Oh, man, I stand here relieved. Just one night!
‘Want to come?’ She gives me a look, sideways. ‘I thought you might be tough enough to tag along.’
This hits me like an uppercut. I’m dizzy. I’m walking in circles around the ring, but I’m not ready to go down.
‘If you want tough,’ I say, ‘take Slate. But if you want me, sure I’ll go. You got my word.’
Ariel lifts the button that unlocks the kid-proof gate into the old school.
‘I was thinking of the weekend after next. Catching the train. You’ll have to check with your parents.’
‘Consider it checked,’ I say.
Then she’s walking away, head down, and I’m backing off, thinking about the future, which, in Johnny James Dunnolly’s words, is going to require my best effort.
Elmore is back, sitting as still and silent as an ice mountain. His eyes are bleak and his face is frozen. He has not said a word to anyone and only once did he send me this look that could have meant anything. The only teacher who will ask him a question is Johnny James and the only answer Elmore will give is a yes or no. Of Eden, there’s been no sign.
So everyone circles Elmore, waiting for something to happen. And it will, because that is how the world works.
I take Deed to Sky Point Reserve, after setting up Anthony the deadlock dude to help Ariel when he comes back from the Full Moon Party in Thailand. Touch wood times ten nothing bad happens in the meantime.
The police helicopter was out over the paddocks two nights ago, lasering the ground with its spotlight and flying so low and loud you’d swear its blades were slashing the treetops. But I didn’t hear or see anything on the news about them catching anybody, so whoever’s out there stalking the place, is stalking still.
A kid from school found a rubber monster mask behind her house, and someone else found a length of rolled black cord, but that doesn’t necessarily mean much. Whatever, the paddocks aren’t giving up their ugly secrets, and although I’m only on the reserve behind Sky Point, thinking about what’s going on in the waste ground creeps me out.
I walk on, flicking the ball for Deed, thinking about the trip up the country with Ariel. My folks gave it the green light, so we’re catching the train, and staying with Ariel’s old neighbours. What do I expect? I have no idea except that to go back to a place where you lost just about everything has to be as hard as hell – but things could be found there, too.
We’ll see.
After tea, Slate brings in a cardboard box from his car. He puts it on the coffee table and starts working on the tape with a steak knife.
‘Check this sucker out, Ryan.’ He pulls out a torch the size of two sixpacks of beer, its lens as large as a plate. ‘Now that’s what I call a torch.’ He holds it with two hands. ‘Man, stupid big or what?’
I hit the couch laughing. The thing is so over the top it’s as if some fruitcake torch-maker has decided to put an end to the most-powerful-torch argument once and for all.
‘That is freakin’ awesome,’ I say. ‘Turn it on.’
‘Not charged.’ He shows me where you plug it in. ‘Mains power. We’ll juice it up, then give it a shot in an hour.’
We set the torch to charge, Slate sitting on the couch, putting his big feet on the edge of the coffee table.
‘So how’s Ariel and the crew? They settling in?’
‘They’re okay.’ I tell him a few things, but I don’t tell him all of it, because I don’t know what all of it is. ‘We’re goin’ back to her old farm. To see what’s left. Weekend after next.’
Slate quietly sips Milo; everyone, even me, probably expects him to drink beer all the time, but he doesn’t. And he doesn’t make much noise, either, doing most things with a minimum of fuss, except when he’s doing weights, and he’s in a bad mood. Then you’d think someone is out the back breaking up a ship for scrap iron.
‘Yeah, that might clear her head a bit.’ Slate gives me a look. ‘She’s a good kid. Well, she’s not a kid, is she? She’s had to make some tough calls.’
Slate’s on the money. To me, Ariel’s made choices that are like cutting your life in two: leaving school to work, choosing to live with one half of your family when you could be living by the beach with the other half and coming to the city when perhaps you really wanted to stay in the country.
‘Still.’ He finishes his Milo, gets up, taking the mug with him. ‘You’ve made a few tough choices yourself lately. Anyway, give that torch a test. Send a message to outer space, like we used to do. I gotta go.’
