His Illegal Self

by Peter Carey

  You honked.

  It was a mistake, he said, grabbing the blanket back.

  How could it be a mistake, baby? She lay her hand on his shoulder and he felt tears rising.

  I thought it had two points to it, he said, sitting up.

  What?

  The horn, Dial. Two points on it.

  I don’t get it.

  Well she would not get it, he thought. She never would get it. She was not mechanical but he couldn’t say that or she would get all pissed.

  A first and second, he said. That’s all.

  He could see her not listening to him and he thought that his grandma would have known-there are the two pressure points on the trigger of the.22 and the car had two points on the key and he had just thought there were two points on the horn but the more he tried to make it clear the more she thought he was lying.

  You want me to get caught, she said.

  He dropped his blanket enough to hit her, shush her, to make her love him. She held his hand. It’s OK, she said. It’s natural.

  He tugged himself free. I’m not like that.

  We’re all like that, she said.

  But he was not like that at all. He stole some money, that was all. Dial, he said, I don’t want you caught. What would happen to me then?

  She brushed his hair back from his eyes as if what he said was nothing. You can’t know what you feel, she said.

  I can know what I feel, Dial. You can’t, that’s all. You can’t know.

  It’s not your fault.

  I do know how I feel.

  You want to go home, baby. Of course you do. She held out her arms to him and he crawled onto her lap, his head between her breasts, and she reached across and wound the quilt around them both up tight around his shoulders, swaddling him tight against her.

  If you were grown up you’d know you honked that horn for a reason.

  It was a mistake, he said, but he was soothed now, not wanting anything more than to be loved.

  Because you’re angry with Trevor, or with me. If you were grown up, that would be clear to you. It feels like a mistake, but it wasn’t. You needed someone to take you home. Shush. It’s not wrong. You’ve been stolen from your grandma. It’s no one’s fault.

  She could not know-it was so much worse than that. He wished she would just be quiet and stroke him till he fell asleep.

  We’ve got to figure this out. She rubbed his head. What’s best for all of us.

  You do it. He yawned. You decide what’s best.

  All your life depends on it, she said. I can’t do this on my own. You have to help me. The thing is, she said, you’re rich.

  I guess. I don’t know.

  You must be. Your mother doesn’t have sisters or brothers. Your grandma is a Daschle and Daschle Kent is a private company.

  I don’t know what that is. Dial, I don’t care about money.

  There are millions of dollars of artworks in the apartment.

  He did not care.

  On Park Avenue. Baby, you will have a really nice life, baby, with a nice apartment, lovely paintings most of all. And Kenoza Lake.

  He blocked his ears.

  Nice things, OK.

  Only years later would he understand; she was a socialist. What could she have been thinking?

  You don’t know, he said. You don’t know anything about me.

  That’s why you have to help me decide for you.

  I don’t know what you mean, he said.

  We have to get you back to Grandma, she said. That’s it. That’s all there is. We’ve been so stupid, but we love you, baby, do you understand?

  He understood enough to fall asleep. In the morning he woke up in the other hut with his nose pressed against her shoulder.

  49

  Trevor had iris-blue and yellow bruises on his back but now that there was a plan to save the boy he came visiting with vegetables, in daylight. Avoiding the track which would have taken him past Rebecca’s, he forced his way through the sweaty tangle of the rain forest, emerging with drops of water on his brown skin, twigs in his hair, displaying a sleek ruddy animal health. He looked quite wonderful. He had always been like this of course but Dial now saw that he loved the boy, not in a temperate adult way, but in a good way nonetheless. He was not an enemy, so she let herself notice his skin, the limpid rather lovely pale blue eyes. She permitted him to turn off the propane light so they could not be seen from outer space and this, somehow, no longer seemed like a retreat from the Enlightenment. Also, it must be said, the candlelight was golden on her walls and the smoke rose into the shadows of the rafters and the little wishful shadow-bats flew in the back door and did a circle before flitting out the front. The boy seemed to settle, and a peace came on them all. They had done something decent and there would be a brief reward for it, not much, but more than she deserved, more probably than she would have had at Vassar.

