Dust

by Christine Bongers

  Jenna forced a fat chip into the open flap of the roll in an attempt to stem the flow of vital juices. ‘Or her getting the social workers involved. Remember Mr O’Malley shoving her at school pick-up, telling her to butt out?’

  ‘I do.’ He remembered her exact words – That’s assault, Mr O’Malley. In front of witnesses – and the look on his mother’s face as she went after the furious little man in his neat suit and tie. I’m not ten, Mr O’Malley. I’ll make an excellent witness for the prosecution.

  ‘Silence rewards the guilty and conspires against the innocent. Remember that one? It drove me crazy. I just wanted her to be like other mothers and tell us that silence was golden.’

  ‘No, you don’t. She’d drive you crazy if she was normal. Well, crazier.’ Jed studied his burger. ‘Nurse, you can remove the wadding; the patient seems to have stopped bleeding – Aah, thank you.’

  Jenna popped the soggy chip into her mouth and selected another, absent-mindedly mopping at the overflow on his plate.

  ‘I don’t want her to be normal. Just fun. Like she used to be.’

  ‘Gawd, you young blokes are worse than the sheilas these days. You been to the same hairdresser as our Joe?’

  Jed nodded amiably round the skeleton of his works burger as a big man in a broad-brimmed hat slid onto the bench beside him. Jenna squawked and launched herself across the café table.

  ‘Uncle Punk!’

  She did a double-take as she caught sight of her mum, paying for a cling-wrapped roll and a bottle of water at the counter.

  ‘Was that you she was meeting? That was quick. We’ve barely finished.’

  Ma slid in beside her, peeling open her first meal of the day. ‘Private burial; no family members present. Ed the undertaker says they fixed him up over the phone with a credit card.’

  Jed picked through the remains of his burger. ‘So, you got a name.’

  ‘J. Weis.’ She glanced up at her brother. ‘Could be Janeen. If it is, I can find her.’

  She looked down to where the roll sagged free of its Glad-Wrap girdle. ‘You know, Punk, I was really hoping she’d be here.’ She pushed the roll away. ‘I really thought she’d come back –’

  He shook his head impatiently.

  ‘Why would she? That bastard Morrie’s been dead for donkey’s years; did the world a favour wrapping himself round that telephone pole on his way home from jail. And Alf just disappeared off the face of the earth. Charlie Dixon’s been share-farming his block for as long as I can remember, paying rent into a bank account. Hard to believe the old bastard lasted this long.’

  His voice softened at the look on her face.

  ‘Come on, Sis, you don’t even come back for anything other than Christmas, the odd wedding and anniversaries ending in an O.’

  ‘And funerals. I came back for those.’

  Jed dropped his eyes at the catch in his mother’s voice. They all liked to pretend she was a tough old nut in the hope it would preserve the soft kernel she hid at her core.

  His Uncle Punk nodded in sympathy.

  ‘Course you did. But it’s not the same for Janeen. It never was.’

  Cecilia had forgotten how cold it could get out here.

  Her memories were filled with the hot blast of the summers, the shimmying heat and the dust. But she’d forgotten how the sun fell with a thud in winter, stripping away the day’s heat shield in a heartbeat.

  She shivered at her parents’ grave, wondering what else she’d forgotten.

  Jed fidgeted as his mother placed the heavy-bottomed bowl of flowers on her parents’ headstone. Jenna squatted at his side, squinting in the dim light.

  ‘Plaque’s nice, Ma. I always loved that photo of them in the tulips on their last trip to Holland.’

  Jed bent and scooped up his mother’s fallen backpack, hoping for a speedy exit. At the unexpected weight, he flipped open the top flap and began rifling through the contents.

  His mother had spotted a lone gravedigger raking over fresh sod at the end of the long aisle of graves. She drifted towards him, dragging them along in her wake.

  ‘Punk, Charlie Dixon told you about old Alf, didn’t he? How’d he find out?’

  ‘Bank phoned him up. Said Alf was dead, the estate was being wound up and his body brought back to Bilo for burial.’

  ‘So who brought the body back? Who’s winding up the estate?’

  He hesitated, studying the sky and the onrushing shadows.

