Trails in the Dust

by Joy Dettman

  Thunder on a night when the sky is clear, light where there should have been none, had farmer and motorist reaching for their phones. Willama dispatched a convoy of sirens, but fuel fed, the fire took the path of least resistance, towards the river, gorging on whatever got in its way.

  Farm fences got in its way, small trees and large, timber power poles, a farm shed and stock got in its way.

  The power poles had an important job to do and for a time continued to do it, but by seven-fifteen, Willama’s twelve thousand residents were plunged into darkness, as were Woody Creek’s five hundred.

  ‘Bugger,’ Jenny said. She was in the shower. Turned the water off blindly, found a towel where it was supposed to be, then, her hand against walls, she made her way down the passage to the kitchen where she opened the firebox, for its light. She’d pitched her plastic bag of candle stubs in the bin when she’d emptied the kitchen drawers. She had torches, the small one she kept in her car’s glove box and the big one, which could have been on the hallstand.

  ‘Sit down or you’ll knock me over and make it a real homecoming,’ she said to Lila. She’d never been an indoor dog, not until Jim died, when Jenny had started locking her in at night, for company.

  Jenny added junk mail to the stove. Harry had delivered a pile of it with a rubber-banded wad of mail she hadn’t yet got around to opening. She felt for the matchbox on the mantelpiece and by the light of matches, she found her nightdress, placed beneath her pillow the morning she’d left.

  She undressed in the dark, then made her way to the hallstand where by the light of matches, she looked for the torch that wasn’t there. She could get the one from her glove box, was considering it when she heard the shed door slam. The bolts had been rammed home before she’d left. Someone had been poking around out there.

  Listened for a second slam. If that door did it once it would keep doing it until she went out there and bolted it. How many times had she got out of bed in the night to slide that bolt home?

  ‘It can slam tonight,’ she said to Lila, who refused to leave her heels. ‘We’re going to bed.’

  She stoked the stove, closed it down for night burning, then her hand following the wall again, she felt her way back to her bedroom. The matchbox on her bedside table, she slid between familiar sheets and placed her head on a familiar pillow.

  ‘Bliss,’ she said, her bones settling on a mattress that was just right. ‘Go to bed,’ she said. Lila was scratching around in the dark. The shed door slammed once more, then either remained open or closed and Jenny’s eyes closed. She knew no more until her bladder roused her at seven-thirty.

  *

  The power was still off, but her kettle was boiling and there was a nest of embers in the firebox, perfect for making toast in the old-fashioned way. She was buttering the first slice when Lila told her Harry was coming. He knew where to get a cup of tea in a blackout.

  He knew what was causing the blackout. The transistor radio he’d been sleeping with since losing Elsie kept him well informed on the local news.

  ‘There was a bad accident out where Old Willama Road hits the highway. A loaded tanker ran into a car full of kids.’

  He spoke of the truckie who’d lived, of the youths who’d died, while Jenny impaled more bread on her fork. He knew the name of one of the dead youths. ‘Young Cody Lewis, Walter’s son. His brother told Teddy this morning at the newsagents.’

  That was the way of this town, information exchanged where locals met, out the front of the newsagency, in the butcher’s shop. They’d have the names of the other dead youths by midday. Jenny, only home for today, didn’t want to hear of death.

  ‘The fire would have done more damage if the tanker had been carrying a full load. That chap who trains racehorses out there lost a lot of fences and was lucky not to lose his house. They’ve been warning traffic all night about horses running loose on the road,’ Harry said. ‘Got any Vegemite?’

  ‘In the fridge. It should be on the top door shelf.’

  ‘You keep it in the fridge?’

  ‘We don’t . . . I don’t use a lot of it,’ she said.

  ‘Young Harry said to tell you that he wants to pay you something for your fridge.’

  ‘It was past its use-by date twenty years ago. Tell him he’s saving it from the tip,’ Jenny said. ‘I was thinking on my drive home of how I had two cases, a tin trunk and a bit of bedding when I packed up in Armadale. It’s amazing how little you can manage with when you have to.’

