When there’s nowhere else to Run

by Murray Middleton

  Kat, Tom and William would set off with plastic bowls in their hands, scouring the flowerbeds and the pot plants on the bluestones, listening to the silly clues that Ian and Don yelled out. It was nice to see Tom smiling and having fun, but the fact that it was all based on such a fanciful premise frustrated Lesley. She made the kids divide their eggs at the end of the hunt because Tom tended to dominate.

  Tom was the first to figure out that there was no bunny. ‘How can one animal make it all the way around the world in a night?’ he asked Lesley, straight after the hunt. She took him on a walk along the fence line and they eventually settled in the shade of the crabapple trees. She plucked a small apple and shared it with him as she explained the truth about the bunny. Every so often she caught him sneaking a look at the windmill that Ian had nicknamed Spinney, whose rusty metal fangs had literally frightened the shit out of Tom when they first visited the farm.

  His lips started quivering when he realised there was no Santa, either. For once, she let him cry. It was strange seeing him drop the bravado that he always maintained around William. Had they made the right decision to let him believe? One of the kids at Lesley’s kindergarten said she knew the Easter bunny was coming soon when the Creme Egg ads with the angry teacher started coming on TV. If only kids could be raised to believe in other things with such conviction, the world might have been a better place.

  WILLIAM, 1992

  Girl germs made you sick and the last thing William wanted was to get sick at the Easter Farmhouse. That’s why him and Tom couldn’t let Kat play Army with them. Not even as a nurse. They had wars to fight in the forest where the Easter bunny escaped every year. There were whole armies after them. Plus real-life Indians. You had to be brave to fight in wars. If you weren’t brave, your country lost automatically and you had to give up your land and your homes and become slaves. It was lucky they never lost.

  They were really good at creeping out of the house when the adults were making dinner. There was a trench behind the garden bed where they could hide from all their enemies. If you put black crayon under your eyes, it was impossible for anyone else to see you in the dark. But they could still see each other. They had chocolate-chip muesli bars that were flown in for them on green helicopters. You could make grenades out of mud. Tom always got to throw the first one because he was older and he had a higher ranking. Then they had to get down really low and block their ears with their fingers.

  They were changing history by beating the mean Turkish people at Gallipoli. Tom said the whole country would be proud of them. Once they got home, they were going to get covered in medals and people would cheer for them in the streets when they were old men. The more enemies you killed, the more medals you got to wear. It made William so happy and excited that he pissed his pants with laughter.

  The adults forced them to stay out in the rain on Easter Sunday, cleaning the mud grenades off the house. Mum and Dad were so much meaner when they were around Tom’s parents. They didn’t even let them do the hunt, so Kat got all the mini eggs to herself and she didn’t have to share. He was going to write a letter to the Easter bunny about it, saying how him and Tom were only protecting their country. If you protected your country, you were automatically a hero.

  TOM, 1993

  It was good that William still believed in the Easter bunny because it meant they got to have the hunt. Having to share was a crappy idea. What you found should be what you got. It wasn’t Tom’s fault that he always found the most eggs. Dad said the goldminers always got to keep what they found, so why didn’t he? There was still lots of gold left around the farmhouse that the miners had missed, and Tom and William were digging holes so they could find it. Then their parents could all move into mansions and say thank you to them.

  Kicking the footy with William was good, too, even though Tom could kick it way further. Next year he was going to play under-elevens for a real team. They gave everyone medals at the end of the season. He already had two medals from Little Athletics. Kat didn’t play any sport because ballet wasn’t really a sport. She was fat and annoying and her dancing at the barbecue was crap, even if Mum and Dad wouldn’t let him say so in front of anyone. Girls weren’t very good at anything. He hoped he’d never have to have a girlfriend.

