Ellie & the Shadow Man

by Gee, Maurice

  When he came back late in the afternoon he had three tiny flakes of gold in the bottom of a corked test tube.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘I reckon it’s been worked pretty hard, but there’s still some there.’

  ‘How much is that worth?’

  ‘Yeah, ten cents. But if I make a sluice? Hey, I can build a suction dredge, two-stroke motor on a little raft – I’ve heard of those. There’s a hell of a lot of gravel, they can’t have gone through it all. Anyway, it changes every year.’

  ‘Good luck, Mike.’

  He panned until his fingers were healed, then he built a sluice. Ellie helped Annie plant the garden with corn, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, everything.

  By the time the first shoots broke through she knew that she was pregnant, and she kept it as hidden as her painting on the roof. Mike had his half centimetre of gold and she had something in her not much larger, causing both fear and delight. She kept it sheltered, locked away, her best thing yet, filling the space she had made – a creature you might warm in your palm, as small as that; and she did not know what to do except grow it, grow herself, or what it – he, she – might mean other than trouble: love and trouble. She was determined Mike would never find out. At times pleasure, then terror, came on her so suddenly she almost cried out, almost rushed to Annie, rushed to Mike. Then she was calm, as though a hand, perhaps the thing that settled on Rain, touched her on head and shoulders, belly and breasts, and she slowed down all her actions and thoughts, and although she kept on moving was in a kind of sleep.

  ‘Wake up, dopey,’ Mike said.

  She let him think she still had pills and was taking them. Her fondness went as far as touching him and patting him, sometimes with words, and fucking for their pleasure in bed, but no space in her mind opened where he might take a permanent place. It was as if he moved towards a horizon and would sink below it before long and be somewhere else and out of her life. It caused her no fear and no regret. Mike had been, what? Fun? He had been useful – a word that made Ellie laugh.

  He came to her one day, holding a tooth on his palm.

  ‘One of these sods has fallen off.’

  A brown stump as small as a milk tooth stood in the place where it had been.

  ‘You’ll have to go back to your dentist. Go tomorrow.’ She would enjoy not having him for a day.

  ‘Can’t,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Shifting my sluice.’

  ‘You haven’t been going up there. I thought you’d given up.’

  ‘Going tomorrow. Anyway …’ He grinned.

  ‘What, Mike?’

  ‘These are still the temporary ones. I never got the good ones put in.’

  Ellie felt her fondness for him die. ‘What did you spend the money on? Pot?’

  ‘Stuff for in the carriage, Ellie. Pictures and stuff. I’ll go to another dentist, get them fixed. Next year, eh?’

  ‘Do what you like.’ She turned towards the garden, where Annie was listening, then turned back. ‘You’re not doing any work here, Mike. Why don’t you leave?’

  ‘We will. End of summer.’

  ‘Not me. I’m staying here. You should go by yourself. Hit the road.’

  ‘Hey, Ellie.’ His eyes filled with tears. It astonished her, made her want to comfort him; but she stepped away.

  ‘This place isn’t right for you, but it’s right for me. I like it here.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘No you don’t. It’s just an easy ride. You’re bludging now. That’s not fair.’

  ‘You’d be surprised what I’m doing.’

  ‘Gold? Grow up.’ She moved towards the garden, turned again. ‘You can stay or go, whatever you like, it’s not up to me. But find yourself another bed, Mike, eh?’

  She joined Annie in the garden, and felt something strike her on the leg.

  ‘You can keep that for a souvenir,’ he yelled. ‘It’s more than you’re worth.’

  ‘What is it?’ Annie said.

  ‘His tooth.’ Ellie pushed it into the soil with her boot. ‘Sorry about all that.’

  ‘You still don’t know what he’s doing, do you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s growing marijuana. Me and Mark baled him up about it. He grew some seedlings down in Mack’s old sleepout and he’s got them planted somewhere over there on the other side. Gold sluicing is just a kind of cover.’

  ‘What did you and Mark say?’

  ‘We should have dumped his trays in the river, but we just told him to get them out. The plants were ready anyhow when we found them. So he took them over. It’ll be a fair-sized plot, Ellie. Maybe a couple of hundred plants.’

  ‘If the cops find out … Are you sure he hasn’t got some planted here?’

  ‘Mark and me searched. There’s none. What we told him, he could do what he liked over the river but he’s got to keep his tools over there, and when he harvests it he gets it out some other way, not through Good Life. We’d all get done, Ellie, the lot of us.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We told him he could stay and do this crop, and then he’s out, he doesn’t come back.’

  ‘Have you told Terry?’

  ‘Not yet. You know what he’d say: everyone’s free. But me and Mark, we’re drawing up some rules. And Tom and Carrie. We’re going to put this place on a proper footing. I want to bring my kids up here. We don’t need … Listen Ellie, it’s not you. We don’t want him, but we want you.’

