The Golden Book

by Kate Ryan

  She turned away from him and fell into sleep.

  20

  They couldn’t get hold of a sword anywhere. And knives weren’t enough, Jessie said. ‘It’s gotta be a gun.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  Feet up against the wall, backs on the floor. Dust hanging in the light, tang of weed from Matty on the verandah coming through the open window. Marianne, husky, whining out on repeat from Aggie’s room.

  Jessie sounded gentler, whispery, though ‘stupid’ would have stung. ‘Cal’s got a shotgun. It’s the sword in the stone, because guns are the equivalent of swords in modern days. And only one person is supposed to use it and that’s Cal. But we have to because we need to break the spell.’

  ‘Yeah, but in King Arthur only he could break the spell. He was the only one who could get the sword out.’

  ‘Yeah, I know but the Experiential Club is about adaptation.’ Ali had said this the other day, so it was hard to argue. ‘We don’t need to take anything in either book’, she parroted another word Ali had used, ‘verbatim. Taking the sword from the stone is like firing the gun.’ Jessie used a BBC accent to make her laugh. ‘We will show our power to use the sword.’

  ‘Dumb idea,’ Ali said.

  Jessie ignored the repeated slight. ‘Anyway, you don’t have to worry,’ she said, subtly turning things around, ‘I’ll be incredibly careful. We’ll go somewhere where we can’t hurt anyone … and I’ll only fire it once, maybe twice.’

  ‘What about Cal? He’ll go apeshit if he finds out.’

  ‘He won’t know. We’ll go on Sunday. He’s got a motocross thing, a rally. He’s been going on about it for weeks. Marco’s picking him up in the morning. And he’s staying at his place after. He won’t be back till Monday.’

  Ali muttered, ‘I don’t know anything about guns and neither do you.’

  ‘I do. I’ve seen Cal using them heaps of times. That Barry Taylor he does work for sometimes, he lets him. I’ve seen him shoot things, rabbits, kangaroos. He showed me what to do.’

  Ali hated the idea of killing anything, so Jessie switched course again. ‘Not that we’ll be shooting anything alive. We’ll just aim at tree or something. We’ll go out bush somewhere.’

  ‘I’m not touching it. It’s your stupid idea.’

  Calling her dumb a third time was sacrilege, but Jessie was so desperate for Ali to agree that she let it go again. ‘That’s okay. I’ll fire it. You just need to help with the beginning part. And you’re the scribe. You write it down once we’re done. Like writing down that part of the legend.’

  Ali shrugged. But she knew she had no choice.

  Sunday was freezing and drizzly. Jessie was climbing the walls: AC/DC, packet of stale Saladas, and game after boring game of racing patience. ‘What if Cal doesn’t go?’

  Ali didn’t answer. She was acting as if she didn’t care, but now it had been decided, part of her wanted the quest to happen too. An hour passed; the rain slopped down harder. Cal and Marco had been out the front for hours, clattering spanners and gunning the engine of Marco’s hotted-up car. They drove off several times and came back five minutes later, an infuriating process of testing something. Another half hour passed. Jessie got up abruptly, turned Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap to side B again. Above Bon’s scream, they heard the door of the bungalow shutting and being padlocked. Cal only locked the door if he was going out for a long time.

  Jessie turned the record down and went to the window. Marco’s cough rang out, chesty and disgusting, and they heard Cal swearing, ‘Fuck it, man.’ And then, at last, the engine was charging, and they were revving and roaring off down the street. ‘They won’t be back now.’ Jessie turned around and grinned at Ali. ‘Okaaay. The Sword from the Stone!’

  Ali looked down at the cards. ‘What about the others?’

  ‘Aggie was out late. And when she’s got Marianne playing it means she won’t get up for hours. And Star’s here.’ She was Matty’s new girlfriend, a hippy chick from Tathra. ‘They barely come out of his room,’ Jessie said. ‘Just dope and The Velvet Underground, literally all day. Eli’s gone somewhere too. He wouldn’t care anyway.’

