by Vanda Symon
At the end of Trev’s driveway, I slowed up and checked optimistically for traffic. As usual, there wasn’t any. The only activity was a harrier hawk down to my left taking care of some roadkill. I pulled out and headed on to my next destination: Phillip Rawlings’. He was another feature on Gaby’s follow-up list and also, curiously, another victim of the cattle rustlers. His property wasn’t too far from Trev’s, just a side road off from the main track back to town. I hadn’t made an appointment, but I was happy to try my luck. So far it seemed to be holding.
As I drove, my fingers, unbidden, tapped along to some catchy, static-ridden country tune on the radio. Why would the rustlers do two properties in one night? Why not just fill up their truck at one farm and reduce their risk of being caught out? It didn’t make sense. Unless they had some warped sense of social conscience that made them want to halve the burden of loss by sharing it around. Yeah, right.
My mind drifted back to Gaby, and the skull and crossbones on her to-do list. What if Gaby’s death was linked to her investigation into TB? It seemed a bit of a stretch, and I had no real grounds to base the idea on, but I just couldn’t think of anything else in her life that could cause someone to kill her. I couldn’t, of course, completely rule out Dr Walden, but instinct told me he was a sideshow in this case, and that Gaby’s research into TB was somehow important. So here was another item for research that night: look at the economic impact a higher rate of TB would have on the country. The disease was already present in a very small percentage of livestock, so it wasn’t a high threat to biosecurity. There was the odd report in the newspaper about farms reporting an outbreak, but it was never front-page material. A phone call to the Ministry of Primary Industries might also be in order, to see if they were concerned about any particular farms in our area. I desperately needed to sit down and have a good hunt through Gaby’s laptop – check her email and look at any websites she’d visited recently. The laptop was still sitting on the front passenger seat; ever the optimist, I’d brought it along for the ride in case I had a bit of time to kill.
Lockie’s ute left a bit to be desired. It was an archaic piece of shit that lacked the creature comforts of air-conditioning and power steering, not to mention a decent stereo – I’d turned it off in disgust. The suspension was as hard as hell, and now the damned thing was starting to pull noticeably to the left. Somehow, I didn’t think it was just the camber on the road. I pulled over onto the side, half on the grass, half on gravel, turned off the engine and hopped out to investigate.
‘Oh, bloody marvellous.’
The bottom half of the left rear tyre was doing a pretty good impression of a pancake. A flat – and it was still a good ten kilometres into town. I could call for help. But who? Couldn’t call work: I wasn’t one of the in-crowd any more. Besides, the guys would never let me live it down. Trev’s place was relatively close, but that somehow seemed a bit defeatist: after all, girls can do anything. I didn’t think Lockie would appreciate it if I wrecked the wheel rim by attempting to drive it the rest of the way home. I’d just have to change the thing myself. I’d changed plenty of tyres before – on cars. How hard could it be? The ute was simply bigger. Surely?
One of my brothers had a similar type of ute, and it had a storage space behind the rear seats. I hauled myself into the driver’s seat, clambered over to the back seat and pulled it down. Sure enough, there nestled behind it were the jack and toolkit. It was a good start.
I hopped out again and walked around the back to open the canopy door and get out the spare tyre. Apart from a few grimylooking rags and excess dog hair it was empty. OK, let’s think. If I were a guy, where would I hide it? Of course, the most awkward place I could. Canopied ute; it must be…
‘Underneath.’ I crouched down and looked under at the chassis. Bingo, there it was.
‘Oh shit.’ I recalled the river of cow shit I’d just driven through twice at Trev’s place. The underside of the ute, including the spare tyre, was plastered in it. Of course, being out to impress, I was wearing one of my best shirts and only decent pair of trousers. I stood up, and took a moment to adjust to the head rush. Then there was nothing for it. The deed had to be done. If I couldn’t rely on anyone coming to my rescue, at least I could save the shirt. I took it off, folded it and placed it across the front seat of the cab. Thank God for singlets. They might not be spectacularly sexy, but they serve their purpose in keeping you warm. In light of the poo situation, I was pleased I hadn’t gone for a lacy camisole. And at least I wasn’t reduced to only wearing a bra.
