The Town

by Shaun Prescott

  How could he possibly know, I asked, if he had never been to the city, or even another town? In a new place he might form another band and potentially become famous. He could sing songs about being a bus driver in a disappearing town. There aren’t songs already about that, I said. To my knowledge there are no songs about this town at all. Why couldn’t he be the pioneer of songs about the town? People might warm to them, now that it had disappeared. He could even channel the moods he had discovered in the music of The Out of Towners. But he said he’d already tried to copy The Out of Towners’ music, but never with any success. When he played in their style it sounded like music created by a child, even though he had more experience playing music than any of them. No matter what he did, he could not reproduce the sadness of their simple music. Even though his life had grown sad, he was just not able to.

  Tom only wanted to make music that recognised the town wasn’t what it used to be, but he wondered: why should there be new music about that? It would do no one any favours, he said, and anyway, he was certain it was impossible to do it deliberately. It happened naturally: even happy songs, completely unrelated to the town, composed abroad in state-of-the-art studios, contain the message that the town isn’t what it used to be. Sadness was the fate of every song.

  He had once tried to deliberately write the saddest song of all time, but it only sounded like the most pathetic song of all time. And anyway, there was no chance it would ever be heard. The reason there are no songs about the town, he said, is that the town isn’t anything anymore. It’s just a place where lots of people happen to live. People have thought for a long time that the town was unique, in ways they could never articulate. But it isn’t.

  Back when Tom was still playing gigs he thought he might one day become a pioneer of the town’s music. It would take time, though, and maybe the time would never come. As time passed, Tom had grown to believe that there was no story or theme to the town. It was what it had always been: the supermarkets, the cheap mansion suburbs, the diminishing town squares, the traffic, the fast food chains, the dozen or so petrol stations. He didn’t know when the town had turned from the fabled paradise of old into a place like everywhere else. It had no centre — he waved towards the mirror — but perhaps it never did. Not for as long as he could remember. He suspected that centres were disappearing everywhere.

  Jenny was still on the footpath when I passed by that evening. She was standing, hands on hips, facing the phenomenon that had consumed her pub. I tried to offer my condolences, and tried to offer some suggestions, but she only shrugged me away. This country’s gone to the dogs, she said.

  *

  Ciara and I hadn’t discussed how we would leave the town, but it was clear we couldn’t walk. When I brought the matter up with Ciara she was not concerned: she said we’d just have to steal one of her parents’ cars.

  Though Ciara had been squatting in the flat near the central park for more than a year, she seemed to believe that her parents didn’t know where she lived. But the whole town must have seen her perched on the balcony all the time, enjoying her vantage point.

  I didn’t press Ciara on the subject of her parents. She seemed certain they had not disappeared, and equally certain that a Commodore sedan would be parked in front of their home in the tentacle edgelands.

  We first visited her underground tunnel from the drain entry and bundled as many of her cassettes as would fit into four plastic shopping bags. Then we visited my townhouse, where I made copies of my files and then smashed the computer. I dropped the ruined computer in a hole by the telephone box outside.

  It took most of the night to walk to Ciara’s parents’ home. The holes had eaten large swathes of terrain. Whole intersections were impossible to traverse, and the roads in the old part of town could not be navigated at all. We crept through sleeping properties, some houses now skeletal, our torches aimed down at the grass in case of holes.

  As we crossed a pockmarked bridge onto the highway, Ciara said she had left her parents’ home the year before. She couldn’t figure out a reason to stay with them. Every day had been the same. Her dad would go to work, and her mum would stay at home, cleaning and watching television. Then her mum would eat a sandwich at lunchtime and browse the catalogues that came in the mailbox. Her dad would then come home, drink a bourbon and Coke, and watch four television shows in a row: the news, then two soap operas, then an American sitcom. Then he might watch the beginning of a movie, but would fall asleep before it finished. Then at the weekend they would go to the plazas. She said it had gotten unbearably boring.

