Burning Eddy

by Scot Gardner

  ‘What is it, Dan? You okay?’ Mum whispered.

  I nodded. ‘My uniform,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll drop it off — and your bag — when I come in to get Tobe.’

  I hugged her through the window and thanked her.

  ‘You sure you’re okay?’

  I nodded. ‘Just smiling so hard inside that it hurts.’

  She scruffed the fuzz on my head and kissed me before parping on the horn as she drove off.

  The sun came out as Mum left. It made a faint rainbow in the east. Chantelle and I watched it without making a sound. I took her hand and grunted a laugh when I realised she was standing on the wet driveway in just her socks.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  I pointed at her feet.

  She shrugged.

  I could understand that shrug. Some things are more important than others. What was important right then was that we were together. Together and alone. There were pictures in my head, pictures about some of the things we could do together and alone, and my underwear suddenly felt uncomfortable. I was thankful that the pictures weren’t on the big screen for the whole world to see. Chantelle looked at me with her eyes part closed. She put her arms around my head and we kissed. All tongue and lips and breath. On and on. Could she feel that? That burning where our bodies met? She broke from the kiss and pulled my hips to her. She moaned into my neck and I knew she could feel it. Maybe she had pictures of her own?

  Chantelle snorted like a pig, then shook with a silent laugh. ‘God, how embarrassing.’

  I looked over my shoulder. Rabbit had mounted Stacey and was humping on her front leg. My face got hot.

  Chantelle hid against my neck and continued to laugh. ‘Bloody Rabbit. Always got to get a bit of the action.’

  The heat between us vanished and left a glowing feeling of closeness. One day, I thought, when the time is right, we’ll love each other senseless.

  ‘Mum’ll be home soon,’ she said. She led me inside and made us both a Milo.

  My mum and Chantelle’s mum arrived in quick succession. Mrs Morrison had been shopping and had picked up Chantelle’s sister from school on her way home. Lauren dragged her bag along the ground and stopped in front of me. She looked a bit crazy. ‘Have you been kissing again?’ she asked.

  Chantelle scoffed. ‘Mind your own business, Lauren.’

  ‘I knew it,’ she said. She laughed, dropped her bag and ran to Toby. She heaved and lifted my brother onto her hip. He hung on around her neck for a few paces then he wriggled and Lauren dropped him on his feet. He ran and jumped into my arms. I hugged him and he licked my cheek.

  ‘Gross, keep your tongue in your mouth, slobber dog.’

  Tobe jiggled and I let him go.

  Chantelle’s horse thundered to a halt by the gate, whinnied, snorted, then threw her head around.

  ‘Hello, April, you missing out, hey? Something going on?’ Chantelle yelled.

  Tobe walked to the gate and held out his hand to the horse. April sniffed at him then nibbled his fingers with her lips. Tobe squealed and backed away laughing.

  Mum and Mrs Morrison said hello to each other. Mum didn’t have my bag. She looked greyer — her hair, her skin.

  ‘I phoned Dad,’ Chantelle told her mum. ‘I asked if Dan could stay over tonight.’

  Mrs Morrison’s eyebrows jumped. ‘Oh, did you?’

  ‘Nothing concrete,’ my mum said. ‘They’ve got school tomorrow.’

  Nothing concrete?

  ‘How was today?’ Mrs Morrison asked.

  Chantelle shrugged. ‘All right.’

  ‘What did your dad say?’ Mrs Morrison asked with a sigh.

  Chantelle nodded. ‘He said it was fine . . . if it was okay with you.’

  I held my breath. I think Chantelle and Mum did too.

  ‘That’s fine. Just don’t go . . . stupid.’

  Chantelle nodded and jiggled on the spot. I let go of my breath.

  Mrs Morrison turned to Mum. ‘Sounds like this has been a long time in the planning.’

  Mum’s lips pulled tight. ‘Yeah. I hope they’re not . . . I hope they don’t cause you any headaches.’

  Mrs Morrison shrugged. ‘Rick’s home tonight. I’m working. Won’t bother me!’

  Mum grunted and crossed her arms.

  Mrs Morrison looked hard at Mum. ‘They’ll be fine.’

  ‘Give me a call if there are any hassles.’

