The Other Side of Beautiful

by Kim Lock

  Lying in the thick blackness in the back of the van, Mercy felt the liquid thud of her heart and her own blood. The dog was a warm weight on her lap. Eventually, she began to notice an ambient light filtering through the van’s grimy windows. A lone lamp-post over by the amenities block was throwing out a weak yellow pool of light. If she shifted her head a little, she could see out the open back door and up into the night sky. Gum trees made dark cracks like rivers through the landscape of stars. Despite the hour, a magpie sang softly then stopped, and now Mercy could hear another sound: a low, truncated grumbling. What was that? She listened harder. Snoring. Someone in one of the caravans was snoring.

  She exhaled, feeling her muscles soften, her heart slow. She listened to the snoring from the caravan and felt a bubble of amusement lift into her chest. It sounded like someone starting a chainsaw.

  Mercy snorted, then began to laugh. She clapped her hands over her mouth, not wanting to wake anyone, but realised no matter how hard she laughed she couldn’t possibly be any louder than that snoring guy, which made her laugh even harder. It was a weak-muscled, delirious kind of laughter. It was laughing-at-a-funeral laughter. Lying on the stiff foam mattress, she wept and giggled and wept again until she was breathless.

  And then, with the cold night air pouring in and her dog snuggled into her thighs, Mercy fell asleep.

  When Mercy woke again she was freezing. The back door was wide open and the inside of the van was a fridge. The sun was up and the birds were a riot of sound; she could hear the thump of caravan doors, the crunch of leisurely footsteps and murmured voices and above it all, the warble of the magpies. Morning sunlight filtered in through the van’s grimy windows and she wriggled herself into a tepid pool of it. All she had on was Eugene’s red Kombi T-shirt and Jose’s skinny jeans.

  Her phone read 7.02am. Although she lay there curled up and shivering, she had done it. She had gotten through the night.

  She made a hurried trip to the bathroom, during which the other campers, bundled in puffy vests and socks, called out greetings to her as she passed and she lifted a hand but largely ignored them. As she brushed her teeth, all she could think of was coffee. Hot, strong, creamy coffee.

  But of course, Mercy had no coffee. Nor had she a kettle, or milk, or even a cup from which to drink it. Back in the Hijet she considered the loaf of bread, thinking of toast, but had nothing with which to toast it. She also had no butter, jam or Vegemite.

  ‘Christ,’ Mercy muttered, the long, panic-filled night coming back to her in flashes. ‘Camping is not for the fainthearted.’ Dragging her fingers through her knotted hair, she pulled it up into a big messy bun that scraped along the van’s roof as she moved. She caught a whiff of her armpits and grimaced. Picking up her phone, she typed coffee, deodorant, butter, Vegemite, blanket, jacket.

  ‘Okay,’ she said to Wasabi. ‘Not toast. What else?’

  She picked up a can of baked beans, frowning at the label.

  ‘In “ham sauce”?’ She waggled the tin at the dog, who sat up with sincere interest. ‘I must have grabbed the tin without looking. Well, ham sauce it is, I guess. Now then.’ She regarded the gas bottle; it was heavy, and the tap made a sharp pfft noise as she tried it. Plenty of gas, at least. She turned to the single cooker. ‘How do we light this thing, you reckon?’ Then she said, ‘Oh, shit—what do we heat the beans in?’

  Mercy recalled a story she’d heard from the ED, when a young man had been admitted bleeding profusely from a ten-centimetre laceration to the forehead. One of his nostrils had also been ripped open and he had second-degree burns to a fair amount of his upper body. The man had decided to ‘go camping’ in his backyard. After he had built a roaring fire, he set a can of soup on the coals and a short while later the can had exploded, resulting in his trip to Emergency.

  Dropping to her knees on the floor, Mercy checked the cabinet, but other than the plastic ice-cream container of forks, spoon and blunt knives, it was empty. She looked into the second cabinet, beneath the gas-ring, but all that offered up was a curl of gas hose and a box of matches.

