by Sue Williams
I turned to Brad, who was holding his head in his hands. Oh, for God’s sake. I kicked the phone table, stubbed my toe.
‘I’m going out,’ I told Brad in my coldest voice. ‘In your car. Don’t you worry, Bradley, Dean won’t arrest you. Tell him you tried to stop me. Tell him I fought you off.’
I sailed out with as much dignity as I could.
I headed off in Brad’s tiny car towards Perry Lake. I don’t travel that way too often, not these days. A million years ago Piero and I used to drive along this road on our day off. We’d come along here in the early morning light. He’d bring his camera, Piero always had his camera. Some of his photos were published in magazines. We’d head along this road and watch the sun rise, its glow a pink glaze over the rows of slashed wheat. Piero would take endless shots of backlit fields. We were going to travel all around Australia. While I gazed at the pink sky, I’d think about all those places we’d be going. I’d get that lifting feeling in my chest. The one that says: this is life, and you know, it’s not too bad.
I belted along the road in Brad’s shaking car, hot air blasting through the vents, drying my tears. Yep, that lifting feeling; I hadn’t felt it in a while.
Slowing down, I peered, blinking, at Ernie’s shack. No sign of Noel’s van. Then, ahead, by the side of the road, I caught sight of my car.
I parked behind it, got out and looked around. No Aurora. My keys were in the ignition, where I’d left them. I checked through the car. No bloodstains or hacked-up slashes on the seats. No Mona in the boot.
‘Brad?’ I said into my phone.
‘Mum! I was just about to call you.’ He sounded suspiciously cheerful. ‘Perfect timing. Dean’s just arrived. Look, I’ve explained about your car. It’s all straightened out. I’ll put him on.’
I won’t bore you with the details of that drab-as-a-bastard phone call, of how hard I tried to explain that, yes, my car really had been stolen, only briefly, but yes, it really had; how the disapproval oozed from Dean’s deep voice, over Brad’s groaning noises in the background.
Any normal cop would have been relieved my car had turned up.
‘I don’t like this, Mum, but you’re really leaving me with little choice. You’re either doing this deliberately, in which case I have to arrest you. Or,’ he paused.
‘Or what?’
‘You need help. In which case I have to get you to a doctor.’
‘Come on, son. Don’t be so bloody ridiculous. You know, your father would have known to forgive a little mistake,’ I said. ‘He knew mistakes can happen. And someday soon, Dean, you’re going to find out you’ve made one or two yourself.’ I hung up.
I wasn’t waiting around to be arrested or strapped down and subjected to some painful mental probe. I had serious matters to sort out. Noel and his moist-wipes. I tried starting my car. No go. Out of petrol.
I got back into Brad’s car and steamed along the bitumen. It was true, what I’d said about Piero, how he knew about mistakes. Dean was a bit of a mistake himself, not that I’d ever tell him that. He stopped a whole lot of things from happening in our lives, Piero’s and mine. Especially mine.
Motherhood’s a special joy, of course. But sometimes joy’s not everything it’s cracked up to be.
I took the turn and drove along the track to Perry Lake, winding among the spinifex and buloke pines. Bingo. Noel’s van was parked beside the track, in the shade. Grabbing Brad’s binoculars, I scanned the place. No sign of Noel. No sign of Bubbles either. I crept up to the van, peered in through the window of the sliding door, cupped my hands around my face to shade my eyes. The van was full of shelves and was surprisingly tidy. Maybe I’d been wrong, maybe Noel was a moist-wipe type of person after all.
On the lower shelf was a small fridge, a carton of food and a cardboard box filled with scrunched-up newspaper. Above them, a bag of clothing and a plastic crate piled with ropes and leather belts with metal spikes attached. Next to the belts another glint of metal caught my attention. A small curved saw, like a short, toothed scimitar. Not that I’ve had in-depth experience with scimitars. So was Noel some kind of bondage freak? A grey S&M nomad?
I stepped back, wiping the sweat from the back of my neck. I fanned my dress. There wasn’t a sound anywhere, the only things moving were the ants swarming around the leaves at my feet. Everything else had shut up shop in the heat. The salt around Perry Lake shimmered in the distance.
