Did I really need to go to Nimbin?
I mean, would James Bond go to Nimbin?
No, of course not. He’d go to Switzerland, or Tanzania, or Monaco, to somewhere more obviously cinematic.
But again, I wasn’t James Bond. Not even close. I headed for the Central Bus Station.
I’d met Zoe that day at the cafeteria, but I hadn’t really been inside Central Bus Station before.
Why would I?
If my family needed to go anywhere we either drove or we flew. Long-distance buses were for, well, other people. And the concourse was full of those, well, other people getting off buses, getting on buses, waiting for buses. They were eating junk food out of styrofoam containers. They were pulling overstuffed suitcases along on wonky wheels. They were stretched out on the floor, backpack for a pillow, sleeping in a fug of body odour. And there were continual announcements over the loudspeaker of bus arrivals and bus departures.
Yes, there was a lot to like about Central Bus Station.
And it occurred to me that if The Debt had done one thing, it had taken me to places I would never have gone to. Exciting places, cool places, like this.
‘I’d like a return ticket to Nimbin,’ I asked the man with the tongue-stud behind the counter.
‘Bus don’t go to Nimbin,’ he said.
‘It don’t?’ I said.
‘No, not direct. You’d have to go to Byron and change there. But there’s an hour wait.’
The man must’ve seen the disappointment in my face because he said, ‘You could hitch?’
‘Sorry?’ I said.
‘A lot of people get off on the Pacific Highway, at the turn-off. Then they stick out the thumb, eh? You’ll always get a lift to Nimbin from there, it’s that sort of place.’
‘Is it safe?’ I said, and as soon as I did I wished I hadn’t because I sounded like such a wuss.
‘Well, I haven’t heard of anybody getting knocked off,’ he said, and then he added, ‘Not lately, anyway.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a return ticket to the turnoff.’ ‘You’re better off just buying a one-way,’ he said.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Just in case you do get knocked off,’ he said, his face straight. ‘It’d be a waste of the return leg.’
But then he broke into a smile.
‘Mate, you should’ve seen the look on your face! Bloody priceless!’ he said. ‘Look, you might get a lift all the way back to the Coast from Nimbin. Lots of people from here go there to buy their supplies, if you know what I mean. And if not, you can always buy a ticket from the driver on the bus itself.’
I ended up taking his advice and buying a one-way ticket to the turn-off. I sat next to a Japanese backpacker who asked if he could practise his English on me.
I said, ‘Sure, as long as I can practise my jujitsu on you.’
He didn’t really get the joke, and after an hour it got pretty annoying having somebody practising their English on you, so it was a relief when the bus pulled over onto the side of the road and the driver said, ‘Turn-off to Nimbin,’ and I could get off.
I stood under the sign that said Nimbin 47 km and stuck out my thumb and the very first car that came along, a Hilux ute with a very excitable kelpie bouncing about in the back, stopped.
‘Where you off to?’ said the driver.
‘Nimbin,’ I said, feeling every centimetre the professional hitchhiker.
‘Well, my farm is only a few clicks up the road, but I guess every little bit counts,’ he said.
‘Sure,’ I said, getting in.
Fifteen minutes later I was again standing on the side of the road with my thumb out, but this spot was much more isolated than the previous one. The thick rainforest on either side arched over the road, creating a canopy above me. And the air was heavy and host to a strange, unsettling assortment of rainforest sounds: clicks and grunts and croaks. I was starting to seriously question the macadamia farmer’s every-little-bit-counts theory of hitchhiking.
Cars passed me, quite a few, until eventually one slowed down and a chubby-cheeked teenager with freckles and red hair leant out of the window and said, ‘Do you want a lift, mate?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘Then drink a Red Bull!’ he said, and the car roared off.
Rangas.
More cars passed and I was starting to think that I should find a way to get back to the Pacific Highway when an old Holden station wagon pulled up next to me.
Thank heavens, I thought.
‘Where you off to?’ said the man in the passenger seat.
He was in his thirties, maybe a bit older, and had a hard, mean face.
‘Nimbin,’ I said.
‘Well, you’re in luck,’ said the man, his eyes flicking between me and my bag. ‘Hop in.’
I moved closer to the car and opened the back door. I could see the driver now. His face was as soft as his passenger’s face was hard, as friendly as his was mean.
‘Too bloody hot to be standing out there,’ he said, smiling at me.
As I went to get in, I could smell stale cigarette smoke. I could smell stale sweat. And I could smell danger.
Whatever you do, don’t get in this car, said one part of me.
But another part said, You’re a hitchhiker stuck in the middle of nowhere and this is what hitchhikers stuck in the middle of nowhere do, they get into strange cars.
‘Just move that stuff out of your way, if you like, matey,’ said the driver.
‘You know what?’ I said, closing the door. ‘I just changed my mind, so I reckon I might hitch back to Byron. But thanks heaps, anyway.’
With that I hurried to the other side of the road, and thrust my thumb out, willing a car to appear.
The Holden station wagon stayed where it was and out of the corner of my eye I could see the driver watching me.
