“I don’t believe you,” I said. But something inside me was telling me to think about it. There was something there, at the back of my mind that, if I thought about it a little more, might make sense of all this.
I searched my memory, trying to find your face anywhere in it. There was nothing specific, but there were hazy, half-remembered things; like the man my friends saw once waiting outside the school gates, and that time in the park when I thought I saw someone watching in the bushes … the way Mum was paranoid about someone following her home. Was that you, I wondered? Had you been watching me that long? Surely not. But there was something else, too, something else I couldn’t quite remember.
“Why me?” I whispered. “Why not some other poor girl?”
“You were you,” you said. “You found me.”
I held your gaze. “What do you mean?”
You looked at me curiously. When I didn’t give you the response you were after, you leaned across the couch toward me. There was an intensity in your eyes. “You don’t remember? You don’t remember meeting me that first time?” You shook your head slightly in amazement.
“Why should I?”
“I remember you.” You moved your hand toward me like you wanted to touch me, your bottom lip quivering slightly. “I really remember you.”
Your eyes were opened wide. I tucked my chin into my chest, away from them.
“It didn’t happen,” I said. My voice was shaky and soft, hardly there. “It isn’t true.”
You reached across to me and grabbed my shoulder. I felt your fingers dig into my skin, forcing me to look at you.
“It happened,” you said. Your face was set, your eyes unblinking. “It’s true. You just haven’t remembered it yet.” You stared hard at me, at my left eye and then my right. “But you will,” you whispered.
After a moment, I heard you swallow. Then your eyes clouded over a little, and you let me go. I fell back against the couch. You stood up and turned away. I heard you in the kitchen, slamming cupboards. I was shaking; there were even goose bumps on my legs, though I wasn’t cold.
I don’t know how long I sat there, just thinking. My eyes moved repeatedly across the land in that time, looking for anything … anything different that could lead to escape. Orange streaks began to thread into the blue of the sky, and the horizon glowed pink.
You came out, squinting at the sunset. You carried a glass of water in each hand. You hovered in the doorway for ages, looking at me, waiting for me to look back at you. When I didn’t, you stepped toward the couch. You held one of the glasses out to me. I didn’t take it, although I desperately wanted it. In the end you placed it near me on the floor and you stepped away, sipping from your own glass. You kept watching me. I think you were waiting for me to talk again. I don’t know why; you didn’t seem like the talking type. I watched the wind instead, picking up random grains of sand. It was so arbitrary where it dropped them.
“Who are you?”
The words were more my thoughts than a question. I didn’t even realize I’d spoken them until I saw how you were struggling to answer me. Your face was frowning, your forehead lined. You sighed.
“Just Ty,” you said. You sat on the edge of the couch and rubbed your fingertips against your eyebrows. In the intense orange of the sunset, your eyes looked lighter than ever. It seemed as if there were flecks of sand in them, too, grains flung there from the wind. “I come from here, I guess.”
Your voice was soft and hesitant, so different from how it usually sounded. It was more like a piece of spinifex being blown about. I felt like I should lean forward to catch your words before they were blown away completely.
“You’re Australian?”
You nodded. “S’pose. I was called Ty after the creek my parents fucked next to.”
You glanced at me, checking for a reaction. I didn’t give you one; I just waited for you to start talking again. I thought you might. There was something about you then, a kind of pent-up energy that you wanted to release.
“Mum was real young when she had me,” you continued. “But then, she and Dad were never really together anyway. Mum was from this posh English family. As soon as I was signed over to Dad, they all packed up overseas and tried to forget about me. So Dad moved me to a piece of land with a few hundred acres and a handful of cattle. That was life.”
“What happened?”
I watched you shift on the couch arm, struggling to answer. I enjoyed you being uncomfortable. It made a change. And part of me thought I’d be able to use those answers against you when I was rescued and you were chucked in jail. You chewed at a thumbnail, watching the sunset.
“Dad did all right at first,” you said. “Guess he wasn’t completely fucked back then. He actually had people working for him, ringers and some lady to look after me … can’t remember her name now.” You broke off and tried to think about it. “Mrs. Gee or something.” You raised your eyebrows at me. “Who cares, right?”
I shrugged.
“She was kind of my teacher, I s’pose. Her, and the oldfellas and ringers.”
“Oldfellas?”
“Local aborigines, the guys who worked on Dad’s farm: the proper owners of this place. They taught me about the land, Mrs. Gee tried to teach me arithmetic or some shit, and the rest of the farmhands taught me about liquor. Good education, eh?” You half smiled. “It was all right, though, running about out here.”
It sounded weird to hear you talk so much; normally you only said a few words at a time. I’d never imagined that you’d have a story, too. Until that moment, you were just the kidnapper. You didn’t have reasons for anything. You were stupid and evil and mentally ill. That was all. When you started talking, you started changing.
“Weren’t there other kids around? When you were growing up?” You looked across at me sharply. But I liked the way my voice sounded angry and demanding and the way it made you hesitate for a moment. I liked that tiny amount of power it gave me.
You shook your head. I don’t think you wanted to talk about this anymore, but now that I was finally talking to you again, you didn’t want to ignore me, either.