  Lauren was inviting Toby inside. Tobe looked at Mum and she told him they had to get going. Mrs Morrison asked Mum in for a cuppa and Mum shook her head. She looked at her shoe and said she’d have to keep moving. Her lips were still pulled tight and it looked as though she was going to cry. She ripped open the back door of the Scorpion and grabbed my school bag. She wiped her nose on her wrist and handed me my bag.

  ‘Luke phoned,’ she said.

  I looked at her face. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Yeah. He wanted to talk to you. Did he call here?’

  I shrugged and shook my head.

  ‘I gave him the number.’

  Mum looked all tangled up behind her eyes. Maybe she couldn’t cope with me being at Chantelle’s. I put my bag down and hugged her.

  She breathed the words in my ear. ‘Your dad phoned as well.’

  Suddenly all the shakiness about her made sense. He hadn’t phoned for months. He’d been transferred to Fulham — nearly two hours away — and I hadn’t visited. Hadn’t really thought about him. Until then. I felt a wash of guilt and my gut fluttered.

  She pulled back and looked into my eyes. ‘He got seventeen years.’

  Seventeen years? That news was like a fox in the chook pen of my mind. My thoughts flapped about in my head and banged into the wire. Seventeen years was longer than I’d been alive. Toby would be twenty-three when Dad got out. In myself I didn’t feel sad and I thought that maybe I should have. I felt sad for Dad. What a waste of a life. Two lives. He was my father — I had no choice in that — but Mum had married him. Mum had chosen to be with him.

  ‘You all right, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah. Bit of a shock. He’d been a stranger for a long time. I didn’t realise how much I didn’t know about him.’

  I could tell by the beaten look in her eyes that Dad had told her about things. About the things he had to suffer as a boy and the ugly justice he had found for himself. She wasn’t angry with Dad anymore. Something had burst. With that news, she now knew the answer to so many of the questions in our lives. Like why Dad was so angry, why he couldn’t be gentle for even one minute, why he struggled to smile. Why he couldn’t laugh.

  She called my brother over. ‘Come home soon,’ she said to me.

  I nodded and hugged her again.

  She bundled Toby into the front seat and tooted as she left.

  Chantelle and I helped make tea. I felt at home. Mr Morrison kept patting me on the back. He patted me on the back when I cut the onion, and again when I got all the pasta into the boiling water without splashing a drop. In all the months I’d been going out with his daughter I’d never really called him anything other than Mr Morrison. That night he wanted me to call him Rick. It felt awkward but he pulled a face every time I called him Mr Morrison.

  ‘Just call him Dad,’ Lauren said as we dried the dishes. ‘We do.’

  ‘Call him Dad?’

  ‘You talking to me?’ Rick said, and flicked me on the leg with the tea towel. Without thinking, I flicked him back and it cracked against his hand. He chased me through the lounge room and dragged me onto the carpet in the hallway. He dug his fingers into my ribs.

  ‘Barley, barley!’ I panted, and eventually he let me up.

  He puffed and smiled. ‘Wuss.’

  He was a good dad. Maybe even a great dad, but not my dad. Rick might be a good name to call this man.

  We watched Home and Away and The Simpsons. Chantelle rested her legs on my lap and Lauren sat beside me and talked the whole time.

  ‘Lauren; teeth, toilet,
bed,’ Rick shouted from the kitchen.

  Lauren groaned, but didn’t move. Next thing her dad’s in the doorway and she’s scampering along the hall.

  ‘What are we going to do about sleeping arrangements?’

  ‘Easy,’ Chantelle sang. ‘Dan can sleep in my bed.’

  Rick grunted. ‘And where will you sleep?’

  ‘In my bed.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Rick said. ‘Wouldn’t be much sleeping going on.’

  His tone was friendly and innocent but when he crossed his arms, the skin on my head got prickly and hot. My heart was rattling away in my chest like it needed an oil. Maybe I could sleep on the couch? Maybe I could sleep in the shed with Rabbit and Stacey? I know Rabbit’s a good kisser . . .

  The phone rang. Lauren garbled through a mouthful of toothpaste that she’d get it.

  ‘There are double bunks in Lauren’s room,’ Rick suggested.

  ‘Get real, Dad, he’s not sleeping with Lauren.’

