by Tim Slee
‘Adalita,’ Mum says. ‘You heard of her. Their lead singer. She’s big still, right?’
‘Uh . . .’
‘You and your rap nonsense. I’m talking real rock. Music was music then, gigs weren’t like now, all drugs and people sliding up and down against each other and hardly even know each other’s names, can’t hear each other talking.’ Her voice is all dreamy. ‘Friday nights at the Palais, all the boys at the bar for a glass of liquid courage or two and the girls cruising around in leather jackets and dark eye shadow. Your dad was with these boys from Yardley who rolled up to the Palais for a drink and a bit of fun and they’re all laughing and joking, full of giggles and wind, trying to impress us by acting like they weren’t trying to impress us.’
‘You liked him because he was tall?’
‘Couldn’t miss him,’ she says. ‘And he couldn’t miss me either. Up front, jumping up and down to the music, both of us the craziest people in the crowd. Stomped on my feet and said sorry and then after the band, when the DJ came on, he came over and apologised again and asked could he buy me a drink and did I want a dance?’
‘Not to Madonna . . .’
‘“Not to Madonna,” I said, right.’ She cracks an eye open and looks at me. ‘Who’s telling this story?’
I grin. ‘You are. He was a ruckman in Geelong Reserves then, wasn’t he?’
‘Bragging about it, like that would get him points,’ she says, closing her eyes again. ‘But he was a tall streak of sunshine, I had to give him that. Had a comeback for everything, could lay me low with laughter, some of the things he came out with. And he was a deadly poet.’
‘Did you ever see him cry?’ I ask.
She lifts her head up and gives me a look. ‘Oh, hell’s bells, Jack.’
‘I’m just asking.’
She sighs, ‘No, I never saw him cry.’ Then she looks up at the clouds, ‘Not that he didn’t have reason.’
‘You mean because of Jen and me?’
She reaches over and pulls my head into the pit of her shoulder, ‘No, dumbo. You and your sister are the best thing ever happened to us. I’m talking about me.’ I’m thinking she might say more, but she goes quiet.
‘He cried once,’ she says suddenly. ‘I nearly forgot. It was just after you and Jen turned five. I wasn’t coping. I told him I needed a break and he said he needed a bloody break too and we had a blue. And I got in the station wagon and I took off. Drove up to your Uncle Leo’s in Melbourne and I stayed away two weeks and didn’t call him. Or even you.’
I’ve never heard this.
‘Then Jen jumped off that stupid rock and broke her foot and humped around on it for two days before your dad noticed and took her to hospital. Leo took the message but I was in the city window-shopping, so it was about ten at night when I got the message. I got in the car and I drove straight to the hospital in Geelong and went running in and your dad was sitting in the corridor outside Jen’s ward with you and he looked up and he said, “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”’
I remember now. But the way I remember it, Mum came running in and hugged us and we all went in to Jen’s ward and she was sleeping so then we went to a service station and got ice creams.
‘He had tears in his eyes that night,’ Mum says. ‘But he was looking at me, not at Jen.’
After Colac it’s a long hot day into Geelong where the only good thing is when we cross the Barwon River, there are some people standing on the bridge waving #BURN flags. Which is also the hottest part of the day so we pull in at the next hotel to give Danny Boy some feed and water and we get lunch.
Mr Alberti sees me and Jenny sitting under a tree with our sandwiches and he comes over. ‘You kids look hot. You want a Rainbow Fizz?’
Jenny looks at me, but I shrug. ‘What’s that?’
‘You never had a Rainbow Fizz?’ he shook his head. ‘All right, follow me.’ We chase after him as he walks into the hotel. The bar has a wall with four huge TV screens on it so I stop to see if the games are live or replays but Mr Alberti comes back and grabs me and pulls me up to the bar. The girl behind the bar is about twenty-five and has six earrings in one ear and none in the other and curly black hair and black eye shadow and she looks bored. The only other people in there are watching a horse race.
‘Light beer and two Rainbow Fizzes thanks luv,’ Mr Alberti says.
The girl pours the beer and puts it on the bar. ‘What was the rest, sorry?’ the girl asks. ‘Didn’t catch it.’
‘Rainbow Fizz,’ Mr Alberti says, slower this time. ‘It’s a kids’ drink.’
