Volcano Street

by David Rain

  Pupils must copy out their corrected work, to be sealed by afternoon’s end in stiff card envelopes, each with the author’s name on the front, like letters to themselves. The room (Skip thinks) is hot. Her stomach churns, clenches. She sits by the window. A fly buzzes, butts against the glass, and buzzes again. Again: Two babies are born every second, 172,800 a day, like adding the entire population of Great Britain to the world each year. So says Watson; so says Skip. Sluggishly her hand moves across the page. She tugs at her collar. Hot, hot. Sick, yes: isn’t it sickening, these babies, babies, babies? Millions, and for what? More Brenton Lumsdens. More Kylie Cunliffes. More Maggie Polomkas. Why won’t this hateful reproduction stop?

  On the wall, the clock is ticking. Skip’s hand moves faster, flying over the page, and before she knows it she has written down thoughts that have no origin in the pages of Eagle. She writes about babies and what they become. She names names: Brenton Lumsden. Yes, she’s written it in Bic biro: B-R-E-N-T-O-N … More! K-Y-L-I-E … The feeling of power thrills her. On and on the Bic skitters like a deranged insect. Bugger Dr Watson. She writes about what she hates, and what she hates most is Noreen Puce, the meanest woman in the world. Frenzied now, Skip piles on details of Auntie Noreen’s vileness. Frizzy perm. Little piggy eyes. Blubbery arms. Huge fat tits. Fat belly. Fat arse. Fat fingers, like sausages about to burst, stuffing Kit-Kats Smith’s Crisps Arnott’s Custard Creams all day into her arsehole mouth. Hate! Hate! Up, up, goes Skip’s temperature (are the oceans, she wonders, already boiling away?), but what does it matter when she has skewered Noreen Puce, fixed her on paper for the future to know her in each obscene detail?

  Sweat beads on Skip’s forehead as she writes. She flicks it away. When will the bell ring? Ten minutes. Heart pounding – this feeling can’t end – she turns to Barry Puce, the cousin she has never met, who naturally must be as vile as Auntie Noreen because he is after all (repellent phrase) the fruit of her loins. Inventing freely now (the historian has the last word), she attributes to Barry halitosis, cheesy feet, rotten-egg farts and a carnal interest in dogs that terrified Baskerville, the neighbouring hound, before Barry was packed off to Nam, where he machine-gunned many a peasant farmer, coshed old women with his rifle butt, skewered babies on his bayonet, and left behind him a trail of abused Fidos and Rovers; but he was sure, any day now, to be captured by the Viet Cong and tortured and mutilated before – ears lopped, eyes squished in – being turned out to wander through a minefield. Boom!

  The bell. Brooker, raising his voice, says, ‘All right, seal your envelopes. Is your name on the front? Make sure your name’s on the front. Now drop it in here.’ Down the aisle he comes, sack at the ready. Drop, drop, go the messages to the future, soon to be borne away to the town hall where they will be secured inside the silver-milkcan time machine. Skip shudders with pleasure. She lets her message drop. Exultant, she has stood up, impatient to leave the class, when she hears a scream behind her: Kylie Cunliffe. Why is Kylie screaming?

  ‘Bleeding! She’s bleeding!’ Kylie points, her expression one of horrified glee. Everyone turns and stares; there are gasps and whispers. Someone giggles. Boys stand on desks to see and Brooker drops the sack as Skip, nonplussed, looks down, aware only now of the hot viscous liquid that trickles down her leg and has stained the back of her skirt. Strangled horror bursts in her throat, an animal howl, and she runs to the door and down the corridor as if the crowd, like hunting dogs, are pursuing her.

  Brooker calls, ‘Helen … Helen Wells!’

  Her name, like a reprimand, rings behind her. But Helen Wells has gone. She has seen Brooker’s face. She disgusts him. She disgusts herself. This happened (exactly this) to a girl at Glenelg Tech, a reffo girl, a total spastic, with a squinty eye and a nose that ran with snot. Back then Skip, baying with the others, had vowed this would never be her. Now it was: Skip Wells, no better than a dirty reffo with nits in her hair and stinking of piss.

  Bikes gleam in bike racks. Here’s Honza’s, and Skip, of course, knows the combo of his lock. Away, away, with the shame that will destroy her searing like a brand.

  Three times she changes direction: stop, skid, go another way. Crater Gardens: she could fling herself down the waterfall. No, she will go out of town: leave the Lakes, ride until she can ride no more, and a truck comes, and she thumbs a lift, and sings along to Buck Owens on the eight-track all the way to – where? Everywhere is ruined if Skip Wells is there. Go to Puce Hardware. Do it, Skip Wells. Throw yourself on Marlo like an accusation. You forgot me, Marlo. And look what happened. You’ve killed me. Look at my blood.

