Pop squinted at her.
‘High school soon.’
She nodded, shifting uneasily under his one good eye. Pop liked to yarn with adults. To kids he generally doled out either orders or the strap, not conversation.
‘Lotta new whitefellas there. Steer clear of em, ya hear? They’re savages. And don’t be like ya slut of a sister, either, putting herself around.’
‘Yes Pop.’
Kerry stared at the blades of grass. Probably a better sister would resent Pop’s description, but it was true. Donna was well on her way to being the town bike. That wasn’t for Kerry. The contempt from Pretty Mary would kill her, for a start. And what was so great about boys, anyway? But Donna was all mouth, all the time. You couldn’t tell her anything. Ken survived because of basketball and footy. Black Superman, well, he went his own way, had his own battles to fight, different again that fella. Pop could tell she was only half listening. He batted her upper arm and changed tack.
‘That hill there, la. What’s ’e look like?’
Kerry tilted her head. The question the whitefellas always wanted answered, the loud ones at the pub with the gammon laughter, the ones Pretty Mary called her friends, and brought home to sleep it off, and whose faces changed the instant her mother turned to the door. If Kerry was honest: wallaby ears sticking up out of the earth. Or a giant frog’s eyes peering down on them. She shrugged. It didn’t look like any monk, that was for sure.
‘Doob lying on her back?’ she muttered. Pop grunted. Something had pleased him, but what, Kerry couldn’t have told.
‘Some say that. Grandad Chinky Joe for one. When I was just a young fella, a year or two more’n you are now, Sergeant Buckley, that’s Jim’s old grandad, ’e chased me up that hill on his horse.’ The rifle lay quiet in the grass beside Pop as he yarned. ‘I runned away from Rivertown mish again, see, needed to get away from Father O. Made it up here and made for the scrub there, la – plenty of places to hide on the sunset side. But Sergeant Buckley, he knew that mountain pretty good for a dugai. He caught me and brung me back to town. Give me a proper flogging out front of the old Patto cop shop, too. Main street. Wanted to bash the black outta me, ’e said.’
Pop shook his head.
‘By Christ, ’e was a hard man, Bob Buckley.’ That was something, coming from him. Pop paused, remembering.
‘Father O come up from Rivertown to fetch me, and he stood there alongside half the town, watching it, with a big fucken smirk on his face, the mongrel. Nothing ya could do. Black man had no rights them days.’
‘That’s dugais for ya.’ It didn’t make any sense to Kerry. If you were black, you were black. How could you become white from a flogging? If floggings made you white, then Donna and Ken would be albinos. Not her, though, and not Black Superman. She was too little for Pop to want to hurt. And she was nobody’s fool either. She prided herself on being able to read the signals, knowing when behind the chicken coop or on the other side of the creek was the safest place to be. She could count the times she’d been hit by Pop on both hands. And Black Superman had something mysterious in his eye that made Pop pull up with him, too, so maybe it was to do with colour after all; the two of them were much darker than Ken and Donna. It was all very confusing.
Then Pop did yet another puzzling thing. He raised his right arm towards the mountain, as though saluting it, and slowly closed his fist against the afternoon light. He leaned in towards Kerry, putting his head closer to hers than she could ever remember him doing, so that their shoulders met and she was looking directly along the length of his extended arm. The three dark bumps of his knuckles protruded against the blue horizon. As he lowered them she saw that they exactly mirrored the peaks of the mountain behind them. A carbon copy.
‘See it?’
Kerry nodded.
‘Maybe it was a dog to begin with, or a doob, for that matter. But make no mistake. That mountain’s a fist now, girl,’ Pop told her, letting his arm drop. He looked at her in anguish. ‘It’s a gunjibal’s fist waiting for us mob to step outta line, waiting to smash us down. We livin’ in the whiteman’s world now. You remember that.’
Pop ground his smoke out against the sole of his boot and stood up, rifle in hand. He looked down at Kerry and something in his expression, some glint of long-buried rage, made her flinch away. She pushed down a sudden idea of his rifle swinging around to meet her fragile skull. Another bleeding hole. Another body on the ground. Stupid. A flogging with the strap, yeah – or maybe the cricket bat for cheeky Donna, bad Donna – but Pop would never have used a rifle on his own son’s children.
