by Debra Oswald
‘Something up?’ Sheena asked. If Celia wanted to sack them, let her get the hell on with it.
‘We should talk about Christmas.’
‘Sorry? Christmas?’
‘It’s the twenty-third today.’
‘Is it?’ Sheena puffed out a laugh. ‘I lost track.’
Celia smiled. ‘Yeah, easy to do. I guess you and Kieran will want to take Christmas Day off?’
Christmas had never been a jolly procedure in Sheena’s experience. On 25 December her family was either scattered, or if there had been any attempt at a gathering, it would fragment into alcohol-soaked disputes and, in especially merry years, would involve visits from the police. In recent times, wherever Sheena found herself during the festive season, she would sign on for any available work shifts in order to snag the penalty rates.
‘I hadn’t thought . . .’ said Sheena. ‘I guess if you guys aren’t working, we can’t work.’
‘Well, when we’re pressed for time, as we are this year, Zoe and I usually pick for part of Christmas Day, then knock off early.’
‘Right. We’ll do the same, if that’s okay with you.’
‘Great,’ said Celia.
Roza was eavesdropping, as the old lady often did. She gave Sheena the heebie-jeebs – the way she watched everything, keeping up surveillance from under her wrinkly eyelids, sending out that I’m a white witch aura. Not that Sheena was fooled. She knew people could spin a vibe like that to unnerve you, but it didn’t signify anything real. Still, Sheena didn’t enjoy being stared at by that peculiar Hungarian duck in her mirrored Indian skirt as tizzy as a Christmas decoration.
‘They should come to my house for the Christmas evening meal,’ Roza announced to the world, then turned to Sheena directly to explain. ‘Celia and Zoe always come. You and your brother can come too.’
Sheena looked to Celia, not sure what to make of this. Celia was smiling but she was noticeably uncomfortable. She was the type of person who wouldn’t want to appear mean-spirited, but even so, she surely wouldn’t fancy having Sheena and Kieran invade her Christmas festivities. Sheena was just about to decline the invitation, when Celia dialled her smile up from polite to hospitable.
‘Yes, that’s what you should do, Sheena,’ she said. ‘Come to Roza’s. Joe and Heather will be there, and their boys.’
‘Oh . . . no. Thanks, though.’
‘Please come. You’re doing us a big favour – working through this period to get our peaches off the trees – so the least we can do is make sure you have a good dinner on Christmas Day.’
‘But we wouldn’t have anything to contribute,’ Sheena mumbled.
Roza flapped her hand. ‘Don’t worry. Plenty of food. Of course, I should warn you: you’ll have to put up with the wife.’ And as she uttered the word ‘wife’, there was the vinegar face whenever she mentioned Heather. ‘There’s nothing I can do about the wife, I’m sorry to say. But a table full of good food – that’s no problem.’
Sheena was formulating an excuse to wriggle out of the event, but then she glanced over to see Kieran hauling two heavy bags of peaches towards the yard, working hard, not complaining. The image of her and Kieran eating tinned food in that fusty cabin on Christmas night was so bleak it was almost comical. Being a stray at someone else’s Christmas had to be an improvement on that. Or a distraction at least. And Kieran loved a party – even if this party was sure to be a tense affair with Celia being awkward, the old lady being white-witchy, her daughter-in-law being vile. Sheena could handle that. She’d endured a lot worse.
‘Okay,’ said Sheena. ‘Thanks. That’d be really good.’
Roza clapped her hands together – it was all settled – then took off her work apron. She was taking the afternoon off for Christmas food preparations, but she must surely be in need of some rest as well, given how seriously ancient she was. Sheena had been shocked and secretly impressed to see an old lady work so hard in the heat, day after day.
Sheena watched Roza trudge down to her house, at a slow but tenacious pace, with her dusty red sneakers crunching on the gravel and that ridiculously long skirt flicking back and forth as she swayed her hips, making the tiny mirrors glint in the sun.
For the rest of the afternoon, Celia took over Roza’s role in the packing shed, in addition to driving the tractor. The woman was fat-out busy, marching around the shed and the orchard in work boots, khaki shorts and blue singlet.