  I had my doubts about stealing their car, but Ciara said they had three cars anyway: one for her mum, one for her dad, and one for ducking down to the shops.

  The tentacle roads — or at least the one Ciara’s parents lived on — seemed unaffected by the holes. It was early morning when we arrived at the foot of the street, the sky dotted pink and white. Ciara had watched the neighbourhood grow; she could remember a time when her house and two others were the only buildings on the street. It had seemed like a desert. Her whole early life was lived in a construction zone, debris and materials everywhere, dust and dirt, yellow mesh fences around burgeoning lots. The view from her bedroom window had resembled a war zone. Once a new house was completed, shiny green grass would be laid like an oasis around it. But even now — she pointed to the closest house — they seemed unfinished to her. Nothing had happened inside them. They were built to be as far away from the threat of things happening as possible. They were built to look like nowhere else, or everywhere else.

  Her primary school was just down the road, somewhere along the highway towards the town. For years she had been unaware that there was a town proper. In the back of her parents’ cars she’d entered the plazas through back entries, via the highway. She’d not seen shopfronts or the central streets; life seemed remote from the car window. The town had been mysterious when she was a girl, full of potential secrets.

  These streets were meant to be the future of the town, Ciara said, but they could never catch up. They were built too late. They could never look dignified next to the older streets. There was not enough time left.

  Ciara instructed me to wait a couple of houses down. She knocked on the door of a neat two-storey home, indistinguishable from the others. It had a dry stone fountain perched inside a chipwood oval. The door eventually opened and she disappeared inside.

  I sat in the gutter. There was no shade. The trees were only sticks, sticks neatly arranged along the nature strip, some of them still tagged with their exotic Latin names. After an hour the houses came alive: venetian blinds slid open and the hum of televisions permeated the street. It was a Saturday morning, and life was carrying on as usual in that neighbourhood. Children watched cartoons and adults fried bacon. Down the road a woman hosed her immaculate lawn. A man pedantically snipped at a struggling hedge. They were as far away as possible from the threat of things happening.

  A man emerged from the house across the road, and with a hand to his brow he monitored me openly. He asked if I had broken down. I replied that I had, just over on the highway, and that I had arranged to meet my wife in this location. It’s a bugger of a place to break down, he said. He kept staring for a while, waiting for further details. Then, when I remained silent, he shrugged and started pottering around the lawn. He was looking for something. He asked if I had seen his newspaper, and I signalled that I hadn’t. I didn’t have the patience to explain to him that all town newspapers had disappeared.

  *

  I dozed while sitting on the gutter, and woke to a much brighter, hotter day than before. Ciara jabbed me with her feet and demanded I get in the car. I tossed the plastic bags into the back seat while Ciara climbed into the passenger side. It was apparently my responsibility to drive, though I had not done so for years.

  She said there was no rush. I looked at her for a moment. She didn’t elaborate because she was already on the dials, scanning the radio. I started the car
and pulled out of the driveway. The car’s accelerator was more sensitive than I had expected.

  Though the tentacle roads weren’t marked on Ciara’s map, I knew my way because of the time I had spent riding with Tom. Once on the circular highway that connected all the tentacles, it was only a matter of time before the town’s highway strip would appear, where the McDonald’s, KFC and several petrol stations were located.

  Her parents wouldn’t call the police, Ciara said. The police had all disappeared, and besides, she had locked her parents in their bedroom. The only way out was to climb out the window, but they wouldn’t — she lit a cigarette — because you’re not meant to climb out of windows.

  I turned onto the main western highway. Holes weren’t a problem on the highway, and the drive-through takeaways and petrol stations carried on like they did every other day. It was impossible to see what consequences the holes had wrought from any point on the highway. Years might pass before a commuter discovered what had happened to the town.

  Ciara’s cunning was impressive, but I was also aware that we had done something illegal. It was only a matter of time before her parents smashed the door down and called the police in a town further east, where they would intercept us. It would be a huge problem for me, I told Ciara.

