Halfway across the field he can breathe. To his right the heifers, their mossy pelts, their pleasing mellow condition. Up ahead, the sky starred with golden bees. He smells honey, probably an olfactory hallucination – these often herald a migraine.
When he hears her calling, he turns back. From this distance she’s a cartoon figure, arms up, framed by the studio door.
Stefan! she is yelling. But what if it’s him? What then?
8
He grinds his earbuds deeper as he sings along. Lithe and rangy with a coiled, springing walk. He’s headed for the chemist with the script and the letter from Dr Paulson to prove that he – Thomas Adam Tucker – is clinically depressed.
He’s decided. He’ll renew the venlafaxine despite the side effects. Nausea, dry mouth, genital anaesthesia, constipation, nervousness and anxiety. But should he tell his 101,253 followers about his depression? Or will this undermine the authority of his website? Facts about which comes first – plague, pandemic or comet strike, grain-shortage uprisings or nuclear blackmail plus the more immediate threat of Apian Atrophy.
Subscribers send him such questions in these End Days Times. His Twitter feed is full of doubt and certainty:
Am I, like, crazy to believe the world’s days are numbered?
@Prepped you’re insane if you don’t believe all the evidence.
Yr totes wrong about the death of the bees!! Cuz I seen heaps in my frontyard. @NatureGrrl
Six essential knots even Moms can master!!! @DoomerMom
Dehydrated Water. A useful barter item for your kit.
His morning post:
Prepare folks. Or join the Pre-parasites, who’ll prey on those who’ve planned ahead.
Tom crosses Greenacre Street, twisting the earphones deeper, blocking all other sounds. Human voices muttering, dogs yapping, reversing utes, the spruiker hawking two-dollar wares outside Wacky Discounts.
Sweet music. Sometimes it’s the only thing to magic him through the morning.
Past the library, which makes him think of the billion trees felled to make those books. Despite being troubled by this, he’s upped the print run of his weekly Survival Report to cater for the summer gawkers. City tourists with their market baskets of local cheese, air-dried muscatels, biodynamic stretchmark cream. So many have permanently relocated they’ve altered the town’s original character. But who can say what that really was – something primordial, beyond all their reckoning. By the market gate he hands out his reports. And later, ten metres down the road, retrieves them from the council bin, brushing off breadcrumbs and bacon, then handing them out again.
Past the butcher, the bakery, the Happy Hemp and Seed. Over there, the Ghost Mountains, getting balder by the hour. The oil and gas company have rebranded their fracking as stimulating. Which caused more than a few snickers and lewd hand gestures at the pub. Tomorrow, at dawn, he’ll head up to protest with the Harmer boys.
When he reaches the town square he scopes it out. His new ammo belt is too small. American sizing. It’s digging a red weal on his hip. When he tore it from the package, the jerky smell of leather. He’d tasted it. Bitter. Now he pushes a finger into a cartridge hole. Just wearing it gives him a swagger, despite the lack of actual ordnance. Across the road, by the Rainbow Café, a clot of mothers with their mucousy kids, their babies bound to the chest like infant possums. As the women slide narrowed eyes towards him, he holds up a greeting hand.
He’s their crossing guard. Weekday mornings and afternoons. Shepherding their kids over the road to the River Primary. He’s not supposed to be walking in town with a $65 Special Ops combat knife in his ankle sock. He smiles at the mums while mentally saying, Stare Fucking Off.
Past the Yoga Studio and the Java Nook, and into the chemist run by those radicals who refuse to sell the morning-after pill. He’s slid Sustainable Facts under their door more than once, detailing the need for population control. Whenever he comes in, he makes a point of asking what forms of CONTRACEPTION they stock. Today, a newly sceptical look on Terri’s face as she lists them.
The Pill, diaphragms, condoms, she says.
Her well-tended hair and forgotten body, the chemist uniform doing nothing for her, a sort of zippered shirt suctioned to all the unfortunate parts.
But what varieties exactly, Terri?
