‘Sure, I won’t—’
‘Four, five, in some places six friggin’ lanes! Little bubble cars, motorbikes, scooters, massive four-wheel drives all shiny like they’ve never been off-road in their lives. Zipping here. Zooming there. Horns blaring. Drivers giving each other the middle finger. And for what? So they’re not five minutes late for work, or to catch up with their friends at some trendy cafe and sip on fluffy coffees, or to view the latest flick at the picture-house? Nup, Trysten, I’ll tell ya—city life’s not for me. Out here, by the bush, that’s where I belong.’
A wind came out of nowhere, waking the sleeping bush. Branches swayed. Leaves clattered. A dozen rainbow lorikeets rode like jetfighters on the tail of the wind, landed at the top of a gum and screeched like demons as they squabbled over the lush pink flowers. As they fought, from down the bottom of the slope, down on the flats, a glint of silver light speared through the treetops.
I wondered for a sec what the sun was shining on down there to send that light up, but when Dad’s eyes gleamed I had my answer. The trimmings on the caravan.
‘Not by the bush.’ I pointed down the slope. ‘You want to be right in the bush. Right?’
Dad frowned. ‘Down there? Down there? What are you talkin’ about? Not no more. Why, I don’t even know if I’ll ever be able to stomach getting back down near that creek at all. Not with the memory of Shaun trying to—’
‘Stop,’ I snapped. ‘I get it, okay?’ I felt pretty much the same way. On one of the scorching days last week, I’d considered going down for a swim to cool off. But no sooner had the thought popped into my head than the image of the tree and that fucken rope popped in with it.
‘Anyway, even if it weren’t for all that, and even if the van weren’t rooted beyond repair, I wouldn’t be down there.’ Dad hooked his thumbs in his jeans pockets, straightened his back. ‘I’ve decided I want to stay up here. I want to be here with you. And Shaun when he’s back, if he decides to stay. And…and your mother too.’
‘That a fact?’
‘Indeed it is.’ He smiled, patted my back. Two soft pats. Then he left his hand there, cupping my shoulder blade. He sighed, his sigh hanging in the air for a moment, and when it fell, a silence hung for a few more.
I didn’t know if he wanted to keep his hand on my back or he’d just forgotten it was there, but as the silence continued the discomfort of that hand on my back grew with it. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t.
‘Righto!’ I bent my knees, breaking free from his hold, and darted inside.
‘Yep,’ said Old Greggy Boy, his hand hanging in the air where my shoulder had just been. ‘Righto, then, son. Righto.’
Rather than draining her like it had Dad, the city seemed to have given Mum a new lease on life. After inviting me into her room to sit on the end of her bed, her voice rising with hope with each line spoken, she updated me on her and Dad’s time with Shaun. She told me how he was cagey on the drive up, how for the first hour he didn’t say a word and for the second hour he lost it a couple of times. Not violently. Just crying. Then how he’d started spinning her and Dad a story. That it was normal, what he was going through. That he didn’t need to go to any clinic. That he’d call the army back and say he was all good. Tell ’em not to worry about signing off on a trip to a head doctor. That it wasn’t about his service, it was ’cause of what Amy did more than anything else.
‘Jeez, that last half hour getting through the city was tense. Thought he was gonna snap again. Open the bloody door while we were on the highway and jump out. I could tell yer dad was shitting bricks—sweat dripping down his forehead, clutching the steering wheel—but he did well. I don’t know if he was spinning shit back to Shaun, or actually meant what he said. Whatever the case, it worked.’ Mum smiled, sipped on her tea. ‘After yer dad suggested to Shaun that seeing as we were so close we may as well check it out, meet the staff, get a feel for the place and then decide what to do, Shaun calmed down. So we got him there, and maybe ’cause it was so flashy—only built six months ago, with a games room and a gym, real beautiful gardens—or maybe it was ’cause of the worker who showed him round, a pretty young thing probably Shaun’s age. Or maybe it was the doctor. Sharp as a tack, bit older, but a looker too. Whatever the case, after Shaun’d come out of that first consultation, he had a bit more light in his eyes. Not much, but it was enough to give us hope, I tell you what.’
‘That’s great, Mum. Just great. You gonna go up to see him again? Can I go next time?’
