Secrets At Wongan Creek

by Juanita Kees

  He remembered the hallway having a table that Mai would put flowers on and paintings that had been part of the homestead’s history since before Louis had bought it. It echoed with emptiness as their booted feet made contact with the wooden floorboards, the globe-shaped yellow chandelier suspended from the ceiling rose shattered, shards scattered over the water-stained, threadbare carpet runner, blending in with the oranges and browns of the autumn-shaded pattern.

  Built long and rambling, the bedrooms and bathrooms were in the left wing and the kitchen and living areas ahead through the arch at the end of the entrance hall. On the right, the formal lounge and dining room stood empty except for a couple of armchairs and a television. The large jarrah dining table that seated ten people, hand-carved by old man Fisher in the days when he’d owned the place, was missing. Gone. A huge empty space in its place. The once heavy, rich, red velvet curtains that had framed the windows were tattered and torn—none of it fire damage.

  How had her dad let the place get so run down? He’d bought it fully furnished, filled with a wealth of Wongan Creek history. Golden Acres had been set to become heritage listed when the last remaining Fisher had sold it without relatives to inherit. Red tape had held up the listing and Louis Chalmers had come to town.

  Harley remembered his parents reminiscing about it years after the sale went through, wishing they’d been able to afford to buy it and turn it into the Bed and Breakfast retreat his mum had always wanted to run. If they had, the livelihood of Bakers Hill might not be under threat now.

  Tameka headed through the archway to the damaged part of the house and Harley followed. She stopped where the roof was held up by steel props under the beams.

  They looked to the right into what had once been the kitchen. Behind it, the mudroom and laundry were exposed to the weather, the old iron roof collapsed, the metal laundry tub and cabinet, added in the seventies, twisted and blackened by the flames, the ancient linoleum floor covering mottled and cracked by the heat.

  Harley shivered at the sight of the damage. In the harsh light of day, it was scarily apparent how lucky she’d been to escape death. He let his hands rest on her shoulders.

  ‘Come, Tikki. Let’s get your stuff and get out of here.’

  He’d expected resistance after their tiff outside, but this time she let him turn her around before shaking his hands away. Again he let her lead the way. She hadn’t wanted pampering so he wouldn’t, but he could be there when she finally let herself fall apart. Bugger all the bullshit about her doing it alone. It wasn’t happening in this lifetime.

  He waited at the door to her room. He’d only ever been inside it once, way before they’d discovered the difference between boys and girls.

  Here the damage had been minimal. Water stains on the wall that had tracked dust down from the roof space through the cornices and onto the peeling skirting boards that secured the worn rose-patterned carpet to the floor—another relic from the past.

  Against the wall opposite the window, Tameka’s narrow single bed was still neatly made up. The hairbrush her hair was too short to need lay on the blue painted dresser next to it, the mirror covered in sooty grime. Wedged into the corner of the peeling frame, a tattered photograph of her, Harley and Ryan curled at the edges, the Kodachrome colours leeched from it by exposure to the light streaming into the room.

  Other than the photo it was empty of anything that hinted at the real Tameka and said everything about what her life had become.

  She moved across to the old wood grain wardrobe and pulled down a canvas barrel bag from the top of it. Harley took the bag and held it open while she pulled shirts off hangers, jeans off neat piles on the shelf, and stuffed them into the bag.

  He’d expected to see a closet full of clothes—practical ones because she wasn’t a dressy kind of girl—but it seemed Tameka hadn’t been shopping for a very long time. By the time the medium-sized barrel bag was full, her wardrobe was empty.

  Besides the smell of smoke and ashes, the house stood eerily and uncomfortably quiet, the only sound the flap of the yellow tarp on the roof and the creak of the rafters from the wind. The starkness of the rooms, the gloom of the blackened walls and the lingering atmosphere of despair and devastation had Harley’s feet itching to leave. To get Tameka away from the depressing sight, out into the sunshine and fresh air again.

