Devastation Road

by Joanna Baker

  When I got back, Chess hadn’t moved, but she looked a bit happier. She said, ‘While we’re at it, I’m going to tell you a story.’

  ‘No thanks.’ I put the toast down beside her, moved my drawing stuff out of reach of crumbs and butter and got back into my nest.

  ‘It’s a story about a dream. A dream and a strange way to die.’

  I threw my head back on the cushions. The way I figured, she’d already told me two stories this morning. I was sorry for her and everything, but I really didn’t want another. That was the trouble with Chess. It always happened this way. You tried to be nice to her and she went all weird and acted like a complete idiot until you had to either scream at her or get away.

  Chess was ignoring my toast. She finished her juice and picked up a nectarine. She rolled it around in her hands. She said, ‘The year is 1925.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said. I wiggled into a more upright position. I hadn’t agreed to this.

  She ignored me. ‘The place is …’ She thought for a minute, as if choosing somewhere, ‘… Balmain, in Sydney. There was an Italian immigrant called Mr Commonsoli.’

  I had my feet under me, ready to push myself up again, but Chess was away with her story. If I tried to leave now I’d hurt her all over again and then end up feeling bad, and then I’d have to go out to her place to patch it all up. It might be easier just to sit it out. I sighed and stuck my feet out in front of me.

  Chess said, ‘Mr Commonsoli had been sitting up in bed, next to his wife, reading a book about Egyptian mythology. After he went to sleep he dreamt he was floating through the Egyptian underworld surrounded by pyramids and golden statues.

  ‘Gradually he became aware that there was a huge eye floating above him. A voice came out of nowhere and said, “I am the Eye of Ra. I can see everything and I know all your secrets and you are evil and you don’t deserve to live.” And with that, there appeared out of nowhere a man with the head of a jackal, carrying a big, golden bolt of lightning. The jackal aimed carefully and hurled the lightning bolt, right at Mr Commonsoli’s chest.

  ‘At this point, Mr Commonsoli was thrashing around in bed and he woke up his wife. She saw that he was having a nightmare and she punched him on the chest to wake him up. Mr Commonsoli screamed in his sleep, grabbed his chest and died of a heart attack.’

  Chess took a big bite of her nectarine and slurped at the juice.

  ‘That’s it?’ I said.

  Chess smiled mysteriously. ‘It’s not a true story.’

  I’d had enough. ‘For Christ’s sake!’ I threw my head back on the cushions and stared at the ceiling. ‘Someone beam me out of here.’

  ‘My question is, how do you know?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ I snapped.

  ‘You can tell the story isn’t true,’ said Chess calmly. ‘How?’

  Suddenly I thought I got it. I sat up. ‘OK, you’re saying something in this story is wrong, and the question is, what is it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like there were no Italian immigrants in Sydney in 1925, or no Balmain, or Ra didn’t have a jackal head.’

  ‘That’s not it.’

  ‘But it’s not fair, Chess. Some of us don’t spend our weekends reading Wikipedia. Some of us have a life.’

  ‘You don’t have to know anything.’

  ‘For God’s sake! Just tell me who killed Debbie!’

  ‘How did she know?’

  I stood up. ‘I’m going out now, Chess.’

  Chess stood up too and stepped across to pull at my shoulder. ‘The dream, you see? How did the wife know? If the man died in his sleep no one would know what he’d been dreaming. So the story must be made up. You don’t need any special knowledge. It’s plain as day. It’s just common sense.’

  Head whirling I lowered myself to the couch.

  Chess said, ‘It’s so obvious when you think clearly. The story works because you are distracted. There’s so much detail in it and a lot of it is colourful and exciting and you end up missing something you’d usually see.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Go over it all again,’ she said. ‘Everything you saw and heard. Put it together logically. Look for the things that aren’t right. Go and talk to Wando.’ She looked at me intently when she said that. ‘Don’t give up.’

  I hated her expression. It was full of wisdom that I never thought she had, and sadness that I didn’t want to see.

