Erasing George (A short story)

George

Halloween 2002.

Manuka Primary School let out early because the teacher’s aid had a GP appointment for a long standing stomach issue.

Instead of waiting for the bus, George flagged down a blue Mercedes which he mistook for his classmate Ben’s family car. Only after the vehicle had stopped and rolled down its tinted passenger window, did he realise his mistake.

Blaring opera scared the birds from the trees as George climbed in. “Thank you,” he said to a mouth full of peppermints. If the driver answered, he couldn’t hear it over the strings and the candies crunching under molars.

The stranger pulled into the gravel bay outside George’s front gate. The boy thanked him again, too polite to ask for a ride up the rest of the long driveway. He sweated through his shorts walking the kilometre or so up the hill.

George’s mother asked him what he was doing in her house. Initially George assumed she was asking why he was home so early. With no smile in sight, he started to suspect a poorly landed joke—something linked to the spooky season, maybe? He forced a grin. His mother could be a bit like that sometimes. But this theory collapsed when she abandoned her parsnip peels in the sink and herded him back through the doorframe. She pulled at his back pack strap. “Where did you get this? Who are you and where is my son?”

She got physical, hurt his arm as he tried to push his way back into the house. She tore his bag’s strap clean off its stitching and ripped the rest of it away from his shoulder. “Get out!” she screamed.

George ate one more stinging push as he lingered on the doorstep. Giving her a chance to see sense.

She disappeared for four full heart beats. Full, but pumping in double time.

Hope made its last welcome visit into the young boy’s life as he waited on that wicker door mat.

Four, three, two—

She returned with a broom and a loaded magazine of words usually reserved for her livestock.

George ducked her first swipe and finally listened to her demands— not because he saw sudden sense in her frenzy, but because he saw no sense in his own. Between his trembling limbs and lips, he couldn’t have offered an appeal if he’d wanted to.

And do you know the strangest part of it all?

While he was retreating back down the driveway, George felt flattered. Albeit it was a flattery undercut by the churning, rancid sense of alienation that his own mother didn’t recognise him, but a buttery base of microwaved flattery visited him all the same. George was flattered to witness the way she might talk about him if she genuinely believed he’d disappeared. Flattered that she cared enough to panic.

Call that a poorly fixed brave face but its true. Given how much the two of them had been fighting in the preceding months–over schooling, over the cost to keep him– to discover this rare demonstration of care? Even if it came packaged in madness? Came flying at him in the form of broom bristles?

This is why, when she stood at the threshold of her dead husband’s homestead and denounced George as an imposter, he couldn’t help but feel warmed. For if she truly did believe this was a charlatan on her door step, it meant that she cared enough about the boy she raised to feel a loss at losing him.

George freed his hounds from the kennels and ran them in the paddocks as a stalling tactic. Assuming, when his friends arrived shortly to head out trick or treating, she’d have cooled enough to see reason. If they didn’t pick an imposter in their midst then perhaps she’d see she’d got it backward?

The boy arrived home with muddy knees and panting dogs at his feet.

Joey and Sam hid behind his mother’s leg. She hid behind an axe. “Get off my land you imposter!”

Sheela, the family border collie, looked at George as if to verify she’d heard correctly. He ran his fingers between her ears and unbolted the front gate, gumboots treading lightly across the boundary of his childhood home. A heavy swoop split the air before his face as his mother released a warning shot from a pioneer era playbook.

Who knows how far she might have taken it had George continued his efforts to enter the house. But between the axe head and his friend’s voices, “Get out of here you trespassing beggar!” he found enough reasons to flee.

Taking Sheela by a tight grip on her leash, he fled from his friends down the full length of the driveway. They wailed for him to “get out!” they wailed for him to “come back!” Half drunk on blood lust, half relishing this unexpected game, their sneakers kicked up dust.

The Blue Mercedes hadn’t left yet. The window slid down. Opera shouted into the trees. George poked his head inside. More birds fled.

“Do you mind if I hitch another ride?”

If they answered, he didn’t hear it.

“And are you okay if I bring my dog with me?”

The other children watched him climb in. This would be the last time they saw the boy pretending to be their friend George.

Merv

Morning sun flushes the pores of the sidewalk and the sins of last night along with it. At least as far as Merv was concerned. His two block commute to unlock the diner was his favourite part of the day back then. The climbing sun had a way of taking an already quiet town and making you feel like it was all yours. They’re not awake to appreciate it, Merv, but you are. So enjoy it. This is your town.

Such thoughts dissipated with the jangle of his keys. Perhaps if he was a barman such whimsy might fly. But not at the diner.

Diner patrons are either feening for their fix or they’ve just had their fix and are reeling from whatever outrage the newspapers fed them as a side to their filter coffee.

“Mother suspected of foul play in boy’s disappearance.”

Merv watched the elderly and the underage come into his diner that day. Like any other working day, they gravitated to the middle table where the papers were kept. The ones who’d clearly heard the news already, skipped right to page seven where “the article continued…” Others saw the headline and morphed into feeding cattle. Not because this town was filled with true crime junkies, but because the mother described in said article was herself, from this town.

