by Ron Elliott
‘No worries. Nice to see you.’
Bill nodded and turned and strode back into the darkness with his dog who’d sat silent the whole while waiting. The dog and Bill walked out of the light but were visible for quite some time, dark shapes moving into the darkest black, hypnotically slow, like that scene from Lawrence of Arabia where the Arab comes out of the desert, only played backwards.
I put the can of soup at the corner of the fire to heat.
Robin lifted the flagon and gulped it down like water.
I said, ‘Who was that masked man? “Oh that’s my father. Haven’t I ever mentioned him? Or my whole family.” What’s going on, Robin?’
‘What?’
‘We drive out to the middle of nowhere, and this guy comes out of the desert, and he’s your father, and he chops the top off the soup and goes again.’
‘Shit! I forgot to give it to him.’ She stood and dug into her pocket and brought out the crumpled invoice again. ‘He should be dealing with this. Really. Not Gail or Liz. Such a stupid plan. Send it to Perth, so that – on the off-chance we saw him. And I did. And I forgot.’ She was talking too brightly.
‘But he’s gone.’
‘Things didn’t go according to plan. Mum’s plans rarely...’ She ran out of energy looking into the fire.
‘Did he? When you were little, your father didn’t touch you or anything, did he?’
‘What!’ She looked at me in revulsion. ‘Is that what you think?’
‘Rob, you can tell me. You can tell me anything.’ I took a step towards her.
‘No he didn’t.’
I stopped and she looked at me.
‘He didn’t.’
It was true.
She got mad again. ‘Jesus, Zac. Is that my problem, huh?’
‘It happens.’
‘Yeah, something might be wrong. It has to be child abuse.’
‘I was guessing, okay. He was weird. You were weird. I was guessing.’
‘You guessed wrong.’
‘Yeah, well if you gave me some little clues I wouldn’t have to guess all the time.’
Robin stood glaring at me and I stood glaring at her. Finally she looked past me at the fire and she said, ‘Soup’s burning.’
The can was blackened and burned, the soup bubbling and sizzling down a side. I grabbed a stick and nudged the can back from the flames. I put wood on the fire.
I said, ‘We should go and see him. We came all this way. We should go and see him about this invoice.’
‘You’re right.’ She nodded. ‘ I’ll go now.’
‘No.’
She said, ‘Maybe that’s why I came. To sort this out with him. And I should ... do it.’
‘Yeah, but you don’t have to do everything alone. In fact, you can’t. You’re not allowed to under the rules of a relationship. It’s the law.’
‘Zac, the President’s plane isn’t missing. An asteroid isn’t going to crash into the earth. It’s stupid parent stuff.’
‘Sure. Can we talk about it first? And we’ll go and see him and get it sorted.’
She sighed and looked at me and nodded. ‘Okay.’ She stepped the four steps to me and she put her hand on my shoulder and she kissed me on the cheek. She stepped back again before I could hug her. ‘You know, out on the road, when the radiator had overheated and you were doing James Dean with Liz Taylor?’
‘Yeah. I know it was Giant, not East of Eden. It was a mental typo. No iPhone coverage. I couldn’t google for a memory check.’
‘When you were standing like that with your hands over the rifle and your leg bent over the other. I never realised it before. It’s Jesus on the cross he was doing. You looked like Jesus.’
‘Jesus, huh? I would rather look like James Dean.’
‘That too. Zac doing James Dean doing Jesus. Whoow.’ She took a big gulp of air and fanned her face with her hand. ‘I need a smoke. I need a joint.’
‘Okay. I’ll get it,’ I didn’t want to see her walking away from me anymore. I thought if I went and got the deal and rolled us a smoke, we could keep talking it out.
I had to search the car even with the interior light in my hand. It was under the front seat. I had an idea about mood music. Like the night I’d put Bo Diddley on to get her to come. Track four. ‘Little Girl’. It was old-time and spare. Guitar and drums. He wants her to go home with him. That’s the song, over and over. I wound up the volume.
I went to the car boot and found a torch. I could tell she was gone as soon as I stood up.
