‘Oh, well do you need a lift somewhere?’ Nancy has on sunglasses that reflect my face back at me.
‘Absolutely,’ says Nancy’s mum. ‘It’s Clancy, isn’t it. I’m Carla, Nancy’s mum.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I mean, yes, that’s my name. Not yes that’s your name…’ My brain’s like just stop talking. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’
‘We’re just on our way home ourselves,’ Carla says.
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘Thanks, though.’
‘Nonsense,’ says Carla. ‘It’s no trouble.’
I don’t even know where Nancy lives, but it’s probably straight out of an architectural magazine. Heated floors, cooled walls, whatever it is rich people have to make their lives easier. There is no way they’re going to see my house. ‘I’ll probably just walk,’ I say, as another fat tear sneaks up on me. I wipe it away and my hand comes back smeared black. Bloody makeup.
‘Oh, sweetie,’ says Carla, in the type of caring voice that makes me want to instantly hug her. ‘Let us give you a lift. Looks like you’re having a tough day.’ She smiles at me, and her face is just so damn nice.
Nancy takes my hand and I feel myself toppling over softly, like that moment a burning candle becomes more melted than solid.
‘These are times I break out the emergency chocolate,’ says Carla, and I laugh, even though this is the height of fridge-magnet humour.
We walk to their car, and Nancy’s got her arm around me, basically holding me up. She makes us fall back from her mum a bit, and she whispers to me, ‘Is everything okay?’ and I nod in reflex but she goes, ‘Actually really?’
I go, ‘Just a headache that won’t go away.’
‘Oh, right,’ she says.
I sniff back a bunch of cry-snot, making a disgusting noise that would probably embarrass even Titch. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ says Nancy, and immediately I imagine her filing away this interaction as a hilarious anecdote to report to her city friends, posting it to her Facebook group Weird Things This Psycho Country Bitch Does. There is no way my snot sounds are going viral. Maybe they already knew about Dad. Maybe they’re just looking for fresh gossip. Would they know already, though?
‘You read the local paper?’ I say, trying to make my voice lose its waver.
‘Not really,’ she says. ‘It any good?’
Suddenly I’m ridiculously relieved. ‘Hell no,’ I say. ‘Everyone loves it but there’s never anything in it. It’s all ads and crap. And there’s this puzzle page? The crossword’s called the Chronicle Chrossword, you know, with a ‘C H’ on both words, and it’s so easy but people think it’s super hard. My grandpa used to do it every day and he always said he was brain training, but they always have the same clues which is bullshit, and anyway his liver rotted away so his brain was the least of his worries.’ I do a fake laugh, realising too late I’m doing nothing to dissuade Nancy I am not an emotionally challenged bogan. ‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘don’t read it.’
‘Duly noted,’ she says.
We get to the car and it’s a brand new rental, with paper covers still on the floormats.
‘The school hired it for me,’ says Carla. ‘I’m paranoid I’m going to back it into a tree or scratch it on something. Silly, I know.’
I smile, but I’m thinking about a car speeding past Dad on a midnight backroad, his reflective vest fluttering in the whipped-up wind.
‘You’re up on the hill?’ Carla says. I nod, wondering if I should just direct her to a completely different house in the neighbourhood. But, for some probably psychologically telling reason, I don’t want to lie to her. I tell her the address.
The car is so quiet as we drive. I love the way the outside is sealed off. In Mum’s car—or worse, Angus’s ute—the world is always blaring in as hissing wind or the rumble of tyres on the road. This car is a futuristic capsule. I stare out the window and say as little as I can until we come to the street that runs off mine.
My tears have disappeared by the time we turn down the top of my driveway, and I’m feeling calm enough to think that maybe the day could improve. This is when I see the police car. Parked neatly in the driveway, clean white and blue, painfully obvious against the faded colours of our yard. There’s the image of Dad in his orange prison jumpsuit, his hands gripping grimy iron bars.
‘My goodness,’ says Carla.
‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ I say, too brightly, realising a few seconds later I should have said that Angus was a policeman, or we had friends who were, or any other number of reasonable explanations. My heart’s hammering and I thank Carla for driving me and nearly sprint out of the car and Nancy says something to me but I don’t hear it as I slam the door and run up the front steps.
I wrench open the screen door and it bashes against the cladding and I hear Mum’s voice rising in the living room and I burst in ready to free Dad or throw my body in front of a bullet or lift a fridge off a baby or whatever it is you’re meant to do in emergencies.
The weirdest thing, though, is that the scene just looks normal. Mum and Dad are on the couch and two cops are on the reclining chairs and everyone’s got a mug of tea. They’re all staring at me and I just freeze, like this looks so ordinary but so not ordinary.
‘Hi Clancy,’ says Mum. ‘We’re just in the middle of something at the moment.’
The cops, two guys—one younger and one older—look embarrassed.
‘Is everything…okay?’ I’m out of breath and there’s sweat pooling in the small of my back.
‘Who’s this then?’ says the older cop, as if I’m a three-year-old.
Dad goes, ‘Just answering some questions, Clance. Nothing to worry about.’ He clearly hasn’t slept. His voice is high and strained.
‘Where’s Angus?’ I say.
‘He’s out,’ says Mum, which means she has no idea.
‘Is Dad being arrested?’
Mum laughs, shaking her hands like she’s trying to get water off them. ‘Nothing like that!’
‘We were the reporting officers at the accident,’ says the younger cop, with what sounds like pride.
The older cop, who’s shaved his head so no one can tell he’s losing his hair—a tactic which didn’t work the first time someone did it, and definitely doesn’t now—says, ‘Tucka’ll have to come down the station and make a statement. At some stage. Sure he knows the drill.’
I go, ‘The hell does that mean?’
‘Hold on, Clance,’ says Dad.
‘Have they got a warrant? You need a warrant.’
The old cop holds up a hand. ‘Settle down there, missy. There’s no warrants here. No arrests. We’re just investigating a serious accident to which your dad was a witness. We’re just having a cup of tea and a chat.’
‘Mister Underhill is just helping us with our enquiries,’ says the younger cop.
That’s what they always say on the news. A local man is helping police with their enquiries. Which means the local man has for dead sure done the crime and is currently down at the station getting hit with phonebooks.
Mum shoots me a look. ‘Maybe you can go out for a while, Clancy.’
‘I’ve just gotten home.’
‘Clancy.’ Serious teacher voice.
‘How am I supposed to go anywhere without a bike?’ Mum grinds her fists into her eyes. The two cops stare into their laps. I swear the old one is grinning.
‘I don’t really have time for this, Clancy,’ she says. She reaches over to the side table and gets her handbag. ‘Get Angus and go see a movie or something.’ She holds out a fifty-dollar note. A fifty. Holy shit.
‘What about Titch?’ I say, hoping for more.
Mum waggles her thumbs, like he’s playing video games. ‘Can you just go?’ she says. ‘Leave us to…talk here?’
I shrug, pocket the fifty and head for the door.
15
I’ve been walking maybe only five minutes when I hear a car slowing down beside me.
‘Hey Pantsy,’ I hear Angus shout. ‘Forget something?’ Pantsy is the name Angus gave me when he was six and I was four, and it remains one of his favourite things and, therefore, one of my least favourite. He’s rolling his ute along beside me. ‘Give me the fifty bucks now and we’ll call it even.’
‘What fifty bucks?’
‘I got home just after you left. I mean, fifty bucks? Dad must really be in the shit.’
‘Don’t joke about it.’
‘Life’s a joke.’
I keep walking, holding my hand out behind me and raising my middle finger. I hear Angus cackling. ‘Do get in,’ he says in a plummy English accent. ‘I shall take us to the pictures.’
‘There’s nothing on,’ I say. ‘There’s never anything on.’ Barwen’s cinema is just a big projector screen in the old town hall building. In the school holidays it’s all kids’ movies.
‘Hop in anyway,’ says Angus. He drives the ute up onto the kerb.
‘Maniac,’ I say. ‘It’s my money, though.’ I get in on the passenger side, noticing a giant duffel bag in the ute’s tray.
