by Tony Birch
She read the inscription on the headstone: ‘Miss Annie House. She’s being well cared for. House. I’ve always liked to think about that when I walk by this way. It’s comforting to think that she is resting in a house. Don’t you think so?’
It was a weird question and I didn’t know how to answer it. She coughed and buttoned her coat as if she’d been bitten by the cold. The sun was almost down but it was still hot.
‘Let me give you some advice, young man. I would not be poking around in there too deeply, if I were you.’
She looked down at the piece of wire I was holding. It started vibrating as my hand shook. I threw it on the ground just as something sprung from the hole in the grave and flashed by me. I screamed out and felt a shiver through my body as something brushed against the side of my leg. The old woman laughed out loud. I turned to see a small red fox sprinting along the lane. It disappeared into a thorny bush up ahead of us.
When I looked back the old woman had turned away from me and disappeared behind a headstone.
I searched up and down the lanes of the cemetery for Rachel but couldn’t find her. I was almost back at the gates when I heard her calling my name. I yelled back and followed her voice, along a line of trees, through a patch of weeds and a pile of garden rubbish. She had made her way to another section of the cemetery. It was clean and tidy and the graves were mostly new. They were marked with brass plates set in slabs of concrete. Some had fresh flowers on them.
Rachel was kneeling on the ground reading names and dates and holding the bunch of faded flowers in her hand.
‘What are you doing there?’
She laughed at me. ‘Jesse. You’re all white in the face, and your hair is sticking up in the air. Did you see a ghost or something?’
‘Don’t be stupid. I didn’t see anything.’
She was sitting in front of the grave of two children, a boy and a girl. Stuffed animal toys had been placed around their names. The toys were covered in dirt, parts of their noses and ears had been eaten away and their insides were tumbling out. Rachel picked up one of the toys. It had an eye missing.
‘Is this a donkey, Jesse? Do you think?’
‘Don’t know. Maybe. Or it could be a dinosaur. Or a dog.’
‘Can I take this one with me? I’d like to clean it and fix it up. Maybe Gwen could sew a new eye for me.’
I looked down at the sorry-looking animal. ‘You can take it if you want to, Rachel. But I’d sneak it, if I were you. I wouldn’t be asking Gwen to fix it up. She’ll probably throw it out of the car window when she sees how dirty it is. And if you do take it, you have to leave something for those kids.’
She held up the flowers. ‘What about these?’
‘Would you want someone putting that ratty bunch of flowers on your grave if you were dead?’
Rachel dropped the flowers and looked around for something she could leave in exchange. She ran across the dry ground to a large pine, picked up pine cones from under the tree until both arms were full, and laid them at the side of the grave in the shape of a heart.
‘This is a boy and a girl, a brother and a sister, just like us, Jesse. But we’re alive.’
‘Yep. We’re alive.’
‘Jesse, when we get old, and when we die, do you reckon we’ll be together forever, like this?’
‘Rachel, we don’t have time to be talking about that sort of stuff. We’ve got to be going. That Gus fella must have fixed the car by now. Gwen’ll be waiting for us.’
She picked up the stuffed toy, lifted her t-shirt and shoved it down the front of her jeans. ‘Is this a good place to hide it, Jesse?’ She smiled and grabbed the bunch of flowers.
‘Well, it looks like you’ve got an alien about to explode from your guts, like in that movie we saw that time. Is that the look you’re going for? We’ve got to go, Rache. Or we’re in trouble.’
The car had been shifted from the street to the servo. Gwen was sitting in the back seat of the car and Gus was hitching up his dirty overalls. I could tell that they’d been up to something, but didn’t want to think too much about it. Rachel stopped at the open back window of the car and offered Gwen the flowers.
‘I picked these for you.’
Gwen turned her nose up. ‘Where’d you get them?’
‘At the cemetery. It’s behind the garden wall there.’
‘You stole those from a grave?’
Rachel looked over at me, worried. I stuck my head in the other side of the car. ‘No, she didn’t steal them. They were blowing along the ground. I picked them up and gave them to her. They don’t belong to anyone.’
‘It don’t matter where you found them. They’re from the cemetery and that’s bad karma.’
Gwen was always going on about karma, good and bad. Just like our luck, we only got the bad.
‘You put those flowers in this car and we’ll end up in a smash. It could kill us all. Now chuck them away.’
Rachel dropped her bottom lip. ‘Chuck them away?’
‘That’s what I said.’
Gus was wiping his hands with his dirty hanky. ‘Oh, don’t you go throwing them away, young lady. I’ll take my chance with them. Things couldn’t get any worse around here. I’ll put them in a vase in my office.’
Rachel smiled and offered him the flowers. ‘You don’t need a vase because you don’t have to water them. They’re not real.’
‘Even better then.’
Gwen got out of the back of the car and jumped into the driver’s seat. Gus leaned against the door.
‘Keep heading this way you’ll drive through another town, Connelly. It’s even smaller than this place, if you can believe it. After that you meet up with the highway again. A few clicks down the road and you’re on your way. You’ve got a full tank and I’ve topped the jerry up for you. It’s in the boot.’
He waved to Rachel and me. ‘Good luck, kids.’