I ran back, hoping she might have gone in the house. ‘Rob?’ I went to the empty window frame and called in quietly, ‘Rob? Are you in there?’
I felt tired. I felt sagging, empty falling down tired. I closed my eyes and listened to the song. It’s a happy up-tempo version. No piano. Bo gets them clapping. It sounded thin this far from the car. The sky was all stars maybe not beyond reach.
I looked at the ground by the fire and I saw that the rifle was gone.
***
I took the torch and went into the desert in the direction Robin’s father had pointed with his knife. There were snake tracks in the fine sand and flickers of glass that caught in my torch beam. I found her footprints winding around one of the holes, like she had a sixth sense. Maybe she did. Maybe she was a vampire. Her old man too. I was being delivered, another victim. He’d take that big knife and slice the top off my skull. I have brought you a brain, father. I’ve driven the brain insane first. Gibbering. I know you like them that way. She could be a vampire. It would explain a lot.
There was a steady glow above a small, flat hill a hundred metres ahead, and part of an old wooden poppet lurking above. It was the one I had seen earlier. I found car tracks and boot prints on a dust road that cut through the hill.
Robin was standing near a ramshackle lean-to of corrugated iron and rocks and canvas. She was holding my rifle. I edged forward until I could see Bill. He was standing about ten metres from her, holding a pair of pliers. I guess he had been working when Robin arrived. Now he was standing still in the middle of his camp.
‘You’ve built it up,’ she said, looking at Bill’s hut. Her voice was clear in the stillness of the desert. I could hear the crackle of a fire. ‘Four walls. Gettin’ tickets on yourself.’
‘Got a daughter who’s a dentist. Have to put my best foot forward,’ he said cautiously.
‘I didn’t know you knew that.’
‘What?’
‘That I was studying dentistry.’
‘One of the girls musta told me. Or your–’
Robin swung around from the house, the rifle barrel going with her.
‘I forgot to give you something. That’s why I came.’
Before I had the chance to call out, Robin leaned the rifle against the table. It was a fold-out table next to a director’s chair by a fire. She dug in her shirt pocket. ‘An invoice.’
‘A bill?’ He walked to her.
‘Yes. A bill for Bill. I’m the debt collector. Come all this way.’
She held the invoice out.
‘You wouldn’t be the first.’
‘No. I heard that.’
He looked at her a moment but finally put the pliers on the table next to a half a bottle of Brandavino and took the paper.
Inside the dirt wall that surrounded Bill’s camp was an old wheelless truck. I edged behind it, not wanting to interrupt what Robin needed to do. The dog looked over at me but lay down again.
Bill held the invoice towards a gas lamp that was on the table. Robin took the bottle of Brandavino and poured into a plastic cup, drinking while she waited.
‘Why’d you bring a rifle?’
‘It’s Zac’s. He stole it from his grandfather before he could hand it in. For hunting, he says.’
‘I asked why you brought it.’
‘Seemed like a good idea at the time.’
‘They’re not toys.’
‘Yes, Daddy.’
‘And you should
a brought a torch. There are a lot of old mines around here.’ He held out the invoice to her.
Robin didn’t take it. She said, ‘Liz and Gail said they’d pay it.’ She took a drink from the cup.
Bill looked down at it. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I think you should pay.’
They stood looking at each other.
Robin said, ‘Seeing as she was your wife. You should pay for her stone.’
‘All right.’
‘What?’
‘All right. If you’re all short. That sounds fair enough.’ He folded the invoice and put it in his back pocket.
Robin started to laugh. It sounded happy for a moment but turned bitter and creepy.
Bill held a hand towards her like a claw ready to scratch out the laughter.
She pushed the bottle of Brandavino at him until he took it.
‘But you won’t pay it, will you? You’re saying yeah to get rid of me.’
He turned to the table looking for his cup, then shrugged and sat in the director’s chair by the fire, with his back to her, drinking from the bottle.
Robin sculled her own drink and pushed the cup in front of him. He poured.
