When there’s nowhere else to Run

by Murray Middleton

  ‘Dad,’ says Charlotte, raising her voice to be heard, ‘I think I cut my mouth on the stick.’

  I glance at her and she scrunches her face up. ‘You look fine to me,’ I say.

  ‘It hurts.’

  ‘Can you hold on for just a minute?’ I ask, as the Tasmanian kid starts leaping nimbly down his boards, collecting them as he goes.

  I look back and see her probing her mouth with her thumb. She pulls it out and there’s the slightest trace of blood. It’s enough to send her over the edge. I should have known it was too good to last.

  ‘It really hurts,’ she says, eyes welling with tears.

  ‘Okay, okay, let’s go and find the St John van,’ I say. ‘Keep your fingers out of there.’

  ‘Finally,’ says Josh, the little shit.

  I apologise to the people in our row as we block their views on our way past. Charlotte is already wailing, thinking she’s gaining sympathy. I can hear blocks of wood being hacked into and the crowd getting louder all around us, but I don’t even want to look. The one thing I do see, to my disbelief, is Josh drop his paper cup on the stairs and keep walking.

  ■

  The kids’ faces are already pink. They’re telling me what showbags they want. I’m trying to repeat them in my head so I don’t stuff it up and incur any more of Josh’s wrath. Peppa Pig, Starburst Super Bag, Bertie Beetle, Cadbury Favourites, Hubba Bubba and the Greatest Showbag on Earth. But if they’ve sold out of the dart rifle, Josh wants the M&M’s Family Bag instead. Instead of what? Has it always been this complicated or is my memory deteriorating?

  ‘Please wait here,’ I say.

  I look at Josh. You’re a big kid now, my look is telling him. This is a watershed moment. Embrace its importance and don’t knife me in the back like you’ve been doing nonstop for the past eight months.

  ‘Okay, Dad,’ he says, like there’s no reason for me to doubt his commitment to the cause.

  ‘Make sure you stay with your brother,’ I tell Charlotte. She’s forgotten all about her mouth now. ‘I’ll be back soon. I want to see you both standing right here when I come back. In this spot.’

  I can already hear the collective murmur of the showbag pavilion. It’ll be a miracle if I get through it without murdering someone.

  ‘Hey, Dad,’ says Charlotte. ‘When’s Mum getting back from her holiday?’

  I feel like someone has stabbed a dozen knives into the gaps of my ribcage and left them all jammed in there.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I manage to say.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  My top lip is trembling and I already know that Josh will never respect me again. But when I look up, expecting to see his scathing expression, there are tears in his eyes. He can’t even look at me. The last thing I feel like doing anymore is leaving them.

  ‘Tell you what, Charlie,’ I say, getting down on one knee. ‘Why don’t we forget about the showbags for now? On the way home I’ll stop at the supermarket and the two of you can spend a hundred dollars on lollies and chocolate and anything else you want. Then we can all go home and make the greatest showbag on earth together.’

  ‘But I really want a Peppa Pig backpack for school,’ she says.

  ‘I’m sure we can track one of those down somewhere at DFO,’ I say, pretending I’ve considered it.

  ‘No, it has to come in a showbag.’

  A bag in a bag. I can’t even begin to figure out how to refute her logic.

  ‘If you think about it,’ says Josh, surprising me with the optimism in his voice, ‘we’ll probably get twice as much stuff at the supermarket.’

  I see the possibilities flash across Charlotte’s face. Josh wipes the mucus from his nose onto his sleeve. It feels so strange and so warm having him on my side.

  ‘I think we should go for it,’ he says.

  ‘What if we get in trouble for eating too much unhealthy stuff?’ asks Charlotte.

  ‘You won’t get in trouble,’ I say. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Alright, if you promise.’

  I grab both of their hands and head towards the turnstiles. I don’t want to give them time to change their minds. We pass the showbag pavilion and I still can’t believe my luck. I’m actually looking forward to going shopping, racing home and spilling our bounty over the kitchen table. I’ll let them stay up as late as they want and their tongues can turn blue from sucking on cheap sour straps. For now, thinking about their little blue tongues is enough. Just enough.

