by Colin Dray
‘Where’s Jon?’ Katie screamed, drumming her fist against the door. ‘Where is he?’ She kicked as hard as she could at the front seats. ‘Where?’ Her thumping went on, hard enough that Sam could feel it ripple throughout the entire car.
‘He’s gone,’ Dettie said, quietly.
‘Where?’ Katie kept kicking. ‘Where is he?’
‘Gone.’
‘Where?’
‘He’s gone, Katie. He left!’
‘No, he didn’t—’
‘Yes, he did!’
‘No!’
Dettie twisted around, her eyes swollen as she snatched Katie’s ankle and pinned it down. ‘He left us!’ she said. ‘He did. He left. That’s what people—’ Her breath caught like a hiccough. ‘That’s what he did.’
Katie kicked free. ‘No, he didn’t. Where is he?’
‘He’s gone,’ Dettie barked.
The car lurched right, and Katie yelped. Sam grabbed for the ceiling and Katie at once, his stomach turning. The tyres drifted across the dividing line of the highway, the cabin wobbling. In the distance, up ahead, an oncoming Land Rover flashed its lights. Dettie’s breath shuddered. She cleared her throat. Blinking. Licking her lips. She gripped the wheel again, steering the car back onto their side of the road.
‘People leave, girl,’ she said. ‘That’s what they do.’
Katie was crying—tears running down her face freely. Her expression was blank. Her face slack.
‘I don’t know why you have to keep fighting me all the time.’ Dettie was sitting forward, taking short, sharp breaths. ‘I’m not the one who left,’ she said, blinking hard, her head shaking in a tiny, rhythmic quaver. ‘That was him. I’m the one who stayed. The one keeping us together. Keeping this family together.’
The Land Rover shot by, still flashing its lights, the driver frantically waving. Sam was still holding on to Katie, but it felt like she had wilted. Her arm, prickled with sweat, hung limp. He squeezed her hand, but she didn’t respond.
‘That’s why family is so important,’ Dettie was saying. ‘Family doesn’t leave. Family stays. That’s why we’re going to Perth. Why your father is there. Why your mother is meeting us. Where she’s waiting for us.’
Sam squeezed again, but Katie didn’t move. She was shivering, staring through the back of the seat in front of her. As if through the upholstery and the padding. Through the dashboard. Through the engine block and the duco shell. Down, out and beyond the car. Down to the black, cool asphalt whipping by beneath them.
PERTH
57
For almost two hours they drove without talking. Katie had pressed her face in the seat, sobbing, and Sam was turned towards the window, tears blurring his eyes, watching the sun slowly lift into the sky. Jon was gone. And just as Sam’s house had appeared larger and more alien the day his father had left, so too did the car. The night before it had seemed so crowded and lively; now it was cavernous. Emptier. Looser. Since they’d hit the pothole, the rattling sound had returned to the engine. It was soft, almost unnoticeable, but Sam could tell it was building, and as they continued on with the ventilation fans turned down and the radio off, it was the only sound they could hear beside his sister’s strangled gasps.
As the shadows shrank towards the horizon, Sam could see in their place expanses of scorched fences and blackened trees. They were driving towards an area already charred by bushfire and he could still smell the melted tar beneath their wheels. He had no idea where they were. A half-destroyed sign said something about Dundas Nature Reserve, but he had no way to tell if they were in it, or near it, or had already passed through. The landscape all around reminded him of a documentary he’d seen once about an erupted volcano that had swept a village away, leaving nothing but charcoal and dust. Smoke was darkening the air above them, and all around, spotting the fields, he could see lumps that were probably once animals, smouldering, the same colour as the ground.
He remembered the first afternoon of the trip, and Dettie dragging them out onto the road to stare down at the dead kangaroo. He remembered what she’d said about it. That it had given up. Given in. Surrendered to death. But as he looked out at these animals, their smouldering husks, torched into the dirt, Sam knew they couldn’t have fought to stay alive—even if they’d wanted to. They didn’t slink off to death. It came for them. He could only imagine what it must have been like. Trapped behind their wire fences. Pacing the locked gates desperately. The flames chewing up the ground. Gushing over them. The bleating and shrieking as they cowered, engulfed by the blaze.
