by Brown, Honey
‘I didn’t push you that hard.’
‘Get out.’
‘I didn’t mean it.’
‘I will call the police.’
‘Rebecca, I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘You tripped.’
‘Get out!’
‘Please let me stay and show you I didn’t mean it.’
‘If you don’t get out …’
He takes a step forward and she leans back, the bedside table tipping with her weight. Her face is now completely white, her lips parted and pink. Zach feels light-headed, outside of himself. He hears himself say, ‘You’re overreacting.’ Her breathing is rapid, her chest rising and falling, the dressing-gown is open over one knee, and parting either side of her long smooth leg. He thinks how her eyes and lashes look darker against her pale face, and sees how strands of her hair have escaped and now frame her features, softening her, making her prettier. He remembers yesterday, being scared to touch her, as though his hand might pass right through her … Days, nights, years of wanting to touch her.
He’s now right in front of her.
The top of her dressing-gown is open and showing the swell of her breast. Zach brings his hand up to pull it closed for her. She jerks her arm up and knocks his hand away. ‘Don’t,’ she says.
There is that creeping female hysteria in her voice, the same as his mother’s. He sees now how similar she is to his mother – dark-haired, slim, high cheekbones, fair skin …
‘You’re overreacting,’ he says again.
There is a faint tap on the lino floor behind him, a sound he recognises but can’t place. He doesn’t turn, but tries to categorise it.
Again it comes – soft and delicate. Tick. The lowered line of Rebecca’s gaze gives it away, that and the rising of the fine hairs on Zach’s body. As though in confirmation, he hears the growl. Colour is returning to Rebecca’s face. She says, ‘The dogs are behind you.’
Zach turns. He steps to one side.
Two dogs stand in the doorway. A German shepherd and a German shepherd cross. When they move, their claws lightly tap on the lino floor. They don’t move now though. They stand still, their ears erect, their heads and shoulders out of proportion to their narrow backs and hips, their blacks eyes shining with a mixture of interest and aggression. Behind them, out in the kitchen, another two dogs stand watching – the blue heeler and the boxer.
The animals’ combined presence is such that it bonds Zach and Rebecca; she says to him, ‘I’ll go out first, wait till I call them.’
Even she must be afraid as she approaches them.
‘Come on,’ she says and slides in between them. She touches one on the back. ‘Come on, outside.’
The tension has transferred to all the dogs. Rebecca has to chaperone Zach right to the gate. Only once he is safely on the other side on the fence does he feel able to return to the conflict inside the bedroom. ‘I didn’t mean to push you.’
‘You can’t come back here. Don’t come here any more.’
‘Why won’t you let me apologise?’
‘If you come back, I’ll call the police.’
‘You can’t call the police,’ he says suddenly. ‘It’s our property, Rebecca, and we’ll have them take away your dogs. And then where will you be?’
13
It’s an hour before Rebecca feels any sense of normal returning, an hour before she can sit and drink a coffee. She taps her nails on the tabletop, chews her thumbnail and moves her chair so as to see both front and back doors.
The phone rings.
It’s the police. The constable’s voice is familiar, one from last night. He says, ‘Hi,’ as though ringing an old friend for a chat, ‘how you going?’
‘I’m okay.’
His voice drops out, and she can tell he only half listens as she answers. There’s noise in the background, the hiss of radios and men talking.
‘Yep,’ he says to someone else. ‘Just ringing,’ he continues, coming back on loud and clear, ‘to let you know we’ll be sending a car out to pick you up and take you into the station for a statement.’
Rebecca says, ‘I thought Aden Claas was coming to get me?’
There’s a pause. Someone laughs in the background.
She hears, ‘Is that her?’
‘He was only here five minutes ago,’ the constable says down the line, ‘and said nothing about it. He’s gone off with a group searching. I got the impression he was putting in a full day.’ After a stretch the constable says, ‘You still there?’
She hears laughing.
‘Okay. That’s fine,’ she says.
‘You’ll be right then for someone to get you in about an hour?’
