Heart of Gold

by Fiona Palmer

  She pulled out a plate of leftover curry and bunged it in the microwave. Ducking her head around the corner, she checked on her dad, who was in the lounge room. It was a decent-size room but its floors were covered in an out of date brown carpet, which looked like it had piss stains all over it. Every archway and doorframe was painted a dull mission brown and the furniture looked like it had spent its life in a bachelor house. Except instead of a drunken bachelor passed out on the couch, it was her dad. Any money they could have saved for renovations, her father had pissed up against the pub wall over the last ten years. God, it felt like it had been a lifetime since they were a happy family. A long time since she was free to live her life without worrying, playing nursemaid and being the main provider. Trying not to dwell on the past, and on the collection of empty stubbies, CJ returned to the beeping microwave.

  At the small, round table, with its fake wood veneer top, she sat surrounded by loose-leaf pages of all shapes and colours. Sadly, they all demanded the same thing: money. CJ had learnt to budget from an early age as her mum wasn’t too good with figures and they didn’t trust Dad with the cheque book any more. Before the accident, he had always paid the bills. It’s amazing what a blown tyre on the gravel could do. Dad had rolled the car and ended up in a ditch. One of those freak accidents, no one to blame. He had stuffed up his spine and as a result now lived in constant pain. They had tried everything.

  CJ collated the bills into very important – power, phone, water, medication – and the not so important. These were the ones she knew she could pay late and not get hassled. Pushing her empty plate aside, she began writing out cheques and putting them into envelopes for her mum to post tomorrow. It was a grim task. She tried to keep track of how much they had so no cheques bounced, but the odd one did return. It wasn’t so bad now that Emily was out of school and paying her own rent. She wanted the best for her sister but her school boarding fees had caused a massive strain.

  By the time she had dealt with it all her neck muscles were pulled tight like the tailgate of her ute. After clearing away her dishes, she quietly carted all the beer from the fridge and hid it under a tarp in her ute. She would try to sell it to Doug or give it to Irene for Paul to drink. With a bit of luck her old man would think he’d drunk it all. CJ picked up the phone, sat back at the table, and rang Emily. It was about eight. Emily should be home.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hey, Em. How’s it going?’

  ‘CJ! Hey, sis. What you up to?’ Em’s voice was soft, light and full of energy. It suited her bouncy, blonde hair and sparkly blue eyes. She was full of life, and CJ did her best to protect her from the harsh realities she lived with.

  ‘Just thought I’d ring, check you’re still alive. You don’t ever call us.’

  ‘Well, I’m too busy… you know, with work and all. You know I do crazy shifts at the hotel. Besides I’d hate for Dad to answer.’

  ‘Gee, how bad that would be,’ CJ said sarcastically. ‘You should see him now, pissed as a newt on the couch.’ CJ heard other voices and knew Emily had missed what she’d said.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Emily agreed, without knowing what they were discussing. ‘Hey, sis, I’d love to chat but the girls are here and we’re off to a concert. Ring me tomorrow night and I’ll tell you all about it. Catch ya.’

  ‘Okay, seeing as I don’t have a life,’ said CJ but the phone had gone dead. CJ put the phone on the table and stared at it. Tears welled in her eyes. She loved Emily but that girl had no idea what real life was. Nearly every penny CJ earned went to paying bills and looking after everyone. Emily’s money went to parties and concerts. Not once had she sent any money home, but why would she? Dad wasn’t her problem. Yes, CJ had a bit of money saved up but that was because she scrimped and saved and didn’t go out, didn’t drink, didn’t buy things for herself. The only time she’d left Lake Moore was to help Emily move. She loved Emily but she made CJ so angry. Life made her angry, when she let it. She took five deep breaths to settle her nerves, and rubbed her eyes. Mum still wasn’t due home for another few hours. She knew she should clean up the lounge room and get Dad to bed or her mum would make that face again. A sad, almost lost, faraway look. CJ hated it. It made her feel partly to blame, although she didn’t know why. She just couldn’t bear to see it.