  Ali felt a quiver in her stomach. Eli had given her a dink on his bike recently, when she got a flat. Gripping the pack-rack, she had held her chest carefully away from his body, her heart beating quickly. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

  The only way into Cal’s room was through the back garden. He liked being away from everyone, even though the bungalow was stinking hot in the room in summer and freezing in winter. Anything was better than sharing with Matty or Eli, Jessie had reported. ‘And the less he has to see Aggie and whatever deadhead she’s into, the better.’

  She slipped her hand behind a bunch of bedraggled pot plants at the bungalow door and pulled out a bottle with a few centimetres of Coke at the bottom. Grinning, she shook it hard until it made a clinking noise, unscrewed the top, and tipped it onto the grass. A stream of watery Coke and a key dropped out. Jessie held it aloft in triumph. ‘Ta da!’

  ‘Won’t he know?’

  ‘Nah. I’ll fill it up later.’

  Jessie turned the key and opened the door. Ali hadn’t expected the tidiness of the room. It was stinky too, not in a smelly boy way but musky and sweet. ‘What’s with the smell?’

  ‘He’s started drenching himself with some disgusting cologne. Matty had a go at him for it the other night. Tested on animals, for sure, Matty reckons. Probably gives you cancer as well.’

  The room smelled of motor oil too. There were bits of engine in one corner, and a wall of motorbike posters — Kawasaki, Harley-Davidson, Suzuki, Triumph — and Cal’s favourite motocross star, Jeff Ward. There was only one rock poster — Kim Wilde in a leather jacket, looking like she wanted to jump off the wall and have sex with someone.

  Ali looked at all the books — on layers of brick-and-board shelves, and stacked on the floor along one wall. ‘Cal’s smart,’ Jessie said. ‘Aggie reckons he’s the smartest in the family. Not hard, I guess.’

  She turned away to take a stack of clothes off a chair. ‘Gotta keep them neat because he’ll notice. He’s a neat freak.’ She put the chair next to the wardrobe and climbed up. ‘Bingo!’

  All Cal had done was cover the gun in towels and put it in a plastic bag. Jessie stumbled getting it down and laid it on the bed. Ali thought of a story she’d seen on the news a while back. Some guys came into the bank in Merimbula with shotguns, sawn off to make them work better. Her mum turned the TV off, so she didn’t know whether someone had died. Jessie unwrapped the towels. The gun was dark brown, old but shiny.

  ‘How are we gonna get it out of the house? And we can’t take it on our bikes.’

  ‘I’ve thought of that,’ Jessie said. ‘Cal found a backpack at the tip the other day.’ She knelt down and looked under his bed, opened and closed his wardrobe.

  The backpack was pushed in between the wardrobe and the wall. She pulled it out and put it on the bed. ‘Okay, I’ll wrap it up again and put a pillowcase or something around so you can’t tell what it is. We can go to that park out the back of the Wills’ place.’ Jessie went to the chest and opened the top drawer, revealing Cal’s neat rolled-up undies, socks and T-shirts. She put her hand inside. ‘Here.’ She pulled out a box, gave it a bit of a shake. Condoms. Ali went red.

  Jessie laughed. ‘Don’t panic. You don’t have to do it with him.’ She slid the box back in and reached in deeper.

  ‘I mean these.’ She pulled out another box. ‘Cartridges.’

  Ali stared for a second or two. They made it real.

  The backpack swamped Jessie completely. Ali could tell it was heavy, cutting into her back and shoulders. Not that Jessie would have said. Because of the steady drizzle, no one was out, and they only passed one old man on their way. Ali knew him vaguely — someone her mum sometimes helpe
d out with groceries. He gave a big smile and a wave from his motorised wheelchair. ‘Good weather for ducks, eh girls?’ They nodded and smiled. Jessie caught Ali’s eye and raised her eyebrows, and suddenly everything was okay. ‘Good weather for ducks,’ Ali said, and they were off, laughing and laughing, till Jessie had to tell her to stop because the gun was bouncing up and down, and she was threatening to collapse on the ground. She kept pulling herself together, and then Ali would say, ‘ddduuu—’ and they’d be in hysterics again, until finally Jessie hissed, ‘Shut up!’

