‘You okay?’ she asked.
Enron rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed his hand across his face, his massive shoulders bearing the weight of this new bit of bad news.
‘We’ll explain to them it wasn’t you,’ I told him.
‘We’ll say that … I don’t know.’ Coco was thinking on the run – never a good look. ‘That Dodie freaked out about exams and you came along for the ride. Something like that.’
Enron nodded, but even though his face was obscured, his thoughts weren’t. There was no way the police were going to believe crap like that.
He stood up, his eyes avoiding all of us, and walked outside, closing the door quietly behind him.
‘We have to call the police,’ Coco said, moving over to the phone by the bed. ‘I don’t care what the Mover says. They can’t go round saying Enron is responsible. It’s just not fair.’
‘We’re not calling anyone,’ Taxi said, the resolve in his voice firm even as he sat slumped against the wall. ‘No Facebook. No phone calls. Once we’ve done what we came to do, we’ll call them. But nothing till then.’ He looked at Coco. ‘You understand, don’t you?’ he asked her. ‘You can’t Facebook about this. I won’t give you my phone again if I think you’re going to Facebook.’
Coco looked down at the floor. Avoiding his eyes.
‘Tell them about the last time we ran into the cops,’ Jones said, whittling as he worked.
‘We’d been caving,’ Taxi said, ‘and after we came up from the drains, some cops drove past us. They didn’t know we’d been down there but they slowed the car down anyway to flex their muscles and make the point that they’d seen us.’
‘So I yelled out, “Run!” – just for a shit-stir – and we all took off,’ Jones said. ‘So the siren goes on and they’re chasing us and we’re running through the streets and then we ran down someone’s driveway and hopped over a couple of fences, and lost them, and that was fine.’
I watched Enron smile as Jones and Taxi tick-tacked back and forth with the story.
‘But then we went past this phone booth, so we called triple 0,’ Taxi said, ‘and said we’re being chased by people impersonating the police. And the operator said, “What makes you say they’re impersonating police?” And I said, “because they’re driving a cop car and wearing police uniforms,” and then, from around the corner, we heard the siren go on again, and they came down the street.’
Jones was laughing, and Coco and I started giggling and even Enron couldn’t help a broad grin.
‘And we bolted again. Down driveways, over fences. That was a good night.’
‘It was a bloody ripper,’ Jones agreed, the wood chock in one hand, big scary knife in the other. He glanced across at Enron. ‘Cops don’t know shit,’ he said.
Coco leant forwards in her chair, her hair pulled back from her face, a slide of spit stretching from her mouth almost to the floor, before sucking it back up into her mouth.
Enron, Jones and Taxi burst out laughing, and Coco sat back in her chair, a satisfied grin on her flushed face.
‘Yes, Australia,’ Enron said, ‘she really does have talent.’
Coco laughed.
‘So what about you?’ she said, leaning back in her chair and tilting her chin at Enron. ‘What’s your special talent?’
Enron thought for a moment.
‘Cleaning,’ he decided. ‘I’m really good at cleaning. A master. Rolling towels, decorative serviettes, whatever you need, I’m your man.’
‘Ooh la la. Are you French?’ Jones said.
Which set us all off, even Enron. Good hard laughing that makes your stomach sore and your cheeks hurt and the rest of you feel fantastic.
Enron grabbed a towel from the bathroom.
‘This isn’t going to work as well as if it was a napkin,’ he said, ‘but it’ll have to do.’ And he folded it down the middle, opened it out, folded the outsides in on each other, poked corners in, held it up to display a lump of towel that looked like it had been bunched up and thrown in the corner, and we all cracked up again. Jones leant over and picked the mangled towel up from the floor where Enron had dropped it and plonked it onto my head like a hat.
‘How do I look?’ I asked, tilting my chin at Jones.
‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘I especially like the way the towel drapes across your eye, sort of obscuring it and making you look like a bit of a spaz.’
I pulled the towel off my head and threw it at him.
