The Chantic Bird by David Ireland

up. The kids with the flattest noses are the ones that dodge the fewest punches.
    I can laugh about it now, and I did then in the cells, but my first smoking wasn’t all that funny. You’ve picked up bumpers and spilled them out into cigarette papers or a twist of tissue paper. Everyone has. But doesn’t it make your head spin? Specially when you take the bigger kids’ advice and suck all the smoke down into your stomach.
    The old fellow in the cell with me tried to stir the trouble-pot every time a constable brought us something to eat and every time one passed in the corridor. One of his favourite dodges was to talk about the desk-sergeant who got some tranquiliser made up and put in the morning coffee. The whole station was nice and quiet and the constables, even the detectives, walked about in a daze. When the supers and the brass called in, they liked the quiet, and you could see they thought the station was sort of holding its breath in awe. Coffee control, the old man called it. It was such a neat idea that I began to have a bit of respect for him. I won’t say I liked him. When you hear of anyone liking anyone, you’ve got to suspect sex.
    I got to thinking of how almost the whole world was against me and people like me. Or I was against the whole world. But where I beat them, they were so liberal minded they couldn’t hurt me as much as I hurt them. The punishment was always easier on me than the crime was on them.
    I can see me now, on their comfortable cop-shop bunk, looking at the black rust on the bars, thinking of when I was a kid; my first fight behind the water tank at Drummoyne, and waking up on the back verandah at my granma’s place at Abbotsford looking up at my cousin’s technical drawing of a thirty-eight engine and tender, looking out over the bay watching my aunt’s ship coming in. Not that it came in, but she told me those masts I saw were it.
    It’s no wonder a fellow has no respect for people older than himself. They have too much, too much more than you have. They have time and money and words and a bagful of ideas to put over, more than a kid can cope with. And no one’s on to them all the time, like they’re on to us. We get too much publicity. People want to hear about us; we’ve driven the good boys out of the news.
    The noise of the old fellow’s sleeve against the brick wall woke me up. He was leaning over me, in another few seconds he would have ratted my clothes. He must have been able to smell the money I had hidden on me. Having someone bending over me like that reminded me of the old man bending over me and saying, ‘I know you don’t tell lies, do you?’ I was too sleepy to hit the old bloke, just like I was too little to hit the old man, years ago. I just pushed him back a bit. He hit the other wall pretty hard.
    Who got away with Ma’s photos? I still don’t know. And the others acted as if I took them, but I didn’t. I wasn’t lying, like I did to the old man. My face did it then, and having clear eyes. The old bloke told me they’d charge me with loitering. The old folks in charge of this world don’t like you to be hanging about unless you’re paid to do it, but the old crim was still trying to find out if I really had cash on me. His telling me that reminded me I might have to use a different style of speaking on Monday in front of the beak. They like you quiet, so they have to growl at you, or even have a good yell, to make you speak up. And you should be a bit slow, so they can follow what you’re saying and pretend to be waiting for you.
    They shifted the old fellow on Sunday and put two other kids in with me. They wanted me to go with them after I got out, and do a few jobs. But they had a leader and that ruled me out. Why do they always want leaders? They must like punishment, and being kept in line. I can’t stand people in charge and I don’t like to be in charge.
    Let them do what they like, without me.
    I wiped them, like a dirty nose.
    When I