  THE FIELDS OF EARLY SORROW

  We encountered our first swarm of locusts on the flat, fertile plains approaching West Wyalong. Although the locusts splattered against the windscreen at great velocity, their demise was soundless. I was barely able to discern the white markings on the Newell Highway through the mass of smeared membranes. Acting on the advice of a cadet journalist who was raised in the region—in Bundaburrah, to be precise—I had secured aluminium mesh over the radiator to protect it. Katie sat sedately in the passenger seat and watched the locusts come to grief.

  Once the threat of locusts had subsided, Katie wound the window down and lit a cigarette (I had bought her a carton of Marlboro Reds before we left). She tilted her head out the window while she smoked. It was only a small concession, but it filled my heart with warmth. Her dyed hair floated around her pale face. I caught sight of her auburn roots, which gleamed in the sun. Her complexion remained youthful, especially against the striking splash of her blue eyes. Her arms looked as slender as I could remember them looking since our adolescence.

  Katie finished her cigarette and drew on a large pair of replica sunglasses. It was difficult to tell whether she was still awake after that. She had barely spoken all day. My wife, Pollyanna, had warned me that Katie might inexplicably lose her temper. She had also warned me not to invest too much faith in Katie’s displays of good humour or kindness. It seemed strange to receive such solemn counsel regarding my younger sister, as though she was a criminal mastermind, waiting for an opening.

  I followed the highway past quiet rural townships, rows of grapevines, fields of lavender, vast seeding machines, timber cattle yards and inviting weatherboard homesteads. The countryside looked resplendent in the afternoon sunlight. There wasn’t another soul in sight. For a fleeting moment I forgot the circumstances of our journey and felt truly happy sitting behind the wheel. I dare say all happiness is fleeting. It is a great pity the same can’t be said for sorrow.

  I was forced to wait at a railway crossing on the outskirts of Forbes while a freight train approached. My gaze settled on a large plateau to the left of the highway that had been subdivided into paddocks. A flock of sheep was grazing the rich, volcanic soil. I wanted to wake Katie so she could share the view with me. But we weren’t there to marvel at the landscape. It was this seemingly trivial act of suppression that caused me to feel disheartened for the first time all afternoon.

  We still had several hours to drive to reach Dubbo. Pollyanna and I had decided that it was best to avoid stopping overnight in Sydney because there would be too many distractions. We would have another ten hours on the road the following day to get to the Buttery: a drug and alcohol clinic that was situated on three acres amid the rainforests and macadamia-nut plantations in the shire of Lismore. We had read numerous testimonials from ex-residents. One of them said he had found his soul again there. Katie had been on the waiting list for the past six months. In truth I was surprised she had made it.

  I had taken one week of annual leave from my post as the editor-in-chief of the Bendigo Advertiser. I wondered whether the time would have been better spent taking my wife and my daughter to a beach resort up north somewhere. Having worked so diligently—I slept four hours per night on average—it seemed unfair to have to sacrifice a rare allotment of relaxation. I knew I couldn’t burden Katie with my feelings, though. She already harboured enough guilt. Besides, driving her to the Buttery seemed like one of the few tasks that I had no right to delegate.

  I frequently took not
e of Katie’s features as she slept. She reminded me so much of my daughter, Ursula. While I had been loading Katie’s belongings into the car that morning, Ursula ran into the street. She was wearing pink pyjamas. I had told Ursula that her aunty was taking a long holiday because she was feeling unwell. Ursula grabbed Katie around the waist and refused to let go. She said she hoped Katie would feel better when she got home so that they could hold tea parties in her cubbyhouse. Katie blinked several times. She wrapped her arms around Ursula’s shoulders and kissed the child’s flaxen hair.

  ■

  Katie picked up a beer coaster and inspected the desolate bistro at the Parkes Leagues Club. Her pupils looked dilated in the bright lights. A group of young men were drinking beer at one of the nearby high tables. They had been playing pool when we first entered the building. I noticed one of them eyeing Katie off. She let out a high-pitched laugh.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.

