by Romy Ash
Bury it, says Nev and throws the spade at Jordy’s feet.
Why’d you bring that spade anyway? says Jordy.
He smirks at us and I don’t know why we thought he could ever help. He finishes his cigarette and starts rolling another, ignoring us. The crows land close. They caw.
Come on, says Jordy. He holds the tail like you hold a hand and we walk away together. He drags the spade behind him.
Okay, he says. Drops the spade. I try not to drop the gummy, but I do. Against the red dirt, its skin is the colour of stormy sky. I wipe the grot from the front of my shirt. It smears it worse and there’s nowhere to wipe my hands. I look back at Nev and he’s facing the other direction, not even watching us. The crows are, though. They’re on the ground hopping towards us. Hop, hop. Not even a flutter of their wings. They stop when I look at them. But when I look back next they’re closer.
We could run, I say.
Where? Out there? Jordy says. He gets the spade and starts digging.
I can help, I say.
You’re too small.
He makes a hole with a clumpy pile of red dirt beside it. His singlet becomes wet with sweat. When the hole looks about big enough to fit me in it he stops. He gets the old rusty caravan knife out from his pocket.
What are you doing? I say.
I want to keep something, he says.
He leans down and slices into the mouth of the gummy.
Jordy, I say.
What?
Nothing, I guess, I say.
I watch him clamp his hands on the head, his knee on the body, as he cuts the jaw out. Pink tendons cling to it and when it finally comes free the teeth have a grey and red edge of gross lips. I touch all the layered little teeth. A breeze blows the stench away for a second. I give the gummy a little pat on its rough back.
Sorry, I say to it.
When I look at Jordy he’s crying. His tears are silent, slow and fat. They leave clean tracks down his cheeks. I start to cry too. He holds the teeth in his hand.
Okay, says Jordy. Wiping tears and snot on his already muck-covered singlet. Let’s roll it in, he says.
We get our hands under it. It rolls into the grave, but the hole’s too small. The tailfin pokes above the ground. The ants have found us. A line of them has made a road towards us. They crawl all over the gummy.
Nev casts us into shadow. Finished? he says. I step as far away from him as I can, behind Jordy.
Yeah, says Jordy.
The gummy’s belly is cream-coloured where it’s not split. Jordy starts clomping the dirt back onto it. The grey skin gets half covered over. The tail still out. Jordy drops the spade. He picks up the gummy’s teeth. It’s black with ants. He shakes them off, but I see them crawling up his arm.
Well, hurry up then, says Nev and he walks back to the truck. We follow him. When I look back the crows have the tail in their beaks and they’re pulling.
Come on, Jordy says.
But – I say.
Come on.
He pulls me back towards the truck and the road that’s gone liquid in the heat. Nev revs and revs and part of me wishes he’d drive off without us. But we get back in the truck.
The smell of rotting gummy is all over us. I look down at my lap, my palms like two slabs of pink meat. I feel something tickly around my feet. There’s ants all over me. I try and get them off, but I can’t do it without killing them. There’s that crushed ant smell. It reminds me of death. More than maggots, it’s ants. I squish them ants one by one.
I’m thirsty, I say.
Nev throws a beer can in my lap. I roll it in between my hands. It’s warm. I crack it open and it hisses at me and overflows onto my legs.
Tom, no, says Jordy. Nev laughs at him, grabs it out of my hands, spilling more on me. He takes a long swig of it, then throws it out the window.
I dig at the holes in the seat with my fingers again. Through the windscreen I see the glint of a chip packet as it falls from the sky, slow as a feather.
Where are we going? I say. Town, says Nev.
15
The car engine tick tick ticks. The truck is nudged up to the pub. The sun has bleached the colour from everything.
I’m getting a beer, says Nev.
He opens the door and swings himself out. Jordy gets out too. I try get out but the dirty seatbelt holds me. Jordy looks back at me. His singlet is covered in guts. I unclick my belt, slide out.