  The rain fell gently but relentlessly, and Ali looked at the trees dripping water, Jessie’s hair dark and flattened, a blaze of yellow roses. She could smell jasmine wound around a fence post. She thought of pellets entering a person’s body, spreading like a stain inside them, like dye swirling in water. What would the pain feel like? She thought of the pellets like liquid tentacles, creeping through a person’s body until their lungs were crushed, their heart squeezed tight. How long would it take to die?

  After trudging in silence for twenty minutes, they got to the Wills’ place. There was no sign of anyone, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The old couple who lived there were old, deaf and half-blind. The house was a run-down weatherboard, with a magnolia and couch grass at the front. At one side the garden was running wild, and, through a broken-down wooden fence, long grass, boronia, and stunted gums were tangled over a half-obscured path. As they made their way along the track, blackberries were wound around the undergrowth. Following Jessie, Ali thought how, for years and years, since they were little kids, they had come to pick them. She looked at the backpack, tilted to one side on Jessie’s narrow back, felt water dripping onto her neck from the trees. After ten minutes they reached the park. It was a broken-down place — a rusty sign of regulations, a few rotten picnic tables and a bin. Looking around, all at once Ali felt the empty ache of dread.

  Jessie took off the backpack, set it down against the bin and unzipped the sides. She eased out the large, swaddled shape inside, unwrapped the layers of plastic and towel and took off the pillowcase.

  Out in the open air, alone with Jessie, the sight of the gun was shocking. Ali pushed back her wet hair and rubbed at her damp face with her jumper. For a second, with her eyes covered, she hoped the gun would disappear.

  When she looked again, Jessie had laid it on a table and was turning it on its side, peering closely. She pushed at a metal lever. Ali stepped back. Jessie pushed at the lever again, and this time it opened, click, and Ali saw the barrel was empty.

  Jessie stood up and back a little from the table. Even then, she could have stopped. There was an empty space inside the gun and nothing bad had happened. Perhaps this occurred to her – she paused – and Ali thought of saying something, that the whole thing was stupid, that they should go home. But then Jessie seemed to wake up. She scratched at her neck under her hair and took a few steps, unzipped a pocket of the pack, pulled out the box of cartridges and took one out. She moved back to the table, leant over and pushed the cartridge into the barrel.

  Ali crossed her arms to hug herself. She heard a car far off somewhere, droplets of rain dripping and the tick of a whip bird.

  Jessie lifted the gun onto her shoulder. Ali could see its weight, like an iron bar pressing down on her shoulder. Jessie walked away towards some trees, five metres, ten, fifteen. She turned the gun towards a huge bumpy redgum.

  Ali felt sick and clammy sweat was on her back.

  Then Jessie’s hand was on the trigger.

  There was a moment of stillness, like the gap between heartbeats.

  Jessie looked towards the tree. She appeared skinny and pale but tightly wound too, as if all her energy were flowing, directed, precisely, towards this one action. Ali saw her fingers squeeze. Once. For a second Ali felt detached, unafraid. The trigger must be so stiff, she thought, like a jar that was sealed tight or a tap that had rusted shut years ago.

  Jessie squeezed again.

  Then the shot blasted out into the bush, and the gun jerked back into Jessie’s shoulder, and there was a splitting sound, like something breaking. Ali screamed and Jessie yelled ‘Fuck!’ The moment seemed filled with colours. Ali’s body felt the thud of shock. Her eyes watered, her ears rang, the bush noises seemed to fall away.

  Then silence.

  Jessie didn’t move.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Ali was almost crying but she saw that Jessie was standing. She was alive.

  ‘Shut up.’

  Ali sniffed, wiped at her nose and slid down onto the wet ground. She would not cry now. She knew that Jessie saying that made her feel better, as if the fear were all Ali’s. As if it had not seemed, for a second, as if the whole world had collapsed and they were dead. Ali wanted to close her eyes but she was afraid. As if one of them might still end up with a bullet in her back. As if the world were tilted now, and a line had been crossed, and anything might happen.

  Jessie put the gun back on the table and walk towards the redgum. The bark had split around the spot where the shot had gone in and she leant in and felt around with her fingers. Suddenly she spun around and grinned. ‘I did it,’ she said.

  The ‘I’ hung in the air. Ali said nothing.

