The Drifter

by Anthea Hodgson

  ‘I’ve found some photos I thought you might like to see,’ Ida said, when she was inside.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Cate replied and settled in to look through old memories. It was nice to see her dad looking so happy as a kid, and there were pictures of her mum, as well. Cate had never thought of herself as a country girl because she really wasn’t. Yet here she was in a photo, sitting in an empty sheep feeder, her face plump and grimy, grinning at the camera, oblivious to her straw-blonde hair sticking straight out of her head, tousled by the dusty wind as her uncle towed her along with the ute. Uncle Jack was taller than she remembered. He had long limbs and dark-brown forearms, and a dusty grey akubra that was smashed down low over his face. He was nothing like her father. He was gentler, and he moved slowly, as she recalled, getting to each and every job in turn. Working long days when she had already grown tired and wandered home to eat cake in the farmhouse with Ida. Her memories were brief though. Impressions, mostly, and it surprised her that she retained even those. She had thought little of the farm, and her parents had shown the same lack of interest. This was another world to her; a foreign place in many ways from the fast and glittering life she had invented for herself. As she glanced out of the window she could still see the same paddocks that were captured in the pictures, and her aunt was still there, sitting next to her, and she began to wonder why she had stayed away so long. She remained engrossed in the past until early evening fell, and she could hear Mac whining at the back door.

  ‘What does Mac want? He never comes inside,’ Cate muttered, and went to the front of the house. She opened the door and shrieked. Hanging in front of her was a clutch of dead rabbits, all hooked by the back legs onto a piece of wire that had been fashioned into a macabre hanger.

  ‘What the freaking hell is this?’ she yelled. ‘There are CORPSES on the front verandah!’ She looked around. ‘Fucking hell!’

  Her aunt came out. ‘Cate. Language.’ She looked calmly at the bunnies, who gazed back at her with their all-seeing dead rabbity eyes. ‘Oh, look,’ she said. ‘Someone’s left us dinner.’

  Cate slowly turned to her in amazement. ‘This doesn’t – I don’t know – disturb you in any way?’

  Ida looked confused. ‘No. Why would it? The rabbits are dead, dear, and they were vegetarians before they died.’ She reached out to touch a furry stomach. ‘Delicious.’ She looked at Cate sideways. ‘Now, who do you think might have left these here for us?’

  Cate rolled her eyes. ‘Well, it’s too high for Mac.’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘Henry.’

  Ida beamed. He was turning out to be a great swagman; she was in heaven. ‘You’d better go thank him, dear. These will be a real treat.’

  Cate strode off towards the sheds. ‘Then why don’t you thank him?’ she muttered to no one in particular.

  Mac, always happy for an excuse to tag along, followed, his gentle panting measuring the steps to Henry through the warm evening air. He wasn’t in his kitchen or in his room. He wasn’t at the workshop or in the machinery shed. This was getting too hard, and Cate could think of a few things she’d rather be doing than talking to Beardy Weirdy Henry. Hey, that rhymed. Weirdy Beardy. She played with it a few times in her mind until she turned the corner and saw the hole in his back.

  It was healed now, but the scar seemed huge and angry. Who the hell had shot Henry? And where did he get that body? It wasn’t from trapping rabbits. He was seriously built, like he’d been working on it for a lifetime. He was in a pair of black stubbies, and he was showering under the hose at the back of the shearing shed, pouring the cool water over his fur and skin, a dark smattering of hair across his muscled chest and stomach, and an old bar of soap balancing on top of the tap. She was going to back away, but it was too late; Mac had announced her. Henry squatted down to pat him, and looked up to see Cate standing there like some kind of pervert. She blushed. Maybe it was just hot.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to —’

  He turned quickly so the scar was out of her range of vision.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he muttered curtly, and reached for a large T-shirt, which he pulled over his huge wet frame.

  Crap. Moses. Samson. Who knew? She looked at the ground, to remember why she had come.

  ‘Oh. Um, thanks for the dead animals. Aunty Ida is thrilled. I could’ve done with maybe pins in their eyes? Or little blood-soaked signs in their paws telling me I’m going to die horribly? They were gross, but I think they could’ve been a little more, I don’t know – disgusting?’

