His Illegal Self

by Peter Carey

  He had nothing to wipe himself with except the cardigan. He spat. There was a sea of ferns beyond the brambles, like fish bones, covering a wide saddle. He broke off some of these to clean himself as well as he could.

  Vomiting was ugly, shameful, mixed up with his feelings about soggy Uno cards and seeds. He told the cat he was sorry for the smell. The trees were wide apart here. They had twisted gray corded bark. Different birds were high up in their khaki canopies but there was another noise, like water, maybe wind.

  He stroked the kitten’s bony head but even the tips of his fingers seemed fouled and filthy. He could hear a river, or it was the wind high in the trees, or the two, mixed up together.

  He could smell damp. He knew damp. Maple woods in summer, rotting things, black mud. He went farther along the left side of the saddle, not far. Here was the edge of a rough red riverbank, no question. A big tree had fallen, its clay-and pebble-crusted roots naked in the air like dried-out innards. The trunk, which made a bridge between the flood bank and the low bank, was about as big across as a man is tall and he soon found a place, just below the disturbed earth, where you could jump down onto its broad back, like the back of an elephant or a slippery seal, and he walked along it, with the kitten now meowing softly, down to the place where the timber splintered and smashed and speared into the earth. The smell of damp was rich with rot.

  Steel pincers pierced his skin.

  He screamed.

  He jumped to the soft ground. He hurt his foot. He dropped the cat. He ripped at his shirt.

  Stay still, said Trevor, who came from nowhere, a nasty-looking groundhog, completely naked, covered in mud and dirt. Stay still.

  The boy shrieked in fear.

  Trevor took the boy’s shirt off over his head. The pain went on and on without reason.

  Got it, Trevor said.

  And held a shining ant, two inches long, a stinking, angry, black, plastic-coated, dying Australian thing.

  Bull ant, he said.

  The boy stayed frozen, vomity, ashamed, his pain still pulsing, while Trevor walked down among the wide tall grass toward Buck, who was drinking something. Trevor found water too, enough to wash some mud from his own body. He shook himself like a dog. Then he grabbed the cat, held it locked inside his arm.

  Did you come looking to see where my stash is hid? He had pale blue eyes, hard as broken bathroom tile.

  The kitten was afraid, his mouth as wide and pink as dentistry.

  No, sir.

  Trevor returned the cat and then put both his hands on the boy’s square bare shoulders. He did not squeeze or hurt, but it was a hard and heavy weight without forgiveness.

  You wouldn’t want to see.

  I want to wash.

  You understand it would be a bad thing to see?

  I threw up, the boy said. I need to wash the stuff off.

  Once, not so long before, he had pooped himself. He had been hosed down in public by a nasty man in boots.

  Come here, said Trevor.

  The boy was relieved to feel his hand held gently.

  See, Trevor said.

  The boy looked down into the ground-it was the damp he had smelled, a smeary rainbow, thick clumps of brown grass.

  Snakes.

  He could see no snakes. All he saw was water.

  There. What do you reckon that is?

  He thought, A bone?

  It’s not a good idea to come looking for my stash. You understand me.

  At that moment the boy saw the actual stash, in the fallen tree. On the underside there was a splintered rotten place where there was blue plastic showing clear as day.

  You understand? Trevor’s eyes were cold enough to hurt.

  Yes, sir.

  Don’t call me sir, Trevor said.

  The boy washed his arms and legs and down his front. He did not stare at where the money was.

  You OK now?

  Yes thank you.

  You don’t come back here without me, OK. The voice was not unkind.

  From the corner of his eye the boy could see the flag of blue plastic. It was so clear, like underpants showing through an unzipped pair of shorts.

  Always look at the ground, Trevor said, as they headed up the saddle.

  The boy did what he was told.

  Where’s your father?

  What?

  Where’s your dad? Trevor mocked the boy’s shrug. What does that mean?

