Sunday is the day I think about James. Actually, I think about James every minute of every day, but Sunday is the day I allow myself time with those thoughts. Not today. I’m making sure I think about money, burglars, how Elaine and Mick must both feel, and what Elaine might be doing. Of course she has a boyfriend, and it wouldn’t be strange to refer to him as her husband in that sort of circumstance. And she probably wasn’t that badly hurt, so it makes sense to go home.
I spin the ute around like I’m in a TV drama, and bounce my way up the rutted edge of the paddock and out the top gate at speed, for no good reason. I’m going to see Elaine because that’s what a good neighbour would do. She’s either doing well at home with her ‘husband’ or she’s in trouble, and some of that trouble is probably my greedy fault. I could call her, but I don’t think a phone call would remove my fears. This is probably not unusual behaviour for normal people, but for me it is out of recent character. I have not reacted to anything or anyone with any energy or speed or purpose for months — except for the trip to the races. Perhaps things are changing. In my rear-view mirror, I see Ted and Special, stopped at the yards, watching me leave. They don’t shake their heads in dismay at me. I’m sure they don’t.
It only takes me a few minutes to get to Elaine’s place. I still don’t know what my rush is, but maybe it’s the force of intuition. Something is not right about the Elaine thing. Not that intuition has played a large role in my life. If I’ve felt it, I’ve usually ignored it. Not now. I spend so much time in my head that intuition seems the only sense offering signposts.
I park at Elaine’s sheds out of sight of her house, pretending I’ve come to ask advice or a favour from the blokes who work for her. I take my time getting out of my vehicle. I reckon I look like the farmer of fables — nothing rushes me, nothing fazes me. ‘Ah, g’day.’ ‘Ah, g’day.’ I shut the door of the ute, then look around. No one is about. I see paddocks, distant cattle, and a sorghum crop due for harvest. Then I turn, and look at the house as if it has just occurred to me that there might be a house around here someplace. I cover the distance to the house quickly, let the garden gate clang behind me, and cover the spongy lawn, observing that it is probably in need of a mow if you were going to be fastidious about these things.
At the glass verandah doors, I knock, call out, and feel a slight shiver at what happened the last time I was here. Let’s not have that again. But this time there is no response. I pull on the door lightly, and it opens. I didn’t think to try to lock it last night, so maybe that means no one has been home. She’s stayed over at her husband’s place. Which is fine. None of my business. It’s not like she’s a friend or anything. In fact, I barely know her.
Responsibility discharged, I turn to go home. And then I point out to myself that this is a kind of shirking. Unless the guy who robbed Mick is a crockery aficionado, Elaine’s injury is my fault. I step back, and face the door. If I go in, and someone — say, the police — happen to arrive, it will not look good. But even I remember that sometimes you just have to act, and forget consequences. Can’t say I care for it, though. It’s a very long while since there was anything I felt strongly enough to act on. I guess this is a good thing.
I call again as I step inside the door, and when I walk through the kitchen area I see that there are no plates or cups that have been used, and none of the appliances are warm from use. This is snooping. Unpleasant. I’ve already accepted that she’s gone to her boyfriend’s place. And then I hear an engine, and I look back and see a car — Elaine’s — stopping out the front. Bloody hell, what was I thinking coming here? There are two people: Elaine and some bloke. Do I walk out, and say, Hi. Hope you don’t mind. I was just checking that the place was safe? Not a chance. I decide to hide. The alternative is way too creepy. I might as well be sniffing my way through her undies drawer. I squeeze in behind a massive timber-and-glass bookcase in the fireplace room where I found her the night before. I hear Elaine enter the house, jangling keys that she wouldn’t have needed.
‘Hello?’ She asks this without apprehension. I feel an idiot. I left the door open. I should just reveal myself. Elaine will be thankful for last night, and will accept that concern has made me an intruder.
I don’t believe it either.
