When there’s nowhere else to Run

by Murray Middleton

  Murray Middleton was born with fractured hips in 1983. He spent the first three months of his life in plaster and has broken most bones since. He won The Age Short Story Award in 2010 with ‘The Fields of Early Sorrow’. When There’s Nowhere Else to Run is his first published collection of short stories. He currently lives in Melbourne and won’t publish a second collection of stories until the Saints win a second premiership.

  First published in 2015

  Copyright © Murray Middleton 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  The story ‘The Fields of Early Sorrow’ has been published previously and revised for this edition. It won The Age Short Story Award in 2010 and was published in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald on 8 January 2011. This story was also published in Award Winning Australian Writing 2011.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone:(61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 76011 233 2

  eISBN 978 1 92526 718 1

  Typeset by Bookhouse, Sydney

  For L.D. and my family

  CONTENTS

  Open Misère

  Big Buffalo

  Mainstream

  Forget About the Prices

  I Remember a Time When Once You Used to Love Me

  The Greatest Showbag on Earth

  The Fields of Early Sorrow

  When There’s Nowhere Else to Run

  The Last Trout that Richard Bought for Alice

  Queen Adelaide Restaurant

  Burnt Hill Farm

  Jubilee Mile

  Hinterland

  The Gift of Life

  Acknowledgements

  OPEN MISÈRE

  I’m not sure how Mum and Dad planned on spending their long-service leave. Maybe planting jonquils, solving cryptic crosswords and firing chestnuts at the cockatoo that Dad called Kasparov. Maybe they wanted to see Europe for the first time, although they would’ve had to see it in winter because of the footy. Either way, I bet they didn’t plan on spending it with our old neighbour, Raymond, lying on a foldout bed in the study.

  Raymond lived around the corner from us in Tecoma when I was little. That was before he bought ten acres just outside Marysville. I couldn’t remember much about him. The main thing that stuck in my mind was that he had a sweet tooth. Mum used to wonder how he slept at night with all that sugar swimming through his veins. But at least he slept back then.

  When Raymond came to visit, Mum and Dad told me not to mention the fires. At first it was easy enough. He didn’t seem to be in the mood for talking. I hadn’t thought much about the fires. Before his visit, nothing in my life had changed as a result of them. Growing up in the hills, I’d got used to hearing the CFA siren every summer. We always took it as a chance to visit Granddad in the city. If there was time, Mum and Dad would fill the gutters with water and hose down the roof, but there was never any talk of staying home to fight.

  What I remember best about the Black Saturday fires is the newsreader in Kinglake who was live on air when he found out that his friend—the previous anchor—had passed away. I can’t remember the newsreader’s name. The realisation of what had happened seemed to come across his face all at once. His cheeks went very pale. It got me thinking that seeing death in the faces of the living might be scarier than seeing an open casket.

  ■

  Our lives were all about rituals after Raymond came to visit. We played a game of Five Hundred every afternoon. Mum said that for the time being I wasn’t allowed to visit friends’ houses after school. The games lasted anywhere between half an hour and two hours, depending on how stubborn Dad was feeling. Raymond didn’t seem to have much interest in playing. He’d usually sit there nursing a packet of scorched almonds. Sometimes when it was his turn to bid he’d just stare into space, like he’d forgotten where he was, until Dad got his attention. Then he’d pass. He even passed when he had the joker. It could get frustrating when I was Raymond’s partner, having to do all the work, but I knew I wasn’t allowed to complain.

  Dad tried to get him back into the footy. He told me that Raymond used to play in the Yarra Valley League over twenty years ago. Apparently he was a decent full-back. I couldn’t see it. We’d all watch the Demons game on TV every weekend. They’d had some high draft picks in the last few years and Dad was sure it wouldn’t be long until they were on the way back up again. Mum wasn’t quite as convinced. Raymond never barracked. I often caught him staring out the window with the same blank look that he wore while we were playing cards.

  Between cards and dinner, Mum and Dad would take Raymond for a walk in the forest near Grants Picnic Ground. They said it was good for him to leave the house every day. Dad bought him a pair of gumboots from Bunnings because the tracks got muddy in winter. I joined them once or twice at the beginning and I noticed that Mum and Dad were steering clear of the more popular walking tracks.

  Before dinner every night one of us had to tell a joke. I’m pretty sure it was Dad’s idea. It was usually a bad joke, too. When it was my turn, I stole puns from the net because that’s what seemed to make Mum and Dad happy. They always had a good chuckle, even when the jokes didn’t entirely work out. Dad laughed differently, though. It came more out of his nose. At times it really got on my nerves and I wanted to tell him to laugh normally.

  For all the effort we made, what Raymond seemed to like most of all was sitting out on the porch in the morning, eating his raisin toast. I didn’t mind him sitting out there as much as Mum and Dad. They didn’t want him spending too much time alone, but since he was always the first person up, there wasn’t really anything they could do about it. The raisin toast left a sweet, burnt sultana smell throughout the house while I was getting ready for school. When I got home Raymond was usually still sitting out there on the bench that Dad had painted red and blue, watching the mist drift over the valley.