  If he did have to have a girlfriend, it would probably be William’s mum. He accidentally saw some parts of her that he wasn’t supposed to see. They were different to his mum’s parts. He thought no one was in the toilet, but when he opened the door to poo, she was in there with her undies around her feet. She covered the part where you wee from, but she wasn’t really that mad because she smiled. Mum didn’t think it was funny. She said he had to remember to knock first and made him say sorry to William’s mum.

  William’s dad was always chopping wood in the woodshed so they could have a fire at night. The sound was really loud and it echoed and the wood always split in half straight down the middle. Chopping wood made William’s dad more of a man than Tom’s dad. William’s dad would probably win if they had a fight because he was bigger and he was more used to being in an angry mood.

  MAGGIE, 1994

  Kat and William started screaming just after they’d commenced their annual inspection of the farmhouse. Maggie found them in the living room, watching Coyote chase Road Runner in vain all across the American desert. Kat asked why Channel Nine was called Win in the country. The owners hadn’t mentioned the telly, so there wasn’t any time for Maggie and Don to present a unified front. They decided to let it slide for the time being, at least while they unpacked, so they could finally get some peace from the kids.

  By the time Ian and Lesley arrived, the telly had already been on for hours. Even though they initially didn’t say anything, which was always their way, Maggie could tell they weren’t happy about it. After the kids went to bed, they had a long debate in the kitchen about the new appliance. Lesley was in favour of banning it. Ian suggested there should be no television during the day. Maggie was inclined to let the kids make their own choices, but she would have been just as happy to put an axe through the damn thing.

  Don focused on keeping the fire going, stoking it just for the sake of it half the time. Maggie knew he was thinking what a shame it was that they weren’t spending the first night catching up on each other’s lives. It was true. But if there was one thing she’d learnt from being a disability support worker, it was that people had to deal with the complications that life threw at them. Don had always had a lot of trouble accepting the complications in his life. She already knew it would end with him exploding at her, like he exploded whenever the Macintosh computer froze on him, as though life itself was out to get him and him alone.

  In the end they opted for Ian’s suggestion. Lesley draped a towel over the telly first thing every morning, which might have been a good tactic at the kindergarten. On the last night they all crowded into the living room to watch a movie. It was about a slobbery dog that moved in with a boring suburban family. The kids loved it. Maggie could sense Ian and Lesley’s silent judgement in the air. She hated being made to feel like a bad person. There were plenty worse than her out there. At least her kids had enough awareness to knock before storming into the bathroom.

  DON, 1995

  Then there was the year that the ABC was shooting a miniseries based on Banjo Paterson’s ‘The Man from Snowy River’ in the local ranges. Several cast members, including one famous Australian actor, had been staying at Burnt Hill Farm during the shoot. But they all had to book accommodation elsewhere over Easter so that Don, Maggie, Ian, Lesley, Tom, Kat and William could take up their annual booking. Don kept joking, ‘Not even the man from Snowy River can get rid of us.’

  His joy was short-lived, though. On Saturday morning Tom woke up complaining about a pain in his stomach. He wasn’t hungry at lunch and William said, ‘I think Tom’s really sick, Dad.’ William didn’t even try to talk Tom into kicking the footy with him. By late afternoon Tom looked so pale that Ian and Lesley rushe
d him back to a hospital in the city. His appendix was taken out on the morning of Easter Sunday.

  The farm felt empty without Ian, Lesley and Tom, especially at sunset. Maggie did her line about the Easter bunny, even though no one believed in it anymore. Kat and William refused to divide their eggs after the hunt and spent most of the time bickering about whose turn it was to choose the television channel. When had Kat become so invested in the lives of the characters on Home and Away and Neighbours? No one even mentioned writing an Easter song.

  Don tried to teach William how to chop wood, but he spent the whole time peppering Don with questions about how someone could stay alive without an appendix. He was a bit of a funny kid. It was a relief that his army phase had run its course, but turning his fixations to Tom’s appendix didn’t necessarily seem like a step towards normality. At least he was only nine years old. They’d probably all laugh about it at his twenty-first birthday party. Maybe Tom would even make a joke about it in his speech.