“Nah, I didn’t see another kid until I left,” you said eventually. “I thought I was the only one in the world. I mean, Mrs. Gee told me there were others, but I didn’t believe her.” Your mouth twitched into what was almost a smile. “I used to think that I had this special power that kept me smaller than everyone else. I never thought I was younger than anyone, just smaller.”
“You never played with other kids?”
“No, only the land.”
“What about with your dad?”
You snorted. “He didn’t play with anyone, not after Mum left.”
I was silent as I thought. When I was young, I was surrounded by kids. Or was I? When I went to school I was, of course, but before then? When I really thought about it, I couldn’t remember being around kids then, either. I’d been a sickly child, and Mum had kept me pretty close. Before me, she’d had a sort of breakdown. That’s what Dad told me once. She’d had a miscarriage, a couple, I think; she didn’t want to lose me, too. I grimaced then as I realized that’s exactly what had happened in the end. Mum had lost me, eventually.
I looked back at you, hating you again. You had drunk all your water and were just staring out with the empty glass in your hand. You stayed like that for ages before you spoke some more. You spoke so quietly that I actually did lean forward to catch your words.
“After a while, Dad started going to the city, for work and stuff,” you said. “Started selling stock, though he didn’t sell ‘em for money, just did it for drink and drugs, things to help him forget. His mind changed then. He never walked his property, never really looked after his cattle … never looked for me, either.”
You glanced down at your glass. It looked like you wanted to wander off again to get some more. I don’t know why exactly, but suddenly I wanted to keep talking to you. Perhaps it was the boredom finally getting to me
, or that need to connect with someone else … even if it did have to be you. I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to find holes in your story.
“What were you doing?” I asked quickly. “AII this time your dad was away, you must have been doing something?”
You frowned, trying to figure me out. “Don’t you believe me?” you said. You tapped the edge of your glass against the wicker as you thought. You shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
You pulled out your leaves and papers, and rolled a cigarette. The crickets started up, and you’d smoked almost half of your roll-up before you spoke again.
“If you want to know what I did,” you said, your voice thick, “I ran wild in the bush mostly, tried living like an oldfella. I got thin and sick and slept under the stars. No one saw me for days, weeks sometimes. Once, I was desperate and had to kill one of Dad’s calves; didn’t tell him, though.” You grinned suddenly, and your face went young again. “Most of the time I just ate lizard … if I was lucky.” You looked up at the sky as if you were searching in it. “I could paint pictures with the stars up there, too, I knew them that well. Connect-the-dots masterpieces.”
I remembered the stars from when I’d tried to escape, that night in the Separates. There could be worse beds than that, if it weren’t for the cold that came with it, that is.
“How did you find water?” I demanded.
“Easy. If you look for the plants, you can find water simple enough … like the spring in the Separates.”
I thought about that clear little pool, and my fear of it containing the stomach-eating fish. “That’s drinking water?” I asked.
You tilted your head toward the glass at my feet. “How else’ve you got that? Where do you think that pipe goes?” You gestured to the long pipe leading out from the house. “I laid that.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You never believe me.”
You slid off the arm and onto the couch properly, nearer to me. I recoiled instantly, more from habit than anything. You laughed a little at that. You leaned back on the couch, but didn’t try to get any closer. After a while, you started talking quietly again.
“Once Dad found the city, and all the rest of it, that was it…. The farm didn’t recover. He forgot about the land, forgot about me, too, laid off the stockmen and Mrs. Gee. I saw him sometimes, on the nights when I slept in my bed, but I’m not sure he really saw me, what with the drink and drugs flowing through him. We stayed like that for a while. Then one day Dad just didn’t come back from the city.” You glanced quickly at my glass of water. “Do you want that?” you asked.
I looked down at the brownish water with the black bits floating on top. I shook my head. You leaned across me to grab it. I watched you drink it down, your Adam’s apple working like a piston.
“What do you mean he didn’t come back?”
You rubbed your lips together, making them both wet. “Never returned. Disappeared. Fucked off!”
“How old were you?”
“Dunno, really,” you said. “I didn’t have birthdays much. ‘Bout eleven or so, maybe. Everyone else had long left the farm; it was just me on it then. It was about a year, though, before anyone else figured it out and came to catch me.”
“Catch you?” I repeated. You shrugged sheepishly. “Didn’t you want someone to look after you?”
“Nah, why would I? Did it better myself.” Your eyes narrowed. “I kept them trying for ages, too. They tried everything: tracking me, bribery, the priest. In the end they caught me with a net, just like an animal. They were making all these soothing noises at me, too. They thought I couldn’t speak at first, or speak English at least. Maybe they thought I was an oldfella … I was pretty dark from the sun.” You smiled a little from the memory.
“What did they do with you?”
Your eyes clouded quickly and your mouth went tight, as though you were angry with me for asking. “They took me to the city, shoved me in the back of a truck … you know, one of those ones they carry criminals in? They took me to this kids’ home place. They gave me a room without a window, bursting with other kids. They wanted my name but I wouldn’t tell them; I wouldn’t tell them anything. So they called me Tom.”