  Walking into the lounge room, she saw her dad, Tom Wishart, asleep on the couch and cringed. His head slumped to the side, a bit of drool hanging from the corner of his lips. An empty beer bottle sat between his legs, below where his red chequered shirt pulled tightly over his large belly. As he sat there in his baggy track pants and thongs, CJ couldn’t help but remember times when her dad was a handsome, fit man. Back when he took pride in his appearance and loved spending time with her, teaching her things. She had been about nine years old when she started getting picked on at school. Her dad had noticed and built up her confidence the only way he knew how. Taking her out into the back yard, he had taught her how to box. At first, it was mainly defence and ducking punches, but she had taken to it so well he taught her how to jab and throw a right hook. As she looked down at the old man, whose body and skin showed the years of alcohol abuse, she felt a sense of loss. If only the accident had never happened, everything would be so different now.

  CJ sighed. She had wasted too many years being angry at the hand they’d been dealt, so she pushed it from her mind. Her dad was still angry, though, and would be until he died. Not that they hadn’t tried to help him. Between her mum, Dot, and herself they had encouraged Tom – and even begged in the end – but he wouldn’t hear of it. He thought all that talking nonsense was for girls and weaklings. Men just didn’t do that. CJ was not going to end up like him. She had her whole future ahead of her.

  She turned off the TV and gently shook her dad’s arm, trying to rouse him. CJ felt like a little girl about to wake up a huge beast, not knowing if she was going to be eaten. Strangely, it reminded her of a story he used to read to her and Emily, called Mia and Grizzly the Bear.

  With a drunken snort, he moved his head and forced his eyes open. They were so bloodshot they looked more red than their normal pale blue. This was not a good sign. Mum would have made sure he’d had his medication before she left for work this afternoon. It didn’t mix well with shitloads of beer. Hell, here we go again.

  ‘Come on, Dad. It’s time to go to bed,’ she said softly.

  He strained to look at her. Using all her strength, she helped him up off the couch.

  Tom roared in pain and put both hands to his back.

  ‘Serves you right for getting pissed. It’s stopped the medication from working.’ CJ stood in front of her father feeling sympathy warring with disgust.

  ‘Whaddaya want, ya little bassstard?’ slurred Tom as he struggled to focus. ‘You wanna piece of me, do yaaa?’ He wiped the spit from his mouth with the back of his large hand before raising them both into fists, ready for a fight.

  ‘Dad, it’s me, CJ.’ She raised her hands to calm him down but he took it as an invite and lashed out his right arm. It was a sloppy punch and came up short.

  ‘Think you can beat ol’ Tom, do yaaa?’ He blinked his eyes hard a few times and shook his head as he bounced his fists up and down. The skin sagged on his face and pulled under his eyes.

  CJ saw his right hand coming easily and stepped back to dodge it. She’d done it many times before, but instead of her left foot finding the floor, it found an empty stubbie. She felt her foot slip over the bottle; her ankle rolled painfully and she fell forward, into the oncoming fist. Down, down, down, she fell in a dizzying haze.

  Moaning, she blinked her eyes open as she lay on the floor. She shook her head and realised her dad was still towering over her.

  ‘Get up and fffight like a mannn.’ Tom’s voice was deep and garbled, and bits of spit flew over her bare arms.

  CJ didn’t know what to reach for first – her sore ankle or her throbbing face. She felt a wetness down her chin, wiped it with the back of her hand and it cam
e away covered in deep-red blood. Her nose was bleeding.

  ‘Oh, Dad. Look what ya done.’ She felt pain shooting up her ankle but crawled away and managed to use the end of the couch to get up on unsteady feet. ‘You’re an arsehole.’

  Holding her nose, she hobbled to the kitchen and grabbed some tissues. She shoved one up her nose to stop the bleeding, before returning to the lounge room. She noticed her dad watching her through his alcoholic haze. Just a fragment of him.

  ‘CJ… your face… ohhh,’ he moaned, realising he was the cause. Tom rubbed his temple. Shiiit… I’m… soorr…’ But his apology never made it out.

  CJ was furious. She felt like punching him back, but what good would that do? Her father stumbled backwards a few steps.

  ‘Just go and wash your face and go to bed before you do something else!’ she yelled. ‘I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.’