‘Sorry, we don’t sell that,’ she says. ‘We have Coke, lemonade, lemon squash . . .’
‘You don’t just sell it, you make it,’ Mr Alberti says. ‘Serious, you never made one before?’
‘Serious,’ she says leaning on the bar. ‘You want to teach me?’
‘I don’t believe this,’ he says, and then pushes his hat back, ‘OK, here we go. Two tall glasses, fill ’em halfway up with orange juice.’ Jenny and I jump up on some stools to watch. ‘Right, pour in some grenadine . . . slowly.’
As she pours this red stuff, it slides down the side of the glass and sits at the bottom, under the juice. ‘OK, now, you got some blue food colouring and lemonade?’
The girl smiles, ‘Sorry, maybe in the cocktail bar? This is the public bar.’
Mr Alberti looks worried. ‘Anything fizzy and blue will do,’ he says. ‘Nothing like that? It has to be blue.’
She looks in the fridge behind her and bends down. ‘There’s this guarana energy drink. Tastes weird, but it’s blue.’
‘Mum won’t let us drink that,’ Jenny says. ‘It’s got coffee in it.’
‘Caffeine,’ I say.
‘Whatever, she’ll flip.’
‘So, we won’t tell her,’ Mr Alberti says to her and turns to the girl. ‘Pour it in over the back of a spoon.’
As the girl pours, some sort of magic happens. The top of the orange juice turns green and then the blue fizzy drink floats on top. The girl does it to both glasses and then stands there looking a little bit like she can’t believe it herself. ‘Rainbow Fizz, eh?’ she says, and pushes it across the bar and hands us two straws. It’s red at the bottom, orange in the middle, then green, then blue.
Jenny squints at it. ‘Do we drink it layer by layer or mix it up?’
Mr Alberti is beaming. ‘I used to drink the blue and green off the top, then mix the orange and the red,’ he says. ‘Or else you’re sucking pure grenadine off the bottom and that stuff is yuk.’
They both watch as we slurp the fizzy part and then swirl the rest around and it goes a reddy brown. The bottom part tastes like flat Fanta.
Mr Alberti pulls out his wallet. ‘What do I owe you?’
‘I have no idea,’ she says. ‘But hey, I learned something new. Let’s say the fizzy drinks are on the house.’
‘We are going to be so speedy now,’ Jenny says. ‘No way can we hide it.’
‘Don’t you dob on me,’ Mr Alberti says, looking around like Mum might walk in any minute. ‘I got on your mum’s wrong side once in my life and I never want to be there again.’
When we get moving again Jenny and me roll out our swags down the back of the milk cart behind the coffin away from Mum and lie down looking up at the clouds and feeling the bumps in the road and clip-clop of Danny Boy’s hooves. There couldn’t have been too much caffeine in those Rainbow Fizzes because I doze off at some point. I wake up with Jenny thumping my arm.
‘You awake?’ she asks.
‘Am now,’ I complain. ‘Why?’
‘Check it,’ she says, pointing back behind us.
We left Colac with what seemed to be about fifteen cars in the convoy, though Jenny said twenty. The ones who are with us all have their headlights on, because that’s what you do in a funeral. I start counting and I get to fifty cars all with their headlights on, before I lose them around the bend behind us. ‘OK, wow. How many . . .’
‘I cou
nted seventy, I reckon,’ Jenny says. ‘Even some with interstate plates.’
Traffic really starts building up after lunch and the police have to help overtakers by pulling us over every thirty minutes or so, but it’s a two-lane highway a lot of the time so cars can pass us without getting all angry.
‘Oh no,’ Mr Garrett says. He’s been listening to the radio while he drives along, with an earphone in one ear so he can also chat with Mum and Coach Don with his other ear. He hands Mum an earphone. ‘This is not good,’ he says.
‘What is it?’ I ask Mum.
‘Shush,’ she says, frowning. ‘Bugger,’ she says, handing the earphone back to Mr Garrett.
‘What’s up?’ Coach Don asks.
‘Fools attacked a supermarket in Colac as soon as the police pulled out,’ Mum says.
‘Who did? What do you mean attacked?’
‘Radio says a mob of people stayed in town after the march this morning, drinking at the pub then a few idiots attacked the supermarket on Rae Street.’
‘Attacked how?’
‘Bottles and rocks. Smashed the windows going into the shopping centre, threw some shopping trolleys in. Spray-painted stuff on the walls.’
