His Illegal Self

by Peter Carey

  The woman with the starving chest said her sister was into cats. The sister was not yet at a stage of development where she could get by without her cat. She said everybody couldn’t grow at the same rate. She thought Dial would in time. Then she said, Yes, a fading away kind of sound. Then she said, So.

  Roger had cheekbones like ax heads. He said the problem was they couldn’t get their shit together. If they just looked at the community hall they would see that was the problem. The cat was just a symptom, Roger said. He thought they should get the people to come up from Nimbin and lay a rave on them about how to start a bakery and a newspaper. If there was indecision about the cat, it was the community, not the cat.

  The real problem, said Rebecca, is that we have a rule that there are no cats. Are we going to enforce it or not?

  Roger said that was exactly what he meant. Exactly.

  The girl with the starving chest said no one wanted to lay a power trip on anyone else. A lot of people were here because they were through with rules.

  The conversation continued like water dribbling from a hose.

  Listen, Dial said at last.

  Roger had been speaking, but he stopped.

  The boy felt the silence, as heavy and dusty as the heat.

  I’m sorry about the cat, said Dial. I really am. But you know while we’re sitting here arguing about this, Nixon is bombing Cambodia and Laos. Do you want to think what that is doing to the birds? I mean, I just came from a country where my friends are dying trying to end this war. So you will forgive me if I say.

  Say what, Dial?

  Dial shook her head and sighed.

  You’re really nice people, she said at last. This is a really beautiful place. I’m pleased you’re not planning to blow yourselves up, or anyone else. She stroked the boy’s back. Not thinking what she was doing.

  Do you know where you are, Dial?

  Oh please.

  Do you know you’re living in a police state?

  Yeah, yeah, she said. It did not occur to her for a second that this might be, in many ways, quite true. Certainly the name Bjelke-Petersen meant nothing to her. She had never heard of Cedar Bay, helicopter raids and arson committed by Queensland police. She did not know there was a Queensland Health Act which permitted police to search her house without a warrant.

  Fine, she said.

  She slipped her hand into one pocket and produced Buck, sleek and soft and supple in his sleep, and from the other pocket she took a small silver bell and a piece of string and while they all watched she tied the bell around the kitten’s neck and placed him on the floor.

  Buck set off around the circle, rubbing himself against feet and knees.

  Only Trevor reached to touch him, to rub his head. When Buck saw how he was received by the others he put his tail high in the air and walked down the broad steps and disappeared into the lantana, his bell ringing softly among the twittering birds.

  Dial stood, and her long shadow stretched across the buckled floor.

  Well, she said, we’ll see you guys around.

  And then she and the boy walked hand in hand down the stairs and up the rough clay road, through the hot and heavy air, to their property.

  Why is it bad to be American, Dial?

  They’ll get used to us, she said. And fuck them anyway.

  29

  His dad’s features existed in his mind like a face made by a windblown tree, but he did have one stable picture and this was in his back pocket and sometimes, in the hot afternoons, he went down into the rain forest to look at it in private. There, in the abandoned dusty little hut with the spooky sculptures by its door, he lay on the sneezy floor together with all his papers and rubber bands. Even in this gloomy place the light shone through his father’s curly hair. Angel-headed hipster, Cameron said.

  Not the man in Seattle. Not the man with the hose. That man had a mustache which lifted and shivered as if disgusted by the life in front of him. He bore no resemblance to the photo on the floor.

  The afternoons were slow and thick as ants. From the door of the abandoned shack the boy could see the melancholy clouds above the ridge as they folded and dissolved and changed from old men into pretty girls into weeping women, growing warts, losing teeth, a mess. He thought he liked this, but he didn’t. He packed up his papers and secured them one more time with the rubber band. Under the front step he found a rusty tomahawk and he chopped angrily at what they called a wattle tree and watched the black blood come out of the wet white. He hated where he was. He had stolen a clasp knife from Adam’s box and now he whittled at a stick, and although he never felt it cut, the knife slipped, maybe twenty times, and sliced up his fingers. Not really blood, just sticky, sour, no real difference from the sweaty heat, everything smudging into everything else.

