…It was like looking down on myself in a video game.  I stopped shaking, and this insane anger just shot through me.   I kicked the door of Steve’s flat, right beside the lock.  The door split, and I pushed through the gap.  The TV was on.  He was standing in front of the couch, in his boxer shorts, with a beer in his hand.  He just stared at me as I walked across the room…

I climb up to the cab and slide into the passenger seat of the truck.  The driver is a big bloke.  He’s got a shaved head, a scar on his left temple and a lot of scrappy looking tat’s all over his arms and neck.

I’m Gary, he says, and we shake hands. 
I pick up hitchhikers all the time, Gary says. Look mate, I’m gonna tell you, straight up, I’ve done some time in prison and that’s why I look a bit rough, but you don’t have to worry, I’m about the straightest bloke you’ll ever meet.
I nod and smile.
I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs, Gary says.  I found Christ while I was inside, and I decided to clean myself up. 
I’ve been a trucky all my life, and I’m probably the most clean-living truck driver in Australia. 

Me dad was a trucky, too.  He taught me to drive and strip an engine.  Me dad’s business was a small operation: him, me, two rented trucks, and me best mate at the time, Steve, who was the third driver. 

Me and Steve were mates, since highschool, and me sister Tracey was pretty much living with him, so it was a real family operation.  
When we weren’t driving we were usually down the pub.  We were all big drinkers, but Steve was something else.  Didn’t know when to stop.  He was OK until about his eighth beer, and then he got a real smart mouth and started picking fights.   He showed up for work drunk more than once in a while.  Dad gave him warnings, and lots of second chances, but in the end, he had to cut him loose.

Dad died in an accident when I was twenty-three.  Fell asleep going down the Bulli Pass and wrote himself off. 
After dad passed, I inherited the business.   I started doing long hauls more and more cause the money was good, and dad had left a lot of debt. 
I didn’t see a whole lot of Steve or my sister Tracey at that time.  I knew Steve was drinking  even more than ever, and I kept hearing about him getting in fights.

I warned Tracey to get away from Steve.  I didn’t want her around him any more.   I knew how he was.  Tracey blamed me for his problems cause I wouldn’t give him his job back. 
I tried to tell her he was trouble, but she didn’t want to hear it from me.  She would just say, you’re not dad, Gary, fuck off Gary.
I tried to keep an eye out for her, but I was away on the road for three, four days at a time.

One weekend I come home from a five day run and I find Tracey curled up on mum’s couch with a bandaid over her eyebrow.  Her eye’s black, her lip is split wide open.  She looked like she got hit by a bus.  When she seen me, she started crying, and I didn’t even have to ask her what happened. 
I put my bag down and sat beside her. I said, you got to stay away from that bloke. 
She said, yeah, she knew that.  She said she was going to break up with him.  

I went over to Steve’s place to set him straight.  He was crying.  He could hardly stand up, he was that pissed. 
I know I’ve done wrong, he said.
I told him, we go back a long way, you and me, but if you ever lay a finger on my sister again I’ll have to fucking kill you.
That was all I said, and I walked out.

Tracey moved back in with Steve three weeks later.  What could I  do?  She was an adult. 
Two months later he put her in the hospital.

I was in Townsville when I got the call from mum.  I drove twenty hours straight and got to the hospital about two in the morning. 

My sister was in a room on her own.  Her jaw was broken, so she couldn’t talk.  I sat beside her bed and held her hand.  There were tears running down her face, and she made this sort of choking noise in her throat.  The nurse told me she was sedated, and I should leave her alone to sleep. 

I hadn’t had a decent kip in two days.
I got a cup of coffee from a machine in the waiting room.   As soon as I drank it I threw up. 
I was shaking all over when I walked out of the hospital. 

I got in the truck and drove round to Steve’s flat.  It was a shitty part of town, across the road from a row of warehouses.  I parked the truck right outside the block of flats.  My legs were still shaking when I walked into the stairway, but by the time I climbed the stairs to the third floor I was totally calm.   It was like looking down on myself in a video game.  I stopped shaking, and this insane anger just shot through me.

I kicked the door of Steve’s flat, right beside the lock.  The door split, and I pushed through the gap.  The TV was on.  He was standing in front of the couch, in his boxer shorts, with a beer in his hand.  He just stared at me as I walked across the room.  His eyes were wide open.  When I stepped around the couch, he dodged past me and ran into the bedroom.  I got my shoulder in the door so he couldn’t close it.  He jumped over the bed, and got out onto the balcony.  He slammed the glass sliding door, and I just kicked my foot right through it. 
Later on I had to have about a dozen stitches on my leg, but at the time I didn’t even notice.

He was backed up against the balcony railing, kind of crouching down.  His face was curled up in a sweaty knot of fear.   I grabbed his arm and punched him in the guts.   I was always a bigger bloke than Steve.  He folded up like a sack of shit.  I pushed him against the balcony rail and hit him in the face three or four times as hard as I could.

I don’t think I really wanted to kill him, but when he went limp and started falling over the balcony railing, I just kept on hitting him. He went over the side. The balcony was three floors up.

I walked down the stairs and climbed into the bunk in the back of my truck cab. 
The cops found me there, passed out, when they showed up half an hour later.

Steve lived.  
I pleaded guilty and I did seven years.  
I spent my time studying.  I read the bible and did a business management course.

When I got out I started driving again.  I worked my arse off and I got a loan and bought a truck. 
I got five trucks and seven drivers working for me now.
My sister Tracey runs the office for me. 

Tracey got married to a really nice bloke a couple of years ago.  
She and Dazza have two daughters and a little boy, so I’m an uncle now.

Nobody in me family ever talks about what happened. But I reckon Tracey told Dazza how I feel about boozers, ’cause he didn’t drink anything except orange juice at their wedding.  

 
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