by Steven Lang
The walking in the cold air, pushing up the sides of hills through occasional banks of snow, relieved something in Robert. His mind, in conjunction with the altitude, sloughed off its despair and terror, opening itself to the simple healing of moss on a fallen log, the hearty conversation of a stream in spate, but also to the awareness of Barbara as a companion. All day he watched her, bounded in her fury and her hurt.
She had a simple broad face, with large eyes, a small nose, and a mouth whose tight cupid’s bow ended with a tiny lift, a tremulous upward curl that destroyed its symmetry, whose one-eighth of an inch gave the whole an irresistible character. Out there, without her make-up, it had even more power over Robert. His relationship with Cody had meant a kind of vicarious relationship with Barbara. Sometimes he had felt as though he was already her lover, but it wasn’t so. Cody was. Robert was her friend, brother, confidant. Over the months he had found himself wanting to do nothing but watch that mouth, to wait for it to break into a smile solely on his behalf.
As they climbed hardly a word passed between them. With the natural world all around it had not mattered, but at night, in the tiny tent, wrapped separately in their down bags, fed on packet soup warmed on a primus, not ready for sleep, it was unbearable.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said.
Silence again.
‘Are you scared?’
A sigh.
‘I am,’ he said. ‘I’m frightened about what will happen to us. About what will happen next.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. I want to sleep.’
‘You miss him, don’t you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really,’ her anger directed at Robert. ‘It’s not enough that he’s fucked off with this bitch. He’s screwed up my entire life.’
‘Things will get better.’
‘They will? How do you know that, Robert? What is it that makes you say that? Is it just part of your down-home nature? I’m on my way to Canada. I’m wanted by the FBI and the CIA, the US Marshals, probably the fucking NSA and the National Guard. I have to change my name. I can’t ever call home, never mind go there. I’ve lost my family – not much fucking loss there – but to top it all off it turns out my man’s been fucking someone else. And why am I in this mess, Robert? Because you guys couldn’t get it together to break into an empty yard in a downpour, you couldn’t even steal a fucking working truck.’
Silence.
‘I’m sorry, Barbara.’
Again the darkness, the rustle of the nylon sleeping bag, the cold of the night outside the thin sheath of tent, the vast and empty night.
‘It’s not your fault, Robert.’
He fumbled with the zip of his bag, undoing it to his waist.
‘Let me hold you,’ he said, not expecting she would, but without answering she came to him, a cocoon of a person within his arms, resting against him, all hard and tight inside her sleeping bag. And little. She was such a forceful person that she had, in his mind, grown in stature physically. In his arms she was small, fragile. After a time she started to cry. She made no sound but he could feel her shaking with a constant small motion, hardly more than a vibration, like a machine winding down. He was cold but said nothing. A feeling began to grow in him which at first he did not even recognise, having nothing to compare it with. There was simply a warmth inside him and it was lighting up every portion of his body, radiating out into the person beside him. He was aware of every sound in the night, a distant fall of water, the movement of branches in a tree. He imagined the pad of a passing animal on the forest floor.
It was a long time before she stopped. He thought she had fallen asleep but he still did not move. He lay on his back looking up at the opaque lines of the tent, the tiny triangle of lightness which must have been the window. A moon was rising, coming clear of the treetops. Barbara was in his arms, her head on his shoulder, he could feel her breathing.
‘You must be getting cold,’ she said.
‘I’m fine.’
‘No you’re not. I’m sorry, sometimes I’m so selfish.’
She rolled away and began the complex ritual of undoing her bag, extracting an arm and feeling his exposed chest.
‘You’re freezing. Come here, let me warm you.’
She unzipped further and dragged the open flap of her bag over him, inviting him within her warmth, her smell. ‘You’re very sweet, Robert.’
She put a hand to his face and kissed him on the cheek, their bodies, as far as their waists, touching. ‘You make me feel safe.’
She pulled his face around and kissed him on the lips.
He was twenty-one years old. He had been kissed before but until that night had been a virgin, able but almost unwilling to imagine what might happen; certainly unable to envisage what transposed in the tent, which never seemed to occur again though they slept together night after night for six months, through the days of their walking into Canada to their lodging on various alternative farms in the backwoods, through the long Canadian winter and into the spring, when she went away. That night it seemed that she opened herself, that, through some deep yearning, possibly not even for him, doors inside her fell apart so that they arrived at a place, together, where nothing else mattered except that they were there, with the wild country all around them singing their meeting. Many times later, making love, having sex, in beds in handmade houses under different names, he would apply all the skills he learned so eagerly to please her. Often he found himself perched above her, looking down at her beautiful face with extreme longing; inside her, yes, but still shut out; pushing into her gently, pushing into her hard, reading the signs and giving pleasure but never gaining entry, watching as she shut herself down to him and the world. That night he had been released from everything, thrown up into a new world, a land-bound creature suddenly become a being of the air.
It was only years later, with Jessica, that he had known again that level of intimacy. And that time he had been the one who had lain beside her without speaking, without declaring his love. She had had to do it for both of them.
