Ironbark

Home > Other > Ironbark > Page 8
Ironbark Page 8

by Jay Carmichael


  Business to do, he says.

  Huh.

  He selects a dress. Turns and shows it to her.

  Remind me to never let you pick my outfit. She gets out of bed and pushes him from the room.

  He sits in the lounge, watching the ABC, as she gets ready. She comes out dolled-up as Marilyn. He smiles.

  What? she says.

  Marilyn.

  She’s picking her fingernails. She says, Fuck off, Markus.

  He flicks the TV off and takes her by the hand. At the ute, he helps her up into the cabin because she’s wearing heels. He gets in behind the wheel.

  You right? she says, fixing her make-up in the visor’s mirror.

  Yair, he says taking hold of the wheel, yair I am. He starts the engine and drives them out to the Lake, pulling up near to the edge.

  Fuck off, Markie, she says.

  Wait.

  You can’t be serious, she says, looking out the passenger window. Why bring me here?

  He reaches behind the driver’s seat and pulls out the shotgun.

  She laughs, You’ve fucken lost it.

  No, it’s right here in my hand. He gets out. She follows, complaining that her heels are sinking in the sand. At the edge, they stand, perhaps near to where they’d once stood in their bathers, back when the Lake was full. He can’t remember. Nor can she. She’s staring out, probably at the place where her mother’s car was found.

  She says, I haven’t been out here since it happened.

  He’s holding the gun’s barrel pointed to the empty Lake. He’s not sure how they got to Mrs Robinson through the tangle of overgrown weeds lining the Lake’s bed. Further across, on the faux island projecting into this mess, the rabbits at the edge of the Lake skitter and dart up the bank into the longer grass. Two of them. Fat. Free. Feral.

  What are we doing here? Elmyra whines a little. She stretches out her arms high above her head. I just want to go home.

  He points the gun toward the pair of rabbits. Markus had never let his father teach him how to shoot. So he says to her, You take the first shot. You were always good at clay target. He holds out the gun for her; she is hesitant, her head dipping to the weapon then back up to him.

  Then, with a firm, distinct grip, she takes it.

  He says, Keep an eye out and wait.

  You never learnt how to shoot, she says, so don’t tell me what to do. She places the gun’s butt against her shoulder, assumes her stance as if professional. Your turn next.

  But before he can protest, one of the rabbits hops down onto the bank on the faux island, slowly and very cautiously. The second follows, hopping over to its mate. Elmyra releases the safety, cocks the barrel, and shoots. Part of the head, the brain, of the first rabbit spatters onto the second.

  Fuck, Markus says.

  She snaps open the barrel and says, Rabbits are a lot easier than clays. She puts out her hand for the second round, which he pulls out of his pocket and hands to her. She loads the gun with ease, snapping the barrel back into place. Your turn, she says.

  He shakes his head.

  For fuck’s sake. She grabs his arm. Like this. She presses the gun’s butt into his shoulder and takes him by the hand, telling him where to hold it.

  There’s no rabbit to shoot, he says.

  The second one’ll come back down to check on its mate, she says. Rabbits are dumb, they always do. Don’t put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. I’ll get everything; you just shoot when I say.

  Just as she said would happen, the second rabbit steps out of the grass and comes down to the side of the first. It sniffs the tattered remains.

  Aim.

  Markus says, Fuck, under his breath, really quietly.

  Put your finger on the trigger, she says.

  And he does.

  Now.

  II.

  On the day

  One eye of the young man Markus Bello opens from some waking dream. There’s his mobile phone’s final ring before silence. As he shifts across the bed to pick it up, it rings again.

  Get up t’ the top paddock. Brute’s here t’ get some wood, Rene says. And don’t forget the axe.

  After some extended moments to himself, Markus dresses and goes down the hall to the open-plan living area. He finds last night’s leftovers — empty beer stubbies — and his mate Grayson, who is shirtless and sleeping on the couch. Markus leaves Gray there and exits the house. He gets the axe from the shed and, swinging its cutting blade through the air, he footslogs the corrugated road toward, not quite to, the cliffs at the edge of Rene’s farm.

  The sun’s been long up and a few clouds loiter. Maybe it’ll rain in the arvo. The plains grass Rene’s planted sways and rustles as if material. From the barbed-wire fence hang the stiff carcasses of three foxes. Wild oats, which Rene’s keen to keep outside his paddocks, grow on the outside of the fence and bend against the foxes’ dried-out noses. The oats’ shorter stalks touch Markus’s legs, and their seed-heads snatch his socks and then flick upright, trembling.

