Friday Brown

by Vikki Wakefield

  I wandered a little way past what must have once been the main street, to where the rows of red gums cast looming shadows. Between them ran an almost-dry riverbed, about five metres across with smooth, pale stones and a few puddles the colour of black tea. The land was split in two: on one side rambling, twisted scrub and the bones of the town; on the other, bare yellow paddocks carved by a cattle fence.

  It all felt familiar, as if I’d been there before. It was uncomplicated. I was at peace. I didn’t feel the need to look over my shoulder; I could breathe properly and my senses weren’t tripping over each other.

  ‘We wondered where you were,’ Bree said.

  She had her sleeping bag wrapped around her shoulders and a beanie pulled low over her ears. ‘Thought you might have been dragged off by a dingo.’

  I shrugged. ‘Just exploring.’

  ‘Did you happen to find an ensuite?’

  I smiled and slid down the riverbank on my backside. I pointed to a puddle. ‘Look. Tadpoles. The eggs can survive without water for months, even years. Then when it rains, they hatch and the cycle goes on.’

  ‘Amazing.’ She smirked and followed me.

  I offered a squirming tadpole. ‘Isn’t it? He doesn’t know he’s going to grow legs and lungs. The information’s all there, waiting for the right time, packed in his DNA.’

  I thought of Vivienne, her hands next to mine, turning a small creature so I could inspect it and be amazed. How she made everyday things seem like a miracle.

  Bree pinned her hands under her armpits and shook her head.

  ‘I heard there are caterpillars in Antarctica that defrost for just a few days at a time,’ I went on, determined to raise her interest. I scooped another handful of water and let the tadpoles wriggle through my fingers. ‘It can take them up to ten years to eat enough vegetation to pupate. Imagine that. Imagine if we could be frozen in ice for a whole year and then wake up and start eating like nothing happened. Makes us seem so fragile, don’t you think?’ I smiled at her but she was staring at the ground.

  ‘Whoopie-doo.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t you sleep?’

  Her mouth twisted. ‘God, didn’t you hear it? In the night? All that rustling and squeaking. I was lying there listening to it with my heart in here,’ she pointed to her throat. ‘Carrie too. Arden ended up sleeping in the car but that was probably because she was pissed off with Malik. What the fuck did she bring us here for?’

  ‘There’s nothing out here big enough to carry you off,’ I laughed. ‘Maybe a camel. Sorry,’ I rambled on. ‘But animals adapt. One caterpillar and one green leaf against a whole frozen continent. That tiny thing knows exactly what it’s born to do and it survives against all the odds.’

  ‘Look at you,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ I smoothed down my hair. I knew I must look awful. ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile.’

  ‘Of course you have.’ I blushed. ‘I smile all the time.’

  ‘Not from here to here.’ She drew a line from one ear to the other with a finger. ‘See, I’m just not feeling it.’

  ‘Feeling what?’

  ‘Whatever it is I’m supposed to feel. You know, some deep connection with the land, or whatever. What a load of shit.’ She wrapped the sleeping bag around her shoulders.

  ‘You’re pretty hard on yourself.’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘Me too. Wherever that is.’

  Bree raised her eyebrows. ‘Carrie said something happened with you and Wish.’

  Self-consciously, I touched my lips. I thought about the false Friday Brown he’d kissed, and compared that image to the real me. But he hadn’t turned up that night, so I decided maybe he wouldn’t have wanted either.

  ‘Nothing I want to talk about.’

  ‘Come on, tell me,’ she prodded. ‘Did you catch the Wish fish?’

  ‘More like he got away. And he stole my bait.’

  She was shocked. ‘Did you two…’

  I got what she was thinking. ‘God, no. Bad choice of words. Nothing happened. I’m glad it didn’t. He loves Arden.’

  There was a distant pop, then another, like something exploding.

  ‘Well, why wouldn’t he?’ she said. ‘Come on. I smell food.’

  We walked back to the campsite.

  ‘You’re ruining this for me,’ Arden was yelling, her hands on her hips and her feet apart. Her insult wasn’t aimed at any one person; it was flung wide like a net. She had her back to us but spun around when she heard us approaching.

