Unsheltered

by Clare Moleta

  The phone was the last thing she found. The screen was cracked and it wouldn’t turn on. She fumbled taking the back off, and saw that the battery had jolted loose from the terminal. She started laughing at how easy everything was getting. She had survived the crash and now, when she needed to walk, it had stopped snowing, and those things seemed like some kind of sign. If there was a message from Chris it would be proof, but when she turned the phone on there was still no reception. The diesel fumes were making her dizzy and laughing hurt her head. She was standing there, holding her knee crutch and trying not to laugh, when a truck came round the bend towards her.

  It was an aid truck, westbound, marked with the cross that meant an NGO of any precinct. As soon as it was clear of the bend it pulled over. The driver put the hazards on and got down. She wore a baseball cap with Wet Creek Hotel printed across the front.

  You okay? she yelled over the engine.

  Li nodded, still fighting the urge to laugh.

  The woman came closer. You’re bleeding.

  It’s not serious.

  The driver looked over at what was left of the four-wheel drive, the wreckage on the road. I guess I’d be happy too.

  She led Li back to the truck. Li let herself be led, climbed up into the humming warmth of the cab, accepted the emergency blanket the driver wrapped around her. She didn’t know why she was being helped, none of this lined up, none of it felt earned but she didn’t want to question it.

  The co-driver’s seat was occupied by a yellow mastiff. It assessed her steadily and then looked at the woman.

  All right Nellie, she said, shift over. Then to Li, You sit here for a bit. You hear anything coming, honk the horn, okay?

  Li nodded again. The driver poured koffee from a thermos and put the cup in Li’s hands. Then she took a pair of heavy-duty work gloves out of a compartment between the seats and went to clear the road.

  There was music on the radio, a deep bell tone, then a flurry of high strings descending and then the bells again. Li felt her body thawing and warming, the sweet scald of the koffee going down, something more painful than bewilderment. The dog whined. She offered the back of her hand and it sniffed, licked and turned back to watch the driver hauling the windscreen to the side of the highway. Apart from the dog, the only visible concession to the dangers of a solo run was the tyre iron stowed down beside the driver’s door. Li touched the silk at the base of the dog’s ear, kneaded it gently.

  The woman came back and climbed into her seat, shunting the dog back over towards Li. I can’t stay stopped here, she said. Someone’ll come round the corner in a minute jacked up on wakey and plough into the back of us.

  Li looked full at her. She said, Thank you.

  You’re all right, there’s no need.

  Her name was Emily. She told Li she was running relief to a new camp on the fringe of the howler’s radius, but her brief included any survivors she met on the way.

  You’re welcome to come for the ride, she said. We like company, don’t we Nellie? She planned to make the return crossing in a week, all going well, and she could drop Li at Permacamp then.

  Li shook her head. I don’t have time.

  Okay, the driver said, like she’d expected that. Got some relief packs in the back.

  She went through one with Li, sorting out what she could use: high-efficiency biofuel pellets, protein bars, a pair of lightweight gaiters, fifty dollars’ worth of phone credit. And a square block of chocolate, silver-wrapped. Li remembered the melon. She put the chocolate carefully away inside her jacket.

  Emily thought Li could make the top before dark and she’d get a glimpse of Permacamp from there, but it would take a few days to walk down the other side. You won’t get a lift from Company, she said. But if it’s army or aid, try to flag it down.

  She left her on the side of the highway, facing east. Li walked away from the four-wheel drive without looking back. The incline wasn’t too steep and the gravel siding was a good surface for the base of her crutch, where the rubberised tip was wearing through. The sun came out as she walked and soon she was warm enough to fold the emergency blanket away.

  She was thinking about Emily, and about the other driver who’d stopped for her, whose name she didn’t remember now. About Megan with her gift of talk and cigarettes. Sanaa and Amin and Abraham bringing water for Matti in makecamp when she was sick. About Yara riding around the industrial zone with her list and her pencils. Angie and Carl, who had never made her feel that they were Frank’s friends. She felt a sharp pain thinking of Trish, who shared her gum and tried to keep them from despair, and Miriam who had talked about how things might be when she knew as well as any of them how things were. She remembered the couple with the baby called Billy, the uncle with the dustmask. The mosquitoes. Rich.

  She stopped thinking and saw that this place she was walking through was beautiful. It had snuck up on her. The complex folds of the range made simple by snow, the fine-grained light, an immense purity and space that reminded her of the lake. There were occasional animal tracks on the slopes and twice a truck passed without slowing. Otherwise she was alone. The light was lucid on the snow. She looked until her eyes burned and when she closed them, the dazzle was still there. She crouched down and touched it, scooped up a handful. It was soft and then hard and when she licked it she caught the tang of diesel.

  * * *

  There was about an hour of light left when she found the children. They hadn’t made it to the top. They were in a rest stop, curled up together under an overhang of rock. It was set back behind the rubbish bin and the picnic table but she saw them from the road. Anyone could have seen them.

