by Brown, Honey
Rebecca bites the inside of her cheek.
‘Or maybe what I heard was him leaving,’ the guy says. He grins. ‘Wait … hang on …’ He lifts his hand to his ear, ‘Is that him leaving now?’
Nothing from outside can be heard above the music.
‘Don’t be a dickhead.’
But she looks through the open door of the bedroom across the hallway. She angles her head to try and see out the window, to try and catch sight of Aden’s bike, just to be sure … The curtain is partly drawn; it blocks her view.
The guy is watching her, grinning teasingly.
She knows it’s all a joke. But … She makes a decision and attempts to walk off down the hallway. The guy steps out and stops her.
‘Where you going?’
‘I’m gunna wait out the front.’ She steps to the left. He cuts her off.
‘Wait here,’ he says.
‘I don’t want to.’
‘It’s rude to come and visit and then leave without having a drink. All the boys are here. You’re our guest, Rebecca. It’s our job to show you a good time.’
Rebecca’s thoughts wind up steadily and quickly now, a lot like the turbos in her father’s truck kicking into gear – that same smooth whine and whirr rings in her ears. She considers, rapidly, the good and bad ways to deal with this. From experience she knows it’s best not to argue. She says, ‘Okay, I’ll have a drink.’
He comes closer and waves a single finger in her face. ‘Uh, uh, uh, I see what you’re doing. You’ll do a runner. You girls play these tricks. You can’t fool me.’ He lifts an eyebrow. ‘And … what you did right there was come on to me. Don’t say you didn’t. You girls say later that you didn’t. But right then you said you wanted to drink and party with me, with all of us.’
She can’t help it, she says, ‘I do not want to drink and party with you.’
‘Already changing your mind … Ahh, Rebecca …’
She straightens and runs a critical eye over him. His hair is ridiculous. It dictates his whole appearance to the point that Rebecca can’t say what he really looks like. He’s the same height as her. His eyebrows are thick. His lips are cracked.
‘Are you really not gunna let me past?’
‘Try me.’
A boy appears at the end of the hallway. He stands beside the cardboard box under the arch. Rebecca knows this boy. His name is David.
‘Simmo!’ David calls.
Simmo looks over his shoulder.
‘Whatcha doin?’ David asks.
‘Pointing out to Rebecca the sticky situation she’s gone and put herself in.’
‘How long you gunna be?’
‘Are they waiting?’
‘No-one can light the heater.’
‘What the hell do you wanna light the heater for?’
‘It’s cold in there.’
Rebecca sees a chance to leave. At that same moment though, she thinks she hears someone moving about in Nigel’s room. She pauses.
‘That’ll be him,’ Simmo says, turning his attention back to her. ‘Your hero has come to save the day. Lucky. Nigel has the place locked up tight. Once you’re in, you can’t get out. Unless you know the magic word. Do you know the magic word?’
‘No.’
‘You might not get to go then.’
Rebecca shifts her weight. She waits for the sound of Nigel’s door unlocking. David leaves. A chant has started up in the lounge room. Rebecca can’t make out what they’re saying. It seems to her as though the music has got louder.
She tries to walk off again, but this time Simmo brings his body close enough to touch hers. He goes so far as to pull her into him and he cups her backside in his hand. His face comes close, as though to kiss her. She leans away. He grins and lets her go.
The contact has made her dizzy. His beery breath invades her head. She knocks on Nigel’s door. ‘Aden,’ she calls.
‘He’s gone,’ Simmo says. ‘He wants us to look after you. Hey,’ he jerks his thumb over his shoulder, ‘listen to how excited they are.’
The chant is louder. It’s not possible … is it? … that they are saying her name? Rebecca knocks on the door again and rattles the handle. In her heart she knows Aden wouldn’t leave her.
‘Go into my room and look out the window,’ Simmo says. ‘He had to go quick. I think the match is starting.’ He checks his watch. ‘Yep, he has to be there by now.’