‘What are you staring at?’ I said to a curious cow that had sauntered over, its face stretching over the wire-and-batten fence. ‘Just ’cause I haven’t got a twinset. You jealous?’
I poked my head back underneath the ute to see how the spare tyre was secured. Just by a couple of bolts, apparently; so I grabbed the spanner, lay down on my back and wriggled my way into position underneath the tyre. The odd bit of gravel that had sprayed off from the road bit into my skin. I gritted my teeth and kept wriggling until positioned directly under the bloody thing. I could see I was going to have to be careful the sucker didn’t fall straight down and crush me to death. Wouldn’t that be a marvellous way to go?
I set to and loosened the nuts with the spanner. Lying on my back, arms up, proved to be damned hard work. I had to pause and shake my arms out a few times before I finally got the nuts to the point where they only needed another couple of turns. The stench under there was not pretty and I was trying not to breathe too deeply.
How was I going to manage this? If I undid one nut first, then, as I undid the other, I could catch the wheel on my hands and knees. I’d then roll over to the side and get it on the ground. Sounded good in theory. In reality, manoeuvring the wheel in that confined space was difficult and my muscles strained under the awkward weight of the thing. My hands were slick with shit and I didn’t even want to imagine how my trousers looked. Eventually, I got the wheel onto the ground without doing myself a mischief. I stopped for a quick breather, and then rolled over onto my stomach to wriggle backwards and drag the poxy thing out. Whoever thought of putting the spare there should have been shot at dawn. Just about out, I cleared the edge of the bumper, then popped up onto my hands and knees.
Crack.
What felt like a baseball bat hit me squarely on the back of the head.
My face hit the gravel and I lay there, dazed, watching the display of fireworks that shot before my eyes.
‘Fucking towbar!’ I reached my hand to the back of my head, and felt dampness. I then realised it must have been the cow shit I’d just smeared through my hair. Fan-bloody-tastic.
With a little more care and a big swerve to the side I pulled myself up onto my hands and knees and stayed there swaying for a bit. There was going to be an industrial-sized lump on the back of my head. Getting up like that had been a stupid, careless thing to do.
‘Bugger this.’
I eased myself up onto my feet and used the side of the ute as support to stagger back to the cab for the cellphone. I’d save my ‘girls-can-do-anything’ mantra for another occasion. I’d just have to suck up my pride and call for reinforcements. I’d ring Paul. He’d just love that. The whole station would.
I looked at the zero bars of signal on the useless flaming thing, and threw the phone unceremoniously back onto the seat.
‘Bugger,’ I yelled, startling the whole collection of cattle that had now gathered around for the show. Of course there’d be no bloody signal out here in the sticks. In this day and age it was crazy that there were cellphone reception dead spots, this wasn’t the Third World – this was a flaming well-to-do nation. But there were, and Sod’s law said there would be one here, today.
I looked back down the road towards Trev’s place and tried to calculate how long the walk would take. Too long.
‘Oh for God’s sake, get hard, girl.’ I marched around the back again and grabbed the jack. I wasn’t going to be beaten by someth
ing as mundane as a bloody flat tyre. I positioned it under something solid-looking down the side and proceeded to do business lifting up the rear of the truck. The exertion didn’t do my head any favours and I needed several pauses to clear the giddiness. Finally, I had the offending wheel raised in the air. A small victory. I grabbed the wheel brace, popped it over the first nut to hand and tried to loosen the damned thing.
‘Oh bloody hell.’
All that succeeded in doing was spinning the wheel around. Even the cows laughed.
Use your brain, woman – of course I was going to need a bit of traction. I marvelled at how truly stupid I could be. I released the jack enough for the wheel to grip on the ground and tried again. It became apparent very quickly that the power my fifty-three-kilogram frame could exert wasn’t going to produce enough force to loosen anything.
‘Shit.’ I tried another nut. All that straining on the wheel brace did was hurt my hands. And perhaps induced a haemorrhoid.