  ‘We need to get this right, Matt. We can’t hide behind fairy stories. We need the truth. It won’t be good. It’s going to make us feel worse rather than better. But we said it right at the beginning and I know it was right. The truth is the only thing that ever helps.’

  Chapter 18

  ‘The truth … The bolt of lightning … How did she know? …’

  Suddenly I couldn’t think any more. I managed to sputter something about going for a walk and then half-ran, limping, out of the house.

  This time Chess had taken it too far. It was easy being annoyed with her, but having to feel sorry for her as well, and then trying to deal with stories and tricks — it just made all my thoughts jangle. It had got to the point where I had no control over them. Ideas were flying around — words, pictures, things Chess had said. ‘Look for the things that aren’t right.’ None of it was right. That was the point.

  I walked, stiffly but fast, away from town and turned right, up the last street. It wasn’t that I wanted to think over what Chess had said. More than anything I wanted not to think about her. But my brain was buzzing away.

  All the faces — Craig’s pressing into mine, Wando’s, big and dopey, Tara’s, shut off and cold, Mrs Carmody’s wide desperate smile, Alec’s, covered in black whisker dots.

  Where did Chess get off, telling me what I should and shouldn’t feel — what I did and didn’t need to know? In my head a little high voice started mocking her. ‘It’s so obvious when you think clearly.’

  My brain felt like a jar full of fireworks — Catherine Wheels and Jumping Jacks, inside my skull — meaningless thoughts, whizzing around and bumping into each other and exploding.

  And what had Chess provided, that was supposed to help me? Another clever-dick puzzle. Fireworks — crack, spark, sizzle. I’d been sucked in. Zzzzzt. How did she do that?

  Manipulative, that was the word. The little twitches and the fake shyness, and the sad act. My father goes on benders … My poor dead mother. She only trotted out these stories when she wanted me to stay with her! Buzz, pop, tak, tak, tak. Just so she could make herself feel clever! Fizz, ping. Because she didn’t have anyone else. I was the only one stupid enough to listen. Phhhht.

  I was being used.

  Thunk.

  I was facing a lumpy field and a pile of gravel. It was like this all around the edges of Yackandandah. Bits of empty land, not farms and hills, and not town, just rough stuff that isn’t anything — skeleton sheds, banks of long grass, and trees with dead branches. Messy. Depressing. Nothing stuff.

  The exercise had warmed up my bruises and most of them had stopped hurting. I turned right again and headed along one of the back streets. The messy landscape seemed to follow me. That’s the worst thing — wherever there’s a bit of space in Yack, this stuff seeps in. There were houses here, but their gutters and fences were smothered in tangled creepers. I passed a block of ragged grass with old machinery made shapeless by vines. I felt as if it was all choking me. I wanted to scratch it away from in front of my face.

  I went past the back of the primary school and then kept walking, across the old stone bridge and up the Albury road, not seeing anyone. As my muscles softened, I almost stopped limping and the walking started to help. It was nicer here, my feet were thumping softly on the roadside dirt, my arms swinging in time, breath going more easily through the dull ache of my throat, and, after a while, my thoughts started fitting in with the rhythm.

  And as soon as that happened, I started thinking different thoughts about Chess. It wasn’t Chess’s fault about
her parents, and she needed someone to talk to about it. She only had me. And I gave her a hard time.

  It would’ve been simpler if I couldn’t see that. I could’ve gone on being mad at her, but now I had to feel guilty as well. I kicked some gravel across the road. Everything was tangled. As soon as you had one thought, doubt crept in. Everywhere you turned there was a catch. All I was left with was a feeling I’d like to run away from it all and keep running until I was gasping for air and my legs gave out and I’d forgotten all about it.

  Trouble is there’s nowhere to go in Yackandandah but around in circles.

  ***

  I turned and went back towards town, past the police station and the bowling club. At the downhill end of Railway Avenue there’s a corner called The Pan. Here the street crosses another creek. Beside it there’s a wooden bridge for walking, a community veggie garden and a triangle of grass. There’s a willow here that has fallen down but not died, so that two of its branches have started growing straight up, looking like baby trees. Someone has put a picnic table there, which I always thought was a bit hopeful, but today I sat down.