  She spoke of the tour then and the aqua-blue case she’d left in Greensborough. She spoke of the secondhand man who’d said he’d be here between eight and eight-thirty this morning.

  ‘You’ll stay with Georgie for a while?’

  ‘For a while, until I know where I want to be.’

  ‘Down there, near the grandkids?’ he said.

  ‘I spoke to Trudy before I left yesterday. She was talking about moving back to Willama. Something big has happened between her and Nick.’

  They spoke of many things, Lila content between them, Harry feeding her crusts, with Vegemite. ‘I missed her this morning. She’s been taking me for a walk up to get my newspaper.’ She knew ‘walk’ and stood, head to the side, waiting for one of them to move. Harry gave her another crust. ‘You can leave her with me, if you like – just until you get settled.’

  ‘If the secondhand chap buys my bed, she’ll have to stay with you tonight. I’ll book into one of the hotel’s cabins – or maybe the Gold Rush. I’ve got a ton of things I need to do down there, and I’ll be on the spot to hand over my keys.’

  ‘They’ve got no power down there either,’ he said, then spoke again of the accident, or of the truckie who claimed that a third vehicle had sent the Mazda hurtling into his truck.

  Lila heard the secondhand man’s van backing in. She ran to the door to bark her disapproval when Harry let the interlopers inside.

  They bought Jenny’s bed, dressing table, bedside tables but wouldn’t take the wardrobes as a gift. Pat and Mike might appreciate them – or chop them up for kindling. They bought her kitchen table and chairs, her old radiogram and vinyl records, for a pittance. They bought the large coffee table from the sitting room, then totalled their offers on a calculator, Jenny disinterested in the total or the notes the shop owner counted from his wallet to the table.

  She picked them up before they picked up her kitchen table, and what was a kitchen without a kitchen setting? She swept the empty space of floor, then Lenny and young Harry came to collect the fridge.

  Didn’t want to watch it being moved, so she made a phone call to her hairdresser and got an appointment at three for a trim and to have her roots done.

  Nothing left, or nothing that wouldn’t fit into the green bin – and her small television and video player. She unplugged them. Harry loaded them into the Toyota’s boot. She tied a dozen videos into a supermarket bag, placed the last of her bread, milk, cheese and butter into another bag, with her teabags and a jar of sugar. She’d spend the night at the Gold Rush and make her own breakfast in the morning.

  One o’clock when she clipped on Lila’s lead. Lila didn’t want to walk with Harry. She wanted to patrol her land, bark at the shed. Harry led her away and Jenny went inside to walk the hollow rooms, to mop the floor where her fridge had been, wipe dust from the corner of her kitchen bench. She took one last look at the library and wondered if Pat and Mike might furnish it as Jimmy’s library had been furnished, wondered if they’d light its open fire and sit in here, watching television. She’d removed the newspaper from its chimney, from all of the chimneys.

  A nice room this one, in a nice old house that had been Jim’s and Trudy’s and the twin’s home but never Jenny’s. She’d just lived here, because they’d lived here.

  The sky to the west was looking dark. Woody Creek could have been in for a storm. The farmers needed rain. Jenny didn’t. She didn’t like driving in the rain.

  Looked at her watch. If she left now she could book
into the motel and make herself some lunch before her hair appointment. She might be able to pick up her photographs early. The chap at the photography place had said yesterday that they’d be ready in twenty-four hours.

  Should have brought her overcoat. She’d meant to. In too much of a hurry to get away, she’d left it hanging in Georgie’s guest-room wardrobe. She was wearing a sweater and cardigan, warm enough, but that cardigan wouldn’t keep her dry if those clouds kept their promise of rain.

  Her old parka was still hanging behind the laundry door. Half a dozen times she’d been going to pitch it in the green bin, but there’d been not a thing wrong with it – other than it made her look like the Michelin Man.

  She picked up her handbag, her plastic bags, looked at her stove one final time. She’d miss it, though wouldn’t miss stoking it. And a light came on in the hall. She turned it off, checked the bathroom cabinet one final time, checked the front door, then left via the back door, locking it and the security door behind her.