  Ellie watched Mike drive away in his car. He was probably heading to the pub in Collingwood. She could not feel anger, although he put them all at risk, but only contempt and sadness at his inadequacy. He could learn, she knew he could learn; but he refused – and she could not be with him any more or he might stop her going where she was going, finding out. She was jolted with fear for her baby. The child might be like his father, half-formed.

  Annie said, ‘You needn’t tell me because I know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re pregnant.’

  ‘It’s only two months. It doesn’t show.’

  ‘It does, though, the way you behave.’

  ‘What do I do?’

  ‘Stop and kind of say hello to it. You’re all slowed down.’

  ‘Am I? Annie, I don’t want Mike to know.’

  ‘I won’t tell him.’

  ‘I mean ever. I don’t want him having any say.’

  ‘He’ll be gone. March, I heard him say. He’ll have to get the stuff away and sell it. Then we won’t let him come back in.’

  ‘I’ll be five months.’

  ‘Yeah, well, keep him out of bed with you. He’s not the most observant guy.’

  He was hang-dog, apologetic, when he came back. She let him sleep alongside her but wondered how she would get on in the next three months. Being pregnant made her randy, which would be a problem if it went on. She shifted to touch him but stopped herself. Words were circling, dancing on the other side of the sexual warmth that flowed in her; and how could they describe him, ‘pale’, ‘cold’, ‘thin’, who was tanned like leather and thick with muscle and as horny as a bull, unless some more essential part called them up and warned her off? Morally weak? Morally thin? Again she was frightened for her baby. This man who lay here snoring, smelling of beer, dreaming of good times with his drug money, easy times, was father of her child.

  Ellie drew away and curled up, sheltering it. Nothing could be changed – except for circumstances. Except for example and quantities of love. She did not want him at Good Life where he might work in close and influence her, get words and thoughts into the secret room where the child was growing. If he even touched her any more – leave out sex – it would be a betrayal of the child.

  Tomorrow she would talk to Annie, and to Terry as well, make them see that Mike must not be allowed to stay and harvest his crop. He must be got rid of now.

  She made breakfast early and half-listened to his promises to get his teeth fixed. He seeme
d to believe it would end the trouble between them.

  ‘Missed you last night,’ he said, patting his crotch. ‘I guess I must love you, Ellie, eh?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were growing marijuana?’

  ‘Well, I thought you probably knew. It’s a kind of present anyway. We can make some real dough out of this.’

  ‘You can. I’m staying here. And I want you out today.’

  ‘Hey, you’re not boss.’

  ‘Does it strike you that pot is against the law? If the cops come –’

  ‘They won’t.’

  ‘– we’re all in trouble. They’ll close this place. And marijuana mucks people up. Who’ll you be selling it to? Kids?’

  ‘It doesn’t hurt them. That’s all bullshit.’

  ‘You think so? Try talking to yourself when you’re stoned. You’re a fucking zombie. You think you’re full of – wisdom, I don’t know. And you can’t even say your own name.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘It’s true. But I’m not going to argue. Pack your stuff, Mike. You’re not spending another night in here.’

  ‘It’s my place as much as yours. Who bought the furniture, eh? Who bought the bed?’

  ‘Take it, then. Do what you like, as long as you don’t come near me.’

  She walked past the gardens and across the paddock to the A-frame. Rain was feeding Terra, breastfeeding still, and Terry was writing in a notebook.

  ‘You know about the marijuana, don’t you?’ Ellie said.

  Terry closed his book. ‘Annie told us. It’s all right, Ellie. As long as it’s on the other side we don’t mind.’

  ‘Even if it is against the law? You know this whole place could get closed down?’

  ‘Mike promised he’d be careful. We trust Mike.’

  ‘We thought you were in it too,’ Rain said.

  ‘Is that what he said? For God’s sake, Rain, don’t you see it’ll ruin Good Life.’

  ‘Please Ellie, no angry voices. Not in front of Terra.’

  ‘All right. But I want Mike turned out of here. I want it today.’

  ‘I’m not getting mixed up in any fights,’ Terry said. ‘And we need more people, not less. We’ll be starting on the community room next week. Mike is going to help with that.’

  ‘So, he stays?’

  ‘You both stay, Ellie. We need you both. But what we need most is harmony or else we can’t begin to know ourselves. And drugs, if they’re natural, needn’t be bad. Anything that opens up new channels. Anything that gives us more of ourselves. I’ll lend you Castaneda if you like. You should read him.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Mike drove by, heading for the gate. He tooted his horn and Terry waved, giving his beatific smile.

  ‘He’s not staying in the carriage,’ Ellie said. ‘That’s mine. He can shift to the sleepout.’

