The Choke

Home > Other > The Choke > Page 19
The Choke Page 19

by Sofie Laguna


  ‘How is he?’ said Relle.

  ‘Didn’t say much,’ said Pop. He was even thinner than when he left; there were new shadows on his face.

  ‘Typical.’

  ‘Did his lawyer say anything about the sentence?’ Dean asked.

  ‘Bloody evidence everywhere. Ray’s a fool.’ Pop shook his head and rolled a White Ox. ‘Bloody Stacey. She’s wanted it from him a thousand times…’

  ‘How long does he think he’ll get? What are they telling him?’ said Relle.

  ‘Could be five…could be seven. Punching the bloody cop didn’t help.’

  Relle started crying.

  ‘Go out the back, kids,’ said Pop.

  We went out to the yard again and waited. Kirk scraped the cigarette butts from the corners into a pile. He picked out a long one and put it in his mouth. Then he took a box of matches out of his pocket and tried to set fire to the pile. ‘We’ll bust him out, don’t worry,’ said Kirk. He lit his cigarette. ‘We’ll shoot if we have to.’

  Pop called from the kitchen, ‘Justine, time to go.’

  When we got back to Pop’s Three, Pop said, ‘Bring me a beer, Justine.’ He lay on his bed and drank beers until he slept. He didn’t eat or turn on any lights or watch television. When it was night he called for me. I stood at the door. ‘Bloody Worlleys,’ Pop said, pulling himself up to sitting.

  I said, ‘Are we going to visit him in jail?’

  He said, ‘Jail is for crooks, not kids.’

  ‘Is Dad a crook?’

  Pop sighed. ‘I suppose he is. Stupid bloody Ray.’ He looked at the clock on the cupboard. ‘Jesus. How long have I been lying here? Let’s go out and ask the chooks what’s for dinner.’

  He got out of bed, putting his dressing-gown on over his clothes. We went to the boxes and pulled out the eggs. ‘Six, Pop,’ I said.

  The chickens fluffed their feathers and pecked at the laces of Pop’s boots.

  ‘Hey, ladies, leave your old man alone, hey? You leave him alone. Cockyboy, tell your girls to give ole Pop a break.’ Pop’s voice was soft as a song for the chickens. It was chicken music. ‘You tell ’em, Cockyboy. Ole Pop’s got enough on his plate.’ We shook out the straw and checked the water and counted the girls. ‘Night, ladies; night, girls,’ said Pop. ‘You get some sleep now, and we’ll see you in the morning, hey, girls? See you in the sunshine, ladies.’

  I stood by the stove and watched as Pop cracked the eggs into a pan. He added butter and salt, and stirred, and when they were soft and fluffy we ate them at the table with toast and jam. I cleared the plates and Pop rolled a White Ox while I got the scissors from my room. Pop passed me the Herald and I cut out escape vehicles while Pop smoked. Smoke filled the top half of the kitchen, like a mist. We sat under it and Pop looked at the things I cut then he looked at the ceiling, blowing smoke towards it in fresh streams.

  He got up and went to the back door. I stood beside him and we lifted our eyes to the stars like silver dust shaken across the sky. Crickets and frogs sang to each other. Pop put his arm around my shoulders. He leaned against me like I was one of Michael’s crutches and spoke parts of sentences ‘…only son…Lizzy…the only one left. Good thing I took you in, hey? What would I do without you?’ Was it me he meant? Was it Lizzy, or was it the night sky above our heads?

  Dad was sent to Pentridge and Pop said to forget I had a father. Let Ray do his time. It was the only way. A part of you had to die. I been there, Lady, I been there, Missy—you can’t count the days, there are too many to count, too many bloody days. There wasn’t anywhere for Ray to go inside Pentridge. If he moved left or right or up or down they stuck a knife between his ribs. What would he do with his secrets when they began to cook? Stacey Worlley asked for it a thousand times, then the one time she didn’t…I didn’t know what the words meant—something stopped me knowing, as if it wasn’t the truth that was buried; it was me.

