Trails in the Dust

by Joy Dettman

  ‘I’m out of petrol,’ Trudy said.

  ‘Teddy’s service station will be open.’

  ‘I left in a hurry. I’ve got about five dollars in my purse.’

  The boys had left messages about no money, no car, nowhere to play and a boogieman lady who talked funny because all her teeth fell out. Trudy was reading her messages, or flipping through them, Jenny watching her face for a reaction. There was none.

  ‘There’s money on the television,’ she said – a wad of it from yesterday’s sales.

  ‘I’ve got money, just not with me.’

  Jenny picked up two fifties and placed them on the table. ‘Get bananas too, if they’ve got any, and a couple of tomatoes.’

  Jenny vacuumed the library while they were away. It was starting to look bare. Amy’s desk would remain until the end, as would the office chair. That tower of Juliana cartons was a problem, but a shrouded problem. She was adding more duct tape to its shroud when the phone rang. It could have been Nick. It could have been a buyer. She walked down to answer it. It was a chap from Willama, interested in the cot.

  ‘It’s not available right now. If you leave your number, I’ll get back to you when it is.’ She was pencilling his number on paper beneath cot when she heard a car drive in. Trudy’s old motor had a distinctive sound. She hung up and opened the front door.

  There was a silver–blue van in her drive. It looked new. She stepped outside to see if she recognised its driver. Recognised the passenger, as did Lila.

  ‘Trudy isn’t here,’ Jenny called.

  ‘Where has she taken them?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Her lie may have got rid of him had Trudy not driven up Three Pines Road at that moment. She didn’t notice the sliver–blue vehicle until she started her turn into driveway. She came no further, and as she backed out, Jenny thanked the old coot in the clouds – thanked him too soon. The Commodore parked in the street, Trudy freed the boys and they came running in through the small gate.

  ‘Get back in that car,’ Nick said. ‘We’re going home.’

  Trudy kept coming, a shopping bag in each hand. ‘The situation down there is impossible –’

  ‘You live in the best fucking house in the street –’

  ‘Then go home and live in it.’

  ‘Get back in that fucking car, I said.’

  ‘Go inside,’ Trudy said to the boys. ‘Run.’

  One dodged him. He got Ricky. He carried him, screaming and kicking, to the back door of the alien vehicle and flung him in. Then he got in to hold Ricky there.

  ‘Go,’ Nick said to the driver. ‘Go!’

  It was a replay of another day. Jenny could see it, could hear the gears of Lorna Hooper’s old green Ford grinding as she’d turned that big car around, Jimmy in the back seat that day.

  There’d be no replay. That silver–blue vehicle would have to reverse over Trudy to get out to the street. She’d tossed her shopping on the lawn and was behind the vehicle, pounding its shiny new paintwork with her fists.

  ‘Back up,’ Nick yelled. ‘She’ll move.’

  Maybe she would. Jenny had allowed Lorna to kidnap Jimmy. She’d stood half clad in the yard, watching that big old Ford hit every pothole in the rutted track, Granny’s gate wide open and too far away.

  Noise in a yard that had previously been quiet, and the noise makers not watching her, Jenny ran between trees and shrubs to the gate. Slammed it, adding its shuddering crash to the noise. Old, heavy metal and wire with a latch that couldn’t be trusted. They’d always chained it and looped a padlock through the chain when they’d left the house unattended. The rear of the van was close before she clipped the padlock, Trudy backing up behind it.

  ‘They’re not going anywhere,’ Jenny said to her. The key to that padlock was on her key ring and her keys were inside. ‘Call the constable.’

  Nick didn’t like that word. He was out before Trudy’s mobile was out of her pocket, then the driver got out. He looked like one of Nick’s relatives, though one Jenny hadn’t met.

  ‘I’m not involved,’ he said.

  Lila didn’t believe him. Perhaps he smelt of Nick. She ran at him, showing her teeth and not in a smile.

  A neighbour on the east side came out to stare; his wife stood at her open front door.

  The driver’s door of the vehicle was open, and Ricky was over the seat, out and running, while Nick twisted Trudy’s arm up her back until she dropped her phone. It didn’t smash. It landed on the lawn.

