Punk nudged me with his shoulder.
‘Lucky O’Dribble’s not here. He’d tell you, You’ll never wear sandals again.’
‘Creek’s stuffed.’
Punk was right. We’d been monitoring it with a scientific intensity every day of the holidays. Watching it sink back into a gravelly embrace that now strangled a series of gasping waterholes.
Big Hairs grunted. ‘Not worth the walk anymore. Too hot down that gravel road.’
Lick picked at a peeling nose. ‘Nothin’ there but eels anyway.’
All six of us were sardined on the trampoline we got for Christmas. The sprinkler balanced on Big Hairs’ belly, spraying rainbows into the air.
The days were starting to yawn before us. Weeks really, till school started again.
‘We should check out the lagoon.’
The rainbows blinked out as Big Hairs surged up, staring over at the gully, an isolated meander of water cut off from the local creek system.
We hadn’t paid much attention to it since the flood. Not with our heads turned by the flashy temptations of a fast-running current on the other side of the bitumen. Now with our first love past its prime, it might be time to take a second look at the more sedate attractions closer to home.
The lagoon hoarded its precious cargo under a watertight carpet of waterlilies. We flitted like dragonflies along its edges, staring with longing at the meandering swathe of flowers.
Apart from a stubborn clump of spider lilies that toughed it out in the shade of the tank stand, we had never had a garden. Now our dry gully had become a flower bowl and I was smitten.
‘We need a boat.’ Big Hairs paused at the water’s edge, hands on his hips, then strode off, the three little boys in his slipstream.
‘Want to see a duck duck?’
Punk skipped a stone into the ribbon of clear water running along the edge of the bank. Ducks scattered in a disgruntled flap of drab feathers laced with iridescent flashes of green.
We’d become oddly companionable since school finished. Maybe it was the rain. The isolation. The lack of alternatives.
So when he raced after the disappearing ducks, for no reason I could explain, I followed. If it was too good to last, I wanted to get in for my chop while I could.
We trotted back from our pointless foray into the furthest reaches of the lagoon to find Hairs hard at it on a gently sloping stretch of bank.
I recognised an old blue door from the dairy, straddling a couple of forty-four-gallon drums. ‘What’s that?’
Big Hairs pinched the wires he had looped round the bellies of the drums and twisted them hard with a pair of pliers.
‘What are you, retarded? It’s a raft, you dill.’
Oh.
Punk looked round. ‘What are we going to use for a paddle?’
Hairs pointed at a sturdy branch on the ground. Must have come from a widow-maker, one of the tall gums that tossed branches like lethal weapons.
‘The lagoon’s not real deep. We’ll see if we can pole through it. Give us a hand to get her in the water and see how many she can carry.’
The water was warm on top where the waterlilies swarmed. The temperature dropped as we dived deeper; the duck poop on the bottom seemed positively freezing, sucking at our ankles as we pushed through the tangle of vines below the surface.
A flutter of wings and flashes of green. More ducks leaving.
A hand reached down and dragged Lick on board by the back of his shirt.
Big Hairs looked happier than I’d seen him in ages as he bent and hauled the next one up.
Heat pressed against the back of my sodden shorts and T-shirt. The heady stench of ripe mud and waterweed drifted up from the purple haze of lilies.
The little boys stretched beside me like dead bodies while Big Hairs, Punk and Wart cruised alongside, silent as crocodiles.
The raft dipped as Punk levered himself onto an edge. He nudged me and pointed.
We must’ve drifted a long way from home.
Morrie Kapernicky leaned on a tree, smoking, on the far side of the lagoon. His shirt hung open and I could just make out his ute, hidden in behind the tree line. He hitched up his duds and spat onto the ground, then lifted his eyes and spotted us.
He glanced over his shoulder, then back our way.
‘What are you lot doing on my property?’
I couldn’t help myself. ‘We’re not on your property! This is our lagoon!’
‘Bullshit!’ An angry toss and his cigarette sizzled in the shallows.