“Tom?”
“Yeah, for a few months. They decided how old I was, what I was going to wear. Because I didn’t speak to them, they tried to make me a different person…. Wish they’d never caught me.”
I wondered what would have happened if they hadn’t. Would you be running around your dad’s farm still, wilder than anything? Would you have lost your language eventually? But maybe that wouldn’t have mattered to you.
“When did you start speaking again?”
“When they tried to get one of them shrinks on me. I set ‘em straight pretty fast then.” You shrugged. “I learned to fight pretty good in that place.”
“But they found you out anyway?”
“They found out my name,” you snapped. “After a while, they figured Mum had gone overseas and Dad had died in a pub. By then the farm had been carved up for his debts.” You were still glaring at me, gripping the couch until it started to creak. “Nobody knew who I was,” you added. “Not really. When I went to the city, my whole life started again, from the dirt up.”
A deep crease had formed in the middle of your forehead. Your shoulders were drawn up, too, tense around your neck. I realized I was beginning to read you, to understand when you were tense or angry, or upset. You ran your hand across your brow, smoothing your crease marks. I leaned a little toward you.
“So, they kind of stole you, too,” I said softly. I kept my nerve and held your gaze. Your eyes turned to slits. You knew exactly what I meant. They’d stolen you, just as you’d stolen me. “Am I your way of getting back at them all?”
You were quiet for a long time. But I didn’t drop my gaze. Once I could see you weren’t going to get mad at me, I felt pretty brave. Eventually it was you who had to look away first.
“No,” you said. “It’s not that. I’ve saved you from all that. Saved. Not stolen.”
“I wish you hadn’t.”
“Don’t say that.”
You glanced back at me then, your eyes wide, almost pleading. “This place is better than Dad’s,” you said firmly. “Nobody’s bought this land, not even us. And no one’s going to want it, either. It’s dying land … lonely land.”
“Like me, then,” I said.
“Yes, like you.” You chewed the corner of your lip. “You both need saving.”
That night I couldn’t sleep. But there was nothing unusual about that. I stared at the ceiling and listened to the creaks and groans of the house. It sounded alive. It was a ginormous animal lying in the sand, and we were in its belly.
I thought of ways to kill you. I imagined the gurgling you’d make after I stuck something sharp into the side of your neck. I imagined the blood gushing out, flowing over my hands and staining the wooden floor. I imagined your blue eyes turning still and hard.
But those images didn’t send me to sleep. So I thought of things I would say to my parents if I could see them again: apologies, mostly.
I’m sorry I broke Mum’s favorite vase.
I’m sorry you caught me drunk that day.
I’m sorry we were arguing in the airport.
I’m sorry I got abducted.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry….
And then I was in the park. I tossed and turned, trying to get myself out of that dream, but it was too late.
I was walking fast. The smell of warm, musty earth was clinging to my nostrils … the remnants of a balmy summer’s day. Gnats were hovering all around, getting caught in my hair and flying into my eyes.
He was there, only a few feet away. Gaining on me. Following. I heard the rub of his jeans, the thud of his footsteps. I picked up my pace. I looked around at the trees and the bushes, hoping for something I recognized, but the trees were thick and dark, with their leaves rustling, rustling.
; He was so close I could hear his breathing, heavy with a summer cold. I took a wrong turn and headed toward the pond. He sniffed. He was behind me, talking to me, telling me to slow down. But I started to run. It was stupid, really; I knew this guy. And anyway, it’s not as if there was anywhere to go out there on that pathway—only the pond. My feet slipped on the wood chips, my breathing quick. And the water was so close, approaching so fast.
His shadow crept up on me, overtook me, covered mine with its darkness. I started to turn, tried to think of something to say … about schoolwork, or Anna, or something.
Then he stopped. And I saw him. Only it wasn’t him this time, it was you.
You were wearing the checkered shirt from the airport, your arms outstretched. Your hands were shaking.
“Please, Gemma,” you were saying. “Please … don’t.”
But I turned away from you and ran straight into the pond. I let the water cover me as I sank down, down, into the cold, dark deepness, and my hair got tangled up and caught in the weeds.
There was a thudding sound coming from the veranda, a steady thump of something being hit. I swung open the wire mesh door and stood for a moment, my feet bare on the wood. The morning sunlight was softer that day, not quite so intense. I didn’t have to wait the usual couple of seconds before my eyes adjusted.
You were to the left of me, in a tattered pair of shorts and a thin, holey undershirt. A punching bag was swinging between your fists and the air. I hadn’t noticed it before, so perhaps you’d only just put it up. You were on your toes, bouncing slightly, hitting the bag hard with your bare fists. Your body tensed before the impact, as rigid as the rocks behind you. Lines of muscle stood out under your ribbed tank top. There was nothing soft about your body, nothing unnecessary. You grunted slightly as you hit the bag, the skin over your knuckles red.
I don’t think you knew I was watching. Your face was so focused, every muscle in your body geared toward hitting. I shuddered, imagining you hitting those rock-fists into me, imagining the crack! of my ribs breaking … the dark stain and spread of bruises.
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