Devastation Road

by Joanna Baker

  ***

  My parents and the Carmodys had been talking about the Singers and had come to a little break in the conversation. Debbie’s envelope was still beside me on the arm of the chair. I pulled it down onto my knees for courage, and launched in.

  ‘Mrs Carmody, there’s something I wanted to ask you. It’s about Jeanette. I hope you don’t mind.’

  There was a little silence. Mr C put his cup down on the saucer and put the saucer on top of his plate.

  But Mrs Carmody instantly gave me her full attention. ‘No, Matty, why should we mind?’

  ‘It’s something that’s been worrying me. It’s about a necklace thing.’

  ‘“Thing” is not a very helpful word, Matthew,’ said Mr Carmody. ‘Do you mean a necklace, or not?’

  ‘It was a pendant really, a thing — I mean a stone — on a chain. The stone was amber, a dark golden colour with little lighter bits inside.’

  I waited but Mrs Carmody didn’t ask me to go on. She just looked at me.

  I went on anyway. ‘It used to be Jeanette’s, but she gave it to Debbie Wilson, and now it’s disappeared. The Wilsons have been asking about it, but none of us saw it anywhere when we found her.’ I was getting lost at this point and started to sputter a bit, not knowing what to put in and what to leave out. ‘The thing is …’ I didn’t seem able to get past the word. ‘Mrs Wilson said that Debbie had got the necklace from Jeanette, a long time ago. Debbie thought the stone was important in some way.’ They still said nothing. ‘I was wondering if you knew anything about it.’

  With her colour rising, Mrs Carmody opened her mouth and then closed it again. She looked at her husband and he looked at her.

  Mum said, ‘Matt, I think —’

  But Mr Carmody interrupted her. ‘Jeanette did, indeed, have a necklace like the one you describe. I believe she picked it up in a gift shop when she was on a school excursion to Canberra in Year Nine. It was very important to her. She had a great interest in history and the amber necklace was pertinent to her reading about both Greek and Egyptian mythology. I’m not sure how helpful it was with her school work, but it was something that amused and interested her.’

  ‘It was a little game of hers,’ said Mrs Carmody. ‘She called her necklace The Eye of Ra and pretended it could see into people’s secrets.’

  ‘A fanciful, but harmless notion,’ said Mr Carmody.

  Mrs Carmody was smiling fondly, lost in memories. ‘She said such silly things about that necklace. That it was a magic golden eye, something to do with the sun, that when she wore it she could see everything.’ She sniffed. ‘It worried us, naturally. It wasn’t the sort of thing we encouraged. We cut down on the amount of television she was watching. But I couldn’t take the necklace away.’ She said this to her husband. He folded his arms over his chest and pushed his lips out disapprovingly. Confiscating the necklace would’ve been his idea. Mrs Carmody went on as if they were in an old argument. ‘It was so important to her. She even wore it to bed.’

  ‘Why would she have given it to Debbie?’ I asked gently.

  The corners of her mouth had gone a bit loose, but she kept it together. ‘She was wearing it when she went to the Rolands that … last … night. She wore it everywhere. But after she died we couldn’t find it. In the end we assumed it had fallen off while she was walking around in the bush. Or possibly even when she was hit by the car, although I believe the area was fairly thoroughly searched.

  ‘Don’t get the wrong idea. We don’t know, really, what happened to it. We had no idea Debbie had it all this time, but now that you say that, I don’t know how she could have come by it, unless she found it by the … by the road. If she said Jeanette gave it to her … well I wouldn’t want to speak ill of the dead. But it would have been strange. Jeanette loved her pendant and it was still quite new. It would have surprised me greatly if she had given it away.’

  ‘But they were friends?’

  Mr Carmody said, ‘Deborah was a nice enough girl. Surprisingly decent, considering the background she came from. I seem to remember Jeanette spending one or two afternoons with her, is that right, dear?’ Mrs Carmody didn’t answer. He went on, ‘I don’t think they were close. Debbie was considerably younger and they were very different kinds of girls.’