Jordy has the gummy’s jaw in his hands. He looks at it like he doesn’t know whether to leave it in the car, but then shakes his head, walks towards the pub door. I walk into the pub, following Jordy, and it’s black. I can’t see nothing. My eyes come right and Nev’s there pulling me in, his hand at the back of my neck, You’re alright, son. You’re alright.
You’re hurting me.
Bullshit, he says and releases my neck to slap me hard on the back.
Everyone is looking at us. I smooth down the goosebumps on my arm. It feels cold in here. The men’s arses hang over the bar stools. The old men have creviced faces. Some of them have tattoos right up their legs.
Come on, he says and pushes Jordy and me towards the bar. Sit there, he says. I climb up onto a stool. I bang my feet against the bar. Jordy slides onto the stool next to me.
The lady behind the counter leans over the bar and her breasts squish together. The skin there is wrinkly and slack. It looks like old man’s bum crack.
How hot is it? she says as hello.
I don’t answer. Behind her is a faded photo of a machine with a wheel as big as a house. There is a little man standing next to it. Next to the picture there is a shark’s jaw mounted above the bar with its rows of teeth. It’s a big jaw. It would fit me and Jordy in it.
A beer, love, Nev says, and two Cokes.
She stares at us a little while longer, but shrugs, gets his beer. I can feel the boy tattoo looking at me from Nev’s arm. He’s hanging his head over his beer now, deflated, like that’s all that’s in him, that sentence, and now he’s spoken it there’s nothing to hold him up. I can hear two old men laughing. The laughs turn into coughs. I look over at them and they’re heaving and spluttering at the table. A basket of potato chips untouched between them. Jordy pushes his stool back and it makes a scraping sound that crawls my skin.
Jordy? I say.
He rolls his eyes at me. I’m going to the toilet.
The lady behind the bar throws a coaster in front of me and places a Coke with ice on it. It’s cool and clean. I take a long sip. The sugar rushes at me. I almost laugh. She leans over the counter at me again. Her arms are crossed in a fleshy bow. I look up at her face. Her eyes are brown with chips of blue-green, a colour as strange as an opal. Pretty. I can’t look away. Looking into them eyes is like staring at the edge of a shimmering universe.
What are you kids up to? she says.
Nothing.
What you doing with old codger then, eh?
Nothing, I say again and look away from her shimmery eyes, drink my Coke all in one long gulp ‘cos I don’t know when we’re going to have to leave.
Love, says one of the young guys down the line, beer?
All their heads are turned towards us. She puts her hand under my chin and makes me look up at her.
Give me a look at ya, she says.
She shakes her head and leaves me there on the stool. I get the ice and crunch the pieces one by one in my mouth. The sound is loud. When Jordy hasn’t come back by the time I have crunched all the ice I get up and go find him.
My feet stick to the carpet. I pass little tables with doily tablecloths and vases with plastic flowers in them. Mosquitoes bump against the fly screens in the back room of the pub. You can see them searching for a hole in the wire. The louvres are open to catch the sea breeze. I go into the Men’s.
I lean over. I can see Jordy’s thongs and his dirty feet at the gap in the stall. I stand and piss into the trough, aim at the urine cake.
Done a poo yet?
Shut up, s
ays Jordy. My piss splatters up onto my feet. Wet spots in the dust on them. The mosquitoes bump against the wire.
When are we going to look for Loretta?
We are looking for her, he says.
I leave him there. Go hook my fingers over a louvre that’s white with dust. There’s a chicken out there. I see it pecking around a half-buried beer can. I open the back door of the pub. Step down the cement steps. Mosquitoes swarm to me. The chicken looks at me. It doesn’t run, just drags one claw in the dirt. I hold it. My hands on the dusty feathers. I hold it around its neck, which is thin and hard as beef jerky. I push its beak to the side and into the dirt. It’s stopped struggling. I draw a line in the dirt in front of its face. Over and over again. Digging my finger in deep. I can feel the heat of the earth through my thongs.
