His Illegal Self

by Peter Carey

  31

  She could have just left him outside a police station. But she could not leave him anywhere, not even, finally, with Trevor Dobbs. She hated being a good girl, but that was what she had always been, the one who would work the meat grinder late at night, or deliver the sausages up and down I-95. She was a dog on a leash, even now, walking up to the oil drums and then back again to the net and back to the drums. She was tied to this little rich boy. At the same time she knew she could not, would not, permit this to be her life.

  She squatted with her back against the trunk of a gum tree, but this caused bits of peeling bark to fall down her back. Then small black ants crawled up her legs so she returned to Trevor’s compound.

  From the doorway she could clearly see the missing Che Selkirk loading black hairy matter onto a sled and dragging it along a path to a vegetable plot where he pulled the load apart. He was a strange little thing. He had a gorgeous sly shy smile, too much like his father’s. She was touched by his seriousness, how he placed the weed on the freshly watered soil. Thinking him safe she finally walked back down the hill. After only a short time she began gardening herself, but the soil dried so quickly and she had no seed. She could not concentrate on anything. Every little while she went back inside to check, but there was no boy, only a heavy viscous emptiness, a blanket of air, inert surfaces from which tiny black flies rose, her furies.

  Back in the garden, Buck caught a frog and tormented it until she had to kill it with a spade and the frog cried and then was still and mashed. All small forms of life, in their wiggling squirming resistance, were like the boy.

  When it was very hot she lay beneath the mosquito netting and Buck meowed until she picked him up and let him in. Bell or no bell, he had a blue fluffy feather in his mouth.

  Dial slept too long. She was running the instant she left the hut, down to the road, up the hill. Raw throated, dry lipped, she slipped through the nets of Trevor’s bunker. There they were, sitting outside the trailer, the boy in a big barber’s chair, the man on a fruit box. Trevor took a knife and sliced a watermelon which he held out, a huge dripping slab, toward the boy. The murmur of the boy’s voice brought a spasm. Did he ever talk so much to her?

  She did not know how real mothers did anything, how they could live without being driven mad.

  So she crept away a third time, believing that a mother would not wait like a lump of dead fish inside her hut while the valley slowly lost its light. It was almost dark when she finally walked back up the hill and by now she was angry with the boy for tormenting her and with Trevor for not knowing he should send him home by dark, and with herself for being so careless with her life.

  Dark caught up with her on the road. Just past the rusty Volvo she was forced to hold her hand out to feel her way in lurching space. After a while she saw a light weaving and shining through the silky pale-trunked trees and at first she was pleased but then the light went out. She waited for it to come on down the road and find her, standing in what she wrongly judged to be the middle of the track.

  Then the light was on her, blinding, blue as lightning in her face.

  She held up her hands against its brutal flood.

  Who is it?

  No one spoke, but the light was hard and cold as ice. Once more she was afraid.

  Trevor?

  Hello Dial, said the boy.

  Oh you little bastard, cried the mother. You little shit. Those were her words. Plus she struck out at him, and knocked the flashlight so hard it bounced and rolled into the ravine, twirling and spinning through the bush until it was nothing more than a glowworm in lantana, far, far below, and they had to walk home in dark and bitter silence.

  I’m sorry, Dial, the boy said.

  That’s OK. I’m sorry too. She could feel his frailty, his beating small boy heart.

  Did you hurt your hand.

  She could not speak, shaking her head in the dark, shamed by him.

  In the hut he showed her what he had been carrying on his back, papaya and melon and pumpkin and eggplant. As he lay the gifts across the table she lit the bright hissing propane and saw his sideways smile.

  So, she said, as she set to work on dinner. What did you and Trevor talk about?

  Nothing much, he said.

  Did you have a nice time?

  It was OK.

  She was dumb enough to be hurt by his reticence. She was smart enough to know that it was dumb. She made a ratatouille but he was asleep before it was ready, his arm thrown sideways off his cushion, his wide red-lipped mouth almost exactly like his father’s. He was about a billion dollars filled with buzzing secrets and she told him, quietly, secretly, she loved him, and carried him off to the other hut where it was easier to get him into bed.

  32

  He said it was OK, but it was not. In truth the sun had been hot beyond belief. It burned clear through his shirt. He had dragged the sled backward and forward on that sawdust path about a hundred times at least, the load bucking and kicking behind him and the rope sawing across his chest and arms, as if it could slice away his feelings like lamb fat off a chop. When all the cauliflowers were mulched he went on to the next bed. How long this took he did not know.

  Smoke-oh!

  Sir?

  We take a break.

  The heat made Trevor look like no one the boy had ever seen in his entire life-a mud man, the trunk of a tree, a watermelon with no waist or hips. He smeared his red face with the back of his black hand and inspected the boy’s work. He did not say well done or thank you.

  You want to wash?

  The boy was not going to get naked here, no way. He said, What?

  Trevor pointed to the shower, right out in the open in a kind of pit beneath a concrete tank.

  The boy said, I’m OK.