  Yackandandah wasn’t choking me any more, it was just boring. I wanted to get away. I dropped my head on the table and I went into one of my favourite dreams. I’d go to Melbourne and live among the tall buildings and the concrete. I’d get a group of friends just like me and we’d all work at cool jobs in the big hotels and shops and we’d drive around in four lanes of traffic, weaving in and out with no bother, and we’d go to bars with coloured lights and rock concerts at the Tennis Centre and the only thing we’d ever worry about was whether our internet was fast enough and where to park the car …

  Uphill from the community garden was the pool. The hard voices of kids were echoing upwards off water and concrete and drifting down around me. I picked my head up. I used to love the pool — the cool blue water and the moist heat, free of dust, and a bag of Twisties. Today it didn’t seem so great. From where I sat I could see the ugly concrete shed that was the boys’ toilet, and the shade structure made of bits of tin on slanting poles. There was a nice steel gate, but that was covered in chicken wire, and the low fence between the pool and the community garden had barbed wire along the top. I glared at that and snorted. What were they expecting? That they might be invaded by a criminal mastermind trying to save himself a dollar twenty? Or a delinquent under-ten not accompanied by an adult?

  I sighed. Poor old Yack didn’t stand a chance with me in this mood. Even the sideways tree wasn’t cheering me up.

  Then I realised it’d be the same if I went to Melbourne, because the things that were really bugging me — Chess, Alec, the two dead girls, the danger to Tara and Wando, the mystery man in the white-blue car — they would all still be there. They’d come with me.

  So there was only one thing to do about it. Tackle it head on. I didn’t need Chess to tell me how. She could sit in the lounge room forever, telling herself stories and drawing doodles on paper. I was the one who understood people. I could start asking questions.

  ***

  At the bottom end of Railway Street, where it joined High Street, was the Yackandandah Motor Garage, a building made of sheets of iron, painted creamy yellow. It was old like the rest of the place. The paint was peeling and the timber holding it up had warped, so that the whole thing leaned crazily to one side. But it wasn’t fake or cute. It was being used as a real workshop. There were bright hard signs around the doors, advertising batteries and oil.

  Out the front, two men were peering under the bonnet of a Landcruiser tray. One was calling out, ‘On, off, on, off …’ to a third man who was in the truck. None of them actually worked there. One of them must have owned the ute, and the other two would’ve just gathered. Workshops attract people when there’s nothing else happening.

  I was drawn towards them, too, like a little dog, going over to see what the others were sniffing at. These were ordinary blokes in grimy jeans and work boots. They wouldn’t bore me with long stories or tell me what to feel. Feelings wouldn’t come up at all. They’d talk about real things, like switches, and tyres.

  As I was crossing the road, Steve, the mechanic, came out from his shop, looking down at something in his hands. A car went past. Almost without looking up he threw out an arm in a big, no-fuss, manly wave of greeting — the kind of wave that said, I like you but don’t expect me to waste time talking about it.

  And now that I was feeling calmer and the brain-fizzing had died down, there was room in my head for a new thought. Steve had been around for a while. He was a bit older than Craig Wilson, but not much. Eight years ago he might’ve known him. And he might’ve known the Carmodys too.

  ***

  The other guys were shutting the bonnet. I went past and leaned against the door of Steve’s shop, waiting for them to leave. They looked at me and then forgot me. After they had discussed something with Steve for a while, two of them walked off towards the bridge and the third got in the ute and drove away.

  ‘G’day matchsticks! How are ya?’ Steve had a soft voice, a bit high and childish, and a way of talking that made you feel he was having an incredible day, and most of all he was glad to see you. This sounds demented, when you say it like that, but somehow it didn’t make him sound like a moron. It made everyone like him.

  In my mind he was not a typical Yackandandah person at all. Most of the men who live here have beards and wear fat knitted jumpers. They do something creative or restore things. Steve had a business. He fixed trucks because they needed fixing. He didn’t talk about art or music and he wore blue overalls with grease on them. He never mentioned Heritage.