‘Ere,’ he passed the weapon over, as if to prove her right. Stooped and gutted the wallaby with a few fast slashes of his knife, tossed the entrails into the thick scrub then slung the carcass over his shoulder. Set off home with blood spatter trailing down his back, and Kerry picking her way cautiously in his wake between grass tussocks and cow pats. She kept the safety on and the weapon pointed at the ground, all the way. Mum’s headache cleared up fast when she saw the wallaby; Ken had got Man of the Match in the win against Grafton. The stew that night tasted fucking marvellous.
~
Kerry rested her hands on her hips as she walked in a sweaty circle on the cracked and potholed surface of Mount Monk Road. Then she simply stood, rocking back and forth as she sucked the oxygen in. Dawn had broken now, and the faint edge of night cool was all gone in an instant, the heat of the day now only minutes away. It was December she was pulling into her lungs and no mistake, and running in it was like running in a rainforest. Three bloody kay and her ribs were on fire. Too much Harley, not enough foot Falcon, that was abundantly clear. The legs that fed into Donny’s Nikes were the same bony stalks they’d always been, but skinny’s not the same thing as fit. She tightened her ponytail, and wished she’d plaited her hair before setting out.
The mountain looming in front of her was different to the dim silhouette she’d seen from Pretty Mary’s front gate. It had turned khaki, tree tops appearing out of the lightless murk, and the sky gone all pink and grey behind it. Sailor take warning, but nah this was just dawn pastels, nothing to worry about. Kookaburras gone quiet now and the crows and magpies having their turn at it. The first Coolangatta plane leaving for Sydney was high overhead, a bunch of suits yawning on their way south to screw the workers that little bit more. To them that hath, shall be given. From them that hath backpacks, shall be taken away. And then something wholly strange, a thudding behind her, thud thud thud exactly like her own feet a minute ago. Kerry tensed, instantly aware of being winded and three kays from home, with only one or two decrepit houses within sprinting distance. In Durrongo, nobody can hear you scream. Cos they all too busy screaming themselves, Ken reckoned. She looked down for rocks to throw in an attacker’s face. Go down swinging, always.
Before she could think or do anything else, though, a moving figure two fence posts away turned into a man running; a vaguely familiar face pale beneath brown curls.
Thirty-something. High cheekbones, fit like a fox. Out running on the same bloody middle-of-nowhere-shit-all-ever-happens-here road as her. And grinning at Kerry as if she was the one person on Earth he had always wanted to meet.
This white man in front of her wasn’t full-blood whitenormalsavage. Proper dark brown eyes like her own. Colour a bit like Donny, that yellow, some sort of wog. Definitely a major spunk.
Turn-up for the books.
‘Hey there,’ the man smiled, slowing down to check her out. He looked to have run a long way already; his jaw and forehead glistened with sweat. Curve of sweet, sweet muscle from shoulder to wrist. A loose white singlet top showed as much as it covered. This fella was built for action and speed, all sinewy around the joints like a serious athlete, big in the thighs and shoulders where he needed explosive muscle. A League player? Or a pro cyclist, except here he was on foot in the middle of nowhere.
‘Hello,
’ Kerry said uncertainly, rocked by the bizarre tableau. Scrub-covered mountain. Grazing Herefords. Hot spunky dude chatting her up. What the actual …
The man used his singlet to wipe his forehead and Kerry glimpsed the hard ridges of his six-pack underneath it, as she was meant to. When he let the shirt drop he looked straight at her, shameless, his eyes bright with unspoken suggestion. It was a look she knew well: I’m up for it if you are. Since she was fourteen, most men had looked at her with either hopeless longing or with anger, but this look was different – it was a bold invitation given without begging or expectation.
If I was remotely interested in white blokes, Kerry theorised, you might be the kind of white bloke I could get interested in.
‘Coming this way? I’m going as far as the bridge.’
Kerry suppressed a grin at his barefaced cheek.