During the limbo before the afternoon shift swapped over, Merv always carved out a moment to pick up the paper himself and confirm what he’d been guessing from his customer’s faces all morning. The testimonies of the neighbourhood kids troubled him most in this case. They claimed Miss Teep had gone mad and convinced them to turn against their friend. According to the article, they’d turned up at the farmhouse to collect young Georgy Teep for a night of spooky season shenanigans, but she wouldn’t let him go with them. Shit, it’s not even that she didn’t let him. She insisted without a wink or a scoff that George was some stray interloper she’d never met before.

Having been around enough of those tykes across the years, Merv could believe it. Kids’ testimonies are about as malleable as a scrambled egg mix before the pan it sits in is properly heated up. You tell a kid a thing and they’ll ignore their own eyes just to please the adult in the room. Shit, adults aren’t much different. Only it’s their government or country they choose to obey, but that’s a whole different type of egg to crack.

“The police reckon what those kids encountered in Mrs Teep was a mental break.” A voice muttered from the table by the door.

“It’s Miss,” offered a voice from the front counter. Miles, a logging trucker who came into the diner every second day. “Miss Teep is a widow, so it’s “Miss” not “Mrs,”” he added.

Merv looked across to the stranger who’d first spoken. “Sorry sir. Didn’t see you there.” He squinted. Strange not to have heard the bell ring when this stranger entered. Double strange that not a single patron had primed him to expect a stranger passing through town today.

“Whatever you wanna call her. It’s the mother I’m talkin’ about–” said the stranger. Drawing his fingers in a gun gesture to his own temple, eyes wide. “Cops reckon the mother’s mind cracked and those kids saw the start of it.”

Merv lowered his eyes. “Miss Teep is a lovely woman, my friend” He paused. “Highly strung, to be sure, but best not talk ill of her.”

“-Especially if you don’t know her from Helena or Harry!” offered Miles, who lowered his tone under Merv’s urging.

“You know they found rotting dog ribs on the edge of the West Bridge?” The stranger continued with a light tone of glee in his voice. “Not so strange in these parts. But strange for it to be attached to a collar!”

“You know these parts do you?” asked Merv.

“Collar had a name on it…Sheela.” The stranger made a face as he said this, as if the choice of name suggested something in its own right. “Anyways, the mother, Miss Teep, was it? confirmed Sheela was her collie. ‘Course she did.” He scoffed. “Anything to support the case of foul play from the outside.”

“Well–” Merv folded up his newspaper, “Outsiders tend to be my best tippers, so I’ll have to stay on the fence for this one!” He returned behind the bar and waited for the stranger to place an order. The boys from the mechanic shop came in with their usual banter roaring a few minutes later. By the time Merv had tended to them, the stranger had left.

Three weeks later, the newspapers outlined how young Casey Wick found a child sized tennis shoe in his eeling net that Saturday prior. Shoes aren’t a body. But even in this town, most kids can’t get by for too long barefoot.

They’re still looking for George and Miss Teep is still milking the fact that she was the first to report his disappearance. But it was all too strange for a guy like Merv to wrap my head around during daylight hours. It led a man to wonder. If the valley kids hadn’t turned up and seen George before he disappeared, would the Mother be so high on the suspect list? Merv didn’t like to run too far down trails of thought of that kind, mind you. He liked the sunrise best. They’re not awake to appreciate it, Merv, but you are. So enjoy it. This is your town.

George

I’ve read the papers. I’ve weighed in on the speculation. Not locally of course—out of state. Across bar tops or in the company of strangers in motel beds– the types that let you bum a cigarette on your bedside table. I’ve shared my take on “little boy George” and his “mad old ma,” in places you’re not allowed to take children, and places where people look at you strangely if you don’t have children with you.

Didn’t think the story would be familiar to so many folks. Especially given the decades that have passed since it happened. But I suppose everyone loves a mystery. Throw a potential fillicide into the mix? Forget it.

The mother who made her son disappear with the words, “You’re not mine,” never strays far from my thoughts. I suppose there’s a touch of outer worldly intrigue attached to this whole tragedy. Shit. How many dead beat dads out there wish they could wield such power? A single sentence and the kid is out of your life for good.

Well my Mum managed it for real. I’m proof of it.

No I won’t go into the details of what happened inside that blue Mercedes and don’t you dare ask me about Sheela. But she pulled it off. I can tell you that much. The magic Miss Teep. She said the word and her little boy was dead. They hold anniversary services for me and everything.

Four magic words: “You’re not my son.” and suddenly I wasn’t. George Teep may be my name, but that little boy left this earth twenty years ago. Turns out it doesn’t take an axe.

Makes you wonder if what happened to my old man a few years earlier was just a test run? Makes you wonder if voodoo is more than a good hook for a blues song.

But let’s leave theories to the tabloid rags. Whatever your take or tale you subscribe to. One thing is constant: that woman stole my life the moment she insisted I get off her property. The fact that I’m here to confirm it for you, doesn’t make that any less true.