‘This is my special talent,’ Jones said, and he cleared his throat like a maestro, lifted his arms theatrically as if he was about to conduct an orchestra, brought two fingers back towards his face, tucked his eyelids in on themselves so that all you could see was the red insides, tilted his head back, stuck his arms out in front like a zombie and started trying to attack everyone within an arm’s span of him.
Coco squealed and covered her hands over her face, I jumped across the bed to get away, Taxi was laughing but stayed seated on the ground.
‘What about you?’ I said to Taxi, when Jones had finished and we were all flopped back down on the bed laughing. ‘What’s your special talent?’
Taxi shrugged.
‘Don’t have one,’ he said.
‘You must have something,’ I pressed. ‘How about why you’re called Taxi.’
And Jones laughed.
‘Short for taxidermist,’ Jones said. ‘He loves animals, but every time he has one it’s stuffed. Fish?’
‘Dead,’ Taxi said, looking down into his beer.
‘More fish?’
‘Dead again,’ Taxi said, unable to stop himself from laughing.
‘Hamster?’
‘Fox got it.’
And we all started laughing again. Jones leant over to Jesus in His wheelchair, a broad grin across his face.
‘What about You?’ Jones asked. ‘What’s Your special talent?’ And then he took off Jesus’s cap and sunglasses. ‘You need to relax, my Man. You’re far too formal for this particular occasion,’ and he peeled off Jesus’s gloves. He looked at the holes in His hands, turning them first palm-up then palm-down.
‘So how do you reckon they did this?’ Jones asked.
‘Did what?’ Enron asked, his feet up on the bed.
‘This,’ and Jones waved his arms generally in Jesus’s direction. ‘I mean, it’s fucking good however they did it. Looks super-real.’
Enron frowned.
‘Obviously it’s not,’ Jones continued. ‘I’m just blown away by how lifelike He is. Like, He really feels like flesh.’ He picked a little at the holes in Jesus’s hands. ‘What is it? Wax? Like Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks or something?’
‘It’s Jesus,’ Enron said simply.
‘Yeah, but what I mean is, how did they get Him so lifelike?’ Jones pushed.
Enron chewed on his lip a moment before speaking softly, shyly, not sure if it was worth the trouble.
‘When Jesus rose again one of his disciples – Thomas – didn’t believe it was Him,’ Enron said, his arms folded against his chest. ‘So Jesus offered His hands for Thomas to touch, to put his fingers in, to prove to himself that He was real. Exactly like you’re doing now. Thomas became one of the most fervent believers out of any of the disciples.’
Jones frowned at him.
‘Not …’ Jones hesitated. ‘Hang on, I think I’ve heard of this guy. It’s not Thomas Tussaud, is it? You know, Madame’s son?’
I was in that delicious state of tipping into unconsciousness when Coco whispered to me.
‘Dodie?’
The cops hadn’t caught me driving without a licence. The bad guys had run the red light and been caught. The Mover was standing in the garage, leaning on his sticks. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
‘I’m not going to Facebook what’s happening,’ Coco whispered to me.
Enron was telling Jones not to call Jesus Santa. Santa was taking over the wheel of the car behind us, ho-ho-hoing as he drove the sleigh into t
he sky.
‘Enron made me promise I wouldn’t.’
The reindeers were running across the clouds. Mother Mary was sitting in the back among the sacks of toys, watching us, keeping us safe. Jones’s knee was next to mine.
‘Enron said we have to trust that things will work out in the end. He said it’s God’s will.’
God was watching us from his throne up in the clouds. A chubby little cupidish angel sat with a bow and arrow in his hands. He shot down, an arrow sailing through the air, shooting Jones straight through the heart. Jones fell back, his arms flinging out either side of him. I picked up the arrow, and the tip of it went through the palm of my hand.
Tipped.
Isabel Flores de Oliva was born in Peru in 1586 and became the first person from the Americas to be canonised. Pope Clement IX did the honours in 1668, giving her the saint’s name of Rose of Lima.