  He kept looking at the ground too. She didn’t want to think about why he didn’t want to look at her face. Probably the hole in his back. What he didn’t know was that she could pretend like crazy. It was practically a permanent lifestyle choice at this point. She hadn’t seen anything. Bad or good. She wasn’t sure which was most disturbing.

  ‘They’re rabbits, Princess. What do you think they make roast lamb out of?’

  ‘I’m guessing not zombie bunnies.’

  The beard twitched and he looked up, his face strange. Raw.

  ‘I was trapping them for dinner, and I thought you girls might like to have some of the locals.’

  She winced. ‘Yeah, well, Aunty Ida is boiling up the cauldron as we speak, I expect.’

  ‘Have you skinned them?’

  ‘Oh yes, I have! Did I forget to wear the attractive hat I fashioned from their mangled fur?’

  He ran his hands through his shaggy hair and down his beard, where water still glistened.

  ‘So you want me to show you how, Princess?’

  She was looking at the way his shoulders moved when he spoke, so she missed the question.

  ‘What? Uh, I guess – okay.’

  He looked inquiringly at her, shook his head one more time like a dog woken out of a deep sleep, and gestured for her to lead the way. She walked a few paces, then slowed, and they walked side by side to the house, while she imagined all the ways Henry had got shot.

  ‘Okay, so I’ve gutted them. Mac helped with disposal,’ Henry said.

  Mac looked pleased with himself.

  Cate’s nose wrinkled. She couldn’t help it. The rabbits still had faces.

  He slapped a furry body in her hand, took one for himself and handed her a pocket knife. ‘Here. Now. Get your knife and nick through the fur in its back, about there.’ He guided her hand. ‘Now comes the good part.’ He smiled evilly. ‘Get a couple of fingers in both sides of your cut, and –’ he pulled the fur apart in a nightmare of skinny shiny pink flesh coming out of a fur sock –‘pull.’

  Blerk. She pulled, and felt the fur tear and the slippery skin slide away.

  Henry nodded in approval. ‘Now. Cut off the paws – no meat there – and the head.’ He held up his example. ‘Done.’

  She followed suit. Once the head was gone, she felt better. Not great. Better.

  He looked impressed. ‘Well done. I thought you’d bail, or sook.’

  ‘I don’t do that anymore,’ she muttered.

  He considered her for a moment, and she clutched the rabbit’s jacket in her right hand and thought about how quickly the little creature had been robbed of its fur. Sometimes, she thought, as she stroked the soft dead pelt, you didn’t get as long as you’d imagined. The poor thing had been dashing across the dry paddocks a couple of hours ago, taking it all for granted. Life was unfair to rabbits, and to young women who thought the world was theirs.

  Henry watched Cate’s hands, quietly, regarding them carefully as they touched the fur, and was still watching them when Ida swung open the squeaking flywire.

  ‘The great white hunter!’ she announced. ‘Well done! How did you learn to catch a rabbit, Henry?’

  He turned quickly and smiled at her. ‘Old swaggie’s trick,’ he said with a wink at Cate.

  Clever bastard.

  Ida gestured to the small pile of meat.

  ‘Join us for tea. I’m showing Cate my rabbit recipe – “Depression Su
rprise”, my father used to call it.’

  Henry shook his head, his eyes back on Cate’s hands. ‘No thanks. I’ll be off now. Enjoy the bunnies. They’re good lean meat.’ He was walking away, barefoot, like a wild man.

  ‘Hey, Henry!’

  He turned reluctantly around. Cate stayed on the back step. ‘Feel free to use the bathroom sometime,’ she said. ‘Just knock so we know you’re coming.’

  He shook his head again. ‘No thanks. I’m right.’

  He was already walking away, and he was gone, into the night, taking Mac with him.

