Jennifer Webb

 

This Petty Pace

 

 
 
 

The council workers start their shift at 6am. For the first two hours, still sleepy, they move quite silently across the city centre, stroking the flowers in the gardens on the islands that separate the highways, in the beds that beautify the city mall. They squat on their heels, and comb each plant between their fingers, gently clipping the dying heads, lifting out the weeds, and piling the detritus on the small tarpaulins that are laid out tidily beside them. Occasionally they rock back on their heels, or stand and stretch. The flowers stretch too, bright heads rolling back towards the sun.

By 7am other workers are arriving in the city to open up the shops and offices. By 7:30 the streets are getting noisy, the air is growing thick. The council workers begin to pack up their tools, and load up their heaps of weeds and worn-out leaves. It's time for them to move out of the city, and on to other tasks, other gardens, other roads.

By 8:30 there are office girls everywhere, and men with briefcases; but by 9, the crowds have thinned down. Now the people milling in the mall are mainly just shoppers and the elderly and some small children with a parent in tow.

Stephen watches it all. He wakes at about 4:30 each morning because light is just beginning to creep across his face, and the flies are beginning to buzz, and anyway by then his back is killing him, killing me, oh my back, he says each morning as he strains to sit up and rubs his tired young body and rubs his tired young eyes and then folds his rug and stows it neatly in his suitcase, and begins the half kilometre walk down to the Transit Centre and its free showers so he can look presentable for another day.

Stephen is sixteen, or close to sixteen. Sixteen is what he tells anyone he might tell. He is a big boy, big boned, big belly, his fingers plump and crisply clean, his arms traced with fat, his jaw heavy, a blue sweatshirt folded around his heavy trunk. He sits, mostly. Sometimes he walks slowly down the road. The world slides by. And by 6pm the shops and offices are closing and everyone is moving up and down the streets to the various bus stops or to wait on the edge of the road for a partner or a friend to scoop them up in their car and in they get and away they go, going home. Going home. Stephen spends that hour tucked back into a deep doorway he knows on Elizabeth Street, near the entrance to the Winter Garden. Later he will go to the park or to the shelter or to that alcove he knows off Albert Street, and prepare for the night. Stephen is sixteen, he says. He told me his age, and I told him he's too young to be alone on the streets every day.

He's hungry this evening. This morning a woman bought him Macdonalds but he hasn't eaten since, him or his little dog, they're both so hungry and the streets are emptying. Dog and boy are chubby, but chubby means you're used to eating a lot and they haven't eaten all day. They're hungry. Stephen likes pudgy food, mashed potatoes, french fries, peanut butter sandwiches. He watches the people walking back and forth past him. This is a good deep alcove and it's cloudy this evening, he'll maybe sleep here tonight.

And then I walk by. 'Lady, hey lady, hey lady, sorry lady, hey lady, could you could you, hey lady sorrysorrysorry lady'.

I can't understand what he's saying, his voice is soft and very blurred. I don't want to stop, but he's very young, sitting there on a step on Elizabeth Street with the dusk creeping in and his little dog looking at me, and there's yearning in all their four eyes. I stop. 'What.' Unfriendly. 'Lady, sorry lady, lady could you could you could you.'

'I can't understand you. What do you want?' Still unfriendly.

'I'm sorry lady. Lady could you, lady I just want I want could you could you sit here and talk to me for a while?'

My god. What can I say? I sit beside him. 'Five minutes.' Unfriendly. He smiles. His little dog puts her head on my foot, and sighs. He is the same age as my own son, who is slender and quick and bright.

'Thanks lady.' She's older than I thought. Her voice is posh. Is she rich?
'Lady. Are you going home?'

'No. I'm going to meet a friend. Very soon. I'm expected.' I'm going to a restaurant to meet a friend and eat dinner and drink coffee and then we're going to the theatre to see a play. Six Degrees of Separation. The movie was good, the play's supposed to be better. If I stay here talking too long I'll screw up our evening. But I've sat down beside him; now I have to say something.

'What are you doing here?'

'Lady, this is where I live. Where I'm living now.' For the last 3 months, he thinks it is. She has begun to stroke his dog's ears. That's good. 'She's a good dog,' he says, he smiles. He has a sweet smile. He wants to ask her for money but he doesn't want to seem rude and anyway he wants to talk for a little longer.

'Where's your family?' she asks.

It was maybe 3 months ago. For what he thinks must be the tenth time since the first time it happened when he was six, his mother was shrieking at him, clawing at her own skin, screaming get out get out get out you prick fuckoffoutofit get out.

'In Rockhampton. Mum asked me to leave. Nan couldn't have me now, she's sick. I went to Townsville first because I had money, and then when I got there I thought, oh, I've forgotten something, and then I remembered - it
was her.' Looking down at his little dog, smiling, stroking her neck. If dogs could purr, she'd be purring. 'I still had money, so I went back to Rocky on a plane, I got her and then came down here and there wasn't anywhere to stay with a little dog, so we've been living here and now we've run out of money and I don't know what we'll do now.'

She looks at him more closely. 'What about aunties? What about the Salvation Army? What about Social Security'. No. No. No. He's on his own.

He talks slowly and carefully. She spills out words so fast he just can't hear what she's saying. She slows down and tries again, but even slowly what she says might as well be another language except for when she says, 'How old are you?'; 'What's your name?'; and 'You're too young to be alone'.

Something grey shifts across his face. He says, 'I'm not too young. I'm too young. I know about drugs, but I don't take them. I've seen money piled high across a table. I've heard people shouting at each other, at me. I've seen them with guns.'

So now she'll give him advice. So now she's writing down addresses on a piece of paper in handwriting he can't read. So now she's talking and talking, it's like she owns every word that was ever made. He likes to hear her voice but he can't tell what she's saying. She tells him her first name
and shakes his hand. She won't tell him her surname or her address. Compassion only goes so far, I keep reminding myself, looking at this poor sad boy; but limits on my own compassion make my stomach ache.

She's getting ready to leave, he knows. 'Lady, I don't want to. I mean. Lady, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't want, lady, we've been talking it's been nice lady lady, I'm so hungry, lady I need, lady'.

'You want some money.'

'Yes. I don't want to - you know - stretch the friendship. I'm so hungry.'

She gives him a five dollar note. 'Lady, sorry sorry sorry lady can you give me more?' She gives him ten, and then says 'That's all, that has to be all.'

'Lady I'm sorry.' It's enough for Maccas for tonight and breakfast tomorrow. She's going, she's smiling, she pats his cheek. She's a lot older than he thought. She walks away. He stays a little longer, a few minutes, then gets down to the Macdonalds family restaurant in the city mall before they shut for the night.

And I, of course, walk away. Do I go to the police? Do I call Social Security? Do I go to the restaurant, do I eat dinner, do I watch the show,do I go home, do I say goodnight to my own son, do I sleep in my deep bed? Do I go and look for Stephen again? And if I find him what do I do, what am I prepared to do?

Look, there's traffic lights. There's the pretty rain on the streets. There's my friend, standing outside the restaurant, looking down the street for me. I tell him my story, of course. Stephen's story. And we eat and we drink coffee and we hold hands as we walk across to the theatre two blocks away. After the show it's 2am and soon the workers will be out, cleaning the roads, and then at 6am the council workers will be sleepily grooming the flowers and then later again it'll be us, the workers, the city folk, moving through the channels of our day.