‘Nah, I’ve had it,’ Kerry said dismissively, but couldn’t deny she was burbling-jumping-fizzing on the inside. She used to enjoy this game, before Allie. They didn’t need to speak another word, could be fucking like bunnies in three minutes. She half turned away, grabbed a toe and held it up behind her to stretch the quad. Faced home. Swapped legs and didn’t make eye contact. Wrong team, pal. And she still held a torch for Allie, anyways, breakup or no breakup.
‘Pretty warm now the sun’s over the hill.’ Major Spunk was jogging on the spot. Keep that blood pumping.
‘Yeah. Too hot for this black duck; I’m done.’
Kerry found that she was pleased to be wearing her best pair of shorts, and to have left Allie’s silver ring on the windowsill at home. Ah, knock it off.
‘Tomorrow then. Same bat time, same bat channel.’ Still happy smiling, good white teeth, teeth from money. Nobody in my family never had no teeth like that.
‘I doubt it. But never know ya luck in the big city.’ Over beside the mountain, a Hereford let out a solemn bellow.
He grinned. ‘Lucky’s my middle name.’
‘Maybe so, but luck comes in two flavours, last I heard.’
Kerry bent and put her palms on her insteps, feeling the slow burning ache up her legs as her hamstrings lengthened. ‘Got a first one?’
The man laughed.
‘Steve. Steve Abarco. And you’re Kerry Salter.’
Kerry straightened like a flick-knife.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’
The memory made her gasp. Arco back then, not Steve. From a teenage time when dignity was in such short supply it had to be scraped from a nickname here, a smile withheld there. He was right. She hadn’t recognised him.
‘Oh, God! You’ve, ah …’ Her fingers sketched inarticulate circles in the air. He laughed.
‘Filled out, yeah. And lost the Afro. Remember a string bean behind you in Maths One?’
Filled out nicely at that. Those arms. The tantalising glimpse of a six-pack. Yes. Think about that.
‘I do recall a certain annoying string bean, actually. Weren’t you a high jumper or something?’
‘Good memory. Well, that high jumper found the door to the gym about ten years ago. Mixed martial arts these days.’ Steve joke-flexed his right bicep and Kerry’s stomach flipped. ‘How the hell are ya? Still in Durrongo, I see. Any kids?’
Kerry laughed. He thought she’d stayed here all this godforsaken time.
‘Nah, I got out while the going was good. I’m just visiting from Brissie. And no kids. You?’
‘I moved back to Patto a couple months ago to start a business. My little girl’s five, but she lives with her mum at Burleigh.’ Steve Abarco stood there grinning at her with no woman and no plan to stop grinning any time soon. Kerry thought of Allie, three and a half hours’ distance and a world away. Locked behind razor wire for the next five years.
All bets are off. Move on.
‘Look, I seriously do have to go. My Pop’s dying of cancer and I’m just in town to … well, you know.’
‘Shit, I’m sorry—’
Kerry gifted Steve a quick smile as he blurted more apologies, but she didn’t wait, was off up the road, really hammering the tarmac now for all it was worth. A pair of wood ducks startled from the creek as she sped past. A family of plovers screamed at her, their incoherent gabble warning of great pain and danger ahead. Her shins ached as she pushed through the air that was obstinately keeping her from home. Oh, she remembered Steve Abarco, alright. The only white kid who had ever had the balls to front the arseholes over boong, nigger, darkie. Or poofter and retard, for that matter. A few of em sucking piss in a group out the back of the Grade Nine disco, three-quarters charged on disgusting Passion Pop and the thrill of turning fourteen. Could have kissed him that night, but he never knew and she never said. And then he left soon after, vanishing just like …
… but nonono. She wouldn’t think about that. That was the last thing she was gonna think about. Fuck you, Arco. That was nearly twenty years ago.
She would get in the shower. Put a hand flat on either side of the cubicle, and stick her head beneath the fast-streaming jet and let the beautiful cold water wash them memories away, yeah. Definitely. Wash it away, wash it away, wash it all the fuck away.
~
Fifteen minutes later Kerry stood dripping in the kitchen with a brand new plan. She had to leave a note, but in her hurry the damp writing pad tore beneath the failing ballpoint. Christ. She scrunched the paper angrily and hurled it behind her, sending the orange cat fleeing beneath the sleeping house. She found a blunt pencil stub and began again.
