by Jessie Cole
‘This has never happened to me before.’ Hamish’s voice was so low and quiet I could barely hear him. I crept a little closer and he didn’t move away. ‘I can’t believe I couldn’t even get into a fucking car.’ He pulled at the neck of his T-shirt, as though he still couldn’t get enough air. ‘How the fuck am I going to get out of here?’
‘It’s probably half a day’s walk.’ I knew he didn’t really expect an answer, caught as he was, but I had to say something. ‘We could do it.’ I tilted my head sideways to try to see his face. ‘Maybe we could even scrape together some bikes. There’s a few old ones in the shed, might need to scrounge up some parts. It’s not impossible.’
He was silent for a while, staring down at the grass. I didn’t know much about men, but I knew they didn’t like to seem weak. I could see him trying to gather his defences, dig a kind of moat between him and the world—between him and me—and it made me feel sad. Sad and suddenly weary.
‘Come on out of the sun,’ I whispered. I wanted to hold out my hand but I didn’t. ‘Come in and get a drink. Then I’ll show you the bikes.’
He didn’t move straight away, so we both crouched there in the midday heat, looking down, not at each other. I wondered what my mum was thinking. I wondered if she’d already heard the clattering of my heart whenever Hamish came near, if she’d seen me press my fingers against that hollow place. I knew there wasn’t much she missed. Whatever the case, she was choosing to ignore it, and I couldn’t help but be thankful for that.
11.
There were a couple of bikes in the shed, old ones of my brothers’. There was a stage they went through when they collected things. Not just bikes, but any wheeled contraption really. There was a patch behind the house that resembled a junk yard, so strewn was it with half-rusted pieces of machinery. Mum cleared it away once the boys had all gone, though every now and again I’d come across some stray nuts and bolts, or the occasional spanner buried in the dirt, like archaeological evidence of some tribe who’d gone before.
The two bikes in the shed were BMXs, a little too small for Hamish, but the perfect size for me. They didn’t even need any new parts. We just gave the tyres a pump up and oiled the chains. When I saw how workable they were, I wondered why I’d never thought about riding them before. It had been so long since I’d ridden a bike I wasn’t sure I still knew how.
Hamish was quiet while we worked. When he held the oilcan, his hands trembled, but whatever was happening on the inside, it didn’t show on his face. Once we’d got both bikes in working order we wheeled them out into the front yard.
‘You get on first,’ I said. ‘See if you can peddle without your knees hitting the handlebars.’
He settled onto the bike, peddling it slowly around on the grass. His knees came up high, but if he stuck them out to the sides, they didn’t hit the bars up front. It looked clumsy but not impossible.
‘Lots of the way into town is downhill, we’ll be able to sail down.’
Hamish stopped peddling. ‘You don’t have to come, Mema.’ It was like he’d been silent all that time, building up strength to tell me that. ‘I’ll be alright.’ He kept watching the ground as I tucked up my long skirt and stepped gingerly onto the bike.
‘I know that.’ I put one foot on the pedal. ‘But Mum will come in later to get some supplies. She’ll pick me up. I won’t have to ride back again.’
He didn’t like to feel indebted but I knew he wanted me to come.
‘I’ve never ridden into town,’ I said. ‘Be something new.’
He took a deep breath and sat up a touch straighter. ‘Alright,’ was all he said, but the breath rushed from him in a sigh.
Mum came out then, with a drink bottle and a small backpack, and a couple of sandwiches in crumpled brown paper bags. She looked at Hamish on the bike, knees up, all askew.
‘That’s going to be hard-going,’ she said to him, handing me the backpack. I opened the zipper and she popped the stuff inside.
‘Here, I’ll take it,’ Hamish said, holding out his arm for the pack. I handed it over and he slipped it on his back. Quiet hung about us and I could tell Hamish was struggling to know how to say goodbye.
‘Well …’ he said at last, ‘thanks for having me.’
My mother just laughed. What were we going to do? Make him sleep in the shed?
I looked at Hamish, gauging his response. He was doing okay. He held out his hand for my mother to shake and she grasped it like a man.