The seatbelt fixed him in place, constricting his chest. The heat muddled his head. He felt the quilt—the quilt Dettie had made for him months ago—tucked tightly around his legs. It strained across his knees, stretching out the stitching on its dozens of embroidered squares.
In one square, a tiny knotted figure that Dettie had intended to represent him was flying, its arms spread wide among the birds. Sam stared down at it: a silhouette in the sky. Just like all the other cheery, impossible scenes she had painstakingly crafted. That she had tried desperately to will into being. But he was a sheep. Sweating into his wool as the grass blades ignited under his feet. The birds were overhead as they scattered, soaring to freedom.
For a moment he wasn’t sure if he was awake or still dreaming.
58
A smaller fire had swept around the next store they visited, and the owner was still outside with a hose, spraying down the walls. There was a stench of charcoal and smoke in the air.
‘Not heading west, are you?’ the man said. ‘It’s getting ferocious out there. Almost took this whole lot.’ And as he directed his hose back onto the roof, his teeth showed, speckled with ash and grit.
Out of habit, Sam found himself standing in front of a comic-book stand, his eyes scanning the covers. To his surprise, he finally found, tucked at the back, with its pages crumpled and bent in half, an earlier edition of Tales of Fear than the one he already owned.
Dettie hovered behind him, and when she saw what he was flicking through, snatched it from his hand. As she held it up to look at the drawing of a car on the cover, her face softened. She crossed to the counter to pay for the comic, and bought a packet of Chico Babies for Katie.
When they were back on the road his sister, who had not said a word for three hours, rolled down her window and hurled the Chicos as hard as she could from the car. Sam was surprised that Dettie didn’t comment—about the window, or the lollies, or the quiet. She just rubbed her eyes and twitched, and kept on driving.
59
Reading the second comic was nothing at all like the first. Now there was no thrill. Nor any fear. No swirl of nausea at the thought of the blood. The pictures of the corpses were all scratchy, and the colours were too bright. The woman with the torn shirt looked ridiculous, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead and screaming. It was an expression that was supposed to represent terror, but looked more like she was singing. That, Sam thought, was not what terror felt like.
Even the zombie’s eyes, which he had perceived at different times as bloodthirsty or sorrowful, just looked surprised now. They were empty, and they gawped at the world, perplexed. The slobber running down its jaws was almost funny. The zombie no longer reminded him of himself. His operation. His lack of voice. Tracey. But it made him think of something—he just wasn’t entirely sure what.
From the bowels of hell I spurn thee, Sam read, and gave up. He flashed through one final time to see if any of the zombies had metal hooks for hands, and when they didn’t, tossed the comic to the floor.
It landed on a piece of bent cardboard sticking halfway out from beneath his seat. Even before he had bent down to pull it up, Sam knew what it was. Jon’s sign. Help me, I’m British. Sam’s own small scribble on the back.
Dettie watched Sam unfold it, and adjusted herself in her seat. She cleared her throat. ‘You know,’ she called, ‘I wasn’t sure if I should tell you two this. But last night, Jon decided to
catch a bus back to Sydney. That’s why he had to go so suddenly.’
She tapped her thumbs on the steering wheel. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He decided all at once. He was so excited. Told me he was going to fly back to England. To be with his wife again.’ She stretched up in her seat, trying to see Katie in the mirror. ‘Did you know he had a wife?’
The rattle in the engine was rising again as Dettie’s foot pressed harder on the pedal.
‘He asked me to say goodbye to you both, though,’ she said, nodding. ‘He did. He was going to do it last night, but you were asleep and he didn’t want to wake you.’ She hummed, her eyes back on the road. ‘He said, tell your two special ones thank you. And have a fun rest of the trip.’ She was nodding away. ‘So you see—there’s no reason to be upset like this. That’s not what he would’ve—’
She stopped and pursed her lips.
‘Why don’t we—when we get to Perth—why don’t we see if we can write him a letter? What do you think?’
Katie was stretched out on the back seat, clutching Jon’s shirt to her chest. ‘You’re a liar,’ she whispered, exhausted. ‘I hate you.’