Without even the pretence of trying to stop her from leaving, Simmo steps in close. He’s excited. It shows in his eyes. They’re bright and wide, not heavy, not sleepy – a different sort of arousal to what she’s witnessed in Aden, what she’s grown used to, perhaps taken for granted. The gulf, sexually, and generally, between Simmo and Aden is extreme.
He takes her by the arm. Rebecca puts her hand over his. His fingers are warm and sweaty.
He may well be right. It might be the case that Rebecca’s mind does to and fro. It’s happening right now. Inside her head she leaps about, latching onto different tactics, but just as she gets a firm hold of one idea, it sinks beneath her, like a weak-sided box floating down a river. She’s inconsistent for different reasons to what he thinks: she changes tack out of fear, not for fun.
She smiles; she’s nervous now.
‘If you don’t know the magic word,’ Simmo is saying, smiling back at her, ‘I should point out some things to you …’
‘Fire away.’
‘Hold this,’ he says, referring to the can of beer, like it’s something he needs her to free him of so he can regain full use of his hands.
Fear has caused her scalp to tighten and her head to spin. It actually makes it easy for her to smile. Her grin must look natural.
‘No thanks.’
He ignores her. ‘That’s my bedroom there …’ he’s saying, inclining his head towards the room across the hall, the one with the window, ‘and that’s Super Boy’s bedroom down the end … Now, don’t get those two rooms confused …’
A good thing happens then – Simmo’s eyes dart towards Nigel’s door; it’s brief, but Rebecca sees it. She feels her jaw stiffen before her brain has even caught up with the change in situation. Simmo sees, senses, maybe smells the change in her. He steps back, wisely too – his groin was at perfect kneeing distance. Her return to confidence is rapid. She shakes her head. She turns her back on him and regains her composure away from his gaze. There’s the sound of a bolt sliding across. The door opens. Nigel stands there.
‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘I didn’t hear you.’
His eyes are clear, calm blue. There’s no trace of humour.
When Rebecca glances over her shoulder Simmo is halfway down the hall.
‘Where’s Aden?’ she says to Nigel.
He opens the door wider. ‘He had to leave. I’ll take you up the oval in a little while.’
28
Zach moves with little purpose. He wanders. A fence cuts a clean line across the paddock. When he gets to the fence he climbs over it. Attached to the wire, facing out, is a sign that reads No Hunting, No Trapping, No Baiting. Private Property. The sign pertains to Zach’s land. Some smart bastard has drawn a cartoon fox with a double-barrelled shotgun in its paws. Boom Boom! is scrawled below it.
The Cummings’ place is similar in size to Zach’s land, but the Cummings don’t draw the same interest and attention as the Kincaids. And Cummings is no farmer – his animals are in poor condition. They have hollow sides and hang about in stray family groups. They’ve sought out the shelter of the bush, and hobble away as Zach approaches.
Zach doesn’t consider himself to be trespassing. He does have some claim over this. The Cummings’ land was a part of the original holding. Zach’s grandfather once walked this land, no doubt covered all areas – knew each low gully, each crest, each dip, each dry creek bed, and even every rock and every stone – enough so as not to be surprised by the topography, or by a wombat hole, a sudden ravine. A good farmer should know his paddocks, and the treed areas as much as
the fertile grassland, so as not to risk coming unstuck, especially after dark.
Zach stumbles over an uneven section of ground. He stops to catch his breath, to wipe his eyes, to cover his mouth and think for a moment why he’s crying … It doesn’t bear thinking about. He keeps on his way. In country like this, you have to walk a long way to feel like you’ve arrived somewhere else.
Up ahead, through the trees, Zach sees a tin shed.
He makes his way towards that.
Next to the tin shed is a crop of marijuana. There’s a fence around it, made of corrugated iron. There’s a small muddy dam down from it. Zach stands on tiptoe looking over the fence. The plants are tall and healthy. There are water pipes running down to a pump, a single tube of poly pipe between each row of plants, with feeders running out from that, and drip lines resting at the base of each individual plant. The crop is not far off harvest, or so Zach thinks: the heads on the plants are full and heavy.