Desperate situations called for desperate measures. I swung the wheel brace around so that I’d apply the force in the right direction and not tighten the bloody thing: rightie tightie, leftie loosie rang inside my head – thanks, Dad. I leaned against the side of the ute for support, then carefully climbed up onto the brace and balanced precariously. I gave a small jump.
Nothing.
Tried a bigger jump.
A little movement.
That was hopeful.
Throwing caution to the wind, I tried the biggest jump I was game for. My feet came down on the bar; the bar shot down a few centimetres and threw my balance off. As my feet headed to the earth, I knew this was going to hurt.
‘Bugger, bugger, bitch, bum, piss, cock, fart,’ I roared, loud enough to send the cows scattering. Good as that statement felt, it didn’t quite cut it.
‘Ahhhh, fuck it all to hell.’ I lashed out and hit the side of the door with my hand, which hurt me more than the ute, then slid down its side and landed in a bloody, dusty, shit-covered heap on the ground. The sobs burst out of their own accord; it was futile to try and control them. I rolled up my trouser leg and cringed at the sight of the gouge down the front of my shin that was now welling up with blood. Hot tears flowed down my cheeks and I angrily wiped them away, only to realise that I had now applied a shiny coating of cow shit to my face.
All that to move one nut.
There were five more to go.
33
It was some time before my ears caught the sound of an approaching vehicle. I scrambled to my feet and lifted up the front of my singlet to hurriedly wipe my face. I’m not sure why I bothered. The tears would have helped clean some of the cow shit away – the tears and the snot. I limped around to the roadside and looked towards the dust-shrouded vehicle. I didn’t need to fake a damsel-in-distress look; it was pretty bloody obvious.
A ute pulled up alongside mine and a familiar face grinned at me.
‘Sam. In a bit of trouble there?’ Cole said.
I gave a big sniff, then realised how charming that must have sounded. ‘Flat tyre.’ I tried to hide the quiver in my voice by resorting to two-word sentences. ‘Other side.’ I turned and indicated the back of Lockie’s ute.
I heard a sharp intake of breath.
‘Shit, Sam, you’re bleeding. Stay there.’
Like I was going anywhere. I turned to tell him I’d just knocked my shin, but Cole had already moved forward to park his ute in front of mine. Before I knew it, he had jumped out and was striding purposefully towards me, holding a cloth.
‘Here, let me help,’ he said.
I was just about to protest when he literally picked me up and leaned me across the bonnet.
‘What are you doing?’ I said, rather indignant. I tried to turn and look, but had my head forcibly directed to the front.
‘Keep still. You’ve got blood pissing out the back of your head. What happened?’
I instinctively reached up to touch it, but Cole slapped my hand away. I felt his fingers part my hair, and winced at the jolt of pain that shot through my scalp. Now he mentioned it, the back of my head was feeling a bit sticky. It hadn’t occurred to me I could have cut myself; I just thought it was more cow shit.
‘Jesus, that’s a good split you’ve got there. Might need a few stitches in it, not to mention a lot of disinfectant. You’re a mess. What the hell have you been doing?’
I was surprised at the vehemence in his voice.
‘What does it look like I’ve been doing? Trying to change the frigging tyre. I collected my head on the towbar, trying to get the stupid spare wheel out. I didn’t do it for bloody fun.’
Once again I felt the need to justify myself to him.
‘Why didn’t you ring for help?’ he asked. His voice had dropped to a more conversational level.
A huge sigh escaped me. ‘I tried, but the cellphone had no reception.’
‘You should have walked back to the farm, then. I’d have come out and changed it for you.’
He stepped back to give me room to stand up straight again. I turned around to face him, but couldn’t quite meet his eyes. ‘I would have, but my leg was a bit sore,’ I said, lifting up my now rather gory-looking shin to show him.
‘Christ. Get in my ute, we’ll get you down to the doctor’s.’
He grabbed me by the arm and started to drag me towards his vehicle. I tried to prise his fingers off as I remembered the precious cargo on the front seat.