It wasn’t that there had been no other women in between. Of course there had. But Jessica had come at a time when he had permitted himself to think connection was possible, no longer forbidden. On their last night together she had said she wanted normality, an intimacy that was founded on the day-to-day experience of another person, not their absence, not on the reasons they couldn’t be together.
‘I’m not interested in Romeo and Juliet,’ she had said, ‘I know that might sound cold and mundane to you, domestic even. But I want someone to share my bed with, to wake up beside. I want a life with someone. It feels like every time I meet a man I care for there’s some impediment to this: a wife, or a job, or a dream, or a past.What is it with you, Carl? What’s your excuse?’
He’d opted for the latter. The easy way out, this history of Vietnam, an unhappy childhood, some such shit, while the bed grew cold between them, her body tremulous beside him but already lost because he wouldn’t take her in his arms and say, ‘This is also my dream.’ Staring at the ceiling while she became angry, unwilling to let him go, pushing him. ‘What’s the matter, Carl? Are you afraid to love? Is that it? When a woman lies next to you and says, “I love you” then you have to run away because it’s too fucking real? Is that it? You can only love someone when they’re unavailable? I can’t do this, Carl. I’ve done it for too long. I hurt inside. Listen.Are you listening to me? Carl, I love you,’ spelling it out. ‘But not enough to be used again. I won’t take it.’ The dawn creeping into morning. The currawongs calling like echoes of each other.The kookaburras in the big gums near the dam going on and on, and him saying nothing. He had held onto the belief that real love meant not involving her in his life.
Jessica had undermined such certainties. What if she was right and he was free but clinging onto fear as a protec
tion against loving and being loved? Wasn’t that the ultimate goal? To love another, to love oneself, to forgive, whatever that might mean? Garbage.The leftovers from psychotherapy, from cheap, mass-produced western interpretations of eastern philosophy. To which he was not immune. He lacked the resolve to believe anything. He had yearned for her so, he thought he’d die of it; he’d never known such pain, his own home, look you, this goodly farm, become a prison.
But there had been other arguments.
If he wasn’t at that time, then he had been once, a card-carrying citizen of a different world in which there had been an imperative of blood-letting, where blood was held as currency, where pints or litres of the stuff could be measured against such ideas as Justice, or Rights, or the big one, Freedom. For a time he had lived amongst people who talked like that. For a brief time, if honesty was required, he had become convinced that humanity’s ritual spilling could be brought to an end by just one more death here, or perhaps another there: surgical strikes, strategic removals of key personnel. It would have been impossible to speak to her of such things. It was hard enough for him to reconcile that the two worlds could exist side by side, that they still did, that somewhere, right at that moment, it was still going on; to admit how wrong he had been in thinking it would ever end.To speak would have been to lose her, never mind that to be silent was to do the same. She was not part of that world, these things had no possible connection with her. They were real but they were also a kind of madness. If she knew of his part in them she would have hated him. Perhaps the hippies weren’t so stupid with their dope and LSD and dreams of peace. He had joined with people made mad by history and he had been stained by it; no, that was the wrong word, because when he had lain next to Jessica watching the dawn come he had been horribly cold in his body, separate and alone, but also safe, watching her do the feeling for both of them. He had not been stained, he’d been drained of the vital capacity to act in the most important field of human endeavour.
It was surprising he did not simply roll over and die.
A couple of hours after dark the dogs went stupid, only being cowed into submission with a greater aggression than their own, resorting to low growls and half-barks, the little yellow bitch the worst of the lot. From the veranda they could see the lights of a car, moving slowly; and once again there was the anxiety, even though he knew no cop would come like that, not after dark, not alone.
The car, something low-slung by the sound of its belly on the road, came right up to the house. Only when it stopped did he turn on the big torch, pinning it in its beam, a Trans-Am with a wide stripe running from the front to the rear. Gazza stepped out, one arm raised against the light, in the other a polystyrene stubby holder.
‘Jesus Carl, is that you?’
He inclined the light, went down the steps. ‘Gazza,’ he said.
‘Fucken hell but you take some finding.’
‘That’s the idea,’ Carl said.As if he needed more trouble. He wondered what it would take to make Gazza simply turn around and leave.
‘I had to ask a couple of places. Found Coalwater and the store all right, had to knock the bastards up to get some info, but then I ended up back down the road at some hippie place. I got out of there real quick.’
‘What brings you out here, Gaz?’
‘In a tick,’ he said, intuiting rather than seeing the figure of Kelvin on the veranda. ‘Who’s this?’
Carl swung the torch around. ‘A friend.’
‘Here, you want a beer?’ Reaching into the car for his smokes and the soft plastic rack of a sixpack.
They went up into the house, there was no help for it. He sat him at the table, accepted one of his beers. Kelvin and he had finished eating and the greasy plates were stacked by the sink. He didn’t offer food. He took up his place by the stove.
‘What’s the story then, Gazza?’ he said.
Gazza nodded to Kelvin, who made to rise. ‘I’ll go out for a smoke.’
‘Sit down,’ Carl said, and to Gazza. ‘He’s all right.’