‘Will we need it?’ Gwen laughed, nervously.
‘Oh yeah, you will. If the fuel line blocks up on you again, you can forget about making it back to Melbourne. The more petrol you use up, the closer you get to the shit in the bottom of the tank. So it can only get worse. Sorry, love.’
He looked along the road. It was just about dark. ‘But, when luck’s all you’ve got, well, you go with it till it runs out. That’s what I’ve always done. It’s all the advice I can offer you.’
He tapped the roof of the car, said goodbye, and headed back along the footpath swinging the toolbox by his side.
‘He a nice fella?’ I asked Gwen, as we drove past him.
‘Don’t know if he’s nice. But he’s harmless. Can’t expect a lot more than that from a bloke.’
The large trees on both sides of the road crowded in on us. It was hard to make out the road, even with the high beam on. Gwen crouched over the steering wheel and just about stuck her face against the windscreen. At least the car was running okay. By the time we got to the next town, which must have been Connelly, it was pitch black. Gwen braked hard when she spotted something up ahead. She asked if I could see anything. I couldn’t, not at first, but then I saw something moving. It was a horse, standing in the middle of the road. As we pulled up, it lowered its head and looked through the window at us. It had a dark head with a white band running from the top of its forehead to the tip of its nose. Gwen unwound her window to get a better look.
‘Fuck. This is spooky. Hey, horse. Get off the road.’
‘A horse,’ Rachel squealed. ‘Can I get out and pat it?’
‘No, you can’t. Stay where you are.’
She tooted the horn but it still wouldn’t move. ‘What do you reckon I should do, Jesse?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Is that all you can say? Dunno? It’s the only answer I ever get out of you.’
‘What do you want me to say? I’ve never seen a horse on the road before.’
She had to blast the horn a few times more before the horse finally trotted off.
After we passed the horse I saw a single light shining from the front veranda of a house. It was so close to the road that, had I stuck my arm out the window of the car, I could have touched the front fence. An old man wrapped in a blanket was sitting on the veranda in a rocking chair under the light. He had thin white hair down to his shoulders and his face was a deathly grey colour. He looked more like a ghost than a man.
‘Did you see that?’ I asked Gwen.
‘See what? The horse?’
‘No, the man.’
‘What man?’
‘Don’t matter.’
By the time I turned and looked again the house had faded into the dark.
We were soon back on the highway. A road sign said we were three hundred and sixty kilometres out of Melbourne. Gwen was sitting just on eighty. I could add up well enough to know that if the car kept running we’d be there in less than five hours.
I had no idea what Gwen had planned for us when we got back to Melbourne. Or if she had a plan at all. But I knew that once we were back in the city we’d become invisible. It was the way it had always been for us. Gwen was always warning us about the police and welfare, and to stay away from anyone asking too many questions. We’d always got about on our own, wandering the streets, searching out new adventures, and no one had asked us a single question. It was like we weren’t there at all.
If it was just Rachel and me I’d head straight for Pop’s place. We wouldn’t be doing that with Gwen. She hated him as much as I reckon he hated her. He’d never said so, but I’m pretty sure he did. If we could just get away from Gwen I’d head there.
I felt tired and rested my head against the back of the seat and closed my eyes. I could feel the road through my body as I listened closely to the sound of the motor. It sputtered a little now and then, but didn’t seem to lose any speed. I started to relax for the first time since we’d left the motel. Gwen must have felt okay too. I could hear her humming a tune from the radio as I drifted off.
I had a dream about Rachel and me. We were back at the farmhouse outside Melbourne, sitting in the yard, thinking about Jon and how much we missed him. It was night and she was showing off her bloodied thumb and begging me to promise that I’d take care of her and never leave her on her own. And I did promise, over and over again, but it didn’t stop her from getting upset. She ran out of the yard screaming, with me running after her. I followed her round to the front of the house and out the gate. She ran onto the road at the same time that a huge truck, a road train, was coming. Its lights were a dirty yellow colour and shaped like diamonds. As I reached out to grab hold of Rachel we both crashed to the road. I heard the truck brake hard and looked up as it was about to run over the top of us.
I woke with a fright. Rachel was holding onto me as tight as she could. She had her face buried in my chest and was crying. I pushed her away and told her to sit up.
‘Why you crying?’
‘Because I had bad a dream.’
‘So did I. What happened in yours?’
‘I can’t remember. I just know it was scary. I’m afraid, Jesse.’
‘Well, don’t be. We’ll be home soon.’
She put her arms around me. ‘Where’s home?’
I wanted to say Pop’s, but didn’t, in case Gwen was listening. ‘We’ll work that out when we get there. Now go back to sleep.’
She rested her head against my chest and was asleep again within a couple of minutes.
When we rounded the next bend I saw an outline of what looked like a giant tree on the side of the highway. As we drove by it got bigger. It was a strange shape for a tree. The trunk was too fat and as I looked up it seemed to have ears. I shook my head to be sure I wasn’t dreaming again. It was a giant koala, taller than the tallest gum trees around it. I looked over at Gwen, to see if she’d noticed it, but she hadn’t taken her eyes off the road.
