Act of Grace

by Anna Krien

  The loudspeaker gave the final boarding call. ‘I love you, Elliott,’ Eva said, easily and simply. And with that, Elliott cut a swathe through the crowd and boarded the train. Eva and Gerry watched as he strode down the carriage. After he chose his seat, his suitcase in the overhead, Elliott waved out the window as the doors slid shut and the train went out the same way it came in.

  *

  ‘Good morning, Staaannnding Rock,’ called a voice on the PA. ‘Wake up, water protectors. Remember why you are here.’

  Eva stretched her arms above her head and rolled over to kiss Gerry, her lips warm on his skin. They could hear the camp stirring: zips on sleeping bags, muffled voices, the thud of mud banged from soles. She reached out and pulled back the corner of the woollen blanket they had pegged over the window. The light was golden. A dance of dust played around Eva’s wrist. She was naked except for a pair of thick knitted socks. Gerry pulled her back under the covers, kissing the pale curve of her breast. Eva giggled as she escaped from his grip, pulling on an oversized jumper that covered her triangle of pubic hair. ‘Wake up,’ the voice intoned. ‘Wake up, water protectors.’

  Eva scooped up Pickle as she walked to the gas cooker, rubbing her nose to his in an Eskimo kiss. Gerry watched, already missing the shape of her. A hunger had built between them once Elliott left, and now there was the privacy to sate it.

  Amos had changed things. Gerry found himself drawing back, steadying the parts of himself he’d let run loose and wild with Eva and Elliott, like winding in a kite.

  ‘Keep your shit to yourself,’ his father had said, when they had met for dinner before Gerry flew out. ‘Everything you do – talking, walking, everything – hold yourself like a fighter. Tuck your head in, fists up. Leave no way in.’ It was hardly wisdom for a fun holiday, but then his father didn’t believe in holidays. The irony of advice from a shithouse father; Gerry had loathed it, of course, but it had lodged for a time. He’d been coiled up tight as a prison screw before he met Eva and Elliott. It wasn’t like that now. It was a more watchful, welcome stillness, a chance to take stock. Gerry had started to write, sitting in a slant of sunlight on the bus with a notebook. Not stories; just describing places they drove past, and people, recording snapshots and snippets of talk. He’d enjoyed it as a kid, writing, but had forgotten it. He found pleasure working on the cars too, lying under Amos’s sedan and the bus. Enjoyed the ground under his back, grease to his wrists, dirt in his hair. When he ran the engine, he listened, seeking out the clunks, rattles and drags, and took to hustling up spare parts in wreckers’ yards. Eva and Amos admired it, looking at him with new eyes. Eva especially.

  He loved watching Eva frown with concentration when they fucked, her bottom lip tucked behind her teeth, eyes shut, grinding her hips, intent on making it up the staircase to wherever it was that women felt things. Afterwards, she would sink her teeth in his skin and sometimes she’d come again, an extra wave of pleasure, her fists tight. They could have turned into moles under the bedcovers, the way they sought each other out in the darkness. Each night they fucked, and in the morning too, if they could, pink feathering the sky beyond the covers, though Amos was relentless, banging on the bus at eight sharp to get a move on.

  The land got sparse near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, plains turning to crops. It was cooler, too. The road was patched with new bitumen like a quilt. A casino came out of nowhere on the prairie, tour buses with grasshopper mirrors parked out front. A few stubby trees, like the heads of broccoli, and some low-slung buildings marked the reservation. Three white crosses were staked next to the road, and over a hill lay the Missouri River, wide and flat.

  Earlier, Amos had shown them the proposed route of the oil pipeline on their roadmap. ‘So,’ Gerry said, putting his finger on a blue blot and trying to get it straight in his head, ‘they want to put it here’ – he squinted to read the print – ‘under Lake Oahe.’

  ‘It’s not a lake,’ Amos said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It’s not a lake.’ Amos tapped his teeth. ‘It’s a dam. Government did it in the fifties, flooded land belonging to the northern tribes.’

  ‘Oh.’ Gerry rubbed his brow. He began again, starting at the Bakken oil fields, tracing his finger downwards, around the city of Bismarck and halting at the Missouri River. ‘So, the pipeline will come from here . . .’

  ‘And another one is being built this way,’ added Eva, tracing her finger from Illinois. ‘And they’re planning to connect it somewhere here.’ She stubbed her finger in South Dakota.