‘Bullshit,’ Angus says, getting back onto the road. ‘That’s for both of us. Mum said. You were supposed to come and get me.’
‘As if you’d have come.’
‘What were you going to do with the money anyway? Get a bunch of new Tegan and Sara albums?’
I punch my brother as hard as I can on his forearm.
‘Shit! Settle down, Pantsy.’
‘You’re such a turd.’
Angus smiles and puts on a pair of reflective aviators.
I go, ‘Yeah, and I’m the gay one.’
‘Piss off. Got these in Brisbane.’
I whip them off his head and pretend to read a description written on them: ‘Guaranteed not to come off while playing nude volleyball with other sweaty men. Sounds ideal.’
‘I need them for driving.’
I put them on. ‘They’re rubbish.’
‘Give ’em back.’
‘Let me drive.’
‘Give ’em back!’
‘I’ll give you ten bucks if you let me drive.’
‘You haven’t got your licence. You owe me twenty-five, anyway.’
‘Bullshit I do.’
Angus flicks the indicator. ‘I gotta get petrol.’ He turns into the servo at the bottom of the hill and parks next to the bowser. ‘Gimme the fifty. I need it to fill up. I’ll give you change.’
‘Tank’s still half-full.’ I tap the dash.
‘I wanna top it up. The gauge’s rooted anyway.’
‘You’ll just take the money and then not fill up.’
‘As if I’d do that.’
I give him a look, like, that’s exactly what you’d do.
He takes a deep breath and lets it out. ‘All right,’ he says. ‘You keep the fifty, but you’ve got to do me a favour.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You gotta help me out with something.’ He motions to the bag in the back of the ute.
‘I’m not helping you count chemtrails.’
‘What?’
‘Whatever it is you conspiracy theorists do.’
‘It’s just some surveillance. Recording data. It’s like an experiment. Scientific.’
‘I’m sure it is.’
‘Just help me take some readings and write a few numbers. It’ll only take a couple of hours tops.’
‘Where do you do it?’
‘Up the mountain.’
‘Really? The Beast of Barwen?’
‘Come on. It’s fifty bucks.’ He sticks out his hand.
‘I’m not shaking your hand,’ I say.
‘You’ll do it, though?’
‘Can I drive for a bit?’
‘Maybe when we get out of town.’
‘I want a guarantee.’
‘You in or out? I’m more than happy to leave you here at the servo and let you become a trucker’s sex slave.’
‘So funny. Let’s just go already.’
‘Awesome.’ He starts up the car and swings back onto the main road, heading straight through town and out into the hills.
Secretly, I’m smiling. Fifty bucks’ll buy me a new pair of shoes easy. Cheap shoes, from Spend-Less, but new shoes nonetheless. I want hi-tops or maybe rip-off Cons. Sasha—I know—will only be impressed by stilettos or thigh-high boots, but it’s a start. I think about Sasha in thigh-high boots. Slinking through some cocktail party, mouth slashed with dark red lipstick, a tight black dress that wrinkles only at her hips.
Angus interrupts my thoughts with an impromptu drum solo on the steering wheel. I never want to know what awful college-rock soundtrack he’s got grinding through his head at any given moment. He says, ‘So Mum was pretty freaked, hey.’
‘I guess. Yeah.’
‘Why’re you home so early? Thought you were working.’
I tell him about Raylene McCarthy and her twins, about Eloise, even about Buggs. I leave out Nancy and her mum for some reason.
‘This town’s full of real arseholes,’ is all he says in reply.
‘Cops still there when you left?’
‘Yeah, just sticking around to eat all our biscuits.’
The houses thin out and we drive out through the wheat fields on a backroad that runs past the abattoir. Past the turnoff that takes you out onto the highway. It occurs to me that Dad’s accident would’ve happened pretty close by. I wonder if there’s still police tape at the scene, whether anyone has put up bouquets yet, or stuck crosses into the ground.
‘You talk to Dad today?’ I say.
‘Nup.’ Angus keeps his eyes on the road.
