Ripples on a Pond

by Joy Dettman

  Georgie walked away from the light, down a slight incline towards the creek. She wanted to wash her hands.

  Cara followed her.

  They’d been closer than sisters for a few years, then nothing, not a phone call, not a card. There were a thousand questions in Georgie’s mind, but tonight wasn’t the right time to ask them.

  Georgie didn’t ask why Cara was nursing her elbow, just continued down to the water’s edge, where she squatted to scrub her hands, her arms. Rinsed the bloody hand towel, then used it to wipe drying blood from her face, neck, hair. Balled it when she was done, tossed it overarm towards the opposite bank. Balled cloth doesn’t fly well. It landed with a soft plop.

  They stood, side by side, watching the slice of moon play hide-and-seek in the ripples.

  ‘She’s over there,’ Georgie said. ‘I can feel her watching me.’

  ‘It’s bush. Your place is miles away.’

  ‘Anyone who can swim could cut through from my place and be here in half an hour or so. It’s not far – as the crow flies.’

  Not far at all. A crow could break his fast on Granny’s eggs and fill up on a dead lamb at Monk’s without breaking into a sweat. Bush kids, like crows, learned to draw direct lines.

  ‘They’ve stopped looking for Tracy,’ Cara said.

  ‘They’ll find her.’ Maybe – or maybe they’d found better fish to fry. And what hope did they have of finding one little kid amid the mess of kids out here?

  The massive adrenaline rush had left her now. The wound she hadn’t felt at the time throbbed in time to her heartbeat, and her legs needed a place to sit down. She walked upstream until she found a log to sit on. Cara sat with her, still supporting her elbow.

  ‘What’s wrong with your arm?’ Georgie said.

  ‘Bruised.’

  They watched the police van attempting to take another load away, umpteen women and kids attempting to prevent it leaving. Flower people may well have preferred to make love not war, but could make a lot of war-like noise.

  ‘Ever tried marijuana?’ Georgie asked.

  ‘A few times.’

  ‘I had a suck on a joint one night and vomited my lungs out for the next four hours. I feel a bit the same way tonight. Too much of the stuff in the air, I reckon.’

  Cara was looking across the creek to the trees. ‘How could they hope to find one tiny little girl in that?’

  ‘They do. We had a two year old wander away from the caravan park recently. They found him curled up asleep beside a log. And . . . though I know it doesn’t help much right now . . . but if Raelene had any intention of harming your little girl, she would have done it where you’d find her. She left your dog where you’d find him. She did the same once to Trudy’s kitten – cut its throat and hung it on the clothes line by its tail.’

  Half a dozen cops walked in line in front of the van, clearing a pathway with their bodies.

  ‘A rotten job, being a copper,’ Georgie said. ‘I thought about doing it once.’

  ‘They’re all we’ve got between us and anarchy.’

  Silence then, and it continued too long. Someone had to break it.

  ‘I heard a good joke today,’ Georgie said. ‘Why do they bury dole bludgers in shallow graves?’

  Cara, in no mood for good jokes, shook her head.

  ‘So they can still get their hand out,’ Georgie said, then offered her cigarette packet.

  They lit two smokes from the one flame. The smoke might keep the buzzing mosquitoes at bay.

  ‘If nothing else is achieved out here, they’ll clean this place out tonight.’

  Whether they cleaned it out or not was of no account to Cara.

  You’ll keep, moll.

  Was he over there, watching her? Was Tracy over there, being eaten alive by mosquitoes? Cara had taken her to a barbeque at Peg Macy’s one night and Tracy had been covered with coin-sized mozzie bites for days.

  You’ll keep, moll.

  She had kept.

  A flashlight found her face. It swung to Georgie’s then back again. ‘What’s your business here?’ the torch bearer asked.

  ‘She’s the missing girl’s mother and I’m her cousin. And I’ve got a headache already without you shining that in my eyes.’

  Cara didn’t doubt Georgie’s headache. In the light from the torch she could see the bloody elastoplast placed over her brow minutes ago, the eye beneath it already closing.

