Tunnel Vision

by Andrew Christie

  Billy had never been on a long bus trip before, let alone an overnight one. It would be 11:00 a.m. tomorrow before they arrived in Brunswick Heads.

  “Did you bring anything to eat?” Rashmi asked.

  He shook his head. It hadn’t even occurred to him. All he’d thought about was getting the tickets and getting Rashmi onto the bus. “Do they stop?”

  “Yeah, I think so. I’ve got some water and some chocolate. We can share that.”

  “Okay. Great.”

  Rashmi was rummaging in her shoulder bag, pulling out earphones and her little MP3 player. She smiled at Billy and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for coming with me.” She put her earphones in before flipping through the music on the tiny screen.

  Billy shrugged. “I didn’t have anything else to do.”

  Thin wisps of music leaked from the earphones; Billy thought it sounded like Lorde’s Everybody Wants to Rule the World.

  He watched the last of the passengers get on to the bus. Nearly all of them had headphones, either in their ears or hanging around their necks. Some clutched pillows in their arms, along with books or magazines.

  The engine started with a low rumble and the bus stop-started its way slowly across the city until they hit the approaches to the Harbour Bridge. There they started to get a clear run. Over the top of the safety railings, and between the bridge girders, Billy got glimpses of the Opera House, its sails lit up all white. They moved quickly through the late-night traffic on the North Shore. The engine whining as the bus wound up, and then the exhaust popping when it slowed again for traffic or lights. The large vehicle working hard to break away from the pull of the city.

  Billy watched out the window, the suburbs getting leafier the further they went, with big houses hidden behind trees and gardens, even on the highway. When they turned onto the expressway at Wahroonga, the bus picked up speed, and they roared through high sandstone cuttings fringed with bushland, black against the faint glow of the night sky.

  Rashmi leaned against him and put her head on his shoulder. Within ten minutes, she was asleep, tunes still bleeding out of her earphones. Billy enjoyed the warm weight of her body against him as he watched the lights of the cars sliding past and the big trucks coming the other way, going back into Sydney. He wondered what they were carrying. Food maybe, from farms out in the country. Meat? What did they grow up north? Bananas?

  He was getting hungry already, wondering where Rash had stashed her chocolate and whether he could get at it without waking her. He didn’t want to break the spell of her snuggling against him: quiet and warm, moving gently as she breathed. The shampoo smell of her blue hair.

  He wondered what Brunswick Heads would be like. Hot, he knew that, with good beaches. Rashmi had said there was a river too, where she could swim safely away from the surf. She reckoned she was a good swimmer even though she couldn’t use her legs. Strong arms and shoulders from using the crutches. Her grandfather had taught her to swim when she was a kid—and fish too. He had taken her out in a boat on the river when she was a little girl, catching fish for their dinner. Billy didn’t know what sort of fish they caught up there. Maybe some big tropical things like barramundi. The only time Billy had been fishing was in the Snowy Mountains with John. They had caught rainbow trout, and it had been freezing cold.

  John had been better there, away from the city. More relaxed, more in control. The bushwalking idea had come up because Shasta had said she used to go bushwalking with her mother and father; they’d made her go camping in the bush around Canberra when she was a kid. They’d invent these stupid games to keep her and her brother walking when all the kids wanted to do was sit down, not trudge up and down huge bloody mountains. The way she spoke, though, Billy could tell they were good memories: camping by mountain streams, exploring old cattlemen’s huts, getting chased by wombats.

  It sounded pretty good to Billy back then. He’d never seen a wombat, never even been camping. Hardly ever been out of the city. That was when John got it in his head to take Billy into the bush. “It’ll be great,” he said. “Camping, hiking, a bit of fishing. We’ll go down to the Snowys.”

  A few weeks later, Billy was peering through the bug-spattered windscreen of the ute as John slowed to pull off the pavement before bumping and crunching across a potholed lay-by. “What do we do if it rains?” Billy asked, looking at the dark-grey clouds, so low they seemed to be tangled in the tops of the snow gums.