  No. Marlo wouldn’t care; she would only turn away.

  Blue fills the sky. By the road, scattered on rich green, are buttercups, daisies, dandelions. All around her is the mocking spring, this spring that pounces in the year’s last third, potent already with a summer heat that presses down mercilessly, month on month, even in these southern corners of the continent. The birds mock her, cackling as she passes. Kookaburras. Galahs. But no one, nothing, stops Skip Wells. Let the reffo go. Blood scalds her thighs.

  At Puce’s Bend stands a Greyhound bus. Skip lets Honza’s bike fall by the verge. Perhaps she will faint now; she wishes she would – anything, to be free of the burden of being Skip Wells. But something is strange: from the house comes a pulse, beating softly on the bright air. She moves towards it.

  So: Sandy Campbell is here. Front door unlocked. She flits down the passage. In the sitting room are cake-crumbed plates, teacups sticky with sugar. Television dark – no Motel today. On the radiogram, a record spins silently, its playing time passed. K-chuck. K-chuck. ‘Cara Mia’ by Slim Whitman, an Auntie Noreen favourite. But where’s Auntie Noreen? Where’s Sandy Campbell? The pulse keeps drumming: rattling teacups, rippling under wallpaper, heaving up lumps in the floral carpet. Understanding now, Skip heads deeper into the house.

  Thud. Thud. The door to the master bedroom stands ajar. Skip pushes it open further. Whitely, light pulses through net curtains and collects and shines in the mirrored wardrobe doors: collects, shines and flings back unreally the figures on the bed, who are all too real. Thud. The headboard, pink quilting on plywood, knocks the wall. Thud. That pink lampshade rocks. Thud. The bedspread, pink and peeled back in crumples, reveals on pink polyester sheets the sweaty straining form that plunges, plunges, a surfer riding a wave of white jelly, then ends at last with a grunt that sounds like a drunkard throwing up.

  Skip watches. Nothing, she thinks, will hurt her again. She has triumphed. They are even, the world and Skip Wells. That is why she laughs, though she should flee or shrink in revulsion as Sandy Campbell pushes himself off the bed and lumbers towards her, doubled in the mirror, eyes wide as he confronts, as if in a dream, this girl who should be anywhere but here. Look at him, belly swinging, thick with damp fur, and the billy club below, purple-headed, marbled with veins, dripping its drippings on the pink carpet. And Auntie Noreen on the bed, round-eyed, a white whale wrapped in polyester.

  Sandy Campbell grins: that lopsided grin! He comes closer and Skip tells herself she will not let him scare her. One barbecued forearm flattens against the wall. His dick, still half-stiff, butts her skirt.

  ‘Eh, heard a good one the other day.’ His voice cracks the mirrors, shatters the light. ‘There’s this little girl, see, and her name’s Fuckarada.’

  Fuckarada! What sort of name is that?

  ‘It’s a wog name,’ says Sandy Campbell, as if Skip has spoken. Unashamed, even proud in his nakedness, he remains directly before her. From time to time he moves a little, prodding at her obscenely. ‘And this little girl,’ he says, ‘she’s a real goer. Just like her mum. Makes eyes at all the blokes. So her mum’s boyfriend sees Fuckarada and reckons, “Jeez, I wouldn’t mind a bash at that. Bet she’s nice and tight.” Well, one day Fuckarada’s mum goes to the shops. “Fuck,” reckons Fuckarada’s mum. “Haven’t got a babysitter.” Well, the bloke sees his chance: “I’ll look after Fuckarada.” “Jeez, thanks,” r
eckons Fuckarada’s mum, and goes out.

  ‘So the bloke rubs his hands together. “What are we going to do, little Fuckarada?” Fuckarada reckons, “Reckon I’ll go to bed.” “Bed?” reckons the bloke. “It’s the fucking arvo.” “Aw, but I really want to go to bed,” Fuckarada reckons with a cheeky little grin. Bloke reckons, “So, Fuckarada, shall I come and tuck yous in?” Fuckarada reckons, “If you like.”

  ‘So there he is in Fuckarada’s bedroom. There’s Fuckarada slipping off her shoes and socks and little frilly panties, slipping into her nightie and into the sheets. Well, the bloke ain’t half got a stiffy by now. Big as a fucking baseball bat. Fuckarada’s in bed. Bloke pulls the curtains. Fuckarada reckons, “Perhaps we could play a game.” Bloke reckons, “Yair? What sort of game?” Fuckarada reckons, “What if you put your stiffy up me twat?” “You reckon?” says the bloke. “Aw, I suppose I could try it.”