  ■

  I’d met Courtney at a party a few months before Raymond came to visit. The Mater Christi girls were there, which meant we all put our hands in our pockets more and talked about sport less. Courtney was always distracting me from studying for my mid-year exams. She didn’t seem to care about hers. She came round three afternoons a week (she worked the register at Woolworths on Thursday and Friday). Mum and Dad didn’t mind her staying over on weekends. They said it was better than us making up stories.

  We tried to teach Courtney how to play Five Hundred by practising some open hands while Raymond was sitting out on the porch. She understood the bidding, but she had a fair bit of trouble remembering how the bowers worked. She was much better when the bid was no trumps. Mum always asked Courtney to score when we were playing with Raymond to help her get a feel for the game. I could tell no one liked it when she started doodling on the notepad, and I hoped it didn’t mean she was bored.

  I don’t think I’ll ever forget what went on whil
e the adults were out walking in the forest. Whenever Courtney threw her school dress on my bedroom carpet, it made me feel proud in a silent way, like I had something over most of the boys at school. For a number of reasons I’d always assumed that nothing like that would ever happen to me. I said Courtney’s name out loud a lot, which was never something I planned on doing. I tried really hard not to say it. But she didn’t mind, even though she never said my name out loud.

  Courtney didn’t like the way that Raymond sat there on the porch when she was walking up the driveway in the afternoon. She thought he was waiting for her. We had a few spats about him. She was much better at arguing than me. Afterwards I could always think of all the things that I should have said in the heat of the argument. Courtney never left much unsaid.

  We were in bed one time, a week or two after Raymond had come to visit, and she asked me how long he was going to be staying with us. She was lying on her stomach, chopping bud on my psychology textbook. We usually had about an hour when the adults were out walking. It didn’t stop me feeling anxious about them coming home early.

  ‘I’ve got no idea how long he’ll be here,’ I said, stroking her hair. ‘Mum and Dad haven’t said much about it.’

  ‘Does he pay for any of the food he’s eating?’

  ‘I’m not really sure.’

  Raymond did seem to have an endless supply of scorched almonds, but I’d never stopped to think about whether he paid for them.

  ‘On my way out yesterday I caught him in the kitchen with his fingers in the peanut butter,’ said Courtney. She laughed. ‘He was just sort of pawing it into his mouth. It was really weird. I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of left. There was peanut butter all over his chin.’ She put down the scissors and started mixing tobacco with the bud.

  ‘I can’t imagine him doing that,’ I said.

  ‘Well, that’s what he did.’ She reached into her handbag and grabbed the cigarette papers.

  ‘I guess I’ll be avoiding the peanut butter then,’ I said.

  Courtney grinned as she started packing the paper. She was the first person who ever made me feel like I might be funny.

  ■

  I sometimes heard Mum and Dad talking about Raymond in their bedroom at night. They never argued. I could tell they were talking about him because their conversations were in a different pitch than usual. It was a strange thing. When I heard them talking, I realised how little trouble I must have given them over the years.

  I couldn’t say whether Raymond overheard their conversations from the study or, if he did, whether he cared. I figured that our aim was to help him feel normal again. I had no idea what constituted ‘normal’. Before I met Courtney, I thought that I was painfully normal. I wondered whether Raymond had been normal before he moved to Marysville, with all that sugar swimming through his veins. All I concluded was that once the state was lost, whatever it was, it probably became impossible to find again.

  Mum and Dad did their best to keep Raymond away from the papers in case something about the royal commission popped up. They didn’t mind me leaving the sports section on the table. Mum tried to get him interested in doing the cryptic crossword, but the clues never seemed to mean anything to him. Before Raymond came to visit, Mum and Dad used to solve all three crosswords every night after dinner. They even solved the crosswords when there were piles of essays all over the house, waiting to be marked. Courtney thought it was a lame way for them to spend their time. She made me promise that we’d never be so pathetic when we were old.

  At dinner Dad would tell us all about his ongoing battles with Kasparov the cockatoo. No one was really listening. Over the Easter holidays he’d made a slingshot by rigging a heavy rubber band over a coathanger. I don’t know what he would have done without Kasparov. He finally convinced Raymond to join him in the yard one afternoon. Even though Raymond took a carton of chestnuts out with him, he refused to have a turn on the slingshot.

  When Mum and Dad visited the McCartneys in Sassafras—which they had done every Sunday since their daughter Fay moved interstate—they insisted that Raymond went with them. I was relieved because I didn’t want to be alone with him. It was the only good run I ever got at studying. I pictured him brooding over a glass of cola on the patio at the McCartneys’ house, maybe rubbing their labrador’s belly while the others talked about films and the footy, missing his raisin toast.