  “We get wet,” John said.

  Billy had been following their route on a map spread out on his lap. Where they were now was pretty much the middle of nowhere: high in the mountains, between Cabramurra and Khancoban. He looked up and down the empty road. “We’re leaving the ute here?” They hadn’t passed another car for the last hour. There was no mobile phone reception; Billy had been checking ever since they’d passed Adaminaby.

  “The ranger told me to leave it here,” John said. “He drives past this spot every other day.”

  He tried to help Billy get his new pack on, adjusting the straps for him, but Billy waved him away. “Leave it. I can do it.”

  John shrugged, adjusted his own shoulder straps and tightened his hip belt. He stepped over the guardrail, picking an angled path down the steep road batter. Billy took one last look up and down the road, wondering what they’d do if the ute wasn’t there when they returned. Sit and wait for the ranger, he supposed. He followed John over the barrier and down the slope, almost falling under the unfamiliar weight of the pack. He had to run the last few metres in an effort to keep his feet underneath him. “Shit,” he muttered, as he came to a stop, struggling to regain his balance on the slippery gravel.

  Grinning in the gloom, John put a hand out to steady him. “All right?”

  Billy nodded and followed as John turned and set off through the trees. Half an hour later, it started to rain as they made their way out of a narrow valley and onto a ridgeline. Slow at first, but pretty quickly it was pissing down.

  Once the rain started, it kept coming. Cold and steady. John seemed to be able to ignore it, like it didn’t bother him. He was wearing an old felt hat with a brim that was wide enough to keep the rain off his face. Billy had refused to let John buy him a hat, preferring his own Tigers cap. Now he had the hood of his raincoat pulled tightly over his head, forming a tube beneath the cap’s peak. He trudged after John, his eyes down, watching the yellow-stained water form rivulets in the track. He was cold. Everything was wet. Everything.

  John seemed to be enjoying himself, asking Billy if he smelled the bush. “Smells different when it’s wet. Softer somehow, more complex.”

  “It smells wet,” Billy said. He liked the way the rain changed the trunks of the snow gums though, staining their dry grey bark with dark greens and bright yellows, he wished it was dry enough to get his camera out.

  He followed John through the rain for nearly four hours, determined to keep up, to put up with the weather and ignore John’s bullshit. He knew John had dragged him along on this trip because they hadn’t been getting on so well. Not fighting—or not the way Billy’s family fought anyway: shouting, throwing punches. He and John were just hardly talking anymore. It was like they didn’t have that much in common now that they weren’t working on the house. It wasn’t just their house now either, since Tony and Shasta had moved in. And John wasn’t the same either; he blamed himself for his mother’s murder. Which was stupid, because he had been trying to rescue her, but he wouldn’t listen to that. He always got angry, said he should have known better.

  After they’d climbed the last and steepest ridge, the rain eased a bit, and the track emerged from the snow gum woodlands into a broad, open valley.

  “Sphagnum bog,” John said, pointing at some bright-green stuff growing on either side of a small stream.

  “Yeah?” Billy didn’t really give a shit.

  “Little frogs live in it. Corroboree frogs. Spectacular little things, bright-yellow with black stripes.”

  �
��Yellow and black?”

  “And they’re poisonous.”

  “Poisonous?” Billy couldn’t help himself. “Yellow-and-black poisonous frogs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Show me one.”

  “I only ever saw them once. They’re endangered. Nearly extinct.”

  Billy didn’t say anything; he just kept trudging along the track.

  “Next valley over is where the red-and-white spotted ones live,” John said. “You should see those fuckers. They’ve got fangs.”

  Billy shook his head. “I haven’t seen the yellow-and-black ones yet.”

  A cold drizzle replaced the rain as the day began to fade. John led Billy over a low ridge and up a broad valley covered with tall grass. Scraggly trees ran down from the ridgetops that wound around the valley. As they got closer to the treeline, Billy made out a small timber hut in the gloom, the old grey timbers slowly distinguishing themselves from the paler tree trunks.