  Rene and Brute stand in waist-high plains grass on the inside of the fence. They wear the same clothes, their arms over their chests, legs apart, leaning a little back. Beside the men, on the outside of the fence in the thin band of wild oats, is a dark squiggle stretching skyward: a red ironbark, whose higher twigs retain thin leaves.

  Markus says, You could’ve used a chainsaw.

  Use ya head, says Rene. The bats’ll die from a chainsaw. And I won’t be doin’ it.

  If Rene was worried about the bats, he wouldn’t cut down the tree. But Rene said. And what Rene says, goes.

  Don’t look at me for help, Brute says. Bad backs, mate. His pointing finger moves between himself and Rene. We’re not getting any younger, neither.

  Markus’s grip tightens on the smooth axe’s haft as he approaches the tree. The steel head above his body reverts, slams down and bites into blackish bark. Thunk. He grunts, knocks at the trunk again. Thunk. His head pangs from his hangover and might explode.

  He limp-wristed or what? Brute jokes.

  Thunk. Chips of wood pirouette and pass Markus’s eyes and body. Vibrations through his lungs and heart as if he’s tumbling.

  Rene starts to speak with a muffled voice, says, He was shit-carted last night — thunk — disappeared.

  Yair right, Brute says. Buff didn’t go.

  Thunk.

  Rene says, His mate couldn’t stand — thunk — on my couch, everywhere.

  Thunk.

  Boys’ll be — thunk — at their age, Brute says, chicks were hangin’ off — thunk — that girl, Robinson?

  Thunk.

  Thunk.

  Thunk.

  Now ya showin’ off, Rene says. And ya not doin’ a very good job of it. He comes out of the paddock and offers his hand. He begins hacking the remaining cut himself and says, If ya want somethin’ done …

  The tree cracks and falls and thuds onto the earth.

  Brute comes outside the paddock to kick the fallen tree. Good thing ya gettin’ rid a this one, Ren. Next t’ no water this year. Not with those cunts upstream.

  It’s goin’ back into the system, Rene says. The Basin Plan — enough for the farms and enough to keep the river systems healthy. He hands the axe back to Markus and tells him to chop the rest into logs. He reminds Brute that the withholding of water’s only for a year.

  Brute spits and says, Fuck yair, an’ we’re left a dustbowl. It’s fucken overregulated, Ren. An’ the allocation we get’s piss-weak.

  What allocation? Rene offers lightly.

  Markus chops the limbs into pieces. With a Blundstone kick, one of the logs rolls to the bare ground at the side. Catching his breath, he stands upright. He rests the axe and turns to the morning light spiking over the cliff’s lip behind them. He’s never
been over the escarpment. It protrudes solidly. He looks past the men. One of them moves, and his silhouette blocks the bold beams.

  Rene says, What is it ya little friend does?

  Grayson? says Markus. Works at IGA.

  Rene’s silhouette swats his forearm for flies. Y’know what I mean. What’s he wanna do?

  Make music.

  Brute says, He’s dreamin’.

  Markus turns away. He forms his fingers into a fist, tightens and unclenches.

  Where you been? Grayson’s awake, sitting up on the couch. He scratches his armpit and hugs himself.

  The telly’s playing a Skins DVD.

  Markus says, holding up the log, Using my head.

  Yair, dickhead, says Rene. Except it’s gunna be forty-five t’day. He scruffs his son’s hair. His hands are as rough, dry, and calloused as the land he lives and farms on. Right, youse boys. I’m havin’ a shower, then I’ll take y’home. He looks at Grayson.

  Grayson nods.

  Rene exits into the master bedroom, yelling out, Be ready when I am.

  Yair, easy fixed. Grayson puts on his shirt. He stands, tousles his hair, stretches his arms, and pulls his jeans over his undies: the humblest of the not-famous warriors adorns his armour.