  ‘Debbie had a few Egyptian things.’ I took a deep breath. What I was about to do seemed completely loony, but I had started now. Everyone was watching me. I moved around to the couch, next to Mrs Carmody, pushed some cups aside, and spread Debbie’s pieces of paper on the table where everyone could see, and then, at the sight of them, I suddenly had nothing to say.

  The sun had started shining, and the light coming through the window had become a warm yellow-green. Through some trick of colours it made the pictures stand out clearly. The little figure of Ra almost rose from the page. A man with the head of a bird, under a red ball. A curved beak, square shoulders and a golden belt around a tiny waist. In one hand he carried a strange cross with a loop at the top, in the other, a thin golden staff. He was still and straight, and his colours glowed hotly in the cool room. Last time I saw the picture I’d scarcely looked at it, but now I almost stopped breathing. The red sun-ball seemed to pulse with a truth that I couldn’t quite grasp.

  I said, ‘This is Ra. He … he …’

  They all felt it. The room was very quiet.

  ‘Yes,’ breathed Mrs Carmody. ‘Jeanette had something like this. Let me see.’ She leaned towards the pages and started reading. She sounded excited. ‘The twelve provinces of daylight.’ She looked up. ‘Yes, Jeanette talked about this. The Mesektet boat … twelve hours of darkness.’

  Mr Carmody was not so impressed. ‘This picture has been torn out of a book. That must be something Deborah did. Jeanette would never deface a piece of literature.’

  But Mrs Carmody had moved on to the other picture and was not listening to him. ‘The Great Temple at Abu Simbel. Oh, Charles, remember this? These huge statues out the front. And the window.’ She was eager to tell me the story. ‘There is a window, placed in such a way that on only two days of the year the sun’s rays could reach the statues inside. Jeanette loved that. She used to talk to me about the ray of light shining through the darkened temple and beaming in upon the gods.’

  Mrs Carmody’s mouth had smoothed and her eyes were clear. For a moment, happy in the past, she had almost forgotten Jeanette was no longer here.

  ‘Jeanette had all this in a book?’ I prompted.

  ‘Ah, yes. Ah, the silly girls.’ She was shaking her head in wonder, as if at something very beautiful.

  I’d never noticed a likeness before, but looking at her now I was reminded of Jeanette. I fought it. I tore my eyes away, back to the pictures, but their power was no longer there. They couldn’t compete with the images inside my head. Jeanette, dark hair, pale, square face, laughing wildly over a mud monster, holding up the Dali clocks. She’d seemed so old to me then, but she wasn’t much older than I am now. She might’ve been a bit like I was, blundering around, saying the wrong things, feeling nothing made sense, but every now and then finding something fantastic to make life worth all the effort.

  And suddenly, after eight years, I made the connection between Jeanette, my Jeanette, and what happened to her. I saw a body going up and over a car, and it had Jeanette’s face. For a second I was filled with a huge, almost unbearable rage, and then this vanished and left me empty, as if something good had just been snatched away, right out of my hands.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at the table. I lost the room altogether. Mrs Carmody had also gone very still. Parts of my face started to twitch and the rest of it was melting. I tried to hold it on with my hands.

  When I took them down they were wet. ‘I really liked her, Mrs Carmody. She was great.’

  This time I hadn’t wasted a thought on whether it was the right thing to say. It didn’t matter that Mrs Carmody didn’t answer. It had just been something I wanted to tell her.

  Som
ewhere, distantly, I could hear my mother talking and Mr Carmody trying to be soothing. Mrs Carmody had started to cry, little whispering sobs. I tried to drag myself back to the room. There must be something else I could do — more than just blubbing away beside her. I felt a fraud. I hadn’t lost a daughter. I had no idea what that would be like.

  And then, without warning, I started to see Deb. I didn’t want to, she just came back. I could see her reflected in the drinks fridge at the bakery, a shadow rippling and drifting in the dark mirror, and I saw her locking the bakery door, smiling, waving, separated from us by the glass. And then, quickly erasing the other pictures, Deb’s blue-white dead face.

  I tried to think about the real Deb, the Deb who ate too much sugar and smoked and made bad jokes. But I couldn’t. This was the worst thing. Deb was just like Jeanette now. It would be like this for everyone who ever knew her. We’d never remember again the normal, everyday Deb, without also thinking about the way she died. And in this way, we’d lost her forever.