‘Well…we’ll see. That’ll be for Shaun to decide.’ Mum looked out the window in the direction of the dairy. ‘So, Trev seems to be keeping quiet. How were things here while we were gone?’
I told her everything. How Trev’d belted the fridge. How he’d downed his weekly rations in one arvo. How crook he’d got and how he wouldn’t let me call the ambulance.
Each word I spoke brought her down a notch, and by the time I was done she was picking at the bedspread like a cat sharpening its claws.
‘Thanks, Trysten.’ She sighed. ‘Thanks for telling me.’
‘Mum…’
‘Yeah?’
‘What’s wrong with him? On the phone you said something about his condition.’
‘Not condition, conditions. When we arrived in the city, yer dad couldn’t find his wallet. Searched all over the car. I found it under his seat in the end. Found something else there too: a scrunched-up envelope. Inside was a summary of test results from the hospital in Big Town. Trev’s results.’
‘Shit! Is it bad?’
Mum rubbed her eyes. ‘Yeah, Trysten, it’s bad. Liver’s shot. No bloody wonder. Other stuff too, bad stuff. Letter included a referral to a specialist saying he’d need immediate treatment. But with the letter being scrunched up like that, I’m sure he won’t be doing anything about it.’
‘Yes, he will, Mum. He will if you tell him to.’
‘Sorry, Trysten, but I doubt it. Anyway, Trev’ll go nuts if he knows I read that letter.’
I looked over to Mum’s chest of drawers, remembering my own snooping. ‘Tell him I found it then. Can have a go at me if he wants. We need to at least try, Mum.’
She looked back out the window. ‘Yeah.’ She nodded, smiled and patted me on the leg. ‘Yer a good egg, Trysten. A real good egg.’
As the bus chugged along Findle Creek Road I kept my back straight and my chin high. If the bus didn’t slow as we approached Jessica’s, if that bench under the big gum was empty, I’d lob the bottlebrush flower I’d picked for her straight out the window. Then I’d shed my tears, but while I shed them I’d keep my chin up. Just like Trev’d said to.
‘Oi!’ Ricky swung into the seat, elbowed me in the ribs. ‘Good to fucken see ya, brother!’
‘Hey.’ I managed a half-arsed grin. ‘Yeah, you too.’
‘Oh…’ Ricky pointed to the flower. ‘Yeah, Jessica. Like I said on the phone, Jade still hasn’t heard nothing either way. Never know, brother, maybe her mum and that Paul dickhead’ve come round.’
‘Yeah, may—’
‘I mean, what’s the big fuss with those schools anyway? Nothing wrong with ours. Better place for girls, I know that much. The girls over at the private school are heaps looser than ours. Hooking up with those tie-wearing boofheads from the all-boys school. I heard of one girl there—same fucken age as Jessica—who had a bub last year. Can you believe it?’
‘Fuck, Ricky!’ I shook my head. ‘What’s wrong with you? You think I want to hear that?’
‘Oh, yeah. Shit! Wasn’t thinking, hey. I’m sorry, brother. Real sorry.’
All the way till Jade’s stop Ricky kept opening his mouth like he had something to say. But whenever he did, I just shook my head and glared, because I knew whatever it was would either piss me off even more or set me off sobbing before we’d even reached Jessica’s stop.
When Jade climbed on, she shuffled up the aisle, head hung low. She looked almost half as miserable as me, I reckoned.
<
br /> I raised my eyebrows. Any news?
She pouted, shook her head. Nope. Then she swung into the seat in front and Ricky wrapped his arm round her and pecked her gently on the cheek.
For the rest of the ride into town, as the noise grew—the chatter of the littluns hauling schoolbags twice as big as them, the skin slaps of high-fives and the fucken awwwwesome, mates as the senior boys with their popped collars and faux-hawks boasted about the chicks they’d pulled in the holidays, the roar of the engine and rattle of the bus as Josie sped round the corners—Ricky, Jade and me stayed silent, staring at the bus door. And after Josie’d run the gauntlet—those series of hairpins as we came down the ranges—and shifted up a gear and charged along the flats, I closed my eyes. Jessica’s stop was approaching. If she wasn’t there, if that seat under that tree was empty, I didn’t even want to see it. So I sat with my eyes closed, feeling the rhythm of the road, imagining the scenery streaming by—rows of corn, cow paddocks, the snaking river. And then, after Josie bulleted round that last little bend before Jessica’s, I heard the bus go down a gear.