  CHAPTER 7

  The next day Cate found herself talking back to the radio. ABC Great Southern Radio was Ida’s station of choice and Cate had to admit it beat the local music station. She flicked it on for variety and listened half-heartedly to heated discussions about country roads and the railway network. Western Australia was so huge that even the local coverage was mostly about distant places, like Albany and Busselton, but she found almost enough to keep her interested, particularly if she was willing to hear Ray Charles’s ‘Hit the Road Jack’ more times than she thought was legal. But now it was already happening. She was listening to ABC talkback, and she was getting involved.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ she snapped from under a pile of piano music. ‘How many sixteen-year-olds are smart enough to vote?’ Oh, look – ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon’.

  ‘You’re talking to the radio, Cate,’ Ida warned her. ‘You sound just like Uncle Jack.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Cate said. ‘Talkback gets to you after a while, doesn’t it?’

  Her aunt laughed. ‘I just like the company, dear, but, yes, I think it can get under your collar a bit.’ She looked over at the pile of papers sitting on Cate’s lap.

  ‘Is that all my old piano music?’

  Cate looked guilty. ‘Yes, I was thinking about tossing it out. You don’t have a piano anymore, and no one would play these tunes anyway, would they?’

  Ida shook her head. ‘I don’t imagine so, but here’s an idea. Let’s put them in a box and I’ll donate them. You never know – someone in Perth might need old sheet music for something.’

  Cate sighed inwardly. ‘Okay, Aunty Ida. I’ll grab a big box and we’ll start a collection of things to be donated in Perth.’

  The house was getting hot, and Cate wandered about opening the doors to the breeze, then decided there wasn’t one. She had to admit, she was getting strange satisfaction from sorting things out with her aunt, and Ida seemed pleased to have someone to share the stories of each item with, almost as if she had been waiting for a chance to tell the stories again, before the stuff went away. Like she owed it to the junk to pass it on.

  ‘Where did you used to go on holidays, Aunty Ida?’ Cate asked, opening and closing a pile of small stiff boxes filled with teaspoons.

  ‘Oh, we mostly went to Perth or to Busselton. Once or twice we went to Caves House at Yallingup. It was absolutely wonderful – kangaroos came up to the lawns at night, and we polished off a few bottles of wine while we watched them, feeling like slightly under-the-weather naturalists!’ She gazed absently at a cardboard box filled with old mismatched teacups as if she was trying to remember why she had kept them.

  ‘Jack loved the water – he’d swim every day regardless of the weather, and sometimes we’d try our hand at fishing, but we never had much luck.’ She looked up at Cate. ‘What about you, dear? What’s your favourite holiday spot? Somewhere glamorous, I’ll bet.’

  Cate laughed. ‘Aunty Ida – I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me! We used to go down south to the beaches and wineries as well, and once or twice we went to Italy. I think Mum and Dad liked the idea of culture mixed with access to wine.’

  ‘I can see the attraction,’ Ida observed happily. ‘And where do you go with your young friends?’ she asked.

  Cate shrugged, unwilling to reply for a moment. She was a member of the solid middle class, but she had managed to gain access to a good number of the right parties and the right holiday houses, with the combination of private schooling, beauty, charm and grim determination. She had made sure she looked good, laughed loud, brought wine or pills, complimented other women copiously, avoided stealing their boyfriends or ex-boyfriends with just as much care, and dropped everything to be available, for anything, any time. It had seen her in some fabulous homes with some terrifically attractive and successful people, it had earned her friends whose names she could drop like fifty-dollar notes, and it had left her afraid of what would happen when she stopped paying her dues.

  She thought of her neglected mobile phone, and knew that it had gone quiet for a couple of weeks before she left Perth because she hadn’t been able to put the effort into chasing the crowd, and they were moving on without her – moving on to wherever the people she wanted to be were going.

  ‘A bunch of us still go down south every now and then,’ she said vaguely. ‘It’s so beautiful down there.’

  Ida nodded. ‘Well, if I have one regret it’s that I didn’t travel as much as I wanted to. It was too hard to get Uncle Jack to leave the farm for long enough.’ She fossicked for a moment. ‘We did have a lovely trip to the UK years ago, but we never made it anywhere else – apart from New Zealand because Uncle Jack wanted to have a look at all the farming land there. And it really was beautiful.’

  ‘I’d love to go there, too,’ Cate said.

