Out of Time

by Steve Hawke

  Anne disentangles herself to make the tea. While she’s at it Joe digs out the bag of chook pellets, and throws her a questioning look.

  ‘Go on then,’ she laughs. ‘Don’t let your tea get cold though.’

  Joe sets off down to the waterhole to cast the bait for the cherabun he will hunt later in the evening.

  She shivers.

  It is not about the evening cool that is sidling in.

  She swings the billy in two more big fast circles than usual, murmuring, ‘Give me strength.’ Gives herself an extra sugar. Lets the overhot tea almost burn her throat as she takes the first sip. She goes to the car and extracts a bag from the bottom of her suitcase, then rearranges the chairs so that they are facing each other across the card table. She sits there with the bag between her feet, and hunches over her pannikin, blowing gently to cool it down.

  NO GOING BACK

  Joe chants as he approaches, ‘Cherabun, cherabun, cherabun feast! Even I won’t miss them darling, there’s that many.’ Then his eye catches her posture, and the rearranged chairs. ‘What’s this? A meeting?’

  She gives him a thin smile and chin-points at the empty chair and steaming pannikin opposite. ‘Sort of.’

  He settles in and raises his pannikin to her. She clinks tin mugs, then reaches down into the bag at her feet. His eyes go wide when she places a bottle of whisky on the table. ‘A present.’

  ‘But that’s what …’ he inspects more closely. ‘Glenfiddich single malt. Twenty-one years! How much did that cost?’

  ‘None of your business mister.’

  ‘And why?’ he asks, reaching for the bottle. ‘Did I forget my own birthday?’

  She puts out a hand to stop him from tearing away the seal.

  ‘You’ll see. There’s more.’

  She reaches down again, and places a sheet of pills on the table beside the whisky.

  ‘Wha …?’

  ‘It’s Viagra, Joe.’

  He opens his mouth as if to object. For a moment their eyes meet, but his drop away.

  ‘I don’t know if it’s even registering with you, but we’ve only done it twice in the last six months, and I had to work hard for the second one.’ She can feel a rising tension, hear a nervous shrillness creeping into her voice, but can’t stop herself.

  ‘I’m hungry for you, man. We’re here for four nights, and I want to make love on every single one of them!’

  His mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Sliding eyes, acknowledgement, shame. A twitch of quarter smile, but still he can’t look up.

  She catches the twitch. ‘It has registered?’

  He nods.

  ‘Can’t talk about it though?’

  Eyes down still, a short shake of the head.

  ‘But you’ve thought about it haven’t you? Viagra?’

  Nod.

  ‘Too ashamed to ask?’

  Nod.

  ‘Fucken men! Oh, what am I saying. I first thought of it months ago too, and I’ve said nothing.’ She smiles at him. ‘Look at me Joe.’

  He does.

  ‘Want to take one now with your tea? They say it takes half an hour to an hour to kick in.’

  ‘Can I wash it down with a whisky?’

  She nods and picks up the bottle, tearing the plastic seal off with her teeth and pulling the cork before handing him the bottle. Joe pokes his tongue out, waits for her to extract a pill from the sheet with blind fingers and pop it on the tip. He draws the pill into his mouth, raising the whisky bottle with one hand while the other reaches for her. They both shift in their chairs, realigning cunt and cock as they feel the heat.

  He can’t help himself. ‘Is that what they call the placebo effect?’

  With an effort she releases his fingers.

  Takes a sharp breath. A moment of reorientation, recovery of purpose.

  ‘There’s one more thing Joe.’

  No mere jaw drop this time, as she pulls out the tartan bag that contains his ‘kit’ and puts it on the table.

  She dissolves into tears as he dissolves into realisation, but it is too late to back away.

  ‘Joe, I am begging you not to use this … this thing. I am pledging myself to whatever it takes to care and tend and love you. I am declaring we have months, more likely years of good times among the angst and the bad. I am telling you that’s what I crave, my gorgeous, stubborn, foolish, bloody man.

