by Tony Birch
I was too tired to answer.
Early the next morning the sounds of a bird calling and tap-tapping woke me up. I opened one eye and saw a black bird perched on the bonnet of the car, pecking at the paint. It tilted its head to the side and looked at me. I sat up. It lifted its wings in the air, flapped a couple of times, and disappeared above the car.
My body was all stiff as I got out. The sky was clear and the morning was cool. I hobbled across the dirt in bare feet, to the back of the shipping container. A cloud of steam lifted into the air as I took a long piss. Gwen was sitting up awake when I got back to the car. She had the door open and was sucking the life out of a cigarette butt. She must have scavenged it from the ashtray. She looked through the windscreen at me as I walked around to her side of the car. Smoke hissed between the gap in her front teeth as she spoke.
‘We’ve stuffed up this time, haven’t we, Jesse?’
We? I shrugged my shoulders and didn’t answer.
Rachel rolled around inside her blanket a couple of times, sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. When Gwen told her she’d have to piss behind the container like I had, Rachel looked at her like it was the most disgusting idea she’d ever heard, which made no sense to me, as both of us had been forced to take a piss, and more, in plenty of places worse than we were in now.
‘I’m not going over there behind that box.’
‘Yes you are, Rachel. You’ll go to the toilet wherever I tell you to.’
Rachel filled her cheeks with air and let out what sounded like a fat man’s fart. ‘Well, I’m only going to pee then. That’s all I’m gonna do.’
Gwen held up her butt, took a final long hard drag and flicked it onto the gravel. ‘Jesus, Rachel. Piss or don’t piss. See if I fucken care.’
Rachel must have had to go in a hurry. She jumped out, slammed the door and ran behind the container. Gwen went to the boot and opened her case. She waved me away.
‘Shoo, Jesse. Don’t be perving on me. I’m getting changed here. I’m gonna walk into town and see what I can find.’
I lay on the bonnet of the car and caught some warm sun as I waited. I heard the boot close and her footsteps on the gravel. I looked up. She was wearing what she called her ‘lucky dress’. It was sleeveless and a red colour with a low neckline. I’d seen her in it a lot of times, but I can’t remember much luck coming with it.
I slid off the bonnet and walked down to the highway. The turn-off to the town was ahead in the distance. I looked back at her. She was fixing her hair in one of the side mirrors. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all if she’d walked away and never come back. She called me back to the car.
‘If anyone comes snooping around, you tell them we’ve broken down and that your father’ll be back soon. He’s gone to borrow some tools from a mechanic in town.’
‘My father?’
‘Yeah. Your father. Fucken play along, will ya? I don’t want anyone thinking there’s just a woman here with her two kids. There could be all sorts of creeps around.’
It didn’t look like there was anyone around, for miles.
She gave Rachel the same warning.
‘What about the toilet? What if I have to . . .’
Gwen didn’t seem to hear the question. She was too busy doing her lipstick in the mirror. When she’d finished she puckered her lips, stood up and jabbed the air with the lipstick as she spoke. She wanted to be sure that Rachel got the message.
‘Use your brains. Go where you have to. There’s plenty of toilet roll in the boot. Just don’t go too far from the car. And be sure your brother’s with you.’
She turned to me. ‘Get her a toilet roll and something to eat.’
I went to the back of the car and searched through the boot while Gwen grabbed her bag from the passenger seat.
She was about to walk off when Rachel called out, ‘Wait. Please, Gwen. Can I take a picture of you?’
She was holding the camera in her hands. She walked towards Gwen, stopped a few steps in front of her. ‘Smile.’
Gwen had never been able to resist getting her photo taken. She threw the bag over her shoulder with one hand, rested the other on her hip and pouted her lips like a model in a magazine. She held the pose until Rachel had snapped the picture. Before I knew what she was doing she grabbed hold of me and wrapped one arm tightly around my waist and planted a lipstick kiss on my cheek.
‘Take this one, of me with my toy boy.’
Rachel snapped the photo before I had time to wriggle free by pushing her away.
‘Take it easy, will you?’ she complained. ‘Come on, Rache. Another one of me.’
Rachel was busy looking at the camera. ‘No. I can’t. There’s only two pictures left. I have to save them.’
Gwen didn’t look too happy that Rachel might want to take a picture of someone other than her. ‘Save them for what? A birthday party or something?’
‘I don’t have birthday parties,’ Rachel fired back.
‘Suit yourself then. I’m off. I’ll see you two later.’
Gwen dropped the bag to her side, turned and walked away without bothering to say goodbye. I thought Rachel might chase after her, but she looked almost happy to see her go. She hopped into the front seat of the car and pretended to be driving.
‘Hey, Jesse. Where would you like to go? I’ll take you anywhere in the world.’
‘Alaska. I’ve always wanted to go there.’
‘Why?’
I looked across the highway, at the orange ball of sun lifting in the sky. ‘Cause it’s just about as far away from here as you can get. And because it’s going to be stinking hot again. In Alaska just about everything is frozen solid. In Alaska if you stand too long in the one spot your blood freezes and you die.’
‘You’re dumb sometimes, Jesse. Picking a place where you freeze to death.’