I kind of would have liked to try it out with him, but maybe that’d sound dumb.
‘I’ll hit Mars with it,’ I say. ‘See you later.’
‘Will do.’ Slate grabs his ID and black jacket, slides back the door, and steps out into the dark. ‘Take care.’
You too, I think, but don’t say.
I take the torch outside, Dee Dee sniffing it, me keeping her out of the way so I don’t end up arse-over-elbow in Jude’s vegetable garden. Then I drag back the bolt on the gate and we step out onto the paddocks. Random patches of fog hover, but there are also stars like sparks and a plane heading away through the blackness like a boat on a sea. I aim the torch up and hit the switch.
A beam, no, a sword of light, flashes upward. It’s as if I’m holding a space-age pillar that could support a cloud, or cut one in half.
‘Oh, man,’ I say, and then swing the beam across ground, the thing like a scythe, me expecting to see grass mown down, trees falling or bursting into flame as it skims like a laser, dead straight for hundreds of metres. ‘Far out!’
This thing is a weapon.
Time goes by and school goes on, Eden staying away, Elmore in icy silence. Winter’s gone and the days are getting warmer. Then suddenly it’s a sunny Saturday morning, and Ariel and I are on a little two-carriage train that is heading for . . . the country.
What’s also weird is that we catch this train from Tempy station. It makes me think that even when we didn’t know each other, we were nothing but a train ride apart. Still, we’re together now, sitting close as we look at paddocks passing, the greenness sweet on your eyes, little white lambs everywhere like tiny piles of snow.
‘It’s so nice.’ Ariel breathes deeply, looking out. It’s as if she’d forgotten these things, but is remembering them now, a new light in her eyes. ‘It’s still here.’
Roads wind between hills and over creeks. There are houses with smoking chimneys and horses in stiff green coats. There are cows the colour of chocolate, and dirt tracks the colour of an old footy, a deep red-brown worn down by one hundred years of wheels.
‘You left a lot behind,’ I say quietly.
Ariel nods, and the sound of the train is like a classic country and western song with a beat you can rely on, clicking and ticking along, not soft and not loud, just right.
‘Some of it forever, I guess.’ She’s almost smiling, but she’s also as close to crying as you can get without going there. ‘But not everything.’ She stares out of the window. ‘I guess I can go back even if I can’t get back.’ Then she does smile. ‘We’re going back now.’
We are, this little train is taking us there, and although I know I mightn’t be able to help Ariel much with the big things, I’ll be giving it my best shot – and sometimes you can even get a trophy for doing that.
‘See the cloud shadows?’ Ariel points out dark splotches as big as football fields on the pale-green grass. ‘They look like they’re locked up in the paddocks.’
I’ve never noticed the shadows of clouds before and seeing them as if they’ve fallen from the sky makes me sad until I see they’re galloping along like massive herds of ghost horses, racing straight through the fences, leaving behind nothing but sunshine and white lambs. It gets me thinking of time passing, so I take hold of Ariel’s hand, determined to make the most of the here and now while the going is good.
From Armstrong station we walk out of town. It’s like the start of a film
with us as the main characters. Everything is country-coloured and faded. It’s quiet, hardly anyone’s around and the only welcome we get is a barking black dog in the back of a slow-driving ute that looks like it’s leaving town forever. Then we’re alone under the trees, our bags slung over our shoulders, listening to the distant country sounds of a whining chainsaw and the growling of a faraway truck.
‘I could’ve asked someone to drive us out,’ Ariel says. ‘But I need some time to get used to the idea of where I am and where I’m going. And I wanted to do it alone. With you.’ She flashes a smile.
I flash one back. ‘Cool. I like walkin’.’
We swing along the road, holding hands, and I’ve gotta say I know this is a sad day but it’s turning out to be beautiful so far, although I doubt that it’ll stay that way, as we turn onto the dirt road leading up to Ariel’s old place. Beside us is a creek, clumps of dead grass and broken branches stuck on fences and stranded high up in trees. It’s pretty obvious that this is where the flood came through. There is a raw strip gouged in the land four hundred metres wide.
