by Clare Moleta
She crawled a few metres alongside one set of prints that led out onto the salt pan. A child’s feet, not much longer than her hand. The same drive that had got her here told her to get up now and go, keep going. That Matti was still in reach. But when she tried to stand the pain was so intense that she couldn’t believe she’d walked for more than twenty-four hours on that ankle. Her stick was useless, she couldn’t get up.
Li smelled mud beneath the salt. Cracked the crust with her fingers. Whatever the truckie had given her, she was paying for it now. Her head rang. She was parched, her vision was blurring and her chest was tight. A long way down there was the pulsing of her swollen ankle. She worked her pack off and fumbled inside for the melon, laid it beside those small footprints. She said Matti’s name again and then she let her body go down all the way onto the dry lake and rocked herself and cried, a ragged circular noise.
It was late in the day when Li woke, in pain and cold and thirsty. The wind had picked up and layers of sand and salt had crusted on her skin while she slept. Now her eyes filled with the same grit. The sun’s heat had thinned and the night was coming behind it.
Mechanically, she registered the danger. Put her thermal layers and her jacket and cap back on and drank four capfuls of water. Her ankle throbbed. Under the compression bandage the swelling had spread in a dark purple mess along the side of her foot. She rubbed in more anti-inflam and put the bandage back on. Then she got on her hands and knees and dug a solar still. She should have done it earlier, but at least this way it would start working as soon as the sun came up. There was moisture not far below the crust. She cupped an empty ready pack into a hollow at the base and covered the hole with one of her smaller plastic sheets. Heaped salt around the edges to seal it and weighted down the centre with another handful. Cut down a discarded water bottle for the second still. Three would be better but two was all she could manage. The temperature was dropping. She needed shelter now.
In the dunes, out of the wind, she got out her torch and started to dig another hole, longer and shallower this time, banking the sand up on each side to maximise the windbreak. She was warmer when she finished but her ankle hurt worse. After she’d unrolled her big plastic sheet she realised there was nothing to raise it up on, to keep the condensation off her. Closed her eyes and felt a weight pulling her down, heard Angie say, Everything’s a decision now. Nothing just happens.
Then Li remembered the stick. She crawled back onto the salt crust to get it and stuck it upright in the sand at one end of her hole, twisting and forcing it down as deep as she could manage on her knees and then building up sand around the base. Draped the sheeting over it and weighted down the corners on both sides. Then she dragged her pack inside and laid down more plastic and the mat and the sleeping bag. Thought again and heaped up the sand under one end of the mat for her ankle. Sat in her shelter and chewed slowly through two protein bars. What she needed was a fire but, apart from her stick, there was nothing here to burn. She felt a million stars pressing on her but she didn’t look up. Wasn’t interested in where she was. The salt got into her dry throat and she thought about her stills, waiting for the day’s heat to draw up saltwater out of the lakebed and purify it, drop by drop. Then she eased off the bandage and rubbed in the cream, and put on her balaclava and got into the sleeping bag and zipped it all the way up.
It wasn’t enough. Hour after hour the cold deepened and sharpened, pushing up through the earth and down from the stars to inhabit her fully. It made the throbbing in her ankle worse, then better, then she couldn’t feel it. Started to shiver and couldn’t stop. She rubbed herself, pumped her arms, trying to catch the heat as it left her body. Thirst tormented her. Matti ran away. Matti was always running away. As soon as she could walk, she ran. Out of Li’s arms and down the long stony driveway, onto the road. When Li caught up with her, she screamed. She thrashed and kicked and bit, eyes on the horizon. Ran further next time, into the bush, into town. People brought her back from everywhere. She hates me, Li told Frank, with bruises on her neck. Don’t take it so personally, Frank said. She’s a kid. Kids run away. Li said, She doesn’t run away from you.
Cold. She reached for Frank, for the warmth of him. Cried out. Got up on her knees in the sleeping bag and licked condensation off the plastic. Above her the stars burned and blurred and ran. Stars so thick they made smoke. Lumps of galaxies like slow burning wood. She was standing in the dark, away from the camp, with Val. Val was naming the stars for her, the ones for direction and the ones for stories, the dead stars and the mechanical ones, patched together from kevlar and alloys, wearing out and failing to bounce their signals, drifting off course and malfunctioning.
Frank, she thought, she’s getting too far away. But Frank was gone.
* * *
Navid had called the salvage depot and Li’s shift manager had found her and passed on the message that she had to come. When she got to the desal plant, Frank’s shift had finished two hours ago. Navid wasn’t where he’d said he would be and no one would tell her anything. Finally one of the men left what he was doing and led her to a container where the workers slept between shifts. As he turned to leave he put his hand briefly on her shoulder.
Navid was sitting on a bench outside the container, leaning forward with his head resting in his hands. He sat up slowly when she said his name. Then he told her there had been an accident. A sling had snapped.
He was on a camp bed inside. A sheet over him and plastic sheeting under him so the blood wouldn’t ruin the mattress. When she lifted the sheet she couldn’t decipher his face.
It’s him, Navid said. I don’t want you to hope for that.
