On River Road

by Chris Else

  — Are you all right? she had asked.

  — Yes, I’m fine. I just wanted to hear your voice.

  — Are you sure you’re all right? She had said it teasingly, laughing at his romantic impulse, which was so unlike him.

  — I’ve had enough, Syl. I’m sick of it.

  — Of what?

  — The law. I want to get out.

  — What will you do?

  — I don’t know. But there’s enough money.

  — I don’t care about money.

  — Why don’t we just go? Take off somewhere.

  — What about the kids? she asked.

  — They could come too. We could buy a yacht.

  — You always said you hated yachts.

  — I do. But we’ve got nothing here, have we? Nothing but obligations and bad habits. We would get a bike. A big one. A Suzuki 1000.

  — You’re crazy.

  Thinking, though, that yes, that was just what she wanted. The two of them together, taking off somewhere. Ripping through the air like they’d done when they were nineteen. I like it, she had told him. I like the speed. And then, later. How fast did we go? 150. That’s nearly a hundred miles an hour. 95. We could have died. If we’d crashed, yes. But we didn’t, did we? We made love, instead. Under a tree above the beach, with the sound of the sea and the speed still throbbing in her blood.

  The path led up and around the hill under the shelter of the trees towards the east. The steep slope was broken every now and then by flights of steps, with wooden facings, cut into the brown clay. Wind again now, the branches and the fern fronds thrashing around her, light dancing, the air too quick, too urgent to smell of much. She pushed herself, breathing hard, striding into the slope and driving down with her leg to take the rise of each step. She was growing warm, the sweat beginning across the top of her breasts, so she unzipped her jacket and let the air flow around her, let the wind soak into her sweater and smear itself over her skin like a chilling balm. And she thought, why not? Why not a bike, the two of us like this in the open air?

  Brightness, a break in the bush. She was nearly there. A few more steps and the path turned back on itself. Grass now and the first gorse bushes. The wind pulled at her hair and wrapped itself around her face. If she paused here and turned she would be able to look out over the town and the river towards the hills beyond, but she didn’t want that. Not yet. She wanted the top.

  She could see the trig station ahead of her, upper third of it jutting above the brow of the hill. No scrub now, only grass, clumps of tussock, tossing and flowing in the stream of the air. Rush of it round her, pulling at her face as if it wanted to steal her breath. She thrust her hands in her jacket pockets and strode forward, the last few metres to the crest.

  And then a gust, the wind grabbed her, flung her, sent her sprawling, hands and knees, and tossing her over as she grabbed at the ground, the grass, and held on tight. She lay there on her back, looking up at the sky, the marching clouds, and gasped for breath, and then, when the shock had faded, she started to laugh. Laughed again when she tried to stand and the wind threw her down again. The trig station was five metres away, a pyramid of wooden struts, painted red and white. She began to crawl towards it, clambering through the thick clumps of tussock, every breath a pain as her jacket rattled round her ribs and threatened to fly up over her head.

  Here then, over the concrete base, grabbing at the wood and hauling herself upwards, leaning, clinging.

  To the south the valley, green of the pasture on the western side of the river, a scatter of houses along the thin ribbon of road and the river itself, a grey, bright snaking band, and the dark green of the eastern hills and there, in the farthest distance, scarcely visible in the haze of the moving air, was the city, just a dove-grey blur on the horizon.

  And she looked at it and laughed and closed her eyes and clung on tight as the wind tried to tear her breath, her hair, her clothes from her body, and she knew suddenly that this was the happiest she ever wanted to be.

  57.

