Reluctant Hallelujah

by Gabrielle Williams

  But I’ve never been like that.

  My dad always says, ‘If a boy likes you, he’ll make the effort. Never make it too easy for them.’

  He’d often told Coco and me about how Mum had him ‘jumping through hoops’ before they’d hooked up. Mum would protest that she hadn’t even known he was interested. ‘He had plenty of girls after him, I thought we were just good friends.’ Which was kind of weird, hearing that other girls wanted to be with my dad – and then Dad would joke that he’d had to kiss Mum to get her to stop talking, and that was way too much information, but some of it stuck. And the bit that stuck was the bit about not making it too easy for boys.

  I kept myself busy with JC whenever Jones was in the room, not looking at him, acting like I hadn’t even noticed that he hadn’t kissed me. Like that was totally the way I’d wanted the night to go.

  The plan for that morning was to have some breakfast, then walk up to the rent-a-car joint, rent a car, and leave the ’64 Ford at Happy Campers for someone to pick up at a later date. Jones and Taxi were in charge of getting toast and coffee down the shops, while Coco, Enron and I got ourselves and the Messiah sorted.

  The knock on the door should have alerted us. Jones and Taxi would have knocked then whispered it was them at the door. We should have known not to open the door unless we knew who it was first.

  Enron was lifting Jesus’s legs into place on the wheelchair; I was sitting on the edge of the bed tying my shoelaces, wondering how I’d gotten it so wrong, how I’d thought we might kiss when there wasn’t a chance; Coco was walking past the door midway through plaiting her hair. And when the knock happened she just opened the door, straight onto these two massive guys.

  The guys who’d smashed into the back of our car just outside Merimbula.

  The first one pushed Coco aside and smacked Enron straight in the face, knocking him to the floor, dazing him. Coco and I looked at the two guys, not moving, and you could see the cogs in their brains turning as they decided they didn’t need to worry about us. Two teenage girls didn’t have a hope in hell of stopping them. Coco’s plait started unravelling in sympathy with the situation.

  ‘Well, hello,’ one said, clocking Jesus in His wheelchair, ready for travel with His hat, sunglasses and gloves on.

  The other one whistled at the sight of Him, tracing the up-down-and-across of the crucifix over his forehead, his chest, and shoulder to shoulder. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

  The taller of the two went behind the wheelchair and started pushing it, but he seemed to be struggling. He looked down at the wheel, pushed at the brake with his foot, tried to push again, kicked at the brake. He couldn’t disengage it. It’s amazing that when you do something quickly and anxiously, it can take twice as long as if you do it slowly the first time. The more he kicked at the brake, the more it seemed to stick in place.

  ‘Just carry Him,’ the shorter, squatter one said. ‘Gonna have to lift Him into the car anyways.’

  But they couldn’t heave Him out of the chair either. It was as if He weighed a ton. Whereas Coco, Enron, Jones, Taxi and I had each lifted Jesus, shifted Him, moved Him on various occasions without much effort, these two gigantic lugs seemed to have spaghetti arms.

  Coco and I stood by the bed, watching them, my brain seeming to have trouble signalling to the rest of my body what I should do.

  Coco whispered, ‘Yoi.’

  It was all I needed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I yelled, moving towards them. ‘Get off Him!’ and I went over to the first guy, the biggest one, and pushed his arm off Jesus. He looked at me as if I was a nuisance to be dealt with and grabbed my forearm.

  I stepped towards him, because here’s the thing I’ve learnt in my years of karate: when you’re grabbed, your natural instinct is to try and pull away from the grip, but in fact, you should do the opposite. You should step forwards, get real close and cosy, because pulling away only tightens their hold, whereas going close means you have two things in your favour: first, it’s unexpected, and second, you’re close enough to stick your knee straight up into their groin, before they’ve even had a chance to register that you’re there.

  Thank you, sensei Keith.

  I slammed my knee up into this guy’s groin, and as he bent forwards instinctively to protect his softest part, I yanked my hand out of his grip through the weak link where his thumb and fingers met and brought that same hand back down on his nose, breaking it with one move.