‘Now it starts.’ Ariel looks at a pile of destroyed fruit trees ready for burning. ‘For real.’
We get to a letterbox, number forty-eight, made from a petrol drum that used to be red, but is now a rusty raspberry pink. Long dry grass hugs the post, and beyond it is a driveway that curves around a couple of those fat old palm trees that don’t have coconuts. Then it heads for the house, or where the house used to be. Ariel opens the letterbox and looks in.
‘No mail today.’ She drops the flap and raises her eyebrows. ‘No bills. That’s good.’ Then she stares up the driveway, the sun on her face, her bare arms crossed. ‘I guess we should go up there.’
‘I guess we should,’ I say. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’
Ariel lifts her chin, her hair shining, and it’s easy to imagine her walking in the paddocks, going in and out of the gates – a country girl in jeans, blue shirt, brown hat and Blundstone boots. There are white gum trees, low hills and empty animal shelters made of tin in the corners. I see a windmill, rusted tight, standing there like a stiff grey flower. No cattle or sheep, though. No horses, no barking dog, no tractor working. No house.
‘It’s such a nice place,’ she says. ‘Why did it have to happen?’
There’s no answering that – so I just nod and look at her, a girl in a white and yellow summer dress that flutters in a breeze smelling of things growing near and far.
‘You’re the bravest person I know,’ I say. ‘No contest.’
Tears track down her cheeks as she looks along the driveway.
‘The house used to be just there.’ She lifts her arm, rounded and slim, showing just a hint of colour from a summer long gone. ‘Behind the old palms. It was wooden and old and had front windows like eyes. And there were sheds. Everything was so trashed they just bulldozed the lot and took it to the tip.’
I can see a patch of bare flat ground, a crooked tap and a few plants that might have been part of the garden. Further on is the creek, just the banks and some reeds. I can’t even see any water. Ariel points to a line of flattened fence posts, the wire strung with tufts of grass, and rusted sheets of galvanised iron.
‘The horses used to be in there. Oh, the poor horses.’ Now she’s really crying, her face in her hands. ‘My dad,’ she says, shaking her head, as she starts up the driveway. ‘Oh, my poor dad.’
I follow, thinking it looks more like a fire’s been through than a flood; there’s not much to see but bare earth with the guts ripped out of it, a stillness as if the land’s in a coma. I put my arm around Ariel, getting the impression she is now as lost from this place as it is from her.
‘And the worst thing is,’ she says, ‘I don’t want to live here again, Ryan. There’s nothing for me. Too much has gone to ever come back.’
We look at the dirt, the scars on the trees, the tangled wire, and I imagine her picturing her old life: her dad coming out of the house; the horses at the fence; Kaydie riding her bike; their dog running around; Jill hanging out the washing, calm and happy. No sign of any of that, all gone, just the sound of the wind rattling through the palm trees and moaning softly in the old telephone wire that’s connected to nothing but fresh air.
‘Let’s walk to the hay shed.’ Ariel points to a big old square tin shed on a low hill. ‘It’s the only thing left.’
The shed is made of a patchwork of tin sheets that must have come from all over the place. It reminds me of a page of old stamps – faded blue, faded red, faded green. The frame is made from actual trees, the bark stripped off, and there’s a gate at the front big enough for a truck to drive through. Inside there’s hay, a low pile of it, the smell like dusty honey, sweet and warm, tickling my nose.
Ariel flips the chain on the gate without looking, we go in, and sit on an old horse blanket with Rosy written on it. Around us the tin walls creak, the wind fiddles around in the high corners, a swallow swoops, the hay rustles and the light shines through, soft and dim. There are nail holes in the walls like a spray of stars. It feels like the clock has stopped and the beating of our hearts has taken over.
‘I’ve never been in a place like this.’ I look around. ‘You couldn’t make it any better. I could stay here for hours.’
Ariel has a stalk of hay in her fingers and I’m sucking on one, the taste of it like cereal.