‘But I wouldn’t. I’d wear a fur coat and these pants and hats they have that are made out of seals and polar bears. And I’d live in an ice house, an igloo.’
She turned the steering wheel hard left. ‘I wouldn’t want to wear a polar bear. Or a seal. They’re cute. I’m going to England instead. To see the Queen. Like in that nursery rhyme.’
I left the driving to her and walked back out to the road. I watched closely as the red triangle of Gwen’s dress got smaller. It stopped for a bit and floated in the steam coming off the road. While I couldn’t make out her face, I was pretty sure she’d turned around and looked back at me. The triangle moved forward again and, bit by bit, it vanished.
Once she was out of sight I went back to the car and told Rachel she could pretend that she was driving the car back to Melbourne while I took a look around the yard. She let go of the wheel.
‘I’ve run out of petrol and can’t get to England. It’s too far. Anyway, Gwen said we weren’t to go away. You have to stay here with me.’
‘I don’t care what she said. She’s not here. And you don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I’m taking a look around on my own.’
‘Good. I don’t want to come.’
‘And I don’t care.’
I’d taken only a few steps when I heard the car door creak open, followed by Rachel’s footsteps scraping through the gravel. ‘I thought you said you weren’t coming?’
She had the toilet roll in her hand. ‘I have to come because I need to go, Jesse. Real bad.’
Part of me wanted to keep fighting with her. At least it gave us something to do. She looked sad, like she might cry any minute. ‘Okay. Come on. We’ll find a place for you to go.’
We walked along the boundary fence on the far side of the yard. I didn’t want her going off into the bush. I remembered when I was in school one time the teacher had drawn a bare arse on the blackboard. All the kids laughed, until he drew a snake with a
long forked tongue biting the arse. He warned us not to go off for a shit in the bush without taking a good look around.
I told Rachel the story as we followed the fence, which was probably a mistake because she looked terrified.
‘I don’t know where you can go, Rachel. Back behind the container looks like the only spot.’
She shook her head. ‘Nope. I don’t want to go there. Somebody might see me.’
‘From where?’
‘From the road,’ she said, pointing.
‘The road? Couldn’t see you from there even if they had the binoculars.’
I tried the door to the shed next to the silo. We’d struck our first piece of good luck since leaving Adelaide. The door opened and there was a toilet in the corner. Rachel stood in the doorway as I walked over and looked into the bowl. What was left of a long-dead rat sat in the bottom.
‘Is it okay to go, Jesse?’
I had to get rid of the rat before Rachel saw it and started screaming. ‘Yeah. It’s great. But just stay there for a bit. I’ll just make sure it’s clean. I don’t want you getting any germs.’
I pressed the button. After a few flushes the rat was gone and the bowl was clean enough. I took the toilet roll from Rachel and wiped down the seat with a few sheets. She was looking up at the corner of the roof, at a large spider web.
‘I don’t want to go here. Look at that.’
‘At what? It’s just an old web. There’s not even a spider living in it.’
‘He might be hiding. I’m not going.’
‘Okay then. If you won’t go here or behind the container you can go on the side of the road. Or maybe in the middle of the bush and have a snake bite you. Is that what you want? If you get bitten I won’t be sucking the poison out. Not down there. And then you’ll die. We’ll have to carry your body back to that town we stopped at before. And we’ll have to bury you with all the worms and spiders. More spiders back there than one old fella up in the corner of a shit house.’
Maybe it was because she was frightened over what I’d teased her about, or she was hungry, I’m not sure. But she started bawling and wouldn’t stop until I promised I’d stay with her while she sat on the bowl. I also had to promise that I’d look out for any spiders that might come down from the roof.
When she was done, I got her to scrub her hands as best she could under the tap on the wall, which wasn’t easy seeing as the water was almost black with dirt. We walked to the fence line then, behind the silo. There was a hole it, just big enough to climb through. I looked back at the car.
‘Wait here for me.’
I got the sports bag out of the case and went back to the shed to search around. A row of plastic drums were piled along one wall. They each had a large skull and crossbones printed on the front along with the word ‘POISON’. I tried taking the lid off one of the drums but it wouldn’t budge. I picked up a rusty screwdriver from the top of a workbench, stuck it under the lid and pushed down as hard as I could until the lid popped open. The drum was full of white powder. After emptying it behind the shed, I squeezed the bag inside, closed it again and put it back with the others. I walked back to the hole in the fence.
‘You coming?’
Rachel had her eye on the shed. ‘What was in that bag?’
‘Just some of my stuff.’
‘Your stuff? Why’d you put it in there?’
‘In case anyone comes while we’re away. I don’t want then knocking it off.’
‘What about my stuff? They could steal my things too.’
‘You don’t have anything worth stealing. You coming or not?’
‘You don’t either. Except the binoculars.’
‘That’s what you think.’
I hopped through the fence. As she climbed through after me, she caught a pocket of her jeans on a loose wire and ripped it. She pulled her t-shirt down, trying to cover the tear.