  His buddy watched in surprise, then turned too late as Coco lifted her leg to kick him in the stomach, before changing direction at the last split moment and heaving a kick to the side of his head instead. As he stumbled she punched him right on the sweet spot on his chin, and he fell backwards, landing heavily on the floor and cracking his head against the brown brick wall of Happy Campers Motel. Out of the corner of my vision I noticed Enron sit up, holding his head.

  My one, the guy whose nose I’d broken, looked across to see what had happened to his mate just as Jones and Taxi walked into the room with paper bags of toast and a cardboard tray of take-away coffees.

  And you’ve never seen anything like it. Taxi went completely nuts, his eyes wild, his fury instant, as he punched my guy straight in the face, knocking him out with one swift punch.

  Sometimes unresolved anger can be a good thing.

  We scrambled Jesus into the back of the Ford and got the hell out of there. Well, as ‘get the hell outta there’ as you can with a 1964 Ford Falcon whose crankshaft is bent and really difficult to steer and there’s this weird scraping noise every time you turn the wheel.

  It was when we were on the outskirts of Merimbula that Taxi told me to stop the car and head back.

  ‘We’re not going back,’ Enron said. ‘We’ll hire a car from Bega or whatever.’

  ‘Stop the car!’ Taxi said. ‘I just had a fucking brilliant idea.’

  I pulled over to the kerb and looked at Taxi, who had his map scrunched up in his hand.

  ‘Go back! We can get rid of those guys for the rest of this trip, but we have to go back.’

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ he said.

  Back in Merimbula we parked the car on the main street. In full view. Right there for everyone to see. Those Bad Guys were going to need zero deductive skills to know that we were still in town, but Taxi insisted we park in the main drag. We went into a crowded cafe and sat down the back, waiting for Taxi to do his thang.

  The mood in the cafe was grim. Enron had on Jones’s sunglasses, well aware that the black eye he had was not going to be a positive for his first encounter with the police sometime in the next couple of days. Jones sat next to me, his leg close to mine. I shifted my leg away, not wanting him to think I thought anything was happening between us. Because it obviously wasn’t. His hair looked unbrushed and messy, and he was wearing his op-shop shirt that I’d bought for him and I wished that I’d bought him something a little less cute.

  I put my elbow on the table and plonked my chin in my hand, blocking his view of me.

  I know him not kissing me didn’t really matter. We were on the run from the police; we’d broken a big, bad guy’s nose – which he wasn’t going to be happy about; Enron was probably going to be blamed for the whole thing because we didn’t have another story to get him out of it; exams were in six days and counting; I was going to have to drive nonstop if we were going to reach Sydney by tomorrow morning; but the main thing on my mind was the fact that Jones hadn’t kissed me. I really hadn’t seen it coming. Or not-coming, as things had turned out.

  Taxi arrived, paid for our milkshakes, then walked back out. The five of us followed him like ducklings, me pushing Jesus in His chair.

  Jones walked beside me, but I slowed down so he could walk with someone else.

  ‘Okay, first of all,’ Taxi said, turning back to face us and walking backwards down the main drag, ‘am I a legend or what?’

  ‘What ha
ve you done?’ Enron asked.

  ‘I’m talking about back in that motel room,’ Taxi said. ‘When I smashed that guy out cold.’

  My mouth dropped open.

  ‘That is so not true,’ I said. ‘I had him sorted. It’s like when the lid of a jar is too tight, so you try and loosen it but it’s too hard so you give it to someone else and they take it off straight away. It was like that. I’d loosened the lid for you. I concussed him, you merely finished him off.’

  Taxi breathed onto his knuckles and wiped them till they shone on his shirt.

  ‘Don’t get in the way of these babies,’ he said, not even listening to me. ‘Lethal weapons, they are. That’s what you can call me from now on. Lethal Lee. Or maybe Mr Weapon.’

  He was leading us away from the car, away from the cafe, down towards the marina.

  ‘And now.’ He fanned his arms away from his body in a curtsey. ‘I’ve sorted the rest of our trip out and those guys aren’t going to have a clue, because they’ll be searching Merimbula for us while we’ll be harbour-side.’

