by Sofie Laguna
I went to the toilet and saw the pad was covered in blood. It stung and burned when I tried to do a wee. I thought I would fall into the same hole the baby had come through. I was at the edge, looking down.
I took one of the pads from the bag and put a clean one in my underpants, then I put the rest in my schoolbag. I put the bag on my back. My chest felt tight and hard.
I went out the back door and stood on the step. I looked across at the fence line, at the clouds in the sky, at the gate. I breathed in the air and listened. I could hear him more clearly outside. I stood for a long time then I turned and went back inside.
Pop lay in his bed, mouth open, a hand over his gut. His face twitched.
There had never been anyone else. Not my dad, not my Aunty Rita, not my mother, not Nurse Patty—there had only ever been my pop. It was Pop who sat with me the first night Donna left, Pop who introduced me to the big man, Pop who collected the eggs with me, so we could eat our dinner on our knees at his fire. I brought him beers from the esky and he made me tea with milk and sugar, and we looked after the chooks. So many chooks we had cleaned for and spoken to and fed. But it was Pop who had taken my baby. He was trying to give him away. The only thing that was mine. I didn’t have a horse and I didn’t have a friend and I didn’t have a mother, but I had a baby, Joe Michael, and Pop was trying to take him from me. I picked up his belt from the floor, unhooked his keys and left the room.
One of the keys was for the truck, one was for the front door, one was for the back-house and one was for the cupboard that held the guns. I separated the key to the cupboard from the others, holding it tight. I took a kitchen chair and opened the door to the stairs. I felt hot and wet. The stairs were as dark as they had been the night I went down with Kirk and Steve all those years ago. Where were my brothers now? Where had they ever been?
I went down the stairs, one hand against the wall. I put the chair under the cupboard, climbed up and put the key in the lock. I pulled open the door and put my hands inside—there was Pop’s Mauser and the brother-pistols. I could feel Dad’s Smith tucked behind them, wrapped in the cloth, the way it had been the day he taught me how to shoot. The same box of bullets sat beside the gun. My hands shook so much that as I took them out I thought I would drop the gun.
Leaving the key in the lock I climbed down from the chair and put the gun and the box of bullets into my schoolbag. Then I went back up the stairs and out of the house.
I couldn’t keep up with my own shaking as I crossed the yard. My teeth chattered. I couldn’t see straight. I stopped and took the gun and six of the bullets from the bag. I pushed the bullets into the six empty holes in the cylinder. You need to know how to look after yourself. So when you say, Fuck off, they’ll know you mean it. My dad’s one lesson.
I walked towards the gate, my legs weak. I couldn’t feel the ordinary ground. It rose up to me as I walked, then fell back behind me. I gripped the gun. I was at the chicken run. I heard Cockyboy clucking. Electricity charged my hands. I was shaking as if I was the gun and the bullets were loaded in me. I opened the door of the run. Cockyboy jumped from his perch and came towards me. Showing me who was boss. He had the same look in his eye as Mrs Turning. As Dr Manning, as the nurses, Withers and Undine. He was another one against me the way Relle and Kirk and Steve were against me. The way Dad was against me. I raised the gun and looked into Cockyboy’s black-pip eyes. I pulled the trigger and shot a bullet into his head. Blood sprayed from his neck like water from a hose. I shot another chook, Missy, and I was released. Blood splattered the walls of the shed and the dust and the sleeping hens, Lady and Lady and Madame and Girl, who started and jolted and looked at me, their feathers rising from their skins. I blasted them one after the other, the hens taking it from me, taking it for me, taking what had been put in me, the only creatures in the world who ever had, the hens who never did anything against me, never hurt me, never stuck anything into me, never against me, the hens, all dead, in pieces in Pop’s shed, their blood on my face and on my hands and on their enemy the gun. They took it for me, dying on the run floor in feathers and blood, all dead, my sweetest friends, the chooks.