  Chapter 15

  After the Carmodys, Mum wanted to see someone in Beechworth, and, as there didn’t seem much else to do, and because Dad would be in the pottery shed, and I didn’t want to be home by myself, I went with her. It was some old bloke she’d bought special socks for up in Albury — and, of course, she took zucchinis, made into soup this time. When we got to his house I didn’t go in with her. Instead I wandered down to the main street.

  Outside the tiny mall at the supermarket, I found four kids from school, looking as if they’d come out just because it’d stopped raining —Daniel Farmer and Amanda Hemsley, who were sort of an item, and two other guys from Year Nine, Robbie and Bart. Bart isn’t his real name, but most people have forgotten what that is. Amanda was eating a pie. Daniel and Robbie had skateboards, but they were just standing around, kicking at them. Bart was on a bike. They’d all stopped on the street, looking as if they’d go somewhere in a minute — if there was anywhere to go. That’s the trouble with Beechworth. There isn’t.

  I was surprised to see Robbie there. I leant on the back of a street bench. ‘Thought you were going to Mollymook.’

  ‘Nah. Tomorrow.’

  ‘Ohh.’

  ‘Been delayed. Only one more day.’ The way he said it meant he was repeating something his parents had said and he wasn’t very impressed. He didn’t give a reason for the delay though. Probably his Dad’s work or something. I didn’t ask, because he was getting one of his far away looks and he wouldn’t have answered me anyway.

  He said, ‘But when I get there, I’m gonna just lie on the beach and listen to the waves.’ He tipped his head back and threw his arms out, demonstrating how happy he was going to be.

  ‘You bastard,’ I laughed.

  ‘And I’m gonna let the salt water pound me and then I’m gonna sit and watch girls in bikinis with brown little arms and little wobbly bums …’

  Amanda threw a sauce-soaked ball of paper bag at him. It landed in a puddle.

  ‘Get over it, Virtual.’

  Virtual is something we called Robbie, because of all the fantasies — Virtual Reality Scanlon. It’s not a real nickname, just something we called him sometimes.

  Then she looked at me. ‘You gonna be around?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Me too.’

  She’d said it quietly, as if it was some kind of arrangement between us. Now I noticed she wasn’t standing near Daniel. Maybe it was all over with him. Maybe she liked me now. This was not good. I mean Amanda was all right and quite pretty and everything. She had a new lip stud, which was a bit try-hard, and she’d put red tips on her long black hair, which looked great, but I didn’t want to go out with her. It wasn’t her fault, but compared to Tara she just seemed … not very … something. If you aren’t interested, you just aren’t interested.

  Luckily I didn’t have to think up an answer. Robbie stood on the end of his board and tried a few half-moves, but he bumped into Bart, knocking him onto his handlebars. Bart looked down at his sleeve. ‘Orrr, look at me flannie. There’s a big hole in it.’

  ‘I didn’t do that!’ said Robbie, in a panic.

  Then he saw us all smirking at him, and he started raving on again. ‘Anyway, you can all laugh. You can all weep, kidlets, because after the beach I’m gonna go the gelato bar, and there’ll be sand and salt on me skin, and I’ll meet one of those girls and I’ll be lookin’ real doodey in me boardies and she’s gonna ask me if I wanna go swim-m-ming.’

  Daniel screwed up his face. ‘In your dreams.’

  ‘That’s where Robbie always is.’ I poked him. ‘Dreaming about girls chasing him down the street begging to touch his beautiful body.’ Everyone made moaning and jeering noises and Daniel tried to push Robbie off his board.

  ‘Still,’ I said. ‘You gotta dream, don’t you.’

  No one liked my little thoughts about life. They ignored me.

  I added, ‘Especially if you live somewhere like this.’

  ‘Yeah,’ they all said.

  We looked around at the street. Beechworth was really just a big version of Yack — verandahs over the street and stone buildings and an old-style lolly shop where everything cost twice the normal price. And galleries, hundreds of them. The problem was, there wasn’t much else. All the normal shops were really small because a lot of people worked in Wangaratta and Albury and did their shopping there. You couldn’t get decent clothes and there was nowhere to have a coffee that wasn’t full of tourists. On Saturday, even this late, there were tourists everywhere, wandering slowly across the road, clogging up the footpaths, and it would be like this for the whole holidays. Just looking at it made you feel like screaming to the sky.