  They walked home without speaking. Ali didn’t offer to carry the gun, and the rain started again. After fifteen minutes, they reached the park around the corner from Jessie’s place. A bunch of Cal’s yobbo friends were hanging around the big Moreton Bay fig. ‘We just stopped by your place. Cal gone to the motocross?’ Bernie Nichols looked at them, his mullet head on the side.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jessie said. She didn’t stop.

  ‘What ya got there?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Pretty big nothing,’ some weedy kid said, smirking, a cigarette in his mouth.

  Jessie ignored him, and Ali walked briskly in front, not varying her pace.

  As soon as they got in the gate, she picked up her bike. She didn’t offer to help put the gun back. There was no discussion of Bernie or the missing pellet, whether Cal would guess, any of it. Jessie was still standing there as Ali pushed the gate open again to leave. She called a question or an order — which was it? ‘You’ll write it.’ Ali got on her bike. She didn’t give her the satisfaction of even the smallest nod. She would decide.

  21

  It was 8.45 and Ed was gone, the long-awaited jam session, a day off school that he had planned for months.

  Ali wandered into the living room. There was no sign of Patti except for her bedding, hurriedly shoved into a corner, and her clothes spilling all over the living room. Tam was lying on the couch in her pyjamas, watching TV.

  In the first few years of school, she would have liked a quiet day just as much as Ali — maybe a walk in the park, baking a cake. A lazy, meandering day. But not now. Ali leant in to kiss her, and she submitted to it like a queen, disinterested, blank. ‘You know Patti shouldn’t have left you here by yourself. And you know that wine is really bad for children, don’t you?’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Tam vaguely. She wanted Ali to go away, leave her to watch her show. But there was no lingering anger. Loved children were like cats, Ali thought. They accepted attention as if it were merely their due. ‘Had breakfast?’

  ‘What?’ Tam said. Ali looked at the bright cartoon figures, heard their chirpy upward inflections, and walked into the kitchen.

  At exactly nine-fifteen, she was sitting with the dregs of her coffee when the doorbell rang. In seconds Tam was jumping off the couch and rushing to the front door. Ali groaned inwardly. It was the curriculum day, but she had completely forgotten about Bettany.

  ‘I’ll come for her after school,’ Megan was saying as Ali reached the front door. She was obviously unconcerned about being late. Ali imagined her with her teachers, her barely disguised insolence.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘See ya then.’ Tossing her hair over o
ne shoulder and pulling her backpack higher, she turned to go.

  The girls ran off to Tam’s room, and Ali left the front door open to let in the sun and air. She turned off the TV and walked past the girls, hearing Tam say, ‘Okay, you can be Emily and I’ll be Edward.’

  In the kitchen Ali heated up more coffee. She was tempted to read over her piece — but it felt too much with Tam and Bettany there, and a whole day to fill, and so she read the news on her phone instead. There was a story about teacher strikes impending, a long-term battle over pay. The premier was quoted as saying that they were ‘holding young people to ransom’. If Ed were around, Ali would say the government is holding teachers to ransom by not paying them properly for helping young people have futures. It made her want him there.

  After five minutes she couldn’t concentrate; the news was universally grim. There was a new sink full of breakfast dishes. She filled the sink, pulled out the plug lodged under a greasy porridge saucepan, and put in the detergent. Somehow, doing them by hand seemed easier than emptying the dishwasher. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and wondered what she should wear to the funeral.

  She was taking off the washing-up gloves when Tam and Bettany emerged from Tam’s bedroom. Tam was dressed now. ‘Mum, can we watch a movie?’

  ‘Not now, Tam. It’s not even ten. Maybe after lunch.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s a beautiful day, darling. Why don’t you go outside and play?’

  ‘That’s boring! Why can’t we watch something? There’s nothing to do here.’ Tam’s voice was high and insistent. Bettany stood staring, and Ali was aware of her head, thick and slow from a bad night’s sleep.

  If Bettany hadn’t been there, probably she would have let Tam watch a movie, and she would have lain on her bed to read a book for an hour or so. But something — the fact that she was going perhaps, or some Diane-ish need to be a responsible parent on a sunny day — prevented this easy option.

  ‘How about I take you to the park?’ she said, though this was absolutely the last thing she wanted to do.