She nods as though he can see it.
Police do nothing to build a person’s confidence in them. They seem so civilian. What from a distance looks good, someone she might trust and confide in, up close looks too much like men with food crumbs on their chests, nicks from shaving, ugly mouths and bad breath. Men caught up in private agendas and workplace politics. Taking her statement seems a chore they have to get done so as to get back to bitching in the corridors.
Only at the restaurant do they seem to go about what looks like proper police work.
Rebecca’s lost there, though – it’s a different place to what it was last night. There are cars parked the length of the street, small buses, a taped-off area and a sniffer dog. The restaurant is overrun with people. Rebecca goes into the kitchen but the faces are all new – there’s no Marc, no Kara, no Aden. Instead there are sandwiches being made by what looks like the Women’s Auxiliary, women in floral dresses who eye her and spread margarine like old pros.
The tables in the dining room have been cleared and are up against the walls, chairs are in rows and a framed photo of Joanne Kincaid is on the counter: a professional portrait, the airbrushed look. Mrs Kincaid isn’t smiling.
On the back veranda the trestle table has been cleared of newspaper and is now home to jugs of cordial, plastic cups and trays of food. A crate on the floor contains two-way radios and fluoro vests. There’s no-one out among the sea of heads she recognises – a few locals perhaps. Nigel’s ute is gone.
Rebecca goes to Aden’s door and softly knocks. Her head spins. Her throat is sore. When no-one answers she tries the handle. The door is locked. This seems somehow to confirm her worst fears, the final and decisive blow – hit by a Kincaid after all.
She looks down at her feet, humiliated, and says, ‘Oh, shit.’
There’s that feeling of being singled out as the fool in a crowd.
Rebecca takes a step back, says again, under her breath, ‘Oh, shit,’ – this time her face is pinched in with the pain of what she’s feeling.
She’s brought the black jumper as a ruse to get into his room, to approach him, and now places it neatly on the chair beside the door – the chair that seems to be there for jilted girls to come and place their respective items for return.
Rebecca turns without looking, and walks straight into the chest of a man. A startled cry breaks from her throat. He puts his hands on her shoulders. Rebecca sees the lace-up boots and orange police-issue overalls, and smells the outdoors and bush still lingering in his clothes. She mumbles an apology and shrugs out from under his hands.
It’s the cop who called her this morning, the rookie from last night. He has a short-back-and-sides haircut and a face that jumps out at you because of it.
‘Looking for Aden?’ he asks, with an amused glint in his eye. ‘He can be pretty hard to track down.’
He sticks his tongue in the side of his cheek. He can’t control his amusement any longer and a smile breaks across his face. ‘You know, Beccy, you had us all throwing our names into a hat to see who gets to drive you home tonight.’
She goes to push past.
He apologises. ‘I’m only joking.’ He touches her arm. ‘I’m joking.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Don’t be so uptight.’
&
nbsp; ‘Do I even know you?’
‘Yeah,’ he says, insulted, ‘I’m Luke Redman. Teddy’s son.’
‘Oh, right,’ Rebecca says, ‘of course. You’re back. Tell me, did police training sort you out?’
‘No.’
‘It didn’t? Well, that was a waste of time then, wasn’t it? Are you still going to crash your car into power poles? I suppose at least now you can not write your own tickets.’
‘Rightio.’
‘And your parents split up while you were away?’
He shrugs.
‘They must have missed the excitement of you smashing cars.’
He purses his lips. On-duty now, he says to her, ‘There’s a lift home for you now if you want to take it. There might not be another opportunity until all the crews come in after dark.’
‘And I wouldn’t want to wait until then, would I?’
‘Maybe not.’ His gaze hardens. ‘Or maybe you want us all to take you home, Rebecca?’
‘You know,’ she says, ‘it’s Teddy’s number I’ve got to call if anything happens while my father is away – I suppose I should screw that up now?’
‘You’re the one cracking the shits.’
‘Arsehole,’ she mutters as she passes him.