Gotta go home. Back for Xmas. xxx K
The shower had failed to calm her and now she had only one idea: escape. Escape from the hideous images, the shifting blurring pictures that had piled one upon the other, keeping her from sleep. The harp of Donny’s ribcage at the river. Buckley driving off with her future in the tray of his ute. Ken slurring insults at the world, his arms spread wide on the lounge. Pop lying in the next room with barely a breath left in him. And now, suddenly the horror of ghosts running up out of nowhere and grabbing at her with their ghostly white fingers and their six-pack abs and their memories of that long-ago time when Pretty Mary sobbed and Pop raged and— No! Fuck Durrongo. She could wheel the bike up to the road, be gone long before Pretty Mary woke to insist, with her raised voice and her terrible, wounded eyes, that Kerry stay and suffer here with the rest of the family.
Kerry crept barefoot across the kitchen and slid the note beneath a jar of vegemite. To her horror, the overhead fan belting at the hot sludge of air in the room made the edges of the paper flap loudly on the laminex – shuttup shuttup shuttup! – until she hastily weighted it down with peanut paste as well. Homebrand junk, more sugar and salt than peanuts. Ah fuck, who cares about peanut paste, grab your stuff and get! Her panic fed upon itself; the idea of staying another fortnight now seemed unbearable. Her petrol tank was full and she had a twenty-dollar note stuffed in her bra. One minute to wheel the bike up to the road; kick it over and be at the highway in another two; then gun the motherfucker hard all the way to the border, home by ten o’clock opening to suck cheap piss with Allie’s family until the memories finally went blank. And let the fucking gunjies catch me if they think they’re good enough.
In the bedroom, her mother coughed a smoker’s cough. Kerry froze, deer in the headlights job, then sprang into action.
She oh-so-quietly picked up her heavy boots. Seeya Pop, she murmured guiltily over her shoulder, see ya on the other side Old Man. Seeya Pop, seeya Donny, seeya Orange Cat, yeah even you Elvis, ya fucken half-tailed moron. She bent to pat the dog one final time then slowed, paralysed by a sudden wave of shame. Ya might never. He might be gone by the time you. And so she crept over to the narrow cot where Pop lay asleep with a betting slip still clutched tight in the dark claw of his hand. Went with her eyes moist, and bent over, and real quickway kissed his dead-straight hair that only Ken had inherited, only …
Christ Almighty, no.
Nothing there.
Oh fuck me no, no, no.
Kerry dropped her boots and let out an indistinct cry. He was gone. Pain rippled through her, hollowing out her arms and legs. Oh no. Oh Christ. For a mad moment she looked around, as though the corners of the room might reveal some answer.
‘Kerry? That you bub?’
No movement. No breath of life. Not much warmth left to Pop’s cheek, his forehead, his arm, in stinking December. So he must have been already dead when she left to go running; she had probably bumped into his ghost on her way out the back door. Thank God his eyes were shut, and she didn’t have to do that thing. His body was exactly the same, lying there. Pop and not Pop at once. Bring smoke, bring earth, bring song, she thought. All that, it was a cliché, she knew; yeah bring all them things, bring the mob to remember and laugh and to cry, but don’t make out like it’s for him, for this, this container. He’s gorn. Ring all them bells.
‘Kerry? How’s about a cuppa tea, love?’ Followed by more coughing as Pretty Mary tried to dislodge a lung.
Pick me up, said Kerry’s boots from the floor. Put me on and then just walk down them back stairs. You’ll be free as a bird. Nothing to it.
Kerry swayed lightly on the balls of her feet, torn. Pretend she’d seen nothing and heard likewise? Make a bolt for the stairs? Or stay with Pretty Mary in this hardest of hard hours? Standing there beside the body she had the astounding thought that of all the billions of people on the planet, only she, Kerry Salter, knew that Pop was dead. Of all those billions, she alone held that singular nugget of information. It wouldn’t last; only seconds, and the family would begin to learn what she knew. But while it lasted it was very strange. Her particular burden.
Too Much Lip Page 7