  ‘Well, he shoves it in a few times, and reckons it’s bloody good, nice and tight, not like her sloppy old mum, when the little girl reckons, “Aw, you’re no good. Harder!” “Harder?” reckons the bloke. So he fucks her harder. But now the girl reckons, “Harder! Harder!” So he’s really going at it, hammer and tongs. “Harder!” yells Fuckarada. “Fuck me harder.” And he’s fucking and fucking, sweat dripping off, breath like bellows, heart thumping like it’s fit to burst, and just then the girl’s mum comes back from the shops and reckons, “Where’s Fuckarada?” So she yells, “Fuckarada! Fuckarada!” And the bloke yells back, “Harder? I’m fucking her as hard as I bloody well can!”’

  Laughter wheezes from Sandy Campbell’s mouth. Spit splatters Skip’s face and she wipes it away. She’ll go. She has the power. What can Sandy Campbell, with his belly and his billy club, do to her now? In the bed, the great mound that is Noreen Puce is wobbling, wobbling, but whether with mirth, shame, sorrow or anger, Skip cannot say. For a fleeting moment she wishes she could bridge the gulf between them. Say what you like: they are women, she and her aunt, and should be on the same side. Sandy Campbell is a bastard.

  The doorbell rings. What is to be done?

  Auntie Noreen fumbles for her dressing gown. Sandy Campbell retrieves his Y-fronts, furry arse-crack opening as he bends, balls from behind pendulous as a dog’s. Skip is the one who goes to the door, smiles, and thanks the boy. Squinting, head on one side, she watches him go, standing up on his pushbike, treading down the pedals. Time has stopped. The telegram hangs in her hand. It might have dropped to the floor if not for Auntie Noreen, appearing beside her, huddled in pink, eyeing Skip’s hand, gasping, and, it seems, knowing everything before the envelope is open. The telegram, barely read, flutters to the floor.

  ‘Never.’ Her voice is cold. ‘Never. Never.’

  Chapter Eleven

  The F-111 turned above the bed: turned, tugged against the suspending string, then turned back again. Moonlight flickered on the green-grey fuselage. What had the F-111 been doing? Killing kids today, like LBJ? Little Hiroshimas for the jungle gooks. DDT clouds descending over green. If you could squeeze the world into a ball, that ball would be this fiery thing in the boyish flat chest of Skip Wells, burning her heart and lungs. It froze her, this burning. She was all ice and fire. How could she rise from this Barry Puce bed when the heart in her chest was too tight to beat, when the world-in-a-ball would not let her breathe?

  The evening had been endless. With the telegram, the count of time was knocked back to zero. The world before? Nothing. Bloodied thighs, headboard rhythm, Fuckarada; all were stages of a rocket fallen away. Everything was the telegram: Auntie Noreen keening on the carpet, dressing gown open over one enormous breast; Sandy Campbell standing at the hall table in Y-fronts, strangely in command as he phoned Puce Hardware; Skip numb in the still-open door, picking up the yellow slip her aunt had let fall, staring at it once, twice, three times between looking out at Puce’s Bend, where the telegram boy, as if eternally, rode away.

  Naturally, the scene was succeeded by others, like slides in a projector clunking into place: Uncle Doug like a schoolboy in crisis, perched on the sofa beside Auntie Noreen, not quite daring to take his wife in his arms; Valmai Lumsden proffering a casserole, shaking her head and tut-tutting as if Your Baz had been a naughty boy; Marky Bonner on a kitchen chair, swallowing and swallowing his Adam’s apple as Sandy Campbell bit the cap from a bottle and said, ‘Here, mate. Get that down your neck.’

  Strange, how death travels! Barry Puce was all over town. How he had died, where he had died, if the body would be flown home and when – all this remained unknown. Only one thing mattered: Our Baz was a saint and martyr. Here comes the clergyman, collar dazzling white, murmurously assuring the sobbing woman-jelly that Barry has gone to a far, far better, that the Lord in His wisdom – oh, what does He do? Watch the fall of every sparrow? Here comes Pavel, tongue-tied, with Marlo hovering behind him, willing him to leave. Here comes Brian Rigby, recalling one of the finest lads ever, ever to pass through the portals of Crater Lakes High. Here comes everybody, the mayor, the doctor, the president of the Lions Club, every dutiful citizen flocking to the court of Queen Noreen. And all the time, as the light declines, and Barry Puce’s picture glimmers on the mantelpiece, and Sandy Campbell’s brown bottles line up on the sink, and Valmai Lumsden’s casserole sits beside them uneaten, and Noreen Puce sobs, and Doug Puce, brown wizened whippet of a man, looks just a little more downcast than usual, Skip feels the world-ball hardening in her chest, and something is blackening, like inkstains creeping over pink polyester, soon to consume it entirely.