The car started bucking again, followed by exhaust farts and shotgun backfiring. I knew straightaway that we were in trouble. Gwen pumped the accelerator as hard as she could. The car roared back to life for a few seconds, before it slowed then stopped and rolled backwards.
She grabbed the handbrake, rested her head on the steering wheel and swore to herself. She stuck her head out the window just as a truck roared by and jolted the car. She turned around, looked down at Rachel sound asleep, and then at me.
‘We can’t stay here. It’s dangerous. We’ll end up with a truck buried up our arse. Got any ideas?’
‘Maybe I could get out and push while you steer? It looks like there’s a downhill bit up ahead. Maybe we could roll for a bit, like we did getting into that other town?’
‘Push this on your own? Not a hope.’
She punched herself in the side of the head a couple of times, which couldn’t help her sorting things out, but I knew better than to say so.
She laughed. ‘When’d you last pray?’
‘When we were at Pop’s house. We prayed before we ate our tea. And he prayed every night.’
‘Bullshit. Your grandfather prayed? Every night?’
‘Yep. On his hands and knees.’
‘Well, fuck me.’
She laughed again, more like a giggle that Rachel might make. ‘Well, let’s pray that this old girl has some spunk left in her.’
She turned the key in the ignition and put her foot down. The explosion from the exhaust was loud enough to wake Rachel. She sat up, startled, and searched around the car. She didn’t know where she was. Gwen was revving the guts out of the motor but we were getting nowhere.
‘The handbrake,’ I yelled, when I worked out what was wrong. ‘You’ve still got the handbrake on.’
As soon as she let go of the handbrake the car jumped forward and sped along the highway, grunting and farting some more as we went. I could see lights in the distance.
‘There’s something over there.’
Gwen squinted as she looked through the windscreen. ‘Looks like a town. Keep your eyes open for a road sign or something.’
We rounded a bend and saw the turn-off to the town. We were about to take it when the Commodore died for the last time, quietly. The motor creaked like a bag of old bones. We were down to less than ten ks an hour and slowing. Gwen flicked the high beam on and off a couple of times. She spotted a break in the road and steered the car off the highway onto a gravel track. We followed it into an open yard surrounded by a wire fence. We pulled up alongside a battered shipping container just as the motor let out a final breath and crawled to a stop.
Gwen rested her head on the seat and stared up at the roof.
‘Why we stopping here?’ Rachel asked. ‘I don’t think I like it here.’
I jabbed her in the ribs to get her to shut up.
Gwen opened the door and walked across the yard. I got out too, leaving Rachel lying across the back seat. A full moon broke through the clouds, low in the sky between a wheat silo and a tin shed. I could see a railway line, signal lights and a narrow platform. Gwen asked if I knew where we might be.
‘A wheat depot, maybe?’
She walked over to the shipping container and tried the door. It was padlocked.
‘Well, we can’t do nothing tonight. We’ll have to sleep in the car and see what we can come up with in the morning. We’ve got that stuff from the motel. Help me with it.’
‘Maybe we could pour some of the petrol from the jerry can into the tank,’ I said. ‘It might get us going again.’
‘No. That fella, Gus, had filled the tank again. The way it must have been pissing out, half a jerry can wouldn’t get us much further than back on the highway.’
She opened the back door of the car and threw a blanket over Rachel. I got in next to her. I’d grabbed three packets of sweet biscuits from the boot and a bottle of water for each of us. Gwen took one of the waters but didn’t bother with the biscuits, so Rachel and me divided the third packet between us.
I ate my biscuits as I tried working out where Ray and Limbo might be. They’d have got back to the motel and would know the money was gone, and that we’d taken it. They’d come looking, for sure. I just hoped they wouldn’t know where to find us.
Gwen lay across the front seat of the car and moved her arse around the gear stick, trying to get comfortable. I stuck a pillow in the corner and rested my head against it, while Rachel stretched out along the back seat and stuck her dirty feet in my lap. Normally I’d have told her to get them off but it would have been a bad time to start fighting with her.
She coughed and sneezed. She’d always hated sleeping on the side of the road and whenever she got anxious over something she was fidgety. She pulled more than her share of the blanket over herself and started whimpering. Gwen ignored her by pulling her blanket over her own head. Rachel cried a little louder to get her attention, so Gwen called across the seat at her to be quiet. When she wouldn’t stop, Gwen sat up, threw her blanket on the floor and climbed into the back seat with us. She was angry. I thought she was about to whack Rachel in the face. Instead, she squeezed in between us and put an arm around her.
‘What’s wrong, little sister?’
‘I’m frightened.’
‘Hey, don’t be. You saw that sign for the town, didn’t you?’
‘Nope. I didn’t see anything.’
‘Well, there is a town there, and I bet there’s a pub in the main street. Every town has a pub, even the little ones. Tomorrow morning I’ll walk in and get some work behind the bar. We’ll be out of here in a couple of days. You’ll see.’
‘And what will we do? While you’re at the pub?’ Rachel asked.
Gwen looked out through the windscreen before she answered.
‘I don’t know. You’ll be here with Jesse. He’ll look after you. Won’t you, Jess? Jesse?’