We were slowing. We were stopping! My heart leapt.
I was just about to open my eyes when the bus lurched forward. Josie shifted back up a gear and put her foot down, continuing on to town.
I opened my eyes and, still holding my chin high, I let the tears flow.
Jade sobbed into a tissue.
Ricky shook his head and said, ‘What a shame,’ over and over again.
When Josie pulled up in front of the school, Ricky patted me on the shoulder before walking down the aisle after Jade. ‘It’s more than a shame, brother. It’s a tragedy!’
I tried to stand, but the blood in my legs had turned to lead.
Josie flung the doors closed and turned the indicator on. As she was pulling back onto the road she checked the rear-vision mirror and spotted me.
I waited for her to open the doors again, for her to tell me to get off to school so she could drive the bus to the shed and head home for a nanna nap. But she didn’t. Instead, she kept the doors closed and switched off the engine. She pulled out a newspaper from behind her seat and laid it over the steering wheel and began leafing through it.
Other buses pulled up. I watched kids climb off and greet their boyfriends or girlfriends who were waiting for them along the fence line. I cried even harder then. With the engine off Josie must’ve been able to hear me blubbering, but I didn’t care. And she just stayed burrowed in that newspaper like she didn’t care either.
After all the buses had come and gone, after the bell for roll-call’d rung, then the bell for first period, I finally managed to stand, haul my bag off the floor and shuffle down the aisle.
I nodded to Josie. ‘Thanks for that, Josie.’
‘That’s okay.’ She gazed at me, a knowing look in her eye, and added, ‘It’s hard, darl. But if it’s meant to be I’m sure you’ll find a way.’
First and second period I hung my head low. At recess I ducked off to the dunnies and cried some more tears. And after that I took on Trev’s advice—and Josie’s—and held my chin high, thinking about how we’d find a way.
‘Maybe,’ I said to Ricky, ‘maybe I could wag school for the day, thumb a ride over to Big Town and sneak into her school at lunchtime to see her.’
‘Ah, c’mon. How ya gonna sneak into that place? Wearing a wig and one of their skirts and blouses? Ha!’
Jade laughed. I glared at her.
‘Sorry, Trysten…but it is kinda funny to picture.’
‘Well…yeah, maybe that’s a dumb plan. But maybe I could get closer to her somehow. Like move to that all-boys school across the road from her school. Meet her in that park at lunchtimes.’
‘Now, how ya gonna get transferred to that place?’
‘I dunno. Get expelled from here. Have a few more punch-ups. Smash that Leith dickhead again. Anyone.’ I stood up. ‘We could have one now! Not a real one, hey, just mucking round. I’ll scream, go fucken nuts, say I’m gonna kill ya. Then when Mr Joyce over there comes to break it up, I’ll tell him to stand back or I’ll kill him too.’
Ricky shook his head. ‘Sorry, brother. I would if I thought it’d work, but I don’t think it’s possible to get expelled from this place. Y’know that kid Isaiah who used to punch on any chance he could get? Well, he stabbed Joey Roth in the arm with a compass and then turned on Mr Mailer. Only got two days’ suspension!’ ‘Well, if my ideas are so shit, what ideas do you have, Ricky? Huh? None!’
‘Don’t worry.’ Jade reached over and touched my arm. ‘I’m sure youse will find a way.’
‘Ah, fuck, Jade, that’s what everyone says, but they never say how!’
I turned and stormed back to the dunnies, putting a nice big dent in a bin on the way.
I shuffled up the driveway, head down again. Halfway up I looked over to the dairy.
Trev! If he wasn’t able to offer any further words of wisdom, help me to come up with a plan, or cheer me somehow, then I’d just hit him up for a six-pack, wander down to the bottom paddock by myself and drown my sorrows.
I knocked on the door. ‘Trev?’
Nothing.
I pushed the door open and as I was stepping through that doorway, I got that feeling, that sense, that something wasn’t right. Like something bad was waiting for me.