  Just the same he followed Trevor out of the sun, under the roof where it smelled of sawdust and dirt and something sweet and drunk like a burrow.

  Trevor showered and came back in his sarong, his brown hair wet and doggy short, and he shook himself and sprayed the boy’s dusty skin with water drops. The boy would have liked a nice cold glass of milk. He asked for water but was told to use a garden hose which was black and beat-up and taped together. The water came out cold enough, and he let it spill down his legs on purpose and rubbed some on his face and wiped his muddy hands on his shorts.

  Trevor asked him did he like watermelon.

  I don’t mind, he said.

  Sit up there. You know what that chair is?

  The chair was strange and scary. He shook his head.

  Don’t they have barbers in New York?

  They have most things, he said.

  Trevor was staring above his eyes. The boy knew his blond hair showed at the roots of his disguise.

  Trevor asked, You don’t know what a barber is?

  The boy just waited while he got looked at.

  No?

  Trevor set up a card table and on this he placed a watermelon and a loaf of bread and a bowl of olives. He held up a single olive between his thumb and forefinger and this made the boy think of his grandma and her six o’clock martini. He made the best damned martinis in Sullivan County. She said so.

  You know what this is?

  It’s an olive.

  You eat it with the bread and watermelon.

  The boy knew that was wrong.

  So, said Trevor, with his face pushed deep in the melon like an animal. So Dial’s your mummy. What about your dad. Is he in America?

  The boy took a big bite of bread and chewed.

  I’m an orphan, Trevor said. He wiped his face with the back of his thick arm. You know what an orphan is?

  The boy made himself busy with an olive. It was black, not green, and pointy at one end. He spat the pit into his hand.

  It means you haven’t got a mother or a father. Do you know where I’m from?

  The boy took a bite of melon, just to have his mouth full. He should not have been left alone with Trevor.

 
Trevor fed himself olives from the bottom of his fist. You’re a very lucky boy, he said at last.

  The watermelon and olive tasted wrong and good, salt and sweet.

  You sad at night?

  What?

  Trevor’s eyes were small but they were bright and sort of wet looking. He blew out his olive pits, fierce like spitballs. You sad at night, I said.

  The boy stared at him, his throat burning.

  Ask me about my father? Trevor demanded.

  The boy was frightened now.

  I haven’t got one, said Trevor. Ask me about my mother?

  Don’t you have a mother?

  Fuck them all, Trevor said. Don’t worry. Look at where I am. He pointed with his knife and they looked together at the piles of stuff, the view.

  When this is done, son, this will be a fortress. I’ve got twenty thousand gallons of water in those tanks. I can have a bloody fountain in the middle of my house. I have fresh veggies, good dope. No one can touch me, man, you understand me. No one knows I even exist. They can’t see me with satellites. I am totally a fucking orphan. That’s the silver lining. Do you understand?

  I guess.

  So she split up from your dad?

  He’s coming here, the boy said very quickly, he’s coming pretty soon. He’s working right now and he can’t come till that’s done.

  What sort of work is that?

  I’m not allowed to say.

  He’s in jail?

  What?

  He’s doing time?

  He went to Harvard, said the boy. He knew it was a powerful thing to say.

  Trevor clicked his tongue and shook his head.

  The boy said, We should probably get back to work now.

  You want to do more?

  I don’t mind.

  So he was taught how to throw the watermelon peel in the compost and they worked a good while in the hot sun. Then Trevor decided it was enough so the boy had a shower and put his shorts back on while he was wet.

  You want to see something good?

  I don’t know, he said.

  Say yes, said Trevor, it’s a gift.

  As it happened the boy already had a gift, ten dollars he had seen on Trevor’s workbench. He slipped the bright blue bill in the pocket with his stuff. Come on, said Trevor, and the boy followed him through the fallen bark, carrying his gift, while the dry sticks exploded like angry fireworks beneath his feet.

  Tit for tat you dirty rat, feed you to the old tomcat.

  They set off along the saddle which was gentle enough at first but then became steep and rough with broken shale like scales, the spine of some old scabby dragon. Then they came out into sunlight and crossed over into a high flat field with feathery grass and purple seeds which shone like silver. Through the waving blades the boy imagined he could see paler yellow lines like grown-over paths or car tires, but maybe he was wrong. He listened to the swish of the seeds brushing against his skin. His eyes were mostly down, looking out for snakes.

  What was he going to be shown? Something relating to his father.

  Soon there was a barbed-wire fence. The posts were gray and bearded with pale green lichen. The wire was a chocolate brown except someone had added a few shiny new bits to make a puzzle of loops and levers so that the fence could be opened and closed like a boneless gate. After that the land fell away to a small flat where baby trees were growing, pale yellow flowers and tough old leaves that tore like leather.

  Wattle, said the man.

  The boy did not want to go any farther but he was afraid to be left behind and he hurried after Trevor until they came to a high sort of knob or wart about the size of a small house, and this was where the man stopped, retying his sarong, and sniffing around him like a dog.

  What are we going to do now?