The moist-wipe question wasn’t resolved, not exactly, but I wasn’t keen to stick around. And I didn’t want to run into Bubbles. I moved towards Brad’s car.
Hearing a sharp cry behind me, I whirled around. There it was again, way over in the trees, beyond the van. I skulked towards the van, hunching down beside it, like a cop in one of those hostage-liberation operations. Holding up Brad’s binoculars, I scanned through the trees, my eyes adjusting to the gloom. Two people were standing in a clearing, a heap of shopping bags on the ground between them. A black dog stood with them, not obviously attacking anyone. I ticked the people off my list: one tall skinny bloke with wild white hair and a beard; one girl with messy blonde hair and a floaty apricot dress. The dress was looking the worse for wear. They were standing near a third person, who was handcuffed to a tree. He was a smaller, weaselly bloke in a torn grey suit. Clarence.
So were they all into some bondage thing? Is that why Clarence had said his book would be a bestseller, did it involve peculiar porn? Clarence jiggled his leg, cried out again. Well, anyone could have told him bondage would be a problem in the Mallee. Clarence and his cuffs had met up with a crowd of bull ants.
Bubbles looked my way, sniffed the air. She stiffened, then took off; coming towards me. Long, heavy strides, faster than a bolting horse. She barked, strangled gargles, sounding more like an unhinged mother bear than any normal dog. I scurried towards Brad’s car with his binoculars swinging heavily around my neck, her galloping thumps closing in behind me. I could feel the dog’s hot breath against my legs, hear her teeth clacking as she took empty snapping bites near my feet.
I made it to the car, grabbed the door and flung it open. I was mid-leap when Bubbles got my leg. She clamped on and shook it, like she was planning on worrying it right off. I screamed and held onto the car door, then turned and whacked her with Brad’s binoculars. They cracked against her head. She fell back with a whimper and I jumped inside the car and slammed the door. Then I screamed some more.
I checked my throbbing leg and saw it was oozing blood onto the floor. I sucked in a deep breath. Started the car with a shaky hand.
Bubbles raised herself off the ground. She hurled herself at the window with a heavy thump, all black hair and teeth and slobber. My hands shook harder. Most of me was shaking as the car lurched forward and shot out of there, dust swirling in a thick red cloud behind it.
Racing home, I passed Dean’s divvy van coming the other way. He pulled sharpish off the road, gravel flying, then turned and followed me. I sped up. I didn’t have time to be arrested. The blood from my leg was seeping onto Brad’s floor. Dean could wait until I put some disinfectant on it.
Dean surged behind, tailgating. I sped up until the engine whined. He pulled out beside me, waved wildly, wound down his window, shouted to pull over. I ignored him. I knew he wouldn’t turn his siren on. He wouldn’t want anyone to see him heartlessly pursuing his injured mother in a high-speed chase. He tucked back in behind and followed me home.
Finally, I pulled into my driveway and stopped the car, Dean’s car sliding in after me. I limped in through the back door in my tattered dress, a good chunk of it flapping bloodily around my leg. I stared straight ahead, my most dignified look.
‘Jesus, Mum. What happened?’ Brad’s face turned white.
I half-collapsed into a chair. Dean walked in behind me, glowering and sat down.
Feeling faint, I gabbled out a brief summary, Noel, Bubbles, the bite. Best to fill Brad in before I passed out.
Brad dabbed some Dettol neat onto my leg. It st
ung like hell and I kicked a bit. He had a few things to say along the lines of don’t-you-bloody-kick-me while he dabbed, interspersed with a hissing mini-rant to Dean, you-should-bloody-do-something-about-this-instead-of-leaving-everything-to-me.
I wouldn’t have minded a word with them about all that weird stuff in Noel’s van, the spikes, the mini-scimitar and Clarence’s handcuffs, but I wasn’t feeling entirely well.
While Brad wiped my leg and went on with his rant to Dean, I shut my eyes. I tried picturing Miss Marple and her nephew, Raymond. Raymond wasn’t one to go on; he was the supportive type. The kind that might thank a person for finding Clarence and Aurora and for short-circuiting a huge police operation to locate her car. He’d listen politely to her description of a mini-scimitar; maybe he’d look it up in some reference book. He might even give his mature female relative, at risk of swooning any minute from a painful dog bite, a little spot of sympathy.