  Wasabi waited, head cocked. Any sense of accomplishment Mercy had felt upon waking and realising she had made it through the night was leaking away. Who was she kidding? She couldn’t do this. She was cold, hungry, sore and still tired. She was desperate for a cup of coffee, a shower and a hot meal.

  ‘All right, Wasabi,’ she said, slumping against the bed. ‘I think it’s time to admit—’

  She frowned. Leaning forward, she let herself fall back against the bed again.

  Yes, she’d definitely felt it. The bed made a hollow thunk.

  Turning around, Mercy put her fingers to the edge of the mattress and tugged. The mattress lifted up, revealing another cabinet space.

  ‘Why hadn’t I noticed this before?’ Filled with a rush of expectation, she propped the mattress against the wall and peered into the cabinet.

  It was empty.

  Mercy sagged. What did she expect? That someone would sell her a campervan filled with helpful self-sustaining supplies for only fifteen hundred bucks?

  She was about to slam the mattress back down when, outside, a vehicle started up and moved, sending a flare of sunlight from its windscreen straight into the back of the Hijet. Briefly lit up, a shape appeared out of the dark. Mercy shuffled along on her knees and found, buried in shadows at the end of the cabinet, a cardboard box.

  ‘What do we have here?’

  She lifted it out: plain brown cardboard, a little bigger than a shoebox. The top flaps were folded down into each other. Unlike the ice-cream container, this box didn’t rattle when she shook it, but it was too weighted to be empty. Scrawled in blue marker on one side were the words Jenny Cleggett. Mercy set the box on the floor and unfolded the flaps. Inside was a thick tuft of scrunched-down clear plastic, held fast with a rubber band. She paused, discomfort creeping over. Wasabi nosed the box.

  ‘No,’ she said, gently pushing the dog away.

  Carefully, she unrolled the plastic. At the sight of the pale grey grit she wanted to believe it was beach sand. Dry plaster. Anything else. But the larger pieces were unmistakeable. They were chunks of bone.

  It was a box of cremated remains. Mercy held in her lap the burned, ground-up skeleton of a human.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When people asked Mercy what drew her to study medicine, or, a little later, why she chose the specialty she did, she usually selected one of two answers to give: firstly, to get away from her mother; or secondly, because of her grandmother.

  The first answer she reserved for those she had known long enough and could delve into the whole sludgy mess of it or, conversely, those she had only just met and who could laugh it off—a flippant, throwaway comment. After all, mothers malign easily in this man’s world. But the second reason—because of her grandmother—Mercy used far more commonly. Both reasons held some truth, but neither held the whole truth on its own.

  The truth was, Mercy never knew exactly why she had chosen to study medicine. Indeed, it was almost a decade of intense study, long years of safely guaranteed reasons to be able to say, No, I can’t. But that wasn’t all of it. Maybe there were lots of reasons: would the prestige of medical school be the thing that finally made her mother proud? Could following in her father’s profession help her understand him better? Or perhaps there were no reasons at all besides the fact that her tertiary entrance ranking had been high enough. But one of the easiest answers to reach for was this: Mercy had chosen to learn the intricacies of the human body and its life-giving (or life-taking) forces because, growing up, she had spent countless hours secretly poring over the ashes of her mother’s dead mother.

  Mercy gaped into the box of cremated remains in her lap now and marvelled at how they looked exactly the same as her grandmother’s. Although technically they weren’t ashes—they didn’t have the silky, powdery appearance of wood ash—they were the carbonised leftovers of the skeleton once all the flesh, muscle, fat and fluid
s had been vaporised by flames. When the skeleton had cooled, it was swept into a container, put through a pulveriser and poured into a bag. Returned to the family was this coarse, grainy substance scattered through with shards of bone.

  And while Mercy held these remains in a plain, slightly battered cardboard box, her grandmother had been housed in a tall brass urn, kept behind a fogged glass door in the cabinet in the living room. Her mother had always kept the cabinet locked, but her mother had also thought Mercy didn’t know where the key was (in her mother’s sock drawer, buried under all the socks).

