The Vintage and the Gleaning

by Jeremy Chambers

  Brett and I went hitchhiking after we got married, she says. I suppose it was our honeymoon, not much of a honeymoon, but that was all we had. We’d been staying at his cousin’s place in Melbourne, but we didn’t have anywhere to live, back then. My family weren’t talking to me, not after everything that had happened, and Brett didn’t want to stay with his father. His father was still alive then, but he was already sick, and Brett hadn’t had much to do with him for a long time already. So we went hitchhiking, to Surfers Paradise, that was our plan, but we never made it there, just to Sydney, and we had no money so it was all pretty miserable really, the whole thing, not much of a honeymoon, but that was our honeymoon, that was it.

  We hitched with truck drivers mostly, semi-trailers. We’d go to the rest stops, where the semis were parked, and the drivers would be sleeping or resting and most of them would give you a lift. Some of them were friendly, others hardly talked to you at all, but I suppose they wanted the company, or it was just the thing to do. Brett said there was no point trying to thumb a lift. He’d done a lot of hitchhiking before, so he knew the ropes.

  Anyway, we’d got a ride, somewhere. It was night and I’d lost track of where we were, but it was somewhere on the way to Sydney, and the driver was this young guy, Brett’s age. Most of the drivers were these fat middle-aged men who didn’t talk much, even the friendly ones, so I would have remembered this guy anyway. He had long hair and tatts, he was a lot like Brett really, and I thought at first that was good, that maybe they’d get along, maybe he’d take us all the way to Sydney, which he said he would when we first got in.

  But for some reason, I don’t know why, after we got moving, I think maybe because of Brett, maybe he didn’t trust him, or he just wanted to scare us, or he was showing off, the driver pulled out this big knife, and he didn’t really threaten us with the knife, but he showed it to us and he said he could kill us if he wanted to. I don’t know why. It was probably because of Brett, something about Brett. I mean, lots of people don’t like the look of Brett, but I would have thought this guy would have been all right, because, as I said, he was sort of similar to Brett. But maybe that’s why, maybe he didn’t trust Brett because he knew what he was like, because he was like him.

  Anyway, after he put away the knife he was friendly and quite chatty, compared to the other drivers anyway, but Brett was furious about the whole thing with the knife. I could tell at the time and I was worried Brett was going to do something, and he did say afterwards that he would have decked the guy if he hadn’t been driving, and I suppose Brett was right to be angry. I mean, even if the guy was just trying to scare us, just letting us know not to try anything, it was still over the top.

  I don’t know where it was exactly, but eventually we pulled up at a rest stop. It was in the middle of nowhere anyway. So we all got out and Brett followed the guy into the toilets and I thought something was going to happen, but nothing did, well, Brett must have said something. I asked him afterwards, and he just said he’d had a quiet word with the guy, but whatever he said, the guy came out of the toilets and got straight into the truck and drove off. I don’t know what Brett said, but we lost our ride anyway.

  And it was late and you know those rest stops, just lines of trucks sitting there, occasionally one coming and going, but there’s something strange about them, something a bit scary, or I found it all scary, out in the middle of nowhere, with no one about, just trucks sitting there with the lights off and the drivers asleep inside. And I thought we’d get a lift with someone else, but Brett was still angry and he said he’d had it with truck drivers.

  So we decided to camp out, or Brett decided. I wasn’t too happy, because I didn’t know where we were and, like I said, the place scared me. Also it was freezing. It must have been winter, now that I remember it. I remember when we got to Sydney it was raining the whole time. It wasn’t raining that night, the sky was clear, but it was icy cold, cold and there was frost in the morning. I would rather have got another lift, but it wasn’t a good idea with Brett in that mood.