  While Rene’s in the shower, Markus bids his mate to escape. And they do. They decide to go to the public pool, because heat. Markus, being sober-er, drives Grayson’s car, saying, You’ll be over the limit. Grayson sings to the radio, Lisa Mitchell, as they head through the drying-out land toward Narioka. Anything on the inside of Grayson wouldn’t have ever made it outside if not for the music he loves. It’s like having someone say what you wanna say, Grayson says, and you take that and pretend it’s not what you feel. Lisa Mitchell was on Australian Idol when we were in like year six. She grew up in Albury. Won awards. Plays at festivals, even had songs in the triple j Hottest 100. I’m playin’ some of her stuff tonight, says Grayson.

  In town, they pass the newsagent, chemist, and the teenage mothers smoking rolled cigarettes and drinking Red Bull out front of the Chicken Ranch.

  Standing in the mid-section of the public pool, the water’s ice-blue and cool on Markus’s skin. The sky’s ceramic-white from the flaky smoke of the wheat stubble that’s burning outside of town. Sun tries splintering through this haze. St Augustine grass (Stenotaphrum secundatum) beside the concrete path, which runs around the outside of the pool, is bottle-green and blue-shaded by a few mature ironbarks: the result of illegal night-watering, no doubt. Markus looks at the shallow end. He wants to touch Grayson: the grace and the body stir him, the face. Grayson from last night, when he and Markus broke in to the pool: how victorious that Grayson had been, while half-in-the-bag. Grayson standing as if he’s caught sight of something he’s never seen before. He’s upright with his hands on his hips and an arch in his back, his head down with his eyes trained on the water.

  A younger boy, the youngest of the Drumanure kids, brushes past Grayson into the water and splashes below him.

  Grayson shifts his hands from his hips, slides them quicker up and crosses them over his chest. Biceps bulge, perfect footy pose. Except he’s never played footy. He moves down a step, releases himself, and steps down once more. Mouth open, an involuntary, Ha, escapes before he duck-dives into the shallows. His body wavers beneath the water like a school of a million shimmering fish, wavers and reassembles when he comes up for air. Water purls off his face, and he wipes sodden shaggy hair across his forehead. So clear is it all: the endless pool, his eyes, the beads of water curling about his exposed skin and the sky above reflecting itself off the surface. Grayson is the island, and this is overwhelming for Markus: his proximity to making landfall.

  Fuck, it’s fresh, ay, says Grayson.

  It’s alright once you’re used to it.

  You’d know. Grayson blows water from his lips. You’re here every mornin’.

  Nah, I come a bit earlier than this. You’ve held me up, Gray. Markus pushes the surface with his hand. A tiny wave unfurls toward Grayson.

  Four years back was when Markus had caught first sight of land. Grayson was some other kind of island then, gliding across the silvery lake on a kneeboard. Rene reminded them how lucky they’d been to see the Lake full and to swim, nah, to kneeboard on it! Nearby the Lake is the water tower that everyone pretends is the lighthouse from Round The Twist. Markus had felt like a freak standing on the Lake’s shore, blown by the wind, hot in his wetsuit, and conscious of the outline of his cock in the tight material. He’d been the last to enter the so-called swell. Crayfish (Euastacus armatus), yabbies (Cherax destructor), freshies (Crocodylus johnstoni). Rarely, rarely down here with freshies, someone had said. C’mon, get in — yer can’t just stand there watchin’! Those critters were excuses, though. He had, in fact, sighted land, his island, in the beam of that fake lighthouse.

  Annoyed at himself, he slips beneath the pool’s surface and sinks and lets his back touch the bottom. He looks upward. The sunlight whips on the surface. A pinkish garble reels at the corner — a child, perhaps. A child, perhaps, who’s pin-dropped beside him. He ignores, or tries to ignore, the rippling image. He focuses on how his body’s unenthusiastic here … His eyes open wider and he turns upright to meet the child’s face. The child paddles his arms beside himself to keep his body below. They mark time. They go through it not around it. They puff their cheeks and round their eyes, somehow it’ll make them see clearer. Which it does. Adjustment. The child is Grayson. From the moment he saw the figure pin-drop, Markus knew it was Grayson, with stubble over his white cheeks and over his neat chin, and a few dots of acne-scar discolouration. Gray looks like a puffer fish frightened to inflation. It’s laughable. The air bubbles out from their lungs and chuckles to the surface. Markus puts his feet down on the semi-slimy bottom and follows his bubbles upward. Life returns: aahahahaha, splishing barefootedness, and dank wet concrete cutting into the actual grassy knoll.