Dean sat in silence through Brad’s tirade, arms folded across his chest, then said, ‘You’d better take her to Casualty in Hustle.’ His voice was low.
Hard to say why they were acting as if I wasn’t there. Surely I was pretty noticeable since I was bleeding all over the floor.
‘Dog bites can be nasty,’ said Dean. ‘She could end up with an infection.’
Infection? I tensed up. What diseases do dogs carry? Into my head they all surged, in one big, unwelcome crowd. Brucellosis. Diarrhoea. Tetanus. Rabies.
Dean stood up. ‘I’m heading out to have a word with this Noel.’
Well, finally. ‘And Clarence was in handcuffs,’ I said. ‘They’re probably making some weird illegal porn.’
Dean looked at Brad. ‘While you’re there, you’d better,’ he gave a little nod, one of those nods that are meant to be all hush-hush-significant, ‘get her head checked out as well.’ He strode out to his car.
I struggled into the passenger seat of Brad’s car, careful of the leg. Despite the pain and nausea, I felt surprisingly at peace. Dean was onto this moist-wipe business now, he’d sort it out. And he’d been almost sympathetic, worrying about a possible infection. I rustled up a smile and gave him a wave as he drove away.
‘You know anything about the signs of rabies, Brad?’ I snapped on my seatbelt. I was pretty sure there was foam involved. At the mouth. Was that awful dog foaming at the mouth? All I could recall was teeth.
‘No rabies in Australia, Mum. There’s lyssavirus, but that’s in bats.’
‘Could it pass to a human through a bat-bitten dog?’
‘Dunno. Possibly.’ He got in the car. Turning the ignition, he started up a briefing on lyssavirus, how long it takes to incubate, all the convulsions and delirium, how long you take to die. ‘In atrocious pain, probably.’
I stared out the window, trying not to think of all the ways a dog might meet an infected bat, of the reasons the bat might bite the dog. An angry bat; a hungry bat. A bat could have a lot of reasons.
A road train overtook us, the blast of air juddering against the car.
Brad started up on his favourite desert rant, the one where he lists the two hundred endangered Mallee species. ‘The place is dying, Mum.’ He thumped the steering wheel. ‘Once the last desperate hangers-on have left it’ll just turn into one big empty salt plain.’
Did he consider me one of those hangers-on? I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. It’s the potential of the place that gets to you. What it could be, if it rained.
We crossed a dry river bed. A kestrel landed in a paddock, its feet extended. Maybe the weather was getting to Brad. It was headache weather, oppressive, like it wants to rain but can’t remember how.
I told Brad about the weird stuff in Noel’s van, those spikes and the mini-scimitar, Clarence and his handcuffs. ‘So what’s Noel up to with that lot?’
Brad looked at me, his face had a worn-down expression, like he’d packed on some extra years today. ‘Well, it’s obvious,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a choice of three.’ He gave me a little list:
One, the mini-scimitar was an actual mini-scimitar, used for slashing unarmoured opponents either mounted or on foot.
Two, the spikes were used for tree climbing and the mini-scimitar was some sort of handsaw used by an arborist for pruning trees, or maybe by a scientist collecting tree samples.
Three, they could all be tools used for some weird sex game.
Options one and three were fairly unappealing. Option two seemed too sensible for Noel somehow; too law-abiding. Anyway, not much call for an arborist around here.
‘And surely a reputable scientist type of person wouldn’t look so scruffy,’ I said. ‘He’d drive a natty car provided by the uni, neat logo down the side, not that rusting van.’
He snorted. ‘You met many scientists, Mum?’ Then he shrugged. ‘Look, he’s probably an environmentalist. He’ll be doing something useful for the planet, maybe bird research.’
‘Without binoculars? And what’s an environmentalist doing with handcuffs?’
A long wait and three injections later, I was declared dog-infection-free. Leaving the hospital, I spotted a parked ute, dusty orange in Hustle’s main street. Terry got out and started limping along the street, staring at the footpath.
‘Terry,’ I called out. He turned. He still had that bruise on his cheek.
‘What happened to your leg, Cass?’
‘Oh, a minor accident,’ I waved a careless hand. ‘I see you’ve got them, then?’
He gazed at me, an intent type of gazing. Like there was nothing else around to see. I didn’t mind it at all. I moved a little closer.