Despite having been christened Isabel, she was always known as Rose. There are two differing stories behind her nickname: one goes that she had the complexion and beauty of a rose from the day she was born; the other story – bit crazier, and therefore the preferred version – is that a servant saw her face literally transform into a rose before his eyes as she lay in her baby’s crib one mellow afternoon.
Whatever the real reason, the point is that Isabel was always called Rose, and as she grew up she became renowned throughout her local region for her beauty. However, instead of enjoying the attention her looks invited, she was mortified by it. She cut off her hair to stop people staring. She disfigured her face with pepper and lime until it was red and blistered. She flogged herself three times daily. She ate bitter herbs to deaden her sense of taste. Despite her family’s hopes that she’d marry some nice young fella from around town, she entered a Dominican convent and took a vow of perpetual virginity. She died at the age of thirty-one, having accurately predicted her own death down to the very day, date and year.
Her feast day is the thirtieth of August and the emblem most commonly associated with her is – no surprises here – roses. But I found out all this later.
Rosedale has a Roman Catholic church named after her.
The morning after we stayed the night at the brown-brick-with-airconditioning-motel we got up at the crack of eight (because, as Taxi kept reminding us, we had a long drive ahead of us), and it was as we were picking up the additive from the petrol station that we heard something weird was happening in the grounds of the little church known as St Rose of Lima in Rosedale.
Hordes of Rosedalians stood on the lawns of the church. Hundreds of people – maybe even up to a thousand, hard to tell – were knee deep in freshly cut roses. It’s probably no exaggeration to say there were a million roses, although estimating numbers of things isn’t one of my strong suits.
News crews were filming, reporters were interviewing, photographers were photographing, old ladies were kneeling with single roses clutched to their bent-in-prayer heads. Some people had arms full of blooms as if hayfever was just a nasty rumour. Little kids were skipping through the roses, holding flowers in their hands. One man stood at the edge of the crowd, his face turned to heaven as if waiting for the next rose to fall. Petals had worked their way loose from their buds and floated like confetti on the up-draft. Coco wound down her window and the interior of the Falcon misted from the almost-visible perfume of roses. Bees pocketed as much honey as they could before someone swept their booty away.
I stopped the car. Didn’t even look to see where I was parking, just stopped and turned the ignition off. Enron opened his car door and stepped towards the church as if pulled on a leash, merging into the crowd. I wanted to tell him to avoid the news crews, but I figured he knew to do that already.
Coco followed Enron into the crowds, standing on her tippy-toes so she didn’t crush any of the flowers. When she got level with him she put her small little-bird hand on his gigantic leg-of-ham forearm for a moment, said something to him, then took her hand away as they both bent forwards to lift roses from the lawn into their cradled arms.
I watched the two of them from the driver’s seat for a moment more, then opened my door and crossed over to join them.
‘This is huge,’ Enron said quietly to me.
I smiled up at him.
‘What is it? Some kind of festival?’ I asked. ‘It’s awesome.’
Enron puffed a short laugh out his nose and grinned down at me.
‘It’s not a festival,’ he said, picking a rose from the bundle in his arms and handing it to me. ‘It’s a miracle.’
‘It’s amazing,’ Coco agreed, looking out at the expanse of pink and red and cream and apricot.
‘It’s not a miracle,’ Jones said, coming over from the car. ‘Miracles are supposed to have a point, aren’t they? You know, cure the sick child, feed the masses, something along those lines.’
‘Feed the human spirit,’ Enron said quietly. ‘Food for the soul.’
‘Ain’t gonna cure no cancer,’ Jones said.
We walked back over to where Taxi leant against the car, checking his watch, signalling to us that we had to get moving. That we had a lot of road to drive today. Jesus sat in the back seat, sunnies on, DC baseball cap on, hair tied back in a ponytail, hobo gloves on, T-shirt and cargo pants. He actually looked pretty cool. Handsome, even, which is a weird thing to say about Jesus Christ.
Good job, JC, I thought to myself. If this is your gig, it’s very bloody nice.
Open your eyes. Fatigue kills.
Fatigue levels low and stable.
Trouble concentrating? Powernap now.
Concentration, no problemo.
Weary? Powernap now.