‘Damn,’ Coach Don says, staring ahead. ‘Call Alasdair; police are going to be wanting to talk to us again in Geelong, that’s for sure.’
Mum looks a bit crumbly suddenly. ‘Am I the idiot, Don? This whole funeral thing? The police are right, someone is going to get hurt. Haven’t we made our point by now?’
‘Front page of the Geelong Advertiser and a few photos on page eight of the Herald Sun aren’t going to change anything Dawn, I told you that. You have to get Farmers First in on this, let them set up that meeting.’
‘What meeting?’ I ask Mum. I remember the Farmers First man in Yardley running the meeting there, except he didn’t seem like he was running much of anything and Coach Don walked out on him.
‘Well, hello, nosey,’ Mum says, turning around and pinching my cheeks. ‘What was that?’
‘What meeting, who are you meeting with now?’
‘No one, luv,’ Mum says. ‘Coach Don wants me to meet with the supermarket people and the banks.’
‘What people?’
‘The people who run them, the supermarkets. But why should they meet with me?’
‘How about because they’re worried about people all over the country starting to attack their supermarkets?’ Coach Don says.
‘This was never supposed to be about that, Don,’ she says. ‘And you know it.’
‘Well, it is now,’ he says, and he doesn’t sound unhappy. ‘You can’t ignore it.’
‘That bloody poem was your idea,’ Mum says.
‘I never told you to read it on the TV news,’ he says back. ‘I never suggested you make up your own Farm Power salute.’
She bites her lip. ‘I’ll ring Alasdair.’
‘Whoa, Danny Boy!’ Mr Garrett calls from up front and we come to a sudden stop.
‘Is he sick?’ Jenny asks as Mr Garrett feels up and down Danny Boy’s right foreleg. He unharnessed the horse and led him around, watching him walk without the milk cart pulling behind him. Now he’s checking the muscles in his leg.
‘Don’t know. There’s something, but it’s not a muscle. I thought maybe he’d thrown a shoe but that’s not it either.’
‘Told you he was too old for this,’ Mr Alberti says. ‘What is he in human years, about eighty? Pulling twice his weight from Yardley to Melbourne? Like to see you do that.’
Mr Garrett rounds on him. ‘Horse years isn’t dog years, you old fool. He’s just past his prime, unlike you.’
‘Right, you two,’ Coach Don says, ‘we have fifty cars pulled up on the side of the road and Karsi pacifying some itchy cops dying to book us for something. Can we go on or not?’
‘I’ll have to have him checked in Geelong,’ Mr Garrett says. ‘By a vet.’
‘But can he pull the cart?’ Coach Don asks.
‘I reckon,’ Mr Garrett says. ‘If we take it easy.’
‘Any slower and you’ll be going backwards,’ Mr Alberti says.
Mr Garrett shoots him a death-laser look. ‘I mean we should take some weight off. Dawn, Don and the kids should ride in one of the cars.’
‘Dibs on Ben and Deb!’ I yell and I’m already off before Mum or Jenny can say anything, running up the side of the parked cars to where Ben and Deb’s old ute is sitting with the engine running.
I stick my head in the window. ‘Can I ride with you?’
‘Whoa, you scared the hell out of me,’ Deb says. ‘Why, what’s the hold-up?’
‘Danny needs a spell from carrying passengers so we need to find a ride in a car so can I come with you?’ I point at the middle seat in the ute in case they think I mean ride in the back with all their camping gear like some sheep dog.
Deb gives me that awesome smile and opens the door and swings her skinny legs out and gives me a royal wave. ‘Sure thing, Your Highness. Your chariot awaits.’
‘Why don’t you turn off the engine if you don’t even have aircon?’ I ask them when we get rolling again. ‘I thought greenies always turn off their engines when they’re stopped?’
‘Ben is afraid it won’t start if we turn it off,’ Deb says, reaching over to poke him.
‘He’s a complicated beast, old Harry,’ Ben says, shrugging. ‘I’m the only one understands him.’
‘You call your car Harry?’
‘Or Hazza, take your pick,’ Ben says, reaching out to thump the driver’s door from the outside. ‘Isn’t that right, Hazza?’ And he revs the engine.
‘You just did that,’ I point out.