We walked through the paddocks behind the yard. There was a lot of junk lying around, bits and pieces of machinery, a water tank that had fallen over and rolled down a hill, and beer cans with what I was pretty sure were bullet holes through them. I picked one up, shook it and listened to the rattle of the bullet inside. Lying next to a dry dam, below the silo, was a bloated flyblown sheep with its insides torn out. It reminded me of a story I’d seen on TV about a drought, with pictures of hundreds of dead sheep being pushed into a ditch by a machine.
I picked up a couple of bullet shells from the ground near the sheep. It had been blasted to death rather than died of thirst. Rachel couldn’t put up with the bad smell and ran back up the hill to the yard. I put the shells in my pocket and followed her through the hole in the fence. She said she was hot and thirsty and headed back to the car.
I couldn’t think of anything better to do so I picked up some stones from the railway track and started pitching them at a ‘Beware of Trains’ sign on the platform. It took me three throws before I hit it, and only a couple more before I was bored.
I walked to the end of the platform where I could see a dirt track below me that followed the railway. I looked back at the car. Rachel was pulling a blanket from the back seat. I jumped down from the platform and followed the track. It ran between the railway and a row of trees. I’d walked for only a few minutes when the railway came to an end at a large open shed. It was empty. The walking track went on, along the side of the shed then it ended too, at a fence topped with barbed wire. I looked through the fence and could see a building with a pointed roof. I climbed a tree next to the fence, and moved my way through the branches until I had a good view.
I could hardly believe that I was looking at one of the pyramids from Egypt. A large statue of a lion was guarding its entrance. I could see the tops of other buildings in the distance. I got down from the tree and followed the fence to a gate, and a sign hanging from it that read ‘Welcome to Carson’s World in Miniature’. Through the fence I could see other wonders of the world.
I ran back along the track as fast as I could, calling Rachel’s name. When I reached her she was sitting on the blanket, resting against the car and laying the tarot cards out in front of her. She picked up one of the cards.
‘See this, Jesse? The Queen of Swords. She’s mine. I like her crown and the sword she’s carrying. If I had a sword I wouldn’t be afraid of anyone.’
‘Forget about the cards, Rache. I’ve got something better to show you. You said you wanted to drive all the way England. How would you like to see the Eiffel Tower on the way?’
‘You’re being stupid, Jesse.’
‘Do you want to see it or not? It’s true.’
‘You’re tricking me.’
‘No, I’m not. Promise.’
‘Can I bring the camera and take a picture?’
Carson’s World in Miniature was overgrown with weeds and most of buildings were falling down. We visited a Dutch windmill, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which was not leaning as bad as the Eiffel Tower was, and the Great Pyramids, although there was just the one I’d seen earlier from up in the tree. Rachel didn’t think any of them were worth one of shots she had left in the camera.
‘What’s wrong with this place?’ she asked, as she sat in one of the seats of a small Ferris wheel, going nowhere. ‘Maybe they had an earthquake here?’
‘I don’t think they have earthquakes round here. Looks like people gave up on it and left. It’s an abandoned world, like in science fiction.’
‘Where’s Australia then?’
‘What do you mean? We’re in it.’
‘But they should have made something special here. Of Australia.’
‘Well, they didn’t.’
I was wrong. They had made something special.
As we walked on, across the world, and were passing an African village with a couple of grass huts and ano
ther that had been burned to the ground, Rachel noticed something on a mound of dry grass up ahead.
‘What’s that?’
I wasn’t sure, but it looked like a giant dog turd.
‘Beats me.’
As we got closer we could see writing on the turd. The word ‘Uluru’ had been crossed out and replaced with ‘Ayers Rock’ and a Nazi swastika. It took me only two steps to climb to the top of the rock and look down on ‘The Canals of Venice’ on the other side. Venice was made up of a giant statue of a nude man with his dick missing, standing in a dam next to an oarless wooden boat floating in the water.
I walked down to the dam and stood at the water’s edge. The surface was covered in a green scum.
‘Let’s have a swim.’
Rachel bent down and put her hand in the water. ‘No. It’s too cold. And the water looks dirty.’
‘So what? I’m hot. I’m going in.’
I stripped down to my underpants and walked in until the water was above my knees. It was cold. I screamed out, ‘One-two-three’, took a deep breath and dived. When I stood up the water was around my chest. My arms and shoulders had turned green. I could hear a deep rumbling sound, way off in the distance. It made me nervous. ‘Can you hear that, Rache?’
She listened. ‘No, I can’t hear nothing. What is it, Jesse?’
‘Nothing,’ I answered, as the sound faded. ‘Forget it.’
Rachel took off her jeans and t-shirt, folded them neatly into a pile and laid them on a rock. She sat her camera on the pile of clothes, and splashed around in the shallows in her undies and singlet while I swam out to the middle of the dam, to where the boat was. I tried to climb aboard but couldn’t pull myself up, so took hold of a rope threaded through a ring at one end, and dragged the boat into the shallows and up onto the bank. It tired me out. I lay on the bank while Rachel got into the boat and pretended to be a pirate.
Between swims I skipped pebbles across the water. Rachel kept herself busy scoring for me. It was her job to count the number of skips of each stone I threw in my attempt to break what I’d announced as the ‘World Freshwater Tor-skipping Record’.