Sam spun around to look at her, but Katie was perfectly still. Her eyes were puffy from crying and she kept them closed.
Dettie’s shoulders fell, but she didn’t say anything. She slumped back down into her driving. Sam could see her lips trembling. Her nails dug into the plastic as she tightened them on the wheel. She sniffed.
Watching her, part of him wished that he could hate her too. Even just a little bit. So many times in the past—and particularly the last few days—he had wanted to scream at her, to rage or run, to tell her to stop and listen. But as he watched her now—her body bent, her thin, dishevelled hair being battered around by the air vents, the bandaid twisted and blackened on her finger—she looked feeble. Tattered and withered and sad. He couldn’t stop thinking of the yellowing photo of Ted in the bottom of her handbag. The sticky tape that ran behind his face. The story she told about the way he died. He remembered all the times she had told him about her heart operation and the scar that stretched down her chest. The wedding ring she would never take off that had tarnished on her hand.
His whole life she’d been so large. Old-fashioned. Stuck in her ways. Afraid of fuss. Fierce. But he had to admit that she was warm and welcoming too. Familiar. Secure. When they got home from school she would be there. When he heard his mother crying at night it was Dettie who would make tea and sit with her. Talk her through it. Even after his operation, having Dettie tell the awful story about her heart attack over and over again did, somehow, make the whole experience less frightening. She’d been through something even scarier and survived, after all. She hadn’t given up.
But as he looked at her now, she looked impossibly fragile. Her fingers were stained yellow with cigarettes and speckled brown with instant coffee. Her dress was smudged with charcoal. She was a bundle of frayed hems, bandaids and laddered pantyhose, worn down by this endless, exhausting trip.
She’d told them they were going to see their father. That their father wanted them. That their mother was waiting for them there too. Now Jon was supposedly on his way to Sydney.
But she was a liar. She’d lied the whole time. From the first morning, lying on the phone, all the way through. She seemed to be held together by hundreds of lies. Lies she’d wrapped around herself to make sense of the world. Comfortable and numbing lies. Their father hadn’t abandoned them. Her husband was dead. Jon was fine. Her lies were all she had left.
Perhaps that was why she favoured Sam so much now. His silence. She could lie to him all she wanted and he couldn’t talk back. Katie, on the other hand, was all questions, clarifications, pushback. It grated on her. Made her wallow in the fraud. Stopped her forward momentum.
And Perth, Sam realised, was simply the biggest lie of all. A hope she had committed them to, that she could no longer abandon. It was just a dream. An idea. A word on a road sign—no closer or further away than it had ever been. But for Dettie it had become the confirmation of something bigger than any of them in that car could ever understand. It spurred her on, but Sam realised that if they ever actually did get there, something inside her might irreparably break.
He heard Dettie’s breath shudder, and saw a tear welling beneath her eye. He felt a falling sensation chilling his stomach. It wasn’t repulsion exactly—more the shock of realisation. The disappointment of an inevitability. Like the day after his operation, when, bandaged and groggy, he had tried to speak for the first time and nothing happened. Dettie was trapped. She’d set herself on a course that had no ending, and from which there was no turning back.
As he stared at her, watching her fidget, blinking sweat and tears from her eyes, he realised that it wasn’t just her. It was words. All words. You’ll be good as new. People were only attracted to what was familiar. The girl behind the curtain was just getting her own room. Words were just lies inherited. The product of desperate people pressing their desires onto the world. Remaking it how they longed for it to be. And Sam was tired of lies. Comforting words. Empty sounds with no more substance than breath.
His gaze dropped and he saw his mother’s blue-embroidered handkerchief, the one Katie thought she had lost, tucked in Dettie’s lap. It was between her knees partially covered by her skirt. And somehow that attempt to hide it seemed so pathetic that Sam felt a fresh rush of pity for her. Her expression was empty. She was gawping at the world. Perplexed. He lifted his hand slowly and petted her elbow. It was a moment before she felt his touch, and when she did, she smiled and wiped the moisture from her cheek.
Their mother had no idea where they were.