  ‘But I am also saying this. I get where you’re coming from, and half of me, maybe more, agrees with you. I will honour you. I will honour your choice.

  ‘But …’

  She shakes the tartan bag at him. ‘It feels like half a lifetime Joe—that this has been hanging over me. Not knowing from one day to the next where you and your whimsy might end up.’ She slams it down. ‘It’s fucking well killing me!’

  She pauses after each and every word to give a heavy emphasis. ‘This bag is not going back to Perth!

  ‘I will not have it in the house any more. Especially not while Claire and the kids are under our roof.

  ‘You have two choices, Joe. Four days and nights of the very best we can make of them, which includes you fucking me silly once a day please if you can manage it, and fish and birds and cherabun, blue skies, warm days and all the bloody good things we can cram in. Then you use this goddamned, horrible thing of yours, or else I bury it under this tree, and we head back home, and I will look after you in sickness and in health until death do us bloody well part. But this bag is not going back to Perth!’

  DEVOTEE

  Eventually the pair of birds dips out of sight behind a low spur of spinifex-clad sandstone. She has been treated to a prolonged display as they flittered to and from the water, retreated to the shade, ventured again, fussed over each other twittering softly, until, with a final flash of that vivid, delicate purple breast, they finally disappeared.

  Anne lowers her binoculars, like a devotee lowering folded hands after prayer.

  She has no sense of how much time may have passed before she eventually pulls the field guide out of her backpack, and ticks off the Gouldian finch. In the margin she records her notes. ‘M/F pair. Possibly breeding, but given time of year, more likely post hatchlings. Approx 1.75km downstream (SW) of lower extremity of Bullfrog Hole, upper Fitzroy River, Kimberley region, WA.’ She closes the book, stashes it in her backpack, uses her stick to lever herself to her feet, and just can’t help it. ‘Wheeehooyahhhh!’ Her cry echoes through the bush.

  She heads back towards their camp.

  BIRDS

  Joe can’t be sure he has heard right, but if that distant ululation was her, and not some unfamiliar bird’s cry, it can only mean one thing. The finch! The vicarious gush of joy he feels is almost overwhelming. It somehow seems the perfect note. He delves for the notebook and pencil he keeps in a watertight bag with his fishing gear, and begins to write.

  He has hardly touched his fishing lines all day. Hardly moved from this spot. He has watched the dapple and sparkle of light whenever a breeze has ruffled the water’s surface. He has contemplated with an amateur’s eye the ever shifting, ever changing array of birds.

  A trio of brolgas wandering the water’s edge talking amongst themselves in a low chortle growl, with every now and then one spreading his wings in a great, grey fan, the lower tips shivering in the breeze.

  A lone jabiru, garish and lumpy in contrast to the elegant brolgas.

  A congregation of kites. Always a handful circling high. A handful more perched in the topmost bare branches of the tallest gums on the riverbank.

  A pair of white cockies, acting like galahs. A flutter of two white feathers drifting down into the water as they take off squawking.

  A clutch of the big, black red-tailed cockatoos, calling as they fly high, across to the far bank and the bush beyond.

  Cormorants, blue-winged kookaburras, and especially the pair of rainbow bee-eaters. From their perch in a branch overhanging the water, they take it in turns to launch into eye-straining whirls of aeri
al acrobatics. Each time one is successful in snaring an insect mid-tumble, on landing it strikes its beak twice or three times on the branch to stun the catch, then tips its head back to swallow its prize.

  Occasionally one or both disappear for a time, flying off with insects in their beaks. And then he spotted the nest, a perfect circle of blackness, a hole tunnelled into the dried mud of a high bank. But always they seem to return to the branch, singly or together, after satisfying their nestlings.

  Even now, as he finishes the first note and looks up, they are back.

  It has been a day of being, not doing; experiencing, not thinking. He has never been a meditator, but wonders if he has somehow stumbled on the method today, he feels so calm.