Sheena reckoned Celia was a good-looking woman – even sweaty and grubby, with no make-up, her mass of dark hair pulled back in an elastic band. She had the kind of olive skin that looked good with a shine of sweat on it, unlike Sheena’s pale, freckly hide. Celia wasn’t pretty – not in a pretty-girl way – but her face was strong, with beautiful eyes. She was tall, with the womanly figure you would see on a 1950s movie star (big breasts, rounded hips, solid thighs). That sort of body could easily plump up, if the woman with the body didn’t work as hard as Celia did every day. The point was, the whole package was quite sexy, in Sheena’s opinion. Not bad for a forty-something woman. So, what a waste that she’d been living out here on her own – well, with a daughter, but no man.
At first Sheena had assumed there was something going on between Celia and Joe, but now she figured it was more of a brother–sister thing. Which was a shame, really. According to the old lady, Joe wasn’t getting any at home, and there was Celia right in front of him not getting any either. But maybe if you’d always had a brother–sister vibe, it would feel creepy to crack on to each other.
Possibly Celia drove into town for a sneaky fuck every now and then. She could have an arrangement with some local guy for her sexual needs, but Roza said she didn’t and Sheena reckoned the old duck was right about that. So, Celia had spent sixteen years living like a nun, a peach-growing nun, a peach-growing nun with a child. Weird. Of course Sheena wouldn’t have a clue what it was like to have a husband, let alone a husband who had got killed out of the blue when you had a baby in your belly. Still, it seemed a shame Celia’s sexiness was being wasted, especially since she was getting older and there wouldn’t be many sexy years left.
Through that hot, windless afternoon, Sheena, Kieran and Zoe picked fruit, then finished up at five, an hour earlier than usual.
While Sheena loaded the ladders and bags onto the trailer, Kieran was pulling at his shoulders, doing exaggerated groans of agony, making Zoe laugh.
Sheena chucked a water bottle at him. ‘I told you to take it easy with that high-up stuff, deadhead. You always overdo it and end up shredding yourself.’
‘But I kind of like the feeling,’ he said. ‘I can locate all these muscles exactly. Makes me think about my insides like one of those charts at the hospital – you know, with the man’s skin taken off so you can see the red stripy muscles wrapping and crossing over his body. How wild is that!’
He grinned at Zoe, who proceeded to encourage the annoying idiot by laughing more.
‘Kieran,’ Sheena snapped. ‘You better have a good scrub. I’m not sleeping in that sauna of a cabin with you all stinky and cheesy.’
‘I love you too, Sheena.’
They were about to head off to the shower when the girl said, ‘Hey, um, I was thinking – since we finished early and it’s still light – which means, y’know . . .’ She trailed off, but Kieran was smiling at her, expectant, so Zoe dredged up the courage to say what she planned to say. ‘The thing is, there’s a good swimming spot at the creek. I could show you. Well, you can’t swim but you can cool off there, if you guys feel like it.’
‘Fuck yeah, we feel like it! Don’t we, Sheena?’ Kieran swivelled his body to face her with a grin of appeal. ‘Come on, Sheena. Yeah? Come on.’
Her brother had worked hard for seven days straight without whingeing, so Sheena figured he deserved some kind of treat. And for that matter, Sheena deserved whatever treats might be available in this place they’d found themselves.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Whatever.’
Th
e three of them refilled their water bottles, then Zoe led the way around behind Celia’s house, down towards the creek. Kieran galloped ahead, as if they were on their way to an amusement park or some amazing attraction. When the rough track became steeper, zigzagging around rocks, all three of them had to pick their way more slowly.
The creek was like a photo out of a tourism brochure. It sat snugly at the bottom of a gully lined with trees that arched over the stream to create a shaded canopy. Clear water, almost knee-deep, flowed over smooth stones. Along the banks, between the big rocks, were stretches of soft grass as if someone had mowed the stuff to look even more perfect.
Zoe pointed out a section where she had piled up rocks when she was nine years old, in an attempt to construct a swimming pool. She showed them spots where her little-kid self had hidden treasures and built cubbies and found an injured wallaby. It was like the childhood in a fucking book.
Sheena yanked her shoes off and sat on a smooth rock. From that position, she could swish her feet around in the creek and scoop up handfuls of water to splosh over her face and arms.