  He stayed in the forest, hiding from Dial in case she wanted him to walk into Yandina once again.

  Dial did not like to drive. They had to walk four miles along a dusty road, four miles back. The heat would kill a spider. Hippies did not stop for them. When they got home, Trevor did not visit. All the single mothers could have said how weird that was, but no single women talked to them. They did not like Buck. They’ll get used to us, he said.

  In the town he had a sneaky traitor’s heart and he would stare like a maniac at anyone who glanced his way. Not having been arrested, he trudged back out along Remus Creek Road. It was not home no matter what she called it, but sometimes he saw how it contained the parts of home he would rather have forgotten-the color of sadness, the same light on the moss side of the trees.

  They weeded, Dial and he. They slept when the day got too hot. They found wild cherry tomatoes twining through the knee-high grass. The tomatoes burst inside their mouths, hot and wet, like vegetables from outer space. She was kind to him, but teary in the mornings.

  The forest around the huts was laced with narrow winding trails, like veins in a creature as yet unnamed. When the boy discovered the first of these he did not mention it to Dial. Sometimes he heard children’s voices echoing, clear as hammer blows or saws, but no child appeared to play, nor did he want them to. He was not used to children, having been brought up alone, Victorian.

  In the banana groves he found blue plastic bags the same exactly as the one Trevor used to hide his stash. They were tied around the high fruit, to stop birds’ pecking, he assumed. The banana tree was high and curved, dying like a sappy weed. He grazed his thighs and bloodied up his knees until he tore the blue bag from the fruit and then, in the grassless, shadowed banana grove, he carefully refolded his papers and tucked them safe inside.

  His father would come for him, along the lacework paths. The boy was too timid to walk these paths himself so did not know the one that led to the big old dogleg bend on Remus Creek. If it had not been for Buck, they would have known about the swimming hole. They would have had hippies drifting in for herbal tea all day.

  Dial definitely did not want to see any hippies. She would not even ask for help. When the boy found her trying to saw a piece of four-by-four along a pencil line, he said she should ask Trevor or the Rabbitoh to come and help.

  Then she cried outright. She wanted to live somewhere pretty but she did not know how. All she was doing was building a shelf to hold the rice and lentils. It stressed her too much. She made sketches early in the morning. She made him shop with her at Day and Grimes, the hardware store, trying to make up her mind about brackets and screws.

  The strawberry-nosed men in white coats asked, Can I help you, missus.

  No thank you.

  She did not get it-neither did the boy, not yet. She was a hippie, therefore she must be shoplifting. Also, the drunk-nosed men were thinking of the naked bottoms of hippie women at the swimming hole. They had been there after work, those good daddies, parking their utes off the fire trail.

  At night Buck returned to lie beneath the roaring propane lamp, and the mother and the boy pulled his ticks off one by one. There were cattle ticks, on his back and sto
mach, and tiny grass ticks which lined up along his ears like babies feeding at their mother’s teat. They used tweezers, a little kerosene. How they were together was more fine and tender than this sounds.

  Dial read Huckleberry Finn out loud and the air was muggy as Jackson, Mississippi, white ants swarming around the hissing lamp, everybody running for their lives.

  It was not until the end of the wet season, in early March, that their first visitor came knocking at their open door, not the Rabbitoh, who Dial had been prepared for, but Trevor. He squatted at the table, and his big new belly pushed against the buttons of his Hawaiian shirt; the boy was pleased to see him. He had gotten all bright and shiny, a whole new layer of fat beneath his skin.

  I’ve been away, Trevor said.

  You were on vacation?

  Most likely Trevor had been in prison.

  Yes, he said, his eyes roaming the room until they settled on the shelf.

  I know it’s not level, Dial said.

  Trevor shifted his attention to the curtains and his face split open in what was a real big grin for him.

  The mother ran her banged-up hand roughly through her hair. Fuck you, she said. I’m a homeowner now. She did not know whether to be pissed or pleased.