Zach walks up to the shed. The door is ajar, but not wide enough to stick his head in. He inhales. He smells sun-warmed eucalypts, wattle blossoms, and not much else. Or does he catch a whiff of something sour? He breathes in again, his nose nearer to the gap. It’s a faint trace of that same smell from Rebecca’s backyard – rotting garbage. Not unusual – the type of people tending to a marijuana crop would leave their rubbish lying about, and Zach read somewhere that the smell of death is distinctive, surely not as everyday as the smell of garbage. A blowfly buzzes past his head. Zach looks at the corroded door handle, and then down at his feet. He eyes the flattened ferns and grass. The shed door is not opened very often – the grass grows right up to the base – but the door’s used enough for there to be a slight arc indicating where the tin scrapes across the earth, crushing any foliage in its way.
It looks to Zach as though the door hasn’t been opened for a week or so. He wets his lips and thinks. He likens the moment to a scene out of a horror movie, those clichéd couple of frames where the action slows and the audience frowns in preparation for the character’s foolish choice – what good can come from opening the door? Don’t open the door, you idiot. If something causes you to question going in to a place, well, don’t go in, especially if you don’t need to. It’s not rocket science. Yet Zach’s head spins as though with astrophysics calculations. Or is he spun out because he never thought he’d be faced with these movie moments, or that he’d ever have to consider the things he’s had to consider over the past week? His heart beats with the strangeness of that, most of all, as he contemplates what might be inside, under a blanket, in a box, half buried maybe, or just slumped … When did life stop being about when next to see Rebecca, how to initiate a kiss, and become about when next he’d see his mother, and if she’d be a rotting corpse when he did?
Zach opens the door.
29
Rebecca closes Nigel’s bedroom door firmly behind her.
‘Why do you live with those two dropkicks, anyway?’
Nigel goes across to a locker on the far side of the room. He opens it and takes a key from the top shelf. He then goes to the bed and crouches down beside it. He unlocks a drawer. ‘They help pay off the mortgage.’
‘Do you own this house?’
‘Yep.’
Rebecca looks through into the bathroom. It’s the second house she’s been in with an ensuite attached to the main bedroom – Zach Kincaid’s was the first. Zach gave her a guided tour of his place once – the visit where she’d learnt the Kincaid scent, and where she’d been left in awe of wealth, old money, family roots. She’d followed silently behind him and discovered the imposing nature of a family portrait, the untouchable aura of antiques, the decisive clunk of a solid timber door. Going to the loo at Zach’s house was a lesson in the smooth glide of expensive tapware. If at all possible, the water at his place fell with elegance from tap to basin. Even the toilet flushed with pizzazz. Nigel’s house has none of that, but it is a step up from the everyday. It’s the first time she’s seen a walk-in robe. Rebecca leans forward to have a better look.
The small room is filled with marijuana plants hanging upside down, drying. There’s a heat lamp shining on them and a small low-mounted fan turning.
Rebecca straightens.
Nigel has pulled out a deep and heavy drawer filled with labelled brown paper bags. He fossicks through the different-sized packages.
‘I’m going to walk to the oval,’ Rebecca says.
‘No need, I’ll take you.’
He doesn’t look up from what he’s doing. Rebecca watches him a moment; she looks away.
In the ensuite there are more marijuana plants hanging above the bath. A sheet of plastic covers the bottom of the tub. There’s a narrow window above the sink. It’s part-way open. A toothbrush and green plastic cup are on the floor, and a can of shaving cream. Not that she’s sure anyone’s knocked them down on their way through the window: lots of unusual items lie scattered on the floor. There’s a bottle-opener by the dresser, a ceramic dish at the foot of the bed, and an unplugged toaster near the bedside table.
‘I’m only having boarders till the end of the year,’ Nigel is saying, ‘then I’m gunna move all that sort of thing’ – he must have seen her looking at the plants – ‘into a room fitted out for drying.’
‘Right.’
