11

Emmett has fixed the black Bakelite telephone to the sticky yellowing wall in a rare act of home improvement and hastily jotted phone numbers surge upwards and outwards from it like arteries leaving a heart. Cards from tow-truck drivers are shoved into the back of the phone and by now they’re as light and curled as autumn leaves.

Towies are respected around Wolf Street. They’re tattooed outlaws who carry with them the allure of those who get away with stuff. Rob is deeply attracted. He sees something of the Wild West and the cowboy in the way they show up out of nowhere, screaming to a halt in their loose creaky trucks and then set about plainly sorting things out, roping wrecks as if they’re ornery bulls and dragging them off into the distance, all the time roaring with laughter at their private jokes.

When they show up, Bonanza comes to Footscray. Rob thinks about being a towie one day but never says anything because Emmett has other plans for the boy. He’s already decided what each of them will do for a living. Rob is to be a scientist and Louisa, a doctor. The rest he isn’t concerned with as long as they bring him credit. Privately he thinks; a man just can’t stay innarested in all these bloody kids.

Whether or not he’d make it to being a scientist, Rob fancies himself an inky illustrated towie. He loves the way they are, every single thing about them: their lack of fear, their maleness, their answers to problems, their handlebar moustaches and especially their clothes, the rusty-looking jeans and thick belts with buckles the size of ashtrays. Dressed like that, he thinks, you’d have to be safe.

Fifty-five Wolf Street is on a blind corner with Murphy Street and small prangs are a constant. The accidents come at the cusp of the day when the traffic hots up. Following the screech of tyres and the smash comes the astonished stillness as drivers register the accident. The silence settles briefly and spreads out in circles until gradually, shocked or furious voices emerge from that muffled hollow.

Inside the house at the first sound of the screech, someone will yell, ‘Quick! Ring the towies!’ And kids pounce on the phone as if it’s taking off. The number is dialled and the name Brown is delivered to the operator with a kind of formal solemnity and then the comfortable thought spreads through them like warm pee in a cold swimming pool: they might get the spotter’s fee! But being resolute realists they know the fee still might go to one of the rotten neighbours.

Still, they live in hope and after a decent interval, they amble outside to inspect the damage, looking real casual and sporadically concerned, though never greatly so because there’s seldom blood.

Outside, the last rags of the day are pulling away from the clenched little pub. And inside the air is layered with shelves of smoke. Rafts of it surround the men like low cloud but they don’t even notice. It’s not far off six now and the swill is in full swing.

Emmett is drinking in a school of five and each of the five has five glasses lined up before them on the sawdust floor. Their legs make pillars of support for the beer and though they spit and joke and laugh, they don’t spill a drop. It’s just another afternoon at the Station Hotel in Paisley Street.

And then a little salesman named Jimmy Collins comes in flogging encyclopaedias and gets the royal treatment from the blokes. ‘Look at the little runt poofta,’ someone says casually and Emmett turns a lazy eye toward the newcomer.

Jimmy pushes his little wire glasses up his nose and tries out a smile. He’s wearing a thin, knitted tie and a tweed jacket, aimed at making him look intelligent. He’s a law student working part-time at selling. He carries a leather satchel and a red sample book. Emmett notices the book straight away even though he’s well into a diatribe against governments, all of them. ‘Only people you can ever trust,’ he declares, ‘are union boys like us.’ And he raises his glass, smiling, remembering something fine about unity.

Smoke trails from his fag. His audience agrees with every word he’s saying and that’s as it should be but still, there’s something about the salesman bloke with the books. Something niggles.

Jimmy, hunched at the bar, is thinking about pushing off, pubs are never very productive anyway and this one looks hopeless, but what do you expect in Footscray? he asks himself. Plus he can hardly breathe with all the smoke in here and he hawks unproductively a couple of times, trying to dredge his sinuses. He’s had a cold for weeks now and it’s wearing him out.

‘Gimme a look at that mate, will ya?’ Emmett yells and Jimmy smiles and hands over the encyclopaedia, half expecting this bloke to spread beer over the sample or even rip it and wipe his arse on it, all for a bit of a joke. Still, better the book than me, he thinks resignedly.

Emmett puts his beer down on the floor, parks the fag between his lips and squinting through the smoke, he cracks open the pages to the story of the oak tree. As he scans it, he knows he will buy it for the kids. Doesn’t matter how much. ‘What you asking for these books? How many of the bastards are there anyway?’

The salesman tells him a figure but Emmett’s not listening, he’s reading and thinking about showing the books to the kids. This is the answer. The idea of knowledge makes him feel different. His bloody kids will be different. They will have the lot, the whole fucking shebang, and they won’t end up like this poor excuse for a mob.

He doesn’t want to close the book but he hands it back to the little bloke. ‘I’ll sign up.’ The others in the school pretend not to have heard. They reckon Brown’s well on the verge of the loony bin anyway, talks way too much about any bloody thing and he’s always had knobs on himself. And through the whole transaction they drink as though they are holding back the tide.

A book arrives every two months till there are ten of them but the hire purchase agreement takes years to complete. Emmett pays for it all himself. Every penny. When he tells Louisa to come and hear a story or to do some investi-gate-ing in these here books, she feels the difference in him. Here he is, she thinks. Dad is here, the real one.

The Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia is red leatherette. Shining gold words on the front. He hands a book to her and she holds it and believes in possibility. They all come to have favourite volumes. Nine years old and there are some truths she knows that aren’t in any book.