  That night, they sat in front of a roaring fireplace, eating reheated beef stew, their wet clothes strung up around the hut to dry.

  The next morning was brilliant and clear, with no sign of the previous day’s rain. Billy sat in the sun on the edge of the veranda, wrapped up in his warmest clothes. A mob of kangaroos was picking its way across the grass below the hut. The valley looked like a different place with sun sparkling off the wet trees and grass. A band of cotton-wool mist lay in the bottom of the valley, but above him the sky was bright blue. Everything glistened.

  “Making friends with the locals?” John said, passing him a mug of tea.

  Every now and again, one of the roos raised its head as it sat back on its hind legs and tail, its ears erect and rotating, listening to some sound from the forest. When John stood to go back into the hut, the roos all stopped eating, heads up, watching and listening. Two of them took off suddenly, bounding easily through the tall tussock grass. The rest of the mob hesitated then followed, bouncing down the valley towards the mist-covered creek line.

  That morning, John and Billy left the hut and headed further into the mountains, making camp on a grassy flat by a bend in a river, where it widened into a long deep pool. John said it looked like a place where they might catch fish.

  And they did. They fished into the dark of the night, standing with their feet in the icy water, the Milky Way stretching across the black sky above them.

  “That’s a fair-size rainbow,” John said after Billy dragged his first-ever fish onto the bank. “Maybe two pounds.” The fish lay gasping on the grass, shining in the light of their head torches. Silver, with a line of colour along the side. John killed it, hitting it between the eyes with the butt of his knife.

  Now, Billy watched his reflection in the bus window, the headlights of the cars going the other way in the background. He wished he felt more confident about this trip. He kept worrying it was just going to get them into more trouble.

  Chapter 10

  Wouldn’t Dare

  John was sitting at the dining room table, flipping through the paper, a slice of toast in his mouth and a cup of tea in front of him, when Shasta came downstairs. He’d been wondering what to do tomorrow, Christmas Day. Shasta and Tony would be gone most of the day, spending time with their families. They’d be back home in the evening, though: Tony talking about his nieces and nephews, Shasta complaining about her mother and Amy, her sister-in-law. John thought he’d go to a pub for lunch then wait for the others to come back. He didn’t expect to see Billy. Usually the two of them spent most of the day together, after Billy had been to visit his mother. Billy usually went early then cleared out before his brother showed up. If all three Sheehans were in the house together, the chances of fighting went from high to extreme. So Billy had learned not to hang around for long.

  Shasta ran her fingers through her hair, trying to get it under control as she came over to the table. “Your phone keeps ringing,” she said, dropping it onto the newspaper in front of him. “Someone’s called twice while I’ve been trying to have a sleep in.” Usually, at this time of morning, she’d be at the park, setting up for her first class, but it was Christmas Eve, and she didn’t have any more classes until January.

  John swallowed a bite of toast. “Sorry. Who was it?”

  “Don’t know. I didn’t answer it. Wouldn’t dare.”

  Through the window, the sky was dull grey with the first light. The night had been warm and it looked like it was going to turn into another hot day. He picked up the phone; there were two missed calls from Sally McPhedran. What did she want so early in the morning?

  He finished off his toast and washed it down with a gulp of tea before he called her back. Maybe this meant the cops were charging Rashmi. What would that mean for Billy? “Hi, Sally. This is John Lawrence, just returning—”

  “John? Is Rashmi there?”

  “No. I haven’t—”

  “Can I talk to Billy?”

  “Neither of them is here. What’s going on?”

  “She’s gone. She wasn’t in her room this morning.”

  “I haven’t seen Rashmi since before…the thing at the school. I’ve hardly seen Billy since then either.”

  “Oh. I thought you and Billy—”

  “No, he’s not staying here. Not at the moment anyway.”