  There’d always been more to Georgie Morrison than her face. The beam of light found her hair. With no rubber band to hold it, it hung round her shoulders.

  ‘Gina?’ the torch bearer asked.

  Georgie looked up at that name. Only one man had dared to call her Gina and lived to tell the tale. She shaded her good eye with a hand, attempting to see behind the light.

  ‘It’s me. Jack. Jack Thompson.’

  To Cara, he was just another middle-aged cop, balding, thickening around the waistline. Not to Georgie. She hadn’t spoken to him since ’59; she’d dodged him at the centenary party – or dodged his wife and boys. He had two; she’d seen a birth notice for his first in the newspaper.

  Thompson. Dianne and Jack are delighted to announce the safe arrival of John David, first grandson for Tom and Katie. Seven pounds, eight ounces.

  At the time it had given her the whisper of a heartache, but only for an instant, then she’d sent his parents a congratulation card.

  When she’d started studying with Shane Murphy, she’d thought about Jack, or about the son born to him, a son she might have produced with him. He was the only bloke she’d ever got close enough to to be in danger of reproducing.

  ‘How have you been?’ he asked. Same voice.

  ‘Currently concussed,’ she said. ‘Play your torch beam over the creek. I can feel them over there, watching me.’

  ‘They’re saying she was half-naked when she ran.’

  ‘If she’d been wearing a shirt, Jenny might have got a grip on her.’

  ‘What did she hit you with?’

  ‘Something hard.’

  ‘We’ve got a bunch of locals down your end of town, working their way through to here. One of the Halls said it’s not far.’

  ‘Teddy,’ Georgie said. ‘He knows the bush like the back of his hand.’

  They turned as a herd of women and kids started protesting about something.

  ‘There’s more kids than sheep out here these days,’ he said.

  ‘There’s more money in the breeding of them.’

  ‘Your wound is leaking.’ He played the torch beam again at her head. ‘You need it seen to.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘You’re not doing any good sitting down here.’

  ‘I am if she’s over there. The mozzies will be eating her alive.’

  ‘You didn’t see their car?’

  ‘I saw her and that’s all I saw. But they need wheels, or they wouldn’t have been trying to get Jenny’s.’

  *

  Joe Flanagan’s shed had given up a half-full four-gallon drum of petrol. Collins spilled a cupful in his haste to get it into his tank, but he got the car started before he heard the cops’ sirens. If he gave any thought to Raelene, it was to hope that they’d got the crazy bitch. She’d got him into this.

  He drove up the lane that led to the old Willama Road, a dirt track he’d ridden a few times on his bike. It offered him safe passage for twelve or fifteen miles, then fed out to the sealed bitumen highway.

  Melbourne 264 K

  Should have stayed in Melbourne. Had to get back there.

  To the left and right, the bitumen road looked clear. He made a right turn, and was rounding a bend when he saw a line of tail-lights ahead and a flash of blue light. The bastards had him boxed in. With no thought as to what might be behind, he did a handbrake U-turn and got his nose pointing back the other way.

  Back to the dirt track he went, cursing that mindless bitch. She’d found her kid’s address, or paid a cleaner to find it. Kill two birds with the
one stone, she’d said. He’d promised to get that moll.

  He turned left and turned his lights off. On this dead-flat bloody land, you could see forever at night. There was moon enough to see the road ahead. He was searching for a back route into Willama and came on one too fast. The car slewed in the dust as he made a sharp right turn onto a goat track that led vaguely north. He didn’t know it, and followed its wending way slowly, passing a few farm gates. He followed that track for what seemed like miles, each mile sucking up petrol he didn’t have. Hoped each curve of that bastard of a track would lead him to Willama. Plenty of cars there – or a bike – a big powerful bastard that would take him anywhere.

  The track dead-ended on Stock Route Road, half a mile from the mission bridge. The cops would be watching it.

  He’d never handled being boxed in. It sucked the breath out of him.

  He sat eyeing that strip of bitumen, the motor off, conserving his little petrol. He rolled a joint and thought of the warm beer he hadn’t bothered loading. Got the joint burning and inhaled a lungful of acrid smoke. Held it, held it long, while considering his options.