The rainforest was even noisier than before: more clicks, and more grunts, and more croaks. I wanted to be back in the Gold Coast, back in Halcyon Grove, within those enormous stone walls topped with razor wire. Yes, the men in balaclavas had found a way to get in, but Samsoni would never let two men like this come inside. Never. And even if he did, their every move would be tracked, displayed on a multitude of screens.
The station wagon inched forward, moved onto the bitumen, and headed slowly towards Nimbin.
Thank heavens, I thought.
Then it turned around and accelerated straight towards me.
Competitive running is not just about running fast, it is also about making decisions under pressure: when to move, when to kick.
I figured I had about ten seconds until the station wagon was on me. One option was the rainforest, but I was worried that if I dived into it, it would be too thick; I wouldn’t get very far. Another option was to play dodge. I was fast, with fast reflexes, surely I could keep out of the way of a sluggish old station wagon.
But as the station wagon got closer and I could see its occupants more clearly I realised that I was kidding myself, that I didn’t have any options at all, because the passenger with the mean, hard face was holding a rifle.
Just as I was about to head for the rainforest I saw a car approaching from the other direction.
When the station wagon had almost reached me, I scampered across in front of it, stopping in the path of the other oncoming car.
It screeched to a stop.
I guess it didn’t have much choice, it was either that or turn me into roadkill.
With a roar of its exhaust, the station wagon took off.
I explained to the driver, a dark-haired woman in her thirties, what had happened, amazed at how calm I felt. Yes, my heart rate was high, but it wasn’t sky-high.
‘You better get in,’ she said.
I hopped into the passenger’s seat and she took off quickly.
‘What is that boy doing in our car?’ said a small girl from a booster seat in the back.
‘We’re just giving him a ride, Lauren,’ sa
id the woman.
‘I don’t like him in here,’ said an even smaller girl from another booster seat next to Lauren’s.
‘Now, no need to be rude, Rosie,’ said the woman.
She wasn’t actually headed to Nimbin – her daughters had swimming lessons in another town – but she said she’d take me all the way there anyway.
‘How old are you?’ she said.
‘Sixteen,’ I replied.
‘No, you’re not,’ she said, studying my face.
‘Okay, I’m fifteen, but I’m nearly sixteen.’
‘You’re not running away from home, are you?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘And you’re not scoring drugs or anything?’
Again, I told her no.
She seemed satisfied with this and didn’t say anything for the rest of the trip, until she pulled up in the main street of Nimbin, outside the police station.
‘So you’re going to tell them exactly what happened?’ she said.
‘Sure.’
‘You okay for money?’ she said, reaching for her purse.
‘No, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the ride.’
Just as I was about to close the door Rosie said, ‘Goodbye, you smelly boy.’
I walked towards the police station, but when Lauren and Rosie and their car disappeared from sight, I turned and started walking down the main street. The Debt stipulated no police allowed. And even if I did report the two men in the station wagon, I doubted whether the police could’ve done much about it.
I mean, they hadn’t actually done anything to me.
I continued walking down the street.
‘Hey, you want some blow?’
‘Hey, you want some Thai?’
‘Hey, you want some E?’
By the time I reached the post office, I’d been offered six different types of drugs by four different people.
‘No, thanks,’ I kept saying, but Nimbin was starting to unnerve me.
‘Do you know where the Fiends of the Earth office is?’ I asked a woman in a low-cut blouse and short skirt standing on the corner.
She looked at me with vampire eyes and said, ‘Yeah, but it’ll cost you ten bucks.’
‘No, thanks,’ I said, walking quickly away.
Her voice followed me. ‘Down that street, take the second street on your left and there’s a little mall about five minutes’ walk, just past the Coast Home Loans.’
I followed her directions, walked past the Hemp Embassy, and there was the office, across from the Mull Café.
I’d already decided against just barging in, figuring that covert surveillance was the way to go, so I ordered a Bengali chai at the café.
Remembering that James Bond never sat with his back to a door or a window, I chose a table where I had a good view of the Fiends of the Earth office, a wall plastered with posters behind me.
An hour and two Bengali chais later, the door to the office swung wide open and a woman, who I assumed was the owner of the calm reasonable voice, came out.
She was in a wheelchair.
After locking the door, she took out her iPhone, starting doing stuff on it.
And immediately I could tell by the adoring look she was giving it, by the tender way she caressed the screen, that she, like my sister, was an iTragic.
After she’d finished she gave her iPhone one last lingering look before she put it away and wheeled down the mall and out of sight.
I guess it was possible that a woman in a wheelchair was capable of sinking a longliner, of liberating twenty thousand chooks, of blowing up a whole lot of logging equipment.
It just didn’t seem that possible, that’s all.
I was just starting to think that I’d got this completely wrong, that I had come all this way, and drunk a whole lot of spicy tea, all for nothing, when the woman returned accompanied by two men.
Both men were tall, well built. Both men wore beards. But no shoes. Both men had dreadlocks. Though while they were waiting for the woman to unlock the office door I noticed that one of them had a large area on the back of his head that was dreadlock-free.