So I wait, swallowing my breathing and trying to think of a plan. But then I hear something I can’t place. A breath, a light grunt that I can’t imagine Elaine making. The boyfriend? There has been no sound of footsteps on the loud floor. Perhaps he’s in socks. And then a faint low rumble, and it might be someone saying, ‘Ask again.’
‘Is there anyone here?’ After what she’s just been through, if she thought there was someone in her house, you would expect her to be panicked.
‘See?’ she says. ‘No one. Dave just left the door open after I was taken away.’ There is no reply.
It’s time to get out. I’m not sure about where the back door might be, but there has to be one. I leave my post, and sprint for the doorway into the next room. They do not appear, and so I guess that she is delaying. The room I’m in is large, filled with ceramic pieces, but not as large as the others. It has more TVs and couches, but one end has exercise machines silhouetted by the light through the floor-to-ceiling glass so you can look outside as you work out. There is a corridor in front of me, but I guess that leads to bedrooms and bathrooms, and not to a quick way out. I run to the gym end, and see a sliding door that opens onto a paved area, push through it, and find myself breathing fresh air in an unseen courtyard. I sidle along the edge of the house in amongst plants and shrubs until I get to the furthest corner. I reckon if I scrabble along the ground out of the garden, and make for the planting rig that sits waiting halfway between the house and the sheds, I should be fine.
From the planting rig I crawl across the ground like an ungainly goanna until I reach the ute, open the door from the ground, slither in, and start it up. I pull forward, and make my way through the gap between two sheds, hoping no one will hear me. I take it slowly — only the guilty would be rushing. But when I look back at the house there is a blond man in the garden watching, waving his arms and becoming agitated. I don’t look again, and hold my pace until I hit Wilson Road, and then gun it, knowing he is probably giving chase. He’ll be looking for me, and I have to be ready. I’m flying down the road, and then I feel a tyre give. My tyres, which are bald or missing chunks of tread, should have been replaced weeks ago, but because of lack of money and a very low care factor, I haven’t bothered. Fine time to pay the price. I veer to the side of the road. In the distance behind me I see dust kicking up, and a vehicle travelling towards me at speed. It can only be him. I figure the tyre is probably buggered anyway, and pull out onto the road and jam my foot on the accelerator again. I might wreck the rim, which would be expensive and inconvenient, but I’m not staying around for this guy.
At my mailbox, I put it into a drift and take the turn, but the soft tyre makes me slide outwards in my arc, and I almost hit a tree planted by my mother in the driveway. I’m a few hundred metres down my drive when the other vehicle catches up. I keep feeding it to my ute, hoping I can get to a gun before he gets to me. But the vehicle behind me doesn’t take my turn. It keeps going at the speed of someone involved in a chase. Except they’re not. I recognise Mandy from next door as she goes past like a rocket — the speed she normally drives at — late for something, as per usual.
I’m breathing again as I make my way to the garage. This is playing havoc with my health.
In the house, I find the rifle and bullets, and take a seat in my rocking chair and wait. If the guy from Elaine’s comes, I will shoot him if I get the chance. Through the leg or the shoulder. I know the police say that is overestimating your marksmanship on a small target in the heat of the battle. I shut my eyes, and think about it.
When I wake, it is morning and nothing has changed, and I haven’t moved. No one waits for me outside. If someone had wanted
to kill me, I would be long dead. But now I have no idea what to do. My assailant must know where I live. Perhaps the box at the mailbox has done its job.
I do my best to get myself together, washing, shaving, and eating. If he is coming for me, I want to have a full stomach. But nobody arrives. My phones do not ring. Even the call centres leave me alone. I should talk to Elaine. I walk around turning things on and off, consider mowing James’s lawn again (it doesn’t need it), and I even water a couple of dying thorny roses. I take Ted and Special, who have waited patiently all night, to their kennels and feed them. Then I return and play patience with real cards, never completing a game. I eat uncooked noodles from the pack.