  Lie low with the blacks for a week or two. He’d done it before. They weren’t fond of cops.

  Or swim. He’d done that before, then caught a lift with a truckie.

  Needed the car, or what was in its glove box. It was plastic-wrapped; he might get it across dry.

  He started the motor and drove into the blacks’ settlement; drove by a group of them sitting in a dusty front yard around a campfire. The government had built them rows of small houses, with fences, but, like him, the blacks didn’t like being boxed in. Tonight he wanted to be black and free to sit with them, to pass around the flagon, then sleep where he fell.

  Two rose as his car crawled by. He kept on going. Blacks and grog wasn’t a good combination – unless you were supplying the grog.

  He parked in scrub beside the creek, and saw a larger mob drinking down by the water, the women as drunk and loud as the men. Locked the car, then left it to walk the few yards to where the build-up to the bridge began. Someone had complained about the name of that bridge. Blacks Bridge maybe, he thought. Settlement Bridge. Stood at the railing, staring across, seeking the bastards’ roadblock.

  Blinding lights of something coming across. A transport. It kept coming, unhindered. The bastards wouldn’t be interested in stopping vehicles heading in, just those heading out. Turned his back until the lights went by.

  Minutes later, a ute came through, overloaded with blacks. The general store, white-run, didn’t sell grog. Plenty of pubs in Willama did. If the cops were waiting on the far side, they would have pulled that ute over. There must have been a dozen clinging on it – though blacks were becoming the new untouchables to cops.

  Watched two more transports cross that bridge before one came from his end. That one he watched with interest. It kept going, its tail-lights disappearing into the forest on the far side. That truck made the decision for him.

  He walked back to his car. Committed to crossing that bridge, he planted his foot. If they were over there, he’d drive right through the bastards and go out in a blaze of glory. They weren’t locking him up again.

  He got across. No trail of tail-lights, no lights at all. He thought he’d done it.

  They were there, their car parked at an angle across his lane two hundred yards beyond the northern approach to the bridge. With too much speed to stop and no room to turn, he pushed the pedal to the floor and swerved around their puny barrier.

  An international truck carrying a load of half-grown calves got Dino Collins. It wasn’t travelling fast. The impact didn’t kill him, but it didn’t do him a lot of good either. They closed the Mission Bridge to traffic for an hour while they cut him out of the wreck.

  A WASTED LIFE

  Jack Thompson had driven up from Melbourne at midday. He’d arrived at Monk’s sometime after three and had been on his feet since. He was still on them, drinking poor coffee, when the news came through that they’d got Collins, that he’d been alone in the car, that no sign had been found of the missing child.

  The time now close to eleven, it was too late to be knocking on folk’s doors, though getting Collins might be reason enough to knock on Georgie’s. Seeing her sitting beside the creek, looking the same as when he’d left her, had jolted something hard inside him. His mother had once told him that you never get over your first love. He’d never got over Georgie, just given up on her. And he wasn’t sorry. He had a good life, a good wife, a nice house and two boys – hardly boys. Johnny was already taller than he. He wasn’t sorry, just suffering a mild case of delayed first-love concussion.

  If he’d thought about Georgie these last years, he’d seen her married and gone from Woody Creek; had seen her aged too. Where he’d been, time had moved too fast. This place appeared to have stood still since ’59.

  Ten past eleven when he got to the house. It dragged him back a year or two. He’d been in on the birth of the deformed construction. The chicken-wire fence was down, as it had been down during the days of the working bee. Had no lights been burning, he would have turned the car around, but every light was on, indoors and out. He parked beside the ute he’d watched driven away from the commune and got out, opened the chicken-wire gate.

  Same sign over the same old door. He’d been at Georgie’s side when she’d painted that length of leftover floorboard white, then added her black block letters. He’d helped screw it to the wall above her front door. She hadn’t liked what they’d done to her grandmother’s rooms.

  The door was closed tonight. He knocked twice before a bolt was drawn and the door scraped open, over cement.

  Harry Hall standing there, long and skinny, as unchanged as Georgie. Jack had seen a fair bit of Harry and his wife back in ’59.