  ‘I bet when we were children you never imagined you’d wind up in a place like this, guarding your kid sister like a prison warden.’

  I didn’t enjoy being likened to a prison warden. I felt that I had been quite good-natured about my responsibilities.

  ‘You’re right, it never crossed my mind.’

  ‘Mine either,’ she said.

  A crowd of elderly people emerged through the glass doors, drowning out the bistro with genial murmur.

  ‘But here we are,’ said Katie.

  ‘Yes, here we are.’

  ‘And nothing in the world could persuade you to turn back.’ It was difficult to gauge whether she was making a statement or asking a question.

  ‘Nothing in the whole wide world,’ I said.

  Katie cast a sardonic smile at me. It wasn’t the kind of smile a person wishes to behold in the eyes of a sibling.

  ‘This must be very different to the hustle and bustle of a newsroom,’ said Katie. She placed great emphasis on the words ‘hustle’ and ‘bustle’, as though they exemplified the difference between us; the thin metaphysical line between affliction and normality, or success.

  ‘Obviously,’ I said, trying to smile. ‘I take solace in the fact that I don’t have to worry about split infinitives in your presence.’

  A waitress who walked with a pronounced limp brought our meals to the table. She inquired whether we were just passing through town.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’re heading north.’

  ‘Oh goody,’ she said, clasping her hands together. She glanced at the mess that Katie was making with the beer coaster and turned to address me. ‘Keep your eyes peeled for the big radio telescope twenty kilometres out of town. It’s on the right side of the highway. The telescope was used to show man’s first steps on the moon to the rest of the world.’

  ‘We’ll be sure not to miss it,’ I said.

  Katie thanked the waitress with a kindliness that sounded condescending.

  I wasted no time in devouring my ribeye steak and soggy vegetables. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was. We had only stopped three times all day: twice to fill up on petrol and once to buy sandwiches from a roadhouse in Deniliquin.

  Katie barely touched her meal. I had ordered her a bowl of chicken and leek soup—one of the blackboard specials—without consulting her. No one had counselled me on what food she might find appealing.

  ‘Are you ashamed of me?’ she asked.

  I was surprised that she posed the question in a public setting. She’d had all day to ask it while we were driving.

  ‘No, I’m not ashamed of you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘None of us are ashamed of you.’

  Katie dabbed her spoon into her soup and watched the condensed liquid spill back into the bowl. ‘Polly is ashamed of me,’ she said. ‘I can see it in the way she looks at me.’

  ‘You’re reading too much into everything. Pollyanna loves you the same as I do, the same as Ursula does. We all love you unconditionally. We just want you to get well again.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘I know.’

  Katie pushed her bowl into the middle of the table. She continued to clutch her spoon, in a bid to prevent her hand from shaking.

  ■

  We found the Westview Caravan Park five kilometres out of Dubbo along the Mitchell Highway. Just prior to the turn-off, I noticed an abandoned drive-in that was bordered by a barbed-wire fence and rows of cactuses. We were greeted by a slim, affable man at the reception desk. He had slicked-back silver hair and wore a red flannelette shirt. As he was locating our booking in a hard-covered register, I asked him how long it had been since the drive-in was open.

  ‘Must be almost twenty years now,’ he said, pausing to suck on his bloodless lower lip. ‘A man named Rex used to manage it. The crowds stopped coming, so I guess old Rex figured he ought to cut his losses. A man’s got to read the signs.’

  He swiped my credit card, glanced at the signature and handed it back.

  ‘Most of the drive-ins in this country closed around that time. From memory the nearest one left is in the Hunter Valley. Awful pity, if you ask me. Mind you, Rex had a good run.’

  He smiled at the ceiling and put the register away. He gave us directions to our cabin and asked us to return the key to his wife at reception by ten o’clock the next morning. I was relieved that he didn’t inquire why we were passing through town.