  ‘Make sure you do, dear. Travel as much as you can. Find a place in your mind and just go. Don’t wait for the right time. Go. The world is so wide and wonderful, and before you know it it’s gone and left you behind.’ She shook her head. ‘No, Cate, I have no advice for beautiful young ladies about what they should wear or who they should kiss, but I’d like to think you’ll find time to travel, and time to be a good friend.’ She fidgeted with her collar for a moment, her thickened knuckles on her thin fingers rubbing there, embarrassed.

  Cate felt her heart stop for a moment. Did Ida know what a terrible friend she had been to Brigit? She felt the guilt of it swamp her again, like a poisonous tide that she had only dreamed of holding back. She thought about Brigit and how beautiful she had looked that last night, how she had shouted out to the heavens that she loved her. And she wondered what she was wearing when they put her in her coffin.

  Cate reached out and took Ida’s hand, surprised to find it shook, ever so gently. There were tears in Cate’s eyes because she knew she hadn’t been a good friend and the truth hurt, and Ida looked embarrassed, like she’d stumbled onto something she couldn’t understand, and she felt guilty that she’d upset her niece. They regarded each other across a pile of old table linen. Cate picked up a tea cosy embroidered with roses and snails, and cleared her throat.

  ‘I will, Aunty Ida. I’ll start working on it right away,’ she said, and the moment was broken. They laughed in relief.

  ‘Well, I think you’ll deserve another holiday when you’ve sorted out all of this clutter, dear. Jack was a terrible pack rat, you know!’ They both looked at the Princess Diana mug she was holding and giggled again.

  Eventually, they stopped for lunch and Ida made a couple of ham-and-salad sandwiches, which Cate devoured happily at the kitchen table, flicking through Countryman, looking at proud farmers standing in front of equally proud rams. It was a different world out here, Cate mused. She turned to the machinery pages and to the real estate. It was strange that so much went on outside the scope of the city that remained invisible. It was like there was a divide, and you had to drive over the Darling Scarp to enter a slightly altered universe, where people liked having their picture taken with sheep.

  When the phone rang, it was Ida who answered. ‘Hello?’

  Then she heard her say, ‘Certainly. She’s just here, helping her old aunt. She’s a very good girl.’ She handed the phone to Cate with a satisfied smile. ‘It’s for you, dear, a Helen Dowling.’

  ‘Hi, Helen.’ Cate was trying to sound like she hadn’t been caught out.

  ‘Hi, Cate. How are
you doing?’

  Cate rolled her eyes. ‘I’m doing okay, thanks. Sorry I’ve been a bit hard to get hold of . . .’

  ‘Well, it sounds like a really nice thing to do for your aunt, but are you coming back to Perth shortly? I’ve had a chat to your dad, and I’d really like the chance to talk to you about your case.’

  ‘Um, no. Probably not for a while. I’m really busy. And I thought you said it would take a while anyway with the . . .’ She glanced around, but Ida had wandered off to the kitchen, ‘investigation.’

  ‘Oh, it will. It may be a while before you’re charged. The police are very likely to be waiting for legal advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions – or forensics on the car – but when that happens we really need to meet to go through the prosecution notice and I’ll want to hear your version of events, that sort of thing. Okay?’

  Cate didn’t speak.

  ‘Still. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, eh?’ Helen was a friend of her father’s, and she was doing her best to help.

  Cate sighed. She didn’t want help. She wanted to never think about this ever again. ‘Okay,’ she lied. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Just call and make an appointment. Thanks, Cate. I look forward to sorting this mess out for you.’

  Cate slowly hung up the phone.

  By the end of the day, there were more boxes to be stored carefully, donated to the Corrigin Red Cross or sent to Perth. Cate and Ida were both feeling a certain amount of satisfaction.

  ‘Well, if that’s all you need me for, dear, I might have a shower and wash some of this dust off,’ Ida announced.

  ‘Great idea. I might just take Mac for a quick walk – it feels like I haven’t been outside in ages.’

  Her aunt smiled. ‘He’d like that, dear.’

  She headed out, slapping her thigh for Mac to join her. He did so with great relish, his old barrel body bouncing about stiffly on his old legs, his fading eyes still on the lookout for something to chase.