  The boy was smaller, maybe six or seven; it was hard to know, they were so thin. He wasn’t wearing his shoes. His socks were blackened and worn away at the soles but Li could still see hotdogs running after each other on stumpy yellow legs. The girl had a red elastic band in her hair and she’d lost two top teeth, like Matti the last time she saw her. They’d taken off most of their clothes and they were holding hands.

  Li knelt in front of them for a long time, crying. She wrapped them in the blanket. They’d tried to make a fire with rubbish from the bin – the packaging had charred but it hadn’t caught. Matti and Robbie were always lighting fires. It would be dark soon and they would be alone. Li set up her tent under the overhang and built a fire with the pellets. She wanted to carry them inside where it would be warmer but some protective part of her understood if she did that she wouldn’t ever be able to put them outside again.

  As the heat blazed up she sat close to the children and thought about where they needed to be now. She thought about Rich’s North stories, how a story could be a map, and she tried tell them about the best place the way Matti used to tell it. She told them they’d have to cross the deep sea but there were boats that didn’t sink. And about all the colours and how the animals all had families. That there was water that came from inside the rocks, and kids rode horses to school and on the way home there was a shop that sold lollies for zero money. And you never got old enough to go to Wars and no one in your family died. But if someone had already died, or you’d lost them, the best place was where they’d wait for you and when you got there your room would be ready.

  It was no good. She couldn’t hear Matti’s voice anymore. She only had her own words, her own understanding.

  It was dark when she stopped telling the best place. She didn’t want to eat but she ate something. It was okay to take the blanket back, they didn’t need it and she still had to live, but she piled their clothes over them and left the fire burning. And when she was in the tent, in her thermals and balaclava, with the blanket wrapped around her inside the sleeping bag, she sang the song that came from her mother, just the little bit she remembered.

  Guardian angels

  watch beside us

  all through the night

  The last time she talked to them was a Sunday and she was nine. Almost nine. At the beginning they call
ed every Sunday, then later it was once a month, and by that last time they hadn’t called for three months. She used the calendar Val got from the free hospital to keep track of his medication. She checked every Saturday that his phone was charged and he had credit and they would be somewhere with reception. When she asked him why she couldn’t call them instead, he said they didn’t have a phone yet, that it took time to get set up inside but he knew they’d call as soon as they could.

  She and Val were inland on a sheep station called Yanderup, about halfway round the circuit. They got a lift into town with the boss and Val bought tinned food and flour and powdered milk and tobacco and cigarette papers, and an orange for Li because he worried about vitamins. When it was nearly time he bought a newspaper and sat at a picnic table by the playground pretending to read, and she pretended to play, and when the phone rang he grabbed it off the table and said, Howaya? and then, All right, so. She’s here now, I’ll pass you over.

  She talked to Chris first. He was three years younger and not good at phone calls – he would nod instead of saying yes, or forget to talk, or try to show her things. She asked about his birthday the month before and he said he had to choose between a footy or a cake so he chose a cake. They were living in a different place again. She asked if he had any friends at the new school yet and he told her about a kid who’d fallen off the big climbing frame and broken his arm. He asked about Tolly and some of the other kids whose families were on the circuit. She said she was helping Val with patching jobs now, that they might get a job on a kelp farm next season.

  Then she said, Is Mum there?

  Yeah.

  Can it be her turn next?

  She’s gone in the other room.

  Then her dad came on the phone and asked if she was being good and listening to Val. He wanted to know where they were now. He asked how often she was getting to school and if she liked the postcard they’d sent with the last letter to Val. There was a strangeness in his voice, he was talking a lot and not leaving space.

  She said quickly, Did you get a phone yet?

  A hesitation. No, no not yet. Me and your mum are still looking for work, it’s all taking a bit more time than we thought.

  And she didn’t ask for her, she didn’t ask, but he told her anyway. Mum can’t talk this time, love.

  Did she lose her voice again?

  She’s been a bit sick, yeah. She sends her love, though, she’s blowing kisses down the phone. There was a kissy noise and then her dad’s voice straight after saying, Did you catch them? Put them in your pocket, quick. Like she was a little kid. But Li couldn’t answer because something was pushing up into her throat. She pressed her ear against the phone in case she could hear her mum in the other room, in case she was trying to say something, but after a minute her dad said, All right, love, I need to have a chat to Val now, okay? We’ll talk next month. Okay? Everybody loves you.

  She played The Floor is Lava with a kid she didn’t know while Val talked to her dad. After a while she looked over and he wasn’t on the phone anymore, he was just sitting on the bench, so she went over and he looked up at her with a look she didn’t understand and then he said, How about an icy pole? And pinball.

  She said, Can we afford it?

  We can this month, yeah.

  When the month came up on her calendar again, they were further north, further inland, at a camp in the bush. She kept reminding Val and he kept saying it’d be fine but on the Sunday they were out of range. That was the only time she got angry with him. When she screamed at him that he was trying to steal her from her parents, he just sat and listened with his head down and told her he was sorry, he’d fix it next month, next month wasn’t far away.

  For a long time she thought, They’ll come back for me. Later she thought, They’ll call. She didn’t remember when she stopped thinking that, when she put it away. She stopped asking Val if he had credit, and then she didn’t mark off the days anymore, and then she never spoke about them again. She turned to Val completely, tried to keep him in her sight at all times. And she felt so sorry for abandoning them, for not being there when they tried to call.