  Jenny didn’t hear the vehicle pull in behind her. She felt its hot breath and turned, expecting to face more of that bastard’s relatives. Saw a dusty farm utility nosing in close to the gate and recognised its driver. It was young Paddy Watson.

  A big chap, young Paddy Watson, toughened since boyhood by farm labour. Nick Papadimopolous and his relative weren’t big. They knew they’d been beaten, and the world silenced. Trudy knew Paddy, and embarrassed, she ran from him, Nick behind her.

  ‘Everything jake here, Mrs Hooper?’ Paddy asked.

  No reply necessary. Shopping spread on the lawn, yellow bananas, white milk, brown bread, red tomatoes, and one tomato squashed in the melee. It might seed Pat and Mike’s front garden next spring.

  ‘I’m not involved,’ the driver repeated. ‘I gave him a lift up here, that’s all. If you open the gate, I’ll go.’

  ‘What do you reckon, Mrs Hooper?’ Paddy asked.

  ‘No key,’ Jenny said.

  ‘He said he needed to talk to his wife –’ the driver said.

  The neighbours closed their front door. The woman would be on the phone to her cronies. Jenny picked up Trudy’s phone. It was working. She didn’t know Pinch-face’s number and didn’t need him now. She had young Paddy.

  ‘If I’d known what he had in mind, I wouldn’t have driven him,’ the driver said.

  Trudy’s purse had been in her shopping bag. It had spilled coins – and her car keys. She still had a key to the padlock on her key ring.

  ‘Let him out, Paddy,’ she said.

  She unlocked the gate. Opened it while Paddy moved his vehicle, then stepped out to the street to watch the van back out and take off fast up Hooper Street.

  ‘I hear you’ve got a wood router you might be interested in selling, Mrs Hooper,’ Paddy said, finally getting to the reason why he was there.

  ‘I’ve got a lot I’m interested in selling,’ she said as she walked back to the lawn to pick up coins then the shopping bag. Paddy came to help pick up the scattered shopping and drop it into Trudy’s green bag while they spoke of John McPherson’s wood router.

  ‘I don’t know if it still goes, Paddy. It hasn’t been turned on since he died.’

  The front lawn now safe, the twins came from the west side of the house as Jenny picked up a ten-dollar note that had blown under an azalea bush. She folded it and tucked it beneath her bra strap as she placed the shopping on her front veranda.

  The door was open. She could hear Trudy and Nick arguing inside but turned her back on that house and led the way to the shed where she pointed out the solo power point and the coiled extension lead John used to use. Paddy did the rest while Jenny, her boys and Lila watched.

  He got the router working. He knew how to use it. They watched him put it through its paces, watched him make sawdust fly and watched him turn it off.

  ‘She’s a good one,’ he said.

  ‘John used to make toys for kids with it,’ Jenny said. Used to. Everything was used to. Trudy used to be happily married and roaming around Europe with her handsome husband. Jenny used to tell those who asked after her that Trudy was footloose and fancy free. She used to envy Trudy a husband who’d enjoyed travelling.

  ‘Have you got a price on it, Mrs Hooper?’

  ‘I haven’t advertised it, Paddy. Take it and bless you for coming when you did.’

  He wrote her a cheque. She didn’t need it, didn’t look at it, just folded it and slid it in beside the ten-dollar note.

  ‘An ol
d fencing-wire strainer,’ he said, handling an oddity Jenny hadn’t been able to name.

  No one had strained fencing wire on this property. Vern Hooper may have used it when he’d owned his farm. Paddy’s grandfather still owned his farm.

  ‘Give it to your grandfather. There’s an old crowbar in the corner. Take it too, if it’s any use to you. I can’t lift it. Take those shovels if you can use them. What’s left in here when I move out will end up at the tip,’ she said.

  He backed his ute in then to load the router and wire strainer, he squashed a few red-backs beneath his working boot when he reached for a massive pair of multigrips he might be able to use. He took what he named a good post-hole digging shovel and the long iron crowbar, picking it up as if it were a toothpick. He took two rolls of fencing wire, then stood there patting Lila while glancing from time to time towards the house.

  There weren’t many Lila allowed to pat her. Maybe she’d picked up the scent of her siblings on Paddy’s working trousers. His father had trained two of her litter mates to round up his sheep.