‘See that fence line?’ His pointing finger was yellow with nicotine. ‘When you crossed that, you came onto my property. The whole lot of you are trespassing.’
A broken swathe of waterlilies marked our path past a wooden fence post leaning in from the bank. Two strands of wire snaked off into the water and disappeared.
He was right. We’d crossed the line.
I turned back to see Aileen Kapernicky walking towards us, her face giving nothing away.
‘Reckon she’s got any undies on?’
Fatlump probably said it a bit too loud, because Morrie Kapernicky went off like a bucket of guts in the sun.
‘Go on, piss off, the lot of you! And take that piece of crap with you. Go on! Get out of here!’ He spun on Aileen. ‘I thought I told you to wait in the car!’
She didn’t so much as glance at him. Just stood with her arms crossed, eyes razoring across at us.
Big Hairs hefted himself on board. ‘Better do what he says. Sis, you go with Punk and I’ll take the little boys back through the deep to clear that fence again. Meet you back at the track.’
Punk and I slipped into the water and paddled to the bank. We clambered out, muddy water dribbling down our legs as we watched Morrie Kapernicky stalk off, his shirt tails flying.
Aileen stared across at the boys on the raft, something unfathomable in her face. Her eyes dropped to the lilies, out of reach from her side. The only path down was treacherous with knotted tree roots above a sheer muddy drop where the water had eaten into the bank. She couldn’t reach us. Even if she wanted to. The barrier between us seemed deeper and murkier than ever.
A lily grew close to the edge on our side. Its mauve petals yielded crisp and velvet to my touch; its waxen heart touched with gold.
Punk’s knuckles brushed my arm; we should go. I yanked at the soggy stalk, felt it slide from the mud, its fibrous roots still intact, then turned and ran after him. Left Aileen standing there, alone.
‘Do you think I live to wash?’
Mum was spitting chips at the pile of soggy clothes the boys had flung in a pool of mud and duck dung onto the concrete slab of the laundry.
‘You think I have nothing better to do with my time than spend it scrubbing mud off yet another set of clothes?’
Before she could reload for a shot at me, I shoved the waterlily in her face.
The long wet stalk swung round, arcing a splatter of swampy water across her hem. Her face shuffled through a deck of emotions.
‘Lovely. I’ll get a bucket.’
Punk’s breath was hot in my ear. ‘God, you’re a suck.’
I ignored him and headed for the hose. I stank.
Please God, let my clothes dry, so I can get to the refrigerator before my stomach swells and my eyes fill with flies like those poor starving children in Ethiopia. Amen.
Mum wound the waterlily stalks into a bucket, looking worn out with the sun still high in the sky.
Punk wandered over to where I was hosing off beside the tramp. ‘Aileen didn’t look real happy.’
‘She never looks happy.’
He nodded and dropped it. But it bothered me that he’d noticed it too: that barely disguised longing etched into her face.
I shook my head, slamming a door on the memory.
I was heading for high school; Aileen Kapernicky was no longer my problem.
chapter 21
The screech brought Dad’s head up out of the guts of the tractor
.
Cockatoos whited out the sky, descending like locusts on the results of all the crazy germinating, flowering and bursting into seed that had followed in the wake of the rains.
‘You two,’ he fingered Punk and me, ‘go get the .22 and keep those flaming birds off the sunflowers for the rest of the afternoon.’
‘You want us to shoot ’em all?’ Punk scanned the flapping sky. ‘We’ll run out of bullets.’
Dad snorted. ‘One shot and they’ll take off, whether you hit one or not. If they come back, give them another blast. Half a box of bullets should last the afternoon. Now get going before we don’t have any sunflowers left to harvest.’
Punk looked over at the paddock, a long walk in the hot sun past the lagoon. ‘Can we take the Mini Moke?’
Dad was covered in grease, working on the Massey Ferguson with Big Hairs. He waved us off, his head back inside the tractor.
‘I’m driving.’ Punk and I quick-stepped it over the scorching ground.