‘If you say so.’ He didn’t look too happy, but then looking happy wasn’t Gazza’s way. He’d grown his sideburns down along his chin and back up again so they met the opposite downward curve of his moustache. The spaces in between were filled with three days’ growth. His hair was cut short on the crown, long at the back. He had tatts on his shoulders and upper arms. It seemed to Carl that people adopted different uniforms for different reasons – businessmen, blue-collar workers, housewives, priests, hippies or criminals. It was a choice they made. It was a mystery why Gazza should have chosen this one. As if he deliberately sought attention.
‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘I got in a spot of trouble back in Melbourne, thought I’d better lay low a bit. See if I could raise some of the ready.’
‘What sort of trouble?’
Gazza looked at him, took another drink.
‘Remember a couple of months ago I was doing a run through these parts? Well, see, on the way back I had a load of cash to deliver and some of it went missing – it wasn’t my fault …’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Hey! I got screwed. I wasn’t going to hurt no one. I know my business. I didn’t use it all. I come out of it orright, just not ahead. I owe some people.’
‘So now you want to hang out for a while.With who knows who the fuck after you.’
‘I might,’ letting that sit for a minute. ‘But then I might not. You got your own problems.’
‘I have?’
‘You growing a crop out here?’
‘No.’
‘C’mon, I’ve come square with you.We go back, remember?’
‘Not a plant.’
Gazza took another drink.
‘All this space and not a plant? Yer shittin me, aren’t you?’
Carl said nothing.
‘Well some bloke is,’ Gazza said. ‘Otherwise I can’t see no reason for having a narc over the hill.’
Gazza looked from Carl to Kelvin, then back again.
‘There’s a narc over in hippiesville,’ he said, and waved his hand vaguely in the direction he’d come from. ‘I stopped at a house over there to ask directions, some sort of party going on. I knock on the door and a chick opens it, vague as fuck. I asked if she knew where youse was. While she’s thinking about it I took a squizz. A whole bunch of people inside. Couldn’t believe my fucken eyes. I stepped back out quick smart. Over in the kitchen was our Barry. He’s probably not called that now, but that was his name up the Cross. A narc.’
Gazza looked from one of them to the other and back again. It took him a while to realise this was news. At which knowledge he could barely mask his delight. ‘You didn’t know, didya? Didya?’ he laughed. ‘There’s a few wouldn’t mind knowing where he is, I’ll tell ya.’
‘What’s he look like?’ Carl said.
He glanced at Kelvin. He was sitting across the table, breaking matches with his fingernails. He’d stopped when he heard the news. He was still holding one little ellipse of wood between his thumb and forefinger, frozen.
‘About yea high. Good-looker, never pick him. He’s grown his hair for this gig, has it in a ponytail. He plays guitar, sings a bit.Thinks he’s the best fucken thing in the world, god’s gift to women. He hung around with us for months, setting us up for a bust.We must have sold him thousands of dollars of shit.This was a couple of years ago.The bastard would have done us.’
‘You know who he’s talking about?’ Carl said to Kelvin.
‘Could be any number of people,’ Kelvin replied.
‘But it’s not, is it?’
‘This guy,’ Kelvin said, ‘does he have a beard?’
‘Scrappy thing.’
‘What’s he wearing?’
‘Didn’t get to see.’
‘He look like a local?’
‘What’s a fucken local look like? I was just in the door. He was in the kitchen, talking to a sheila. Looked like he belonged. That’s his knack, see. Excep
t one day he let something slip. He likes the dope himself, always smoking, that’s what made us believe him. But this thing he said got us thinking. We set him up and he walked straight into it. Trouble was he’d fucken set us up at the same time, fucken cops everywhere, his big bust. Disappeared after that. Otherwise we’d have topped him.’
Carl had that low emptiness in his belly which comes when the pieces start to fall into place, when all the little inklings and assumptions and fantasies run together into one thing.
‘Well now you know where he went, don’t you?’ Carl said.
‘Could be anyone,’ Kelvin said.
‘But you think you know, don’t you?’ Carl said.
‘Could be Andy.’
‘So what’s that to you, Kelvin?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I mean is, if you think it’s Andy, and you do, then how come it matters to you?’
‘If it’s Andy then it means there’s a narc on the farm. That’s bad news.’
He was lying.
‘Listen, I know where this guy lives,’ Kelvin said. ‘If it’s him. You can get a view of his place from across the creek. I could take you there, to make sure.’
Not only had Carl been living next to a fucking cop for months he’d let one come and live in his house. All this shit about the Cross and prostitution, second-hand bookshops, Shelley. A fucking story. For which he’d fallen. The whole fucking thing. What to do now? Jessica too. Jessica involved with the bastard.
‘You got telescopic sights on yer rifle?’ Gazza asked.
‘I’ve got binoculars,’ Carl said.
‘I wasn’t thinking of birdwatching.’
‘No,’ Carl said.
‘Fuck you, no,’ Gazza said. ‘The man’s a cop, a pig. I bin waiting for this.’
‘Not on my watch.You’ve only been here ten minutes and already you’re killing cops. Give us a break.’
‘I ain’t just going to leave him there.’