  Our cabin was in a sparsely populated lot in the heart of the caravan park. It was stifling inside. The blinds were drawn and the kitchenette had an acidic odour. I insisted that we both sleep in bunks in a small bedroom that was adjacent to the bathroom. I put my backpack on the bottom bed and unloaded a box of Corn Flakes and a carton of milk that I had purchased from a supermarket in town. Katie sat sullenly on a vinyl bench beside the fridge. She rubbed her shoes against the stained linoleum and complained that she was feeling nauseous.

  Five minutes later I was reclining on a deckchair by the swimming pool, enjoying the shade of a palm tree. I was reading a copy of the Daily Liberal—a newspaper covering Dubbo and the surrounding district—which I had picked up at the reception desk. On the front page was a picture of a local wheat farmer. Dry skin was peeling off his nose. He had won the second-division prize in the national lottery. In spite of the six-figure windfall, he vowed to continue working on the family farm.

  Katie removed her jeans and her blouse. She didn’t have any bathers, so she had decided to swim in her underwear. Three young children—two boys and a girl who was wearing floaties around her arms—were playing in the shallow end of the pool. I guessed from their brazen familiarity with one another that they were siblings. The two boys briefly stopped teasing the girl when Katie entered the water. She waded to the deep end and lay on her back so that she could stare at the cloudless sky.

  While I watched Katie float, I became aware that this allotment of time represented something vastly different to her. This time next week her wellbeing would no longer be in my control. She would be in the hands of strangers; people well versed in the realm of affliction, but still strangers. The swim was probably going to be her last allotment of peace for a while. This time next week I would be back sitting on a revolving chair in a newsroom, crosschecking citations, responding to readers’ feedback and composing editorials, as though the scene at the swimming pool had never taken place.

  Once more I began to contemplate the thin line between the poplars of an east-coast clinic and the brimming desks, the partitions, the air-conditioning units and the stark white lights of a newsroom. How had I managed to land on one side of the line while my sister landed on the other? Could the children playing in the swimming pool, splashing carelessly, conceive that their lives might take such a tumultuous course? Or was their bliss contingent upon the ignorance that such a course was possible?

  ■

  The swimming pool was empty when I awoke. I returned to our cabin, expecting to find Katie asleep on the double mattress in the larger bedroom. She wasn’t th
ere. I followed a wide paved road and ended up running a frantic circuit of the caravan park. I searched the amenities block, even calling out Katie’s name in the female toilets. No one answered. I saw a man in the communal barbecue area and ran up to him. He was filleting snapper. I tried to describe what Katie looked like as I was catching my breath. He raised his wet knife and pointed towards the Mitchell Highway.

  I left the caravan park and jogged along the highway in the direction of town. The surrounding fields of canola had burst into dazzling displays of yellow. Several grain trucks rattled past. I had no idea why I had chosen to run in that direction or why it hadn’t occurred to me to take the car. I knew that there was less than an hour of daylight remaining. The search would be hopeless once the sun had set. After following the highway for fifteen minutes, I decided to turn back.

  When I had almost reached the caravan park I caught sight of a figure sitting in the middle of the abandoned drive-in. It was difficult to gain access to the property because of the rows of cactuses and the barbed-wire fence. I hurried past a rusted yellow-and-grey sign that read: WESTVIEW DRIVE-IN. Vegetation enveloped the old ticketing booth at the rear of the property. I reached a side fence and called Katie’s name. The figure looked in my direction, but made no obvious attempt to respond.

  I took off my trousers and placed them over the barbed-wire. Once I had scaled it, I put them back on and ran through the knee-high rye grass. Katie was sitting facing the giant white screen. A herd of goats were grazing no more than twenty metres away. They didn’t seem to mind her presence, or mine.

  Katie’s hands were smeared with blood. It was coming from a circular stain just below the ripped knee of her jeans. Her face looked frightfully pale.

  ‘Do you think they’ll give me something to dull the pain at the hospital?’ she asked.

  I tried not to smile.

  Katie rolled up her jeans and inspected the wound on her right leg. It was deeper than I had expected. A crust of torn flesh was peeping out of a slit in her bloodied shin.