Then the phone in the house does ring. I ignore it for two rings, and decide that not knowing is worse than the short period of peace I might get. I suck in a few breaths, and plunge in.
The voice says, ‘Dave? Are you all right?’ No formalities — just a cut to the chase. That’s how we talk these days.
‘Hello, Sarah.’ The name spoken is enough to rattle me. No need for the searching lilt of her voice.
‘Mick’s worried about you.’
‘It’s so good to hear you.’
She is quiet. I have said exactly the wrong thing. It’s my specialty.
‘He thinks you might be mixed up in something. Is that true?’
‘No. I sold some things to pay some bills.’
‘Sold what? You can’t do that without telling me.’
‘Just a handful of cows. They were threatening to send the sheriff out over the unpaid rates.’
I can lie without shame to my still-wife, even though the fact that she’ll accept the lie shows how low we’ve sunk. The sheriff probably would have come for the rates. But Sarah is not motivated by money, or afraid of its absence. When Dad died, we found out he still owed money to his brother, Henry, for his part of the farm — Henry’s inheritance. It was money that we had to find. We paid Henry out, but not before a few robust conversations about our need for a reasonable time to pay. Henry was Dad’s younger brother, and a lifetime after leaving the farm he was bitter about how long it took for him to be paid out. Sarah and I toughed it out together. She was always gracious about hardship. We were a team then.
‘But you went to the races?’
‘Just to get off the farm. See some people.’
‘You don’t like the races. You never go to any of your friend’s places. Mick says you’ve got bundles of cash in the house.’
‘I had a big win on the horses.’
She doesn’t believe me, but she’s had enough of the conversation. ‘Don’t do anything stupid, will you?’
‘Course not. How are you going?’
‘I’m good. I might have a job. Fran has been terrific.’ The line is quiet, and I let it be. Fran is one of her oldest friends — someone who never wanted Sarah to move to the country and marry me. ‘I’m feeling like I can do stuff. Cope with stuff. You know, get on with things. I was hoping you might be feeling the same way.’
‘Definitely. I’m starting to get some work done on the farm — spraying weeds, fixing some of the machinery, and cleaning things up a bit.’
‘Did you get the oats in?’
‘Not yet, but I’m about to.’
Sarah knows the oats should have been sown by now. She knows ‘not yet’ means ‘never’, but she can’t let herself care anymore.
‘Are you still off the grog?’
‘Yep.’
‘Okay. Look after yourself.’
Mick has kept one confidence.
‘Try to see some of your mates, won’t you?’
‘Sure thing.’
When she left it really hurt me, and probably cut the last of my moorings. I’ve been floating around like a leaking balloon ever since. But there was a small part of me that was glad to see her go. I knew she wouldn’t be able to move forward if she stayed with me, and while she was around she was a constant reminder of how I’d failed. After a while she stopped mentioning it, but I knew she always thought it.
‘Dave, I’ve got a new friend. Lucy. Just a friend. But who knows? I wanted to tell you.’ She pauses as if to recover. I’m trying to think why I’m not shocked by this possibility. ‘I’ll come and visit James in a few weeks. Make sure the house is clean. Bye.’
‘Bye.’ I would do anything to keep her talking, to keep hearing her, but I have long since destroyed our connection. She doesn’t have the will or the energy to put up with me anymore. And now she has a ‘friend’, as I knew she would. I knew it was coming. I didn’t know it would be a she. I wonder if it is a response to the blokey world of the farm that has so comprehensively let her down. I put the phone down and hammer my fist hard into my chest. It is important to think about something else.
