‘John,’ Pop said.

And there was a scuffle.

‘John!’

And someone fell against the galvanised iron.

I could go in, stand between them, but I’d seen what John could do.

Mr Harper said, ‘Before you do any more damage.’ I looked in and saw him removing the masking from the car, close the bonnet, and hold his hand out for the keys. Pop gave them over, opened the shed, and moved. Harper started his car, backed it down the drive and was gone.

Pop said, ‘It dunt matter. His choice.’

John looked at him, his hand shaking, but held in place.

‘Keep yer cool.’

Later that night, as we ate rewarmed pizza, Pop explained. ‘He did good.’

‘How’s that?’ Mum asked.

‘When Glen come at him, he just stood there, and when he pushed him, he didn’t push back. That woulda taken a bit of doing, eh?’

And Jen said, ‘Don’t trust him, Pop.’

But I could see in Pop’s eyes, the light, the challenge of fixing a car that didn’t come with a manual.

April

Holidays. Stale-bread-Curtis, returned to the wrapper. Jim Rockford crawling from his van, wrestling winos in search of the murder dollar. I longed to be Jim. Late mornings, strong coffee and an open-topped drive along the Pacific Highway. Stopping for debt collectors and pimps, the teary-eyed children of nice-people murdered.

Me, the teenage Garner, giving up on Lanark Avenue, wandering the back streets of Windsor, the flaky suburb the other side of the main road. It’d started suburban, like us, but ended industrial. Factories built between more cracked-spine fibro homes. Weedy driveways with old washers, stripped bare, piled high along fence lines. Looking in open doorways, down halls, to mums shouting at bare-arsed kids as, outside, dads collected, stripped-down and calibrated. Always twice as many cars as there were people, cos cars could be cannibalised (I’d learned that from Pop, though Mum’d never let him keep wrecks round the yard). A trampoline for the kids, perhaps, but with a hole, and someone had stacked bricks on it. So there was no distinction between living and making a living.

I crossed the road and entered Don’s, bought a Coke and emptied my pockets, hoping there was enough. As he counted, moving uncomfortably in his Marlboro T-shirt, he said, ‘You been behavin’ yerself?’

‘Yes.’ Surprised he’d shown interest after so many years. Perhaps it was boredom, the quiet before the Ford mechanics, after the milk mums, the ciggie kids. ‘We’re right behind your shop.’

‘With the pool ladder?’

‘Yeah. Me and my sister, t’ get over the fence.’

He dropped the money in the till. I wasn’t sure if he’d gypped me. It seemed unlikely I’d had the right amount.

‘You never buy cigarettes?’

‘No.’

‘But you smoke them.’ And he gave me a strange look.

‘Well …’ Then I thought, he would’ve seen me, walking past with Curtis. ‘Everyone smokes these days.’

‘The Post?’

‘Nan used to read it.’

He waited.