Free The Blue Mile by Kim Kelly Page A

late-opening department store round here. There’s nothing but the trees and the bats that live in them. Those fucking fruit bats. I’ve got to try to get some sleep tonight; I’m supposing I only got about four or five hours last night, bits and pieces of it, thanks to the bats and the damp of the ground, and keeping one eye on Ag and the other out for a cop or a gatekeeper that might fall over us in the dark. I need a good sleep tonight. I’ve got a job to turn up to in the morning. What in Jesus’ name am going to do with Ag tomorrow while I’m at it? On the North Shore, too. Somewhere I’ve never been, either.
    At least the Gardens is safe. No luck getting back in until I’ve gone all the way up and round to where I found the bent-out railing last night, and when we’re in, I keep walking, just keep walking, almost back down to the harbour again, as if by walking I might somehow get us further away from hopeless. I get us down to the tram sheds this side of the Quay, and they’re lit up like hell’s tomorrow, so I keep walking down to the seawall, away from the harbour lights, to where the sound of the water washing against the wall seems quieter than silence. It sounds like sleep. Even the figs here are quiet. The air is warm and still. This will be a good place for us tonight, I think.
    And then a dog barks somewhere in the blackness ahead and a fella calls out: ‘That you, Perc?’
    I don’t run. I couldn’t run if it was Welfare after us. I’m far too past it now. I say: ‘No, and I’m not looking for trouble.’
    â€˜Righto,’ this fella laughs as he comes up to us. ‘No one’s ever looking for trouble, are they – poor lonely bugger, he is, that Mr Trouble.’ I can’t see him well, but I can smell him. On the metho.
    Ag must smell it too; she wakes up and yawns: ‘Yoey?’
    And the old fella sees her; he says: ‘Ah, you got trouble anyway, I take it. What you doing out here in the night then?’
    â€˜Not a lot.’
    â€˜Righto,’ he says. ‘Well, since you’re not looking for trouble, let me tell you two bob’s: you don’t want to go into the Domain for not a lot tonight.’
    â€˜Wasn’t thinking to,’ I say, thinking about it. The Domain, it’s the park along from the Gardens, behind St Mary’s Cathedral, where there’s a permanent hobos’ camp and the soap-boxers preach their politics on Sundays, not that I’ve ever been to see or hear any of that steaming pile. I ask him: ‘What’s going on there?’
    The laugh goes out of his voice: ‘Listen, you can still get a good feed from the Salvos there, my word you can, but you have to get there before five o’clock. After sunset, no good. Lot of young blokes hanging about nowadays, warming Mrs Mac’s Chair – like you, not looking for trouble, none of them. But they are – stirred up and it’s worse than the last time, it is. It’s no place for you to be taking a child.’
    I don’t need to be told that, and not by this old piece of shitbag. Keep going past him.
    â€˜Stay round the Gardens,’ he calls after us. ‘We’ll look out for you – we’re the Governor’s new groundsmen!’ He starts laughing again, wheezing like a dead man with it.
    I keep walking, and Ag says when we’re well past him: ‘Don’t worry, Yo-Yo. We’ll find a place tomorrow.’ Patting me on the shoulder.
    Jesus, please: she’s seven years old and consoling me. Have a heart, listen to her now as she chooses our tree for this night, telling me all about the fairies that live in this part of the Gardens, that they have white wings and pink roses in their hair, and they all have the prettiest names, like Nina and Lucy, and that they’ll like the hard bit of this pork pie crust to dunk in their tea. ‘Don’t worry, Yoey,