  Wasabi came forward to sniff the box again and Mercy let him. After all, he too had spent the night with this unknown Jenny Cleggett. It was only fair that he caught some whiff of acquaintance.

  Mercy set the box on the floor and rubbed her face. Clearly, she wasn’t supposed to do this. She didn’t have any supplies, she couldn’t easily get supplies—let alone know what those supplies should be. And now the crappy van she had unthinkingly purchased from the kerb of Eugene’s street had turned out to be a mobile cemetery. She thought of the old man, dropping the price, convincing Mercy this van was hers. She could not drive around with a box of unknown remains in the back. Mercy didn’t even know where she was going, let alone taking along someone else, alive or dead.

  Home is wherever you ARE.

  Mercy stared at the grains of bone. Exactly whose home was it?

  ‘Fine,’ she cried out, pushing the box away. ‘Fine. I’ll go back.’

  She had no choice. She would have to return to her ex-husband’s house. She would have to face her insurer and their soulless, temporary, unknown apartment. A howl of rage gathered in her chest.

  Mercy returned the box to the cabinet under the mattress, climbed out the back of the van and slammed the door.

  Then she heard a strange roaring. Looking up, she saw a caravan being towed at speed from the park, rocking as it tore around the corner and up the hill. Close behind it was a second caravan, the engines of both four-wheel drives revving. A third, the last caravan in the park, followed moments later, screaming up the hill and disappearing in a cloud of dust.

  Mercy froze, glancing about. The park was empty. Had something happened? Had the owners of those caravans seen her staring into a box of cremated remains and fled in fear? Or was something more sinister afoot? Was there a reason to get the hell out that she wasn’t aware of? Marauding bushrangers, a pack of wild dogs, an imminent busload of born-again religious?

  She heard chuckling, and turned around to see the man from the office strolling along the grass at the edge of the gravel, a spray pack on his back and nozzle in gloved hands. Periodically he aimed puffs of mist around the base of posts.

  ‘Never mind them,’ he said. ‘Gotta get there first.’

  ‘Where? What’s the rush?’

  The man shrugged, making the spray pack lift up and down. ‘Wherever they’re stopping next.’

  ‘Are they in some kind of race?’

  ‘Yep. Hurry up and slow down.’ He walked off, still chuckling to himself.

  Mercy watched him for a moment, confused, then shook her head. She didn’t have time to contemplate the rush of caravanners. She had a box of human remains to return. Hastening to the driver’s door, she grabbed the handle and pulled.

  Nothing happened.

  She wriggled the handle. Fishing the keys from her pocket, she tried the lock but it wouldn’t budge. Wasabi was in the van, and he watched her from the other side of the window, head tilted and floppy ears pricked. Feeling a bristle of panic, Mercy rattled the door handle with all her might, until she remembered the old man slamming his hip into the door. She positioned her feet. With one hand she lifted the latch, with the other she steadied herself. Taking a deep breath, she shot sideways, bashing her hip into the centre of the door.

  ‘Ow,’ she cried.

  The door clicked and swung open.

  Mercy climbed in. As if prompted by the fresh throb in her hip, everything the old man had showed her came rushing back. The engine would be cold so she would need to pull the choke. Three pumps on the accelerator. She turned the key, the engine chug-chug-chugged for a moment then brummed into life. For a minute she let it idle fast, then she pushed in the choke. The engine stalled.

  ‘Crap,’ she said. She started again.

  Now the engine was flooded, and it turned over uselessly. She had to let it sit for a while. She tried not to think of the box of ashes, or her growling stomach, or the caffeine-withdrawal headache starting to cinch behind her eyes. Finally she got the van running, shoved it into gear and pulled out of the park.

  She had almost reached the roundabout onto the main road when her phone began to ring. She glanced at the screen.

  Her stomach plummeted. Her vision narrowed and her hands turned to ice on the steering wheel. Blinking to clear up her sight, something appeared in the corner of her eyes. A dark shape on the windscreen.

  Mercy looked up and screamed.