She inhales, replies, Ribbed, extra-headroom. Flavoured, coloured, studded, contoured, Space Age, glow-in-the-dark, Fire and Ice, Twisted Pleasure, snugger fit …
She tugs her above-knee hem, zips her cleavage tighter.
Once his script is filled, he leaves with a jumbo pack of Rocky Road, but no prophylactics, which – now he considers it – might give Terri the wrong impression.
As he turns down Archer Street he runs right into Jack Hodgins and his twins, Christabel and Aurelia. Hodgins. The self-appointed King of The Hive. Greying ponytail, wide, sulky American mouth. Jack used to be handsome. When Tom’s mother could remember what country she was in, what year it was and that he was actually her son, she’d recollected, Oh yes, all the girls at The Hive fancied Jackson. Including her, he assumed.
Tom hands the man a copy of last week’s Survival Report.
Hodgins snaps it dramatically in the air, then reads the headline aloud.
Dark Ecology. End Days Strategies. He uses a slow tone, making it sound extra stupid.
No thanks, son, he says, returning the paper. You know, he leans closer, marijuana and clove breath, I noticed lots more ads in your last issue.
Tom flinches at son. But – an admission – he’s been reading it!
You say we ought to cut back on material goods, Hodgins says, counting off fingers. You call us frivolous consumers. But the ads in your little newsletter suggest we need so many items to survive the … What do you preppers call it now? The Rapture, the Quickening? Bit of a mixed message?
Daddy, sighs Aurelia. Can we exactly go please?
Her sister nods. They’re in cahoots, eyes flashing like cats in the dark. Both wearing tutus with sparkly bags. Their mother had left, years back. After that, Hodgins opened a Single Fathers’ Shed. But no one had seen any carpentry from there. They’d seen plenty of smoke. Seen plenty of tools, they joked, going in and out.
How’s your mother, Tommy? I heard about her wandering off. Fortunate that Nico was driving by that night. Could have ended up anywhere, says Hodgins.
She just wanted some air, Tom says.
At three am? Hodgins is sceptical, smoothing his mane. Maybe it’s time for professional help, son. I remember how stubborn Heidi can be.
Tom stares, recalling Hodgins, bare to the chest, with one of his mother’s towels around his waist.
Stubborn, says Tom. But what were you asking her to do?
Last Sunday his mother had passed back and forth down the hall all afternoon. Ma, what are you doing? Sit down. But she’d gone on walking, with a twitchy look, making slow insect gestures at the wall. Two days later, he figured it. There was a woman in the hall mirror she no longer recognised. She was reversing through her life and he was powerless to arrest it.
On the fridge, the checklist from Dr Cheng:
• Memory loss that disrupts daily activity
• Trouble understanding images and spatial relationships.
Hodgins matches a rollie, then asks between puffs, Is it Pick’s disease that she has? Or Lewy Body?
Mix her some herbs, Papa! says Aurelia.
But Tommy has never believed in my craft, Hodgins says, blowing a perfect O of smoke. Even in The Hive he refused all my remedies. We could have taken care of that stutter. Those teeth. But you’re a Self-Made Man, aren’t you, son?
That’s what you taught me, Tom says. Anyway, she’s on a prescription. I wouldn’t muck with it.
But if you did try naturopathy for what’s ailing her, says Hodgins, and for whatever’s ailing yourself. If it worked, then you’d have to change your whole story about what a phoney I am.
Tom stands, stunned, in the silent street – ail
ing yourself ! And is propelled back to those weekly gatherings at The Hive. Jack, in his wide podium stance, talking about Pureland while everyone sat in padmasana, hands in jnana mudra. The smell of that communal hall, of root-vegetable stews, body odour, bergamot, patchouli; the heady smoke of dope and incense and the drone of Jack’s voice. The meditations. The hall had been built along certain ley lines. Tom always staggered out feeling sick.