‘I’ll see you in there later, about four,’ she said to me. ‘You two got helmets?’
‘There weren’t any in the shed,’ I replied. Mum had a thing about physical safety. I’d been hoping she wouldn’t notice.
‘What if you fall off?’
‘We’ll be fine.’ It always baffled me that Mum could be so untroubled by most things but stressed out about creek-riding or helmets.
‘We’ll be going pretty slow,’ Hamish said, tilting his head down towards his knees. ‘And I doubt there’ll be much traffic.’
She stood there towering over us, shaking her head. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said finally. ‘Wait a second.’ She turned around and went back inside. I was seriously hoping she wasn’t going to try to wrap our heads up in towels, or something equally as ridiculous.
Hamish looked at me and I could see he was ready to go. I shrugged but didn’t move.
Mum reappeared holding a big straw hat in each hand. ‘I know these won’t save your skulls but they’ll keep the sun off.’
Considering what I’d imagined Mum might insist on, a hat was an easy compromise. She leaned over and plonked one on each of our heads. I adjusted it till it was comfy.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ I said and turned the bike around so it was facing the driveway. ‘See you this afternoon.’
‘Be careful,’ she said. ‘Watch out on that corner before the Smiths’ place.’
‘Okay, Mum.’ It was amazing how quickly I could feel like a little kid around her.
‘Go on,’ I said to Hamish. ‘You take the lead.’
I didn’t much like the idea of him riding behind me, studying my rickety take-off. It was unsettling even thinking about his gaze on the back of my legs. He bumped the bike forward, still pushing it with his feet on the ground. The hat came down low over his face, half covering his eyes. For the first time in ages I wished that my mum wasn’t standing there watching.
Hamish waved to her and then he pushed off towards the driveway. I followed, wobbly, in his wake.
There was a thrill in it—the leaving—as though the whole world was starting fresh from that point. I didn’t turn back to look at my mother, standing in the front yard. I didn’t look back to see the shadow of the old dog, or the silhouette of the cat through the window, or the pecking of the chickens in the grass. I didn’t scour the landscape for the shape of Bessie and her calf. I didn’t even glance around. I watched the wheel of Hamish’s bike turning in front of me until we got close to the sloping driveway, and in the rush of a downhill ride we were off.
Riding into town was different from driving. In the car, the trees whipped past, and after a while it looked like one green blur, but on the bike everything became singular. That crooked leafy tree, that stick across the road, that fallen twig. And the road itself—how subtly it undulated. On the bike you could feel every ridge in the bitumen, every slight dip. It was like mapping the world with a different tool. Feeling the shape of it beneath the tyres. It made me think of blindness and reading with Braille. There were six bridges between home and town, and the two we’d already crossed had felt so different—our one was bumpy, the other smooth.
We hadn’t been passed by a car yet, so Hamish and I rode side by side. We didn’t speak. I wanted to ask him if he felt that riding was like Braille, but I didn’t know how to bring it up. It was peaceful—the quiet between us—and it seemed a shame to break it. Our pace was leisurely, faintly downhill, there was not much need to peddle. There’d be a few steeper stretches befo
re we got close to town, but so far it was all pretty easy. I wondered how long the trip would take.
On both sides of us the hills rose up covered in forest. One of the old farmers had told Mum that when he was a boy everything around was bare, even the mountain tops. The trees had gone to make way for the farms, but no one used the hills for anything nowadays, so slowly the trees had taken them back. It was hard to distinguish the different types from where we were down on the road. Up on the distant hills it looked like one green mass, thick and glowing in the sun. Mainly camphors. Right next to the road it was mostly flat paddocks, grazing for the occasional fat cow.
All along the fence lines the camphors flourished, large and graceful with their luminous leaves, grown from seeds in the droppings birds scattered while they rested on the fences. Randomly placed by nature, the camphors always seemed perfectly positioned. Boundaries still standing when all the fences were gone. It was interesting the way nature worked, throwing up these neat lines, adapting to what was at hand.