‘Hang on, I’ve just got to get something out.’ I had no qualms about abandoning Lockie’s hunk of crap to the wilds, but I wasn’t about to leave Gaby’s computer in it.
Cole let go and I hobbled back to the cab, grabbed the laptop, my bag and shirt. Then I limped my way back to Cole’s ute and climbed up into the seat next to him. He must have found some water to dampen the cloth, because he reached across and proceeded to wipe at my face.
‘Ouch, give that here, I can do that.’ I grabbed the cloth from him and swung the rear-vision mirror around to get a look at myself. It wasn’t pretty. The tears had tracked stripes down the smeared shit, and the gravel had bitten into my skin, leaving globs of blood on my cheeks and forehead. Still, after a bit of work with the cloth, I was vaguely fit to be seen in public. Pity I smelled like a sewer.
‘What about Lockie’s ute?’ I asked as we trundled off towards town.
‘It’ll be alright there for a while. Nobody’s going to steal it with a flat tyre. I’ll come back later and fix it, then drop it back to you.’
I stared out at the belts of toetoe that rushed past the window. It shocked me to feel so small and vulnerable. I had always been able to handle any situation I’d got myself into – if I couldn’t physically deal with it, I could talk my way out. Ms Invincible. It had been a rude awakening to feel so utterly useless. Even ruder to admit I needed the help of anyone, let alone a male. My traitorous eyes started to leak again.
As if reading my thoughts, Cole looked over at me and stated the obvious. ‘You really should be more careful, Sam.’
An hour or so later, I was sporting three stitches in my head, courtesy of Dr Arnold. Of course, he had taken the opportunity to give me a lecture on looking after myself and told me in no uncertain terms that I did not need to act like a superhero. Sounded like a baritone version of my mother. I didn’t have much choice but to take his words on board at the time – he was the one wielding the needle.
The medical-centre staff were up on my brush with TV fame. Francine had seen the news, so naturally, they had all been filled in on the gory details. Should have known my luck would run out on that front soon, but at least they seemed to be of the ‘I-don’t-believe-a-word-of-it’ school of thought.
If there was one positive from the visit, it afforded me the opportunity to find out what had happened with Dr Walden. It had occurred to me that I might not be received enthusiastically after I’d sprung one of the surgery’s doctors, but in fact, the welcome mat was warmly, if cautiously, extended. Perhaps I wasn�
�t the only one who could see through Walden’s apparent charms. The staff had been mortified to find that blackmail had gone on under their very noses. I think they all felt some level of guilt at having been blind to it. Ranjit, in particular, was most apologetic to me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the one who needed to hear it and Gaby was in no position to accept apologies.
While playing tailor with my scalp, Ranjit brought me up to speed on the doctor’s activities. Officially, Dr Walden was on extended leave. Unofficially, he’d had his butt booted out the door and the Medical Council had been advised of his actions. Dr Walden had recently become a partner in the practice, so extracting him was going to be a bit messy. He’d already threatened to sue them for wrongful dismissal and, while he was at it, was going to do me for defamation, apparently. It was pretty clear we hadn’t heard the last of that man.
Cole had done the chivalrous thing and waited while I was being attended to, then insisted on dropping me off at home. Not quite a knight on a white charger; more of a bloke in a tan ute.
‘You sure you’ll be OK?’ he asked.
‘I’ll be fine. Maggie’s home – she’s good at playing Mum.’
He gave me that full-beam look, and I wriggled under his gaze.
‘Thanks for coming to my rescue. I did make a bit of a mess of things. I don’t know how I can repay you.’
‘You could come out and buy me a beer later tonight,’ he said, sounding casual.
‘Oh, OK. Sure…’ I was taken off guard. ‘I won’t be able to drink; the doc said I probably have concussion. But I can come out for a little while.’ As I looked at him, I realised he had a bit of a glow rising up his cheeks. He didn’t feel so casual, after all. It was quite cute on a grown man.
‘I’ll pick you up after dinner,’ he said. ‘Should have Lockie’s ute sorted by then.’