  I don’t know, sir, he said, his heart like a washing machine inside his ears. He thought his dad might be in Sydney but no one knew his name.

  Trevor took the boy’s chin and tilted it so there was no escaping the interrogation.

  The boy’s blood was swooshing and thumping in his ears. He met Trevor’s cold gaze and let himself be seen in all his everything.

  That’s right, Trevor said as he released him. That’s right.

  The boy understood his secret had been touched. There had been a conversation of some sort.

  16

  She had gone through Sydney and Brisbane on chocolate bars and Coca-Cola, trusting the force of her will and energy to reach the other side. It was what she was used to doing, and of course there had been more to it than Hershey bars. In the aftermath of Susan Selkirk’s death she had trusted Harvard men to save her. She knew famous people, Dave Rubbo, Bernadine Dohrn, Mike Waltzer, Susan Selkirk obviously. On the run with Che she had trusted the Movement, most particularly that Harvard representative of Students for a Democratic Society whose silky penis she had once loved holding between her lips. It was he, with his large hand resting very lightly on her forearm, who had persuaded her that they would be safe and cared for in Australia.

  We’ve got people there, he said.

  What crap that turned out to be.

  It was the Movement which had provided the passports, so she was given to understand, although what the Movement was by 1972 depended on whom you were talking to. Some like Waltzer were now campaigning for the Democrats; Bernadine Dohrn and the others had formed the Weather Underground. Susan Selkirk had belonged to a faction that had threatened to shoot Mike Waltzer. Instead she’d gone underground and blown herself sky-high.

  Dave Rubbo said he was in an alliance with the Black Panthers. He showed Dial an AK47 and gave her air tickets from San Francisco to Honolulu to Sydney, Australia. He scared her. She took the bundles of dollars not understanding the transaction. She bought nuts and candy and comics for the flight. She had no guidebook, no Australian currency. She had no idea of what Australia even was. She would not have imagined a tomato would grow in Australia, or a cucumber. She could not have named a single work of Australian literature or music. Why would she? It was only temporary. She persisted with this all the way up to Yandina, through the storm, the stolen money. It was only when Trevor and the boy ran into the bush, when she was left alone to face the bulge in Jean Rabiteau’s pants, she knew she had fallen into a pit she would not get out of easily.

  She picked up a sturdy broken branch, maybe four feet long.

  Are you on the Pill?

  The branch was seared by fire, black as velvet in her hands. Looking at the Rabbitoh’s excited eyes, she thought, He has no idea what I could do to him.

  The Rabbitoh stepped forward and she knew that this had always been her destination. She had a father with bullet wounds in both his hands; she should have trusted that.

  Cool down, babe.

  She saw his fragile collarbone, felt the heat of tropical sunshine on her back, heard the flies attempting to crawl into her ears.

  She swung at him and he stepped back, stumbling. This moment had been waiting all her life. This was always going to happen but who could have known? Who could have told her? When, in 1957, she huddled in the doorway of the Girls’ Latin School, waiting for the janitor to arrive for work, it was this that was on the other side of that bright green door, not the silverware her mother wished for her. Fish fork, salad fork, dinner fork. The fish fork is shorter, with broader tines to pick
out bones. The salad fork is shorter than the dinner fork, and has one tine on the left side that is thicker than the others. This way you can cut the lettuce without a knife. She had no time for silverware. She would crack his fucking collarbone if need be. She could not imagine what came next. In New York she could not imagine Philly. In Philly she could not have imagined Seattle. In Seattle she could not have imagined the Australian Builders Labourers Federation where she had brought the boy and her request for help. She sat beneath the neon wondering who controlled the Australian garment industry, who decided on these Chinese zippers down the front of the maroons and dirty greens. Albania, she thought, must be like this.

  But she was cute. She smiled at them. I’m sorry, this particular young man said. He was big and plain with worryingly short hair. They had gone to sit in a coffeehouse in Harris Street, Ultimo. Che was pouring sugar into his Coca-Cola. The young man talked to her earnestly, gazing somewhere above her shoulder.