  There were times when Raymond took some coaxing to leave the house. It was usually just after we’d finished playing cards. He’d say he was feeling sleepy or he didn’t need the exercise. He was never rude about it. Mum was always the one to reason with him. Those were the only times I resented him, especially when Courtney was over. His excuses made me feel angry in a way I never had before. We all knew he was eventually going to put on his gumboots. Courtney would just smile while Mum was talking Raymond into it, like she knew what was going on inside me and that was the funniest part.

  ■

  We were stumbling up the driveway in the dark, trying to avoid Dad’s jonquils, when I noticed that the kitchen light was still on. It was hours after Mum and Dad usually went to bed. I got Courtney to brush the twigs off the back of my hoodie. Mum, Dad and Raymond were sitting in the dining room, listening to terrible folk music. There were two empty wine bottles on the table and they were working on a third. Raymond was resting his purple cheek on his hand. Mum had hold of his other hand.

  ‘How was the party?’ asked Mum.

  ‘Good,’ I said, trying to sound normal. ‘It was more of a gathering.’

  ‘Any fatalities?’ asked Dad.

  Courtney pressed her mouth against my shoulder to stop herself from laughing.

  ‘How was your night?’ I asked. I had no idea who I was addressing the question to.

  ‘We had a quiet night in,’ said Mum. She patted Raymond’s arm. The flesh on his cheeks seemed to be softening. It was more unnerving than watching him stare into space.

  ‘Well, goodnight,’ I said.

  Courtney let out a loud laugh when we were halfway down the corridor, so I cupped my hand over her mouth.

  ■

  I was sitting out on the porch at two o’clock in the morning because I was having trouble sleeping. My Australian history exam was first thing in the morning. Even though I was under-prepared, I figured I’d clean up on the essay. It was close to freezing. I was fumbling underneath the bench in my usual hiding place when Raymond appeared. He asked if I minded the intrusion and I said that I didn’t. His joints clicked when he sat next to me.

  ‘I swore I’d never resent the cold again,’ he said.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. We sat there in silence, staring out over the dark valley. My breath was making small clouds. Every so often I’d hear a car zooming through the forest. I used to have nightmares about a grey car tumbling off the road in the forest and rolling down the valley, somehow missing all the mountain ash trees, never stopping. But since I’d started smoking, I’d stopped having dreams.

  ‘Do you remember much about it?’ he asked.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The day.’

  ‘Black Saturday?’ The words sounded heavy.

  Raymond nodded.

  ‘We went to visit Granddad to get away from the fires. I think we stayed inside most of the day. It was really windy. The sky was a funny colour.’ I realised I’d put my foot in it. ‘Not funny . . .’

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Raymond, still looking out over the valley. ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘Mum and Dad were pretty upset when we watched the news.’

  The cypresses along the driveway were beginning to sway.

  ‘Did she get you into that stuff?’ asked Raymond.

  ‘Sorry?’

  He waved his hand. ‘I don’t care. It’s nice to watch you two.’

  I decided never to tell Courtney what he’d just said.

  ‘I bet you make all kinds of promises to each other.’

  ‘Not t
hat many,’ I said, laughing a little.

  He kept on staring into the darkness like he expected something to be out there. The skin on his cheeks looked loose enough to stitch and fold into curtains.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about one?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know, they’re all pretty boring.’

  ‘Boring’s fine,’ he said, glancing under the bench. ‘You might as well light it.’

  I reached down and found the half-smoked joint. I lit it and offered it to Raymond.

  ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

  I inhaled and tried to think of a promise.

  ‘Last week, while you guys were out walking in the forest, we made a pact that in twenty years’ time, no matter what, we’re going to meet at Burke’s Lookout on our anniversary. Courtney’s going to bring Frosty Fruits.’

  ‘Frosty Fruits,’ said Raymond, raising his heavy cheeks and shaking his head. ‘Won’t they melt?’

  ‘She said she’s going to bring an esky.’

  It took Raymond several minutes to get over the idea of Courtney bringing Frosty Fruits along. I couldn’t see how it was that funny and I was worried he might wake Mum and Dad.

  ■

  The next afternoon Raymond opened the bidding with a call of six clubs. Mum and I bumped the call up to eight diamonds, but then Raymond bid open misère. I’d never seen an open misère bid and I had to explain to Courtney what it meant. ‘Bring it home, Ray!’ yelled Dad, laying his cards face down on the table and flashing his fillings at Mum. I could feel Courtney’s hand working its way up my thigh. Raymond picked up the kitty and started complaining that it’d given him nothing. It was nice to hear him complaining.

  BIG BUFFALO

  Jennifer Pfeiffer was always giving me instructions such as, ‘Stay with me, Henry, don’t lose it!’ Sometimes she told me off. ‘No, no, you’re doing it all wrong today. Not yet!’ I always tried to comply. I feared that if I didn’t, she might find someone else to give instructions to and they might be better at following them than me. My favourite part was when she closed her eyes, arched her spine and her breathing grew heavy. I knew I was doing everything just right. Her orgasm would come in small spurts at first, followed by an almighty surge. It felt like everything that I had ever wanted in this world.