  ‘I don’t know, he didn’t say. Look, Sis, if you’re determined to go gallivanting around a cemetery in the dark, I’m getting a torch so we don’t all end up at the bottom of a grave.’

  As their uncle stomped off into the gathering dark, Jenna appeared at Jed’s shoulder, curious at his sudden interest in their mother’s bag. He flashed a warning look at her quick intake of breath, just as their mother’s voice jerked them guiltily away.

  ‘He tried to talk me out of coming, your Uncle Punk. Said it was wishful thinking, hoping to catch up with Janeen.’

  The gravedigger was finishing up as they drew closer, laying down his rake on a neighbouring plot and moving to collect his kit, bundled to one side.

  ‘He was right, but I didn’t want to hear it. There wasn’t any reason for her to come back. She was never the type to dance on a grave.’

  They huddled in hoodies at the unmarked grave, waiting for the cemetery worker to leave. His broad back straightened as he lifted his belongings, his breath shafting white in the cold dark air.

  Their mum moved them aside to give the man room to pass. ‘You’re working late. Did you know old Alf?’

  He shook his head. ‘Plot looked like it needed a bit of a tidy up, that’s all.’

  He nodded a polite goodbye as Punk arrived back, swinging a solid lump of a torch. The arcing beam caught them from behind, locking onto and illuminating the one strange face in their midst.

  Cecilia felt the years rush away in the blinking of two eyes, a dark, indeterminate shade, not green, nor brown, but something in between.

  The colour of the crumbling rich mulch of her childhood, of the Dee River cradling the last of the rains in a stoic clay embrace, of the eyes that haunted her childhood, creating a great wash that had swept her through life and career and deposited her back here on the shores of where it had all begun.

  Her voice caught at the wonder and inevitability of life’s swirling currents.

  ‘You’re Janeen’s son, aren’t you?’

  His eyes dropped to the battered brim of a once-fine, kangaroo-felt hat. He shifted it between his hands as he shrugged a jacket on over his sweater.

  ‘You have her eyes.’

  The twins stirred at her side. Punk’s brief shake of the head warned them to stay out of it.

  She tried again. ‘And her gift for silence, I see.’

  That brought his eyes up. Janeen’s eyes. Self-contained and poised to leave.

  She took a risk, hoping to give him a reason to linger. ‘He left you the farm, didn’t he?’

  He paused, his next words confirming the accuracy of her intuitive leap. ‘It helped put me through vet school. Some years, better than others; always, better than nothing. It deserved some acknowledgement.’

  The finality in his voice left little doubt that the conversation was over. But Cecilia refused to let it go, picking her way nimbly across a minefield of what could and could not be said.

  ‘And your mum –?’

  He glanced at his watch and made up his mind; he’d talk, but only for a minute. ‘Oh, she’ll be thrilled that I bumped into you –’

  He noticed her faint start. ‘Yes, I know who you are. Mum’s always pointing out your by-line, showing me clippings. Ends up in an argument with Aileen every time. Mum likes winding her up, reckons you’re two of a kind … neither of you ever learned to let things go.’

  ‘Gawd, ain’t that the truth.’

  The fervency in Punk’s voice elicited laughter at Cecilia’s expense as he moved forward to
introduce himself and the twins.

  Jack Weis seemed as amused by Cecilia’s reaction to being likened to Aileen as he was by her family’s unseemly haste in agreeing. ‘Aileen doesn’t like it much either, so Mum must have a point.’

  He glanced again at his watch.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, I really have to get on the road if I’m going to make Mackay by midnight. Mum held the fort today, but I have to be back for work tomorrow.’

  The words jolted Cecilia out of herself. She scrambled about for her missing backpack, spotted it hanging from Jed’s shoulder and fumbled at the opening, her customary poise deserting her.

  ‘Wait, I have something I’d like you to take back –’

  She pulled out a plastic bag, weighed down by its contents.

  ‘It was given to me a long time ago by someone who knew your mother. It’s meant a lot to me over the years, but now –’

  She shrugged at his hesitation. ‘Please, take it. Janeen’s right – I need to learn to let things go.’