  This is not something we can involve ourselves with. He spoke like this, politely, dully. To Dial he sounded English and when he cupped his hands around his teacup she saw him like someone in a film who would say guv’nor.

  He was just so completely straight. He was blunt, with conscript’s hair.

  You know who Dave Rubbo is, right. And she was not wrong to expect he would. Those boys had gone a long way since Somerville, gone from playing politics, to being the revolution. She was here because there was an alliance, Dave had said so. This Australian dork was meant to be the vanguard, but he waved all this away.

  The executive will not support this, Dial. It’s not like you’ve dodged the draft and we have to hide you.

  Draft for what, she asked, watching Che’s Coke bubble up and spill across the table. She found the young man glaring at her directly.

  What?

  You’re joking! he said, wiping up the Coke himself.

  Australia is in Vietnam?

  His cheeks were red, his eyes blue and cold.

  Right? She tried to catch herself. Vietnam.

  But he was already standing, an earnest lanky boy, raw jawed, with heavy workman’s boots and a tartan shirt. It’s a shame, he said, you never learn more about the countries that you fuck with.

  But he had misunderstood who she was. I’m in SDS, she said. Dave Rubbo’s friend.

  He stood with his big hands grasping the back of the chair, looking down at her, the dress, the golden hair she had washed that morning. He laughed through his nose. Good luck, mate, he said to Che.

  Thank you, said the boy.

  It was not until Bog Onion Road that she could no longer ignore the extent of Dave Rubbo’s deceit, but by then she had other creeps to deal with.

  When Trevor came back into the clearing, she threw the lump of wood down at the Rabbitoh’s feet and walked toward the boy. His hand was sticky but she held it tight.

  Where are we going?

  There was always a way forward. She dragged the boy, resisting, toward the road.

  Oh come on. The Rabbitoh was slinking after her, his hands outspread. Don’t be so uptight.

  We’ll drive you, Trevor said. He had to raise his voice because they were already well up the first hill. Do you want a receipt?

  Receipt for a fucking robbery, she thought. But she had money left, whosever money it was. She would damn well need it too, and all she knew was she must buy a map, find out where she was. She must go where no one knew about this treasure, this currency that she could not change.

  Her name was Anna Xenos. Xenos meant displaced person, stranger, a man who arrived on the island of Zákinthos years before the birth of Christ.

  Trevor called, Don’t you want to know where I live? His was a full-chested shout, filling the steep valley of peeling trees.

  She paused a moment, looking down the track at the two men.

  You should get his address, the boy said quietly.

  If she had been nicer she would have answered him but she had too many battles raging inside her head. She was imagining their bodies, her’s and Che’s, found decaying in woods.

  What about our money, Dial? Shouldn’t we get his address?

  Shut up, she said. OK?

  She left him to trudge up the track behind her huge hard fury.

  Can you, she demanded, just for once, not have an opinion? You’re seven, for Christ’s sake.

  She waited for him to tell her he was almost eight. He didn’t. They walked some more, a little slower.

  He knows my daddy, he said.

  He stopped then and he stood before her, his arms straight by his side, so armored against her that his little gray eyes had become pinholes in his face.

  No, she said. He does not.

  I think he does, Dial. I’m pretty certain.

  She thought, You’ll go mad with this, not knowing who you are.

  He knows about my daddy then, he said. He shoved his hands into his tight little pockets and stared up at her, a dreadful rigid smile upon his face.

  No, babe.

  He can tell my daddy where we are.

  Sweetie, do not do this to yourself.

  She had not meant to be harsh but now his chin began to wobble and he would have broken down if he had not heard the Ford laboring up the hill toward them. She pulled the boy off the track, with his face against her stomach, but as the car came to a stop beside them, he slipped free.

  Come on, called Trevor, his thick arm lay in the open window. Get in.

  No thanks, she said, but the boy was already at the car.

