Unsheltered

by Clare Moleta

  She was backlit against the fire and Li couldn’t see her expression. Probably she was full of shit but it made sense to protect your advantage in a group. Maybe Jasmine had worked out it was better not to alienate her too far – not give her a reason to muscle in.

  Jasmine said, That call you wanted to make, back in town. That was about your kid, right?

  I can pay for the call, Li told her. You saw my trade.

  Jasmine opened her mouth, shut it again, shook her head. Drank. Li watched her trying to remember if she’d already made her big gesture. She pulled a phone out of her jacket. You don’t have to pay. You’re part of the crew now.

  How many hours since this woman pepper-sprayed an unarmed man on his knees and tried to take Li’s salvage? But she needed this call. Her mind itched with it. If Jasmine wanted to build up some obligation in her head, that wasn’t Li’s problem. So she took the phone, waited until Jasmine said, I’ll give you some privacy.

  She called the Agency hotline. Punched in language selection, her status number, the missing-minor claim number, their change-of-status claim number. Got comfortable in the dirt, left leg extended to take the pressure off. Shifted slowly through queues, tuning out the hold music, the ads, the official advice to call back in working hours or find a Source outlet. After twenty-five minutes she got a toneless notification that there was no update. She hung up, checked the battery and looked over at the fire, where Jasmine was talking to Mira, re-filling Lucas’s mug. Her generous streak holding.

  He picked up on the second ring.

  She said, I put you on the claim, said you were family. You’ll get the call.

  Someone asking in the background. He covered the phone, said something and the other voice retreated. When he spoke to Li, he kept his voice low. I told you, they’re not going to call.

  Then you call them. Let them know someone with sheltered status is looking for her. Or call the relief groups.

  Li —

  Goddammit, Chris. How many people you think I know inside?

  He said, I have my own kid. I can’t claim another one, that’s the rules.

  You have a kid?

  Yeah. Aaron. He’s nine.

  Pride in his voice, or softening. It was a crappy connection and she was wasting time being thrown by this – that Chris was a parent too, that they’d had kids so close together. Matti always pretended Robbie was her big brother, big cousin. She said, I’m not asking you to claim her. Just keep her safe till I can get there. We already have a change-of-status claim in the system – you’re not on that. I don’t need you to sponsor us.

  You won’t get in if I sponsor you or not. Quota’s bullshit, there’s only buy-in. You got that kind of money?

  Li pushed the phone against her ear, so hard it hurt. She tried to listen past the static, to make his life inside audible.

  Where’s her dad?

  Was this the first time anyone had asked directly? She had a sudden hunger to talk about Frank. He wanted to claim for the Deep Islands, she said.

  Deep Islands aren’t in the XB.

  I know that. You don’t get to choose but you can nominate a preference. He put the Deep Islands first, then any precinct.

  Chris made a sound that could have meant anything.

  That’s what he and Matti wanted.

  Nobody tries that anymore, he said. Deep Islands haven’t opened quota for years – they hardly even deal with the Agency now.

  You looked into it?

  Yeah, I looked into it. His voice had got even quieter. You think Suyin and I want Aaron to grow up here?

  Of course Li thought that. They were inside the wall. Well then, she said. I guess we’ll have to take our chances getting in.

  Jasmine was standing up with her back to the fire, looking over at her. Calling time.

  She heard the way Chris breathed down the phone, not impatient anymore, just trying to slow it down so she’d get it. You won’t. Listen, Li, you won’t. Your kid turns up, she might have a shot. What is she, seven? Eight? Probably got a better shot without you. But the life she’d have in here as an unaccompanied minor – I don’t think you want that for her.

  She couldn’t keep her voice steady. Do you have any idea what it’s like out here? Chris? How fucking sheltered you are?

  And what do you think it’s like in here? Walled up, waiting to get overrun or short-strawed for buy-in? What do you think happens when things run out? I promise you, Li, this is no place for a kid on their own.