  ‘You’ve found the little girl,’ Harry said, his voice low.

  ‘No. No. We got Collins though, out at the Mission Bridge.’ He offered his hand. ‘Jack Thompson. You knew me when I had a bit of hair and carried a few less stone.’

  Woody Creek had known a lot of cops since ’59, but Harry remembered Georgie’s first and only boyfriend. He led him through The Abortion to the kitchen, to where Georgie sat, to where Jen Hooper stood, little changed, to where Elsie stifled a yawn, very changed. Then he saw a second, older Jen Hooper sitting beside Jim.

  ‘Tracy?’ the one who looked like Jen but wasn’t said.

  Same posh voice as the cousin he’d met in the dark, the missing baby’s foster mother. Obviously some sort of close relative of Georgie’s mother. She was taller, but had her hair.

  He shook hands with the older version, shook Jim’s hand, while telling them there’d been no word yet on the little girl.

  ‘Collins had a head-on with a loaded transport and they reckon he was going like the clappers. They say he could have spinal injuries. He lost a lot of blood.’

  No one cared about Collins or his loss of blood.

  ‘Raelene wasn’t with him?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘No sign of her either.’

  The foster mother had lost interest. She sat, a makeshift sheeting sling supporting her right arm.

  ‘The fact that the little one wasn’t in the car is good news,’ he said, wanting to offer her a little hope. ‘It took them an hour to cut him out of it.’

  Georgie’s one good eye was looking at him. Her left eye had closed. The lump of bloody plaster he’d seen out at Monk’s had been replaced by strips of white plaster, pink plaster now, the wound still oozing pink fluid. A roll of toilet paper on the table before her. Plastic bag of used pink tissue beside it.

  ‘That needs stitching,’ he said.

  ‘We can’t tell her anything,’ Jenny said.

  They were drinking coffee. Jack wouldn’t have refused a mug had it been offered. It wasn’t. They wanted him out there, searching for Tracy. He wanted to look at Georgie.

  ‘I’m off until daylight,’ he said. ‘I’ll drive you down to the hospita
l. It looks as if your cousin needs to go down there too.’

  ‘I’ll drive down in the morning,’ Georgie said.

  ‘The sooner it’s stitched, the less of a scar it will leave.’

  ‘I’ve already told her that two dozen times,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Georgie said.

  She wasn’t leaving Cara, and Cara wasn’t going anywhere until they found Tracy.

  Robert’s car wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. Along with the corner window, one headlight had been smashed, and the radiator rammed back onto the fan. It was gone from the yard now, towed into town by Teddy Hall.

  Margot was in bed. She’d moved faster than they’d seen her move for a while when Teddy had walked in. He hadn’t been inside that house in ten years, but he’d had a coffee with them tonight before looking at the cars. Jenny’s he’d pronounced ‘driveable’. Its driver’s side door had been brutalised and its boot was now roped shut, but they’d built those old cars solid.

  ‘Coffee?’ Georgie asked Jack.

  ‘It would go down well,’ he said.

  Jenny made it. ‘That’s the last of your milk, Georgie.’

  Elsie had milk. Harry went across the paddock to fetch two bottles. They planned to sit drinking coffee until daylight.

  *

  Old Joe Flanagan, or his dogs, broke up their night watch before Jack had emptied his mug.

  Joe owned a pair of red kelpies and the buggers had been barking on and off all night. They rarely barked at night. Joe had taught them not to. They’d barked while he and his missus had watched an old movie, and when it ended and his missus turned the television off, he’d gone out back to shut the barking buggers up.

  ‘Lay down, you pair of mongrels,’ he roared, and when his roar failed to settle them, he knew that some bastard was about.

  He and his missus had little to do with anyone in town, and nothing to do with their nearest neighbours. They knew that something big was going on over there tonight. Rarely saw any light from that house. Tonight he could see plenty glinting between the trees.

  He’d had two cops knocking at his door ten minutes after the movie had started. They hadn’t told him why, but they’d wanted to search his outbuildings – and were still probably around somewhere. The dogs would get rid of them.