I ran through the gate towards the trees, my breath heaving in my chest. The trees rose up around me like ghosts. I kept running. There was my river-truck made of branches, there was my keepout where I had my blanket, my torch, my biscuits and my matches. I pushed open the door and was home again. I vomited onto the floor, then I fell against the gun, wrapping myself around it, cold as bone, my face sticky. I cried. It was death all around, my face stained in blood. It was the end of things, because I had lost the beginning.
I held on to my weapon, and slept without moving. I didn’t see the clouds passing over the bright face of the moon. I didn’t feel the damp of the forest floor, or hear the owl calling. Sleep was a valley and I was walking its darkest path, where nothing can be reached or saved. When I was too tired and too weak to go any further, Silver came to my side. She stood over me, snorting her warm breath against my cheek, ready to fall to her knees so I could climb up onto her back. There were blankets tied to her saddle, and supplies, there was hot tea and eggs to eat with bread. Silver and the gun guarded me.
When I next woke the gun was still in my hand, my fingers stiff around the handle. I sat up and took the box of bullets out of my bag. Dad didn’t teach me how to read or write or speak or make friends or look someone in the eye—he taught me how to use the Smith. They’re all the same. Every single last one, rich or poor, black or white, old or young, they all want it. I opened the gun’s cylinder and pushed in six more bullets. You don’t ever want to find yourself looking into a gun from the wrong end. Chances are it’ll be the last thing you see.
I left the keepout and walked down to the river. Birds with long hooked beaks flew away as I came close. Clouds of insects separated and trees pulled back their branches.
I stood at the edge and looked at the water. It had stopped flowing. The banks of The Choke had tightened. The water had nowhere to go.
I put the gun to my head, my finger on the trigger.
56.
In the quiet of the Murray I heard my baby calling for me—his one and only mother. The same way I had called for Donna the day she left, the same way Sherry had called for her mother when Stacey couldn’t get out of the bed. Slowly, my hand shaking, I lowered the gun. There wasn’t anybody who could take my place for Joe Michael, there wasn’t anyone else he wanted. The way I had wanted Donna. I closed my eyes and felt her arms around me, holding me to her, rocking me, whispering words I didn’t know, dancing with me across the floor, nobody in the world but us.
I folded the Smith back in the cloth and put it in the bag. I kneeled and took a long drink from the river. The water cooled me and soothed my throat. I splashed more over my face, washing the blood from my hands. My head stopped pounding. I looked up and saw that the river was moving, flowing forward, it hadn’t stopped. The banks were the same distance apart as they had always been. I breathed in deep and my breath flowed out and forward. My breath and the Murray. I closed my eyes and saw the hole the baby had come through. It was the same ditch that surrounded Steve. I looked over the edge. It wasn’t dark; it was light.
I put my schoolbag on my back and walked up to the Henley Trail, then I left the trail and went through the trees. I took the same path that the Worlleys and the Lees used when we were young and would run between the farm and Pop’s Three. All our tracks had disappeared, the grass had grown thick, new young red gums grew in the way, but I knew where to go. My bag was steady against my back; it had only ever been empty and now it held a gun. There was throbbing between my legs, as if a heart was under the pad. That was where the baby had come from, where I was split; it throbbed and burned but I didn’t want it to stop—it kept me joined to him. I walked in time to its beat as I headed for the Worlleys’. Night was coming. It was a circle that didn’t stop turning.
I came to the dirt road that led to the Worlleys’ caravans. I
stopped. The slide was bright yellow, the bubbles flew as we slid, the Worlleys and the Lees, there were so many you couldn’t tell which was which. The fall-out happened in a single night. Tight bastard…The Japs took your balls, old man…Fucken money. And then we weren’t the Worlleys and the Lees anymore, and it was war. I kept walking, one foot in front of the other.
Stacey’s half-built house was outlined in silver, the way it had been the night I was there with Dad. The moon was full then too. Bricks were in piles around the concrete square, there were planks not yet laid, bags of concrete, torn and spilling, glass broken. I saw two cars without wheels, I saw engines and a fridge and an upside-down bath. Jamie’s Valiant was parked outside Stacey’s caravan. I heard cries and couldn’t tell one voice from another. Was it Joe Michael? Was it Stacey? Was it Sherry?