  They were leaning in, peering at the map, when Amos suddenly whipped it away. He scrunched it into a ball and threw it against the wall of the bus. ‘Fucking stupid map!’ he snapped. Gerry stared at him, mouth open, his stupid look seeming to enrage Amos even more. ‘You believe in that map?’ Amos asked, his tone poisonous. Gerry looked at Eva helplessly and she gave him a tiny shake of the head, as if prompting him on a test.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gerry answered weakly.

  Amos stalked to the paper ball and unfolded it, pressing it flat with his fists. ‘This map is bullshit. Look at Missouri River. You think that’s really how the river goes? No,’ he said, answering for Gerry. ‘That river has been drained, narrowed, dredged, diverted. It had fake riverbanks put in so folk can keep their riverfront houses, and boulders blown up for smooth passage.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Gerry stared at the pale thread that writhed on the paper. He would never have thought to question it.

  Amos stabbed at the roadmap with his finger. ‘There isn’t a fucking honest map left in this country.’

  Eva was nodding. ‘You know how coal companies are taking off the tops of mountains in the Appalachians?’ she said. ‘It’s the same thing. Something like five hundred mountains have been blown up and the government just changes the maps. Flattens out the contours and it’s like they were never there.’

  ‘See this?’ Amos pointed to a shade of brown marking the Standing Rock reservation. ‘It’s bullshit.’ He tapped the map, pointing out tiny wedges of brown, one after the other. ‘All of them are bullshit. We respect the’ – Amos held up his fingers and counted them off – ‘1851, 1858 and 1868 treaties, even if the government won’t.’

  Gerry was silent. He had no idea what to say. He’d studied the map and the names of places had jumped out at him. He knew them all: New York, Mississippi, Utah, Miami, New Orleans, California, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Arizona, Washington, Florida, Texas, Kansas. He knew the country better than his own – at least he thought he did.

  ‘What’s it like in Australia?’ Amos was looking at him with curiosity now. ‘Is it the same?’

  Gerry frowned. ‘How do you mean?’

  Amos waved his hand at the map. ‘As this.’

  Gerry reddened. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. He had a memory of his school assignments – how he would photocopy pictures from books, gluing them onto paper, colouring them, to distract teachers from the distinct lack of information. He’d been to so many different schools and managed to turn up just in time to study the gold rush at nearly every one. Five times he had to do an assignment on the gold rush, and he never got any better at it.

  As though reading his mind, Amos pointed to a patch on the map. ‘Black Hills,’ he said. ‘Ink was barely dry on the Sioux Treaty when the government changed their mind. Got to thinking there was gold in those hills. People starved, the reservations got small.’ He scowled. ‘Cunts.’

  ‘Pricks,’ Eva corrected.

  Gerry felt sick. Five assignments and not once had he thought about the people who’d lived on that land. Fuck, he had mentioned the ‘chinks’, had even eked out some sympathy for them. But. Not. A. Single. Thought. How the hell had he missed this? He had a feeling his brain was a plant, its grey tendrils pushed against the inside of his skull. He felt an urge to dunk his head in some river, rerouted or not, and thump his skull, get the plant out, give it water.

  *

  ‘Good morning, Standing Rock!�
� There was gurgling and the rich smell of coffee as it spat up into the top half of the pot. When it finished, Eva used a sock to take it off the burner and poured it into two cups. Gerry got up, putting on the same pair of undies as the day before, jeans, shirt. He glanced at the map, etched with the creases of Amos’s fury, as he picked up his mug. Eva had marked it up in pencil, including an X for where they were camped, next to Cannonball River, with the Missouri about a mile downstream. She thumped open the bus door and they sat on the steps watching people emerge from trailers, tents and tepees, crusty-eyed, tin cups in hand. Each person flicked their eyes across the water, a sun salute to the security guards and police who had spent the night watching them. Behind the guards, a temporary fence was guarding the Dakota Access Pipeline bulldozers and diggers, orange mouths open like cooling crocodiles. Floodlights mounted atop the enormous crooked arms had shone into the camp all night long, forcing the activists to squint and bury their heads under pillows, while a surveillance plane turned like clockwork above.