  Trevor’s eyes were small and very blue and when they turned to look at him they were bright and glassy and the boy was afraid he would get caught for stealing. Without a word Trevor took his hand and led him around the base of the wart, through some snaky-looking grass, then to a pile of dead branches. He held apart the twigs and branches meaning the boy should go in. He did not want to.

  Where are we going? His throat was kind of scratchy dry. He did not know what a man would want to show a boy.

  Trevor gave him a little push and so he went ahead and found a rough shed covered with the exact same net that guarded Trevor’s house except here it was threaded with dead vines and saplings like a trash pile.

  The boy thought, She should not have left me alone.

  Go on, said Trevor. Nothing’s going to bite you.

  Inside this shell the boy found a very pretty pale blue car, its axles set on wooden blocks. There was three or four feet between the car and the netting so there was room to admire it properly.

  You know what sort of car this is?

  No, said the boy, generally relieved.

  You like it.

  It’s cool, Trevor.

  It was dark and strange inside the net, not scary, not at all-the car was so silvery, shiny blue, like ice, or a fall sky. You could also smell the cleaning products and see the little starbursts of sunlight-headlight rims inside the wild stick nest.

  It’s got huge fucking petrol tanks, said Trevor. It used to be a rally car. You can drive seven hundred miles in this without stopping. Trevor made a pistol with his finger. Bang, he said. You want to fire it up?

  What?

  Start the engine.

  Thank you, Trevor.

  The door wasn’t even locked. The boy climbed up first and slid across behind the wheel.

  See the key? Just turn it.

  That’s all he did and the engine came to life and Trevor showed him how to get down on the floor and push the pedal to make the engine go real loud. It was clean down there, no dust, nothing but a silver coin which he took and put in the pocket with the paper money. After a while he got sick of being on the floor so they took a brick from the backseat and rested it on the pedal.

  Got to keep the battery charged. Trevor explained how that worked. He might as well remember this if he was going to be responsible for Adam’s shitty Peugeot.

  The boy did not say he was going home. He learned about the generator and they both squatted in the bush some distance off watching the exhaust smoke drift out into the sunlight and disappear. Trevor produced tobacco from the waist of his sarong and began to roll a cigarette.

  Everyone thinks that the road stops up at my place, Trevor said. You look at a map, that’s what it shows. You ask the police, that’s what they’ll tell you, but none of that is true.

  The boy paid attention to the police.

  There’s an old survey road all the way through here. This is my back door, you understand? I can drive the way we’ve walked. It’s all passable now. There’s nothing to stop me coming out on the Bruce Highway just before Eumundi. So when they come for me, Trevor said, I’m out of here. I’m an orphan, dig it. This is why you need to know me. We learn how to look after ourselves.

  I’m not an orphan, said the boy. I’m not!

  Hey, take it easy. Trevor ruffled his hair.

  The boy pulled away. He felt the man’s upset, his eyes traveling angrily across his scalp, although maybe this was just his imagination.

  I’m not going to hurt you, said the man.

  My dad would kill you, said the boy.

  He’s your dad, said the man. What choice would he have?

  33

  The boy’s skin got dark as tree bark. He walked up the hill barefoot. Dial was left below, not knowing what to do. She was waiting, for what, for nothing. Outside the open windows the world was green, fecund, everything rotting and being born, but she did not know how to garden and she got herself trapped in the hut with its miserable yellow moisture barrier between the rustic clapboard and the inside frame. Inside the hut was worse than the place she had been born in-rickety, cobwebbed, no straight line or corner and everything made poisonous looking by the yellow shiny paper. Thi
s was the alternative architecture, its most reliable component manufactured by Dow Chemical, Monsanto, 3M.

  She made herself drive the car. She had to go somewhere, but she set off along Remus Creek Road not knowing where that might be.

  In Nambour she drove past the police station twice. She parked half a block away, still uncertain. Her mouth was dry; she felt sick with the smell of automotive plastics. She locked the car with the windows up, her hands trembling as she did so.

  She planned to take one step, then another. She had brought her passport with her. She did not know which way led back to Brisbane.

  She came upon a newsagent with a crouching dark veranda and a low doorway. She had planned to ask which way was south but instead she saw the walls were stacked with pulp fiction. She asked if they might have The Sea-Wolf, and having politely considered Sea of Troubles and Sea Babes, she was directed to a dusty lending library in the School of Arts. The library was useless but the librarian had heard there was a wonderful bookstore at Noosa Junction although she had never been there personally.

  What an awful place to spend your life.

  Heading back to Yandina, she began to drive more slowly as if tempting something to happen to her, slowing in front of bullying gravel trucks, daring them to destroy her. Approaching the turnoff to Remus Creek Road she found she could not do it. She headed another mile, then three. Somewhere near Eumundi she pulled off the road and sat there with the engine running.

  She was parked across a rough sort of track leading into the scraggy bush. Through the smeary windshield she could make out piles of sawdust, some stacks of fresh-cut timber held in racks. There were two abandoned cars, an open-walled shed that might have been the mill and a wiry little man, maybe sixty years of age, who now came out to look at her. He wore shorts and an apron which stopped just above his leathery knees.