Rebecca looks at the full cup of tea beside an open notebook on the desk. There’s a half-eaten packet of Twisties beside it. Two $100 notes lie in an open drawer. ‘You must have heard me knocking,’ she says. ‘Why did Aden have to go so quickly?’
Nigel sticks his head up from the other side of the bed. ‘Make yourself at home.’
‘I thought the match didn’t start for another half-hour?’
‘Sit down, Rebecca.’
The bed has been roughly made, the blankets pulled up hastily over the pillows. She shifts her gaze from it. Beside her is a chair. She moves a baseball cap from the seat and perches on the edge. ‘What are you looking for?’
Nigel ignores her question. He uses his foot to push the drawer closed, and the action reminds Rebecca of Aden. It makes her aware of how closely aligned the two friends are – they mimic one another; either that, or they unconsciously act the same. She wonders what aspects of Nigel’s character Aden has taken on as his own.
She eyes Nigel. He holds nothing in his hands, and seems to have taken nothing from the drawer.
He walks around the bed towards her. He leans against the dresser with his hands either side of his hips. ‘Oh,’ he says looking at his cup of tea. He comes forward to take it. His body is close as he picks up the drink. ‘Almost forgot about that.’
His face is bruised and misshapen from the fight. His demeanour is controlled, not calm, as she’d first thought on seeing him. Far from being at ease, he’s on some kind of internal loop-the-loop. The straight face is there to hide it.
He returns to his spot. He takes a sip of tea. There is the sound of laughter out in the hallway. Someone barks like a dog. The music has been turned down. It’s as though they are out there listening.
‘This is cold,’ Nigel says, referring to his cup of tea. ‘I’ll get a fresh one. What do you want?’
She stands. She wipes her palms on the sides of her pants. ‘I’m just gunna go.’
‘What’s wrong with waiting until I’m ready to drive you?’
‘Nigel,’ Rebecca says with honesty in her voice. ‘I’m not going to say anything – if that’s what you’re worried about. I know you must be nervous.’
Nigel glances at the door.
Rebecca says in a lower voice, ‘I know you think something might have happened to Joanne.’
‘You do realise, don’t you, that if you wanna be taking off around Australia with Aden you’d better get used to this sort of thing?’
‘What sort of thing?’
Nigel walks to the door. He opens it slightly. ‘Fuck off,’ he says through the crack.
There’s the sound of the boys laughing, barking, howling. They
lairise their way back down to the living room.
Nigel shuts the door.
‘I am going to say you were both there that night,’ Rebecca says, after a pause. ‘What I’m not going to say is I was … with both of you.’ She sits a little straighter. ‘I don’t see why I’d have to say that. I don’t know why you said it in the first place. Do you know how hard it is to live down something like that?’ She holds his gaze. ‘I will say you were there, though, if I’m asked.’
This statement doesn’t have the effect Rebecca thought it would – it doesn’t reassure like it was meant to. Nigel’s body stiffens. He runs an agitated hand through his hair and scratches his scalp, possibly the only part of him not sore and tender.
‘That’s fine,’ he says, ‘but we were there.’
‘You were in the car – yes.’
‘No, I was where you could see me, all night.’
It’s hard to know how to respond to this. The truth still rolls too freely off her tongue. Judging by the steely way Nigel watches her, he has some clue as to how she struggles.
Rebecca gives up being brave and looks imploringly at him. She wraps her arms tightly around her body and draws in a breath. ‘Am I going to be questioned about it?’
‘If she never turns up, what do you think? It could be dragged up any time in the future. Out of the blue, cops could turn up on your door. They will ask questions. The only reason you haven’t been asked already is because of Teddy’s involvement with Kara. He won’t pull strings forever. It’s going to look bad for everyone if the story suddenly changes. Cops from the city could come in and take over at any time. It has to be the way it was – you have to remember it like that. If you start messing with it, it starts to fall apart.’
‘How am I meant to answer questions if I’m asked?’
‘That’s a good point, Rebecca. How are you?’
‘Did Aden ask you to talk to me about this?’