  In the long mopoke nights when the boy was properly asleep she and Trevor Dobbs sat out on the deck and talked, and marijuana alone could not explain how a body that had previously seemed so strange and feral could now be both foreign and alluring, smelling of bark, the holes he dug, the dark green chard in his square muddy hands. She had wild hair but she was not wild and no matter what Time magazine said about her so-called generation she had only made love to one man in her life. She had been a loyal, lingering fool and she had no intention of involving herself with any more criminals, no matter how kind and principled they were. But she did kiss Trevor, more than once, and on one night fell asleep breathing that fragrant well of air between his neck and shoulder. There was a charge of violence around him but-the truth?-she did not mind it. Indeed she was familiar with this particular frisson, a little touch of fugu to the lips, not enough to kill her dead. And if anything surprised her about Trevor Dobbs, it was that he did not jump her-she might not know his heart exactly but there were few secrets between sarongs.

  She was a little achy, pleasantly aroused, it was enough. Even if it was a moment, she would take it.

  It was Trevor who suggested that they talk to Phil Warriner about how they might return the boy without endangering Dial.

  That she agreed was not because her precious Harvard standards had slipped-but there was no other choice.

  So Phil was summoned by whatever method Trevor used-it did not seem to involve telephones-and the lawyer finally arrived at the end of a wet day, a warm evening, still raining softly, little pools of water gathering in the banana leaves, then spilling in a crystal rush you would never tire of. Phil parked his Holden Monaro and Dial came out on the deck and watched him for a moment before she understood he was undressing, hanging his shirt and suit on a hanger like a traveling salesman before walking toward her up the rain-soft path, barefoot, bare bottomed, carrying nothing but his briefcase and what turned out to be a pack of Drum tobacco.

  Hi-yo, he called.

  Oh Christ, she thought.

  He came rather shyly into the hut, a big man with hairy thighs and shiny calves, and Trevor made no comment on his appearance. She knew the boy was lying up in the smoky loft pretending to nap, or maybe really napping-she could not tell. Phil sat his rain-wet backside on the dusty floor and took out a yellow pad and asked them questions and Dial looked him steadily in the eyes, anything to avoid the penis which was peeking between his crossed legs like a mushroom.

  Later she meant to ask Trevor what Phil imagined he was doing, but she never did. She supposed the lawyer, who had a lot of hippie clients, knew his business better than she did.

  The boy, of course, was peering down on the three Fates while they figured out his life. They were not Clotho who spins the Thread of Life or Lachesis who allots the length of the yarn, or Atropos who does the final deadly snip. They were, Dial thought, more Karlo and Slothos and Zappa. She could feel the boy’s intense attention.

  What did she call you? Phil asked. The nana?

  The what?

  The grandma.

  The boy heard this,
every word. He saw the gauze of light in front of the jacaranda, white ants getting born with silver wings.

  She called me Anna, said Dial, licking the three cigarette papers and joining them together like a hippie quilt.

  Anna Xenos?

  The boy never heard that name before. He saw Dial look up at him, but he was spying through the crochet rug. She could not see his eyes.

  That’s the first lesson, Phil said. Rich people don’t know the names of their servants.

  Not so fast, said Dial.

  You worked for her. She had no fucking idea who you were. Did she pay your taxes?

  I was off the books.

  See, said Phil, and he took the joint Dial gave him. He creased up his face to drag the smoke down into his lungs, curling up his toes. Some of the smoke stayed hanging around his furry sideburns like valley mist. The boy thought, No one will ever know what it is like to be here now.

  See, said Phil.

  What am I meant to see? asked Dial, laughing.

  They don’t know who you are.

  I don’t know who you are, said Dial and then all of them burst out laughing.

  The boy saw Trevor pat Dial on the knee. Dial picked something from his hair, a bug perhaps.