A pulley up at the top of the poppet head began to clunk dully against the old wood in a breeze blowing somewhere above our crater.
Robin said, ‘Do you ever get lonely?’
‘No.’
‘No. You don’t care, do you? That’s the way you like it.’
Bill stood. The dog growled.
‘Fuck your wife, your family. Fuck everybody else. You know who’ll be at your funeral?’ She stopped talking. She looked bewildered. It was like she’d been slapped, but Bill’s arms were down.
I stood and said, ‘Rob?’
Bill looked over at me, annoyed, but straight back at Robin. ‘Do you want an answer? Is that what you want?’
‘Yeah, I do. Why you killed her.’
‘Killed her? I didn’t kill her. She died of cancer. I wasn’t even there.’
‘Exactly. You were never there. You left her to bring us up.’
‘I gave her money when I had it.’
‘Why did you hate us?’
‘Hate you? Is that what your mother said?’
‘No. She’d never say that. It’s what I’m saying.’
He shook his head, like a boxer trying to clear away concussion.
Robin smiled.
Bill started around the table.
Robin reached for the rifle.
‘No, Rob. No.’
She pointed the rifle at me then back at Bill as he walked up to her.
‘I didn’t love her. That what you want to hear?’
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Robin said.
‘What?’ Bill saw something and in that moment took the rifle out of her hands. He grabbed and twisted it in the one motion and held it up behind him. ‘Who said anything was your fault?’ He flicked his eyes to include me. ‘It’s no one’s fault. Shit, I was twenty. Your mother was seventeen. We all do fucking stupid things when we’re young.’
I came closer. ‘Shall I take the rifle? Make it safe.’
Robin said, ‘You know what work she did, Zac? She took in laundry.’
‘Nothing wrong with that,’ said Bill. ‘We can’t all be dentists.’
‘There was everything wrong with it. She’d start working at five. Wouldn’t stop. Piles and piles of dirty clothes. Slag heaps of dusty, sweaty, stinking miner’s clothes. Underwear of people we didn’t even know. Scrubbing the shit out.’
‘Her choice,’ he said.
‘What choice did she have?
‘Why didn’t you help her?’ he said.
‘I did.’ She looked at him, pleading. Then at me too. ‘I tried. I couldn’t do it all on my own.’
‘So it is about you,’ Bill said.
‘It’s about you. You and her.’
‘Where were you?’ he asked.
‘Hey, that’s enough,’ I said. I stepped towards them and Bill pushed the rifle into my chest and reached into his pocket and pulled out the screwed-up invoice. ‘Your name’s on the bit of paper, not mine.’
‘She should have put yours.’
‘But she didn’t. Here it is. Next of kin. Robin May.’
‘I couldn’t...’
‘Rob, you couldn’t.’ I stepped between them again and said to him, ‘She’s a student.’
He talked past me. ‘Why did she put your name on the paper?’ He pushed the invoice at Robin.
I grabbed it. ‘That’s enough.’
He said, ‘You didn’t even go to her funeral. It wasn’t just me. You didn’t go either.’
‘Stop it.’ I reached my hand forward to push him. He swatted it away.
‘You know what I think?’ he said. ‘That’s why she put your name on the paper. She knew you wouldn’t come. Not when she got sick. Not when she was dead.’
‘Leave her alone, you prick.’ I chested him and made him take a step back.
‘What did you say?’
‘Leave her alone.’ I tossed the rifle down and raised my fists.
The dog growled.
He moved the bottle into his left hand like it wasn’t a weapon. Then he looked over my shoulder and said, ‘She’s getting away.’
I turned. She was. Robin was running out of the gap in the hill. Damn. I sighed and turned back in time for Bill to punch me. I fell on my arse in the dirt. Blood dripped onto my chest. ‘You hit me.’
‘It was a fight. You lost.’
‘But I wasn’t looking.’
‘Yeah, that was the idea. Now fuck off and leave me alone.’
I tried to wipe my nose but it hurt. I got up and looked around for the torch. When I grabbed his gas lamp he didn’t say anything. I got the rifle and went after Robin.