  In spite of his own problems with ruined crops, the threat of foreclosure and the future of Bakers Hill in jeopardy, her challenges were proving a hell of a lot worse than his.

  Tameka walked over to the dresser and tugged the photo from the frame. For a long moment, she stared at it, her fingers tracing Ryan’s face. His mum had taken the photo with her new Nikon, Harley remembered.

  The three of them had been playing hide and seek on Bakers Hill that day. Mum had fed them Vegemite sandwiches and snapped the shot of their grubby faces and cheesy grins. Moments before he and Tameka had wandered off down to the dam to muck around in the water.

  Ryan hadn’t wanted to go. He’d wanted to explore the rusty old ute in Mr C’s shed. Pretend he was fixing it up.

  You can’t, Ry. My dad will skin you alive if he finds you in his shed.

  He won’t catch me. I’ll be quiet.

  Tikki’s right, Ry. You should come with us.

  Water’s too cold, shrimp. You go. I’ll catch up with you later.

  They’d left him, but Ryan had been right, the water was freezing so they’d only stayed a while. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes later that Tameka had gone home and Harley had run off to find his dad to see if he could score a ride on the tractor.

  The next time he’d seen his brother that day, Ryan had been covered from head to toe in a white sheet stained with sooty black fingerprints, and ash from Mr C’s shed fire was still drifting down from the sky.

  Chapter 12

  ‘We should go, Tikki.’

  Tameka looked up from studying the photo, catching the shiver Harley shrugged off and the crack in his voice. She pushed the picture into the pocket of her trackpants.

  ‘Yeah. The insurance paperwork can wait one more day.’

  Loki loped into the room, leaving sooty paw prints over the roses on the carpet, a charred wooden spoon clenched in his jaws. He dropped it at Tameka’s feet.

  She knelt on the floor to scratch his ears, wincing as the skin on her back pulled tight inside the suit. ‘Found some treasure, boy?’ Probably the spoon she’d been cooking with.

  ‘Thinks he’s a bloody Golden Retriever.’ Harley bent to pick up the spoon and studied it. He handed it back to Loki who took it and ran off. ‘Not much left of that spoon.’ He held out a hand and helped her to her feet. ‘I couldn’t have faced another white sheet, Tikki.’

  Tameka’s breath hitched as she stood close to him. The memory of the burning shed, her father coming out and padlocking the door. He’d walked away across the field down to the river, a leisurely stroll as if the shed behind him wasn’t engulfed in flames.

  And her eight-year-old self had watched, terrified, frozen behind the big gum tree until the old iron shed buckled in on itself. Her mum had dragged her away inside, any English she’d learnt forgotten in the panic. Mum had run for the phone and held it to Tameka.

  You phone. Fire.

  But why hadn’t she remembered all this before? What if it was her imagination making it up? Some kind of trauma after the fire. But each time they happened, the flashbacks were clearer.

  She turned her face up to Harley’s. Until she was sure what she’d seen was real, she couldn’t tell him about the flashbacks. That she’d lived all this time knowing that her father had been aware that Ryan was in the shed that day. That he’d left a young boy to die. That he’d left her to die the same way. Terror edged into her throat. If he came back … Would he try again?

  Harley’s hand cupped her face. ‘You okay?’

  She nodded. ‘Let’s go.’

  Goosebumps edged their way up her arms. Her home wasn’t th
e haven it used to be. Had it ever been safe? She hadn’t imagined the kick to her head or her father walking away from a fire. Again. Tears burned her eyes and she blinked them back as his parting words echoed in her head.

  You’re weak and fucking useless, Tameka. No wonder your mother deserted you.

  Harley dropped his hand from her face, picked up the duffle bag and put an arm around her shoulders to lead her out into the hallway. ‘I think we both need a cup of tea.’

  She didn’t object to his arm around her shoulders, but kept her own crossed tightly to her chest, and let him walk her across the field, through the gate and up to the house with Loki playing chasey behind them with the wooden spoon.

