I fell asleep in the bucket that night with Jodie in my arms. Never have I felt such warmth, such bliss. As dawn broke across the paddocks and we awoke, untangling ourselves and rubbing the sleep from our eyes, the aftermath of the night before was revealed to us in all its horror. Most of the machinery was still burning, belching clouds of black smoke up into the air; police cars and fire trucks had gathered with their blue and red lights flashing, and uniformed figures could be seen standing about in small groups as if trying to come to terms with the carnage around them. As I crawled back into bed later that morning, alone, the smell of Jodie’s hair still lingering in my nostrils and the sound of her soft breathing still in my ear, I knew it was only a matter now of waiting for the end, an end more certain than ever after the events of the night before.
A few hours later a megaphone was heard addressing us from the other side of the South Wall. It was Slug: he was standing, alone, beside a white four-wheel drive with government plates. The group gathered inside the wall to listen, a brick was removed at eye-level and one by one they peered through, each turning away dismayed: Dave, the last, so overcome with emotion that he could not be moved to speak again. Slug, for motives pure or tainted, was acting as emissary and arbitrator, a last-ditch attempt to bring those inside around to reason. We were deluding ourselves, he said, and had acted precipitately; the earth-moving equipment behind him which we had so savagely rendered immobile the previous night had not been out to harm us and it was beyond him to understand what had inspired us to such an act. Were we all mad? Couldn’t we see that the freeway that had been promised to us so long ago was finally coming? What had possessed us to try to stop it? It hurt him deeply, he who had worked so tirelessly since returning to the city to draw attention to our plight and had tried, finally with some success, to turn the rusted wheels of bureaucracy in our favour. Our houses had already doubled in price (he had buyers standing by with chequebooks in their hands); within a month we would be linked to the city as promised, the petrol station would be built, new houses added, shops, factories, warehouses, the park would be landscaped, the lake dug and filled; by summer at the latest all the details of the original plans would be realised and improved upon. He was asking us only to take stock, stop and think, and show a little patience; he’d lived among us, knew what we’d been through, if we couldn’t trust him who could we trust?
No-one believed a word of it, but the gall of the man held the small group inside the wall in a stupefied silence. Michael climbed into the bucket and asked Alex to raise him up. The others put their heads together to peer through the hole in the wall. I was not one of them but it brings a smile to my face even now to imagine the look on Slug’s face: he, in suit and tie, standing behind his shiny white four-wheel drive, looking up to see cockeyed Michael rising above the wall, his face unshaven, his left eye wide and wild, the rabbit-skin hat on his head and the old army jacket buttoned to the neck. They looked at each other for a long time; in quiet tones Slug pleaded with Michael personally to stop this madness, it wasn’t worth it, and would all lead to disaster in the end. From his pocket Michael drew out the notepad that Loch had signed, supposed proof of an entirely different scenario to the one Slug had just outlined. He held it up in front of him, read it through aloud, tore out the final page, shoved it in his mouth and began chewing it up. Then, with one quick snap of the neck, he spat it out in Slug’s direction. The wet ball of paper landed at Slug’s feet; he picked it up and began prising it open. Don’t bother, said Michael, it’s full of lies; as you, Slug, are full of lies. He shouldered his rifle and fired. The bullet hit the ground at Slug’s feet; Slug dropped the megaphone and jumped into his car. Another bullet ricocheted with a ping off the roof as he turned it around and drove at full speed back across the paddocks. Michael gave the signal to be lowered. He dismounted and told Craig to go out and fetch the megaphone: they’d find a use for it before long. He then helped Dave to his feet and whispered something in his ear. Dave smiled, Michael put a hand on his shoulder and together they made their way down South Street to the bar.
New machinery was trucked in over the days that followed and within a week the freeway was moving again. Two police vans now accompanied the advancing bulldozers as protection against another raid; they did not try to talk us out—if Slug had failed what hope did the police have?—but their presence out there was a sobering reminder of how far the situation had deteriorated. As night fell and the workers left for home, a spotlight on top of one of these vans was switched on and its beam slid back and forth across the open ground between us. I sometimes crept out to the wall after dark to watch this beam and to see how far they had advanced that day: Alex’s bulldozer was now parked almost permanently at the end of South Street and the hoist and bucket served as a mobile sentry post with a commanding view of the paddocks beyond the wall. I sat up there with Craig, Dave, Alex, Nanna, Marie-Claire or Jodie—with anyone, in fact, but Michael, who I now did my best to avoid—and talked or simply watched in silence as the spotlight passed back and forth, sometimes freezing a rabbit in its beam.