  Markus sees, as he turns and leans over the side of the pool, the lawn pegged with naked skins slapping their surfaces with sunscreen. triple j comes tinny through the PA: ‘Hero’, by Family of the Year. He stretches the muscles in his neck.

  Grayson leans beside him; their skins brush as he scratches his stubble. And with the scratching, the child becomes a young man. Tryin’ to get away? He stops scratching and places his hands, palms down, atop the pool’s overflow grate.

  Markus watches the clear weather swirl in the ripples rushing over each of his hands and down into the dark grate, to be regurgitated later.

  There’s some light pinning the water beads on Gray’s collarbone. He sniffs. Too bad.

  Toward the shallow end, the Drumanure family is playing with a wailing Vortex.

  Grayson turns to look, and Markus glances over his own shoulder.

  The youngest Drumanure kid yells, It’s mine, with a voice on the edge of manhood: its pitch is undecided, and then breaks.

  That sucks, Grayson says. He lifts himself up onto the side of the pool. He faces the water.

  Young Drumanure, with the Vortex, is yelled at by his father. Markus turns to the grassy knoll behind Grayson and sees the other Drumanure son: the boy they used to go to school with and whom Markus once threw a mouldy sanga at. This Drumanure (left school to be a butcher) is sitting up, knees drawn, and looking down at the arse and bare skin of the girl beside him: is that Cecily? Markus pretends it isn’t; with her on her belly, and her face buried in her arms and under a hat, it’s hard to tell. Elder Drumanure and Maybe-Cecily are in dappled shade. Several noisy miners (Manorina melanocephala) sit on top of the more-than-six-foot cyclone wire fence encasing the pool. Behind the fence is the north end of Melville Street, which runs beside the pool complex and today — a Sunday — the road is empty. Parallel to Melville Street are the rose gardens, with their centrepiece a replica tar-coloured steam locomotive. The gardens are silent and the blooms nod in
the breeze. The tributary creek from the Lake, which cuts through town a little further south, is empty on the other side of these gardens.

  Grayson said another time, when he was giving Markus a collection of Platonic dialogues (As a joke, Markus, I don’t expect you to read them) that a conversation’s an amazing thing. You can pull it out of nowhere. Make it into whatever. Say whatever. Lie. Tell the absolute truth. Myth make.

  Elder Drumanure has his back turned against all this. He has an orange towel wrapped around his shoulders; he is filled with potential.

  Younger Drumanure, now without the Vortex, comes and sits on the grass in front of Markus and beside his brother. Younger Drumanure looks to Elder Drumanure, to Maybe-Cecily and then away as he laughs and hides his face. Elder Drumanure spins, Oi, and throws a bottle at his brother, telling him to, Grow a fucken pair.

  Gray. Markus nods toward the other boys.

  But Grayson goes on staring at the water. He is distant. A distance Markus has been trying to make up ever since that camping trip the two of them took back in high school.

  When the two of them were alone, Grayson had wanted to know about what Markus wanted to do, about where Markus wanted to go, and about who Markus wanted to be. And Markus couldn’t answer any of it. So the two boys skinny-dipped and went to bed.

  That’s what Markus remembers.

  Grayson in a swag across from him, with his legs and arse covered by a folded back sleeping bag. His shoulder blades lifted and fell. The last of dusk filtered through the tent. Markus had lain on the top of his own sleeping bag, and didn’t understand it all. Grayson is the messiest person: his things had been flung, strewn, tossed, and fluttered. A raven (Corvus coronoides) had opened its black onyx beak, stretched its tonsils, and declared ahr ahrr ahrrrrr. And inside the tent the noise had echoed in Markus’s mind long after the bird had settled again. Towels — wet, dry, dirty — and jocks, socks, shirts, shorts, and shoes remained scattered. That was after year eight, during summer holidays. The Lake was still filled at that stage (not for much longer, it’d turn out). And it was the night that Buff decided to stay. Grayson hadn’t told Markus, who was under the impression that Grayson hated Buff. So Markus had been feigning sleep when Buff arrived. Grayson, whispering, cleared a space between his own sleeping bag and Markus’s. After the rustling settled, Buff whispered about this girl he’d been texting. She’s got a bangin’ bod. Markus hadn’t heard what Grayson said. But he had heard what Buff replied at length, Shit my rufus is hard. Markus’s voice had broken, as if a self-betrayal, in reply when Buff asked, You listenin’?

 

‹ Prev