  Enron stopped Taxi with his arm.

  ‘We’re not going with Judd.’

  ‘Yes indeedy we are.’

  Enron shook his head.

  ‘No way. It’s too dangerous,’ he said. ‘It’s one thing for us to spend a couple of hours at night drinking with them, but I’m pretty sure they’ll notice something strange about the guy in the wheelchair if we’re on board for any length of time. And anyway, I don’t trust that guy. There was something sneaky about him.’

  Taxi waved his concerns aside.

  ‘He’s fine. He’s a good guy. And he was totally cool with it. I’ve spoken to him already.’

  ‘Of course he’s totally cool with it; he’s going to have Dodie and Coco on board with him all day and all night. Why wouldn’t he be cool with it?’

  I flicked a glance at Jones to see if he’d noticed that Enron had made a comment that sounded like he thought I was attractive. And like other guys might find me attractive. Jones didn’t seem to have heard.

  ‘Besides, why would they let us hitch a ride with them? They hardly even know us. And it’s not their boat. They could get in big trouble if they get sprung with hitchhikers on board. Going with them is a fail, I’m telling you.’

  Taxi shrugged. ‘We’re more fun than most of the stiffs they have to spend time with when the O’Bs are on board. And they know we’re not going to do anything dodgy. And there’s plenty of room. It sleeps twelve, or something. Six extra beds for when they’ve got crew on board. I told them our car’s fucked and we need to keep moving because we have to get Sam to Sydney before anything happens to Him. They were totally cool with it.’

  He turned and started walking down the marina.

  ‘You can thank me later,’ he said over his shoulder.

  Halfway down the pier, the wheels of Jesus’s chair jammed. Stopped dead. Same as back at Happy Campers when the bad guys were trying to move Him.

  ‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ Enron said, kicking at the brake for me, and kicking at it another couple of times before it released. ‘This is a bad idea.’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘We’re going to spend the rest of the trip on a cool-as boat.’ And I might even flirt with Judd or Pirate, see how Jones liked that. Not that I even cared about Jones not kissing me. But I knew why Enron didn’t want to go on board.

  ‘We’ll both keep an eye on Coco,’ I said to him. Enron flicked a glance at me. ‘Besides, I don’t know if I can handle another drive with cars bashing into the back of us. We’ll just hang on the boat and get ferried up to Sydney.’ And I’ll flirt with whoever’s going. ‘Anyway, look who we’ve got on our side,’ I said, tapping Jesus on the shoulder. ‘I kind of feel like, after what happened back at Happy Campers, He’s going to make sure we’re okay. I’ve got a good feeling about this. It’s a good plan. This is one of the good ones.’

  ‘So they couldn’t lift Him at all, those guys back in the room?’ Enron asked, shaking his head.

  ‘It was as if He was a dead weight,’ I said.

  ‘Which He kind of is,’ Enron pointed out.

  I laughed.

  ‘But we can lift Him easily,’ Enron continued.

  ‘I know. And the park brake, same thing as just now, except they couldn’t get it off, which took you, like, a second to do. But for them, it was as if the chair was glued to the floor.’

  We got to the boat and Taxi lifted Jesus from boat-side, while Enron lifted him from marina-side. Jones put his hand under my elbow to help me cross over, which churned my stomach, even though I wasn’t interested in him anymore.

  ‘You doing okay there?’ Coco asked Jesus, tucking His blanket in around His knees. ‘A little bit of sailing, the wind in Your hair. This’ll be fun.’

  The water stretched out in all directions, when my brain pinged. I had the perfect out.

  ‘Mick,’ I said to Enron, smacking his shoulder. Mick being his alias, duh. ‘I’ve just realised something about that thing you were asking me about yesterday.’

  Enron frowned over at me. Judd and Pirate used their hands as peaks to shade their faces, looking over at me, their eyes curious. Coco looked up at me, too. Taxi and Jones were sitting with Jesus a bit further up deck, going through some maps.

  ‘What thing?’ Enron asked.

  ‘You know. That thing we were talking about. I think it’s in my bag. Come and have a look.’