I lift my hand from its neck. It stays there, frozen. I pat its feathers gently and they’re slippery. I stand up. The ground is littered with bottle caps, shining their round eyes at me. I dig at one, dislodging it from the earth. I slap a mosquito and it’s a bloody splat on my arm. The chicken stays still. I walk backwards up onto the step. Fumble with the door handle and open it. Get in there, back in the cool. The carpet feels spongy under my feet. I look out through the louvres. I can see ants around the chicken already. They’ve found it. A little cry escapes my mouth. I push open the back door and in the bright sun I clap loudly.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I say.
The chicken gets up. Opens its wings and flutters there on the ground, then runs.
I rush past the island tables back to the bar, climb back up the barstool next to Nev. The lady comes back to look at me.
May I have a glass of water, please? I say politely, how Gran would like me to say.
Water, she says, water’s for washing the truck. She laughs but gets me a glass. I take a long sip, but leave some for Jordy. It tastes of chlorine. She shakes her head at me, then narrows her eyes at Nev.
These your grandkids?
He looks at her over the top of his beer. Nup.
Well, whose kids are they? she says, but they’re talking like I’m not here. I look around and everyone is looking away now, into their laps, their beers, their baskets of chips.
He shrugs. I’m looking after them, he says.
Where they from?
East.
She leans right the way over the bar towards him. Where’s their parents?
It ain’t your business.
In my pub it’s my business.
He shrugs again.
She turns her opal eyes on me, her wrinkles spread across her face into some sort of smile.
Where’s your mum and dad? she says.
Nowhere, I say.
Nowhere, she repeats and blows a humph of air out. She steps back and polishes a glass with a tea towel.
Jordy walks towards us over the clear expanse of the room. It feels like it takes him a long time to get to the bar. His eyes look red.
Well, they smell like shit, she says to Nev, gesturing towards us.
I can hear you, I say. She looks like I’ve slapped her.
Nev eyes her down and scrapes his stool back. Come on, boys, he says.
You give them back, alright, she says. She’s cleaning that same glass, twisting it around and around in her hands.
There’s no need to worry, he says. These words come out of his mouth so clearly and formally I wonder for a second what he did before he ended up here, at the end of his life. Boys, he says.
I look at her eyes, but she’s got them trained on him, and her mouth is pursed tight. I get off my stool and pull on Jordy’s singlet.
The men in the pub are still looking into their laps. Nev ushers us towards the door. It swings open. It’s blinding out there. I remember my half-glass of water on the bar, the thought is a punch in my guts. I try go back in but Nev has his hand on my neck leading me to the truck.
I make my hands into binoculars. Keep out the glare so that I got two round circles of vision. I look around for Loretta. I put the glittery tar in the circles. I put the takeaway shop in the circles. I try to imagine Loretta in one of the circles, but it’s like I’ve forgotten what she looks like. There’s the shuffle, shuffle of Nev’s and Jordy’s feet. I imagine they’re Loretta’s feet, I try find them with my binoculars, her toes with the chip of red nail polish in the centre of each nail. The feet that come into the sights are flat and huge. They’re Nev’s feet. I let the binoculars go and look up at Jordy and him.
Get in the truck, he says.
But what about Loretta? I say.
She ain’t here.
But we didn’t even ask.
Did it look like she was in there to you?
He goes around to his side, gets in – the keys still hanging from the ignition – doesn’t look at us, just looks straight ahead.
Get in, says Jordy. I look at him and he throws his fringe from his face.
Okay, I say, because I don’t know what else to do. I take a look down the street before I get in and it’s empty. A long stretch of telegraph poles cast lines on the road. I climb back up and it feels like it’s the thousandth time I’ve climbed into the cab.
Nev kicks the engine over and then we sit there, waiting while he rolls a ciggie. He’s got that flap of white paper on his lower lip like a bit of flaky skin. I fight the urge to tear it off. He drops the car into gear and reverses out into the street without looking. He has to hold the steering wheel in bursts ‘cos of how hot it is. I see two dogs lying in a slip of shade, tongues lolling out of their mouths. I close my eyes and try to forget where I am. I shake my head and whimper without meaning to. Nev changes gears, and I can hear us all breathing. As we drive out of town, I turn around and look back at the Welcome sign and wish we were driving the other way and we could begin again.