  The evening ends at last. No nighty-nights, no TV shutdown with God Save the Queen, but somehow the lights in the house are dark, Queen Noreen is quiet, and Skip, in jeans and bomber jacket, lies on the dead boy’s bed, pinned down by the world-ball and watching the wind, like air currents on high, buffeting the F-111 back and forth. For too long, for all the dazzled hours of the telegram, the keening, the here-comes-everybody, she has felt the world-ball grow and thought it numbness, but now she knows differently. It is guilt.

  My fault. I killed Barry Puce.

  ‘Night stalker, come …’ But the words never would. Nights when Honza hunkered beneath the window spun away through blackness like an exploded moon. Skip sat up: her feet, in sneakers already, connected with the floor. The plan possessed her mind, fixed as the telegram and easier to read. The time capsule letter had gone to the town hall, ready for the burial that would take place in the morning. Skip must go to the town hall too.

  The moon that night had a hollow, pained look. Honza’s bike was gone from the verge; she dared not take her own from the shed, risk the creak of opening doors. She walked. Why shouldn’t she? She had all night, and this time all she needed to steal was a single creamy envelope.

  Crater Lakes lay like a town in a story, suspended in sleep for a hundred years. Perhaps it had been: a hundred years ago, nothing; now this town with its Lions Club and Chickenland and Coles New World. But had it ever been awake all this while? What, in truth, are any of us but sleepwalkers, going through motions dictated by time? Parents. Place of birth. (And some places are cursed.) The heft of history, pressing down like a coffin lid. Nothing else moved as Skip, like a ghost, slid through Crater Gardens. A hole, covered in canvas, had been dug already to receive the milkcan time machine.

  Shimmery under the moon, the town hall rose above her. She had pictured herself smashing windows, forcing locks, but her criminal act was easy: a window on the first floor, open just a crack; a tree by the window, a branch brushing glass. She shinned up the tree. She edged along the branch. The window sash protested faintly as she pushed it open.

  In a dark office she made out typewriters under covers, filing cabinets, and a duplicator with a spindly stiff handle. Padding over the floor, she kicked a wastepaper basket. The sound it made was a gong, mournful in the silence. She winced. Where was the milkcan? She didn’t dare turn on a light. Bluish pallor flickered through the windows; faintly she heard the waterfall from the cave,
falling unregarded against the night. She creaked through a door. She found herself in a hallway; a staircase stretched downwards, a hefty Victorian affair of deep carpets, slippery polished banisters, upthrusting carved newel posts. That milkcan, it had to be heavy. They would keep it downstairs.

  She descended. She knew her quest was stupid: to take back the letter would undo nothing. Time would not turn back; death would still be death, and the aunt she could not love, though she knew it was only human to love her now, would still feel her agonies for all that one letter-writer might say (and mean it): I didn’t mean it. Who would read the letter? No one, not for a hundred years, if ever. But Skip knew that the letter, festering secretly, would poison her life.

  Below, the light was dim. She wished she had a torch. She missed her footing on the last stair and lurched forward, tiles slapping coldly under her sneakers. Along one wall ran a counter. Portraits, in heavy frames, glowered down from the walls. Was that Mayor Gull, Honza’s gramps? Flowers on a table underneath him gave off a sickly scent.

  Milkcan, where was the milkcan?

  She had moved towards the back of the staircase when a loud crack sounded in the silence. From beneath a door seeped a pool of light. Skip stood, breathing. She crept forward, pressed her ear against the door. Silly. She was being silly. Someone had left a light on. Old buildings go crack at night.

  The milkcan lurked in the darkness under the stairs. Skip crouched before it. The lid had been screwed on firmly, but she twisted hard, gritting her teeth, and the secrets of time were hers. Eagerly she pulled out the contents. Envelopes flurried about her on the floor. So many. Too many. She patted her jacket. Marlboros: two left. Redheads: ten? She struck one, then another, and riffled through envelopes until flame lapped her fingers. Look at these names, bound for the future, as if the future cared: Cunliffe, Kylie. Gruber, Kevin. Polomka, Margaret.