  Yanking the steering wheel was an instinct, a purely unthinking attempt to fling away the giant huntsman spider. Was it inside or outside the glass? She didn’t want to look more closely to see. It was still there, lurking, the size of a bread plate, as she slammed her foot on the accelerator, not necessarily making the van go any faster but sending the engine into a loud whine that at least sounded like it was. The Hijet leaned perilously as she careened around the roundabout once, twice, three times, trying to fling off the spider until she tugged the wheel again and was on the shoulder, bouncing over rocks and ruts, hitting the kerb and launching finally onto the main road. Pulling back onto the bitumen, she once again stomped the accelerator, hoping that if the spider had managed to cling its long hairy legs to the window as she swerved, sheer speed would blow it away.

  That was, if the spider was outside. If it was inside … she didn’t want to think about where it could be.

  The speedometer needle edged up: sixty, sixty-five, seventy. She kept going. Sweat prickled on her hairline. Seventy-five, seventy-nine. The engine bucked and vibrated beneath her seat. The whole van rattled; Mercy’s teeth crashed together and Wasabi’s body jiggled.

  The engine began to shudder in protest. Mercy eased her foot off the pedal until the van smoothed out. But still she did not look up. Nor did she look down at her phone. Gripping the wheel, she watched the white lines flashing beneath the front of the van and tried not to think.

  After half an hour, she finally felt her pulse beginning to slow. Pressing herself as far back in her seat as possible, Mercy allowed herself to glance up at the windscreen.

  The spider was gone.

  The relief was immediate. She began to laugh weakly, rubbing the tension out of her neck and taking a few more kilometres from her speed. After another half-hour, her breathing was back to normal and she started to pay attention to her surroundings. Surely she should be coming up to Spalding by now? Where were the rolling grape vines from yesterday, the fields of wheat?

  And then she saw the large green sign.

  ‘What? No.’

  She eased further off the accelerator. A four-wheel drive towing a caravan overtook her like she was going backwards.

  ‘No,’ she said again.

  Spotting a rest area ahead, she flicked on the indicator and pulled off the road. All around her was flat reddish dirt, low tufty bushes and dry scrub. The sun shone brightly in a clear blue sky. And on Mercy’s right was a long, dark green stretch of mountain range.

  Bringing the van to a halt, Mercy picked up her phone. 1 missed call; 1 new voicemail. Ignoring the notifications, she opened Google Maps. Her eyes frantically tracked the screen. Then, setting the phone down, she unclicked her seatbelt and climbed out of the van. She put her hands on her hips and stared at the mountain ranges sitting immovably to the east. The Southern Flinders Ranges. If Mercy was heading back towards Adelaide—if she was heading south—the Flinders Ranges should be behind her. Not next to her. Because yesterday she was south of them—yester
day, she hadn’t even reached them. Now she looked again and they were definitely, undeniably there. A long, rumpled range of mountain, stretching as far north as she could see.

  The road sign she had just passed read PORT AUGUSTA 49. Much like the Flinders Ranges, if Mercy was heading south, Port Augusta—the gateway to South Australia’s vast northern outback—should be behind her.

  Mercy wasn’t going back towards Adelaide. She was still headed north.

  She had travelled for an hour in the wrong direction.

  A string of cars zoomed past on the highway, one after the other. Heat shimmered off the dry earth. Mercy swore under her breath. Then more loudly. Turning towards the mutinous mountain ranges, Mercy opened her mouth and screamed, ‘Fuuuuuuck!’

  Bending over, she howled into her hands. She couldn’t take this anymore. She couldn’t take the feeling of her body in a constant state of anxiety, everything tensed like a rabbit awaiting a fox. Unrelenting guilt ate at her, acid sloshing her insides. The waiting, the endless waiting. For what? There was no atonement for her. Nothing could ever fix it, there was no way of going back. Time passed and would always pass and as long as she was so irrevocably in existence she would have to face that, the inevitable suffering of her very existence, every single day. Meanwhile people would continue to die—just like whoever was the box of ashes in the back of the Hijet—and she would be alive.

  In the shade of the van, the road hidden behind her, Mercy cried until her lungs were raw.

  And then a campervan pulled into the rest stop.