  After Dad went away I didn’t see Kirk and Steve as much. The last time Relle came to pick them up, a week after the verdict, she brought Dean. Dean looked at Pop’s yard and his house and the back-house, and shook his head. The less to do with the Lees the better, he said to Relle when Pop wasn’t there. Bloody kids; half their blood is Ray’s. That’s the problem.

  Relle chewed the nail of her thumb, narrowing her eyes. Would it be so hard for Ray to write a letter? To call them? It isn’t blood in his veins; it’s something else. She said the same things over and over, as if Ray took up all the room, and she had to speak the words to let some of him out. Not for me—I don’t give a shit anymore—but for them. He is their father.

  What was it flowed in my dad’s veins if it wasn’t blood? Was it the same stuff that flowed in the veins of the Japs? Did that same stuff flow in my veins too? Was that why I was born breech? If I had a different father with different blood, would I be able to read? Would my mother still have caught the train to Lismore? I never had words to ask anybody the questions, so I never had the answers.

  37.

  Michael and me were at the school benches. ‘Weather controls things,’ said Michael, taking a handful of sultanas from his box.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He passed me the box. ‘It decides what happens.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘The way the land goes. How things grow. What animals live there. Weather decides it.’ Sparrows waited for sultanas to drop at our feet.

  I thought of The Choke and its banks pressing in, trying to touch. I said, ‘The Murray is part of the weather.’

  He said, ‘The river?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Yeah, but the weather came first.’

  ‘The river decides things too.’

  ‘But the river is there because of the weather.’

  ‘Are you sure the river didn’t come first?’

  ‘No.’ Michael shook his head. ‘I don’t think it did.’

  ‘But you can’t be sure.’ I ate the last of the sultanas. ‘Do you want to see it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The river.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The next morning, when Mrs Hooper was dropping Michael at school, Michael said, ‘Can I go to Justine’s, Mum?’

  Mrs Hooper looked like she wasn’t sure.

  ‘Mum, it’s not fair if Justine can come over to our place and I can’t go there.’

  ‘I didn’t say you couldn’t go there. What day?’

  ‘This afternoon?’

  ‘This afternoon?’

  ‘Yes, why not, Mum?’

  ‘I’m thinking…’

  ‘Stop thinking, Mum. Just say yes.’

  ‘Don’t be cheeky, Michael. This is short notice.’

  ‘Please, Mum.’ He put his head on the side. ‘Say yes?’

  Mrs Hooper dropped us at Pop’s Three after school. ‘I will pick you up at five, Michael. You need to be here out the front at five. Is that clear?’

  ‘Clear.’ Michael nodded.

  As soon as Mrs Hooper drove away I took Michael down the side of the house into the yard. We stopped at the chooks and I threw them the good seed. ‘Here, Missy; here, Lady; here, girls,’ Michael called. Cockyboy strutted around the edges. ‘Matt Dunning,’ said Michael.

  ‘Not as bad,’ I said.

  I pushed open the gate. Michael swung forward on his crutches. The path was narrow and rose up on the sides. We went slowly. I didn’t help him. The land and the forest and trees and the long puddles in the grass shone with a deeper green. Being with Michael took away the old Yolamundi and made a new one. We were looped together.

  The sun was on us, and I could hear Michael breathing hard behind me. It was a hot walk. We came to the trees and the path disappeared and Michael’s crutches caught in sticks and thick grass but I didn’t help him. We stopped and Michael looked up at the sky and the branches. It was as if we had arrived from a long way away, and we were seeing the trees for the first time. As if we couldn’t speak the language and had never seen a cloud or a red
gum or a kangaroo before. Everything was new to us. The knots in the bark, the trunks like bulbs, their twisted branches. The white cockatoos, their yellow crests moving back and forth, the clouds covering the sun, the leaves rustling, the ants across the ground, the flies that hovered over the puddles, the spiders suspended in their webs—all new. We kept going, not speaking, only seeing, until we came to the river, wide, rippling and muddy, birds pushing up from the surface, wings spreading. We were quiet, listening. Michael said, ‘It’s still, but it’s moving.’

  ‘Come further,’ I said. I knew it wasn’t easy for Michael to walk the path. The crutches caught in the roots and his feet slipped and stumbled. I heard him breathing more heavily, I heard the crutches slipping on the stones, but I didn’t help. At last we came to The Choke. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘See how much closer the other bank is?’