‘Nah, that was Harry, just showing he knows we’re talking about him.’ And he revs the engine again. ‘See?’
‘Why can’t you turn the engine off?’
‘Because at the speed your horse and cart is going, I’ve had to stay in second gear the whole way from Port Fairy, and Harry has got a dicky water pump, which drains the battery if I don’t disconnect it every time I stop the car for more than about five minutes, which is a pain in the backside to do unless we’re stopped for the night, so I prefer not to have to do it, so I keep the engine running to keep the battery charged to keep the water pump working which keeps Harry cool. Simple?’
‘No,’ I tell him. ‘Do you have PayPal?’
The good part about going with Ben and Deb instead of riding in the milk cart behind Danny Boy is that they have amazing speakers in the car and can stream music from Deb’s phone and she has premium streaming as part of her phone subscription that her dad pays for. They let me play DJ for a while until Deb screams, ‘No more misogynistic rap music!’ And tries to explain to me what misogynistic means and then takes her phone back and we take turns choosing songs as long as I don’t pick rap. I manage to get a bit of hip-hop in there with rap bits in it though, without her freaking out again.
I’m looking for a song and there’s a bit of a break and I say to Deb, ‘Jenny doesn’t think my Dad is dead.’ Like it’s all her idea, which it was at the start.
‘No?’ Deb asks. ‘What does she think then?’
‘She thinks the bank man and Karsi and our doctor and Mum have made a conspiracy to fake that Dad is dead and it’s Dad and Coach Don setting fire to the banks and supermarkets,’ I tell them.
Deb doesn’t look convinced. ‘And what do you think?’ she asks.
‘Where were you that night in Warrnambool when the supermarket burned?’ I ask them.
‘What?’
‘I checked your camp and you weren’t in your tent and your car was gone.’
Ben looks at me, frowning. ‘We went into the pub for a drink and a counter meal,’ he says.
‘Pubs shut at midnight,’ I tell them. ‘The supermarket fire was in the middle of the night, Mum said,’ I tell him.
‘We met some people and went back their place after the pub shut,’ Deb says. ‘Wow, you’re really the detective.’
‘Karsi says that too. What people?’
‘Tell him,’ Ben sighs. ‘He’s old enough.’
‘They’re all friends with that cop,’ Deb says to him. ‘No.’
‘Sergeant Karsi?’ I say.
‘Yeah, look. Someone burned down those banks and the supermarket, but it doesn’t have to be the same person, or group of people,’ Ben says. ‘Country towns are full of angry people who think the banks and big businesses don’t care, city folks don’t care, the politicians don’t care and their own unions are useless. Your mum has given them a target for their anger, maybe that’s all.’
‘So it’s Mum’s fault?’
‘No!’ Deb says. ‘What your mum is doing is personal, not political.’
‘Well . . .’ Ben says, not sounding so sure.
‘Anyway, the people burning the banks and supermarkets, that’s their own responsibility, their choice, not your mum’s fault. I didn’t mean it that way.’ Deb puts an arm around me and gives me a hug. ‘When I was a kid, there were these books called the Famous Five. About these kids who went around solving mysteries, except if you ask me it always turned out there wasn’t really any mystery, just stuff they didn’t understand. Your mum says your dad died in that fire, that should be good enough for both of you. All right?’
‘Yeah. What don’t you want Sergeant Karsi to know?’
‘My god!’ Deb says, putting her hand to her forehead and leaning on the window.
‘We met up with some people to smoke some weed,’ Ben says, taking his hands off the wheel and shrugging his shoulders, ‘OK, Jack?’
I look at Deb. ‘Is that all?’
‘Yes,’ she says, like that’s totally the end of the conversation. ‘Tame Impala?’
‘What?’
‘Next on the DJ Deb playlist, you never heard of them?’
‘No.’
‘You are in for a treat.’
Geelong
Geelong isn’t like Colac, with people in their cars parked all along the side of the road as we come in, but Deb says that’s because Geelong is a real city and not everyone there even knows about Dad’s funeral and if they do, a lot of them don’t care. But after Winchelsea, as we pass the Ponds, the crosses start. Little white crosses down the side of the highway all the way to the turnoff into High Street. We pass one family banging their cross in and one of the kids is hanging a milk carton around it, just in case people don’t realise what it’s all about. Then I see quite a few of them have milk cartons hanging around them.