JACKS PLACE

Jack patted the old stretched balaclava into place over his head and tucked a few escaping gray, greasy threads of hair within. He’d finished cleaning up the kitchen and his days work was done.

“You goin’ home Jack?” asked Gazza, joining him in the wide hallway. He watched Jack with the intensity of a sheep dog watching its flock.

“Yeah, mate,” Jack replied as he fished around in his pocket and pulled out a faded ski hat. Screen printed words, ‘Mt Hutt’, were splashed across the hat and struggled for recognition amongst the grime.  He carefully installed it over the balaclava, arranging the edges.

“Can I come home with ya Jack?” Gazza asked this every day. It was a habit. Gazza, a permanent fixture at the Mission shelter among the comings and goings of decimated, roiling humanity, asked everyone the same question whenever they left the premises.

“Nah mate.” Jack gave the standard reply automatically as he shrugged the old army coat into place over his scrawny frame and pulled on his mittens.  He liked the mittens; old socks with the toes cut off and a hole in the side for the thumb. They worked.

“When can I come and visit ya Jack?” Gazza persisted, as usual. His resemblance to an anorexic rat bore testimony to a habit of guzzling meths - and whisky - when he could get it. They said Gazza was one sandwich short of a picnic these days.

“One day mate”. Slinging the khaki canvas army bag over his shoulder, Jack shuffled towards the front door, already feeling the exaltation of freedom, anticipating the brisk breath of autumn.

When they’d pushed him out of the nut house Jack had nowhere special to go. Not that he belonged in the nut house. He’d been dropped off there as a wee nipper when his Ma and Pa had been killed. There was nowhere else for them to put him. After forty years of living there and working in the laundry hospital, it was closed down and Jack had to leave.  Six months later flash apartments took its place.

Jack was put into a house with five other inmates. Davie, Jo, Arthur, Bethany and Sarah. They were supposed to learn to manage on their own and a social worker came twice a week to teach them how to. Independence it was called. He had his own room shared with Bomber, his cat. It was hard to get accustomed to living somewhere else. No routine.  Jack didn’t have much in common with the others but he kept to his room and didn’t interfere. He hoped he’d get a job in a laundry as they’d promised but nothing happened. He was thankful for the cat who came and went through the bedroom window. He came by it five years earlier when a nurse fished it out of a drain behind the laundry.

 “Do you want this Jack?” she asked passing the tiny, shivering,  gray tabby kitten to him. It took his breath away. He hadn’t imagined anything could be so small and yet so perfect in every detail. It fitted his hand. He called him Bomber after a friend who had died.  Bomber, his friend, fought the Korean war on a daily basis until he finally couldn’t stand it any longer and jumped off the hospital roof. It seemed proper to remember Bomber with a tiny handful of life. Jack carried the kitten in his pocket at first but as Bomber grew, he trotted along at Jack’s heel, like a well trained dog.  For the first time Jack found love. 

He struggled to get along with the others. Although they were in their mid-thirties they were mentally young teenagers. One day, let loose with no discipline, Davie, showing off for the girls threw a fire cracker on Bomber and that was the end of it. The cat screeched with pain and fear then flew over the fence. Davie and the others rolled around laughing. Jack went to look for Bomber. Every waking hour, for weeks, he trudged brokenheartedly around the neighbourhood searching for his cat. One day he kept walking.

He bummed around the city trying to survive with no skills or knowledge of how to.  Reverend Jones found him one frosty night huddled on a seat in the city square and took him to a hot meal and a warm bed at the City Mission.  It probably saved his life. Ten months on the streets had taken toll of his health. Dirty, cold, malnourished and avoided, he was on the downward path to oblivion.

The Mission staff  were supportive and concerned with his welfare, but after a while Jack became overwhelmed by their cod liver oil caring. And too many things happened. There was no continuity.  It wasn’t that he was ungrateful, but he ached for another place, a place without so many people, less friction.  He felt he had gone from the same place back - and now wanted something new.

“You off then Jack?” called Mrs Holding the shelter manager, hurrying down the hall, the aroma of cooked cabbage following in her wake. Rotund, a middle aged nurturer with bright cherry cheeks, mouse hair held in a net, Mrs Holding fussed over her ‘boarders’.  She pushed a yellow plastic supermarket bag into his hand saying, “A bite for later love...” and automatically, rubbed at the leadlight in the front door with a cloth she pulled out of her apron pocket.