  Nothing’s going to happen, Trevor said. He’s sorry. He nodded toward the driver. He’s a creep.

  I’m meant to be a Christian, said the Rabbitoh, his eyes shining like an animal’s in the darkness of its hide.

  Please, Dial, can we?

  She opened the door and she and the boy sat close together with the kitten in its cardigan between.

  Say you’re sorry, Trevor said. She was not displeased by his authority, the bulldog body, the thick neck.

  The Rabbitoh then apologized and she watched him fold himself across the steering wheel. She thought of the pleasures of submission, a topic she knew more about than she was ready to admit.

  Shush, she said to the Rabbitoh, as if he were a child to be forgiven, not some shit with a very nasty knife and a sense of sexual entitlement.

  Trevor turned in his seat and held her eyes. John has written you a receipt, he said slowly. You don’t want it, OK, but can I give it to his nibs? It’s got my postal address? he asked the driver.

  It has, he said.

  Trevor gave the piece of paper to the boy, who seemed to read it, but it was unclear how much of this was a performance. He certainly folded it extremely carefully before undoing his rubber bands to accommodate it with his stuff.

  Abandoned on the highway they watched the Ford turn toward the back road and leave its blue exhaust lying on the blacktop. They were left alone in the shadeless heat, buffeted by the big trucks, dirt swirling up beside them.

  Can we just stop going places, Dial?

  Soon, she said.

  17

  To be honest, he had liked it best in Oakland, when they were just together in the motel, eating pizza, playing cards. She read to him then, like for hours at a time and in the night as well. He was as happy as he could ever remember, to have her to himself finally, at last, and the prospect of his father, that electric cloud of surprise hanging over him like vapor from an open bathroom door. She sat cross-legged on the bed and put her skirt in her lap. She had a big mouth and she kissed him lots, her breath all soft and ashen.

  Can we stop going places, Dial.

  He saw how she paused and listened to him properly, her eyes resting seriously upon his.

  Soon, she said. First we have to go to Nambour, baby.

  Maybe we don’t need to, Dial.

  He had carefully retrieved his sodden Uno cards from the backseat of the car and now she gently took possession, kneeled by the highway and fitted
them in the outside pocket of her backpack.

  He watched her, thinking it must hurt her knees.

  We need to go to Nambour now, she said.

  What if we get caught?

  Her mouth turned down. She didn’t know he saw that, the way the whole of her lower face could lose its bones.

  What if they take you away from me, he said.

  She did not even look at him, but lifted her pack to her shoulders and combed with her fingers at her hair.

  What if I could get our money back, Dial?

  Shush.

  Because I know where it is.

  Her hand got caught in a big tangle and she jerked at it, making a face. It had to hurt.

  You’re a dear brave boy, she said at last, but you better forget whatever it is you saw.

  Why?

  Because I said so.

  She rubbed his head but the nice mood was spoiled.

  It’s cool, Dial, he said, trying to get it back again.

  Shush, she said.

  We’ll go with the flow.

  That should make her smile. It didn’t. She started walking with her thumb held out and he was left to carry Buck under the burning sun, along the rutted gravel edges and through the choking dust beside the Bruce Highway, where they finally caught a ride with the manager of a cactus farm who dropped them by the high school.

  There were trees by the school but everything else had been chopped down in Nambour long ago, so there was no shade remaining. They itched and hurt, the mother and the boy. They were unwashed, unloved, ripped, “feral” to the local eye. The mother had one infected bite on her calf. She had ten thousand dollars inside her hem, she whispered. This remaining money was secured by a piece of fuse wire provided by the cactus farmer.

  He started to think about a motel. Didn’t need to be fancy. They would have to do this now.

  They came to a car dealership with big glass windows and he stood beside her and he could feel what she was thinking, that she would try and buy a new car with the American dollars. He wished she wouldn’t. She opened the door and walked inside. The air-conditioning was very nice but that was all.