by Tony Birch
‘What sort of place is it?’
‘A big servo.’
‘Do you think they’d be open and have food there? I’m real hungry and we’ve got no biscuits left.’
The lights inside the shop were on. There were no trucks or cars parked out the front. I could see someone sitting inside, at a counter. The highway was empty. I pointed across the road.
‘We’ll cross here. See that dumpster?’
She crawled alongside me. ‘What’s a dumpster?’
‘Jesus,’ I snapped. ‘That giant fucken rubbish bin. It’s red and yellow.’
She dropped her head and whispered, ‘Yes.’
I felt bad for yelling at her. ‘I’m sorry.’
I patted her on the head. It was drenched. ‘Sorry. I really am, Rachel.’
I took the backpack off. ‘When we cross the road, you take the backpack with you and wait for me behind that bin while I go inside.’
‘Why can’t I come in with you?’
‘In case they come by afterwards, Ray and Limbo, and ask if a boy and a girl have been in. I don’t want them to know it’s us. You get it?’
‘I get it.’
‘You can’t ask any more questions, Rache. You have to trust me and do everything I say from now on. I’ll go in and buy us some food. You hide behind the bin and stay there until I come for you. Whatever happens, you stay there. If I have to take off for any reason, if anyone comes after me, I’ll hide until I can come back for you. As long as you stay put, I’ll be back. Don’t come out until you hear me whistle.’
‘Can I ask one question?’
‘You just did.’
‘Well, another one?’
I folded my arms and waited. The rain had soaked through my top and was running down my back.
‘If they have hot chips in there can you get me some?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And if not, can I have a hot dog?’
‘Yeah. A hot dog. And chips.’
We slid down a muddy bank and crouched down while I listened for traffic. The wind had dropped and there wasn’t a sound, and there were no headlights in either direction. I took Rachel by the hand and sprinted across the highway. We ran past the bowsers, ducked underneath the shop window and ran to the bin. I handed Rachel the backpack and told her to wedge herself between the bin and a brick wall. She couldn’t fit. I took the backpack off her, threw it behind the bin and told her to crawl in after it.
I couldn’t see her at all, but could hear her heavy breathing. I poked my head into the darkness.
‘You stay as still and quiet as you can. I’ll come and fetch you in a bit. Listen for my whistle. The one I make that sounds like a bird.’
I walked into the shop. A blast of warm air hit me in the face. A fat kid in a black and white striped beanie and pimples over his chin was sitting behind the counter. He looked up at me from a magazine. I’d brought a puddle of water and muddy footsteps inside with me. He looked through the window and out to the highway, like he was surprised it was raining.
‘Hey. It’s wet out there. You need some help?’
I didn’t want him getting a good look at me and kept my head down. ‘I’m getting some food. I can help myself.’
He went back to his magazine.
I picked up two packets of potato chips, some chocolate bars, a carton of orange juice, and a packet of mixed lollies. I headed to where the hot food was kept. There were no chips or hotdogs and the pie warmer had been turned off for the night. I took two pies out of the warmer, put them in the microwave sitting next to it, and blasted them. When I took them out they were so hot they nearly burned my hands. I kept my eyes on the floor as I walked to the counter.
‘Is that the lot?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You want this stuff in a bag?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, noticing some picnic rugs in a big plastic tub. They were ‘on special’ at $29.99. I put one on the counter.
‘I’ll take this as well.’
He leaned forward so he could get a better look at me. ‘Where you from? Not from round here. Where’s your car?’
‘We’re down the road a bit,’ I said, without looking up at him. ‘Our car. It broke down. My old man’s looking at it now. Sent me up here to get us something to eat while we’re waiting.’
He put the food in a plastic bag and scanned the rug for a price. ‘What’s this for?’
‘Just in case he can’t get it fixed and we have to sleep in the back for the night.’
I took the hundred out of my pocket and handed it to him. He held it up to the light and checked it out.
‘That’s real money, all right. It came straight out of my dad’s wallet.’
I don’t know if he was just being a smart arse, but he took another long look at the note before he finally put it in the till and handed me the change.
‘Try keeping yourself dry.’
I walked outside and opened the bag of food, pretending I was searching through it, while I looked back at the shop from the corner of my eye. He’d already started reading again. I slipped into the shadows, crawled to the bin and whistled to Rachel. When she didn’t move I whistled again, a little louder. I crawled along the ground and stuck my head in the dark space. I could just make her out. She was sitting at the far end, looking at me.
‘What are you doing, Rachel? Didn’t you hear me whistle?’
‘Yeah. I heard. But I thought it might be a trick. You could have been somebody else. I heard Ray whistle like that one time.’
I was about to reach in and grab the backpack when I heard a car engine. I squeezed in alongside her and listened as it drove in and pulled up outside the shop. It was the Camaro again. No mistake. I heard a car door slam, twice, footsteps and the jingling of Ray’s cowboy boots. Then nothing. Everything went quiet again, except for the pounding of my heart and Rachel breathing in and out as heavy as a steam train.