But despite our forebodings, the progress of the freeway was proving to be painfully slow. We had expected the excavations to reach us first before any bitumen was laid but it seemed in fact that the work was advancing piecemeal: the earth-moving equipment would stop for a while and then behind them the gravel trucks and spreaders would do their work before the excavations advanced again. It seemed to indicate a hesitation on their part and suggested—to me at least—that the end might not be as swift and decisive as we’d first imagined. As for Michael, his behaviour became increasingly reckless and bizarre and I did well to keep out of his way. It seemed that the strain of waiting for the final moment was taking its toll. He spent most of the day at the wall with the megaphone in his hand shouting abuse across the paddocks and was often seen running down South Street after dark in his pyjamas, suddenly concerned that they may have moved in the night. He organised a working bee to barricade the access road gate with whatever was at hand, junk that had been scavenged from the tip mostly, and topped the wall again with more barbed wire and broken bottles. In the midst of all this he seemed completely unaware of the fact that the freeway had almost stopped, or was crawling so slowly now that it might as well have stopped, and acted as if they were already on our doorstep when in reality they were still over a kilometre away to the south and hardly moving at all.
In the eleventh summer after Inauguration Day dear old Nanna died. My only regret, and it is a regret I’ll carry with me to my grave, is that I did not speak to her over those last few days. Jodie had knocked at my door in the morning and called me down to the wall. Nanna’s out there, she said. It was the first time I had ventured outside during daylight hours in over a month and in the meantime the freeway had begun moving rapidly again. A lone worker had spoken to Alex late one night as he stood guard at the wall. The workers, he said, had been deliberately slowing the freeway down, reluctant to be the ones responsible for ploughing through our homes. But their bosses had become wise to this and were now threatening to bring in the scabs. Within days the freeway had leapt forward again and covered more ground in an afternoon than it had in the previous week, and as I looked through the peephole in the wall at the end of South Street that morning the first thing that struck me was how close they now were: less than three hundred metres away and closing fast. But the real shock was Nanna. She sat with her back to us, her face to them, in front of the enormous bulldozer at the head of the column. She was still dressed in her blue nylon nightie and held a small posy of flowers in her hand. She went over the wall last night, Alex whispered to me: I couldn’t stop her. Extra police had arrived, their cars parked higgledy-piggledy around her, and some kind of negotiations were in progress. It was hard to follow what was happening; we could hear nothing at that distance but the occasional crackle and static-drenched voice from the police radios and everyone crowded and pushed around the peephole for a look. Michael was up in the buc
ket, megaphone in hand; he’d been shouting abuse and giving ultimatums all morning. Two policemen tried to lift Nanna up, taking one thin feeble arm each, when Michael suddenly shouted through the megaphone and fired a shot into the air. They lowered Nanna down again. A police megaphone shrieked out a warning to Michael; Michael in turn abused them with a list of unrepeatable words. It’s been going on like this all morning, Alex said: that’s my mum out there, what am I going to do? The negotiations began again but Nanna was unmoved. Suddenly the bulldozer coughed into life and above the sound of its engine the police megaphone could be heard: “We will now pull back and I would ask you to do the same. Some of the police cars turned around and retreated to the end of the column. I have no doubt they were sincere, that the driver of the bulldozer had meant to put it in reverse, but alas for poor Nanna the best intentions mattered little. The bulldozer lurched forward, there was a shout from one of the policemen—No! Back!—but it was too late and within a second Nanna had been crushed. The driver finally found reverse and backed the machine away to reveal Nanna’s body lying twisted and lifeless on the ground, the posy of flowers still in her hand. Alex, screaming, tried to scramble up the wall and had to be physically restrained while above us Michael began firing wildly and the sound of bullets ricocheting off metal filled the air. The police grabbed Nanna’s broken body and retreated behind the bulldozer. Hold your fire! came the cry through the police megaphone. Michael kept shooting until his magazine was empty. Then all went eerily silent.
This event, so senseless in itself, sparked a chain reaction that threatened to get completely out of hand: there can be nothing so mad as the madness that followed. We never saw Nanna’s body again—an ambulance whisked it away that afternoon—but if, as I believed, they were trying to cover up the death and the whole fiasco ur had become then they didn’t entirely succeed. News somehow leaked through to the town up north and the consequences were swift and dramatic. The following day ‘reinforcements’ arrived (I’m aware of how stupid that must sound but can find no other word to describe it): farmers mostly, driving tractors, and a group of council workers (Alex’s mates, as we later discovered) all crammed into the cabin of a bulldozer. They parked their machinery outside the South Wall in the path of the oncoming freeway. Later that same afternoon it began raining food from the sky. All day every day during the days that followed, the light plane flew again overhead and dropped food parcels into ur; they thumped and broke open on the ground so often that it became almost dangerous to go outside.