  You’re very sweet, Phil, said Dial. But they can easily find out who I am. I was at Harvard.

  It was not the first time the boy saw how that worked. Phil raised an eyebrow and took another toke.

  Fair enough, he said. Everyone was serious now.

  Also, there is Che.

  These guys are not as efficient as you think, said Phil. Really. They have a lot of trouble with their index cards at immigration. Ask Trevor if you want to know.

  Trevor looked sharply at Phil, then shrugged at Dial, sucking on his bottom lip.

  Phil, I don’t want to go to jail.

  Why should you go to jail? The boy’s mother asks for him. You do what she asks. She’s your employer.

  Former employer.

  Former, OK. But employer, on that day.

  It isn’t like that, Phil, said Dial. The boy’s mother was legally barred from access to her child. I stole the boy from his legal guardian.

  With her permission.

  Listen, Dial began.

  No, said Phil. He drew a line across his pad. Here’s what we’ll do.

  The boy saw this. He saw Dial look at him.

  I’ll be your lawyer, Phil said.

  OK.

  I’ll go and visit Mrs. Selkirk.

  You’ll go to New York?

  To Park Avenue. I’ll explain the situation as your adviser. I’ll represent your interests. You were acting on the legal guardian’s instructions.

  Phil, I went to Philly.

  OK, OK, very funny, but she has her, you know, accident. You take the kid to the father, but the father doesn’t want to know. By then you are accused of kidnapping. You get frightened. You run away. Dumb, but not criminal.

  Phil, you are so sweet, but this won’t work.

  I’m a lawyer.

  A conveyancing lawyer. That’s what you said before.

  You think I’m a moron, say so.

  Of course I don’t.

  Conveyancing, Phil nodded, wills, trusts. This is an inheritance issue. And even if I am a moron, you tell me someone else who is dumb enough to do this for you?

  How would you get there?

  You’d buy me a ticket.

  OK.

  I’d book into a hotel. I’d negotiate your case and check out the Village Vanguard, you know. Max Gordon. Why not? You can’t do anything from Remus Creek Road. You’ve got to move. You can’t move. You’re stuck.

  Phil, have you ever done anything like this before?

  Phil beamed. He raised his eyebrows and twisted up his mustache.

  This is lovely, he said.

  Really? said Dial, and the boy could hear her old sarcastic voice and he hoped they wouldn’t have a fight. He liked it how it was just fine, her picking twigs from Trevor’s hair.

  I wouldn’t be dead for quids, said Phil, exhaling.

  And what might that mean?

  It means that there is no amount of money you could pay me, said Phil-filling up his lungs again with smoke-no amount of money you could pay me that would persuade me not to be alive.

  And then they all laughed, the Fates, rolling around, stoned out of their gourds most likely.

  By then the boy was sleeping.

  50

  The word conspiracy was later attached to what happened on Remus Creek Road but in the weeks while Phil “prepared” himself to travel, the only conspiring the boy noticed was on the deck where he once saw Dial kiss Trevor late at night. Maybe also some noises in the dark.

  Early every morning Dial climbed up into the loft and they played poker and ate leftover dinner. He knew this was because he would soon go home, but once that had been decided, the weeks or months that followed were like a vacation and he no longer needed to worry that his grandma would die or that his dad would never be able to find him.

  He had bad dreams at night, but each new day brought a lot of Dial-type driving between the mountains and the coast, between one red phone box and another. These telephone boxes would finally be revealed as part of the conspiracy, but they hardly mattered to the boy. What he cared about was the beach, eating pearl perch, teaching Trevor how to swim. Why they drove so much, he did not ask, but they traveled the winding throw-up roads to Mapleton, Maleny, then down to the muddy river at Bli Bli, up to dry Pomona, back to Maroochy which was the name of a pretty aboriginal girl long ago. The boy occupied his rightful seat. Trevor lay across the backseat winding up his cyclone radio. He said that the engine block interfered with his reception-a falsehood that the boy would believe for twenty years-and he would not take the front seat if you paid him. He could not read but he knew everything-five men got caught breaking into the Watergate Hotel. B-52s were bombing Vietnam. The boy did not want to think about the war which seemed to have taken everything from him. He preferred to study the line between his chest and swimsuit to see how brown he was. Sometimes he lay on the dusty floor. Dial had a jade anklet. He watched how her foot moved, the stick shift too. He could do it better but was not allowed.