I took out my iPhone, switched to camera mode, zoomed in on this area. Just as I’d expected, it was a moonscape of scar tissue. I remembered what Dad had said that night: ‘Didn’t one end up with third-degree burns to the dreadlocks?’
I reckoned I’d just found myself a couple of chook-liberating, longliner-sinking, logger-maiming eco-terrorists.
‘You right for another chai, luv?’ asked the waitress.
‘Do you have anything else to drink?’
‘You’ve been drinking the Bengali, right?’
I nodded.
‘Well, there’s the Punjabi.’
‘Okay, I’ll have one of those, thanks.’
I sipped the Punjabi chai as slowly as possible and there still hadn’t been any action in the Fiends of the Earth office. I wondered whether now was the time to switch from covert to overt surveillance, whether I should go into the office and, under the guise of wanting some information about battery chooks, check out what was happening in there.
In fact, I was just about to do this when the door opened and the woman wheeled out, accompanied by the two men. After locking the door, the three of them disappeared down the street.
No time to lose, I thought. If they’d gone to a late lunch, which I assumed they had, then I had thirty minutes, an hour at the most. I paid my bill and left.
Standing in front of the office, pretending to read the noticeboard, I took out my wallet, extracted my plastic Athletics Australia card, inserted it between the door and the doorjamb, and exerted pressure on it. There was a click and the door cracked open.
I slipped inside, locking the door behind me. There were posters of dead things on the walls: dead seals, dead whales, dead kangaroos. All in all, a pretty spooky sort of place, and now that I was here I realised that I didn’t actually know why I was here, or what I was looking for.
I picked up a pamphlet from a table showing photos of scrawny featherless chooks crammed into cages.
More spookiness.
But then I noticed something: the phone number at the bottom wasn’t the number I’d rung earlier.
In fact, it was a mobile number.
Was it hers? Scrawny featherless chooks crammed into cages did seem to be her speciality.
I shoved the pamphlet into my pocket.
There was only one door in this room. I opened it. It led to a toilet. Well, half was the toilet but the other half was being used as storage space. There were cardboard boxes, rolled-up banners, Grim Reaper masks, all sorts of weird activist stuff.
Then there were sounds: a door opening, muffled voices, footsteps.
They’d come back!
I dived into the pile of boxes, covering myself with a banner, making sure my bag wasn’t showing.
The muffled voices became more distinct.
‘So Mandy will pick us up at five, and then we’ll go get the gear from the farmhouse.’
‘Jesus, Thor, – Mandy?’
‘She wants in, man.’
Somebody entered the toilet.
Through a chink in the cardboard I could see that it was the man with the moonscape head. Suddenly I had a thought: my phone’s on!
‘I know, but …’ he said, his voice trailing off.
The man undid his belt, dropped his shorts, sat on the toilet.
I moved my hand towards the pocket where my phone was, but as I did there was a rustle of paper so I stopped.
‘You can’t discriminate, man,’ said the other man. ‘If she wants in, she’s in. And we know we can trust her.’
‘It’s just that it’s a tough gig, this one. That tower is, what, two hundred metres from the road. And that’s rough country out there, Alpha.’
So Thor was the one with the moonscape, Alpha was the one without.
‘Chill, Thor. You heard what she said, she wants to drive, that’s all.’
�
�I’ll have to clear it with the boss, anyway. He’ll have final say,’ said Thor.
I recalled what I’d read about the Fiends of the Earth, their leader was a mysterious figure they liked to call Dr E.
Thor grunted twice; there was a series of splashes and the room was instantly flooded with a horrendous suffocating smell.
Again I moved my hand towards my phone. Again there was a rustle of paper.
‘Man, that’s rotten, you been eating animal again?’ said Alpha.
‘Well, shut the door if it offends your delicate sensibilities,’ said Thor.
Alpha did just that.
The smell got exponentially worse, and seemed to be thicker, soupier.
I clamped one hand over my nostrils, but it seemed to enter my body from everywhere, through my ears, through my eyes, through my skin.
Why-o-why did Thor start eating animal again, why couldn’t he have stuck to tofu and alfalfa sprouts?
Thor kept grunting, there were more splash sounds, and I thought I was going to faint. Finally there was the sound of paper being scrunched up, a toilet flushing, and I started to congratulate myself on my excellent undercover work.
And that was exactly when my phone went off.
As it did I automatically checked the caller ID. I mean, who would bother calling me during school hours?
Gus calling … Hell’s bells and buckets of blood!
FRIDAY
SPEAKING IN TONGUES
I sat in a straight-backed chair, a light shining in my eyes, while the three of them grilled me.
‘You can’t keep me here,’ I said, going to stand up.
‘Don’t you bet on that,’ said Alpha, grabbing a handful of my T-shirt with his enormous paw and shoving me back into my seat.
I thought about the incident in North Queensland. Had they known that the logger was in the grader when they’d blown it up? I was starting to think that they had.
‘Let’s try this again,’ said Thor. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Like I told you, I was looking for money,’ I said.
Alpha had unzipped my bag and found the Big Pete’s uniform in its plastic.
‘What’s this?’ he said.
I shrugged.
He took out my school blazer.
‘Grammar?’ he said, looking at the insignia.
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