  There was something strange about the way Maggie walked to the dam in the afternoon to read her book. Was she bored with him? Don marvelled at the fact that this woman who slept soundlessly beside him at night, with ankles that were bigger than he’d have liked, had once induced a ravenous desire in him, to the point where he felt that all life would have stopped if it had remained unrequited. He knew it was the kind of sentiment that could never be voiced. An empty space was slowly opening up inside his chest. They might as well have let the famous actor stay at the farmhouse.

  LESLEY, 1996

  Then there was the year that Lesley’s old grape-picking friends, Drew and Gillian, accepted her invitation to the Sunday barbecue. They’d all met in the Barossa Valley when Lesley was nineteen. She was more carefree back then. Drew and Gillian arrived at the farmhouse in a dusty Range Rover. They’d driven down from Kununurra, where they managed an Aboriginal art gallery, camping along the way to fish for cod. The first thing Lesley noticed was that Drew’s shoulder-length hair had started to go grey.

  An old kelpie hopped out of the back of the Range Rover. His collar had a tag that read: ATTICUS. Lesley had never been a good judge of a dog’s character. She didn’t know whether to be more worried by the damage Atticus might do to the flowerbeds or the threat he posed to the kids. But as the afternoon wore on, all Atticus really seemed interested in was resting at Drew’s feet and accepting the little chunks of sausage that Ian thought he was offering on the sly.

  Don, Maggie and Ian had lots of questions for the glamorous new bush couple. Do the locals accept you? How do you find buyers for the Aboriginal paintings? Isn’t it a bit remote up north? Drew and Gillian seemed amused that their lives should be considered in any way out of the ordinary. It was strange for Lesley seeing her two old friends look so at ease around each other. She assumed living in the bush had done it to them. They were probably the least pretentious people she’d ever met.

  The kids occasionally surfaced to smother a sausage in sauce or scull a glass of soft drink. Kat and William liked patting Atticus. They’d been nagging Maggie to buy them a puppy for years. Lesley was surprised Maggie hadn’t given in. Tom kept staring at Gillian, whose red hair splashed around in the haze of autumn sunlight. It made sense that Drew loved her. There was dirt beneath his fingernails. He didn’t seem to mind eating with Atticus’s saliva all over his hands.

  Lesley had once kissed Drew by a barrel fire at night. They were both pissed. He tasted like red wine and tobacco. At the time she thought that she was too bland to try to take things further. It was a little disconcerting watching the Range Rover recede through a cloud of dust that afternoon. Looking after twenty-five germy kids for a living suddenly didn’t feel all that important. She couldn’t help but imagine that this life of dirt roads, pitching tents, squatting in bushes, mosquito bites, fishing and wet bodies might have belonged to her if she’d been just a little more courageous.

  WILLIAM, 1997

  Then there was the year that Tom wanted to include Kat in everything they did. It was probably because his mum and dad had said something to him. They were always telling him how he was meant to act. He wasn’t even allowed to watch Blue Heelers. Kat was really mean. She got in big trouble with Dad when she got her tongue pierced and she never ate food anymore because she thought she was fat. Plus she smoked cigarettes when she was babysitting and she said she was going to get addicted to heroin when she was older.

  Everyone was being so boring. Sometimes Tom said he didn’t want to kick the footy, even though he really did want to. He was different since he got his appendix out. His scar had got better, but it was still going to be there forever. He was lucky his appendix didn’t explode inside him. It could happen. The adults were being more boring than Tom. They always talked about politics in the kitchen and their music was so stupid. On one of their CDs the man couldn’t even sing properly.

  William invented a new game by counting how many kicks it took him to kick the footy from the front gate to the clothesline. The last kick had to go in the middle of the trees where the cord hung from, otherwise it didn’t count. It was heaps of fun. He could play all day and he forgot how annoying everyone was being. The least kicks he did from the front gate to the clothesline was seven, but three of them were perfect torpedos and usually he couldn’t do it in less than nine.