  But nowhere was. She was exhausted suddenly, like some part of her had believed in Matti’s Best Place after all. Look, she said. Just, if they call you, just claim her. Temporary. I’ll give you a number you can call me on, okay? Soon.

  I’m not going to call, he said. I already told you I can’t help you.

  Then I’ll call you. I’ll keep calling.

  Okay Li, you do that. The voice in the background again, insistent. Chris sounded as weary as her.

  Li said, She’s your family too.

  No. I don’t owe you anything. It wasn’t my fault.

  When he disconnected the call it was very quiet. She had a sense of the continent around her, how it went on and on, and she was so far away from the fire. She listened to them. Jasmine asserting something, Dev disputing it but turning it into a joke, Eileen’s laugh, like something shaking loose. She didn’t want to be alone in the dark. So she went over and Lucas made room for her on his rolled-up swag and she sat down between him and Eileen, and the heat was good.

  Anything? Jasmine asked.

  Li shook her head, passed the phone back.

  Lucas offered her the bottle he was holding but she shook her head again. They left it alone, picked up some argument about Wars – where the Front was now. She noticed how Dev and Mira stayed out of this, talking quietly between themselves.

  Her number came up, Eileen said, beside her. Last year. That’s why they’re out here.

  Li watched Dev watching his daughter, who should be at the Front now, the child he was trying to save. She remembered Frank in Valiant, looking across the kitchen table at Matti. His unreadable expression. That isn’t something you have to worry about now, sprout.

  Eileen said, I lost my kids. Long time ago.

  Li turned, stared. Do you know?

  I know they didn’t come back.

  Li tried to read it in her steady face, how long it had taken her to give up.

  Eileen said, Don’t you start crying.

  Here. Jasmine pushed a mug into Li’s hand. Bush tea.

  The smell was pure alcohol. Li thought about that and found she didn’t care. She held the mug in both hands and drank, absorbing the burn and the after-scum of leaves. The sugar tasted real. The shock of it hit her system as hard as the spirits.

  Eileen said, They were proper good kids.

  Jasmine leaned over and poured more into the dregs and Li drank again. She drank steadily and with purpose, like Val. After a while she looked up and Eileen was watching.

  Why are you here? Li asked her.

  That’s a big bloody question.

  I mean. Jasmine said you all had a thing.

  Jasmine refilled Li’s mug again. Auntie Eileen’s from North, she said. We couldn’t get by up there without her. Wouldn’t even get there without her.

  Where north? Li asked.

  Huh?

  How far north do you go?

  The others had gone quiet.

  Oh, you know. Jasmine indicated the general direction, spilling her drink. A bit.

  Dev farted forcefully, elbowed his daughter. Mira! Is that how I raised you?

  Good one, Dad. Mira leaned away and started coughing. Oh, that is so rotten.

  Lucas said calmly, You animal.

  Not my fault, Dev said. You all know what roo does to my guts.

  Jasmine caught up. You’ll be sleeping waaay over there.

  I’ll be sleeping under the tarp, he said. Right in between the two sharp thinkers who turned down a perfectly nic
e goat.

  Li said, North’s bullshit.

  Eileen said, You’d know, would you?

  It’s just another place with Weather. Li looked around the faces and shrugged. There’s no way off, there’s nowhere else. There’s just the wall.

  She drank into the dark parts of her brain and the drink made a path between them, step by step. They couldn’t let them in. Not her and Matti, not Safia, or Rich, or the two with the baby. Not the family with the shop that sold everything, or the dusty unsheltered walking to camps that didn’t exist anymore. And not these ones around the fire who thought they were beating the system. Because if they got in, if they all got in, then the whole continent would tip and go under and they’d all drown together. So fuck Chris, she didn’t need him. She’d find Matti herself and then they’d make whatever life they could wherever they were. Not the best place, just any place. And when they couldn’t stay there they’d go to the next place. They wouldn’t waste the time they had running to some bullshit poison paradise or walking around the wall trying to roll a six. She realised she was saying these things out loud, taking up all the air, and she bit down on the rim of the mug.