  ‘The fire’s going out,’ she accused. ‘And you’d think somebody would know enough to open the fucking cans.’

  Carrie retreated behind the car.

  Silence was sitting up, still inside his sleeping bag. It looked like it was bleeding orange sap. The dirt surrounding the campfire was sprayed with baked-bean buckshot. A couple of gaping, blackened cans bubbled and spat in the dying coals. A sickly, sticky odour made me screw up my nose and cover my mouth.

  AiAi returned from wherever he’d been, zipping his jeans. He gauged Arden’s mood, then slunk away.

  Bree and I turned to look at each other.

  Her mouth twitched and one deep dimple appeared. ‘I’m not that hungry,’ she said.

  ‘Me neither,’ I agreed.

  We giggled and Silence, who looked like he was wearing most of the exploded beans, laughed too.

  Arden stalked off.

  A few minutes later, she was dragging junk out through the door of the old church, making a pile of iron sheets and planks that would have to be moved again anyway.

  Malik helped, stripped bare to his waist.

  In the end, nobody could stomach beans for breakfast.

  I grabbed a piece of stale bread and toasted it on the end of a stick, then ate it dry.

  AiAi did the same. He burned three pieces before he got a colour he liked.

  I stoked up the fire and rolled my swag, then followed Carrie and Silence into the church.

  ‘Shit,’ Carrie said under her breath. ‘This is worse than I thought.’

  Even Arden’s determined efforts had not made a dent in the mess. Fire had ravaged the church once—maybe more than once—and the air tasted stale and smoky. Most of the pews were more or less intact but they were charred and brittle, breaking apart. The whitewashed walls were covered with graffiti, dripping with yellow stains. There was no glass left in the windows. Birds had moved into the rafters and a one-eyed crow watched us from above, head tilted, its good eye aimed down. Our footsteps echoed on the scarred wooden floor, black with dirt, grease and burns.

  Arden broke from her frantic pace and wiped her arm over her face, leaving a clean, pink spot on her nose.

  ‘Don’t just stand there,’ she snarled. ‘If we all pitch in it’ll be cleaned up by tonight.’

  ‘No fucking way am I sleeping in here,’ Carrie said and squashed a spider with her foot. ‘I’ll take my chances out there.’ She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder.

  Silence wheezed agreement.

  ‘How about you, country girl? Scared of a few spiders?’ Arden challenged.

  ‘Just the redbacks,’ I conceded. ‘But if we bomb the place, that should fix them.’

  Carrie laughed. ‘Now there’s an idea. Let’s blow the place up. Looks like it’s been bombed already.’

  ‘I meant spider bombs. Those cans of insecticide.’

  ‘I’ve started a list of everything we’ll need,’ Arden said, waving a piece of paper. ‘Let me know if you think I’ve forgotten anything. Malik and I will do a run tomorrow morning.’

  ‘We need more water,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Oh, shut up about the water, will you?’

  Near dark, we were all filthy, bleeding and exhausted. Arden’s vision was a long way from being realised and the air was still choked with dust. We’d cleared a large space, enough for living and sleeping. Six rows of pews were gone, ripped apart an
d stacked up for firewood, the rest wiped clean and lined up along the walls for seats.

  Much to the others’ disgust, Arden and Malik laid out their swags to claim the raised platform where the preacher’s pulpit would have been. I wasn’t too bothered. Up there, the floor seemed fragile.

  The other buildings were beyond hope. The pub was a wreck, a house of cards ready to fall in on itself. It was plain dangerous to go in there. The squat, plaster houses were nothing but walls—no roof, no floor. We’d found a few useful things—a shovel, a crowbar, a dresser and a rickety table—but most of the half-buried artefacts that looked promising had disintegrated on touch.

  We looked like a group of dirty savages, collapsed around the fire. I smelled burnt toast again but, thankfully, no beans.

  Joe was smoking on the steps, alone. I went over.

  ‘I’m in mourning,’ he said, showing me his empty packet.

  ‘Arden’s going shopping tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I’m sure she’ll get more for you.’