  ‘Just thinking, Mrs Hooper. Those blokes setting up their museum would like to have a poke around in here. Want me to have a word to them for you?’

  ‘Have a word with anyone, Paddy. I’m thinking of hanging a Help Yourself sign on my fence,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t go doing that. You’ll end up with every Duffy in a fifty-k radius helping himself to more than what’s in your shed.’ He nodded towards the house. ‘Anything you want me to do about . . .’

  ‘She has to do it, Paddy. No one can do it for her. We’re going for a walk, aren’t we, darlins?’ she said to her boys.

  They followed the ute out to Hooper Street. He turned towards Three Pines Road so they followed him to it. He turned right. They turned left and walked by the hotel. No sign of that silver–blue van, so they walked on down to the takeaway shop, to the smell of fish and chips. Her boys had become addicted to hot chips and potato cakes at a young age. She had ten dollars so ordered ten dollars’ worth of chips and potato cakes, and when the money and the hot parcel changed hands, they walked east to Harry’s bungalow. He’d have the very necessary tomato sauce.

  They picnicked with him, elbow to elbow around his tiny table, sharing their food with him and Lila. Happy little boys who didn’t understand about listening to a football match on a radio. They sat quietly, taking turns to cut pictures from Harry’s supermarket junk-mail with Jenny’s nail scissors.

  Jenny and Harry spoke adult short-hand while listening to that game until the siren hooted its end. Jim used to watch or listen to football matches – if Collingwood had been playing.

  Daylight saving had ended. A fine warm day had become cool evening before Jenny walked the twins home. Trudy’s car was still parked in the street. He was behind its wheel, Trudy met the returning walkers near the gate.

  ‘Did you find my car keys?’

  ‘I’m not giving them to you.’

  ‘We’re going home, Mum,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ Jenny said. ‘Please don’t do this, Tru.’

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ Trudy said. ‘You can sell their cot. Sell my bed too. Sell everything.’

  ‘Please don’t do this, my darlin’ girl.’

  ‘Where are my keys?’

  They were tucked into one of Jenny’s bra-cups. She took them out and dropped them. Trudy picked them up then turned to her boys. ‘In the car,’ she said. ‘Be quick about it.’

  Jenny kissed little hands that still smelt of potato cakes and of all things good. She kissed two worried faces, got a grip on Lila’s collar, then walked alone through the gate. She didn’t look back. No gain in looking back. No gain in begging. Jim had begged and two and a half weeks later he’d died of a broken heart.

  People can choose to die of broken hearts or decide they have no heart to break. Heartless is less painful.

  NO WHITE ANTS

  Pat and Mick’s building inspector declared Vern Hooper’s house termite free the day Jenny sold Trudy’s bedroom furniture. She sold the sitting-room suite to a couple from Willama who also needed a washing machine. April was running short of days when her industrial sewing machine sold.

  She signed her new will before April ended. She’d told Georgie that she wanted her money to be placed into a trust account for Katie and the boys, for Trudy to receive a monthly allowance for the boys’ upkeep only, and that if anything happened to Trudy before the boys were twenty-one, Nick wouldn’t get his hands on one cent of her money unless he could produce receipts relating to the boys’ upkeep.

  She’d signed it at home, in the presence of Georgie, one of her associates and his secretary. Georgie’s firm had offices in Sydney and Melbourne; she’d been the complimentary woman on a few big defence teams, had flown up and back many times. She was driving a big-name barrister that day who had been warned by his doctor not to fly. Jenny fed them lunch in her kitchen, then they got back into a luxurious limo to continue their drive.

  Donna and Jessica Palmer had been helpful. She’d put them to work in the kitchen, emptying cupboards. Most of what they’d packed had gone with them, to the op-shop. She could have used their help in the library but couldn’t take them in there. Donna would have that shroud off the Juliana books in ten seconds flat.

  They were too many. She couldn’t donate them or dump them. Every carton she unloaded at the tip, sealed or not, old Bert, the tip man, opened.

  Books start life as trees. The night after she signed her will, she’d decided to do a Hitler and burn the books – save money on firewood – and before hitting her pillow, she’d stoked the stove with two copies of The Winter Boomerang and two of The Town.

  They hadn’t burnt well. She’d woken to a cold kitchen, a dead stove and four badly singed books, which took all day to burn, one at a time.