  Check it out, Lucas said. Jas’s new mate can’t hold her piss either.

  * * *

  Val taught Li to patch, like he taught her everything else. Pretty soon she was helping him. He said she had the knack for it. Told her she’d inherit his tools and his customers one day, when he got too old for the circuit, but it had happened sooner than that.

  On her twelfth birthday, he took her into a bar for the first time. Some inland town, in the lull between lunchtime drinking and night-time drinking. He ordered her a lemonade and a packet of cheese and onion chips, and a half-pint of dark for himself.

  This is a special occasion, he said, and she watched the tender way his hand closed around the glass. All those dry years couldn’t cure him of the need to fall.

  After that, he drank sporadically, convulsively, in great all-night inhalations. Mostly in the shearers’ camps along the circuit, where the alcohol was cheaper and more lethal. He would set their tent up a little way from the action and hurry her into bed, and later she would crawl out and watch him laughing, head back, loose-kneed. Like the other men but different. She watched him rant and slur and lose his balance. He wasn’t a tall man but he seemed to go down from a great height.

  Afterwards he would be pained and shy with her, struggling to meet her eye. He would make promises. Tell her how he’d given it up years before she came to him, and that he would again.

  She started going with him when he got paid for a patch. Men he knew in the towns saw them coming and laughed at him. Couldn’t give your missus the slip, Val?

  When it was just the two of them and he brought bottles back to camp, she took her bedding out into the scrub. He would shout for her but she kept her distance until he was past noticing, and then came in closer to make sure he was okay. One night she watched while he burned the fingers of his left hand slowly, methodically, with his lighter. His drinking hand. It didn’t help – it just meant she had to take on his patching jobs for two weeks. That was when she started carrying his toolkit, in case he lost it when he fell down somewhere. His hand healed, but bit by bit he got too shaky for fine work. Within a year she was the patcher and he was the one who trailed her round the circuit, fronting up for the jobs to make it look more legitimate. Customers stopped caring pretty fast though. Like Val said, she had the knack for it.

  He was going to leave her, she saw it in his eyes. The guilt he couldn’t carry. He would leave her somewhere and go north and she would be alone, circling in the dark. She watched him every minute, would have left any place to go with him, but she couldn’t make him stay.

  For a while he fell back on shearing, or cooking for shearers, or fencing. He’d always been able to turn his hand to anything, but in the end all he could do was shake and drink.

  She was fifteen when he died in the free hospital. After that she just kept going, town to town, the way they always had. Nerredin was just another stop on the circuit for almost ten years, and then one day it was something else.

  * * *

  Sometime in the dark, she was shaken awake. Li, time to go.

  It was Stokes talking. She sat up and her brain contracted.

  Come on, get your shit together. You got five minutes.

  A thumping behind her eyes. Big, slow tongue. She heard movement around her, the ute doors slamming. We breaking camp?

  Stokes flicked torchlight into her face, making her wince. This is what we came for. There’s a convoy coming through, big one. They’ll refuel at the roadhouse.

  And?

  And, so we’re gunna resupply too.

  Her stomach clenched. I don’t want to do that.

  Sure. But you don’t really have a choice, do you? We don’t carry passengers.

  Li made it clear of the bedding before she threw up.

  Jesus, what are you – cut? I need you to be up for this. That was the deal.

  She’ll be all right. Jasmine’s voice behind him. She can match with me. You’re okay, right, Li?

  Li got up slowly, turned to face them both. Jasmine didn’t seem to be suffering. She seemed sharp, focused, almost pumped. She held out Li’s waterbag and Li drank carefully.

  I’m okay, she said. I’ll be ready in five.

  How was it possible that she could smell the water runners before she heard them? First the top notes of fuel and rubber, and then something deeper, a heavy and expansive smell that made her throat ache. Then the dust and the roaring, like a howler with lights.