  On the last morning, while the adults were packing the cars, he accidentally kicked the footy into Ian and Lesley’s bedroom window and broke it. He’d thought it was a good angle to try a banana kick from, but it came off his shoe wrong. He ran and hid in the grass near the dam where all the snakes slept at night. Was he too old to be smacked? It was hard to think of an excuse that would stop Dad from swearing like he always did at Kat.

  MAGGIE, 1998

  Then there was the year that Maggie and Lesley started going for long walks in the afternoon. Lesley suggested it. She said walking helped to keep her knee from stiffening up. Maggie couldn’t remember how many years it had been since they’d spent any one-on-one time together. Every day they’d set off at four o’clock and walk in a new direction. They walked to the crabapple trees, through the forest and around the dam where Lesley had found William the year before, curled up in a ball with tears in his eyes.

  They exchanged stories about the magazines they’d found in their children’s bedrooms. Lesley mocked Tom for his obsession with big-breasted women. Maggie suspected William wasn’t interested in breasts. But at least she no longer feared he’d be responsible for the next Port Arthur-style massacre. She confessed that some days she felt like reaching into Kat’s mouth and ripping her tongue ring out. It was nice to laugh together. They never really talked about their husbands, even though she knew that’s what Ian and Don thought the whole thing was about.

  On the final afternoon, they decided to walk in the middle of the gravel road. Sunlight squeezed through the tall branches. It was already starting to get a bit chilly. Although they walked mostly in silence, Maggie got the impression that Lesley didn’t want to turn back either. She wanted to propose that they start going on regular bushwalks when they got home. Maybe once a month. But she didn’t want to exhaust Lesley’s goodwill.

  They eventually wandered into the forest and stopped by the remains of a burnt-out cottage. All that was left standing was the chimney. Lesley sat on the ground and sighed. There were so many lines on her forehead. It was difficult to think of her as being in her mid-forties. ‘Why do you think it is that we all stay together?’ she asked, shuffling dry gum leaves around with her feet. ‘You know, you and Don and me and Ian. What makes us last?’ Even though Maggie would have liked to say something profound, she couldn’t really think of a good explanation. ‘Maybe we’re just committed people,’ she said.

  Lesley told her about kissing Drew by the barrel fire all those years ago and how sometimes she caught herself wondering what might have been. ‘That’s nothing,’ said Maggie, smiling. ‘He can leave his shoes under my bed any time.’ They both laughed. She fe
lt certain that Lesley understood her better than anyone else in the world. They were actually pretty similar. In the end they had to hurry back so they wouldn’t miss the sunset.

  TOM, 1999

  Then there was the year that Kat brought her friend Felicity to the farm. Both girls had dyed black hair and they were both obsessed with a Nick Cave album that only had songs about killing people. Tom didn’t see how any of the songs were catchy. Still, he liked the way the two girls were always teasing him about stuff he didn’t know. The three of them hung out in the mounds behind the farmhouse at night, where he and William used to play Army and dig for gold. Tom had no idea how much the adults knew about what they were up to, but Kat and Felicity didn’t seem to give a shit if their clothes smelt of cigarettes.

  The girls had smuggled a jar of magic mushrooms and two bottles of Jim Beam in their backpacks. They decided to take the mushrooms the night before Easter Sunday. Tom wasn’t in the right mood to have any, but he was happy to sit out the back and drink bourbon with them. William gave Tom a sad look when Tom invited him, like everything was moving way too fast for him. But no one could kick a footy forever.

  Felicity said the sky was spinning out of control and she was seeing lots of other things that weren’t really there. Then she started vomiting. Kat was a pro at taking drugs. She talked to Tom about how her family didn’t really understand her and lots of other stuff that no one had ever talked to him about. It made him feel funny. She even wanted to see the scar on his stomach. She ran her fingers over it and then kept running them down into his boxers. Then she kissed him with her tongue and made sounds like she was enjoying it.