Fair enough. He got in first. ‘OK, but I’m driving home.’
We puttered up against the boundary fence. A hundred yards off sat the Kapernickys’ house, shut up tight against the heat.
A handful of yabbering dogs put on a bit of a show then slunk back into the shadows under the car and truck bodies littering the yard. The first shot brought their heads up, but their interest disappeared with the cockatoos.
‘Jeez, you’re useless. How could you miss that many birds?’
Punk scowled. ‘Give me a break. I’m a bit out of practice, that’s all.’
His own fault really. Should have known better than to mess with Mum and her odd attachments.
The crazy mouse that lived in our games cupboard was a bit of a performer. Made Mum smile when he dangled out of his hole near the bottom of the door. She liked to watch him abseil down, headfirst, for a bit of a look around, then climb back up his own tail and disappear.
The blast of the slug gun had shocked us silly in the confines of the kitchen. Punk’s eyes had lit up at the fat dollop of blood, dripping in a giant tear onto the kitchen floor. Then Mum appeared, grabbed the gun in one hand, his ear in the other and left no-one in any doubt about the wisdom of firing a gun in her kitchen.
‘You reckon Dad’s forgotten that Mum banned you from shooting for life?’
Punk shrugged. ‘Hope so. How long did he say we have to stay here?’
‘The rest of the afternoon.’
‘Flamin’ hell. Hope those birds come back soon.’
The sunflowers nodded at where we sprawled across the front seats of the Moke, our feet propped against the windscreen, the gun in Punk’s lap pointing out into the paddock.
Flies crawled along my legs, lifting off as I waved my hand, hovering and landing as soon as my hand dropped.
‘Did you know that Biloela is the Aboriginal word for White Cockatoo?’
He grunted. ‘That’s probably why we’ve got so many of the flaming things.’
‘Well, Jambin means Echidna.’
He frowned and swatted at a fly. ‘So?’
‘So you hardly ever see any of them around.’
Punk’s frown deepened. ‘And your point is?’
‘I’m not making a point, I’m making conversation. You know, to pass the time.’
‘Well, how about making conversation about something interesting.’ He scanned the horizon for a likely topic. ‘Like what was up with Aileen, down the lagoon the other day? Thought she’d be happy as, seeing us run off like that.’
The shuttered face of the Kapernicky house gave nothing away. I couldn’t make out any movement, inside or out.
‘Place is like a ghost town. Dead cars. House shut up all the time. I feel sorry for them stuck over there for the holidays. Be enough to make anyone miserable.’
Punk propped himself sideways in the seat to stare at me. ‘You? Sorry for Aileen? Since when? You two been at each other since they got here.’
‘I don’t know. Seeing her at the lagoon … then this place … the way Morrie talks to her Mum. It just seems like she and Janeen don’t have much, that’s all.’
‘Jeez, Sis, the Kapernickys are doing OK. Better than us, probably.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, they got no debt, for starters. Dad reckons old Alf’s brother selected the block back in the thirties and killed himself clearing it – got caught by a hang-up when he was felling timber. He was the worker. Alf hasn’t done much with it since. A bit of dryland farming, that’s about it. Dad reckons he couldn’t run a bath, that bloke. And Morrie’s no better.’
Now it was my turn to stare. ‘How come Dad told you all that? He didn’t tell me anything when I asked him about the Kapernickys.’
Punk chewed on a stalk. ‘Shed talk. If you spent a bit more time working instead of holed up in your room, you might find out a bit more about what goes on around here.’
I wasn’t sure how much more I wanted to learn. ‘Place gives me the creeps.’
The screen door flapped open and banged against the side of the house.
Janeen hurried down the steps, arms wrapped round herself. We automatically raised our hands in greeting, but maybe she couldn’t see us sprawled in the open frame of the Moke in among the towering sunflowers.
One of the mangy dogs pushed itself to its feet and thumped its tail against a rusted side panel of a long-dead car body.
