by Derek Hansen
Once she’d put a kilometre between herself and the madman, she pulled to the side of the road to give herself a chance to calm down and take stock of her situation. The obvious thing to do was to drive into Walgett, contact the police and make the madman their problem. But then she’d become a talking point for the entire district, and everyone would know about her and where she was living, all of which negated the whole point of the exercise. There was only one other option besides turning around and driving back to Sydney. If he was up, she figured she’d find him with a mug of tea in his hand, sitting feet up on the eastern side of his house. But what if he wasn’t there?
In fact Billy had only just put the kettle on when Linda’s Toyota came tearing up the driveway towards his house, lights on high beam even though the sun’s imminent arrival made it debatable whether she needed lights on at all. It had taken him a couple of days to round up and walk his steers to the good pastures near the homestead. It had been careful, patient work rather than tiring, with most of his efforts going into restraining the enthusiasm of his dogs. He could’ve finished sooner, but mustering could knock the beasts around so that they lost condition and that was the last thing he wanted. His dogs might have preferred a bit more excitement but, as much as they loved to belt around, Billy knew they’d rather work a couple of days than just one. Besides, he always gave them a good run racing them home at the end of the day.
Billy didn’t recognise the Toyota and hadn’t a clue what idiot was driving it, only that someone was in a God Almighty hurry and kicking up enough dust to damn near bury the house. Keeping things clean was hard enough without such stupidity. He knew it couldn’t be a local. Locals knew better than to do that. The Toyota had woken the dogs and they’d reacted as they always did to excitement by getting excited themselves. They strained at their chains, barking and snarling. The kelpie, which had come out from under the steps, was standing poised for action, ears pricked and tan eyebrows raised. The Toyota stopped and was momentarily lost from sight as dust billowed over it and headed for the house. The dogs copped it too and voiced their disapproval.
The kelpie took off, tail not so much wagging as thrashing, giving Billy his first inkling as to who his uninvited guest might be. Despite the discourtesy of the dust he began to smile, but his smile vanished the moment he saw her running towards him. He’d seen that look on people’s faces before and it was something he’d hoped never to see again. An instant after he opened the screen door she was in his arms, sobbing on his shoulder, trying to speak between sobs.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, without having a clue what was okay. He kept an eye on his driveway in case whatever or whoever had scared her was still chasing her. But the only thing moving was the dust and that was settling. ‘It’s okay,’ he repeated, holding her tight until her sobs subsided and she began to calm down. He led her around to the eastern veranda and made her sit down. Only then did he become aware of the whistle from his kettle and wondered how long that had been going on.
‘Black with lemon, thirty seconds and a stir,’ he said, and finally drew a ghost of a smile from her. ‘Yeah, I got some lemons in. Tried it. Not my thing. I’ll get another chair and you can tell me what happened to you over a cuppa.’
Billy went the long way to the kitchen so he could check his driveway. Nothing moved. The dust had settled, the dogs had crawled back into their kennels and the kelpie was back under the steps. When he rejoined Linda she was more like the cool, confident, amazing city woman he remembered. But, Jesus Christ, something had shaken the living daylights out of her.
Linda began to tell her story and she’d hardly begun before he was assailed by guilt. He let her go on, thinking she needed to get it out of her system.
‘That was Rodney,’ he said eventually. The sun was up but hadn’t yet cleared the trees. Soon it would flood the veranda and take the night chill off the air. Not far away, kookaburras were having a discussion of their own and magpies were tuning up. ‘You should have let me know you were coming so I could’ve had a word with him.’
‘You know him?’ Linda was incredulous.
‘He’s your neighbour.’
‘My neighbour!’ She was angry now. ‘Why didn’t you tell me I had a gun freak madman for a neighbour? Don’t you think that’s pertinent information?’
‘Rodney’s all right.’
‘The hell he is!’