  ‘She said we all have to give up,’ he said, miserable. ‘Part of her vision for a better world. But there’s nothing else to do out here.’ He crushed the packet and dropkicked it into a bush. ‘Where are you going?’ He gestured towards my torch.

  ‘I just came to see if you were okay. Come over by the fire. It’s freezing over here.’ I switched on the torch and flashed an S.O.S. on his face.

  Joe squinted and waved me away. ‘I want to sleep for a month. When I wake up, I want this all to be over.’

  I sneaked into the church and pilfered two cigarettes from Arden’s packet, which was sitting on top of her precious tin. The tin that I supposed had money in it. I wondered how much she had stashed away, how long she’d been saving up for her plan to take over the ghost town. I picked the tin up, felt the thunk of something shifting inside, jiggled the lock, then put it back carefully inside the impression left in the dust.

  ‘Abracadabra, alakazam,’ I said to Joe. I reached behind his ear and pulled out one cigarette. I held it under his nose.

  He inhaled the scent of it, a cheeky smile on his lips. I handed him the second one and he gripped my hand for a moment.

  ‘I’m going to call a referendum,’ he said seriously. ‘I’m pretty sure we all want to get out of here. How will you vote?’

  I shrugged. ‘Even if you get enough votes, do you really think it’ll make a difference? Sounds like Arden’s put a lot of effort into this.’

  ‘I was hoping the fact that she has to shit in the woods like all the other bears might change her mind.’

  ‘It probably will. Give her a few days.’ I was enjoying myself. I felt more at ease, more sure of myself than I had in a long time.

  Silence materialised. He tugged at my sleeve.

  Joe got up, lit a cigarette and took a long, blissful drag. He sighed through a stream of smoke. ‘Yeah. A few more days. We can all survive that.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Joe, Silence and I wandered back to the circle of fire.

  Carrie had her hand deep in a bag of Doritos and AiAi sat cross-legged on the ground between her legs, drinking beer again.

  ‘We’re telling campfire stories,’ Arden said.

  ‘It was disgusting,’ Darcy said. ‘Malik said how this family had their house broken into and all their stuff was taken. But not their camera. So, when they took the film in for processing they found all these pictures of the burglars mooning. And when they zoomed in they could see the family’s toothbrushes stuck up their arses. And they had been using them since the burglary.’

  ‘It isn’t true. It’s an urban myth,’ Joe said. ‘True stories are even creepier.’

  ‘I’ve got one,’ said Carrie. ‘Our next-door neighbours went away for a few days and somehow our other neighbour’s dog got into their backyard and killed their rabbit. It was all covered in dirt and slobber. So this woman is horrified that they’ll find out and she takes the dead rabbit, washes it, blow-dries it, and makes it look like natural causes.’

  ‘Gross,’ AiAi slurred.

  ‘I’m not finished. So, the neighbours get home and they tell my mum that the weirdest thing happened—their rabbit died the day before they left and they buried it in the backyard. And when they got home it was back in its hutch.’

  ‘Freaky,’ Arden said.

  ‘Another urban myth,’ Joe argued. ‘Notice how everyone always said it happened to someone they know?’

  ‘Bah, humbug. It’s true,’ Carrie said, but she sounded unsure.

  ‘I have one,’ I volunteered. ‘This is a true story.’

  ‘Go on,’ Arden said and swigged her beer.

  I told it just like Vivienne told it to me. The setting was almost the same: a dying fire, ghostly gums all around, bitter cold. The hairs on my arms were standing up and I had the keenest sense that with Vivienne gone, this was my story to tell. My history. Campfire stories were in my blood.

  ‘We lived in a two-roomed hut,’ I began, and their orange-glowing faces all turned to me.

  I was three years old. Vivienne and I were there all alone, nineteen kays from anywhere, her man away droving. There was bush all around, flat land with no horizon. We had an ugly, yellow-eyed dog called Croc. He was ten generations of mongrel, but he was whip-smart and he wasn’t scared of anything.

  One afternoon, Vivienne was hanging wet sheets. I was playing by the woodheap when a metre-long red-belly black snake shot out, writhed past my feet, and went under the house.