  CJ took a deep breath and sighed as she watched him back out of the room, crashing into the doorframe on his way out. She was sure there was a hint of sadness in his eyes when he’d realised he had hit her. There usually was. The first time he’d bruised her face he’d been appalled and wouldn’t rest until she knew he hadn’t meant it. But now… well, it wasn’t anything new.

  She was afraid that soon there wouldn’t be anything of the old Tom left. Some days she got a snippet of the father he used to be. Sometimes if it was a nice sunny weekend he’d sit and chat about his shearing days long ago. CJ treasured those moments. They were becoming few and far between.

  It took two full garbage bags to clean the room. By the time she was done picking up the bottles, cleaning the blood off the floor and taking a couple of Panadols, she could hear her dad snoring loudly in his bedroom at the far end of the passageway. Dot had kicked him out of her room long ago, and with it the love she felt for him.

  Tomorrow she would ask her father how he had got the money to buy the beer. His old friends knew not to loan Tom money; they had all been stung years ago. No one ever came to their house any more. Even Irene stayed away, but CJ wanted it like that – she didn’t want Irene to see how bad it was. She also knew Irene would try to get her to leave, but she couldn’t. Someone had to stay.

  CJ headed to the bathroom. The sight that greeted her in the mirror didn’t shock her like it used to. Flaking blood caked the bottom half of her face, and blotched down her neck like a bad case of measles. With a red bruise circling her eye and approaching her nose, she wasn’t going to win any beauty contests, that was for sure. Life would be much easier if Dad hadn’t been such a good boxer. Maybe it was time to invest in some make-up. The thought of going to work with another bruise so soon after the last one bothered her. Usually she could avoid Tom’s fists but she felt like a weak failure when she couldn’t.

  She cleaned herself up, went to her mum’s room and let herself in. Dot would still be a while but CJ knew she’d understand when she found her in her bed. After a bad night with Tom, they’d both support each other in the darkness. Dot would smooth CJ’s hair to ease her pain, and if it was Dot in the firing line, CJ would curl her mum up in her arms and rock her to sleep. Tonight she needed her mum. The moment her mum crawled into bed next to CJ, she would relax enough to survive her dreams.

  5

  TOM Wishart dragged his hand down his face, stretching his wrinkly skin tight.

  ‘Oh God,’ he groaned. He tried to open his eyes but it was all just blurry. Am I dead, he wondered? He felt the depression grip at his soul the moment his eyes cleared and he saw the dirty, cobwebbed ceiling of his bedroom.

  Ah, shit. I’m still bloody alive. Tom tried to move but his head weighed a tonne. It felt like someone had strapped it to the end of the bed with thick packing tape. He decided to stay put. There was no reason to get up and besides, he felt like he was stuck inside a whirlpool. A wash cycle that just didn’t stop.

  Tom licked his dry, cracked lips and got the faint taste of blood. Blood? Something clicked over in his mind, a flash of memory with an image of Catherine lying on the floor and a lot of blood. His heart missed a beat. Did he kill her? Did he finally go too far? His hands began to tremble and his brain throbbed with the effort as he tried to remember.

  Suddenly he exhaled. A fragment came: Catherine telling him off or something. He couldn’t quite remember the words – he was sure she’d said arsehole – but the sad, broken look in her eyes he couldn’t forget. Tom shook Catherine’s face from his mind. At least she was alive. He knew that somewhere inside of him, he still loved his family, but the black hole that had swallowed him didn’t allow it to show. He didn’t know who he was any more. He didn’t feel like Tom. The Tom who used to love shearing and boxing and playing with his girls just seemed so far away.

  Tom had been angry for so long that he didn’t really remember who he used to be. And on the odd occasion he did remember he usually had to drown out the memories with alcohol; it was too painful knowing it would never be like that again. That’s what had started him off yesterday. Dot had been in one of the large storage cupboards, searching for God knows what, and she’d left the door open. He’d walked past it and glanced at the bundle of red leather on the top shelf. His old boxing gloves. The leather had smelt so good and instantly filled his head with happy memories of fights he’d won. For once, he’d felt alive.