  ‘Good morning!’ called a protester on the riverbank, his hands cupped around his mouth. He was wearing moccasins that tied over his jeans and a coat with a woollen collar. The eyes on the hill opposite swivelled and settled on him without a word. ‘I said,’ he called, ‘good morning!’ There was laughter in the camp, and a few more people called out to the wordless mound. It was a kind of dance. Less than a week ago a black thread of snipers had lain draped there when activists had gathered at the riverbank. ‘Rubber bullets,’ one of the leaders explained to Eva and Gerry in an information session in the community yurt. ‘But they can hurt like hell. Take an eye out if you’re unlucky.’ People had waded in across the icy water and the police had tear-gassed them.

  ‘Coffee?’ the protester yelled now, holding up a coffee pot. The grass was flecked with ice and he stamped his leather boots in it. Sometimes the protesters played frisbee where he was standing, exaggerating their squeals of delight and taking wild leaps, showing off. ‘Want to play?’ they’d call across the river to the security men. It was teasing, Gerry figured. Bear-baiting. Appealing to their humanity, Eva countered.

  There was a crackle of static. Remember why you’re here, the voice said. Eva flung the dregs of her coffee onto the dirt. There were mornings when it felt simultaneous, hundreds of brown splats, small rivers in the shape of lightning bolts on the ground. Eva went inside the bus to put more layers on. It was mid-November. They’d been in the camp for six weeks and had watched the lowlands change from pale green to a rusty hue, the grass moulting like a buffalo hide. Overnight, the creek had turned to ice. Amos had shifted into a tepee with people he’d grown up with. He had a glow about him. A lot of the protesters did.

  ‘Out there,’ Amos tried to explain one evening, ‘we don’t exist. You can’t even imagine what that’s like.’ He laughed. ‘Man,’ he said to Gerry, ‘you’d have to take your eyes out to even try.’

  ‘Even then,’ Eva interrupted, ‘it would be impos—’

  ‘I get it,’ Gerry said hotly.

  Amos laughed again. His face shone. ‘But here,’ he continued, ‘we’re fucking here. We exist!’ He pointed to his eyes, shaking his head. ‘Shit, I didn’t even know it. I mean, I know our history – but my eyes, they may as well have been yours, man.’ Gerry winced a little, annoyed. So, just because he was white and male, he was part of the problem?

  Still, it was incredible, Gerry knew that. He had never seen anything like it. Their camp was a sprawl of yurts, pick-up trucks, wagons with tarps stretched over metal ribs, tents and caravans. Nailed placards read WATER IS LIFE and WELCOME, WATER PROTECTORS. People were busy. Men and women, hair plaited or in ponytails, waistcoats and shirts woven with tight stitches of beads. Dark-eyed kids from cities, jeans low on their hips. People had come from all over, crossed the invisible lines, and like a mercury instrument cracked open over a map and spattered across the continent, they kept coming, they eased down into the prairie, forming a single silver fist.

  *

  Toohey Colpitt surveyed the cream tiles of the airport floor, the people wrapping their bags in plastic, the bored queue. He stood behind a young couple already wearing their inflated peanut pillows around their necks. Toohey stared at them scornfully: idiots.

  The queue shuffled forward a step at a time, but Toohey refused to move until there was enough space for a dignified stride or two. He ignored the clumps forming behind him. In the inside pocket of his coat he could feel the hard rectangle of his passport. Within it he had slotted a letter from DFAT, along with several names and numbers. The consulate had provided him with contacts and given a guarantee that he was cleared down the line in the States. ‘However,’ the consular official had warned, careful with his words, ‘things have gotten a little unpredictable in immigration.’ Toohey had snorted his approval of the new American president. ‘And so they bloody well should.’ Not like this bullshit leftie country that betrays its own damn countrymen for the sake of a foreigner, he’d thought.

  It was Wedge who’d told him, fucking shit-stirring Wedge from his old unit, who had somehow made it up the ranks to officer. ‘I just thought you should know, man,’ Wedge said on the phone. ‘The woman, she’s here.’ Toohey didn’t catch on at first. ‘She asked to come and they let her,’ Wedge continued. Then Toohey clocked; he saw it, vivid as the frigging couch he was sitting on: the woman in the back of the car, wailing, blood everywhere. ‘I just thought you should know, man,’ Wedge said again.

  ‘Where?’ Toohey managed to ask.

  ‘That’s the thing, that’s why I thought you should know. She’s in Melbourne, same as you.’

  Toohey started to shake then, his legs moving of their own accord, his hands trembling. ‘Where in Melbourne?’ he’d croaked, but Wedge clammed up, as though it was Toohey who had made the call, put in the enquiry.