  You crazy thing, get out of there.

  They parked beside a red telephone box in the middle of the sugarcane on a bend in the road between Coolum and Yandina, and another above the surf at Peregian Beach.

  There was also a phone box in Pomona, the tiny rusty town where they first bought swimsuits from the thrift shop. Maybe Trevor used some twenty-cent coins from the phone money jar they carried with them everywhere. These phones had two buttons A and B; he did not try to work them. In Pomona Dial bought a black swimsuit covered with white flowers, some printed and others stitched onto her breasts. Trevor called her Mrs. Flower. Her skin grew dark quickly on account of she was a Greek with Turkish blood.

  The boy also got real dark, his hair bleaching white as white, as he persisted teaching Trevor how to breathe in water. No matter how sad you were, swimming always cleaned your soul. The boy said that to Trevor, those words exactly. He showed Trevor the dead man’s float, but the surf picked him up and dumped him and soon they were just running at the waves and it did not matter that the London orphan could not swim because he caught the waves, at Marcus, at Sunshine, Peregian, Coolum.

  Che, Trevor, Mrs. Flower, got dumped, got their faces pushed down into the sand and their legs kicked and tangled in the air and that was the point, that plus the feeling of the skin going tight across your back and face, and some days they were almost the only ones between Coolum and Sunshine. It was almost winter but completely perfect-no one else but a single leather-kneed geezer sweeping a bag across the wet sand to gather worms, they guessed; they did not know.

  Trevor loved a band called the Saints. He played them over and over: I’m from Brisbane and I’m rather plain. He carried a whole stalk of bananas beside him on the backseat and they ate them all day long, but wh
en the sun in the west touched the low clouds along the eastern horizon they danced and jumped under the cold shower in a trailer park and headed off in search of fish. Pearl perch. Red snapper. Reef fish. They found old codgers with missing fingers selling fish from the back of plywood vans on roads out of Noosa and Alexandra. And after that they drove back to the valley, which always lost its light before the world outside, and there Dial and Trevor cooked while the boy washed and cleaned the labels of the ice-cream cones to keep as souvenirs.

  He collected exactly eighteen of these papers, all identical, white and blue, and marked BUDERIM, and when they were washed he laid them flat on the deck and the next day they would dry and he would put them to one side. Other things he saved were shells, stones, dried grasshoppers. Obviously he was getting ready to say good-bye, but that did not occur to him just then and no one tried to tell him what he really felt.

  The three of them began to fix up Dial’s garden and although time is the element that makes a garden, the boy did not think of it in those terms. They drove to Wappa Dam with rakes and took the rich smelly carpet of weed for mulch. He got drenched in lake slime, hugging the wet bundles as they filled the trunk with them. The Peugeot sagged and water leaked behind them all the way back home.

  They borrowed a rotary hoe from the Puddinghead’s father, then broke up the clods by hand, their brown skin coated with sweat and mud. They wound string onto a stick and made the rows straight. They planted broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, parsley, rocket, spinach, silver beets, onions, carrots, radishes.

  The boy kept the seed packets, and in each one he placed a single seed and then sealed the packet with masking tape.

  It was hard to believe he was not already filled to bursting with regret, and when his brown back began to itch and peel, when he shed his powdered skin onto the Australian floor, Dial watched with her hand across her mouth.

  What is it, Dial?

  I’m good.

  Penny for your thoughts, Dial.

  Nothing really, she said. She could not have explained it to anyone, just motes of dust in sunlight, nothing anyone would ever see.