I crawled along the ground to the end of the dumpster and stuck my head around the corner. The car was empty. If Gwen was in it, she had to be lying across the back seat. Or maybe they’d put her back in the boot. I could see the kid at the counter, but not much more. He was talking to somebody, most likely Ray. I crawled back to Rachel.
‘We’re stuck here. We’ll have to wait till they go.’
I put my head between my knees, closed my eyes and tried to remember the words of one of Pop’s prayers. I couldn’t think of more than a few words, so I made the sign of the cross, like I’d seen him do and said ‘Amen’ under my breath.
I heard the Camaro gun back to life. The vibration shook the dumpster as they drove back onto the highway. I grabbed the backpack and handed Rachel the rug.
‘You’ve got to carry something.’
We crawled out from behind the bin and ran back across the highway. When we tried climbing the same spot we’d slid down earlier, the ground was too wet and slippery for us to get back up. We either had to stay where we were or walk along the highway.
‘We can’t make it, Rache. We’ll have to keep to the road for a bit, until we find another spot to climb. If a car comes by, we’ll lie in the ditch here on the side of the road.’
‘But it’s full of water.’
‘We can’t get much wetter than we are already.’
We walked on and tried climbing up the bank at other places. They were just as steep. Each time I tried boosting Rachel up she slid back and crashed into me. I tried myself but couldn’t make it either. I fell into the ditch, up to my arse in water. I was picking myself up when I thought I saw something move behind a tree across the highway. I put my finger to my mouth.
‘Jesse, what is it?’ Rache whispered.
‘Nothing. Keep still.’
I heard the sound of another car engine,
heading our way, on the opposite side of the road. I was pretty sure it wasn’t the Camaro but got Rachel to crouch in the ditch anyway. The headlights of a van lit up the tree. I couldn’t see anything moving. I must have spooked myself. A battered milk van passed us and turned into the truck stop.
‘Come on, Rachel. We’ll find another place to climb.’
I was almost enjoying splashing through the puddles when I saw another tree move, across the road a little further along. I walked on until we were directly across the highway from the tree, stopped again and took a closer look. Limbo suddenly stepped out from behind the tree. When he smiled at me through the rain and pointed a finger at us I wanted to scream out and run at the same time, but couldn’t move.
Rachel was chanting ‘Jesse, Jesse, Jesse’ over and over again. ‘Jesse, let’s go.’ I was stuck to the spot like glue. I had the loaded pack on my back and was also carrying the bag of food. If I dropped the lot maybe I could outrun Limbo. But I wasn’t about to give up the money or leave Rachel on the side of the road, where he could grab her.
I heard the sound of another engine behind me, quickly getting louder. I looked back along the highway. A truck was rounding the bend, cutting through the sheet of rain. It was big and heavy and moving fast. It had dirty yellow eyes, just like the truck in the nightmare I’d had.
Limbo took a couple of steps onto the road. He ran his hands through his wet hair then rubbed them together. He looked like he was about to sprint across the highway after us.
I tried keeping calm. ‘Rache. When I yell “run”, you take off as fast as you can.’
She was watching Limbo just as closely as me. ‘Where to, Jesse? I’m scared.’
‘Straight ahead, until you find a place where you can run back into the bush.’
‘And if he catches up to us?’
‘He can’t keep hold of both of us. I’ll fight him and you run.’
‘Not without you, I won’t.’
‘Be quiet and be ready to run!’
I looked over my shoulder. The truck was about to swallow us.
‘Run, Rachel, run!’
As soon as I started running Limbo took off too. I broke into a sprint, and tried dragging Rachel with me, but she fell.
‘Jesse . . . wait.’
I turned to pick her up just as Limbo bolted across the road. He was quick, like a hungry cat chasing a feed. He would have got us too, I reckon, if he hadn’t slipped on the wet bitumen. The truck’s horn howled. Limbo got to his knees, got in the headlights, just as the truck smashed into him and threw his body into the air. I heard a thump, and then a groan from Limbo’s body as it was dumped on the side of the road up ahead.
The truck didn’t brake at all. It didn’t slow down or stop. As quick as it had shown up on the highway it vanished into the mist with the rain kicking off its heavy tyres.
I put my arms around Rachel’s waist and got her to her feet.
‘What happened?’
‘It got him.’
‘What did?’
‘The truck.’
Limbo was in a ditch up ahead of us, lying on his back. His legs twitched for a bit and then he went still. I told Rachel to stay behind me. I walked on and looked down at him. His face had been smashed to pieces and I could hardly recognise him. The front of his head was split open like a watermelon, his nose had shifted to the side of his face and the teardrop tattoo under his eye was missing. A piece of metal from the truck was sticking out of his chest. I jumped back when he coughed and spewed some blood onto his face. It was the grossest thing I’d ever seen. Worse than any horror film. I didn’t feel sorry for Limbo, but it didn’t stop me shaking.
‘Is he dead?’ Rachel called out to me, without moving any closer. ‘He sounds alive.’
‘He’ll be dead soon. Cover your eyes and don’t look. It’s real bad.’
She came and stood next to me. ‘No. I want to see him. He’s a bad man.’ She took a quick look at him and covered her eyes. ‘You’re right. I don’t want to see.’