She went to it like it had called her, cradling its head between her hands. She glanced round quickly, then sank down next to the rusting hulk, pulling the mutt into her arms. Then she slipped into the shadows, disappearing from the bright day as though she had never been there at all.
The only movement was the faint nodding of the sunflower heads in a whisper of breeze.
Then a blood-curdling screech split the air.
‘Shit! Nearly gave me a heart attack!’
Punk handed me the gun as the thumping wings of a thousand returning cockatoos thrummed the air.
‘Go on. See if you can hit one.’
I whacked a bullet into the breech. ‘Couldn’t miss if I tried.’
The flock wheeled away for easier pickings elsewhere as Punk hot-footed it over to collect a trophy feather.
The shadows had shifted over at the Kapernickys. Only the runty little mongrel stared back from the shade.
Janeen was gone, the screen door shut up tight, answering no questions, telling no lies.
1973
chapter 22
Someone had stolen Punk and replaced him with a high schooler.
‘You both look so grown-up.’
Mum sniffed, making me wonder what we’d done now, but when I looked up, her eyes were misty.
I certainly felt grown-up, in my shop-bought uniform and black lace-ups. The earrings were still coming; I was sure of it. Just needed to wear Mum down a bit more.
Big Hairs seemed even bigger and tougher this year, what with all that leg hair and a bit of moustache coming along nicely.
But for some strange reason, the uniform made Punk look small. Like dressing him the same as his older brother underlined the differences instead of hiding them. He looked vulnerable and for some inexplicable reason, I wanted him to punch me in the arm and tell me to wake up to myself.
‘Hey, Sis, check ’em out.’ He stuck out his foot.
‘Your shoes?’
‘My new Bata Scouts. If high school doesn’t work out, I can just pull out the compass and find my way home.’
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. Punk was indestructible. Don’t know why I worried about him at all.
At precisely 8.15 am we walked to the high school bus stop.
A hundred yards up the road, the three little boys waved madly from the old one. They fitted neatly on the verge. No-one was relegated to the roadside ditch. The old pecking order was gone forever.
A cloud of red dust in the distance became a big flash bus, crunching in the gravel beside us.
Hayl
ey Harris waved me into the seat beside her as I tripped up the steps. The bus driver didn’t even wait for us to sit down before pulling out onto the bitumen. I half-fell onto Hayley as Hairs strode past to his seat up the back.
The railway bridge flashed overhead as Mr Blinco’s sturdy little green turtle of a bus trundled past, travelling in the opposite direction. Nothing would ever be the same.
‘When your name is called out, please join your class group next to the water fountains.’
The parade ground was blistering, the principal’s voice loud and tinny over the megaphone.
‘Eight One … Anna Antonia, Helen Brykreutz, David Byrnes –’
I clutched at Hayley’s hand. ‘Hope we’re in the same class.’
‘Michael Galliano, Susan Johnston –’
Hayley pulled her hand away and smoothed down her plaits. ‘Me too. I’d hate to be here on my own.’
A spike of panic whited out the meaningless staccato of names until I heard my own, jarring like a full stop at the end of the list.
Head swivelling back at Hayley, I joined the Eight Ones in the shade.
Strange faces trembled and blurred as we milled around a doll-faced teacher in a micro-mini shirt-dress.
Her endless list of what we needed to know on our first day was lost on me. I could only focus on Hayley being called into Eight Two with Valda and Jenny, and moments later, Punk and Brian Vernon.
‘Class! Pay attention!’
Her smooth skin was waxy in the heat, a hint of a line creasing her smooth Dolly brows.
I heard Dalwyn’s name, called into the Eight Threes, as we were led away. Thank God he didn’t end up in Eight Four. Big Hairs reckoned they streamed everyone on the first day: smartest to dumbest. No-one wanted to get in Eight Four. No-one.
I was on my own with twenty-nine strangers. Sweating in a poly-cotton prison suit. Wondering if anyone would talk to me. Ever.
Dust Page 10