He walks with her across the lawn and around the side of the property. Rebecca hardly sees for her tunnel vision, she hardly hears for the ringing in her ears. When they get to the car he opens the door for her. Something over in the car park draws his attention and Rebecca takes the opportunity to get in and shut the door behind her.
He stands a moment beside the window. He taps on it. When she turns and looks, he holds his middle finger up against the glass.
It’s hot in the car but Rebecca breathes in, fights the tears, feels an affinity with Joanne Kincaid, wherever she is. A town mobilised and without a clue. She decides there and then she’ll go home and sleep for two weeks solid, lock herself in the house and wait this out. She can’t help but feel her mother is somewhere watching, waving her cigarette up there in heaven and telling everyone within earshot that her damn daughter hasn’t listened to one goddamn thing she said.
Luke Redman still hasn’t got into the car. The stifling conditions get too much and Rebecca looks for the window winder. There isn’t one. It’s all electric. She looks around, noting the opulence, the grey leather … the smell – it’s familiar … She looks in the centre console – there are docket books with rubber bands around them and pens attached, some unopened mail.
Rebecca pushes the envelopes with her fingers. She flicks one forward and reads the name – Mr Ben Kincaid.
The car door opens and Mr Kincaid climbs in.
Rebecca snatches her hand back from the mail. She reaches for the door handle. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t —’ she begins.
He leans over and puts his hand on her knee. It seems her days now are going to be punctuated with Kincaid men touching her.
‘It’s on my way past,’ he says. ‘It’s no trouble.’
14
A strange thing to have to do – walk from shed to shed, climbing over the baler, opening the door to look in the cab of the tractor, on hands and knees beside the trailers, lifting sheets of tin, looking for your mother: a warped version of hide-and-seek.
Zach walks across to the caravan in the corner of the hayshed. He feels for the spare key on the roof and unlocks the door. He finds some of her artwork wrapped in sheets. Big canvases: bleak grey and yellow blocks of colour, bright, garish, thickly painted checkerboard patterns. There’s a crudely sketched black figure on a purple background, some unfinished pieces, a disturbing slur of pinks and reds and blues that he kneels in front of, touches with his fingertips. In the cupboard beneath the sink are her paints and brushes. At the back he finds a stash of marijuana in a plastic bag, a packet of tobacco, some Tally-Ho papers and a pale, smoke-stained cigarette holder. Zach lays the cigarette holder across his palm and tries to imagine his mother using such a thing. The plastic is brittle. Zach snaps the device in two and tosses it beneath the table. In the drawer there’s a notebook with a sketch in it, and under the drawing are the words By menaces of Amethyst, And Moats of Mystery, and, in tight block print, different handwriting to his mother’s, is written Aden 755 504.
Zach locks the van again, hides the key in a different spot. He walks through the yards and over to the old shearing quarters. He goes room to room, squinting into each dim corner, opening wardrobes, calling, ‘Mum?’ He stands listening for more than the whistle of wind through the gaps in the walls.
He goes across to the shearing shed, breathes in the greasy wool smells, looks down at the sheep-shit stains on the boards, squats to see under the long classing tables, and again calls her name.
There are the covered yards to check, the storage area beneath the shed, the drenching pits: he takes the dipping pole and drags it back and forth through the black water. He goes down on his belly in the pine needles and looks below the row of pines, checks the hayshed in the paddock, the pump shed at the dam, walks all the way over to look in the bush lean-to. He runs an eye over every rippled dam he passes.
It’s midafternoon when he stands again at the side gate of Rebecca’s. The dogs react in a way that confirms Rebecca isn’t home. They stand in a pack and bark at him, a few of the braver ones coming forward and showing their teeth.
Zach hisses at them, like you would to scare away a cat, and they explode with increased ferocity, lunging and jumping at the gate. He steps back, feels his nose wrinkle.
‘Sit down,’ he snarls.
The noise of the dogs blocks the sound of the car approaching. It is slowing, beside the letterbox before Zach sees it. The less aggressive dogs run away, but the German shepherds and the heeler cross stay.