  TOM WOKE. HAD HE been asleep? No, not asleep, thinking. Hardly slept for two nights now. He was in a chair, a leather chair, in the big living room of the big house, with the two chandeliers and the rugs on the polished floor. He could see out over the veranda and the little lawn with the fountain to the two half-finished mounds of dirt. It was evening, darkness coming down, and the wind was blowing, sweep of it from the hills and the puff and quiver against the French doors. The noise of it lulled him, stilled his senses. Not asleep but thinking, if it could be called thinking, this maelstrom of words and images and feelings. Carla and Heidi. The yellow car. Laura Kerrington. Pain there in his shoulder. Blood on her body. Angry Man, don’t be foolish. I might call the police. Have you thought of that? I might tell them you raped me. Pleading. Was she pleading? We could have a lot of fun, you know. She had been driving the car. Who else could it have been? And if it were her, he had to kill her. Except, if he were going to kill her, he should have done it then, when she stabbed him. There was enough reason, then, enough hatred. How could there be more hatred than that? Hatred of her. Hatred of himself. So although he knew now who was responsible (or almost knew), the knowledge was useless to him. Knowledge left him helpless, enfeebled, undirected. Tom, the fool, the idiot, the object, the guilty one. Sitting there waiting.

  Almost dark now. Somewhere outside, the noise of a car. Was it a car? He didn’t notice. Too far gone and the wind sound blurred the world. He didn’t hear the garage door, the key in the lock, foot on the floor. He didn’t notice anything until the light went on. Bright light. Blinking, hand up to shade his eyes.

  ‘Who are you?’ A man coming towards him across the polished floorboards. Monty Kerrington wearing a suit and overcoat, overcoat flapping with his stride. ‘What are you doing here?’ Stopped a metre or so away.

  ‘Waiting,’ Tom said.

  ‘Where’s Laura?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How the hell did you get in? Who turned off the alarm?’

  ‘No alarm,’ Tom told him. Staring, looking at Monty, at his black shiny slip-ons with their little gold buckles. Wasn’t he supposed to take his shoes off?

  ‘What are you doing? Why are you here?’

  ‘Do you own a yellow sports car? A Mazda MX 9?’

  ‘That’s Laura’s car. It was stolen.’

  ‘Stolen? It’s in a barn at the end of Pigskill Road.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ Monty took off his coat, threw it over the back of a chair.

  ‘It’s there. I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Does Laura know this? Where is she?’

  ‘Search me.’

  ‘Get out of my house,’ Monty said. He had a cellphone in his right hand.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll call the police.’

  ‘Yes, do that. Who was driving the yellow Mazda on the twenty-second November last year?’

  ‘How would I know? It was stolen about then.’

  ‘It was involved in an accident. It killed someone. Now it’s in your barn smashed up, with a broken headlight.’

  ‘Jesus!’ A look on his face, so sudden. Dazed. Hand in his nut-brown hair, fingers pushing back through the waves. He turned away, walked across the floor. Tom pivoted in the chair, craning his neck to watch him. Standing there at a sideboard, Monty lifted his head, gazed up at the ceiling. Then he seemed to slump, look down again. ‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked, without turning round.

  ‘Were you driving that car?’ Tom asked.

  ‘No.’

  Relief, then. Why? Because he knew for sure now.

  ‘I’ll have a Scotch.’ He turned back again, face to the windows, to the reflection of the room in the shimmer of the wind. His own shadow figure in the shadow chair, Monty behind him, in the distance. Why did I ask for a Scotch? he thought. I don’t drink Scotch. That’s Larry’s drink. And Colin’s. A drink for bastards. Monty’s shadow, moving, coming forward, looming larger. There beside the chair, hold
ing out a glass, fine, bright crystal.

  Tom took the whisky. Monty went and sat in the other chair.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked, crossing his legs, leaning back. ‘Is it blackmail?’

  ‘How could I blackmail you?’

  ‘I don’t know. You may think you’ve got something on Laura.’

  ‘I just want to know if she was driving that car.’

  ‘She wasn’t.’

  ‘Can you be sure of that?’ Tom asked. ‘How well do you know her?’

  ‘I know her.’

  ‘Did you know that she’s made over a million dollars on the stock market over the last few months?’

  Monty opened his mouth to answer and then shut it. A big gulp from his drink, and then he took out his phone again, opened it, pushed a couple of keys. Holding it to his ear, listening.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘It’s me. Where are you? … Don’t play games, please. There’s a bloke here who says he’s found your car. In our barn on the Pigskill property … It’s what’s-his-name, Greenwise. The guy from the garden centre …’ Then Monty was leaning forward, holding the phone out. ‘She wants to talk to you.’