‘We could stay.’ She glances at me. ‘We’ve got our sleeping bags and I’ve got some muesli bars. And an extra bottle of water. Plus there’s a rainwater tank outside.’
My mouth is suddenly dry. Rainwater – man, I wouldn’t mind a drink of that right now.
‘We could.’ I feel Ariel’s hip against mine, warm and firm. ‘If you want to. What about your neighbours?’
Ariel lays stalks of straw along her thigh, gold and yellow on faded blue.
‘I never rang them. I always meant to sleep here.’ Her voice is even and calm. ‘One last night. For my dad. And for you.’
I look outside into late-afternoon sun that’s the colour of hay, thinking that just about everything here is the colour of hay, soft and silky like sleep, even the dirt road and trees edged in gold as the sun goes down. In the distance I can see a line of low mountains, not gold but blue, that have been there for a million years. Boy, I bet they’ve seen a few things and a few people come and go – and now Ariel and I are here.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘we do have our toothbrushes.’
‘Well,’ Ariel says, ‘we most certainly do.’
We set up camp, laying our sleeping bags on the loose straw and horse blanket. Then we build up around the edges with hay bales, closing it in to keep the wind out. Next we arrange our food and water, and the job’s done. The cubby is complete! We look at each other and laugh.
‘Saturday night in the country.’ Ariel sits on a hay bale, not wearing shoes, curling her toes in their white socks. ‘It’s goin’ off, you’ve got to admit.’
She’s put on a white cardigan over her dress. I see it has little blue and pink roses on it and bits of loose hay stuck to it like gold thread. She’s also happier than I’ve ever known her, smiling and laughing, as if she sees the silliness of what we’re doing but couldn’t care less.
‘I feel good,’ she says, pushing her feet around, looking at the loose straw on the floor that is like a yellow sea around the stacked bales. ‘And I don’t even know why. I guess I can’t change anything that happened. It doesn’t mean I don’t care. I just can’t change it.’
I sit on my sleeping bag and lean against a hay bale. The wind scurries across the tin, scraping and scratching, small noises that I’m used to now, just part of the soundtrack. I look at Ariel’s bare legs, and look further up than I probably should. She doesn’t notice, or doesn’t seem to care, and in fact sits next to me, very close, no space between us, undoing the three front buttons of her dress with a flick of her fingers. I see a roundness there that is so perfect I zone out completely until her face touches mine.
‘This means everything,’ she says, so close to me her breath is warm in my mouth. ‘But it might never happen again.’
I nod, thinking I already understand – certain things have their own set of rules and work in their own special way. Like your favourite song – never the same even when someone else sings it. This is one of those moments in time that comes and goes, and can only ever be held in your head.
‘I know,’ I say.
The night is like a page turned in a story that brings us closer than we’ve ever been. The sounds of the wind and the old shed create a space in which we are free to be ourselves with each other, in a way that is our secret and always will be. Creatures are moving around, there is a sense of the country outside and the weight of a black sky loaded with stars, but in here there’s just us. And that is exactly how we want it to be.
I wake early, quietly amazed at where I am and what has happened. I look around the shed and then outside, and lose myself in the silent show the country has turned on. Fog has come down, a thick whiteness that surrounds the secret that Ariel and I now share. The grass is soaked, heavy and green, and the drifting mist presses itself amongst the trees and through the fences. It is, I’m sure, the most beautiful morning of my life so far.
‘Fog.’ Ariel sits up. I see her white cardigan is mostly undone and her hair everywhere. ‘Quiet. A nice morning for a walk.’ She looks and keeps on looking, her chin on her hand. ‘And calm. Just how I like it. This is how the world should be. Peaceful.’
Ariel’s so close to me I can feel the warmth of her skin. She’s calmer than I’ve ever seen her. But what do I really know about her and her life? What does anyone really know about anyone? I realise there’s more to other people than I ever thought, that you can only ever try to see the world they live in, try to see what they’ve been through, and try to be part of it.
‘Listen to the silence,’ she says. ‘I’ve been missing that.’
Tigerfish Page 15