Zach ducks down so as not to be seen. It’s his father’s car at the gate.
On the dogs’ level now, Zach eyes the animals through the wire, finds himself with dry grass between his fingers, sun hot on his scalp, noticing the grooves in the dogs’ teeth, and the bloodless colour of their gums. He edges sideways, positions himself to see through the junk in the front yard. The remaining dogs slink with him, alert, interested by his odd behaviour.
Rebecca is in the front seat of the car. Zach watches his father talk to her. She has her body angled away from him. His father gives her one of his brief tight-lipped smiles. Rebecca gets out, straightens her clothes. ‘Thank you, Mr Kincaid,’ she says.
So typical of something his father would do: offer her a lift, reaffirm himself like that. Typical also for him to back up the car the way he does, before she is even at the gate, no time to wait and no inclination to see her safely inside.
Only Zach sees Rebecca’s steps slow up the driveway, the way her face falls and her shoulders drop, the way she takes a breath as though to calm herself.
He hears her say, ‘Hey,’ to the three dogs who greet her.
She smiles and touches their heads, mutters nonsensical things, singles out each animal for affection, and then brings her gaze up to look for the missing three.
Only Zach sees that she is crying. She wipes the tears from her cheeks.
It seems then that she looks right at him, but there are objects between them, and if she does see him it’s only a part of his shoulder, a small section of his face, not enough for her to comprehend what she is looking at; so unlikely a person would be crouched low watching her, she can’t conceive it.
‘Come on,’ she calls.
The dogs near him circle in their attempt to have her understand. She calls to them again, and after a couple of frustrated barks they run to her.
To leave without being seen Zach has to follow the fence line down to the road. He crabs along like some army commando, has to check for cars before climbing the fence out onto the roadside. He places his feet carefully so as not to make too much noise in the fallen bark beneath the trees.
Only when he is out on the road does he straighten and walk normally again.
; 15
As always when he’s away, Rebecca’s father speaks quickly and with warmth. These are the times he tells her he loves her, that she’s a good daughter, and that he thinks of her as his own. It’s the drugs. He takes amphetamines, assures her there’s a not a truck driver who doesn’t. The calls can be comical, all sorts of things spoken about – politics, sport, health, diet. This, Rebecca gathers, is the man her mother was first attracted to – the philosophising funny man, what he is to his fellow truck drivers. The man her mother settled with, and, hopefully, fell in love with, was the quiet and unassuming man tinkering in his shed. Dual personalities. The ‘Home Neil Toyer’ would sense something was wrong, that her tone was flat, that she was holding something back, and he’d ask her until she told him. But the ‘Truckie Neil Toyer’ doesn’t give her a chance to speak. Deep down doesn’t want her to speak because he doesn’t want to feel the guilt of leaving her home alone. And Rebecca can’t blame him for that. She does everything she can to ease his guilty feelings, and so finds herself even now not mentioning anything. They talk about things on his side of Australia. It’s all heat and dust and traffic, tyres blown, the synchro workin a dream, a favourite song he heard on the radio.
She has time while he talks to put the phone down and pull her cheese on toast out from beneath the griller. When she picks up again he doesn’t know she’s been gone.
He rings off with, ‘You’re a good daughter, Becs. You know how much I love you.’
It’s her chance to say it also. ‘I love you too, Dad.’
For three days she stays holed up, curled on her side in bed, thinking about Kincaid’s eldest son, Aden Claas. She sleeps so much she gives herself a headache.
She drags her feet from room to room, sits unblinking in front of the TV, doesn’t shower, doesn’t change out of her nightie. She goes down into her father’s bedroom and puts on one of his porno tapes, perches on the end of his bed and watches with the same blank expression she gets watching Days of Our Lives. This, though, she can at least fast-forward through. She presses play and watches an orgy in an aeroplane. It’s an eight-seater so things are a little cramped. They all look ridiculous in their pilot and air hostess uniforms, but even more ridiculous when the uniforms come off. She goes and washes the dishes.