  We had a tent, at least. Brett’s cousin had lent us his tent and some other gear, and we went away from the truck stop to find somewhere to camp and I just remember how dark it was and going through a lot of scrub. It was pitch black down where we were, you couldn’t see anything except the stars, and it got even harder to see when we got away from the truck stop. I really didn’t know where we were or where we were going and I got all scratched up from the scrub and wet as well because everything was covered in dew. And I started to get really frightened. I mean, I was just a kid, and I’d never done anything like this before but I suppose I trusted Brett because he had. I thought he knew what he was doing, really he didn’t, but anyway, I was just a kid, I didn’t know anything. But I thought Brett did.

  So we kept walking through the scrub until it started to thin out and then we were walking through paddocks, I suppose. I don’t know whether we were on someone’s property or where it was, but we were a long way from the truck stop by then. You could still hear the trucks coming and going and the sound of the brakes, but you couldn’t see much, just lights in the distance. And eventually we came to the top of a hill and we saw this fire down below and we thought it was probably other hitchhikers camping out, like us.

  Anyway, Brett told me to wait while he checked it out. I suppose he did used to look after me like that. So I waited while he went down. The fire was sort of hidden in a ditch, we hadn’t seen it at all until we got to the top of this hill, and I stood there in the cold, and I could hear Brett’s voice and another voice, and I waited for such a long time, absolutely frozen, just waiting and waiting. I was nearly in tears by the time Brett came back. And he said it was all right, they were cool. And I thought it would be young people, like us, but it wasn’t.

  What it was, there was this couple, I suppose you would call them a couple. But it really wasn’t what I expected. I thought they’d be backpackers or something, other hitchhikers, but young people, like I said. I was sort of happy about it, for the company, until I saw these people, who it was, this man, this awful man, and this young girl.

  The man, this man was really, you know when there’s just something wrong? When you can just feel there’s something wrong, like a gut feeling? Well, this man, there was something very wrong about him. He was probably in his fifties, older maybe, but rough, really rough. I mean he had no teeth and this long beard and his face was sort of tough and sunburnt, you could tell he lived outdoors. And he had some problem with his back, he was hunched over when he walked, or even when he was sitting, and when he talked to you he had to bend his neck to look up at you. I just remember these eyes looking up at me all the time. And he acted nice enough, but that sort of made things seem worse, I mean, he was acting nice, but overdoing it, like he was hiding something, or guilty about something, which he was, I mean, that was obvious. Like I said, I could tell straight away there was something wrong about the whole thing. I could just tell.

  And the man had these tattoos on his fingers, like from cards, a deck of cards, aces, spades, diamonds, clubs, on the fingers of both hands, red and black. But they weren’t proper tattoos, they were sort of messy and uneven. Brett said afterwards that they were prison tatts, he said in prison they’d cut their skin with razor blades and they’d do the tatts with pen ink or oven grease. I didn’t know at the time, but I wasn’t surprised when Brett said the man had been in prison. I didn’t trust him from the start, and he scared me, and, like I said, I was already scared being alone in that place, out in the middle of nowhere, but this was so much worse, because even though the man was short and bent over, he looked strong, really strong. And I knew Brett could handle himself, but this man could have done anything to us out there, and I wondered why Brett was so relaxed and I just remember thinking, Brett better not go off and leave me here, with them.

  So they had this camp set up around the fire and they must have been there for ages, I mean, they lived there, they weren’t ca
mping out, they were living there, it was obvious they were living in this ditch and there was all this junk lying around, old car seats around the fire and a fridge sitting on its side and styrofoam eskies and dirty mattresses, piles of sheets and rags and old clothes, just rubbish, most of it. And there was a tarpaulin set up on sticks, near the fire.

  But it was the girl, that’s what really creeped me out, this old man and this young girl, and I didn’t really see her until we’d sat down by the fire, on the car seats. She was just sitting there, not saying anything. She didn’t say a single thing, the whole time, not one word. And she was retarded or something.