  Not that I had much of a bag. Just the small op-shoppy number that I’d put my one extra outfit in, but Enron stood up and came with me anyway. I swiped Taxi’s phone from off the kitchen bench as we walked past it, then stepped down to the room I was sharing with Coco.

  ‘We call the motel,’ I said to him as I shut the door to our room. ‘We call Happy Campers and tell them to get the police to arrest those two guys. Tell them that they kidnapped us a few days ago – you as well – and we overpowered them and they’re out cold in our room. That’s it. There’s our out.’

  Enron opened his mouth as if to give a reason why that wouldn’t work, and then closed it as he realised it was the perfect plan.

  ‘But what about these guys?’ he asked, meaning Judd and Pirate. ‘Why haven’t we mentioned it to them? We’re sitting here and not saying a word about the fact that we’ve been kidnapped over the past couple of days? Sounds a bit suss.’

  ‘But they don’t know who we are. They think we’re Minty and Amelia and Mick. They don’t know we’re Enron and Coco and Dodie. They’ll drop us in Sydney, then never give us another moment’s thought. It’ll be on the radio that we’ve been found, but so far as they’re concerned we’re six people taking a sick guy for His last trip to Sydney. We don’t have to say anything to them because they’re never going to put two and two together.’

  ‘But where are we?’ Enron asked. ‘Now? Where are we now? Why wouldn’t we just go to the police and tell them about being kidnapped?’

  I thought a moment. It was a definite flaw in my perfect plan.

  ‘We say we’re hiding,’ I said finally. ‘We’re scared that those guys are going to find us, so we’re hiding from them until they’re firmly locked up in jail.’

  ‘It could work,’ Enron said slowly, thinking it through. ‘And those guys are going to have trouble explaining why they’re unconscious in a motel room. Worth giving it a go.’

  I rang Directory Assistance on Taxi’s phone and got connected through to Happy Campers Motel.

  ‘Hello, yeah, hi,’ I said. ‘Look we stayed in your motel last night … rooms twelve and thirteen … That’s what I’m ringing about … Well, we had to leave because two guys had kidnapped us … No, I’m not joking … Yes, I’m the schoolgirl they’re looking for … Seriously, if you go to room twelve, you’ll find them there … we overpowered them … They’re unconscious on the floor … Yes, happy to hold, and you might want to call the police as well. These men are dangerous …’

  I looked over at Enron.

  �
�They’re just going to check the room now,’ I told him.

  I felt relief washing over me. We had a firm excuse to go to the police with. Enron was going to be fine. And those guys could say what they liked, if we said they’d kidnapped us, the police were going to believe us, not them. How else were they going to explain what they were doing in Happy Campers, all bashed up and unconscious looking?

  ‘Who is this?’ a different man said into the phone. My shoulders went round and cold from the tone of his voice.

  ‘Did you check the room?’ I asked. ‘Did you find those guys?’

  ‘No one’s in that room. Who is this?’ he repeated.

  I pressed the red panel on Taxi’s phone.

  End Call.

  I looked down at the dark carpet of my room.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, looking across at Enron. ‘They weren’t there.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ he said, disappointment shadowing his features. ‘It’s really nice that you tried to do that for me. That in itself makes me feel a million times better than I did about five minutes ago.’

  Enron went back on deck and I went to the bathroom to think.

  In the mirror my eyes looked clear and bright. My hair was unbrushed but shiny, and my skin looked like I’d just woken up. I should have had big bags under my eyes and my hair should have been stringy and my skin should have been patchy, because that’s how I was feeling. Funny how your outsides sometimes don’t match your insides.

  I couldn’t bear that Enron was grateful to me when I had sorted out nothing at all.

  If I’d thought of it a couple of hours ago, if I’d called the motel as soon as we’d left Merimbula, the police would have had those guys and Enron would have been safe. But my brain wasn’t quick enough. It always took me ages to think of comebacks when someone was an arsehole; under pressure when someone’s life relied on it, I was no better.

  No wonder Jones didn’t want to kiss me.

  I left the bathroom, flopped on my bed and picked up Taxi’s phone. Dialled one-three-three-three-two-one. Keyed in my mobile number and pin.