Stop squirming, Nev says. I turn back around and sit straight with my hands flat on my sunburnt knees. I scratch my arms. It feels like we’re driving straight into the sky. Looking out the front windscreen the road comes up to meet me. The new crack has a tail the length of my pinkie, catching the light. It’s been growing. We are driving right into the setting sun. It lights us up golden. The truck visors are down casting little squares of shade on our faces. In the rearview I can see a few pink clouds. Nev is going fast. We come up on a truck, and there’s kids and a mum, and a dad or an uncle holding on tight in the back. They are all smiling. The mum’s hair is blowing like a flag and as we pass they all turn to us and blow party tooters. One kid leans over and pops a party popper at us. It bangs. The sun lights up their hair and each of them looks like they got a halo. I gasp. The man driving lifts a hand in greeting. I wave at him, automatically. A beetle smacks against the glass. We’ve got nothing in the back of our truck.
Nev looks at the two of us and says, Ya know, we were way out deep once, and we come across this white line in the water, looked like a slipstream in the sky and it went as far as I could see from one edge of the ocean to the other. When we got close I realised it was a rope. We pulled it in. It was three thousand metres long and weighed over a ton. I admire something like that, such a long piece of rope. It took up the whole bloody deck. We knotted it into a kind of clumped net and dragged it behind the boat. After a while birds started to alight there. They started nesting there. They picked seaweed out of the water and other bits of flotsam. They laid their eggs right there in the middle of the ocean. The rope got harder and harder to tow, heavier with all the bird shit. Finally we couldn’t even pull it. We realised we’d been towing an island, so we cut ourselves free from it.
Jordy sighs and looks at him. What’s that supposed to mean?
It means, let it go, he says.
Let what go? I say.
Nev looks at us. You’re chasing a mirage.
What?
You don’t stand a chance.
I look at Jordy. He looks like he’s about to cry. Nev adjusts himself in the seat and shakes his head. I look up at
him. He’s got grey hair spiralling out of his ears. He grips the steering wheel, accelerating down the road. Jordy scrunches against his door and hangs his arm out the window, palm out, like he’s trying to shake hands with the wind. As we turn off tar onto the corrugations the radio fades all the way to fuzz.
16
We drive into the camp. A man staggers across the road in front of the truck. Nev swerves around him. He swerves close to the tents. I look back at the man and he’s holding his hand up. Like it’s a stop sign. He staggers against the bright blue of dusk. I hear screams of kids playing down the beach. Standing at the crest of a dune a girl is illuminated against the ocean. She collapses suddenly, like she’s been shot. But I can hear her giggling maniacally.
I realise I’m holding my breath. I try to force myself to breathe out and in again. My chest hurts. I want to close my eyes but I can’t. I count my breaths. The caravans are lit up blue and red. It’s like Christmas lights all over again, flashing on and off. Loretta’s beach towel is there. Same as this morning. It flaps in the wind. I can see an empty milk arrowroot packet in the grass. Bert’s not there. A cop car is shedding light over everything. But I can’t see any cops.
Get down, says Nev.
Huh? I say.
Get down.
Nev pushes me hard on the shoulder. I crouch down on the floor so as not to touch him, and Jordy’s scrunched over the top of me. The empty beer cans collapse under me and leak their hot beer smell.
This is not good, this is not good, he’s saying to himself. The corrugations jolt me hard. I bite my cheek. Taste blood. I can hear bushes scraping on the underside of the car. I look up and Jordy’s sitting properly in the seat again. I sit up. Rub the indents from the cans out of my knees. I suck my bloody cheek.
Where are we? I say.
The truck lights the scrub ahead. But around the pool of light everything else is darkness. We’re driving straight into the desert.
It’s okay, Nev says. It’s okay, we’ve just taken a detour.