Billy leaned back in his chair, focused on a distant box gum that was among the first to have its upper branches highlighted by the sun, and began rolling a cigarette. She was upset but had no call to contradict him or question his knowledge. He decided to give her time to calm down. He noticed she hadn’t swung her feet up onto the rail and thought perhaps things would go a bit better if she did. A couple of grass parrots flew by at breakneck speed, a blaze of red and green. Forty or fifty zebra finches clustered around the dripping tap at the edge of his vegie garden, busily filling up ahead of the heat. His tea tasted dusty but that didn’t surprise him.
‘Secrecy is one thing,’ he said finally. ‘But what did you stand to lose by telling me you were coming?’
‘You were supposed to be my litmus test. If I could move in without you knowing, then I could be pretty sure nobody else would know.’ She swung her feet up onto the rail, which Billy took as a good sign. The fact that she was wearing heavier, more utilitarian jeans this time and ankle-high boots made her legs less distracting, but only marginally. He gave her time to settle and find something to focus on. Some grey kangaroos were foraging no more than a hundred metres away. He wondered if she’d noticed them.
‘No harm done,’ he said. ‘Rodney has to know anyway, and he’s not going to tell anyone.’
‘Want to tell me about him?’
Billy took a final drag on his rollie before stubbing it out on his boot heel and dropping it into the apricot jam tin. There were apricot jam tins strategically placed on each veranda.
‘I’ve known Rodney all my life. Went to school with him. He’s a bit odd but he’s okay. He’s got some diggings up on his land, which occasionally produce some pretty decent opals. They’re black seam opals, like you get down on the Grawin. Funny thing, his dad was just like him, same affliction, same addiction to opals, same fierce determination to guard his patch.’
‘What affliction? Are you saying he’s insane?’
‘Rodney, insane? No, he’s sane enough, just sane in a different way. What time’s your truck due?’
‘About eleven.’
‘Let me make breakfast and I’ll take you up to meet him.’
Linda tagged along behind in her Toyota as Billy set off across country in the ute with the kelpie up on the tray, driving slowly so that he didn’t choke her with his dust. She realised he was only being considerate but that did nothing to ease her growing impatience. It had passed eight and the truck was due in less than three hours. There were things she had to get done up at the house and had hinted over breakfast that she was anxious to get on with them. But nothing she said appeared to have any effect on him. He did things as she supposed he always did them, with the unhurried efficiency that typified country folk. But she sensed his mannerisms weren’t exclusively the product of geography or his solitary life and that there was something else governing him. There was a remoteness to him that showed in the faraway look in his eyes, as though he wasn’t quite rooted in the present. Although she hardly knew him, and realised any speculation was, to say the least, premature, it seemed to her that he’d made a conscious effort to remove all the peaks and troughs from his existence. She’d arrived unannounced on his doorstep, more than just a little hysterical, and thrown herself weeping into his arms — hardly the sort of thing that happened every day. Yes, he’d done all the right things, calmed her down and made a cup of tea, but there’d been no emotion in his response, not even surprise, and that puzzled her. Her own life had known too many ups and downs in its thirty-eight years and she readily conceded she’d have been happier if there’d been fewer, but peaks and troughs,
the highs and lows, were ultimately what made life interesting.
Ah, what the heck, she thought, maybe he’s just the strong, silent type. Everyone was a bit strange in their own way and she didn’t have time to worry about Billy and his peculiarities, not with her furniture due almost any moment. Besides, she had another hurdle to negotiate. Somewhere up ahead there was someone even stranger: a madman who was both armed and her neighbour.
She watched the kelpie run from one side of the ute to the other with the regularity of a metronome and wondered if she should have a dog. Maybe a dog was just what she needed to keep feral animals and freaky neighbours at bay. But dogs spoke of a commitment she was in no position to make. She dismissed the idea as the ute swung onto the track and turned up towards her house. She stiffened in her seat when she recognised the spot at the side of the track where she’d pulled over to dry her eyes and failed utterly in her attempt to stop shaking.