Powernap not necessary but thanks for the offer.
We’d only been driving for an hour, and I was fresh as a field of roses. Coco had shifted up front between me and Enron, and was reading about us in the newspapers.
‘So here’s our fifteen minutes of fame,’ Coco said, flicking at the papers with the back of her hand, ‘and we get splashed around the papers in our school uniform.’
‘If this is fame, fame sucks,’ Enron said, slouching against the window. ‘I thought if I was ever going to be in the papers, it’d be for footy. But here I am, the mental nutcase kidnapper.’
Enron looked to have lost centimetres. There was every chance he’d register at below six foot, just from the shame of it all.
‘Most celebs get a hefty bank cheque to go with their fame,’ Coco said. ‘We get the fame, and no cashola.’
One of the newspapers quoted a kid from school as having seen Enron talking to me at the lockers the morning I went missing, and that, ‘she seemed a bit agitated and I thought it was strange, because it’s not like she’s friends with him or anything,’ and just that little bit of sentence there made me feel bad.
I glanced past Coco towards Enron, who kept his eyes firmly out the window, looking at the trees and bush.
‘You okay?’ I asked him.
He nodded.
Even though he wasn’t.
‘So do we still think it’s a good idea not to tell anyone?’ I asked to the car in general. To anyone who wanted to put up their hand and offer a solution. ‘I mean, we can always call the police, tell them we’re okay, Enron’s nothing to do with it, and say we’ll sort the rest of it out later.’
‘Yeah. That’s a good idea,’ said Jones, and I knew something sarcastic was coming my way. ‘Tell them you’re fine, you’re just popping Jesus off in Sydney and coming straight home. They’ll be fine with it.’
I chewed on my lip, my arms on the steering wheel at ten to two, like my dad had taught me. I had never actually found ten to two to be that comfortable, but Dad assured me that ten to two gave me optimum control over the car.
Ten to two, like the hands of a clock.
The road was starting to change. Instead of the flat yellow wheat farms we’d been driving through since leaving Melbourne, we were coming up to greener, more forested areas, closer to the coast. It wa
s still Victoria, but not as we knew it. It was a more New South Welsh type Victoria. Trees rose intimidatingly either side.
We were entering official fishing territory. Hundreds of lakes spread out before us like someone had tipped the bucket over. Lakes Entrance – pretty appropriately named, all things considered. Bark hung in lazy strips off skinny, towering gums.
‘Koala country,’ Taxi said.
‘Stoned, probably,’ Jones said.
I could hear the slight flick flick flick as he whittled his piece of wood.
Wasn’t exactly sure how safe it was for him to have that big knife whittling against the back of the driver’s seat, the back of my seat, but Jones wasn’t the sort of person you told what to do. That much, I already knew.
‘They’ll be off their nuts by this time of day,’ Jones said, flick, and pretended to look at a watch that he didn’t wear. ‘This whole place,’ he added, pointing out the windows at the trees with his knife, ‘is just one gigantic booze cruise for Australian native fauna.’
‘That’s a myth, you know,’ I said, looking at him through the rear-view mirror. ‘They don’t really get drunk on the eucalyptus.’
Jones didn’t answer, just continued whittling.
‘They prefer beer,’ Taxi said.
We laughed.
Jones slugged back one of the twenty-four cans that he and Taxi had brought that morning before we left Rosedale.
‘It was on sale,’ Taxi had protested. ‘Six bucks for twenty-four. That’s, like, forty cents a can or something.’
‘And you know what they say,’ Jones had added. ‘You can never have too much Coke.’
My eyes felt scratchy. My neck was stiff.
‘God, I feel like we’ve been driving forever,’ said Coco, twiddling the dial of the AM-only radio and trying to find something that sounded even remotely like a tuneful song instead of some old-timey knee-slapping classic. Didn’t people in the country like modern music? It was as if the 1964 Ford Falcon radio was instinctively searching for familiar tunes to blast out of its speakers, like we’d been sucked through some worm-hole into the nineteen-sixties, seventies and eighties.
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