  “I’m so worried. The police were here yesterday, talking about charging her with terrorism. I was hoping she’d gone over to visit Billy.”

  John raised his eyebrows. “Terrorism? They’re serious?”

  “God knows. But they really scared Rashmi. I thought maybe…I hoped she was with Billy.”

  “Billy’s been staying at his mother’s, I think. I doubt he’d take Rashmi there, but I’ll check for you.”

  “Would you? Thanks. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to tell the police.”

  “No, don’t do that. Not yet.”

  After he got off the phone, he went to look in Billy’s room. Usually the room was a mess, what John presumed was typical of teenage boy’s rooms. Not now, though. Everything was neat and tidy, with the cat, Adolf, curled up in the middle of the made-up bed. No clothes on the floor or hanging on the back of the chair; everything was put away. Billy must have come back to the house sometime when John was out. With Shasta and Tony working, there were plenty of times when he could have come and gone with no one seeing him. No one but the cat.

  This bullshit with Rashmi had driven a wedge between John and Billy, and now he had no idea what the boy was thinking. What am I doing? he thought. He hadn’t even gotten him a Christmas present this year. Wouldn’t even know what to get him. The last present he’d bought for Billy was a bike, but he hadn’t seen him ride it for ages.

  “You think he’s run off somewhere?” Shasta said when John told her about Billy’s room.

  “Maybe. He came and got his camera and his laptop the other day. He usually takes that camera everywhere he goes. And Rashmi’s missing too.”

  Tony came into the kitchen, pulling a T-shirt over his head. “What’s up?” he said, looking from John to Shasta before opening the fridge door and peering in.

  John told him about Billy and Rashmi.

  “Little bastards. Where would they go?” Tony said, pulling a bottle of orange juice out of the fridge.

  John had no idea. He’d have to give Billy’s mother a visit. He hoped they were there, even though it seemed unlikely. He had no idea where else they might go. Obviously the police had scared them, threatening Rashmi with terrorism charges. The two of them probably thought they could run from it. Where, though? It would have to be somewhere they already knew about. That should make it easy to track them down. But then it would be easy for the police to find them too, once they discovered Rashmi was missing. And if they found Billy with her, they’d soon tie him into the investigation.

  The front of Mary Sheehan’s house was dark even during the day, the fig trees that lined the street keeping the front yard in deep shade. The plastic casing of the doorbell was
cracked open; the jagged hole in the side lined with cobwebs. John tried the button without much hope, then knocked.

  It took a while, but Billy’s mother eventually opened the door. Mary Sheehan was a short, wiry woman, hugging herself despite the December heat. She started to close the door as soon as she saw him, but John put his hand out, holding it open.

  “Good morning, Mary.”

  “What?” she spat the word at him, looking away, looking at the ground.

  “Where’s Billy?”

  “How the fuck should I know? He’s never here where he should be. Always at your place, doing whatever the two of youse do.”

  “He hasn’t been at my house all week.”

  As her red-rimmed eyes climbed up to meet his, John half expected her to say something, make some crack about a lovers’ tiff. That would be typical for her, but somehow through her fog, she seemed to pick up on John’s anger and impatience. Her eyes slid away from his again. “Well, I don’t know where he is. How would I? Comes and goes as he fuckin’ pleases. Sneakin’ in and out of the place.”

  Mary scratched at her face and peered past John at the street. “I can’t really get by without young Billy. He’s a good boy…tries to be anyway. Helps out when he can. He…” John watched as she softened her face and looked up at him again. “He always leaves me a bit of money. For food and board, see. Helps with the rent and for food. Bloody pension doesn’t go far…”

  John would never understand how this crazy lump of drug-fried spite had produced someone like Billy. Maybe his father had been all right; who knew? Regardless, Billy was the only member of clan Sheehan who wasn’t a waste of oxygen. “What about Tom? Would Billy go there?”

  Billy’s brother had fallen closer to the family tree. Tom was a bully and a heavily committed fuckwit.