Billy parked short of the carport so she could have the shade and his ute would be out of the way when the truck arrived. She backed into the carport so she could make a fast getaway if need be. The panicky two-point turn she’d been forced to execute earlier felt like it had taken for ever, despite the fact that she’d chipped the odd cog with her desperate gear changes. The last thing she wanted was a repeat of the experience. By the time she’d turned off the motor, Billy had got out of the ute and was leaning up against his bullbar. She jumped when he put two fingers in his mouth and let fly a piercing whistle, but realised almost immediately it wasn’t her attention he was trying to attract. He motioned to her to stay in the Toyota and slowly began to roll a cigarette. She was happy to oblige, even to the extent of locking her doors. Billy had smoked his rollie down to the butt before Rodney appeared out of the grey bush on the passenger side of the track, shotgun in hand.
Linda almost screamed. He looked even more frightening in broad daylight than he had by the beam of her torch. He glared at her through the window, head slightly angled away, eyes filled with suspicion. Lank black hair, matted and choked with dust, hung in long greasy strands beneath a battered Akubra and met up with an equally unkempt, greying beard. But what held her riveted was the constant flow of expressions across the madman’s face: anger, malice, frustration? His jaw worked furiously as if he was trying to summon up insults to hurl at her, but no words came. His shotgun was jammed hard against his shoulder but, mercifully, not pointed at her but down. His whole body seemed alive with barely restrained energy. Her mind wrestled with what she was seeing and tried desperately to make sense of it. His head kept bobbing angrily up and down behind the rifle and Linda suddenly realised what she was witnessing. The last emotion she’d expected to feel was compassion but it washed through her. The other thing she noticed in that instant was his size. Her neighbour, her terrifying neighbour, was barely a metre seventy even with his hat on.
He turned from her and strode down the track towards Billy. Linda watched him go, confused by the sudden change in her feelings. She saw the kelpie dash out from under the ute and run to greet him. While the two made a fuss of each other, Linda took a more measured look at her strange neighbour. He wore a jacket over what appeared to be a collarless shirt or undershirt. God only knew what colour his jacket and trousers had been originally but both had aged and worn down to roughly the same filthy charcoal grey. Linda thought she saw tinges of dark green still in the jacket, but had to concede the green could’ve been anything from stains to mould. His boots had probably once been black but were now a cracked, crazed, indeterminate grey. A whitish dust and soil coated everything.
Billy lit up another cigarette and handed it to Rodney, before lighting one for himself. If a word had passed between them, Linda had missed it. She watched as both men drew smoke deep into their lungs and exhaled. Then Billy started talking and Linda would have given anything to hear what he had to say. She began to feel foolish, but then remembered how different things had been earlier that morning, when she’d had every reason to react the way she had.
Her nerves were more or less under control when Billy waved to her to come down. The ‘thunk’ as her doors unlocked sounded embarrassingly loud. Both men were watching as she climbed out of the Land Cruiser and probably laughing to themselves. She hadn’t exactly distinguished herself. Damn them, she thought, it was time to assert some kind of control. She stopped and bent over, hands on knees.
‘Here, boy,’ she called.
The kelpie didn’t need to be told twice. It bounded over to meet her as if it hadn’t already gone through that ritual with her earlier. She rubbed its ears and the spot in front of its tail, keeping the two men waiting, determined not to behave like a frightened city woman. She stood up, straightened her back, made a beeline for Rodney and held out her hand.
‘Hi, I’m Linda.’
‘Bitch.’
Bitch? Linda tried to withdraw her hand but Rodney already had hold of it and hung on. His bottom teeth hammered uncontrollably against his top teeth.
‘The dog. Id a bitch.’ He let go of her hand.
‘Oh.’ He was talking about the kelpie. She half expected to read amusement in his eyes but saw only suspicion.
‘Rodney’s sorry for frightening you but he didn’t know who you were.’