I heard another car, looked up and spotted headlights on the opposite side of the highway.
‘Let’s go.’
We scrambled over some rocks behind us and ran into the bush. I looked back. The car pulled up across from Limbo’s body. It was Ray.
‘Keep running, Rache.’
I couldn’t see where I was going but could feel myself moving downhill. Rachel’s hand slipped from mine. I called to her over my shoulder to catch up but couldn’t see her in the dark. My head smashed into a low tree branch, I slid further downhill and slammed against a rock. I could hear a buzzing in my ears as I fell into a deep hole.
The rain was pelting my face when I came to. Something warm ran down my cheek, onto my neck. I wiped my hand across it, stuck my fingers in my mouth and tasted blood. Rachel crawled on top of me and wrapped my face in her hands.
‘You have to wake up, Jesse. I’ve got the food bag you dropped and I found us a cubbyhole.’
‘A cubbyhole?’
She helped me up. The ground under my feet was spinning. She took hold of my hand and led me around the other side of the boulder I’d crashed into.
‘See? There’s a cave here. And it’s dry.’
I couldn’t stand in the cave without my head hitting the roof. I sat down, slipped off the backpack and took a long drink of water from one of the bottles inside. The cave mightn’t have been the safest place to be, with Ray driving around looking for us, but I couldn’t go any further. I was cold and exhausted. I pulled one arm out of my wet t-shirt sleeve and tried to work it off, over my head.
‘We have to get our wet clothes off, Rache.’
‘But I don’t want to take my clothes off. What if somebody comes?’
‘Don’t be stupid. Nobody’s coming. Anyway, if you don’t take your clothes off you’ll freeze and die.’
‘Well, I’m not taking my undies off.’
‘Are they wet?’
‘They might be.’
‘Please yourself.’
We laid our clothes on the cave floor to dry. I tore the plastic wrapping off the picnic rug and put it over us. I took the pies out of the bag. They were squashed from having been dropped but were still warm. We ate them, shared the bottle of orange juice and finished off the meal with some lollies.
Rachel was a little spooked. She tried to keep her mind off it by talking like mad. One minute she was telling me how she was going to decorate the Christmas tree next year at Pop’s and the next her head fell on my shoulder as she nodded off. I sat with my back against the wall listening to noises outside the cave. It had stopped raining. Just before I fell asleep I heard a siren somewhere out on the highway.
That night I had a nightmare about Limbo. He was chasing me, not across the highway, or through the bush, but through the farmhouse we’d shared with Jon Dempsey. He had the whip that belonged to the blackfella, Magic, and he was coming for me, across the front yard, with his two vicious dogs behind him, barking and howling like crazy. I was trying to run as fast as I could but my legs wouldn’t work properly and I was going up and down on the one spot. I got to the front gate just as Limbo was about to grab me. Old Magic was sitting on the fence, holding his belly and laughing.
‘Don’t you worry, Yella Fella,’ he said. ‘A good beltin does you real good.’
I woke up early in the morning, my face pushed against the floor of the cave. I freed an arm from underneath me, shoved my hand down the front of my underpants and felt for the roll of notes. It was still there. I sat up and touched my forehead above my left eye. It felt swollen and crusted with dried blood. I looked across at Rachel. She was lying with her eyes wide open, looking up at the roof of the cave. I followed her eyes. There was a drawing of a fat-bellied man with a small head. Two small animals were standing next to hi
m.
‘See the picture?’ she asked. ‘What do you think it is?’
‘I don’t know. It looks old, though.’
She pointed at one of the animals. ‘This one is a dog.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Your eye is all black, Jesse. And there’s a cut on it. You better wash it. Or you’ll get poisoned.’
I got Rachel to pour some water into my cupped hands, splashed it in my face and tried rubbing the dried blood away.
‘Is it gone?’
‘Not all of it. Let me do it.’
She poured more water onto the dirty singlet she had on, stood in front of me and dabbed at the swollen cut while I looked at her belly button.
‘The black eye’s still there, but it’s cleaner.’
Our clothes weren’t exactly dry but we put them on anyway. We spread the rug out on the cave floor, ate a packet of chips each and finished off the orange juice. Rachel looked up at the painting again while she was eating.
‘Do you think it means something, the picture?’
‘Yeah. It means we’d better take off or a man with a pair of crazy dogs is going to chase us.’
I put the leftover food in the backpack, rolled up the picnic rug, tied it and handed it to Rachel. She tucked it under her arm.
‘Where we going?’
‘We have to get back to the road and take a look. I’ll make up my mind then.’
‘Won’t that get us into trouble? Because of . . .’
‘We couldn’t be in much worse trouble. Come on, let’s go and take a look.’
We walked along a narrow dirt track, away from the cave. The climb was steep and tired us out. I looked across at Rachel every few steps, wondering when she’d start complaining. She only asked me to stop when she saw a sign on the side of the track. It told the story of the painting in the cave and how Aboriginal spirits had made the land. One of the spirits went into the sky and became an eagle, while another one turned himself and his family into the night stars to protect the earth, so the sign said.
Rachel read aloud as she ran a finger over the words. She was a better reader than me.