  Taking it, lifting it.

  ‘Angry Man,’ she said in his ear. ‘You found me out. Was it you who told the newspaper woman? And the cops?’

  ‘No.’ What newspaper woman? Lisa, was it? ‘You killed someone.’ Watching Monty, watching his eyes, the fear in them. And feeling a sudden stillness in himself.

  ‘Yes. It was bad luck. It wasn’t fun.’

  ‘What happened?’ He could scarcely get the words out.

  ‘I was coming back from Winston. I wasn’t used to the car. I’d only had it a few weeks. It started to rain and I turned on the wipers, only I got it wrong. It was the headlights, the pop-ups. I was confused for a second and I couldn’t see because of the rain, and then this person was right there. I hit her.’

  ‘Do you know who she was?’

  ‘No. She had a name, I suppose. I might have heard it, I don’t remember. After it happened, I put the car in the barn and I hiked up to Ridge Road and hitched a ride into town. I went to the police and reported the car stolen. Then I hid. I went to Australia. Just in case. It had all blown over by the time I got back.’

  ‘It was my daughter,’ he said. And the words came from deep down.

  ‘Really?’

  A pause. Silence. Monty’s eyes wide, face drawn. Waiting.

  ‘That’s a weird coincidence, don’t you think?’ she said. ‘Very strange.’

  Another pause. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move.

  ‘I expect you want something,’ she went on. ‘I don’t know. I can’t see what I can do, really. Can you?’ Then, suddenly, her tone changed, quickly urgent. ‘Look, sorry. I’ve got to go now. Tell Monty I couldn’t wait. Tell him I won’t be back.’

  Silence. He closed his eyes. And the darkness seemed to suck at him. He felt the first small shift in his blood, a throb of anguish, and suddenly it was all moving, pouring through him, into his chest and his groin, down into his arms and legs, through flesh and bone, a flood of pain so swift and so complete that there was nothing left of him to feel it. And the whisky glass exploded in his hand.

  58.

  AND SO HE SLEEPS, this wounded dog, in the bed in the room with the picture of the bleeding bull. And he dreams. Of course, he dreams. He’s in the hallway outside Carla’s room and he’s afraid. He knocks and there’s no answer, and so he turns the knob, opens the door, wondering what he will find. And there she is, in bed. She’s two years old. Lying there asleep. Her small face, with its pointy chin, dark hair on the pale pillow. He reaches out and touches her. And she’s awake. She was just pretending. And she starts to giggle and he tickles her and she writhes and twists and then she bites him. Sharp teeth on his hand in a playful way. And he puts his hand over her face, loosely, and she keeps on biting, or trying to. He can feel her teeth scraping on his palm. And suddenly, she’s not a child any more, she’s not a human being. She’s a strange thing, a giant grub and she’s gnawing at him, tearing at his flesh, and her eyes are small and dead, like blobs of wax.

  — No! he says. And Carla starts to cry.

  On the afternoon before she died, as she was leaving school, she came upon Margot Riley and Tina Greene and another girl, a younger kid, year nine maybe, who she didn’t know. They were standing under a tree beside the school drive. Slutty Margot, with her blouse hanging out and her tie undone, was chewing gum and leaning on the trunk of the tree and looking down her nose at the younger kid, who was overweight and had black hair and sloping shoulders. Tina, as always, hovering there, looking pinched and rat-like, bright little eyes and grinning little mouth, ready to run away at the first sign of trouble. Carla, with her bike, was going to walk on past, but as she got close to them the plump kid gave her a look that stopped her. Scared and pleading, both at once.

  ‘Hi,’ Carla said. ‘You guys all right? What are you doing?’ Keeping it cheerful, keeping it innocent. There were streams of other kids wandering past, going home.

  ‘Nothing to do with you,’ Margot said.

  ‘We’re on rubbish duty,’ Tina told her. ‘Cleaning up rubbish.’

  ‘Yer.’ Margot reached out and stroked the plump kid’s shoulder. Then, she pulled a face and gave a shudder, wiped her fingers on her skirt.

  ‘Rubbish stinks!’ Tina wrinkled her nose. ‘Pooh!’