  They won’t break the door down, she said. It would be disrespectful to the house.

  *

  We drove for hours before we reached another town. Billboards for McDonald’s and Great Western Inn marked its border, and petrol company signs warned of approaching stations. Soon we passed the first BP, and then the second, and then an Ampol, a Caltex, a Great Western Inn, and then some golden arches, and then the giant chicken bucket, and then finally a sign with a name, a number, and a council emblem. We were officially in the town.

  It was possible to pass through this town without strictly visiting it, but Ciara wanted us to turn right into its wide main street. It was a Friday afternoon and the town was as busy as it was ever likely to get, because the townspeople were dressed like they were going somewhere specific – most likely the pub. Ciara lit a cigarette as we parked at the foot of the main street.

  After some time sitting in the town I worried that we might draw unwanted attention here, or somehow fall foul of the authorities, or else act in a way that might seem offensive to the busy people. Ciara was not worried at all. She sat on the bonnet and smoked her cigarette, making no attempt to hide how closely she studied passersby.

  I warned Ciara that it was probably sensible for us to look like we have some reason to be here. Maybe we should go into a shopping plaza and buy some supplies. Maybe we should browse the bookshops, or Sanity, to see whether they stocked any books or music unavailable back where we came from. Maybe we should browse the library, and see if it has any books.

  We split a footlong at a nearby Subway, then walked the two large blocks of the main street. All of the shops were the same as the town we’d just left, except there was a BI-LO instead of an IGA. The park where this town’s annual festivities might have been held did not contain any holes, as far as I could see. It’s true that the town had a different atmosphere to Ciara’s town: an atmosphere born of closeness to the swell of mountains that stood a few hundred kilometres east. This town was colder, and the people seemed less concerned about being in the town. It might have been possible to catch a train, but we couldn’t be sure. We had come by car.

  I was disappointed that Ciara was not in awe of the town, since it was only the second she had ever seen. I had expected to take on the role of worldly chaperone, guiding her through an unknown realm, but Ciara did not care about the town. It was exactly like hers, she said. It was just an Australian town.

  And she was right: there were equivalences to everything that existed in her town, exactly as she had suspected. The people walked with the same gait, they ate the same food, they worked the same jobs. Ciara butted out her cigarette. She had smoked heavily since leaving her town, completely fed up with discipline. It’s just another boring town, she added. She wasn’t disappointed, though. For a while she didn’t want to leave. She wondered whether there might be something to discover there, but I warned her that it wasn’t possible. I warned her that I had started to learn the truth of towns.

  *

  We passed through three more towns before we stopped in one again. From our vantage point each town had been aside a flat highway lined with fast-food drive-throughs and petrol stations. Unlike Ciara’s town, each town had a claim to something. Some ponied their status as the cleanest town in the area, while others had signs boasting of ornate statues. Some were home to especially interesting shops, like a cottage selling the most beautiful porcelain dolls to be found in the Central West. Others laid claim to famous football clubs, or stunning natural landmarks, or long-dead politicians, or artisanal bread fairs. Some were home to legendary sportsmen, or the last vestiges of a gold rush centuries prior.

  Ciara said she didn’t think she could live in any of the towns we passed through; she seemed to have forgotten her fleeting desire to linger in the first town. It would be impossible to function, she said. The networks were established too long ago. It was always best to know with certainty what one can’t belong to.

  The last town of the Central West sat at the foot of swelling mountains, and it was unlike any we had passed through before. As we arrived at night, the silhouettes of cliffs were faintly visible among the eastward stars. It was an ugly town, squat and lifeless beneath the surrounding hills. House lights speckled sharp slopes. When we turned off the highway we saw drunks wandering the uneven footpaths with lethargic, unsteady steps. The town appeared haunted to me. It was too close to something entirely else.