I stood behind one of the cars and took the Smith from my schoolbag. I was shivering. I thought I was going to vomit. I walked closer to Stacey’s caravan. All Sherry’s toys were gone; now it was car parts and sheets of iron and fallen bricks. The cries in my ears grew louder. I held on tightly to the Smith as I listened for the cry that belonged to my baby. My little baby, Joe Michael. Then I heard it, a cry just for me. I took another step towards the caravan and out came Jamie Worlley.
He stepped down from the front door and unzipped his jeans. He was tall, his shoulders broad. I heard him piss into the dirt. He was like my dad. Jamie and my dad could have been the same. He zipped his jeans and turned to go back inside. I stepped out of the shadows. ‘Jamie,’ I said.
‘What the hell?’
I held up the gun with both hands. Only point it at the thing you want to kill.
‘What are you doing here?’ Jamie said.
I had to find the words. Which one of you will die today?
‘I came to see you.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I had a baby.’
‘So I heard. Fuck off, Justine.’ He turned to go into the caravan.
My hand was charged, as if Pop had put his jump leads against it and turned the key. All that had been taken from me was in the force of my finger as I pulled the trigger and shot the ground near Jamie. Bang.
‘Fuck!’ Jamie’s voice shook and jumped.
‘I need you to help me.’
‘P-put down the gun, Justine…’
‘No.’
‘Please…Please, put down the gun.’
‘I said no!’
‘Okay, okay. What is it…why are you here?’
I shot the other side of his feet. ‘You can help me,’ I said, my voice new and strong for Joe Michael.
‘Fuck! Fuck, Justine. Jesus. What the…’
‘Take me to my Aunty Rita.’
‘Rita? Who…’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand…’ Jamie never took his eyes off the gun.
‘My Aunty Rita.’
‘Your aunt?’
‘Yes,’ I said. The gun was steady; even if I had taken my hand away it would still be there, suspended, ready to shoot.
‘Justine, please, can you put down the gun?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Take me to her.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Sydney.’ I stepped closer to his face.
‘Okay, okay, Sydney.’
‘Gladesville. Tarban Creek. Take me.’ I lifted the gun, as if the gun itself had a voice to add to mine. Do it, Jamie.
‘Okay!’ he said. ‘Okay.’
‘Now!’ I shot the Smith at the side of his head.
‘Okay! I need to get money. Please, just let me get some money. I got to get keys. It’s inside, we have to go inside.’
‘Get the money,’ I said. ‘But, Jamie, if you don’t do what I want I’m going to kill you.’ I wanted to kill him, leave him as bloody and dead as Cockyboy on the floor of the chook run. But that wouldn’t stop my baby crying. ‘Do you understand? I’ll kill you.’
‘Okay. Okay, Justine.’
I followed him as he stepped into the caravan. The television was on; people clapped. There was a picture on the wall of Stacey holding Sherry. She was smiling and holding her yellow rabbit. They were both laughing and Stacey was whole, happy, her face wasn’t in the trough with pieces of her hair missing, and she could get out of bed and look after Sherry another day, the way she was before my dad took me to visit.
‘Get your things and get in the car.’
Jamie picked up his wallet and his keys from the kitchen bench. I followed him outside to the car, my gun pointed at his back. It was the same white car, the Valiant, but this time I got in the front seat, not the back, and this time I was holding a gun.
Jamie turned the key and started the engine. He drove down past the Henley Trail, past the Yolamundi pub to Nullabri, then onto the Murray Valley Highway. I knew I was heading further away from Joe Michael, and the distance pulled at me, twisting my gut. Soon we were on the Sturt, heading for Sydney. Every second made me ache but I would not drop the gun. We weren’t turning back.