  The second note takes longer. It tests but does not shatter his serenity. By the time he has finished he can hear the sounds of Anne arriving back at their camp. He gathers his gear and heads up to join her.

  TICK

  She is watching him, lying on her side on the swag, head propped up on a hand. The mosquito net is tied in a big knot above, dangling from the branch. He puts his notebook on the card table next to her field guide, which is propped open at the Gouldian finch page.

  He reads her notes. Without looking at her, ‘A tick.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Feel good?’

  ‘Yeah, it does.’

  He turns to face her, anticipating the question in her eyes. He holds her look for just a few moments, then nods. She sniffs, closes her eyes, pats the swag to summon him.

  He sits cross-legged on the swag beside her. She opens her eyes, reaches up a finger and places it on his lips, then begins to unbutton his shirt.

  NOTHING TO ADD

  They have moved the folding chairs from the campsite down to the sand slope looking directly down the length of Bullfrog Hole. One hand holds hers, the other the whisky bottle. He sips regularly.

  The bottle hand points. ‘See the bee-eaters?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Been watching them all day. They’ve got a nest in the bank over there, feeding their young’uns.’

  ‘As they do.’

  ‘Whisky’s getting low.’

  The holding hands both squeeze. So hard it hurts.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to add darling. You know what I think of you,’ he says. ‘You?’

  They turn to face each other, eyes brimming.

  She shakes her head. Pulls his hand up to her lips. Kisses each of his fingers. Disentwines her own fingers and places his hand on the armrest of his chair.

  ‘I’m going to sit here and watch the river. I’ll come up to the car in an hour. Go now Joe.’

  She just manages to stop her voice breaking altogether.

  ‘Now. Please.’

  THERE IS NONE

  She opens the car door. Averting her gaze, she gropes for his arm, his wrist, his pulse. There is none.

  She lowers the mosquito net, tucks it in around the swag, takes two sleeping pills and climbs in.

  UNASSISTED

  It is getting towards midday by the time Anne pulls up at the junction of the station track and the Gibb River Road. If it all goes smoothly, she should make it to Derby before close of business. She doesn’t want to think about what Plan B might be if she doesn’t.

  She leans across him to check that the window is tightly closed and the towel covering it is firmly in place. She can’t help some contact; rigor mortis seems to have taken effect. The other three windows are down.

  She thinks about music for a moment, but even before she starts thinking of specific CDs she knows it won’t work. She turns left, taking in the view of the northern face of the King Leopolds, tips her sunnies down to reduce the glare, and heads for town.

  She’d read the notes when she woke. The one for Eric even brought a smile of sorts:

  Mate,

  Sorry for being such a prick the other day.

  Better late than never. And I’m not talking about myself this time. Sorry I won’t get to meet Ruvini. Enjoy the love. Anything in the shed you want is yours. And if you don’t take the crib board and chairs, I might just be offended enough to come back and haunt you. Thank you my friend. Joe.

  The pack-up was quick and routine, everything rolled and folded and shoved in through the back doors of the wagon, with eyes averted from the front seat. Even a slight moment of self-congratulation for thinking it all through so well; right down to convincing him to do it in the car to save the drama of shifting his body.

  Then the shitty bit.

  Surgical gloves on. Passenger door open. Couldn’t keep looking away. Had to fiddle with the straps to get them undone. Had to manoeuvre the bag off his head. Toss it and gloves onto the back seat. Put towel over the window. Slam door shut as she gagged, slumped, gasped for air, tried to not think or see.

  Then the shittier bit.

  Her camera on the driver’s seat. The note beneath it:

  Love you evermore, lady mine, one in a zillion.

  I’ve made a little movie for the coppers and coroners, just in case of need.

  You don’t have to watch, but of course it is your call.

  Be strong.

  J

  How can I not watch it, you bastard.

  There is a blur of fuzzy audio and even fuzzier vision that as far as she can tell is a pan around the interior of the vehicle. More wobble as the camera appears to be propped up on the dashboard, and the focus becomes half clear on Joe. His words are slurred, more so the further it goes, but intelligible, at least to her.

