching my breakfast pie in tomato sauce. ‘I wonder if it’s any good?’

  ‘I went to Mereton on Monday and bought it.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. Took the day off. I was at EB Games ten minutes before opening. They hadn’t even unpacked them. But let me tell you, I stood over that little dick with the acne until he did. Two hours later I was back home and loading it.’

  ‘Legend.’

  ‘GoP 2 pisses all over it.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘There’ll never be a game to top that.’

  Moe rings up the bill. My breakfast comes to $3.98. ‘It’s my birthday,’ I tell him. ‘What about a discount?’

  The fluff between Moe’s eyebrows crinkle.

  ‘Just joking,’ I say.

  Moe laughs. But then Moe laughs when he’s nervous.

  That’s the reason I put him on the list. That laugh is so piss weak. It annoys the hell out of me.

  Some days I walk to school through the bush. It takes longer but I like it because no one else comes this way. The original schoolhouse is down there. All that’s left is a stone chimney tagged by every self-important dickhead in town and there’re plenty of them.

  Today part of me wants to take the bush way so I can rehearse the roar-up I’ve prepared for my English teacher Mrs Finch, who’s a week late handing back my final assessment. But dark clouds heavy with rain have congregated in our big country sky. Arriving to school drenched will only have me looking stupid and put me on the back foot. And that’s no way to start a verbal slapping. My motto is ‘one step ahead’.

  I cross the wide street where parallel parking is forbidden. That’s the big crime to commit in this town. Not glassing some defenceless stoner outside the pub ’cause they’re late settling their weed account, like Billy Marshall did last week.

  I squeeze between two utes. The shiny new silver one belongs to Steven Marshall, compliments of Strathven’s big smokers, no doubt. The other ute, all beat up and rusty, belongs to the Pigman. His dogs are chained to the tray. The links strain and groan as they jump to attention.

  ‘Hey fellas.’ I croon at them like they’re puppies from a toilet paper ad. But they’re up, barking and snarling as their thick paws skid and slide along the metal tray. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. You’re good boys.’ A scab as big as my hand wraps around the snout of the grey dog, who’s almost the size of a Shetland pony. ‘That must’ve been some pig,’ I say to him. ‘Did you go in to protect the little fellow?’

  The Pigman steps out of the butcher shop, waves his hand around and yells something that sounds like ‘Shutee!’ The dogs shrink back into the tray. The Pigman disappears inside.

  The Pigman’s a headcase. Not many people know his name. I’ve heard it before but it’s not the type of name you remember. The only thing everyone does know is that he shoots pigs and that he’s from where they used to call Yugoslavia. I can’t remember what they call it now. I should ask Moe. He’s good with that stuff.

  Moe reckons he knows stories about the Pigman. He says the Pigman’s a criminal and that Glen the butcher and him have got some kind of racket going on. Once I said to Moe, ‘That doesn’t make him a criminal.’

  Moe didn’t listen. He rolled his eyes, opened his mouth barely enough to show his teeth and mumbled, ‘My family knows what he’s done. But I don’t want to talk about it.’

  Moe, always trying to big-note himself.

  The grey dog has started a growl that rumbles from the very back of his throat. It’s just for me. No one else can hear it.

  He doesn’t scare me. I love dogs.

  ‘Grrrrr,’ I growl back at him and our eyes lock. ‘You and your master have had a bit of fun in this beast, eh?’

  I know I’m risking having my hand chewed but I can’t resist running my fingers along the paintwork of the Pigman’s ute. Some of the dents are so hollow you can almost see the outline of the boar’s tusk and you can’t help wondering who came off worse.

  ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME,’ I sing as I walk through the school car park. ‘Happy birthday, dear Damon.’ I thump on the roof of Pascoe’s new pride and joy, wishing my fist would go straight through the green metal. What a birthday gift that’d be. ‘Haaaappy birthday, to me.’

  Standing at the top of the stairs outside the administration building is Pascoe. His arms are folded but under the weight of his elbows I can
see his chest rising, his nostrils flaring in time with each heave. I’m tempted to wave but now he’s pointing his finger and beckoning me up the stairs.

  I lift my hands in a ‘what have I done this time?’ action. He thrusts his thumb behind him in the direction of his office. Bring it on.

  When we walk through the doors the office ladies stop talking and begin to shuffle bits of paper around the desk.

  ‘It’s my birthday,’ I tell them. The one who’s been here the longest looks up at me. For a second I think she’s going to say ‘happy birthday’. But instead her eyes dart away and she begins to frantically feed paper into the fax machine.

  I follow Pascoe down the corridor. Mrs Finch sees us coming and spins around, walking back the way she came. Actually she’s not walking, she’s trotting. I was right. She still hasn’t marked my assessment. But she will.

  Pascoe just about punches open his office door. He hasn’t spoken yet, but his nostrils are still flaring like miniature bellows. He settles himself in the big chief’s chair.

  I stand. I want to hear his voice before I get comfortable.

  ‘Sit. Down.’ He says it like they’re two separate commands.

  Slowly I drop into the chair. It’s not made for a fully grown man. It’s more suited to the Year 9 tarts busted for giving head in the bushes at lunchtime.

  My hands grab onto the sides to stop my bulk from spilling out. Having something to hold will help when the urge to laugh rattles my body.