Kieran clambered straight into the water in the grubby board shorts and singlet he’d been wearing all day. He stretched out and rolled around on the creek bed until he was wet all over, like a labrador in a puddle. Then he started to whoosh himself from side to side more vigorously.
‘Sheena, check it out! You can make it like a washing machine! Saves time on washing my clothes. You hopping in the washing machine, Zoe?’
Zoe laughed, shaking her head. Like Sheena, she was sitting on the side, swirling her bare legs in the water. ‘See that rock there?’ she said to Kieran. ‘Sit with your back against that.’
Kieran shuffled his bum along and wedged himself against a rock that protruded from the middle of the creek like a low chair back. Instantly, the water was forced up, spraying high around him. He whooped, turning his head to catch the spray, flapping his arms like a little kid frolicking under a sprinkler. ‘This is like a jacuzzi! Better!’
Not that Kieran himself had ever been in or anywhere near a jacuzzi. He must’ve seen one on TV and was comparing that to a bit of water splashing against a rock in a creek.
Sheena sometimes envied the way her brother could find delight in things, even if it involved being blind to the ugliness of whatever reality he was stumbling through. She wondered if it was a better way to be. But no, it really wasn’t – that kind of childlike, unguarded state meant Kieran was too vulnerable, susceptible to individuals who took advantage of him.
Sheena closed her eyes, relishing the shade, the sound of the water and the peacefulness of this place. A few moments later, there was a splash and she opened her eyes to see Zoe in the middle of the creek, her shorts and T-shirt now soaking wet. The girl propped her back against the rock next to Kieran and the two of them were laughing.
When they’d first turned up at the farm, Zoe had kept her distance from Kieran, but in the past couple of days, from what Sheena could see, the girl must’ve changed her policy. Now, during the long shifts working in the orchard, Zoe and Kieran were yabbering to each other at every opportunity.
Zoe was careful not to let Celia notice her talking to the low-life guy. Sheena admired the way the girl handled the mother, the subtle way she sidled in and out of one-on-one chats with Kieran without Celia sussing it out. When Sheena was sixteen, she hadn’t needed to use any such furtive manoeuvres. She could get away with anything. Her mother wouldn’t have given a flying fuck if – well, it was more that she never noticed when any of her offspring were engaged in unwise activities. Their mum was always off her face or preoccupied chasing after Scumbag Boyfriend of the Month or sprawled in bed, weeping, blowing her nose on scrunched-up toilet paper because Scumbag of the Month had left her.
Sheena had made a strategic decision not to worry about her brother engaging in a bit of low-octane flirting. Sure, Zoe came across as more mature than Kieran, but she really was just a kid, especially compared to the scheming sixteen-year-old bitches Sheena knew in the city. For all Zoe’s delicate manoeuvres around her mother, she remained thoroughly under Celia’s thumb and she’d never do anything to risk her good-girl status. And if a flirtation with the blonde princess helped keep Kieran settled for long enough to earn some money, that was an advantage. It meant they could fix the car and move on as soon as possible. Back on the road, with a wad of cash, they could then cobble together a longer- term plan.
Kieran and the girl climbed out of the water and lay on a slab of flat rock, warming themselves like beautiful animals in the syrupy light of the late afternoon. Kieran kept glancing at Zoe’s wet T-shirt clinging to her bra, outlining the shape of her breasts. Oh Jesus, it was like a classy, soft-focus wet T-shirt competition with only one entrant. Zoe’s eyes were closed, her blonde eyelashes against her pale skin, her chin tilted up, but even with her eyes closed, that girl knew exactly what effect the whole shirt-clinging-to-breasts thing must be having on Kieran – on Sheena’s poor gullible brother.
Then out of nowhere, the girl sat up and said, ‘I want to know how you guys ended up here.’
Sheena shrugged. ‘This is the place my car broke down.’
‘Yeah, but I mean, where were you driving to before the car trouble?’
‘We weren’t driving to anywhere,’ said Kieran. ‘It was —’
Sheena flashed him a warning look that would usually have shut him up, for a moment at least. But this time Kieran held her gaze with a kind of firm composure she wasn’t used to from her brother.
‘Come on, Sheena, I want to explain. To Zoe. Let me explain about when you found me.’