  Hadn’t heard from Trudy. She’d gone over to the dark side. That’s what happened in some families. Jim had denied his family – in life. He was with them now and she hadn’t been near the cemetery since the day of the funeral.

  Idle hands are the devil’s tools, Granny used to say. Never put off till tomorrow what you don’t want to do today.

  She had to get an ad in the Gazette today, a shorter list of items for sale, no suggested prices. No genuine offer refused, she’d add to this one. She was running out of time. Didn’t have to hand over the keys until the eighteenth of June, but would be flying away on the fourteenth of May.

  The day after the funeral, half out of her mind and mad as hell at Jim for that fifty-thousand-dollar cheque, she’d walked into a travel agency to blow his fifty thousand on a world cruise – and jump overboard before the boat completed its circle.

  She hadn’t booked a world cruise. The agent had shown her a cruise of the Greek islands. The water would be warmer there, she’d thought, and she’d never heard of white pointers eating Greeks. It hadn’t cost fifty thousand, so she’d upgraded her flights to business class, paid for top-of-the-range travel insurance, paid the deposit with the Visa card, then driven home and forgotten about it – until the itinerary arrived and a bill for the balance of her cruise.

  She could have cancelled it. Might have got back a little of her deposit. Had thought about cancelling it, but she’d read that itinerary then written a cheque for the balance.

  May was five days old when she wrote a final cheque for the woodman, then a larger cheque for the lawnmower man. She paid him in advance to come in weekly while she was away. He had a vac-blower that made short work of fallen leaves. They were falling.

  On the fifth of May she wrote her hairdresser a cheque for a trim and dye job, went to the bank to collect her new bank card, guaranteed by that bank to access any overseas ATM, then drove out to the Willama tip with a load, just to check it out.

  It was more businesslike than Woody Creek’s. It had a uniformed man in a small office who took her money, told her where to unload and left her to do it. She got rid of a boot-load of pla
stic pots and a few pot plants. She’d get rid of Juliana’s cartons there tomorrow.

  That evening she’d removed the shroud and was sealing the first carton into a garbage bag when the phone rang. She thought buyer and ran. It was Georgie. The case won or lost, she was back in Greensborough.

  ‘Heard from Trudy?’ Georgie asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘She’s back at work, doing the nightshift at Box Hill.’

  ‘Who’s looking after the boys?’

  ‘They might keep Nick at home,’ Georgie said.

  ‘They might not too.’

  ‘What have you been doing? You’re panting,’ Georgie said.

  ‘I ran from the library. I’m dumping those cartons in Willama tomorrow.’

  ‘Filled Woody Creek’s, eh?’

  ‘Old Bert opens them. The publisher’s name and mine is all over them,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Kill that thought,’ Georgie said.

  ‘The Willama tip is impersonal. No one sees what you dump,’ Jenny argued.

  ‘You’re not dumping those books, Jen.’

  ‘Then what do I do with them?’

  ‘I’ll give them garage space. We’ll bring the ute up at the weekend.’

  ‘I’ll need any space you’ve got in your garage for the stuff I want to keep.’

  ‘We’ll find space. We’ll be up on Saturday –’

  ‘No. Make it the following weekend and I’ll drive back behind you. I’m going to tell Trudy about Margot – and I’ve got something to tell you too.’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘You’ll try to talk me out of it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m booked on a cruise, leaving on the fifteenth.’

  It was much more than a cruise, but cruise was enough for Georgie to swallow over the phone. Without giving her space to ask, ‘Where to?’ Jenny added, ‘That’s why I’ve been in such a hell of a hurry to get things done. I won’t get back until the sixteenth of June and I hand over the keys on the eighteenth.’

  ‘The sixteenth of June? You’re going for a month?’

  ‘Twenty-eight days – plus the time flying.’

  *

  They came on Saturday, the tenth of May. They loaded Amy’s desk, then the cartons. They loaded the ruby-glass lamps into Jenny’s car with two large cases and one that was smaller, brand new and already packed for her cruise. It had wheels and a handle that turned it into a trolley. The laptop, zipped into its bag, went into the Toyota’s boot, with Jim’s concertina file and Jenny’s near new set of saucepans. The jewellery box rode on her front passenger seat with her handbag.