Free Frederick's Coat by Alan Duff

home holding hands, Danny with his own excitement at what he was going to draw as soon as they got home. Food of little interest to him.
    This was the same boy who’d once said, ‘You’re
not
my father. I don’t have a father. Now go away.’ Like being hit by machine-gun fire.

    Using a car lent by his father, Johno finally got his mind around working for a living, took a job as assistant to a chef in a café called Harry’s Authentic Aussie Tucker — authentic stodge, more like it. A truckers’ cafe when it wasn’t frequented by beer-gutted drunks.
    Slave would be a better job description. The pay was twelve dollars an hour for a fifty-hour week of Thursday to Sunday lunches and heavy dinners that catered to overweight workers, to entire families suffering obesity pigging out on ten-buck ‘All U Can Eat’ specials, late-night drunks ordering steak, eggs and chips and spoiling for a fight. Johno was often tempted to come out from the kitchen and sort out some aggro troublemaker, but knew he mustn’t.
    The most popular dish was a mixed grill — lamb chop, sausage, piece of steak and a mince pattie, with fried chips and choice of two eggs as an extra. Aussie tucker sold by a Croat. Harry Novak worked the public end of his business, put on a ruggedly affable persona with his Slavic accent and told crude jokes to his regular customers. In the kitchen he was an abusive dictator who screamed at his staff for the smallest reason, or for none at all. He reminded Johno of certain prisonguards who abused their power. The day would come, surely, when he’d thump this bully and walk off the job.
    A neighbour, Mavis Wilkinson, looked after Danny when Johno was at work. Widowed at forty-six, she had grown-up kids who lived in other cities. She was country plain with noticeably warm blue eyes, especially when they looked at Danny, who came to really like, even adore, her. But he was just as capable of ignoring her existence if engrossed in drawing or painting. Danny was still young but his father could see the rapid development in his work and wondered when he should get him some professional guidance — not that he could afford it on his wage.
    One day Johno bought a big pad of good-quality art paper, a set of pencils and a novelty pencil sharpener that played ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ and flashed on and off in fluorescent green when you used it.
    Ignoring his father’s gift for an admirable length of time, Danny responded when Johno sharpened a pencil and the familiar tune played. Johno said, ‘I bet you can’t draw me.’
    What the child produced was remarkable for his age, though disturbing, too.
    ‘Is that me?’ Danny nodded. ‘Doesn’t look like me. I bet you can’t do Dad working in the restaurant kitchen.’
    To his great surprise Danny drew a plate of food like the one Johno had once sketched when he was trying to win the boy over. Danny had looked at it for about half a minute, torn it up. Danny’s depiction of Harry Novak’s fare was far more precise: a perfect oblong sausage, a very good rendition of a lamb chop, a rectangular steak with a ridge of fat, and a circle for the meat pattie, but textured, as well as numerous chips drawn in three dimensions, with little square ends. Two eggs with yellow yolks carefully coloured in. How did someone so young draw like this?
    Presumably Johno was the figure wearing a tall chef’s hat. He’d told Danny that he had to wear one at work. The mouth was turned downward in misery and tears were coming out of the almond-shaped eyes.
    ‘Why am I crying? I like the mixed grill. Remember Daddy cooked it for you.’ Come to think of it, the kid had only picked at the food his father had so carefully prepared.
    Danny said, ‘Because Mum doesn’t like you.’
    ‘That’s sad. Does Leah like me?’
    ‘Nope. That’s why they left.’
    ‘Do you like me?’
    ‘Yes. But I didn’t used to. Mum said you spent all our money on horses. We could have had a house and