Those of you who are fatherless, think of me, Jack would say. And it was hard to tell if he was addressing Tom in particular, though his mother had always acted like his was a virgin birth. He’s never met his father. No other Tucker lived at The Hive, no man ever claimed him. His first memory, a smell of cedar, sun shafting through cabin logs, blocky toys of wood and wax. And Hodgins. Throwing him up into the air and jigging him. But that was his routine with all the babies, each morning when he visited the Nursery Cell. Throwing them up. As if to prove what good hands everyone was in. All the pregnant women queued to have him diagnose. Footling, twins, anterior, posterior. Once, he’d turned a breech baby, his broad palms pushing the woman’s belly, his breath loud and even. The women just lay there, letting him touch their bare skin. Even before they were born, Hodgins made sure he’d handled all the babies.
Tom turns away. Remembering has made him hot and unsure and he feels the eager, absorbing part of himself that he’s struggled to disavow. Across the street, Evangeline with a large basket, one hand shading her eyes. Hallelujah. Someone normal.
Gotta go, he tells Hodgins.
And watches the man swivel slowly in her direction. The extra-long draw on the rollie, the second’s uncertainty in his eyes, his twins skipping off through burnt-sugar air chanting, Vanilla, Chocolate, Rocky Road.
Tom freezes for a minute in the whirling street, eyes on Evangeline. The Repentance River flows over him, the camphor-scented smoke. He’s rewound, to the day of the commune fire. The clanging alarm. The infants in the nursery, the baby in his arms. Evangeline, running from the Emerald Forest with blood on her face. Flames behind her, scrabbling up the ghost gums. He’d signalled, follow me. It was his chance, perhaps, to prove himself. He turned to the river and started to run.
At the water, he’d waited, jigging the kid. The baby had one fist in her mouth so he could see the pearly nubs in her gums, her knuckles working against them. Finally, Evangeline came skidding down from the bush. Her shirt was burned at the back and sides. She wore one huarache sandal, the other foot was bare. Where’d she been? What happened to your mouth, your head? He started to shake, he felt liable to cry on her behalf. She took a thorough look at the baby, then leapt into the river.
Tom watched her lave water on to her chest as her shirt floated downstream. He saw the burns across her back. She was older – eighteen – but seemed, crouching low in the water, as vulnerable as the infants in the nursery. He stood, looking and loving her more in her sudden frailty. And then he remembered – he’d left his other people unaccounted for.
Take her, he told Evangeline. Follow the river track down to the valley!
But she was waist deep, arms around herself.
Tom, she said, don’t fucking leave us here!
But my mother’s still up there, he said, and the other babies …
When he reached the burning cabins, flames were spiring above the thirty-metre gums. The nursery was empty. Through the door, the black cut-outs of men – Arlo and Lute, Rainbow, John and Starr, calling names and checking the huts. No sign of his mum.
He found the cabin he’d lived in for twelve years. No one there. On the floor, his storm glass. He’d once been able to say from its contents what kind of weather was streaming their way. He’d once had an amateur’s authority. But there’d been no presentiment for disaster – the glass was dumb to fire, flood; its drifting crystals only mastered air. Then he bolted into a rain of embers, wondering about the horses and bees, the goats, chickens and frogs. Who’d save them? And where was his mother?
Tommy!
Evangeline is tugging his left arm. She’s dragging him across Baker Street.
What are you doing? she asks when they reach the kerb, her face damp and pink as a newborn.
You could have been flattened! Standing in the road like that!
He stares at her blankly. Lustred hair, smoky eyes. In a long skirt and baggy T-shirt with holes in the hem. A tooth on a silver chain round her neck. Human? Animal? Tommy, don’t leave me here, she’d begged, back then. And where had Stefan Müller been, or Jack Hodgins when the people needed rescuing? When the End Times came at The Hive, the Real Men were AWOL. That day, all Tom had thought about was survival. And he hasn’t stopped, ever since.
He has an urge to flash his belt as Evangeline shakes his shoulder, saying,
You’re supposed to be a crossing guard!
Then she laughs, a curt, choppy sound he can’t recall from her, though she’d once been a girl who laughed freely, and often.
Angel, he says.
Those sombre eyes. It’s so nice, how she’s looking out for him; it sets a peculiar warm humming in his chest. But she steps back quickly, dropping his arm.