Hamish peddled along, taking in the landscape from under his hat. He seemed calm and soothed, and even though we were on bikes I felt like drawing closer to him. It was a practical impossibility. I wasn’t a skilful enough rider, and his poking-out-knees would surely knock me off, but that didn’t stop me from feeling the urge.
I ignored it as best as I could.
The grasses in summer grew long and thick on the roadside. All different types with minute feathery flowers. Even though there was nothing spectacular about them from afar, up close the flowers were delicately pretty. Often with the smallest hint of purple—soft and downy. When I was little I was always picking bunches of grass flowers to bring back to my mum, and she would dutifully put them in a vase, but I could tell she wasn’t that impressed. Something about them spoke to me—the fineness of their beauty, the ordinariness. They were in full flower along the roadside and I put out a hand to touch their softness as we rode. In winter they would turn a deep purple and then brown and rustle in the wind, but on that day they were blooming. The only sound besides the brush of our tyres on the road was the crickets chirping, and even that seemed far off in the distance.
Hamish turned then and smiled at me, the slightest flicker of his lips, but it was enough to make my heartbeat quicken. I tried to smile back.
‘Cat got your tongue?’
Sometimes my mum would say that, but it sounded different coming out of Hamish’s mouth. I shook my head. ‘You’re quiet too.’
‘Just thinking.’
I rode along, waiting for him to tell me what he was thinking about, but he didn’t. While the going was downhill it was effortless, but eventually we hit an uphill slope. I stood up on the peddles, using my weight to turn the wheels, and Hamish tried that too, but it was harder with him being so tall. Once we slowed, the heat of the day began to bear down. The sting of the sun was sharp on my forearms, my hands moist and sticky on the bars.
‘You could get off and walk it,’ I called across to him. ‘Just for the uphill bits.’
I knew Hamish didn’t like to be beaten, but he stopped struggling and stepped off the bike, still holding onto the handlebars. He was about to say something when we heard the humming of a car in the distance. Hamish steered across to the side of the road and I slowed right down to a stop. It took a good few seconds for the driver to come into sight. I recognised him straight away—it was Frank Brown in his truck. Frank owned a lot of the land around us. He was a gentleman farmer, kind and softly spoken. Probably a few years older than my mum. I liked him just fine. When the bananas or avocados were in season he often left a bag of them at the bottom of our driveway, under one of the big trees. He was different from the rest of those men. He never sniffed around, never even came inside.
When the truck got closer it slowed right down, pulling up beside us.
‘Not too hot?’ Frank called across from the driver’s seat, through the open window. He always wore an old farmer’s hat, even in the car. ‘Want a lift?’
I glanced at Hamish, knowing that he couldn’t get in the car.
‘We’re right,’ I called back. ‘It’s a nice ride.’
He looked from me to Hamish and back again. It was obvious he was trying to place him.
‘Could throw your bikes in the back.’
I guess it seemed bizarre to choose to ride undersized BMXs to town in the midday sun when a lift was on offer.
Stopped there on the side of the road it was baking hot. I could feel a line of sweat trickle down my back beneath my shirt. ‘Thanks, Frank,’ I said, watching Hamish. ‘We’re fine, though.’
‘Frank Brown,’ Frank said, unclicking his seatbelt and leaning across the car, holding out his hand for Hamish to shake. I wasn’t good at manners. I’d forgotten to introduce them.
‘Hamish.’ He took Frank’s outstretched hand and shook it firmly, but he didn’t elaborate.
‘You the fella who washed off the bridge?’ Frank asked, his engine still humming.
There was so little traffic on the road into town that sometimes there’d be two trucks, going opposite ways, stopped in the middle of the road for a chat. It was kind of endearing, except when you got stuck behind them.
‘Called the SES?’
‘Yeah.’ The sweat was building on Hamish’s face. ‘I got disorientated.’
‘Must have given you one hell of a fright.’ Frank had a slow way of talking, as though there wasn’t any place he’d rather be. ‘Heard the car sank right to the bottom. Have to wait for the water to go all the way down before they can retrieve it.’ He still had one hand on the steering wheel. ‘You were lucky to get out.’