I do not know what was behind this sudden outpouring of support—since Loch’s visit the food parcels had stopped and we’d had no contact with any of these people for years—and it seemed to me an extreme overreaction at the time. But food was food, and for the first time in months we ate civilised meals again. No-one could say how long this glut would last or when the freeway would carve its last three hundred metres into ur; for a moment we forgot all the goings-on outside the wall and spent most of our time eating. People took to their homes again: Craig and Marie-Claire spent the days inside, sharing perhaps for the first time and in deliberate defiance of the shambles around them the lifestyle Craig had promised; Jodie came to my place every night for tea and by the light of an oil lamp on the kitchen table a vague hint of the romance I’d longed for was revived; Alex disappeared into his dead mother’s house and was rarely seen again; Dave, bless his soul, from the day of Slug’s appearance at the wall, had taken to sitting as many hours a day as Michael would allow at their old table on the footpath outside the bar and now, after scavenging among the food parcels scattered in the square, ate his meals there religiously, wrapped in a nostalgic dream. Only Michael, like some prowling animal, roamed the streets with gun in hand, chewing at most on an old rabbit bone, his mind completely gone.
If we could have held that moment, frozen it in time, shut out all the sights and sounds that suggested disintegration and ruin, we might yet have believed in our dreams and seen long, contented lives ahead of us. More than ever now, and against all rational thinking, with Jodie sitting across the table from me of an evening, I wanted to turn the clock back and start the story all over again: this is my wife and this is the meal she has cooked; soon her eccentric father will drop around and I will tolerate him, as I should, and ask him to come with us to the park on Sunday where with our two children hand in hand we’ll cross the grass to the lake and throw crusts of bread to the ducks. This is my wife, this is my home, my children are sleeping and all is well with the world. They were saying that now, out in the east, but how far away it seemed!
eleven
The stand-off outside the wall continued; the freeway was temporarily halted. Michael roamed the streets and the inner circle of the wall by day and slept in the bucket of the bulldozer at night. He still had Craig’s support and he (Craig) now wore his own hastily made rabbit-skin hat as a sign of his loyalty but everywhere else the solidarity that Michael had previously enjoyed was eroding. Alex remained unsighted, Dave sat at his table all day long and only rose from his chair every hour or so to wipe the neighbouring table with a piece of cloth, as if acting out at intervals a memory from long ago. He should go inside, Jodie said to me one day: it’s too dangerous now out in the square. It was true, he should have gone inside, but neither I, nor Jodie, nor anyone else for that matter thought to go out there and talk him in. Food parcels fell like meteorites now, so regularly they had become almost meaningless, and the day after Jodie’s prophetic words one fell on Dave’s head and killed him. He was buried in the square, beside the bronze plaque that for God knows what reason still remained where it had been erected over eleven years ago; an old beer bottle filled with flowers was shoved into the dirt at the foot of the grave and that was the end of Dave. Michael went berserk; he fired at anything remotely associated with ‘the murderers’; the farmers with their tractors and the council bulldozer fled under fire across the paddocks and when the plane wheeled overhead again later that day Michael emptied fifteen rounds in its direction and we never saw it again. He expended the last of his ammunition from the South Wall that night, shooting blindly in the direction of the freeway until the last bullet was spent.
Later that night he knocked at my door and we spoke for the first time in months. Jodie and I had just finished dinner and she, sensing the delicacy of the moment, tactfully offered to clean up while Michael and I talked in the lounge room. Her hope, I’m sure, was that I might somehow save him from himself. He was an awful sight, a shadow of the tanned and wiry outdoorsman of so many years ago. He hadn’t shaved for weeks and now sported a rough, grizzled beard. He had lost weight—Jodie had tried and failed many times to get him to eat. Beneath the ugly beard his face was thin and pale, his clothes were dirty and dishevelled and if not for the fire still burning in his eye and his nervous, twitchy movements you might think him a man sinking inexorably and uncaringly towards death.