  On a wave of excitement, he had pulled them out and taken them into the garage. He had inhaled the musty mixture of sweat and leather before sliding his large hands into them. They fitted perfectly, and he marvelled at the sensation it brought to his chest, as if he was having a heart attack, but instead of pain it was joy. His bag still hung in the corner, where he’d left it, now covered in dust and spider webs.

  Tom had closed his eyes, remembering his fights. Right jab, left hook. That time he took Willy Langdon down in the first five minutes, sent him to the floor with a crunch from his right arm. Damn, that had been so good. The crowd had roared and the count had begun. Willy had pulled himself up on the ropes but he’d won. Tom Thunder, they had called him when they placed their bets. Put my money on Tom Thunder. They were the best damn days of his life – until he met Dot.

  It didn’t take long for it all to come back. He might have been a bit wonky but the basics were still there. Feeling ready, Tom had tried a set of four.

  Thud, thud… argh! Spasms had erupted in his back. Angrily, he had lifted his arms again but with more determination, hoping he could beat it. He was the great Tom Thunder. But, moments later he’d lain on the floor with his back in painful spasms and known he was beat, in a way he’d never been in the ring. His heavy breathing had blown the dust from the cold concrete floor as the blackness had surfaced again, winding its way through his body, along with the pain. He could feel it coming for him.

  Pain already had his soul. If only it would take his life and be done with it.

  It was then he had remembered needing a drink – and quick. On the spur of the moment, riding the hurt and anger, he’d sold all his boxing gear to the new kid down the road. It gave him enough money to get a couple of cartons of beer… and well and truly smashed.

  Tom had lost count of the hours he’d spent staring at this ceiling with its water stains and patches of mould. Each time he thought of ways to end it all. But he was too gutless. That… and he didn’t want Catherine or Dotty to find him. He was a big enough burden on them already and he didn’t fancy leaving them with more scars to bear. One day he would find a way, though. His clock was ticking…

  Lindsay arrived late to work, having set his alarm wrong, and the shed had already started. He was a sheep behind but quickly caught up. He finished off his fourth ewe, pushed it down the chute, and looked up to see CJ picking up the fleece. He stared at her for a very long second before she blushed and said good morning. He muttered a reply but was lost in her face, the shock of the swelling and discolouration of her skin. As he dragged out the next sheep, he found it hard to concentrate. It was a huge bruise, still swollen, and it seemed out of p
lace on her gorgeous face. The first thing that came to mind was: Who? You didn’t get a shiner like that from walking into a door. Who the hell could hit a woman? Anger pulsed through his veins. No one deserved that, especially someone as harmless as CJ. Eventually he got back into the rhythm of shearing, but each time she picked up his fleece he couldn’t help trying to get a better look at her eyes. He was trying to see if she hurt – not physically, but mentally. But all he could see was a haunting emptiness in the depth of her blue eyes.

  ‘Shit, that must have hurt like hell,’ he said to her at the end of the run, trying to hold her fleeting eyes.

  CJ shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Nah, it’s fine now. Don’t worry about it.’ Then she changed the subject, saying she’d better help pen up, and left immediately.

  Lindsay grew more uneasy as the day wore on. The bruise wasn’t the only thing that had him concerned. He felt like no one had noticed her face. No one else stared at her the way he felt compelled to and he never saw anyone ask her about the bruise. It was as if it hadn’t happened. Or maybe it had happened before. He decided to ask Doug after they’d finished for the day. He didn’t know anyone else well enough and he wasn’t about to bring it up with CJ. She’d obviously had enough torment.

  When he arrived at Doug and Tessa’s house later that day, Lindsay hadn’t got two feet out the door of his ute before he heard the squeals of delight from his favourite nieces. Bonnie, the oldest at seven, reached his arms first. He lifted her off the ground and swung her around. Bonnie was the spitting image of her mum, Teresa, with long, straight, silky black hair and brown eyes. The only thing she had inherited from Doug was his attitude, but it was much cuter on a seven year old. By this time Tara, who was four, was tugging on his shearing pants trying to get his attention. Tara could have passed as Lindsay’s child; she had inherited all the Taylor genes. Her blonde hair and blue eyes were a match to his own features. The two girls couldn’t be more different – but similar at the same time.