  ‘It’s a fat pig, that’s why. Pigs stink, don’t they?’ Margot shoved the plump kid hard, so that she staggered.

  ‘Hey!’ Carla told her. ‘Cut that out!’

  ‘Fuck off!’ Margot glaring at her, threatening.

  ‘No. You fuck off. Leave my friend alone.’

  ‘She’s not your friend.’

  ‘Yes, she is. We’re going down to Baxter’s to have a coffee.’ Carla looked at the plump kid. ‘Aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes.’ A soft voice, frightened, little whisper.

  ‘You’re not allowed to go there in school uniform,’ Tina said. Typical. Tina the hypocrite, keeping all the rules that didn’t matter, the public rules.

  ‘Who cares? You don’t care, do you, Margot?’ And then she had a thought, a sneaky thought. ‘Hey, why don’t you come too? We can all go. The four of us.’ She turned from one to the other, hoping she’d guessed them right. Tina looked worried all of a sudden, screwing up her face and showing her ratty teeth. Good.

  ‘Nagh,’ Margot said. ‘Who wants to go to a dump like that?’

  ‘We do,’ Carla said, relieved. She beckoned to the plump kid. ‘Come on.’

  So the two of them walked away. Easy as that. Although the plump kid seemed to have to drag herself as if she still thought it was going to be impossible.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Carla asked her.

  ‘Merry.’

  ‘I’m Carla.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You don’t have to take any crap from them. They’re pusbags.’

  Merry didn’t answer.

  ‘They’re inadequates. You should feel sorry for them.’

  ‘They’re going to take me down to the Rock,’ Merry said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, don’t go.’

  ‘I guess I could stay home.’

  Something about the way she said it made Carla see that she didn’t want to have to stay home.

  ‘What are you supposed to be doing?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s an art class at the Community Centre. I go to that on a Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘Well, you should go to it then,’ Carla told her. ‘Don’t let them stop you.’

  ‘But they know about it. They hang around the Mall. They’re going to get me.’

  Now, by the main gates. Two buses there, with the kids piling into them.

  ‘You like art then?’ Carla asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you any good at it?’

  ‘Oh, a bit.’ Merry closed her eyes t
ight, as if she might have told a lie, as if she were hoping what she’d said was true.

  ‘I’m not. I’m hopeless. I can’t even draw a wiggly line. My sister’s good, though. She can draw.’

  ‘I like making colours,’ Merry said.

  ‘What time is this class?’

  ‘Three o’clock.’

  ‘Look, I have to go to the library tomorrow. I can be there at three o’clock if you like.’

  ‘Really?’ Soft brown eyes looking at her, pleading and grateful, all at once.

  ‘Sure. Not a problem.’

  ‘Wow. That’s great. Thanks.’

  The buses were full now. The last stragglers squeezing on board. Merry glanced towards them. ‘I have to go,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you want to come to Baxter’s?’

  ‘I can’t. I have to get home.’ Looking worried, as if Carla were going to stop her somehow.

  ‘Whatever.’

  Merry turned away towards the bus, a knock-kneed kind of walk.

  ‘See you tomorrow then,’ Carla called after her.

  And the dog-man dreams. Of a howling wind that strips the trees. The iron of the roof is coming loose and bits of the house are flying away and he’s out there trying to secure it, clinging on to a ladder and banging in nails, but as fast as he secures something another bit comes free. And then he’s falling, through the house, as if it were an unreal thing, dissolving all about him. And he’s there in a garden with a wide lawn that slopes down to a lake that stretches out as far as the horizon and it’s dusk or maybe dawn with a darkened sky above and thin layers of grey cloud, striations through the brightness where the light is, beyond the water. And the lake is blue grey, paled with silver. And there are voices somewhere, faint, high voices. Children playing. He sees them there, down at the water’s edge. There are three of them and they’re launching a boat.

  And so he wakes in the dark and his hand is throbbing. Five stitches from the broken whisky glass. He lifts it to his chest and lets it rest there, in the half-sleep, softly breathing, and the pain seeps into him, filling his body, and he welcomes it because it’s real.