  Pretty, Trevor said, not looking at the curtains anymore.

  Thank you, said Dial, going pink along her neck.

  And what about his nibs here? asked Trevor, not looking at the boy.

  Well you can ask him, she said, smiling so much she was embarrassing.

  Would he like to come and help me in my garden?

  The boy had been pleased to see Trevor, his visit being the first event to break through the endless veil of heat and flies. He certainly did not mean to sneer at him. He was not aware he now curled his lip at him, showed all the pink shiny gums and square white teeth.

  Some other time, said Trevor.

  Jesus, said Dial later, we don’t have to be at war with everybody.

  I’m sorry, Dial. I didn’t know. But he had that nasty jealous feeling, so he did know after all.

  Be interested in his goddamned garden.

  The boy was frightened when she yelled at him.

  He said, Will you read some more?

  30

  The road to Trevor Dobbs’s hideout was like he had bragged to the boy already-outlaw, very steep, rutted, washed away, potholes, tank traps, killer rocks, one stained black with oil, the death of an auto owned by someone who had no business. It was on a road that didn’t want you any more than you wanted it. On the high side of the cutting there was wild bush but no shade at that hour and the dirt was baked hard and comfortless.

  There were no threats or skulls or crossbones nailed to tree trunks but at one place there was an abandoned Volvo in a tree. It seemed to have slid down the hill and then skidded backward into space and there it had come to a stop with its back wheels stuck in a burned old wattle. The front wheels had slipped clear off the edge of the road and it clung to the yellow clay road with just inches to spare. Beneath it was nothing but giddiness.

  The Volvo had gotten burned, at the time of the accident or later, you couldn’t tell; it was black from fire and brown from rust and thin as cigarette paper, like an eaten wasp abandoned in a web. As the boy and the mother approached they heard a rustling sound in its dark throat. Then-loud flapping, or slapping. The boy’s hair was too heavy to stand upright, but it pulled at his scalp and filled his neck with fright.

  Then a huge black bird-a vulture, he thought, but a turkey actually-flew out the front window, leaving the shell of rust to rock and sway like a dead flower on a brittle black stem.

  The boy’s heart was in his ears, his legs were aching. He asked, How will he know where to find me?

  Who, baby?

  My daddy, he said, his throat stinging.

  Dial squatted down before him, her too-big eyes watching him as though he were a mouse in a gluetrap, something she did not know how to kill.

  Have you been thinking about your daddy?

  What did she think he thought? Forever, through the sweaty nights and burning days.

  Oh baby, she said, and reached out to hug him. He tugged away and walked on up the hill, feeling the biting gravel sneaking in between his feet and rubber thongs. Every day his skin got hurt or broken.

  Che, talk to me.

  I’m Jay, he said. He did not have many ways to hurt her.

  Jay, we’ll tell your daddy where you are.

  He feared that was a lie but at the same time he hoped it wasn’t.

  How?

  I’ll write a letter.

  He was maybe ten feet farther up the hill now, looking down at her at last. When?

  Tonight.

  Do you love my daddy, he asked.

  She lifted her big scratched hands up to her breast. He understood, or thought he did, but he turned and continued up the hill and did not look at her misery until they arrived, finally, on a wide saddle where it seemed the road had led to nothing more than five big drums of diesel fuel.

  Where now? he demanded because he was still angry, because she was meant to know.

  She pointed and he saw there were many sets of pale tire marks, not following any single course, but all proceeding in the same direction, ending in a bit of gray among the big trees, a sort of nothing that made his mouth go dry. He followed her toward this blur and only when they were very close did he see it was a heavy net which had been thrown like a spiderweb across a building.

  Then he could see a high wall punctuated by thick gray timbers, standing upright like trunks of trees, and the space between filled up with yellow clay and on top of the walls he could make out a corrugated iron roof which had been painted black.

  He did not want to go in there.

  Dial took him by the hand. But she did not know what it was any better than he did.