  ‘There must have been a change,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The earth changes. The plates shift. Maybe that’s why the river is narrower here.’

  Even the earth changed. ‘The banks try to stop the water,’ I said. ‘But they can’t. It goes over the top. Floods. The water keeps moving.’

  ‘What happens to the trees?’ Michael asked.

  ‘They keep growing,’ I said. ‘Underwater.’

  Lorikeets and cockatoos and kookaburras called to each other, two or three at first then more joining in, five and six and seven, then a hundred rose up louder and louder, flying out of the branches, screeching and squawking. Michael and me lay on our backs and screeched with the birds.

  We sat up and looked out over the water to the far bank. He said, ‘You’re right, Justine. The river came first. The river decides things.’

  Michael had shown me his home and a mother who gave me a rose bubble bath and a brother who gave me toast. He had shown me a tent, cut grass and spaghetti. He had shown me Black Beauty and which circle to tick for the right answer. I had shown him the Murray River. We were even.

  We walked back slowly. Michael said, ‘You could start there, at the river, and keep going and if you never left the water you could make it to Antarctica. You’d look for the channels. One leads to another.’

  ‘You’d build your own boat.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Michael.

  ‘That way you’d know it was strong enough to make it.’

  ‘Strong enough to cut through ice. It would have a telescope for nights.’

  ‘You’d arm it,’ I said.

  ‘In case of enemy invasion.’

  ‘Brian Lawson.’

  He snorted.

  38.

  The Worlleys left me alone. Pop said jail made Ray more dangerous to the bastards. Don’t worry about that; it’s who you know. The Worlley cousins looked through me on the bus as if I was invisible. Was I real? Did I have arms and legs and a body like other people? I knew I had a mouth. Kirk said my teeth had grown in like bent forks. Pop said, Justine’s teeth do the same job as everyone else’s. Leave her alone.

  Kirk held up two forks and made them talk. He said, ‘I’m Justine. Have you met my teeth?’

  I grabbed the fork from his hand and held it at his face. ‘Fuck off, Kirk.’

  ‘Killed by a fork,’ he said. ‘Ha ha!’

  After Dad received his sentence Pop’s gut trouble was even worse. He drank beer in the mornings, he didn’t collect the eggs, and some days he wouldn’t light the fire. It was cold the whole day. I wore all my clothes and put the towels on my bed at night. Pop said, ‘Bring me a beer.’ He held his gut and said, ‘Haven’t you taken enough, you bastard?’ He drank the beer and looked towards the window and shook his head. He shook it and shook it and shook it.

  On Saturdays if there was a John Wayne movie on the television I found the channel and we watched it together. Sometimes there were three in a row: John Wayne as the Ringo Kid, John Wayne as Quirt, John Wayne as Davy Crockett. We saw John Wayne shoot the Plummers, the Mexicans and Laredo. We watched him ride Starlight, Duke and the Miracle Horse. We saw him kiss Feathers, Maureen and Sophia Loren. Pop smoked and drank beers and I ate Frosties. When I went to bed I looked through the window and saw John Wayne walking the fence lines, with his sawn-off shot gun ready to fire. I held up my 9mm in the darkness. We’re on the same side, big man.

  Michael was going to Sydney for Easter. He said he didn’t want to go but his parents had business there. I missed him. Pop held his gut from the start of Easter to the end, and didn’t light the fire once. There was nothing to do but wait. The day before school went back, the telephone rang. Pop picked it up. ‘Who?’ he said. He held out the receiver. ‘For you, Justine.’

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Justine, it’s Lara Hooper—Michael’s mum.’

  Pop was watching me. ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Justine, we’d really like to see you. Michael, I mean, would like to see you.’ I heard Michael shouting in the background. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Mrs Hooper sounded upset. ‘Can we come and pick you up?’

  ‘What is it?’ said Pop.

  ‘It’s Mrs Hooper. She wants me to come over.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mrs Hooper.’

  ‘Be home for tea,’ said Pop, and then he walked outside.

  ‘Yes,’ I said into the telephone.