It hadn’t occurred to her to hope for that. She had known she would lose him when they met, and when they lay down in the paddock, when he asked her to stay and she said yes she would stay, when Matti was born, when they went out dancing after they sold two seasons’ harvest in advance and they couldn’t stop talking about the future, when they were on the road together and the future was still there. She just hadn’t been ready today.
Navid pushed her down gently into a chair and let go, like she burned. She couldn’t take her eyes off his body. This was their last time together, soon he would be gone completely, and she was watching for some essential detail – some proof or sign. She heard gulls outside and something landed heavily on the wharf. There was the static hum from the lightstrip above her. There was the clock and Navid breathing behind her. A smell of skin and iron. There was nothing of Frank here. She knew it was him, she didn’t delude herself, but the crushed body in bloody pants and workboots could have been any man out there.
The shift manager knocked and came in, wiping his boots. He stood behind her and spoke quietly to Navid about human error and risk ownership, the terms of independent contracting. He said it was unfortunate. He asked what they planned to do with the remains and offered more plastic sheeting. He made it clear they would need the bed soon. He wiped his feet again as he left.
School would be over in four hours. She would have to go there and tell Matti what had happened. Matti wouldn’t believe her, she would want to see, and Li would have to decide if that was right, and she would have to decide without Frank. She would have to make every decision about Matti alone now. But first she had to take her eyes off the body on the bed.
She thought about how she’d never wanted a child, had feared it, feared herself, and how Frank had tried to make her believe she was capable. That there was enough room in the world, that Wars wouldn’t last forever. How she had changed her mind, slowly, falteringly. His faith in the essential goodness of people drew it out in others or suspended their disbelief somehow – finally even hers. It was a kind of grace he had and it would be in their child too, she decided. What she knew about parenting she had learned from an alcoholic drifter who had no memory of his own mother. But everything she got wrong, Frank would make right. Everything the world couldn’t offer, he would provide. And that’s how it had been. All these
years he had been teaching Matti his language of grace and she had watched and listened without ever getting closer to learning the words.
Behind her, Navid said, I never should have got him the job. I’ll try to get you a payout but he wasn’t on the books. So. He shifted painfully. How will you bury him?
She saw that the bed was facing out towards the Gulf. East, where Frank would never go now. Whatever Teresa wants, she said.
He moved towards the door. I’ll get some of the boys to help put him in the van.
Li spoke with her back to him. Can you get us on a boat? She heard him release the door handle. Stood up and turned to face him. Navid. You do that, don’t you? You and Teresa? That’s what you do. Can you do it for me and Matti?
He met her gaze finally and she saw he was angry with her for knowing when to ask this of him, for seeing that he had no choice.
* * *
She went back to the salvage depot. Her shift manager had told her that if she walked out there would no job to come back to, but he owed her two weeks’ pay and she would need cash where they were going. There were still a few hours before school finished. She thought of those hours as a gift for Matti.
On the bus to the the depot, and while she waited for the manager to see her, and while they argued, and on the two buses from the depot to the school with the money in her jacket, and waiting outside the gates with the others, she kept searching for the right words, shaking them out and stacking and rearranging them, dumb and persistent, looking for the combination that would cut cleanly and not scar.
She watched Matti crossing the playground with a group of other children. Not one of the kids who dragged their backpack along the ground but one who carried it carefully because she knew exactly what it had cost. When she saw Li waiting she slowed and peeled off from the others. She usually walked back to the flat on her own. Li wanted to take it back, give her another hour another minute, but it was too late.
When she told her, Matti looked at her carefully, not speaking. Li tried to hug her but that was wrong already, shaming, so they just stood there while the crowd dispersed, and then they sat on the school wall.
Matti touched Li’s mouth, testing for truth. She said, But he didn’t tell me he would go.
Li shuddered. Matti took her hand away and stared at her. A grown-up crying was proof. Li watched the death go into her, this unbelievable thing, saw her pupils soak it up and darken with it. She pulled her in and Matti pushed her face into her neck and a wounded sound came out, muffled against her. Li rocked her like she had rocked her when she was a baby, when her crying protested all the things she hadn’t asked for and was helpless against. But when Li was too tired to hold her anymore, when she felt desperation boiling up inside her, then Frank had lifted Matti and carried her through the dark, his body like a boat, a promise, and that low creaking sound he made over and over until she quieted and slept on his chest.
She looked up at Li out of a face that was already remade by loss. And now where is he?
What had Frank said about Robbie? Had he just lied? I think he’s in here now. She touched Matti’s chest and then her own.
Matti concentrated, face screwed up. I can’t feel him.
Li was so tired. What’s the last thing you remember?
The last thing of Dad? Matti thought back, lips sifting quietly through the night before. He was late, so he hung me upside down to shake out being late.
Li nodded, seeing them in the crush of bags and shoes by the door, before Frank headed out for the night shift. Did he say goodbye?
Matti’s face opened a little. I said, I love you be safe, and he said he loved me and he would be and have fun at school tomorrow.
Can you feel him now?
She hesitated. Yes? But not inside.
Okay, not inside. In Li’s mind the ruin of Frank, plastic-wrapped.
* * *
They were nearly home before Matti had another question. Will he wait for us?