  In the morning the rest stop was heavy with snow and snow was piled up at the edge of the overhang, and still falling. Without Emily’s blanket, Li didn’t think she would have made it through the night.

  No headache but her hands and feet were numb and uncooperative. She put on all her clothes and packed up and then stood under the overhang, looking at the children beside the dead fire. They had come through the night unchanged. She couldn’t bury them, except under snow. It was too high and too cold for dingoes now, at least she hoped it was. Better to leave them together like this, visible to any driver who cared enough to lift them and take them on the rest of the journey. She looked through their clothes for status cards or anything that might identify them, so that someone could know for sure, but there was nothing, so she pulled a few hairs from each of their heads as gently as she could, gold and brown, and wrapped them in a corner of the pellet packaging, and put them in the buttoned pocket where she’d carried the horse.

  She walked out into steady falling silence. There had been enough traffic in the night that the road was fairly clear so she walked on the road, listening for trucks. Each time she heard one going the right way she turned to face it and stuck her arm out, but they passed her like she wasn’t there. She wore the blanket and draped a plastic sheet over everything. As long as she kept moving, as long as it was light, it would be okay. When she was thirsty she wet her mouth with snow.

  Li arrived at the top almost without noticing. There was a lookout but whatever there was to see was hidden behind low cloud and drifting snow. She felt no closer to Permacamp, or anything that was here in front of her. Now that she had let herself remember, she couldn’t stop. If she listened hard enough, was there still time to hear her mother in the other room? Was she crying? Had they always meant to come back and get her, like they said they would, and take her inside? Had they meant it at the start, at least, until things got too hard? Or had they always known it wouldn’t be possible? They got in on a one-child visa, she knew that much. Fengdu brought in One Child years before everyone else. That was the condition, and they took Chris. She assumed they’d left her because she was older, more capable. Or maybe Fengdu wasn’t looking for girls then. Val was their closest friend on the circuit, the one they trusted most, and he’d been dry for years. She knew they’d sent him money for a while. Had it been a slow, deferred decision, creeping up with an inevitability that surprised them, even while they resisted it? Had her mother always lost her voice on Sundays because the alternative was unbearable?

  She didn’t know, she never would. There was no sound from the other room. She could push past the fear, the refusal, in Chris’s voice and ask what he thought, if they ever spoke about it later, about her. But what would be the point, now? And it wouldn’t be fair. It wasn’t his fault that he was chosen.

  * * *

  After she’d been walking downhill for a long time, she heard another truck coming up behind her and stuck out her arm without turning. It went past, but slowly, and she heard the gears changing down. She watched it round the bend and then heard the whump and squeal of hydraulic brakes. Tried to run but only managed a stumble. The truck was waiting, pulled over on the siding. She saw the Homegrown logo on its side and thought somehow it would be him again, the driver with the melon. You couldn’t stop for everyone, he’d said, but he’d stopped for her.

  The cab window slid down and she looked up at a face she didn’t know.

  Jus you, is it?

  She nodded but he looked back past her anyway.

  How’d you get this far?

  I had a vehicle. Wrote it off yesterday.

  Black ice, hey? He nodded unhurriedly, sucked his teeth. Lucky you weren’t a gonner.

  His face was ruddy with the heat from the cab, freckled forearms bare. I’m not sposed to take passengers.

  I know, she said,
and she was ready. She lifted her heavy arms clear of her sides, letting him see.

  He nodded again and kept nodding, thinking it over. Nothin in the pack?

  You going camping?

  I’m not going camping.

  Then there’s nothing in the pack.

  If he drove on now, took his cubicle of heat and left her in the snow, she didn’t know what she would do. All she could do was stand there and let him look.

  Fair enough then, I spose. Can’t have you freezing to death.

  He kept the engine running. Her fingers wouldn’t work so he got down and helped her with the buckles of her knee crutch. She was greedy for the heat but she almost couldn’t feel it when he pushed her up and through to the bed in the back of the cab, helped her get the plastic off and the pack, the blanket, the coat.

  Jesus, he said, good thing I didn’t ask for a striptease. He unbuttoned her pants. Threw his hands up when he saw the leggings and left her to fumble them down while he hunted for a condom in the glovebox. Made her turn around. No offence. I can tell you were a good-looking woman.

  She heard him spit on his hand and then he pushed her legs apart and shoved himself in.

  You like that? he said. Do you? Hey?

  His spit barely lubricated her, she rubbed raw. His breathing was loud in the cab, opening tiny splits inside. The shelter house, crawling away from the shelter house with him in the dark behind her. She gripped the back of the seat with her numb hands and looked out through the fog on the windscreen at the road and the mountains descending east, she thought it was still east, this is nothing. He had her by the hips, grabbed at her hair but there wasn’t enough of it so he ran his hand down her face, forcing her mouth open, down to her throat. She yanked his arm away with both of hers, falling forward and hitting her cheekbone on the headrest. He came out of her, swore and pushed her head against the seat. Held her down that way, breathing over her, the stink and slap of flesh as he worked in and out.