‘He seemed better than last night.’
‘Yeah. I haven’t talked to him. I saw him downstairs but I couldn’t—didn’t know what to say.’
‘You think anything’ll happen to him?’
‘Hard to know.’
Angus is doing his cool act. He’s put a million sticks of gum in his mouth again and hasn’t offered me any. With the aviators, he looks like an eighties motorcycle cop. ‘Don’t you care what happens to him?’ I say.
Angus shakes his head. ‘He’ll get what he deserves, I guess.’
‘What if he goes to jail?’ Voice at full Disney princess.
‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ he says.
‘What what’s like?’
Angus sighs. ‘To be constantly called a fuck-up. That’s all Dad ever does. Reels off the ways he thinks I’ve gone wrong, the decisions I could’ve made better. As if his life’s been perfect. As if he’s ever made it easy for me. This is just karma.’
‘He can get pissed off sometimes, but—’
‘You don’t know, cause you’re the smart one. It’s like, they don’t have to worry about how you’re going to turn out because you’ll be a scientist or a lawyer or whatever. With me, with Dad, it’s like it’s his life’s purpose to have a go at me.’
‘I don’t think he’s that bad. Is he?’ Dad is a dick to Angus, but Angus is a dick back. And, really, my brother never settles on one thing long enough to fail or succeed. He always just changes his mind.
‘You’ve got no idea,’ he says. ‘Uni was the worst. Having to come back home was totally humiliating.’
‘You didn’t have to come back.’
‘Yeah, I did. Head lecturer had it in for me, just because I had the balls to ask the tough questions. Just cause I wasn’t a sheep like the rest of them.’
I knew exactly the types of questions Angus would’ve asked. He’s always been a contrarian: this is the word Dad uses. Constantly trying to find ways to undermine authority, to take the opposite view to what he’s being shown is right. He would have spouted half-baked conspiracies all the way through his business degree, about the World Bank or the Illuminati or alien coverups: any of a number of obsessively insane theories he’s crammed into his head at the expense of basic life skills.
‘Rather be a sheep than a loon,’ I say under my breath.
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16
We drive for about forty minutes, coming way up into the hills, following the spiral road that circles partway up Mount Meyer. On the other side is the national park and between, over the crest of the mountain, is thick bushland that gradually grades up into cool air and a kind of half-rainforest.
Angus swings off the main road and plunges us down a dirt track with a sign that tells me it’s a firebreak. The canopy of trees closes tighter and tighter above us and after a couple of minutes Angus pulls the ute to the side of the road and kills the engine. It’s only after we stop that I remember I wanted to drive part of the way. I remind myself to nag Angus about it on the way back.
‘This is it,’ he says.
‘I’m not going to have to walk through mud am I?’ I peer out at the dark foliage lining the track.
‘Nah, it’s cool. You can walk it fine in sneakers or whatever.’
‘Can I walk it in my only pair of shoes?’
‘Absolutely,’ he says, hopping out of the car.
I get out, surprised by how cold the air is. Something flies at my face, smothering it, and I scrabble to get it off.
‘It’s a jumper,’ says Angus, ‘you pussy. Temperature drop.’
‘You could’ve just handed it to me.’ It’s some scratchy army surplus thing, but I put it on.
‘Not out here. We’re adventuring now.’
I roll my eyes. ‘How often do you drink your own urine when you’re up here adventuring? More than at home, or the same amount?’
A backpack hits me in the head.
When we’re all strapped in, Angus plunges off the track at a seemingly random point.
‘Jesus. Wait!’ I’m worried at how dark it’ll be in the bush, and how my legs will most likely come out covered in leeches.
‘There’s a track just through here,’ says Angus from somewhere behind what I’m sure is a fatally poisonous tree.
I follow his voice through the thicket and sure enough it opens up a bit and there’s a faint track winding through the bush. It’s slightly lighter, somehow, too, like we’ve just gone through the forest’s front hall and are now in the living room. The sun is a glimmer in the tops of the gum trees.
‘Nice,’ I say involuntarily.
Clancy of the Undertow Page 6