If Kieran described that scene, the girl would realise he was a bona fide fuck-up and not some innocuously scruffy guy. And maybe it would be just as well if she understood that.
‘Okay,’ said Sheena. ‘You can tell Zoe about that day.’
Kieran grinned, excited, like a puppy let off the leash. ‘Okay. So. A few weeks ago, Sheena came back to Sydney. She’d been living up the Gold Coast. She was living up there with this dude who —’
Sheena slammed her hand against the air to shut him up. The princess didn’t need to hear details about Sheena’s fucked-up love life. ‘Let’s just say I was with a guy who turned out to be a bit of dickless wonder.’
Kieran nodded emphatically. ‘Sheena always picks the biggest dropkicks. Our aunty reckons Sheena could walk into a room packed with fifty nice guys and she’d manage to find the one slack dickhead in the place and fall for him in five minutes flat.’
‘That’s probably a fair call,’ Sheena conceded. ‘But where are these rooms with fifty nice guys in them? There are no such rooms. If someone showed me where I could find a room with fifty nice men inside, I’d go there right now.’
Zoe laughed and made eye contact with Sheena – which was unexpected, given the way the girl generally avoided Sheena’s gaze.
‘Anyway, anyway,’ said Kieran, eager to get to the story, ‘Sheena comes back to Sydney and she asks our mum, “Where’s Kieran?” And Mum goes, “I think he’s been staying at his mate Mick’s place.” So then Sheena asks, “Which Mick? Brain-dead Mick Fraser or Mick the Toxic Snake?”’
Sheena frowned, not sure it was the best idea to go into such detail with the girl. ‘Well, yeah, I had to ask because —’
Kieran leaned across to explain to Zoe, ‘Because I’ve got two different mates called Mick. Well, three if you count Dean’s brother Mick – who’s in jail now.’
‘The point is,’ Sheena continued, ‘Mum had no clue. She just —’
‘Oh, oh, oh, let me do it.’ Kieran was stabbing his hand in the air like a kid eager to answer a question in class. ‘When our mum has no clue, she does this —’
Kieran did an impersonation of their mother – sighing, jaw slack, fluttering her eyelids down – an impersonation so accurate it gave Sheena the shivers.
‘The poor woman’s very tired,’ Sheena explained to Zoe.
Kieran added, moc
k-earnestly, ‘It’s all too much for her to handle.’
‘She still hasn’t worked out that the pills and the Bacardi don’t contribute a huge amount to her mental alertness and problem-solving skills.’
Sheena took a swig of water and glanced over to see that Zoe was getting off on the thrill of hearing about this low-life family. A bit more of the sordid detail might properly freak her out, and that wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it scared the kid into keeping her distance from Kieran.
‘So, anyway,’ Sheena continued, with more relish and purpose now, ‘I took a guess on where Kieran was and gunned it round to Mick the Toxic Snake’s place. I could smell the putrid house from two doors down. There was so much blood in the living room, I thought someone had their throat cut with a chainsaw in there.’
‘What was the blood from?’ asked Zoe.
‘Those geniuses got hold of industrial quantities of a vet drug called ketamine.’
‘Some guy told Mick how people can take it even though the vets use it on animals,’ Kieran explained.
Zoe nodded, trying to play it cool. ‘Yeah, it’s for horses. It’s a horse anaesthetic. My friend’s dad is a vet.’
Ah, the princess was showing off, trying to impress them with her rural credentials.
‘Well, Zoe,’ said Sheena, ‘I don’t happen to know what effect ketamine has on horses, but I do know that if human beings pig out on the stuff, their feet and hands go numb. There was heaps of broken glass on the floor – from accidents with bottles none of those morons had enough functional brain matter to clean up.’
‘Oh,’ said Zoe. ‘They couldn’t feel they were cutting their feet on the glass because they were numb from the ketamine.’
‘Yeah, so they tracked blood all over.’ Sheena sighed. ‘But actually that stuff wasn’t what worried me.’
Again, Kieran leaned over to Zoe to explain. ‘Sheena thinks Mick is a dangerous guy.’
‘He is a scaly toad and a psycho,’ said Sheena firmly. ‘The kind of psycho who holds a shotgun to a mate’s head as a joke.’