In the background there was a cheer and a roar. Almost everyone was in the lounge watching the All Blacks playing South Africa, apart from Ferret. He was upstairs in his room with  pneumatic thumping of head banging music enhancing the ‘P’ he had scored earlier in the day.

Drugs were strictly forbidden at the Mission shelter, but Mrs Holding knew the boy was finished if she reported him. It had been bad enough aarlier in the week when Ferret, decked in his chains, studs and weapons had threatened to cut her head off. Jack had found them in the kitchen, Mrs Holding backed up against the sink and Ferret holding a knife to her throat. He took the knife off Ferret. After forty years in a nut house he knew how to do that.  Ferret was admitted to the psychiatric ward at the hospital but there was nowhere else to put him so they sent him back after a couple of days with new pills. Since then Ferret had been in his room most of the time, only coming downstairs to grab some food to take back with him. Whenever he saw Jack he parodied cutting his throat, his wild eyes wide and dark. Jack ignored him. He’d seen worse.

Apparently entranced with the leadlight, Mrs Holding said, “Bathroom working at your place yet Jack?” She was tentative, her raisin eyes peering at an imagined blot on the glass.  She didn’t like having to do this. She persevered. “Time you got cleaned up love. You can do it here if you want to. I’ll sort out some new clothes.”

Jack gave her a quick, furtive glance out of the corner of his eye, pulled open the door and slipped onto the street.

“See you tomorrow Jack,” she called after him. Standing on the steps she watched the lonely scarecrow figure until he crossed the road and headed into the middle of the city. While he said he had new digs she wondered how good they were. He still had a look of sleeping rough. At least he had his job here in the kitchen.  With a sigh she went back inside.

Jack shrugged his collar up and shuffled down the street clutching the yellow bag. Across the road the bottle store had cars backed up like flies over a piece of meat, their exhausts fogging the air as they waited their turn. He walked down the avenue towards the autumn gold poplar trees standing along the riverbank like giant candles, then followed the stone strewn tinkling river through the inner city suburb living with the melody of the water. 

Pausing to watch a slash of scarlet as the sun left its fingerprint on the horizon, he was startled when an alarm sounded in the fire station on the opposite bank. Within a few minutes the station doors open and the fire trucks were ejected, their sirens hooting and wailing a message of urgency. Despite this cacophony on the evening air, it was peaceful in this part of the city. Everyone seemed to be undisturbed.  Before continuing he opened the supermarket bag; two meat pies, one apple and a packet of biscuits. He grunted his approval.

Ten minutes later he entered the old cemetery beside the river. It was established in the early planning days of the city but was now a monument to the early settlers.  The old headstones leaned at drunken angles and some subsided in the swampy ground like sinking monoliths. On the other side of the river, in complete contrast, a brightly lit hotel was festive with guests coming and going, laughter and chatter.  In river, ducks and water fowl punctuated the merriment by giving small squawks and clucks, with the occasional splash and agitated beating of wings as they settled for the night.  Watching over this activity the tall elms and oaks lining the perimeter of the cemetery fluttered redundant leaves onto the ground where they lay like an old fashioned Bremworth carpet. It all had a comfortable nonchalance and anonymity, a freedom of breath.

The cemetery was groomed by the City Council apart from one corner seemingly forgotten. Scrubby, overgrown bushes made a backdrop for a stand of scruffy, warped pussy willow trees. Jack made for this corner and then followed a faint path through the ivy ground cover, before crawling into a thicket at the back.

He emerged into an arboreal cave wrapped around an ancient, decrepit armchair. Tufts of filling protruded from the torn, faded floral cover and a musty smell of damp bathed the air. Around the space little homely touches had been added.  A tarpaulin across branches made a waterproof cover, an old chipped mug and plate on a banana box.

Jack settled himself into the chair and pulled a torch out of his pocket, flicked it on and hung it on a branch tailored to fit. Opening the supermarket bag he retrieved a mince pie and carefully broke it .

“C’mon then Bomber,” he called putting half the pie on the ground. “C’mon.”

A small black and white, skinny, feral cat slunk through the branches and snuffled its face into the pie, gobbling it ravenously, keeping an eye on Jack all the while. 

Jack expelled a soul deep sigh of contentment and eased back into the chair. This was his place.

Back to Top