  Jack Weis’s face relaxed into a smile as he took hold of the bag. ‘Thanks, Mum will appreciate the thought –’

  ‘I’m sure she will. But it’s not for her –’ Cecilia allowed herself a tiny smile. ‘It’s for Aileen.’

  The opening bars of Mission: Impossible pounded out of the darkness as they followed the wavering beam of Punk’s torch back to the car park. He nudged his sister with a shoulder as she answered the call.

  ‘That’ll be the search party. Wondering if we’ve fallen into a hole.’

  She pushed him away with a grin, speaking into her mobile. ‘Everyone’s there?… OK, fire up the barbie and open the wine, we’re on our way. See you all soon.’

  She flipped the phone closed and pointed a warning finger at her twins. ‘Now, don’t let me drink too much tonight; we’ve got a big day tomorrow –’

  ‘Oh God, we’re not driving back home, are we?’

  ‘Jesus, Ma, we only just got here!’

  Cecilia grinned. She’d forgotten how much she enjoyed tormenting her children.

  ‘No, we’re staying. For as long as it takes to teach the pair of you to drive.’

  epilogue

  Last fuel for 200 km!

  The fading sign at the edge of the highway guarantees a bustling trade for the tiny petrol station tucked into the shade of an ancient mango tree.

  A smaller sign greets customers as they make their way inside: Keep your cool – just shut the door!

  The deserted front counter is graced by a tiny brass bell and more helpful advice: Please ring – we’re just chatting in the kitchen.

  Beyond the fly-strap curtain, two middle-aged women bicker companionably over the contents of sandwiches and rolls.

  One is in constant motion, grey streaks fighting free from a knot of dark curls clamped roughly at the nape of her neck.

  The other calmly chops, mixes and spreads, her gaze often drifting to a framed photo of a smiling man up to his elbow in the rear end of a startled cow. Less often, it settles on her ‘message in a bottle’, a surprise find, clipped from the pages of the Mackay Mercury and pinned to the fluttering pages that crowd her poetry board:

  Thunder eggs are born in hell and grow into the sublime. They hatch from volcanic explosions that trap bubbles of steam and gas in cooling volcanic lava.

  The expanding bubbles feed on silica and minerals, growing into rough crystallised eggs with empty hearts. Over oceans of time, silica-rich solutions wash over, seep into and fill these empty spaces.

  Like fingerprints, each thunder egg is unique, with some hearts layered by concentrated experiences at different times; others, the dramatic result of a single cataclysmic inundation.

  The Blue Horse (pictured) is a startling example of pure blue agate encased in rhyolite. It demonstrates why thunder eggs are prized beyond their monetary value.

  They inspire faith by mute testimony: terrible forces can create the most beautiful hearts – in rocks and in life. All we have to do is let the great wash of time seep into and fill the empty spaces within.

  There is no accompanying photograph and no by-line. But weighing down a flimsy stack of greaseproof sandwich wrappers on the bench below is a galloping blue form captured for all time in cooled and hardened magma.

  It draws one set of eyes more than the other, more often than she would ever admit. And if caught, she still mutters the words that have become a mantra over the years.

  ‘I still say she’s a cow.’

  The older woman lets the words pass without comment. She is content just to see the begrudging twitch to her sister’s lips: the first hopeful sign of a new layer forming in the hot pulsing spaces of a strong, volcanic heart.

  acknowledgements

  Love and thanks to my wonderful husband, Andrew Hallam, and our children, Connor, Brydie, Clancy and Jake, for supporting and believing in me. To my six brothers – Tony, Peter, Mike, Rick, Tim and Jason – I owe you big time, for creative inspiration and the wild ride of a childhood. To my mum, Sylvia, and dear departed dad, Ted, I owe just about everything.

  Thanks to Varuna for the early encouragement; Dr Sharyn Pearce and my QUT cohort for the critiques; Veny Armanno, Kim Wilkins and the Queensland Writers Centre for stocking my writer’s toolkit; and my publisher Leonie Tyle and editor Sarah Hazelton for polishing the final product.

  I am also indebted to the late Lyle Semgreen of Jambin, for showing a much younger me his prized ‘Blue Horse’ agate. It remains on display at the Semgreen farm at Jambin, where it can be viewed by arrangement with the family.