  ‘Snake!’ I yelled and pointed at the gap between the house and the ground.

  Vivienne snatched me up with one hand and a heavy, club-ended stick with the other. We waited, but the snake didn’t appear. Vivienne set a saucer of milk near the gap to entice the snake out. For hours, Croc eyeballed the gap where the snake had disappeared, but it didn’t show itself.

  A thunderstorm formed overhead and we went into the hut. The sky was churning, purple and black, and a single bolt of lightning struck the woodheap. It sparked and started to burn, but a torrent of heavy rain doused it. Vivienne took me and Croc into the kitchen. She put me high up on the wooden table and told me to stay there with Croc crouched on guard beneath.

  Vivienne could withstand more than this; the land was cruel and her life had been lonely and tough. With nothing but her stick and her yellow-eyed dog, she fought bushfires and floods and fended off loners who knocked at her door, vagrants without conscience. A drifter had chopped and stacked her woodheap in exchange for food and she’d given him extra as thanks, only to discover he’d built the woodheap hollow.

  Once, when I was sick, she rode our ancient mare hard for thirty kilometres to get help, with me draped across her lap. The old mare dropped dead and Vivienne walked the whole way home with me on her back.

  I fell asleep on that hard table, while Vivienne and Croc stood vigil, their eyes on the corner.

  Near midnight Vivienne was reading, attuned to the slightest noise and every quiver of Croc’s tail. Thunder boomed and wind rushed through the gaps of the old hut; lightning flared, illuminating the room. The fire burned low and Vivienne dozed with her hand on the stick. Her eyes were drooping, but still she waited for that devil snake to show itself. Croc dozed, legs twitching, chasing snakes in his dreams.

  Almost morning. Weak, grey light poured through the curtains and Vivienne needed to use the outdoor toilet. She couldn’t hold on any longer. Out of habit, Croc followed her. She lay the stick next to me on the table and closed the door quietly behind her.

  But the soft click of the door and the sudden silence woke me. I slid off the table, onto the floor, still half-asleep.

  My mother and Croc were missing. I was alone, only three years old.

  But I wasn’t alone. An evil pair of bead-like eyes glistened at the gap between the wall and the floor. The snake inched out, testing danger with its tongue, then slid out further.

  I reached up for Vivienne’s stick.

  Further.

  I raised the stick above
my head and brought it down before the snake had a chance to retreat.

  Whack!

  I hit the snake with the clubbed end of the stick. It smashed down and broke its spine near the tail-end of its body, but there was still nearly a metre of angry snake, moving, darting at my bare feet with pinkened fangs.

  Whack!

  I severed its spine halfway, but still it came. I backed into the corner and raised the stick again.

  Vivienne opened the door. The snake had three enemies and didn’t know which way to go. Its rear half was limp and useless but its single-minded dying wish was to inject venom.

  Croc advanced on one side, his yellow eyes gleaming with deadly intent. He’d killed hundreds of snakes; he’d die by snakebite, never old age, as snake dogs do.

  Croc darted in. His jaws clamped down behind the snake’s head and he snapped it like a whip. The snake landed belly up, flipped itself over, and kept coming.

  Vivienne snatched the stick from my hand and brought it down near the snake’s head. She missed. Croc slashed the snake with his teeth but it was still too quick. Vivienne hit again and skinned the end of Croc’s nose.

  She scooped me up under her arm and swung again, one-handed. She dropped me onto the table, but the momentum carried me up and over the side. I rolled onto the floor, gasping, and opened my eyes.

  The snake’s mangled head was centimetres from my cheek.

  Croc gathered his body to launch but Vivienne had him held by the collar.

  ‘Friday Brown, do not move!’ she said.

  The snake stared at me. If it wasn’t just a dumb creature with a half-smashed head I’d have sworn it was dragging out those final moments, summoning every last drop of venom, loading its gleaming fangs, for me.

  Vivienne stayed Croc and bent low under the table. Slowly, she opened her fingers like pincers. She held her hand poised over the snake’s tail, ready to grab should it strike. Croc hunkered down next to her, set to spring.