Kitty and I straightened and looked towards the dark recess where he sat.
‘If you got any balls you’ll drag me down to the big stormwater grate on the corner of McKillop and York and chuck me in. And then the next rain will take me right under the city. I want to be buried under all those bloody buildings, way down there with the Aborigines!’ Then he laughed and we laughed as well and we agreed it was a fitting end for city-dwellers like us. Then, even in that dark void, I saw his face drop like wet newspaper.
‘Don’t want no bloody relatives coming to claim me,’ he said. And we knew exactly what he meant.
One morning about a month later Milo didn’t come out of his room. We heard him arrive the night before, coming up from the cellar as usual. But by lunchtime we were sure something wasn’t right. We went to his room and pushed the door wide open. A piece of blanket was pinned at the window and it hung to the side letting in weak light. Everything he owned was arranged neatly along one wall: a plastic bucket, a little stack of books, a candle and an old wireless hooked up to a 12-volt battery. On the opposite side there was a camp stretcher - where he’d got it is anyone’s guess - and on it Milo lay sprawling with his boots on. His arm was over the side and his palm rested on the floor, his big old knuckles standing up like speed humps. His head lolled off the edge of the bed at a horrible angle. I said, ‘Milo?’ but I knew he was dead.
It was only then that we realised how much we’d grown to like the old man. In fact I don’t even think he was that old, just tired. And he was the sort of man I wouldn’t have minded for a father. I think Kitty felt the same. She walked out of the room and I found her standing at one of the windows. The lower panes were rippled glass covered with a thick film of dust so who knows what she was seeing. I walked up behind her; she turned and put her arms around me. She was as tall as I was but that day she put her face into my neck and made herself small. Then she cried; I felt it in my own chest. I don’t think Kitty had ever cried before - and just two days off her fifteenth birthday.
High above us street noises came through a broken window pane and I heard a big motorbike’s rowdy blatter. Those windows faced McKillop Street and nearby there was a popular bike shop. We were used to the big choppers starting up and then the noisy blattering as they came past our place. Our place: Kitty and me and dead Milo in a big old factory, no power, no water, no anything.
‘Don’t worry Kit,’ I said at last, ‘we got the best thing that anyone could wish for; we got each other and nothing else matters.’
But it hardly soothed her; she just kept on sobbing against my shoulder as though the only thing decent in her life had suddenly been taken away.
‘You still got me,’ I added, though I wasn’t sure about the compensation.
After a while we went into the Office to figure things out.
‘We’ll have to go to the cops,’ I said.
Kitty sat silently and stared at the floor.
‘We’ve got to let them know, Kit.’
‘No we don’t.’ She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘What about what Milo said? What about the promise we made?’
‘We didn’t make a promise.’
‘Yes we did. I did,’ she said.
She stood up and I found myself following her back to Milo’s room. She just went over and started getting him out of his coat. Reluctantly, I helped her. I was so scared my knees shook. He was skinnier than I imagined and we easily rolled him onto his blanket. Without a word we wrapped him up and tied it off with his own belt. Then, in the weak light coming through the window, we both stood and faced each other.
‘You take the heavy end,’ she said in a soft voice.
I couldn’t touch him. Instead, I held fast to the blanket and we dragged him to the cellar door. Kitty went down first and took his weight as he slid down the stairs. We dragged him to the trapdoor.
‘We come back tonight, Jack. And we do what Milo said.’
I was happy to get out of that dead dark cellar and hoped that by nightfall Kitty would have changed her mind. But sometime before dawn she shook me awake and I found myself again standing in the complete blackness of the cellar with Milo’s body somewhere before us. Out of the void I heard Kitty say that I’d have to heft his weight up the steps and into the outside world.
‘Can’t we call the cops?’ I whispered, staring blankly into the dark.
‘We can do it,’ Kit said. ‘Don’t give up.’ I heard her near the trapdoor and when she lifted it a trace of weak light fell on the bundle.
I took a deep breath and stepped forward. I was hardly a robust boy; skinny legs and bony chest, but I was ready to give it a go. I lifted the lump of him and a long throaty sigh burst from his body. It muffled horribly under the blanket and I never felt so frightened in my life. His slumped body felt heavy and human and his limbs shifted stiffly as though he was still alive. I let out a groan of my own and shoved him up and out and when he was finally on the ground I jumped back, hyperventilating.
‘The blanket,’ I said, ‘it’s all wet!’
Kitty drew close to the long bundle.
‘That’s normal,’ she said, ‘that’s what happens.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I just know, Jack.’
‘Well what now?’ My voice was high and panicky.
Kitty hesitated.
‘We have to take him,’ she said flatly.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t! Not now.’
She looked briefly at me and even in the dark I felt her steely blue eyes.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I can do it now. I’ll take him.’
‘No!’ I walked around and took deep breaths. ‘I can do it.’
Kitty let me gather my nerve.
‘You take that end,’ she said.
I could barely touch him, my hands shook so much. I closed my eyes and grabbed the bundle. It could be a sack of potatoes, I told myself. And with Kitty on the other end, at 4 a.m. while the city was all closed down, we got him under the fence and began to stagger off down the street. Whenever a car came by we just sat right down on the footpath. Then I’d steel myself again, lift him up and off we’d go. And in this way we finally got him all the way to York Street.
There we took Milo’s old belt off the bundle, tied it around the metal grid and pulled it up. We were both out of breath and dizzy with the trauma of it. Then, without ceremony, we pushed him into the culvert and I heard the thump as he hit the bottom. We put the grid back and dropped his belt through the grate. Then Kitty put her arm around me and, side-by-side, we went down to the toilets to clean up.
2
You might wonder why I relate this story. The morning