  ‘Well, it’s one of the options. Come on, think of some others.’

  ‘Dan,’ Lauren sang. ‘It’s for you.’

  I looked at Chantelle. ‘Who is it?’ she shouted.

  ‘It’s Luke Van Den Dribble or something like that.’

  Rick smiled. Timing, I thought. They could work out where I was sleeping and I’d just sleep there. I took the handset from Lauren.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Daniel. Luke here. How are you?’

  ‘Luke! I’m fine. How are you?’

  ‘Ja, I’m okay. Your mum said I might catch you there. I . . . I wanted to say sorry for today,’ he said. He sounded old and beaten.

  ‘Sorry? There’s nothing to be sorry about. You did . . . you did the best you could.’

  Silence. I could hear his dog barking in the background. Stinky old Diamond.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do,’ he said. ‘Please. Call. You got my number?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll let you get back to . . .’ he mumbled.

  ‘Nah, no hurry,’ I cut in. ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’

  ‘Nothing much. Washing. Making some soup if I get time. Maybe.’

  ‘We’re going to get Eddy’s ashes at lunchtime. Do you want to come?’ Chantelle and I decided that it wouldn’t be a big walk from school to the funeral director’s office. If we took off at lunchtime we’d make it back to catch the bus.

  ‘Ja, that I could do.’

  He offered to pick us up from school. We organised a time and a place, and before he hung up there was a lightness in his voice again.

  Chantelle was smiling. ‘It’s all arranged,’ she said. She grabbed a sheet and a pillowcase from the linen cupboard and skipped to her room. Rick had dragged the spare mattress in from Lauren’s room and dumped it on the floor beside Chantelle’s bed. Right beside her bed.

  ‘Leave the door open. Please try to get some sleep.’

  ‘Yup,’ Chantelle and I chorused.

  When Fish saw us getting onto the bus together the following morning, he made lots of whoo-hoo noises. Kat hadn’t caught the bus. I looked up the Bellan road and wondered how her sleepover had gone.

  Fish couldn’t believe that I’d stayed the night at Chantelle’s place. He asked me what had gone on and I smiled and shrugged. He laughed and coughed and called me a sly prick. He wouldn’t have been able to understand how, when you really love someone, sometimes just being with them is enough. You don’t have to do anything. He wouldn’t believe that a boy and a girl who are in love can lie beside each other and talk for three hours in the dark of a winter’s night — about Eddy and camping and school and music and dads — and be satisfied just holding hands. Well, holding hands until they are almost frozen, then falling asleep.

  He’d know about the wanting. He’d know about that dream of smooth, warm skin against skin. The smells. The taste. The tingling touch. There’d be no mysteries for him. There’d be no mysteries but I wondered if he knew about love. I laughed to myself — Mr Expert on love. How would I know what love felt like for Fish? God, it felt good to me and the four of us on the back seat felt like a sort of club.

  The bus stopped to let the Johnson kids on. Amy sat in the corner of the back seat next to Fish and ate some red fruit jelly with a plastic spoon. As I watched her, she gagged and spat a mouthful of the fruit stuff back into the container.

  ‘That’s totally off,’ she groaned, and slapped the spoon in the cup and tossed it onto the floor.

  ‘What?’ Fish asked. ‘Mouldy?’

  She kicked the container under the seat in front of her and spat on the floor.

  ‘Charming,’ I said.

  She pointed out the window.

  We stood up to get a better look and Fish groaned.

  A calf had just been born. Right beside the fence.

  ‘How beautiful,’ Chantelle sang, and I had to agree. Death and birth. It made me smile.

  As the bus lurched off, I could see the cow licking and chomping at the afterbirth that covered her black-and-white baby. Afterbirth the colour of red fruit jelly.

  Had to laugh.

  nineteen

  E A G L E

  Luke arrived on time and stayed in the car while Chantelle and I talked with Daryl about the service. He gave me a small ornately carved wooden box, not much bigger than a long-life milk carton. I could hold it in one hand.

  ‘That’s it?’ I asked.

  Daryl chuckled good-naturedly, and nodded. ‘Doesn’t seem like much, does it?’

  I thought about opening the lid. Chantelle pulled on my sleeve. I thanked Daryl and we left.