  ‘Any news from the bank on your loan?’ If she didn’t talk, her thoughts would drive her nuts. And in all the chaos of the last few days, she’d forgotten that she was partly responsible for ruining Harley’s harvest. Another cross to carry her secrets on.

  ‘Not yet. Greg has promised he’ll do his best to stall them while I put a plan together. We just have to wait. You might want to know that some of the farmers have started a petition against your father using the herbicides. If they get enough support, they’ll move to apply for a court order to stop him. They’re talking about lawsuits for compensation, Tikki.’

  ‘Are you one of them?’ Humiliation seeped through her.

  ‘No. Seeking compensation would be the answer to my financial issues, but that won’t stop the same damage occurring next year. I’m not happy about what they’re doing, but I can understand their frustration. You know as well as they do the back-breaking hours we put into our crops and to lose so much of it to damage … that can kill a business. Especially when some of us are competing against cheaper imports.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Harley. I tried so hard to make him understand the harm he was doing.’ Tameka stopped at the front door and waited for him to push it open. ‘I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier too.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard.’ He squeezed her shoulder before stepping inside. ‘I’m going to have to look at alternatives to carry me through to the next harvest while the bines recover. If we can’t stop your father, I’ll have to find another way to protect them. I don’t want hectares of greenhouses. It spoils the view. But I might not have the choice. I have a niche market I can’t afford to keep and can’t afford to let go either.’

  If Dad didn’t come back it would be a blessing for everyone, the ideal solution to the problem. There’d be no more spraying, no more damage. But she’d be living in fear every time footsteps sounded on the verandah or a car came up the drive. Golden Acres was her responsibility now. She had to fight for what she had left. Or abandon it completely. That thought scared her more than the possibility her father would walk back through the door.

  ‘What will you do?’ She followed him to the laundry where he tipped out the duffle bag and began stuffing her clothes into the washing machine. ‘I can do that. Here, let me.’

  He hesitated a moment as if he was about to protest, but she gave him the eye and he stepped back. It was bad enough he’d seen her charity undies, but no way would she let him handle the threadbare tradie-strength ones she wore daily. No sexy, silky lingerie, just practical working-girl cotton briefs. No-one got to see them except her anyway.

  ‘Righto.’ He leant back against the doorframe, taking up far too much space in the narrow laundry room. ‘I’ve kinda got a plan in my head, but it depends on how much red tape I have to cut through.’

  She measured out the powder and softener from the containers in the laundry tub and tried to ignore the heat he radiated. ‘Oh yeah? What?’

  Harley shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. Her hand shook a little as she looked away and poured the softener into the dispenser. Damn him for having grown into his muscles and being this solid, strong bloody tower whose walls she wanted to climb and hide behind.

  ‘I’ve started on an application proposal for a rural research and development grant. After what happened to the crop, I thought if I could investigate ways on how to combat spray drift from herbicides, I could find a way to prevent it from damaging future harvests. We’re struggling here, desperate to hang onto anything we can. The gold mine is expanding along with the population. The need for land to rezone to residential is growing, and John Bannister is capitalising on every aspect. Only a handful of farmers in the region want to hang on to what they have. The rest are considering selling out, taking the money and starting over somewhere else, or giving up completely.’

  Tameka drew down the lid of the top loader and set it to wash. ‘That would change the whole face of the region.’ Sadness warred with humiliation. Generations of farms would be lost. Rolling fields and livelihoods would disappear. And in the middle of it all, her father would have played a major role in the downturn in the area.

  ‘Exactly. And there’s no point turning to vegetable production either. The market is seeing increased imports from the States, Italy and China. But the real problem is that whatever we grow, spray drift will always be a problem unless we can change our methods.’

  She grimaced. Surely somewhere in all of this there had to be a positive. ‘And with farmers like Dad still hanging onto the old ways of control, it will remain a threat.’