‘Sorry?’ he said.
‘Clarence and Aurora. I see you’ve got their ute. From Ernie’s shack.’
Terry expelled his breath. ‘Wow. You’re one observant woman.’
I smiled.
Brad folded his arms and stared at the road, suddenly fascinated by the bitumen.
‘Nah, that ute’s mine. Had it years,’ said Terry. ‘Your little Corolla out of action?’ He was looking at Brad’s car.
I explained about the vandalised lock.
He stood closer. I could feel his warmth. ‘You need your vehicle fixed, Cass. A woman needs good access to her vehicle. Want me to fix it?’ He looked into my face and smiled. What would he be like to kiss?
I was out of breath and words for a moment. Pull yourself together, Cass. ‘That’d be terrific. Suit you to pop over sometime?’
Terry nodded, glanced at his watch. ‘I can swing over tomorrow night. OK?’
I nodded. He turned and limped away.
‘I just haven’t had the time, Mum. Anyway, it’ll give you a chance to see him again. You fancy that bloke, don’t you.’
‘What a peculiar thing to say, Bradley.’ I folded my arms, stared at the wall behind him. It featured a colourful mural of the Mallee Farm Days. Tractors, smiling children. No mention of how Hustle stole those Days from Rusty Bore, of course.
‘Yes, you do. And it’s about time you started seeing someone. Just don’t go making a fool of yourself.’
‘Seeing someone? As if I could find the time. No, my interest in Terry is purely Mona-related.’
His mouth twitched.
‘Yep, I’m like one of those Mexican whiptail lizards you’re always on about. She doesn’t have time for males, remember? She has her little lizard kids without him. Some special bio-whatever-genesis.’
‘Parthenogenesis.’
‘That’s me. Partho-woman.’
‘I’m sure you needed Dad for us.’
‘Your father was different, Brad.’
‘OK. Sorry I brought it up.’ He got back into the car.
I limped over, got in, shut the door.
Brad started the car and looked over. ‘You’ll be careful, won’t you?’
Brad, the big expert on life. He started the car, hunched over the steering wheel, staring ahead, not speaking. Not one single update on extinctions, not even as we passed the miles of shimmering salt. He was like one of th
ose Alaskan caterpillars he’s told me about, all frozen and inert in winter, before they bound into life in spring. He’ll be right, I told myself, Brad’ll spring to life. When he’s ready.
With the worry about rabies-related foam no longer hanging over me, I could focus properly on the Mona business. ‘I need your help tomorrow, Brad. We’ll close the shop.’
‘What?’
‘We’re going to Muddy Soak.’
‘Muddy Soak? Listen, you need to stay at home and look after that leg, Mum. Anyway, we can’t close the shop. There’ll be customers queuing all along the footpath.’
I liked his optimism. I couldn’t remember when we last had an actual queue, possibly not since we lost the Farm Days.
‘Good point. OK, you can mind the shop. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine on my own. I’ve got a plan. I’ll head to Hocking Hall. Return the briefcase, ask some questions.’
‘Jesus. Just take that briefcase to Sergeant Monaghan.’
‘I’m not taking anything to Monaghan. He was bloody rude. If he wants the case, he can ask. Politely.’
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. ‘Mum. Can’t you just be a normal mother for a change? You’ve got to stop putting yourself in dangerous situations. You don’t want to run into that dog again. This time it might kill you.’
‘Don’t you worry, son, I’ll be staying right away from Bubbles. Look, that briefcase is important, I’m sure of it.’ We passed a row of dead kangaroos hanging from a fence.
‘And anyway,’ I said, ‘life is full of danger. I mean, a person could die any old day at home, from something completely uninteresting. Heart failure, heat stress, a stroke or anything, just while she’s cooking fish. Having done not a single thing with her life. No one wants to look back on all this and think, I should have done more, I could have done more, now, do they?’
‘When?’ he said.
‘When what?’
‘When would this nameless person be thinking that? After she’s had the stroke?’
‘Yes, quite possibly,’ I said. ‘On her deathbed, waiting for the second, decisive stroke. Anyway, my point is…’ I paused while I fossicked for my point, ‘…I’m doing this for the populace of Rusty Bore.’