  Off to my right the street was filling up with tourists, parking their cars and peering in the antique shops and inspecting the ‘collectables’ on the street. All the tables outside the cafés were full of families and city types. None of them even knew about Debbie.

  I must’ve been scowling at them.

  ‘Come inside a sec,’ said Steve, waving a small cardboard box. ‘I gotta put this away.’

  ***

  The workshop was dark and cool, full of metal things I couldn’t recognise, and it got even darker when Steve pulled the roller doors down. The corner by the window had been turned into a neat little office. There was a square white bench for a desk and the walls had yellow shelving holding bottles of oil. As well as a musical Christmas tree, which Steve’s kids must have chosen, the desk held a computer and some red trays of paper. There was a plastic chair for a customer.

  Plonking the packet down, Steve pulled a pad towards him and started writing. I slumped into the chair.

  With his floppy red hair, and his fat lips that closed around the pen while he was thinking, Steve looked like a kid doing homework. Finally he felt me staring at him and glanced up sideways. ‘What’s the big problem?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He put the pen down and leaned on his elbows. ‘Sunday morning, eh? Been out walking the streets of sunny Yack-and-and-uh.’

  ‘It’s so small and depressing.’

  Steve nodded wisely. ‘You need to get out. No joke.’ He dropped his papers into a tray. ‘How old are ya? Fifteen?’

  I nodded and shifted in my chair.

  ‘Yeah.’ He made it sound as if he remembered exactly what it was like. ‘You’re staying at school though, aren’t ya? Gonna get your HSC.’ He said ‘haitch’ instead of ‘aitch’, which would’ve bugged my parents. I was annoyed with myself for noticing.

  ‘VCE,’ I said.

  ‘Comin’ to the movie on Tuesday?’

  He nodded towards the window where he’d stuck a poster, a black and white photocopy, advertising some war thing called The Couriers. The sunlight made the white paper glow. We stared at it from behind, through a grey lace curtain. I thought about the Yackandandah Cinema, a screen set up in the old public hall, with all the same old people and two kinds of ice cream on sale at a table in the entrance. This week there’d be White Christmas and candy canes.

>   ‘Yeah … Nah … I dunno.’

  He looked at me sadly. ‘Watcha bin up to?’ He meant why was I so miserable I couldn’t answer a simple question.

  ‘Nothing. I’ve been home. Talking to Chess.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ He wiggled an eyebrow at me. ‘No wonder you’re not thinking too good. That girl isn’t human. She come round last month to sort out me BAS. No joke, by the time she finished explaining it I didn’t know whether to scratch me watch or wind me arse.’

  ‘Chess helped you with your paperwork?’ I didn’t know Chess even talked to Steve.

  ‘Sorted it all out pretty good. She did all this.’ He waved a hand proudly at a filing cabinet.

  ‘Did you pay her?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He nodded and widened his eyes. ‘She knows how to charge. Worth it, but. I mean I’m the type of guy, just the sight of a pen and paper is enough to stop me thinking.’

  I spent a minute feeling impressed and wondering how much she’d charged him. Then I pushed the thought away. I didn’t want to talk about Chess, I wanted to talk about Devastation Road.

  ‘Do you ever see Craig Wilson in here?’

  Steve’s mouth twitched in a little smirk. ‘Heard you had a bit of trouble last night.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Zat what that is?’

  He pointed to the side of my face, which was grazed and darkening where I’d been pushed into the ground. There wasn’t much else showing. My throat, surprisingly, hardly had a mark. Inside it felt like warm jelly and it hurt when I pushed at it, but Steve couldn’t see that.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Is that all? The way I heard it you were nearly dead.’

  ‘I got kicked in the bum a few times.’

  At seven o’clock that morning I’d checked myself over in the bathroom mirror. There were a couple of marks on my chest and stomach, but most of the damage had been done by Craig’s boots. The bruises on my right hip and at the back of my thigh were the bad kind, the hot blue-red that goes down really deep and turns a dark thick black.