  Harley reached out and rubbed her arm gently. ‘Not just your dad. Here’s the thing … I read a report on the internet that almost sixty thousand hectares of crops in Australia are damaged by phenoxy spray drift every year.’

  Tameka let out a whistle, her stomach sinking further. ‘That’s huge.’

  Harley pushed away from the doorframe and his fingers hooked into the belt loops of his jeans. ‘Estimated at around twenty million dollars before the season is even complete. A cost like that could wipe out the industry. This is the worst season on record for crop damage according to that report.’

  ‘And the weeds are out of control which means grains farmers are spraying more.’ Guilt weighed heavily in the face of the facts. Facts her father could have taken into consideration and made the necessary changes to accommodate. If he’d cared enough for the community.

  Harley nodded. ‘And you know what that means, right?’

  ‘Yep. More drift, more damage.’ She brushed past him and made her way to the kitchen, filling the kettle and setting it to boil. Tea. Strong and black because today the knocks just kept coming, and powerless was a feeling she was too familiar with.

  ‘Right. So there’s this agronomist who works with farmers to get the best out of their land and looks at alternatives to current methods. So I thought if I contact him, we could maybe work together on new organic technology that will have the same long-term effects as herbicides.’

  It would be so easy to get swept up by his enthusiasm and be carried away by his plans, but she couldn’t afford to lose her heart to the hope of being part of it. ‘Sounds expensive.’ She rinsed the mugs they’d used earlier and dropped a tea bag in each.

  ‘Not as expensive as us losing crop growth every year. Spray drift affects broadleaf crops, so even Liv Waterman’s grapevines across the creek would have suffered some damage.’

  And the Chalmers’ were the last of the growers in the region using phenoxies. Something she had tried to explain to her father in his less-heated, more receptive moments. All had fallen on stubbornly deaf ears.

  ‘I try, Harley. I monitor weather conditions, check wind speeds to minimise spray drift as much as I can. But when I’m reduced to hiring a crop duster because we don’t have our own, I’m limited to how much control I have over it.’

  Especially when Dad insisted on aerial dusting. When he refused to consider using a less invasive way, like a boom sprayer. Almost as if he wanted to damage neighbouring crops. Maybe he did, and God knew he was angry and resentful enough to do it for reasons only he knew.

  Harley stepped closer, his warmth at her back. ‘I know you do, but it would be great if you stopped it altogether.’

  And it wouldn�
�t make a damn difference if she couldn’t convince her father to try alternative methods. If he ever came back from wherever he’d disappeared to. Tameka stirred a little sugar into the tea.

  Harley dragged a hand through his hair. ‘That’s why I need this research grant.’ She held out a mug of tea and he took it. ‘Will you help me with the proposal?’

  ‘Harley …’

  If her dad came back and found them together, who knew what he’d do. Plus there was this memory of Ryan. If she’d seen what she thought she had, Harley would hate her for keeping quiet all these years. He’d hate her mother for not speaking up that day.

  And the consequences of the truth coming out … She had to be sure of her facts, but how could she when there were only two people who knew the truth, and one was missing while the other was a potential murderer.

  Harley put his mug down on the kitchen table and placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘Please, Tikki?’

  ‘Didn’t I ask you to stop calling me that?’ Because when he did, it made her want to close her arms around his waist and taste his mouth on hers again, to forget the years and obstacles between them.

  ‘I’ll stop calling you that if you help me put the proposal together.’

  ‘That’s blackmail.’ The kind that made her lips twitch from the memory of the times when him saying her name that way could get him almost anything he wanted.

  ‘Call it payment in lieu of accommodation for as long as you need it.’

  He stepped into her space and her hands drifted up intent on pushing him away, but the moment they made contact with his shirt and the soft flannel material, she knew she’d be lost if he kissed her. And the connection between her brain and her nerve endings seemed to have short-circuited because she found herself leaning closer, tipping up her chin and wishing he would do just that.