  ‘Thank you, Justine. I appreciate it.’

  Nicky and Michael weren’t in the car when Mrs Hooper picked me up outside Pop’s. ‘It just seemed easiest for me to come and get you myself,’ Mrs Hooper said. ‘Michael’s waiting for you.’

  It was quiet in the car. We didn’t talk. I looked at the long sticks of wheat that lined the road ahead, which ran straight until it was too small to see.

  When we arrived at the house I followed Mrs Hooper inside.

  ‘Michael! Justine’s here.’

  Michael came out of his room—his eyes were red.

  Mrs Hooper said, ‘You two can go outside if you like. I’ll bring you some apple juice and chocolate cake. You like chocolate cake, don’t you, Justine?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I didn’t understand why Michael’s eyes were red or why he wasn’t in the car or why I was there.

  I followed Michael through to his back yard, to the mulberry tree with its leafy branches hanging down in a circle, like a green dress. We sat on the swing seat under the branches. He said, ‘Thanks for coming to my house.’

  I said, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘We’re moving.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘We’re moving to the city.’

  ‘What city?’

  ‘Sydney.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So I can go to a different school.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘One with facilities.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. Other kids like me.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Michael pressed his crutch into the dirt and swung the seat.

  ‘When?’

  He kept sticking his crutch into the ground before the swing reached the top, so it jerked and bumped.

  ‘Two weeks.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There were tracks in the grass left behind by Michael’s crutch. My eyes stung. When I opened them the mulberry tree wobbled as if rain was coming down over its dress of leaves. The swing went still.

  That night I sat with the chooks a long time—Missy, Lady and Lady, Madame and Girl, and Cockyboy. They pecked around me, near my feet and fingers. Missy climbed over my crossed legs onto my lap and Cockyboy let me touch her and hold her. Clouds from a storm that had been caught in me came out my nose and eyes and mouth. Tears dripped onto the feathers.

  I knew it wasn’t his fault but if I talked to him again I could never go back to Pop’s Three or to school or anywhere. There would be nowhere for me to go. At school I turned away from him but he took my shoulder and he turned me around; he never cared who was watching or listening, he didn’t care about his voice that stretched and tugged the words, how l
oud his breathing was, the noises he made. He said, ‘We can still talk to each other on the telephone. We can write.’

  I said, ‘No.’

  Michael stood in front of the school, in the middle of the hard path, his body racked and jerking, his face wet with tears. His dad came fast up the path, his face full of worry, eyes only for Michael, and he didn’t see me, as if I wasn’t there. I ran behind the shelter sheds until Michael and the Hoopers were gone.

  Where were they held, the things we had done? Who knew we had done them? Who knew about the tent and the blackberries, Antarctica and Black Beauty, trucks with lifts, cars without brakes, archaeology? I closed the door on those things and it was as if they had never been. But just before I slept the door swung open, I couldn’t stop it, and Black Beauty galloped across the field towards Joe Evans, the wind in his black mane. Joe held out his arms, and called, Beauty, Beauty! and Joe and Beauty were together again. Only before sleep did Michael and me go to Antarctica, where there were no footprints but ours, where it was only Michael and me crossing the ice to plant our flag. Just before sleep, in those last seconds, it was a new Yolamundi, with red gums and cods and cockatoos we saw for the first time, as if we had come from a place far away, and all this was new. But the next day would come and it had never happened; the seat beside me in class was empty.

  Part Two

  39.

  It was my first day at Echuca High School. I walked along the Henley Trail to the bus stop. Grass had grown tall around Pop’s rock; you had to dig to see it. I didn’t look at the other kids when I climbed onto the bus. As I sat in a seat at the front, blood came out onto my rag. I’d had my rags three times. At first I thought it was Pop’s gut trouble spread to me. I lay on my bed and I didn’t do cut-outs and I didn’t do anything. I held my hand over my gut and waited for the bug to finish. But when there was blood on my underpants I knew it was my rags; I was thirteen. Julie Rigney said most girls were thirteen when they came. The skin of the sky seemed to grow thicker, like rubber. It couldn’t be cut open. It made no difference if the sun was shining when my rags came; there was a weight over the sky.

 

‹ Prev