  How many times had she locked and unlocked those doors? How many times had she walked those few metres to the laundry?

  She took the old blue parka down from its rusting nail. Unworn in three years, it was probably full of spiders. She shook it, slapped it and, still slapping and shaking it, walked down Jim’s ramp. It would be gone in a week. Pat and Mike hadn’t liked it. They might be sorry in ten years’ time – sooner than that they might be sorry they’d bought in Woody Creek.

  The plastic bags tossed onto the back seat, the parka checked more thoroughly for spiders and then placed with her handbag on the passenger seat, she slid in behind the wheel.

  Georgie had driven the Toyota for the weeks her own car was in the body shop. She’d had it serviced, had bought it a new battery and new front tyres. By no stretch of the imagination was it a new car, but it still looked new, still went like new.

  Jenny had fallen in love with it the day she’d driven it home from the showroom. It was her first car with power steering, air conditioning and bucket seats that adjusted to suit the driver’s size. Its fuel gauge was down to a quarter full, but a quarter of a tank was plenty to get her to Willama.

  Shift in reverse, she backed up to where the nose of her car was level with the library window, where she turned her wheels hard onto the track she’d worn between house and shed. With less space to manoeuvre each year between the liquid amber and the crepe myrtle, she had to concentrate on her side mirrors, then make a second hard turn as the car mounted the cement driveway.

  And her passenger side door flew open.

  She hit the brake, wondering how she’d managed to leave that door open, and as she turned to close it, a black-clad male, his face hidden by a ski mask, flung himself into her passenger seat, pointed a gun at her and snarled, ‘Drive.’

  She didn’t think. She didn’t see. Her brain said, Run. If not for her seatbelt, she may have. She got her door open, but as she did, he hit her behind her ear with the barrel of his gun.

  ‘Drive, you geriatric old bitch, or you’re dead,’ he snarled.

  Jenny stared in open-mouthed disbelief as her car backed itself into the lavender bushes she’d planted to hide an old paling fence. No scent of crushed lavender in her car. Stink of Duffy in her car, stink of unwashed feet.

  ‘Take the car,’ she said. ‘There’s money in my bag. Take it.’ She was too old for this. She had too much to do and too little time to do it. ‘Please, just take my car and let me out.’

  ‘Drive,’ he said, and he pushed the barrel of his gun into her neck.

  She didn’t want to die in Woody Creek, be buried in Woody Creek. She wanted to do it drugged to the eyeballs in an old folks’ home. Her foot found the accelerator and, taking half of a lavender bush with her, she reversed too fast out to Hooper Street, missing the right-side gatepost by a whisker.

  No passing truck to stop her flight. No bike rider or wandering drunk. Not a soul to save her, and when had there ever been anyone to save her? Only Granny – who she was going to see a lot sooner than she’d expected.

  The opposite kerb stopped her. One of her rear wheels hit it and mounted it, before her foot found the brake. He didn’t want her to brake. He pushed the stick into Drive, turned her wheels away from Willama, ground the gun barrel into her ribs, then, from the mouth hole in his ski mask, familiar lips spat, ‘Drive, you ugly old moll.’

  She drove, her undercarriage grinding on concrete before all four wheels were back on Hooper Street. Too fast she turned right into Three Pines Road, her head throbbing where he’d hit her, her heart attempting to break free of her ribs. Her eyes searched the road for that pinch-faced constable, or a council worker, or Bernie Macdonald and his walking frame. Someone. Anyone.

  Empty end of the world road in an empty end of the world town. She was getting out of it, though not the way she’d planned to. Should have locked her car doors as soon as she got behind the wheel. Jim used to tell her to lock her doors –

  Drove by what used to be John and Amy McPherson’s land to where the road used to curve left to the old bridge. No curve now. No old bridge. No McPherson’s land. A new stretch of road led directly onto an ugly concrete bridge, designed by city men for city traffic that wanted to bypass tin-pot little towns.