  It seemed dangerous to drive through the mountains at night, so we stopped in an empty Woolworths car park. A narrow lane led onto the main street, where a gutterless road curved between empty storefronts and the occasional shuttered restaurant. None of the roads ran perfectly straight. Nothing was gridded, and even the buildings stood at vastly different heights. I lowered the passenger seat and made my bed there, while Ciara prepared her blankets along the back seats. Before settling down we agreed to wander the main street in search of food. Since the town was so strange maybe shops would be open past ten, and some might even be open til morning.

  If I had felt ill at ease in the first new town we stopped in, I felt dreadful in this one. It did not feel organised under any council’s watch, and the blue streetlights highlighted every smear and blemish on the dust-stained shopfronts. At that time of night it was impossible to imagine the town in the light of day. It was the last town of the Central West, or the first, and it bore no resemblance to Ciara’s town. Fibro homes stood lonely on the main street between colonial terraces, and vacant petrol stations were cement craters between square, functional shops made of brick. We passed several abandoned pubs before encountering one that was open, strung with flashing fairy lights and loud Tooheys New signage. Inside the pub it was empty and forlorn. Opposite was a pitch-black playground where, to our surprise, a fluorescently lit van sold hot dogs. Ciara became animated. We must eat, she said.

  Ciara’s enthusiasm for hot dogs and her seeming ambivalence towards our environment did not alleviate my dread, but I followed as she crossed the road and marched through the dark towards the van. An old woman stood elevated inside, brandishing metal tongs. Ciara ordered four hot dogs.

  The old woman said that unfortunately she was out of dogs. She had bread rolls though, and we could eat them with some tomato sauce – maybe a bit of mustard too, if we liked. Ciara nodded. The old woman placed her tongs down and tied an apron around her waist. Then she retrieved four long white rolls from a plastic bag. She tore the rolls open with her hands and squeezed the sauces. Then she wrapped each roll in a paper towel and handed them to us.

  As she filed her sauce bottles away, the woman explained that she always ran out of dogs by ten in the evening. If we wanted dogs and not just rolls, we’d need to arrive e
arlier. After all, it was late. And there was no point in her overstocking the dogs. She spoke like we had chastised her for running a poor business. Ciara made sympathetic noises, but I stood back, not wanting to be drawn into whatever monologue the hot dog woman seemed about to deliver.

  She wanted to know whether we were passing through the town to the city. Ciara said that she hoped so. I added that we were, and that we had better go, since we were expected there by morning. The woman said that it was stupid to go to the city. Things were heating up there, and we wouldn’t find a place to stay. The people in the city would eat the likes of us alive. She pointed at Ciara maternally and said that she should go home to her parents. Then she gave me a foul look. Ciara said that it was none of her business, then bit into one of her rolls.

  The hotdog woman was angry. Of course it was her business, she said. There was no use having the likes of us driving through the mountains in the dead of night. Her son — and she pointed easterly — had nearly driven to his death off the edge of a cliff, veering from the likes of us. Her index finger panned slowly from the mountains to the earth.

  Ciara shovelled the last of a roll into her mouth, and then asked: who’s the likes of us? She sounded genuinely curious. The hot dog woman didn’t reply, instead retrieving a phone from the counter. She’d only pressed two digits before Ciara jumped up, tore it from her fist, and tossed it into the dark. Then Ciara grabbed my wrist and pulled me, bolting, back towards the fairy-lighted pub, through the ugly winding streets, and down the lane into the car park.

  We hopped into the car and I turned the ignition as fast as I could, but Ciara laid her hand on mine. You need to eat this first, she said, passing me a bread roll. She had mustard and tomato sauce dripping down her arm. She was panting, but elated. Her eyes were drawn as she lazed in the reclined passenger seat, monitoring the car park contentedly. I would have insisted we leave, since the police could arrive any moment, but as the thought occurred to me I realised that it might be wise to wait for the police to turn up. We could lie that Ciara had just lost an important member of the family, that she was feeling irrational in her mourning, that it was an isolated incident, that whatever fine needed paying we’d pay, but that it was important for us to reach the city by morning. I was merely a chaperone, called upon at late notice.