No one calls me that any more, she says. Then pulls out her umbrella, launches it and races away. Seconds later, Lana Beaufort striding round the corner with her slate-coloured whippet. The dog high-stepping, too good even for the ground. Tom greets her, gives the dog a tentative wipe.
Are you all right, Thomas? asks Lana, but her eyes are on Evangeline. Best stay away from that one.
The whippet lifts its leg and pisses melodiously on to the street.
9
The forest leaves are scarlet and gold on the black tarmac. Above, winter branches blown bone-clean. It’s Friday morning and the clouds are rippled with the last threads of dawn. As Meg cycles up to the Clear Energy gates she sees the three tree tripods. From further down the Summit Road these wooden poles had looked like stripped tepees. Closer, she sees Bowie and Comet, already roped to their poles.
Meg slows, ditches her bike by the road, takes a puff of Ventolin. The boys, high on their sling chairs, are lighting smokes, settling in. Tom Tucker’s halfway up the third tripod, his face white and blotchy. He puts a hand to his forehead, wobbles precariously, climbs a little higher. His narrow body like a stick insect, swaying. When he used to visit, before Pip became ill, Tess had pointed it out. The dude, she’d said, is spade-arsed. After that his every posture had seemed designed to accent this feature. The sisters sat in silent, racking spasms as he reached for a top shelf, or bent to a shoe, revealing no architecture beneath that denim. Later, at the table, they’d wonder. Where did all that food go? Clearly not arseward. Their mother called it feeding him up, how she cooked when he came to dinner, and how he ate, as if perpetually renourishing after illness.
Today Clear Energy have brought in two cranes. They’re parked about ten metres down the road. The cranes and the tripods face off, like two species of monster insect ready for battle. Five policemen are standing around, clapping cold hands in the morning chill. Marjorie Baker and two other ladies pass out sandwiches, pour steaming drinks from Thermoses, giving the whole scene a peaceable feeling. No one shouting today, no one struggling as they had last year when the graders first came in. Tess and Meg had watched the protestors then – farmers, hippies, mums and dads, even babies on shoulders wearing Frack Off slogans which seemed kind of mean because what could babies know about fracking, or even fucking, which the word was referencing, their mother said.
Now Meg watches the steam from the policemen’s cups blend into wisps of mountain fog. This diffused morning light turning everything tenuous, sfumato. Downhill from where they stand, one holding pond has its own thin cloud line over the water. Sfumato, a way to hold two opposite ideas at once. Da Vinci, Meg read, had prized this skill as much in life as on canvas, this ability to reason.
Marjorie offers food to the crane drivers, but they wave her away with sheepish smiles.
Going to be here a while, she says, crossin
g to Meg in her lumbering gait, one hip outslung, one shoulder hunched by her ear.
She offers her Tupperware and winks, You can catch more flies with honey than mud, she says.
Meg chooses a sandwich and bites into the triangle of forbidden Wonder White. She’s surprised to find not honey, but plastic cheese inside. It is a wonder, she thinks, how the bread turns almost immediately to dough in your mouth, and the cheese to paste, as if to spare you the chewing.
Last summer the boys had come up here to protect the trees. They called themselves the Guardians. And once the company started clearing with chainsaws and graders other townspeople came, including her parents. But one night Nico and Lute shot bolts in the tree trunks. The next week a company man was blinded when his chainsaw blade made contact. The girls will pass this man in town, a cheerful type with a shrub of brown hair, and a red pirate patch. He’s on compo, their father says, better off than slaving for the enemy.
After that Nico and Lute were banned from the site. The protests were meant to be NVDA. Violence wasn’t cool, direct action could be peaceful. It was all written up in Tom Tucker’s Survival Report. But the loggers were violent to the trees! said Meg, reading this report to Tess. Trees don’t feel, Tess replied, back then when she was talking. Even though they’ve got cells and blood, even if they live, die and have limbs. But they suffer! Meg said and ran through the house shouting Timber!
The World Without Us Page 6