  You could tell by her face, she just sort of looked wrong, in the face. And the whole time she was looking at me, staring at me. When I first sat down I smiled at her, but she didn’t react at all, she just kept staring. She was holding a kitten, and she just sat there stroking the kitten, staring at me, the whole time. And she was really young, just a kid, or maybe a teenager, it was hard to tell, but too young, definitely too young to be with this man, living out in the middle of nowhere. She just shouldn’t have been there, Especially not with this awful, awful man. It was ghastly. The whole thing was just horrible.

  And Brett and the man kept on talking and passing around this plastic bottle. I don’t know what was in it, meths, I think. I nearly threw up, but Brett drank it. The girl didn’t, the man didn’t even offer it to her. She just kept sitting there, staring at me, stroking this kitten. And then for some reason she got up and came over to me and held out the kitten, not saying anything, just holding it out, like a child does, for me to pat it, and I started to stroke it and, I couldn’t see it properly, but it felt odd. The kitten. It was stiff and cold and I suppose I could feel it but I kept stroking it and it took me a while to realise that it was dead. And I looked at it more closely and I saw that its face was sort of frozen, like a mask, and it had no eyes, just these black holes, where the eyes should have been. It was dead, a corpse, and it must have been dead for a long time.

  But the worst part of it was, after Brett and the man had finished the bottle of meths, or whatever it was, the man said he was going to turn in, and he said goodnight to us, shook Brett’s hand, he was still being polite, and he went under the tarp, and the girl followed him, went under the tarp with him. So we put our tent up near the fire. I wouldn’t even talk to Brett. And not because I was angry at him, I was too upset to be angry. I just didn’t want to talk to him. And even though I was exhausted, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep. Brett did, he dropped off straight away. But I just lay there in the dark and the cold and after a while the man and the girl started having sex. And you could hear him talking to her and making noises, but she didn’t say anything, or make any noise, you couldn’t hear her at all. It was like she wasn’t even there. So he kept grunting away, going at it, and after a while I did hear her, very quiet. She was making these sounds. And I realised that she was meowing, like a cat, and sort of purring, making the noises a cat makes. And the meowing got louder and louder. My God it was horrible. It was just unbearable. And I just lay there, in the freezing cold. Having to listen to it.

  Charlotte stops talking. Her face swims in the light. She is looking into the fire.

  I don’t know why I just thought of that, she says. I’d completely forgotten about it. I don’t know why I thought of that just now.

  After Charlotte turns in I get my old shotgun from out the hall cupboard and clean it at the kitchen table. I find a box of shells in the garage. I load the gun and put it under my bed and then I change into my pyjamas and go to sleep.

  Thursday I wake from broken dreams and Charlotte’s voice. All night in my dreams and half-asleep, Charlotte’s voice, and I dreamt she was there in the room, talking from out the darkness. I get up, exhausted, my pyjamas soaked in sweat. Dawn breaks and the song of magpies. I shiver as I dress.

  What did Boss say? I ask Roy.

  Roy shrugs his shoulders. He’s left the motor running.

  Not much, he says. Didn’t say nothing.

  Yeah? I say.

  Not as far as I heard, said Roy.

  So nothing, I say.

  Roy shakes his head. He winds up the window and leaves. I sit in the living room and watch the sun rise over the trees. There is movement in Charlotte’s room and then the bathroom. She is in there for some time.

  I remember I left the shotgun cocked and I go and get it from under my bed and unload it, putting the shells in my pocket. I stand the shotgun against the back of the wardrobe and wipe my hands on my jeans.

  Charlotte comes out of the bathroom scented and made up, her hair done and colour on her cheeks. Her eyelashes are long and dark, her brows high and arched. She walks in carrying herself, her back straight, and sits down on the couch, her back straight still.

  You look well, I say.

  She is arranging Florrie’s bathrobe.

  I just woke up and I thought, bugger it, she says. I’m not going to let this destroy me.

  She pats her pinned up hair. Her straight back and arched eyebrows give her a proud look.

  I’ve got to keep going, don’t I, she says. Whatever happens.

  Good for you, I say.