***
Her tracks were easy to follow. She was running straight, with deep steps, fleeing out across the desert.
Her footprints ended at one of the mine holes where they skidded in the dirt.
‘Rob?’
The light from the lantern spread easily across the ground but not so well down into the old dig. I tipped the lamp and found her on a ledge, huddled in the corner. The ledge was only about half a metre wide before the shaft went down again beyond.
‘Jesus fucking Christ, Rob.’
She had scrapes on her arms and a bruise rising on her cheek.
‘Anything broken?’
She giggled. ‘You said you wanted to meet my family. Careful what you wish for.’ She sounded a little drunk.
‘Can you stand up?’
‘I thought he had all the answers. You know, living out here, away from – all the noise. My mysterious father.’
I took the light off her and looked around the top of the mine shaft for something to use to drag her out. There was a broken wooden winch but no rope. Only rocks poked from the mound of dirt.
‘All this way and no answers to the meaning of life. What a rip-off.’
In the shaft were weathered poles of wood stacked lengthways along the sides, but they looked too smooth to climb.
‘Can you stand up?’
Robin started to get up but saw the edge and she pushed back into the corner. ‘You should leave me.’
‘How about I get you out of this hole, and we’ll see?’
‘Ah, you’re considering it.’
‘Never.’
‘I don’t blame you. I’m a shit.’
‘Can we talk about this later?’
‘That’s what I say.’ She was looking into the darkness below her. ‘I have no idea why I do shit. Why I do anything. Two days ago, I quit uni. I went in and I sold all my books.’
‘Oh.’ I tried to catch up. ‘Yeah, I never saw you as a dentist.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t imagine you being an actual dentist.’
‘Yeah, well, snap. I need to see a shrink.’
I lay down on the ground with my arm reaching over the side.
If she stood, I could almost reach her. ‘I’m going to have to go back to his camp and get some rope.’
‘No.’
‘Rob, you’re stuck.’
‘Don’t care.’
‘You’re being stupid.’
‘Am not.’
‘Are too.’
‘You are.’
She smiled.
I said, ‘We’ll use the rifle. If you can hold on and kind of step up on those logs along the edge of the shaft.’
She squinted up at the light of the lamp in a studying kind of way and said, ‘You should have held up that petrol station, you know.’
‘Yeah. I really wanted to. But, you know.’
‘The cops would have come. I’d have to take over driving while you held them off with the rifle.’
‘I’d shoot out their tyres.’ I moved the lamp onto a mound so it angled further into the shaft, then got the rifle and lowered the butt end towards her, but she wasn’t moving. I said, ‘Stand up, Rob.’ When she didn’t, I said, ‘Of course, we would have to come out here because the cops would radio for all the police everywhere to get us. We’d have to hide out with your dad.’
‘What? No.’
‘Yeah. We’d be in his one-room rock house surrounded by hundreds of cops around the hill like in Butch Cassidy.’
‘They die in Butch Cassidy.’
‘Well, I don’t want to have to correct you, but they don’t die. The shot freezes. Before they are dead. Like Thelma & Louise. Anyway, we get away. There’s this hidden mine shaft under his hut. But he tells you all the secrets first and says he’ll hold them off and we get away.’
She nodded.
‘Stand up.’
Robin stood, pushing back into the corner. ‘Can he take a bullet?’
‘He steps outside after we’re gone, full of regrets. Gets riddled, especially by the Gatling gun on the chopper.’ I pushed the butt at her again. ‘Okay, now if you grab the stock, and I grab the barrel. Whatever you do, don’t touch the trigger. Or let go.’
She had the stock.
‘I’m not lifting you. You’re stepping up on those bits of wood.’
She nodded.
The barrel was slippery. ‘Just a sec.’ I got up on one knee and I got one arm right along the barrel, kind of wound around. ‘Okay.’
Robin pulled and I leaned back on my heels as she started to walk up the wall. I leaned further and further back as she found footholds between the wood logs shoring up the side. Her face appeared at the top. She was straining now but there didn’t seem to be a way for her to take the last steps up onto level ground.