  ‘I can’t say, mate, but I just thought you should know.’

  At the airport, Toohey loosened the collar of his shirt to let some air in. His uniform was tight. But it still fit. Jean had looked admiringly at him when he tried it on and he’d showed off a little, punching his arms into the khaki jacket sleeves, dancing it over his shoulders with a jaunty shrug.

  He hadn’t expected his breath to catch when he’d opened the door to her. Five years since he’d seen his wife, and if anything, he had expected her to be a mess, not just because of the news about Gerry, but because she’d been without him. But her presence gave him a jolt. Not once in all the time he’d withdrawn had he considered that Jean might be with another man, but looking at her, her cheeks pink, her eyes luminous and secret, he wondered. The dog was going crazy, jumping up on her, pawing her leggings, and he gaped as she knelt to scratch Melanie behind the ears. Jean’s hair was curly, pinned up with bobby pins. A single brown tentacle escaped down the nape of her neck. Toohey’s chest tightened in a wave of worry. Was she still his?

  Melanie lurched at Jean’s face, pink tongue out. Jean giggled and put her hand on the doormat to steady herself, her knees wobbling. Toohey ran his gaze to her fingers. Their wedding ring – she was still wearing it. Instantly his insides stopped their attack. Jean looked up shyly and he let a few seconds pass before he smiled. Then he opened the door wider and whistled for Melanie to come back in, nodding at Jean to follow.

  ‘What the hell does Gerry care about some oil pipeline in America?’ he asked, once the two of them were seated awkwardly in the lounge room. Jean shrugged. ‘It’s that school you sent him to,’ Toohey continued. ‘The hippy one.’ Her brow creased. She was silent. It made Toohey nervous. He’d been used to her placating him, feeding him crumbs to go on with. ‘Well?’ he said pointedly. ‘Do you have any idea why he’s gone and done this?’

  Jean shook her head. ‘No, Toohey, I don’t.’ She took a sip of the tea he’d made; he’d put it in front of her like a gift. She sighed, and Toohey got an uncomfortable feeling that she was looking right through him. ‘Do you know they pulled your father’s house down?’ she said
suddenly.

  Toohey frowned, confused. ‘I assumed they would,’ he replied curtly. ‘What’s that got to do with Gerry?’

  Jean didn’t answer. Instead she continued, her voice tired and dreamy. ‘I went and saw it. A big ugly house is there now. All grey. Pulled the nectarine tree out too.’

  Toohey snorted. ‘Of course they did, the thing was half-dead.’

  Jean smiled. ‘It was half-alive too,’ she said, and looked at him so directly Toohey felt that jolt again. He wondered if she knew about the Iraqi woman. If Wedge had somehow called her up, told her too, just to get something going. He looked away.

  Melanie was sitting on her cushion, watching them both with interest. ‘Get down from there,’ he said, pretending she wasn’t allowed up. He felt strangely unsure of himself. ‘So, I’m going,’ he continued.

  Jean nodded.

  ‘I got the red-eye flight tomorrow.’

  ‘Good,’ Jean said.

  ‘It was very expensive,’ he added.

  Jean didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’ll need someone to look after Melanie.’

  The corners of Jean’s lips turned up slightly. She looked at the dog and patted her lap. Melanie jumped up neatly and Jean ran her fingers through the white fur. ‘Okay,’ she said. She tilted her head and smiled. He missed her then. All that time, and he missed her then. Abruptly he reached across and touched her cheek. ‘Jean,’ he said hoarsely. He pressed his thumb gently just below her eye.

  He wasn’t wearing his ring. He’d taken it off years ago, storing it in the jar where he kept the shrapnel. They had all come out now. The last fleck, half a head of a nail, had popped out with its usual stink of pus a year ago. For a week or two his neck was red and the skin around the hole stung. He cleaned it with antiseptic, but as always he got a fever, his dreams vivid and lurching. Yet when Toohey came out of it, it was the strangest thing. He didn’t want a cigarette. Out of habit he lit one up anyway, but it tasted bitter. He gagged in disgust and stopped smoking. Just like that. Which, he figured, explained the extra weight. Like his uniform, the ring was a little tight when he tried it on after Jean went to collect her things. It would be best, they had decided, if she moved into his flat to look after Melanie. But he pushed the ring down and spun it stiffly around under his knuckle, and found himself glancing at it in a way he’d never done before, not even when Jean put it on him all those years before.