  Plenty of signposts where those roads intersected. The main road had right of way. Three Pines had a Stop sign. She attempted to obey that sign, but he hit her again, and in the same place, and the pain so intense the second time, she did something she’d never done in her life, she sideswiped a white post, hit it hard enough to fling the steering wheel from her hands.

  Survival instinct saves us whether we want to be saved or not. Jim had known that. That’s why he’d removed his prosthesis before taking his final ride. Survival instinct kept Jenny on the road, and at that moment, had she been holding that gun, she would have put a bullet between his eyes. He’d made her damage her perfect little car.

  She was powerless. She had no weapon – only her car, and so thinking, she flattened the accelerator to the floor. The motor surged, the wheels skidded on gravel and bitumen, then all four became a team. Obedient to her foot, the Toyota took off over the bridge like a bat out of hell.

  Big trees on the far side, nothing but trees, one of them marked by a Duffy utility that had attempted to climb it. Her passenger didn’t want to climb a tree. He took the gun out of her face and grabbed for his seatbelt.

  He’d sat on her parka and handbag, and unable to find the seatbelt clip, he dragged both from beneath him and pitched them to his stinking feet as her speedo crept past a hundred and twenty. She’d been doing a hundred and twelve when she’d got that speeding ticket, but the road beyond the bridge was straight and wide, so she increased her pressure on the accelerator and got the needle brushing a hundred and thirty, wanting another speeding ticket, praying for another speeding ticket.

  He was wearing the Duffy uniform of windcheater and hoodie. For three generations, Duffy had been an obscenity in Woody Creek. They lived off the taxpayer, stole anything that wasn’t tied down, and every generation bred better thieves than the last. His build was Duffy but something about him wasn’t. Most of that rat pack’s insults were four-letter words. Drive, you geriatric old bitch, he’d said. Geriatric had nine letters.

  She glanced at him as she passed the old Bryant property. No more Bryants in Woody Creek, no more Monks or Hoopers. All three properties now belonged to a city company that ran dairy cows, hundreds of big black and white beasts that walked twice a day to modern milking sheds where machinery did the work of a hundred hands. The world had been a safer place when all men had laboured. The elderly had been respected, cared for. These days they were easy prey for this mongrel and his ilk.

  *

  In her office on the twenty-third floor, Georgie was thinking Duffy. She was with a client who made her skin crawl.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said when her mobile vibrated. Few had that number. Katie’s school had it. Paul, Jenny, Trudy and more recen
tly, Harry, had it.

  It was Trudy, and Georgie excused herself to take that call in the corridor.

  ‘They found my car. He crashed it out near Broadmeadows. They’re saying that he dragged a teacher out of her SUV at traffic lights then drove off with a little girl in the back seat.’

  ‘Nick? Have they got him?’

  ‘No. And they think that SUV was involved in that fatal accident near Willama.’

  ‘Have you phoned Jen?’

  ‘She’s not answering, Georgie.’

  ‘I’m with a client, Trude. I’ll have to go.’

  Her mind wasn’t with her client – and she had another two this afternoon, one she’d transferred from yesterday so she could pick Jenny up from the airport.

  She’d been determined to drive home. ‘I’m so close,’ she’d said. ‘Off you go, and don’t worry about me. I’m fine.’

  She’d looked fine, had sounded fine and had been making her own decisions since she’d turned fifteen.

  Only fifteen when she’d given birth to Margot – and in these days of enlightenment, a rape victim wouldn’t be expected to give birth to her rapist’s baby. Attitudes had been different back then. Males had ruled the world and girls weren’t raped but taken advantage of – and apportioned more than their fair share of the blame. Jenny had run from baby Margot. She’d stowed away in the goods van of a night train.

  In these days of enlightenment, a psychologist might explain why a fifteen-year-old girl had become involved with a twenty-six-year-old man, might explain Georgie’s conception. Jenny had never attempted to. She’d said that Laurie Morgan had been kind to her, that he’d looked like Clark Gable with red hair, that he’d bought her beautiful frocks and shoes with heels four inches high, and glasses of magic lemonade, and if she drank enough of it, it made the world, the Macdonald twins and Margot go away.