I drive to the mailbox, the flat tyre thump-thumping beneath me. I must remember to change it. The box that I repacked and taped up is still there, underneath the mailbox. This is bad news. In the mailbox there are two new boxes. I curse in the most exotic forms that come to mouth. I wonder if I shouldn’t leave the boxes there, but then it would become the mailman’s problem. I can’t think what I should be doing, so I take the new boxes out of the mailbox, put them in the ute, leave the old box where it is, and drive home. I am thinking of Sarah and the way she is getting her life back on track while I am obviously still derailed. How is she managing that? How does she find enough meaning to get up and go to work? I didn’t even ask what she was going to be working as, or where. I don’t have the imagination to conceive of it. I don’t know who I am or what is worth doing.
Sarah is a nice person, and I don’t mean bland or a do-gooder. She is mostly good-natured and generous. She laughs a lot, thinks the best of people, and is slow to judge. She was all of these things when I married her. After the loss, not so much. I know she fought the bitterness, but she couldn’t shake it until she left here for good. At least, that’s what I thought I observed. Escaping the farm, and me, saved her. It let her leave some things behind that she thought she couldn’t; things she believed couldn’t be separated from the loss, like rage at how other people could live such happy, undamaged lives. People such as our friends. Turns out, moving away from friends and community helped her dump the bitterness. That’s what I think anyway. Of course, I don’t know much about Sarah’s inner life these days, so I could be talking through my hat. Sarah might be still as screwed up as I am. But I remember the first time she called me after she’d left. There was a tone in her voice I hadn’t heard for so long I didn’t recognise it until later. I’m pretty sure that sound was hope.
In the past months I have spent a lot of time on my own. Sometimes I have gone weeks without talking to anyone in anything other than a perfunctory manner — bought groceries, ordered fuel, that sort of thing. I don’t answer the phone, and I avoid going out. I really don’t do much of anything. I mean to, but it never really happens.
Often I don’t notice how much time I have spent without human contact. So much so that the sound of my own voice can startle me. I will be driving along and a thought will put itself into words, and I will wonder who is talking, and then realise it is me. At other times in my life I would have hated to be alone, and would have found excuses to go and talk to people: at the pub; in town; call friends; or just flag someone down on the road. But when being with other people just makes the pain worse, it is easier to set a lone course. And when you want to be alone, after a while you either get used to yourself or go crazy.
All my life I have been anchored here. I have known where I fitted. Wherever I went, people who didn’t know me could always place me: because of where I lived, because I was someone’s son, grandson, friend, then husband, and then father. Now it is all gone, and I am untethered, unplaceable. If I met myself in the supermarket, I wouldn’t know who I was. I never imagined I could be so totally isolated. The farm is the only thing tha
t defines me.
I put the boxes on the kitchen island, and look at them. They are the same size as the last one, but in better condition. I feel a bit afraid of them. Do they contain more money from crooks unknown? I know it’s blood money of some sort. The boxes feel like a taunt from my conscience: You were happy enough to take the last one. What are you going to do with two more? Maybe half a million dollars more? Why didn’t I leave them at the mailbox with the other one?
I grab the knife, and open one of them. There is a plastic bag inside, white, thick-walled and heavy-duty, but no bricks. It gets worse. Everything always gets worse. I slice the top of the bag, and peel it back. The bag is full of something that might be ash — fine, grey-white ash. What the fuck? seems an understatement. I dip my finger in, and the ash sticks to it like fine powder. I scrape the ash back to see if anything is buried under the fine material, but there is nothing. It is a bag of ash. Then I notice, in the corner, a half-submerged gold ring with a tag tied to it. The tag says, ‘Fatboy Cakestand’. It doesn’t make any sense, but it unnerves me because it is written in a childish freehand that suggests Fatboy Cakestand is a nickname. My half-dead imagination brings forth a picture of a bikie gang rival, assassinated; a large, sweaty enemy called ‘Fatboy’ with the ridiculous surname of Cakestand. Fatboy has been eliminated and cremated. I simply don’t have the horsepower to summon what the reasons for this might be. Maybe Fatboy is the revered leader of an outlaw gang whose remains are due to be scattered somewhere.
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