  ‘That place was freaking me out,’ Chantelle said. ‘Did you see the side room? Coffins everywhere.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. Luke’s car had a bench seat in the front and we climbed in beside him. ‘It’s their display room; you know, choose a coffin.’ I wondered if they had mannequins in the boxes.

  ‘Where to?’ Luke asked, and started the car.

  Chantelle looked at me. Her eyes were smiling. She was ready for adventure.

  ‘Bellan,’ I said.

  ‘Ja?’

  Chantelle nodded.

  ‘Okay,’ Luke said with a shrug, and drove off.

  We were quiet until we reached the outskirts of Carmine. Luke shifted in his seat and sighed. ‘Eddy made me the one to look after her will. I went to the solicitor this morning and they read it.’

  Chantelle and I looked at the lanky man.

  ‘She left everything to charity; World Wide Fund For Nature, RSPCA, Greenpeace, World Vision. Her house, everything.’

  I slapped my thigh and laughed. ‘Fantastic.’

  ‘Ja, I think so too. Fantastic.’

  Even after she’s dead, I thought, she’s still trying to save the world.

  Chantelle looked at me. ‘What about Timmy?’

  Timmy the cat. The stray that stayed.

  ‘Timmy disappeared,’ Luke said. ‘I went to feed him the day after Eddy . . . I went to feed him and he was nowhere. I put the food out for him and the next day it was still there. So I asked Mrs Vos down the road and she tells me that he’s shifted into her place. Sleeps on the front doormat. Cats are pretty smart.’

  Luke’s car skidded as he turned onto the dirt Bellan road. It had become potholed and rough as it did every winter and Luke pointed to the ‘Summer Traffic Only’ sign.

  ‘Sure it’s okay down here?’

  ‘Yeah, I live down here.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Chantelle asked.

  ‘You’ll see,’ I said, but in my heart I was undecided. I’d thought about finding the remains of Eddy’s old place, but that is in pine forest now and the pines are too much like a graveyard with their heavy shade and the way the wind whistles through their needles. I wanted to scatter Eddy’s ashes somewhere strong and happy.

  Luke kept driving, dodging puddles and holding tight to the steering wheel.

  ‘Almost there,’ I said as we drove past the
remains of Penny Lane’s house. The grass had grown with the autumn rains and now her place was the greenest in Bellan. Yes, I thought. Death and birth. ‘Just stop near the fence here.’

  Luke pulled over but stayed in the car.

  I asked him if he wanted to come and he shrugged.

  ‘I’ll wait,’ he said, and crossed his arms.

  I held the barbed wires apart for Chantelle and she did the same for me. I still managed to hook my school pants on the wire and put a small tear in the crotch. We walked up the green hill, then into the forest beside the dam. Down to the little gully and the huge myrtle beech tree that had sheltered me after the fire at Penny’s place.

  ‘It’s beautiful here,’ Chantelle whispered.

  A lyrebird called from the other side of the gully, its voice so loud that I felt like covering my ears. Whistling and chortling, pretending it was a rosella, then a kookaburra, then a shrike-thrush, then a whipbird. Chantelle and I stood frozen, listening. A creaking cockatoo, wren and then chiming like a currawong. Then a sound like sharpening a knife on a stone. It finally stopped singing but we could hear it scratching through the leaf litter.

  ‘This is where fairies live,’ Chantelle whispered.

  ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘They’ve got a house just up the road.’

  She grunted. I held the wooden box up and looked at her. ‘How do we do this?’ I whispered.

  She shrugged. ‘Open the lid and tip it out?’

  ‘Do we have to say anything?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  I opened the lid. Inside looked like the scrapings from the firebox on the wood heater. Grey and white ash. I put the lid in my pocket, and Chantelle held my hand. I moved to the gnarled roots of the old tree and upturned the container. The ash tumbled out in a cloud and settled on the bark of the roots. It settled on the moss, it settled on the fallen carpet of small gold and green and brown leaves. Some seemed to hang in the air and I realised as I pulled Chantelle closer that it had settled on a tiny but perfect spider’s web, giving it form.

  ‘The web of life,’ I said.

  Chantelle put her hand to her mouth.

  ‘That has to be good medicine.’