Inside, the dairy was neat and tidy. All the beer bottles were cleaned out. The bookshelf was empty. Trev’s bundle of clothes and his duffle bag were missing.
‘Fuck!’
I raced up to Mum.
‘He’s gone!’
She kept her eyes focused on the pillowcase in her lap that she was sewing a button onto. ‘Yep.’
‘Where? To the hospital to get fixed up?’
‘Nup.’
‘Where then?’
‘Dunno. North’s my guess.’
‘What? For how long?’
‘I don’t know!’ She looked at me and placed the pillowcase on the lounge beside her, the button hanging from a thread. ‘For good, Trysten! Yeah, probably for good.’
‘What? He can’t have! He didn’t even say goodbye to me.’
‘Nup. Didn’t to me either. Or even leave me a fucken message. He’s not big on goodbyes.’ Mum sighed, picked up the pillowcase and resumed sewing. ‘Ah well, that’s Trev for ya.’
‘Well, what’s he getting up to up there?’
‘What do ya think? Hanging round with his old mates, the real deadshit ones. Going hard on the booze and drugs. Continuing on his path to self-destuction.’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’ Mum raised her head, her eyes as piercing as her sewing needle. ‘He’s gone away from us, ya see. Gone away so he can d—’
‘Don’t say it!’ I screamed.
I streaked out of the house like a comet. And when I got down to the dairy, with eyes blurry from all the tears—so blurry that I could barely see what I was doing—I destroyed that fucken place.
26
It wasn’t till about six months later, mid-June—a week shy of my fifteenth birthday, and almost a year since Shaun’d left for Afghanistan—that the dust finally settled and felt like it wouldn’t be getting kicked up again anytime soon.
The winter was even meaner than the last. We’d had more than a few frosts, and each morning a thick mist lay snug in the valley until the shafts of sunlight crept over the ridges and pulled it away like a blanket. Outside my window, those bloody birds that had jetted round last winter were at it again—chirp, chirp fucken chirping. Woke me every morning. But the deeper we got into winter, and the longer the sun hid behind the ranges, the later those birds rose, and the later I rose too. That is, until Mum started hassling me.
‘C’mon,’ she said, poking my arm. ‘Up and at ’em.’
‘Shit, really? It ain’t even light yet!’
Mum flicked my bedroom light on. ‘There you go!’
‘Ah, Jesus!’ I reefed the doona over my head.
‘Now.’ Mum reefed the d
oona back off my head. ‘What are yer plans then?’
‘Dunno…get up to no good, probably.’
‘Oi, don’t get smart. What’s really on the cards?’
‘Help Dad with the fencing this morning, then probably catch up with Shaun this arvo.’
‘Great.’ She leant over and patted my head with her cold hand. ‘I gotta get a wriggle on. Can’t leave the fellas waiting for their pies.’
‘See ya!’ I smiled and, as she pulled my door shut, she smiled back.
I lay in bed thinking about how much better Mum looked these days. While Shaun was still in the clinic and after Trev went away, she’d gotten messy again. Not with the drinking. Just the yo-yoing. Weeks of the up and down again. Things improved for a little while after the night I overheard Dad suggest that maybe she should get a check-up herself. She’d flown off the handle at him, but I figured she took it on board, because after a couple of months of fortnightly visits to Big Town to ‘get her nails done’ she’d started seeming leveller and leveller. So level she managed to get her old job at the bakery back.
She wasn’t the only one working, either. Soon as she was back to it, she told Dad and me that we’d be getting back to work too. Clean up the junk. Fix the fences so we could take on a few dozen head of cattle. Get that greenhouse going, tomatoes—whatever, Gregory, I don’t care what, I just don’t want either of youse sitting on yer arses. And then she was raving about the money from the sale of the farm—drying up, almost gone!—and telling us that if we wanted to spend money we’d have to earn our own, because we weren’t havin’ a single bloody cent more of hers.
After I heard the Corolla crunching down the driveway I yelled at the top of my lungs, ‘Hey! Old Greggy! Ya out of bed yet?’
A couple of seconds later Dad’s voice boomed out of his bedroom and down the hallway. ‘Nup.’
‘Right. Whose turn is it today then?’
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