They had to get away.
60
The red glow in the distance grew into smoke and forest fire. They could smell the fumes of it through their vents and the only traffic on the road was driving the opposite way. Other cars, loaded with luggage and pieces of furniture, beeped at them as they roared by, but Dettie kept heading forward, towards the blaze.
The weight of the sun made Sam’s eyelids heavy, and when he tried to remind himself of being at home, he found he couldn’t remember the sensation of anything in particular. The smell of their kitchen, the feel of his mattress, his mother’s voice; all he knew now was the numbness of his car seat, vibrating, rocking him ever so slightly, and the heat. There had always been this heat. Always the dust. And always the three of them.
For a moment he wondered if Jon had just been a dream from which he’d woken. Another lie. The memory of his accent seemed so strange, like some tropical birdcall. But he could feel the cardboard of Jon’s sign between his fingers. He could see the tiny boomerang swinging from the rear-vision mirror. And behind him, he knew Katie was still clinging to one of Jon’s weathered flannel shirts.
The grinding in the engine went on, even louder than before, and when Sam placed his hand on the dashboard he could feel the vibration of the fan belt. He could picture the way it was thrashing about beneath the bonnet.
A handwritten sign whipped past, warning that the road ahead was closed, but Dettie didn’t flinch or even slow down.
‘Oh, my head,’ she groaned, digging deeply into her temple, her papery skin stretched. ‘My head.’ Her teeth were clenched. ‘That blasted noise.’
Another sign—this one singed at the edges—shot by.
‘Jon could have fixed it,’ Katie said. She spoke quietly, her lip trembling, but she was staring at her aunt’s eyes in the rear-vision mirror.
Dettie looked dazed. Her hair was matted into knots and her skin was pasty. When she spoke she seemed to be returning from somewhere far away, retracing every sentence in her mind. ‘Pardon?’ she said.
‘Jon could have fixed the noise. He did before.’
Dettie scoffed. A laugh that turned into a cough. ‘Well, if he did, he didn’t do a very good job.’
‘Yes, he did!’
Dettie sighed heavily. It took a moment for her eyelids to lift again.
‘I honestly don’t know why you keep getting so worked up,’ she said. ‘He went his way. We went ours.’
Katie sat forward, stretching her seatbelt. ‘What did you do to him?’
‘I mean, it’s not as if he’s your father—’
‘What did you say to make him go away?’
‘Please. Stop this, girl. Stop it.’ Dettie’s voice trembled.
‘What did you say?’
‘We’ve made it this far now. Just—please. You’ll be back with Ted soon enough.’
Katie’s face fell. Her fists, balled white, released. ‘Who’s Ted?’ she said, her eyes wide, welling with tears.
‘What?’ Dettie rubbed the bridge of her nose.
‘You said Ted. Who’s Ted?’
‘Roger, I said.’ She thumped the wheel with her palm. ‘I mean, Donald. Back with Donald. Your father.’
‘Why did you say Ted?’
‘Katie! That’s enough!’
When Dettie yelled the car shook, lurching across the road and into the path of an oncoming ute. The driver beeped furiously, flashing his lights, and the caravan attached behind lurched heavily. Dettie yelped, wrestling the car back in place, and Katie screamed, clinging to her seatbelt. The ute roared past, still honking.
‘You see? You see, girl? Do you want us to get killed? I am too busy to be playing these games all the time!’
Trembling, Katie sat back in her seat, silent, and began stuffing blankets and clothing around her self. Sam’s heart was racing, and the rattle in the engine suddenly seemed more ominous, as though the car were about to shake apart at any moment, scattering itself across the gravel.
They drove on that way for another few minutes, the air becoming ferociously hot. Ahead of them, parked halfway into the dry scrub, a small fire truck stood at the base of a large plume of white smoke. It looked abandoned, but its hoses were still fixed to its taps, throbbing like fat yellow snakes, stretched across the steaming road and into the bushes. Sam couldn’t see the fire-fighters through the haze, but as Dettie slowed to pass the truck, he could hear shouts through the crackle of flame. Amid the shifting blurs of orange and grey he thought he could see silhouettes.