The highway was long and straight, line after line down its middle. After a long time Jamie said, ‘Justine, put down the gun. I am getting you there.’ But I didn’t put down the gun. Outside the car the bush was thick—there were a lot of places to hide a girl in the bush. Jamie’s strong hands were on the wheel, and when I looked at them as he drove, the night we were together came back to me like pieces of a puzzle. With every hour of road, every white line behind us, I knew more. I was fourteen now, I had a baby, I had been pregnant, it happened in the back of Jamie’s car, after the hot mint drink. Kirk and Steve left me at The Choke with Jamie and his cousin, Lachie, and their friend, Stu, and another guy I didn’t know.
We had watched the river and I had been listening to the boys talking. I had drunk from the bottle Jamie bought for me, and then the next thing I knew I was vomiting in the car, and after that Jamie was on top of me. It was hard to breathe, I tried to push him off but I had no strength. There was a dream of my dad, a dream of Stacey, but what was happening to me wasn’t a dream. I was torn apart, peeled back like chicken off the bone.
Jamie helped the baby come into me. It happened that night. I didn’t want Jamie to do it, I didn’t ask for it, but now that he had done it I would take it. It was mine. With every mile I knew more. Knowing woke and found a voice, pushing through the dead, dry ground like a body back to life.
My father was in Pentridge for what he did to Stacey Worlley. I was there with him that night. Jamie Worlley was Stacey’s younger brother, and it was Jamie Worlley who had hurt me. Joe Michael came from them, from Jamie, from Dad, from Stacey, from Pop, he came from the mistakes they had made, but Joe Michael was not a mistake.
We kept driving. I could stay awake holding the gun, and I could know the truth, for Joe Michael I could do it. Hours passed. Inside the car it was still. Jamie’s arms were steady. I kept my eye on him and the gun and the bush outside. I never put down the gun for one second. When I needed to piss I did it onto the pad. We only stopped for petrol. I stood close to Jamie with the gun to his back.
‘I need to piss,’ he said.
‘Go over there.’ I pointed to some grass beside the wall.
‘Fuck.’
‘Do it there or nowhere,’ I said.
Jamie pissed beside the wall.
The highway stretched on. The sun rose, lighting the sky with gold and grey and pink, mixing like the paint of a picture by Michael. My friend Michael, who I’d missed every day since he left. Who helped me and waited for me. Who shared his house and his family with me, protected me, knew me and wanted to know more. My friend Michael. Who wanted to write to me, but I told him no, because I could never read a single word. Whose name I gave to my baby. It was morning, there were still stars in the sky, fading, soon to be gone. Joe Michael’s call mixed with the call of birds. I had never had a reason before, and now I did have one. I saw it in the light of the rising sun.
We were outside a brick building with hedges all around it like walls. Jamie stopped the ca
r. ‘It’s here,’ he said.
I kept the gun pointed at him and looked at the building.
‘Now what?’ he asked.
I couldn’t read the sign; I saw the letters, I could see they were words, but I didn’t know.
‘What does it say?’
‘What does what say?’
‘There,’ I pointed. ‘The sign.’
‘Gladesville Hospital.’
That was where Aunty Rita worked. Tarban Creek—Gladesville Hospital.
Jamie took cigarettes from his pocket. ‘What happens next?’ he asked.
‘Now you can go.’
‘That’s it? I’m not going to hear from you again?’
‘No. That’s it.’
‘What are you going to do in there?’ He looked at the hospital through the car window.
‘Find my Aunty Rita.’
‘What if she isn’t in there?’
‘I don’t know…This is where she works.’
He looked at the wheel then up ahead and through the glass again. ‘Do you want me to wait?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Justine,’ he said, ‘if you need me to wait here, I will.’
I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘If she isn’t here, if she’s somewhere else, I’ll take you there.’
I shook my head.
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
I looked into his eyes and saw a tunnel. I saw his sister, Stacey, in the tunnel; I saw Sherry calling for her mother from Margy’s caravan. I saw bottles of see-through drink and the rusted car rising from the Worlley dam. I saw the long red scar on Jamie’s back that never came from a dogfight.
‘Your old man nearly killed Stacey that night. He’s where he belongs…fucken Pentridge.’