  I don’t think this is his, he said, but he allowed himself to be persuaded forward. It was hard to say what they entered, maybe a shed, a barn, a hut, a garage, a fort-all of these in fact-the bones of the construction would eventually turn out to be a hay shed Trevor Dobbs had stolen from Conondale on New Year’s Eve; he had unbolted it and carried away the steel trusses and the roof in a “borrowed” truck. He had driven it up the potholed hill and unloaded the shed and had the truck back home before the first day of 1968. Who his accomplices were, he never did say. He made a lair, a compound. Mud brick walls, one foot thick, bulletproof.

  The boy had a very strong feeling he would get in trouble just for going in, but the high wooden gate was open and it was either follow Dial or be left behind. He discovered lengths of milled timber leaning against the inside walls, also many narrow sheets of glass on which was printed TELECOM. A small silver trailer home was parked in one corner. In front of it were piles of sand, gravel, sawdust, black stinky stuff the boy would soon know all too well. Half of the floor was concrete and the other half was dirt and where the walls were not yet finished you looked straight onto the vegetables, some of which-the lettuces, for instance-were growing inside.

  Dial called Trevor’s name.

  This is his hideout, the boy whispered.

  Shush, she said. He followed her close between the lettuces out into the garden which was dotted with new plantings among the wild pumpkins and zucchinis and eggplants bulging huge and purple from a bed of yellow flowers.

  And there was Trevor Dobbs, holding cut greens across his fat and muddy penis.

  The boy did not wish to see his penis, not any part of it, and he was relieved to sense that Dial felt pretty much the same.

  I brought your assistant, she called. Her voice was very bright and made-up cheerful but her face was coloring and she turned, just like that, and left.

  Dial was running away from him. She should not do that. He ran after her, back in among the shadows of the shed, but she was gone. He sat on a pile of bright yellow sand trying not to cry.

  After a while he was aware that Trevor had come inside and had gone
into the trailer. He tried not looking at him but saw he did not have much bottom and what he had was very muddy. He came out wearing a pair of shorts.

  Then Dial appeared again.

  Are you OK, she asked the boy.

  He would not even look at her.

  Trevor was now washing the green stuff under a hose. Water flooded across the floor or perhaps it was the garden.

  You can stay, Trevor said to Dial.

  She squatted down so she was the boy’s height. It was a dumb suck-up thing to do.

  What time do you want me to come back?

  He was angry she would make him feel so scared. He turned his back on her and walked out into the garden and pretended to look at things.

  When?

  When I’m done, he said, wanting to hurt her but not wanting her to go.

  Then Trevor was coming toward him dragging a sort of sled, a length of rope around his neck.

  This is a pallet, said Trevor. Which was wrong. A palette was what Grandma used to paint with, but Trevor could not read or write, he said that once before. Now he tied both ends of the rope to the front wood slats so it was a long sort of harness and then showed the boy how to put it across his chest and pull it. Like a dog.

  Trevor did not waste any time in squatting down to talk. He led the boy to a nasty-looking pile of stuff and said that it was a waterweed that he had harvested from Lake Something-or-Other and now he was going to use it as mulch. Do you know what a mulch is?

  By now it was clear Dial had left him.

  I’m only a kid, he said.

  A mulch stops the water escaping from the ground, Trevor said. We put it around the vegetables and it stops the weeds as well. So what you can do to help me is-put as much of this weed on the pallet as you can pull, and then drag it over to those little cauliflowers. Do you know what a cauliflower is?

  How long do I have to do this?

  As long as you want.

  Half an hour, he said.

  Then he would go home.

  Half an hour is good, said Trevor.

  Later the boy saw him down at the bottom of the garden swinging a pick. He had got naked once again, but now the boy was busy with the dark heavy weed all mashed together like hair when the shower got blocked. He patted the matted stuff around the cauliflower seedlings where, to his confusion, his nostrils filled with the dank and distant long wave smell of Kenoza Lake. Then he did cry, secretly, mourning everything he lost, all the cold empty hollows, the marrow stolen from his bones.