  ‘We’ve got the whole of January to get through,’ said Daniel. He was a small dark guy with a surf hat pulled down over his eyebrows and a loose Fila sport shirt that made him look even smaller.

  Being bored was a topic Beechworth kids moaned about all the time, and suddenly they all had something to say.

  The street was decorated with Christmas things. The Artists’ Co-operative had bright flags outside. There were people everywhere, chatting and laughing. No one here ever thought about drunken fathers, or car accidents, or losing people. Here it was just movement and colour, and under that — emptiness.

  ‘That’s what’s wrong with this place,’ I said. ‘It’s too nice.’

  ‘What if we had a tele-port,’ said Robbie. ‘We could just dematerialise …’ But even he had run out of ideas.

  I felt as if we’d been standing on this street every year for the whole of our lives, having the same conversation. And soon my mother would come along in her car and say it’s nice that I met some friends, and she’d ask me how they were.

  ‘You know what I hate about the holidays?’ I said. ‘People ask you questions all the time. I’m supposed to say where I’ve been, which is nowhere, and what I’ve been doing, which is nothing, and why, which is I don’t know.’

  I’d gone on too much about it. Now everyone was thinking I was in a strange mood. Daniel was hunched into his big shirt, looking sorry for me.

  Amanda had finished her pie. ‘You found that body, didn’t you?’

  I felt my stomach tighten. I hadn’t expected to be asked about that. ‘Mm.’

  She pulled a disgusted face, but you could tell she was also getting a thrill from the idea. ‘What’d it feel like?’

  I wanted to say ‘Not “it”. She. Debbie.’ I could still feel her, the heaviness of her body, the rubbery flesh under the nylon shirt. But I didn’t have words for that.

  ‘Pretty bad. Cold.’

  ‘Eeergh.’

  ‘It’s OK. It doesn’t matter.’ I snapped the last word.

  But Amanda would’ve been hearing bits of the story all over the town, and she wanted to check her facts.

  ‘And that Jessica kid was with you. She helped you pull it out, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why’s she always hanging around yo
u?’

  I didn’t feel like talking about Chess either. I hated people to know we spent so much time together. ‘I dunno. She hasn’t really got anyone else.’

  ‘But she’s a bit of a pain isn’t she?’

  ‘Well, yeah, more or less.’

  ‘Will she be around all summer?’

  ‘I’ll be trying to get away from her.’ I gave Amanda a sly smile and immediately wished I hadn’t. I shouldn’t be saying things about Chess.

  ‘You can always come and see me,’ said Amanda.

  This was all I needed. ‘No. Chess is OK. She’s no trouble. I sort of feel sorry for her.’

  At this point a woman carrying folders in both hands went up to the real estate agent and started trying to unlock the door. Everyone just sat and watched her. I went to help. The others would’ve done it if I hadn’t been there, but they knew I always did that sort of thing, so they just let me. It’s what I’m famous for.

  When I’d got her inside, Bart was back again still half on the bike. ‘Jeez, Tingle, you’re a nice person.’

  ‘Like your Mum,’ said Amanda. ‘She’s always doing things for people.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, with a pooncey accent. ‘I was going to be a boy scout, but they said my hair is a little unkempt.’

  Amanda snorted. I played up to her. ‘If I comb it off my face Daddy said I could have a new toggle.’

  ‘Woggle,’ said Daniel. He must’ve really been a boy scout.

  ‘Yes, a new woggle.’

  ‘Where are you going to hang that?’ said Amanda.

  I made a wiggling gesture somewhere near my nuts and everyone laughed again. Then, for no reason, we all started moving. Daniel and Robbie pushed their boards and we followed, Bart rolling along beside us on the bike. Not because there was anywhere to go. We were just moving.

  We stopped at the row of small granite buildings with information signs that are called the Heritage Precinct. ‘Heritage’ is a big word in Beechworth. I leaned on a fat green and yellow lamp post.

  Amanda said, ‘Was Tara there, too?’