Hamish tilted back his hat and wiped his forearm across his forehead. ‘Mema got me out,’ he said, glancing across at me.
I wasn’t used to wearing my boots and I was starting to swelter. In the distance I could see the heat vapour rising from the bitumen. I felt myself nod.
‘You didn’t go in, did you?’ Frank asked.
‘I used a branch, you know.’
Frank nodded. ‘Good girl. Could have lost the both of you. Wouldn’t want that.’
He didn’t seem in any hurry to get going, but I wasn’t sure I could stand much longer in the sun. ‘Well, better get moving,’ I said, putting a foot on the peddle.
‘You could clamber onto the tray,’ Frank said. ‘Get out of the heat. Throw the bikes up there too.’
Hamish peered at the back of the truck.
‘What do you reckon?’ Frank asked.
I could see Hamish was thinking about it. I guess maybe he wouldn’t feel so trapped in the open back of a ute.
‘You want to?’ Hamish asked me softly, taking in my hot face.
I nodded, pretty sure he’d made up his mind.
‘You’ll have to hold onto your hats,’ Frank said with a smile, ‘but the wind’ll cool you down real quick.’
‘Okay,’ I said, hopping off the bike.
Frank opened his car door and stepped down from his seat. ‘You two jump up and I’ll pass the bikes in.’
Standing, he was a big strong fellow. He picked up a bike in each hand.
Hamish popped into the back of the ute easy, but I didn’t think I’d be able to. I clambered onto one of the wheels and then up over the side. It was pretty inelegant, but it didn’t seem like either of the men noticed.
‘Resourceful. That’s what you are, Mema,’ Frank said, surprising me. ‘Just like that mother of yours.’ I let that comment slide. ‘Now get comfortable in there.’ He kept talking, unhurried, easy. ‘Best to sit with your backs against the cab.’
Hamish took the bag off and we shuffled backwards on our bums. Frank passed the bikes up as though they weighed nothing. We were pressed together, Hamish’s shoulder against mine.
‘Like two peas in a pod,’ Frank said.
Hamish didn’t speak. I was guessing that he couldn’t. I wanted to urge him to breathe, but not while Frank was standing there watching us.
�
�Now, hold onto your hats!’ Frank called out as he climbed back into the front.
Riding in the backs of utes was one of the things on my mother’s list of ‘far too dangerous activities’, so even though I’d lived in this place all my life, surrounded by farmers and their trucks, I’d never actually travelled this way. I suspected that it would live up to my expectations. Part of me wanted to reach out and grab Hamish’s hand, but I figured I shouldn’t push it.
‘Hamish?’ I whispered as Frank’s door slammed shut. ‘You alright?’
He didn’t say a word, just pressed the heel of his palm against his collarbone again. I couldn’t see his face beneath the big hat.
‘You got to breathe.’ I bent forward a bit so I could see him. He was pale, pale as this morning in the car, his eyes wide and panicked. The truck started to move forward, slowly picking up speed.
‘Look at me.’
‘I’m alright,’ Hamish muttered, looking away. ‘Just give me a second.’
It’s impossible to help someone who doesn’t want helping, but in my mind I imagined climbing over and straddling his lap so all he could see was me. I didn’t move an inch and the truck bumped along gently. Frank was a cautious driver, and I suppose he was thinking of the bikes bouncing around on top of us too.
He was right about one thing—as he gathered speed, we both reached up to grab hold of our hats. We were shaded by the cab of the truck, so once the wind started rushing I pulled my hat right off and held it between my legs. I liked the feeling of the wind in my hair, and if I hadn’t been squashed in alongside Hamish I would have felt utterly free. His arm against mine, moist and hot, kept jolting me back to the thought of climbing astride his lap. I hadn’t known how much unwanted thoughts could make you feel like a prisoner.
Reaching up, I pulled the elastic from my plait. If this was my one chance of riding in the tray, I wanted to feel all of it. My hair streamed out around me, the wind whipping it about. Hamish took his hat off too and leaned his head back against the cab, face tilted towards the sky. He closed his eyes, and the hand he pressed against the base of his throat relaxed and dropped slowly to his lap.