  From the scrub Li counted the Quench tankers pulling up in front of the roadhouse. The others crouched around her, watching, as the tankers filled the truckstop and overflowed into the rest area, out of the light.

  Twenty-seven, Jasmine said quietly, at her elbow. It checks out.

  When did my info not check out? Dev asked. Name a time.

  He and Eileen were on her right, with water containers, Lucas and Stokes behind them with the wheel brace. No torches. Shaun and Mira had the ute ready two hundred metres back, on ground that was too soft to hold a heavier vehicle.

  The drivers were climbing down stiffly, leaving the headlights on while they started fuelling up, or heading inside to wait their turn. The security guards took up positions, guns at the ready, but there weren’t enough of them and they were getting distracted by the smells of fried food and koffee from the roadhouse. No way a convoy this size could cover all the angles. It occurred to Li that maybe the crew she was with could highjack a tanker after all. One tanker. If there were more of them and they all had guns, if they shot out most of the headlights, and if there wasn’t a CB radio in every cab to call for Company backup. No. Hijacking convoys was just another bullshit story people told each other in a place like makecamp, so they could feel like someone, somewhere was winning. Stokes had a different name for what his crew did. He said they were mosquitoes. They didn’t take Company on, they just fed off it.

  On the way there, the mood in the tray had been keyed up but not tense. Stokes said they were just going for water and spare tyres this time; Quench ran its fleet on biofuel and they needed diesel. Fifteen, twenty minutes’ quiet work. The convoy would go on, barely lighter and none the wiser, and she would be in the back of the ute again, closing the gap. All she had to do was make her contribution. So now she watched the scene outside the roadhouse, looking for the spots with the least light and the biggest gaps between security. She felt dried out and queasy. Felt like shit. There was a delay on every thought and the smell from the roadhouse kitchen wasn’t helping.

  Jasmine put her mouth against Li’s ear and pointed at the rest area. There, on the edge, she said. Close to the road – not too much ground to cover. She touched her steel-capped boot lightly to Li’s ankle. Can you run? If you have to?

  Bit fucking late to ask now, Li thought. She’d left her stick in the tray when she saw she’d have her hands ful
l, but her ankle felt solid so far.

  Run, yes, she said. Drag fifty litres, maybe.

  I’ll stay on your left. We just have to get halfway and then Shaun and Mira can take over.

  Li wrapped the plastic tubing of the siphon tighter around one hand and felt for the empty container with the other. She was wearing a harness made of bicycle-tube inners and rope, crossed over her chest and around her hips, to drag the water back to the ute. She had her toolkit and her knife and Matti’s horse in her pocket. Everything else she owned was in the ute.

  Most of the weight’ll be on your hips, Jasmine said. Just lean. She hesitated. You’ll be right, we do this all the time.

  Li felt an unexpected flash of gratitude. The drivers were moving inside.

  Right. Stokes kept it just above a whisper. Me and Shaun’ll go first – get us a spare.

  Shaun said, Two tyres is better than one.

  Let’s see how we go, eh? Stokes shuffled forward. Jas, Dev, check the time. See you at the ute in twenty.

  They came out of the scrub and ran forward in a crouch, almost touching, keeping the containers off the ground. Crossed the highway. Only security left now, black cutouts of bodies and guns in the headlights. They were aiming for a tanker on the near side of the rest area. No guard around that she could see, dozens of other vehicles blocking the view from the roadhouse. They moved through the gaps between headlights, hip to hip, like they’d been doing this for years. Li blocked out all the peripherals: her throbbing head and churning gut, the location of Eileen and Stokes and the others, the music and voices leaking through the glass doors of the roadhouse, the smell of asphalt and cigarettes. It was just the two of them closing on the tanker they’d picked out. They were in the rest area now, on the hard dirt. Jas caught her foot on something and Li steadied her on the run. Her ankle was holding. She felt quietly amazed that they were a good match.