  I owe it to myself, she says. I deserve better than this.

  The dawn clears. The sun is full, the sky untroubled.

  Charlotte stands up and goes to the window. Cars and utes pass.

  I watch her, the morning sun on her.

  I make porridge for Charlotte. She eats at the kitchen table while I clean up. The mealy smell turns my stomach.

  You know I’ve lost five kilos, Charlotte says. I’ve been trying to lose that for years. The one good thing I’ve got out of this whole bloody mess.

  Oh yeah, I say.

  I scrub the saucepan and the wooden spoon. The kitchen smells of starch and detergent, the sink water grey and swimming with globules. I nearly retch.

  I’ll probably just put it on again, she says.

  That’s what they say, isn’t it.

  I keep working on the saucepan.

  So how come you never take that hat off? Charlotte says. You’ve got beautiful hair.

  What? I say, my hand going to my hat. I look at Charlotte who is watching me, smiling.

  Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and my heart was racing like crazy, she says. And I was breathing funny. It was like I couldn’t breathe, like I was suffocating. I think it must have been a panic attack or something. Anyway, I was still half asleep, sort of confused. I’d been dreaming and I thought I was at home, I mean back at my parents’ house, on the farm. When I finally woke up I was in your room. I didn’t know your hair was so white.

  I didn’t hear you, I say. I would of thought I’d hear you come in.

  It was all spread out around your head, she says. I never knew it was so white.

  I put the clean things onto the dish rack and drain the sink. I sniff my hands and wash them and sniff them again.

  You’re blushing, says Charlotte.

  Even old men got vanity, I say. He didn’t come back? Charlotte asks, looking out the back window.

  Not that I saw.

  We are in the lounge room. The gas fire is off today and I look at the cold waxy ceramic. Light splashes the room.

  I’m just sick of it, says Charlotte. These games, these stupid games. Whatever it is he’s playing at. My useless bloody dropkick of a husband. I’m just sick of it. I’ve had enough.

  There is a sharp pain in the knuckle of one of my fingers. I rub it but the pain does not go.

  I mean, I should be the angry one, says Charlotte. I’m the one who’s been hard done by, aren’t I? Not Brett. No matter what he thinks. I’m the one who should be, whatever he’s doing, holding a grudge or whatever. It should be me. I should have stayed home, told him to pack his bags, told him to never come back. That’s my right, isn’t it? After what happened?

  Of course it is, I say.

  The police told me I should get a restr
aining order, she says. And I should have. But instead I go running off and hide, like it’s all my fault. Which is how he sees it, I’m sure. Well, I know that’s how he sees it. And I’m just playing into his hands, aren’t I? I mean, running away, whatever I’m doing. I really don’t know what I’m doing. I mean, you tell me. Why am I here? Can you tell me that? Why did I come here, of all places? It’s ridiculous. No offence Smithy, but I don’t even know you. I mean, I appreciate what you’re doing for me, but really we don’t know each other, do we? So what the hell am I doing here? Hiding out like this. I don’t know what I’m doing.

  Charlotte turns from the window and looks at me and turns back again, looking out at the fences and trees and the light striking the landscape, in places, in parts, here and there. There is still the smell of boiled oats and starch coming from the kitchen.

  I suppose it just goes to show what sort of friends I have, she says. Why didn’t I go to them, my friends, my so-called friends? I mean, what I wish I had, what I really need right now, especially now, is a proper friend. A woman. Someone I can actually talk to, especially now, with all this, with Brett, whatever it is that’s going on. I need that. But I don’t have anyone, a friend, a proper friend, I mean, obviously. Because I came here, didn’t I?

  Charlotte walks over to the couch and sits down. She fixes up the bathrobe, pulling it down over her legs, tightening the belt, smoothing it over her thighs. The glowing pools falling across the room tremble, receding with the rising sun.

  Oh, well, bugger it, says Charlotte. It’s my problem anyway. Why should I be lumping other people with my problems.