All day a storm had been brewing to the west of ur and that night thunder and lightning racked the sky, rattling the windows and filling the air with the smell of rain. Michael’s raw nerve ends were doubly raw: he jumped at every clap of thunder and turned to the window, eyes blazing, each time a flash of lightning lit up the sky outside. It was all I could do just to get him to sit still in his chair, he wouldn’t look me in the eye: it was impossible to say what disturbed him more, the storm or me, but then his demeanour changed, he laid his hands gently on the armrests, sat back, looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes. Bram, he was saying, do you have any idea how ridiculous all this is? Of course you do, that’s why I haven’t seen you for a month. He opened his eyes and pinned me with the left in a hard, sardonic gaze: but never start something you can’t finish, that’s all I can say. Jodie! he shouted, come in here! She walked into the lounge room, drying her hands on a tea towel, and stood calmly in the doorway. I want you both to know that I approve, said Michael, and not only do I approve but I give my blessings, unconditionally. I won’t deny that it’s been a struggle
for me; after everything that’s happened, Jodie, I know you’ll understand. He raised his hand, removed the rabbit-skin hat, and placed it carefully on the armrest of the chair as if to emphasise the gravity of the moment. It was the first time the hat had left his head in months; his greasy, greying hair was stuck flat to his skull and made him look sadly comical. I began my time here with so many hopes, he said, like so many of us, running from an unhappy past to a new and unknown future. When Jodie arrived—sit down, Jodie—when Jodie arrived the better part of my hopes were realised. I had my daughter with me again after a long and agonising separation—you know, Bram, that I was making my preparations and was on the point of leaving when this happy event occurred. This suburban dream is not for me, I said, the house is too big and lonely; but then you came, Jodie, out of the blue, back to your father, and everything inside me changed. It’s true, by then this place had already gone to rack and ruin and anyone with any sense had well and truly left but I had my daughter, I had family, and this was enough to convince me to stay. Life was suddenly filled with good times, times I’d forgotten existed. We went out shooting rabbits again like we used to when you were small—do you remember?—at that magic hour after dawn. But you’re no longer small, you’re a woman now, and I’d be the first to admit it’s taken some time for me to accept that fact. I’ve forgotten how true love works. I’ve forgotten many things. When I first mentioned the wall to Bram he didn’t try to stop me (though I knew he thought the idea was mad) and it wasn’t until some time after that I realised why: he was nodding his head out of love, love for you, Jodie, and yes, sometimes true love is as unfathomable even as that. Jodie turned on her heels and walked back down the hallway to the kitchen. I could feel myself turning red. She’s embarrassed, Bram, it’s understandable, said Michael: a father shouldn’t embarrass a daughter like that. Jodie! Please! Come back a moment. (I need to talk to you alone, Bram, too, and I will before I go.) Jodie, please…His bottom lip began quivering and his hand passed vaguely across his face. Jodie stood again in the doorway. Your father has become ridiculous, Jodie, I know that. I know how I must look. But please, be patient with me, I’ll say my piece and then I’ll go and leave you both alone. I only want what’s best. Michael’s chest heaved and he began to weep. Jodie sat on the arm of the chair by the door and gave me a brief, impatient glance. Dave and Nanna, he blubbered, so senseless, so cruel—he took out a filthy old handkerchief and blew his nose—I still can’t believe what has happened. And Alex too, you can be sure of that, he’s tried his best for his mother’s sake but soon he’ll be gone and I don’t blame him. He folded the handkerchief into his lap and tried to compose himself again. He looked up at us both, his eyes still glistening with tears: So what’s left to fight for now, you ask? Craig is like a son to me, you both know that, but do you know how much it hurts me to see his dreams reduced to this? To have to try and explain every night the gulf between his long-distance promises to Marie-Claire and the daily reality of life in this place? Marie-Claire—with one exception—is without a doubt the most patient and suffering woman I have ever met but she shouldn’t have to suffer for nothing. Craig offered her a house, a backyard, a new life in the estate north of Melbourne—I do what I do for Craig and Marie-Claire too, you mustn’t forget that, but above all, Jodie, Bram, I do what I do now for you, for your future happiness, for all that I fought against in myself before, as a father, a perhaps too-loving father, for your life together, the kind of life I so miserably failed to achieve with a woman who truly never loved me—yes, Jodie, never—and who would not take my love, a love that I then transferred to you, my daughter, and which has blinded me to the thing that I now see before me so clearly, namely your love for Bram, his love for you, and your justifiable disdain for a father who has loved so selfishly and without a thought to the independent woman you’ve become.
Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe Page 9