  ‘Dear Officer … and Dear Coroner if it so becomes,

  ‘Please forgive any shortage of clarity and coherence, I’ve had a bit to drink.’

  He dangles the empty bottle with a foolish grin. The clunk of it dropping can be heard, and then he is holding up a pill bottle.

  ‘And I’m about to take a shitload of sleeping pills …

  ‘I’d really rather not be making this little video …

  ‘But it’s about the one I hold near and dear … My Annie … love you girl.’

  He sprinkles a bunch of pills into his hand, and washes them down from a bottle of water.

  ‘Love you girl … Officer … She tried to talk me out of this … tried … hard. What was it my love? That’s it. Till death us do part! That’s what you said. Even if we weren’t married!’

  More pills shovelled out and washed down.

  ‘Mr Coroner! Tell ’em to change the fucken laws. Only reason I’m making this fucken spectacle of myself’s to tell you my Annie’s fucken innocent. She’s pure as the driven fucken snow. Leave her alone you bastards. This is on me. This is me. She’s down by the river, the beautiful river. I’m here on me own.

  ‘It’s suicide! Unassisted! Just the way Humphry says in Final Exit.’

  He holds up the oven bag with the velcro straps.

  ‘Unassisted …’

  His head drops. His voice a murmur now.

  ‘Fuck Annie, hope you haven’t watched this. Too late to change me note now.’

  Deep breath.

  Lifts his head. Looks at the camera. Blows a kiss.

  ‘I’m turning off now.’

  TALKING TREES

  The sign for Mowanjum snaps her out of the driving daze, back to a semblance of the present. She glances at her watch. 3.56 p.m. Might still work. Hands tight on the wheel, she shakes herself properly awake.

  The last fifteen kays into Derby. Rigorously observing speed limits; rigorously avoiding glancing to her left. Past the roadhouse at the start of the town proper. Past the fenced off oval on the right.

  The gnarly grey brown boabs lining the road seem to be wanting to say something to her. She ignores them determinedly. No time for you guys.

  Am I going mad?

  The cop shop.

  Thank Christ.

  She does a U-turn, pulls up outside.

  She leans over once more; checks the towel in the window, tips the sun visor down, pulls the hat lower on Joe’s brow, sh
udders.

  REPORT

  It seems to take forever for Claire to answer.

  She waits for her daughter’s bubbly greeting to subside, hardly registering the words.

  ‘It’s Saturday isn’t it? Are you at home, with the kids?’

  ‘Mum! What’s wrong? You sound weird.’

  ‘Listen darling, I’ve got something to read to you, and then I’ve got some business to see to here in Derby.’

  She talks over Claire’s premonition and rising voice.

  ‘I’m alright darling. Promise, promise, promise. I’m alright. And promise, promise, triple promise, I’ll call you again later on. You’ve just got to go with me on this girl.’

  ‘MUM! What the?!’

  ‘Ssshh girl. Go with me. I’m reading now.’

  Claire Bear, the other love of my life.

  I’m not going to make it home this time.

  I can only say those tritest of words; I’m sorry, and please forgive me. I believe you will.

  It is the better way for me, and though you will both deny it, I think it is also better for you and your mother. I cannot abide the notion that your last memories of me will be as of mine of Uncle George. It is not tolerable to me.

  Until recent years I have liked to lay claim to be a clever man, and even fancied myself as a good one. But your mother is the wiser and the kinder soul. She will tell you the story of these fraught and fabulous days.

  You know my girl that I am not a believer in the afterlife, but one last contradiction from Joe the Drongo.

  I will never stop loving you girl.

  Dad.

  ‘I’ll call you tonight Claire.’

  She switches off her phone, gets out of the car, locks the doors, marches up the pathway and opens the front door of the police station.

  To her relief there is a constable at the counter; she does not have to wait around or call out.