Yes.
Where will he wait? In the Best Place?
She didn’t want to keep lying to her. She wanted to pull them both down into sleep and sleep through everything that was coming. She wanted Matti to stop asking. Yes, she said, in the Best Place.
She lived through the night. When she crawled out to pee before dawn, the salt was pink and phosphorescent, a paler crust of stars. She looked north and saw the whole horizon blink.
The sun swelled up molten over the flat edge of the world. She waited for it to reach her, to heat the plastic. Then she slept.
* * *
In the thin warmth of the twelfth day Li stood in the abandoned campsite with the dunes at her back and looked out at an immense, low flatness, veined pink and white, a glare off the salt, back and out as far as she could see. The horizon was low and the sky filled all the space with clouds. A long way north there was smoke.
The cold and the rest had eased her ankle and she could walk a little with the stick. She started looking for proof. The campsite wasn’t enough; how many big road camps had she passed along the highway? But there were other things. Shallow toilet holes and uncovered shit too close to camp. The distance a kid would be willing to walk away alone in the dark.
And then, a little way out on the salt, she found the remains of someone else’s still, half full of parched-looking plant matter. Li got down on her knees and laid her hands flat on either side of it. She had taught Matti how to do this on the road to Valiant, made her practise over and over in the dead resting hours, even though Matti complained that she was hot and sick of digging, that they wouldn’t be around to drink the water.
Right there, she made a list of things that would keep Matti alive. She knew ways to get water, knew how to make a snare out of anything you could bend, how to keep a tent dry and watertight, how to share body heat. She had thermals, some food, some safety in numbers. And she knew how to be among people. Robbie, the kids at school, the kids in makecamp – she was always in the middle of things. Like Safia but without the calculation.
It was a choice she was making to believe Matti could survive, she recognised that, but if she stopped believing it she would never get out of here. So she made a deal with Matti. Wait for me, she told her, I’m coming. I just have to get myself right. Give me three days. Stay with the group, remember what you know. Don’t get in a truck. Just set up camp and stay there and I’ll come.
She widened Matti’s still, firmed up the sides and cut down another bottle. Covered it with her last sheet of plastic. When that was done, she checked the other two and drank half the distilled water with absolute attention. Poured the rest into her waterbag and resealed the stills. Then she ate Matti’s melon. It was overripe and astonishingly sweet. Matti had eaten melon once. Her fourth birthday. The Nerredin co-op had bought up a bulk-load of bruised and damaged watermelons off a truck heading south. They were selling it frozen by the piece. Frank bought enough to fill a bowl, they stuck in the candles. Matti and Robbie wolfed down the sugary chunks, gnawed the rind, asked for more. They didn’t know there were other kinds.
The sugar bolted through Li’s blood and left her sick with betrayal. But in a little while she felt hydrated, her brain sharper and her body responsive. There was something missing, something good, and then she realised that she didn’t have a headache. For the first time since she got here she could imagine walking out, the physical sensation of it. But as long as she was stuck here, she would use the time, so that when she caught up with Matti she could go back to keeping them both alive.
The dunes around where she’d slept revealed the tracks of small night creatures. She unpacked her dump wire and made and set a handful of snares. The stick was no use in the dunes, it was easier to crawl. There had been trees of some kind here that had been ripped down to stumps for firewood. But it wasn’t as barren as she’d thought yesterday; there was saltbush and small mesquite plants, prickly acacia and something that might be rubber vine. Still nothing to burn, but adding plants to her stills woul
d increase the water supply she’d taught Matti that.
The sun was high now, early afternoon. She needed to figure out a way to get off the ground tonight and keep warm.
* * *
The four-wheel drive was further into the dunes, about fifty metres from the end of the track and buried up to the bottom of the windows. She found it by the fierce glint off the windscreen. It looked like someone had turned off for shelter, or maybe the track used to come in that far before the dunes had blown over it She shovelled the sand away from driver’s door. Saw that the driver was still inside.
The door was rusted stuck. When she got it open the heat of the cab washed over her, and a smell of leather from the body hunched over the steering wheel. It was brown and shrivelled, a brittle blanket of skin tightened in on itself, still clothed in fragments of shorts and T-shirt. A long time dead. When she put her hands on it, it was smooth like the bark of a ghost gum and weighed almost nothing; she dragged it out easily and it stayed rigid and whole. She propped it on the sand against the rear wheel hub and crawled into the cab.
Small fragments of plastic were scattered over the passenger seat and floor – probably the remains of a water bottle. Three empty cans, labels long disintegrated. The dash compartment yielded registration papers, a vehicle maintenance handbook, and a wallet with nothing in it except an old-style driver’s licence. Daniel Baker. Date of birth more than seventy years ago. A Saint Anthony medallion hung from the mirror. Reaching under the driver’s seat she felt a wad of folded-up paper and drew it out carefully. It was a map, fragile but intact. She put it aside to look at later and hauled herself into the back. Daniel Baker had probably slept here. There was an empty thirty-litre jerry can in the boot, too heavy to carry but still useable. She sat for a minute with her eyes closed, feeling the heat through the glass of this obsolete vehicle that would keep her alive.