‘That’s okay.’ She listened to Billy but kept her eyes on Rodney and even offered a smile. It wasn’t returned.
‘He thought you were one of the prospectors up from the Grawin, after his opals.’
‘I’m not.’
‘He knows that now. Also, he didn’t realise you were a woman.’
‘A lot of people make that mistake.’ She glanced at Billy who snorted and crushed his rollie beneath his heel.
‘I told Rodney you needed someone to dig a garden for you.’
‘You told him what?’ Linda glared at Billy, clearly questioning his sanity. She glanced back at Rodney whose expressions ranged from suspicion and distrust to outright rage.
‘You need someone to break up the soil and dig out the stones. It’s hard work for anyone but Rodney’s kind of used to it. He charges ten dollars an hour.’
Rodney’s restless jaw jutted forward in defiance, making the point that his fee wasn’t negotiable.
‘Sounds fair,’ said Linda, though the look she gave Billy was nothing short of withering.
‘He says he can start next week.’
‘Lucky me.’
‘Good, then it’s agreed.’ Billy spun around and opened the passenger door of his ute. He pulled out a slab of Tooheys Old and handed it to Rodney.
Rodney took the slab without a word of thanks, glared at Linda one last time and retreated back into the scrub.
‘Thank you, Billy Dwyer. That’s all I need,’ said Linda once she thought Rodney was out of earshot. ‘A drunken madman with a gun doing my gardening.’
‘Yeah, sorry to drop the garden thing on you, but I figured it was the best way to solve two problems.’
‘Specifically?’
‘Well, you need someone to dig your garden and Rodney needs to become accustomed to you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Give him a week or two and he’ll have forgotten he met you. How many times do you want him to greet you with his shotgun?’
‘Shotgun?’ It sounded so much more threatening than a rifle.
‘The shotgun’s his weapon of choice but he has a rifle as well. One day you’ll recognise the difference. I figure if he digs your garden and you give him a few dollars to come over and help you with it, he’ll get used to you being around.’
‘And what about the beer?’
‘Rodney’s not much of a drinker. The carton will last him a month. He doesn’t go into town much so I usually get him what he needs. The basics, beer and a block of chocolate.’
‘Chocolate? Very generous.’
‘He pays for everything I get him out of his disability pension. They don’t know he sells the occasional opal and he’s smart enough not to tell them.’
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br /> ‘Doesn’t tell them about the gardening, either?’
‘What do you think?’ Billy paused as if deciding whether or not to continue. He sighed heavily. ‘Look, there’s something else you should know about Rodney. Sometimes he loses things a bit.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’ll start shouting and swearing at you for no good reason. He doesn’t mean to and doesn’t want to, but something just takes hold of him. Sometimes he gets this helpless look in his eyes, like he knows what’s going on but can’t stop himself. He won’t harm you, but it can be a bit off-putting until you get used to it.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Billy, have you got any more surprises? I’ve got to tell you I’m damn near surprised out.’
Billy shifted uncomfortably.
‘Look, I’m only doing what I think is best.’
‘I hope in a week or two I’ll share your point of view. Now, shall we go on up?’
The truck arrived on time and managed to negotiate the newly graded track without too many dramas. While the removalists unloaded the van, Billy drove home and returned with fresh eggs, bread and a dozen cans of VB. Linda didn’t realised he’d gone anywhere until the smell of curried eggs began to waft through the house.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Protecting your interests.’
‘By currying eggs?’
‘Look, Linda, these guys are hot, hungry and thirsty and they’re going to want to eat before they head back to Sydney. Do you really want them shooting their mouths off in the first pub they come to?’
‘They know to be discreet,’ she said defensively.
Billy just stared at her before turning his attention back to his eggs.
‘So how come I took down the ribbons?’
Linda closed her eyes and silently cursed the removalists before realising she should be giving thanks.
‘It’s nice to have someone watching over me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how I would have managed without you. I do my best but sometimes it’s hard to think of everything.’