  ‘Nothing belongs to anyone, Ellie. You know that. It’s why we came here.’

  ‘Ellie, go away,’ Rain said. ‘You’re upsetting Terra.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But I mean it. The carriage is my home. It’s where I’m staying. Maybe you don’t know it but Mike is only passing through.’

  ‘You must both do what is right for yourselves,’ Terry said. ‘But Ellie, please, no bad vibes. Good Life is about harmony.’

  Ellie went back to the carriage and tidied it. She folded Mike’s clothes and stuffed them in his pack, which she put by the door. Annie came down to the garden with her daughters. She pulled radishes, nipped off their tops and rolled them in her palms.

  ‘What’s happening, Ellie?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Terry won’t help.’

  Annie put the radishes in the girls’ schoolbags. She kissed them and sent them off to catch the school bus.

  ‘Mark had a look at Mike’s plantation, did I tell you? He’s got a little micro-climate down there. Mark reckons he’ll harvest in March all right. He’ll be gone then, Ellie. We’ll set up a constitution for this place. I’ll ram it down Terry’s throat if I have to.’

  Ellie nodded. She had turned a corner in the night and left Mike somewhere else. If she had to, she would leave Terry too.

  ‘I’m not coming to work this morning. I’m going across there.’ She waved at the river.

  ‘You’re not looking for his garden?’ Annie said.

  ‘No. Up in the hills.’ Seeing Good Life from the other side might be a way of putting more space between her and Mike.

  She rowed across and pulled the dinghy on to the shingle fan above the creek. She might have been in a wilderness with nothing man-made visible. When she reached the top of the waterfall the roofs of Good Life came into view. They seemed too cosy for her liking, and she walked, stepping upwards, for half an hour before looking back. The longer view made Good Life small and lonely, which suited her better, reinforced her independence and the strength she felt. The valley was crescent shaped, enclosed, held still by the weight of hills leaning on it. She climbed again, through rocks and stunted scrub and gravelly soil, moving in a straight line and meeting the gorge as it twisted. The creek ran in shingly banks, then slipped to lower levels on slides of stone. She saw Mike’s sluice dug in and fixed with stakes, and was impressed by how far he had carried it. For a while he had been serious about his gold prospecting. For a while: that was Mike. It put another step between them and made her tolerant.

  The gorge cut through reddish-brown rock, part of a mineral belt. Bush grew at a distance on both sides, thicker and blacker to the north. Somewhere down there Mike’s plantation lay. Green seedlings, she thought. Green plants by now. His dreams would be of money instead of rainbow shadows. Ellie grinned, then was angry and sour. Letting him get away with his crop seemed like complicity. He put a stain on Good Life and on her.

  She ate the cheese and tomato sandwich she had brought, then climbed down to the creek and drank from a pool. She lay on a patch of grass and stared into the sky, tried to see deep into it. There was no way of telling how far the eye travelled out, how far it would penetrate, at its speed of light. If she blinked, did the journey start again?

  She closed her eyes. She tried to sleep, but the grass pricked through her shirt and the ground made her hips ache – and perhaps made her baby uncomfortable. She wondered about that. Could it feel yet? She could not imagine it without responses, or that they were simply physical. Her ignorance made her ashamed. She would have to get books and read – must not go through pregnancy without knowing. She wanted to know everything the baby knew.

  She stood up and climbed again, and each level sank Good Life deeper into the valley. There were goat droppings on the ground and it pleased her that something lived up here. Goats on the high hills. Trout and eels in the river. People at Good Life. It all seemed linked. She rested again, then wound her way through clumps of nibbled tussock grass to the bush. Some of the trees she could name, others not, but she knew their shapes and would be able to draw them, leaf and trunk and tree-head, if she chose. It was as if they gave themselves to her and she might carry them away.

  Her watch said midday. She walked down slowly, angling back and forth. Pieces of the river shone, trailing like snail slime. She saw her table rock, its surface white in the sun. She had stood there in mid-winter with the river boiling less than a yard below, hammering in the undercut above the water-chute, which had turned into a rolling coil. The wind had torn her hat off and boated it halfway across before the water sucked it down. Ellie shivered. It had been her lesson in smallness: was today her lesson in her true place? She wondered about it. The valley was here when she was not. The hills sat still, the river ran. So what was she, moving through it, seeing?

  She stood on the lip of the waterfall. The pool at its base was less clear than the river. An eel pool, not a trout pool: green glass. Mike had trapped eels and tried to smoke them. He talked about setting up a business, then forgot. Poor Mike. He was strictly short term. He should forget his marijuana garden and move on.

  Something was flash
ing in the sun through the trees. It moved slowly: Annie shifting sheets of tin in the garden, perhaps, strengthening her possum fence. Ellie rowed across the river, hauled the dinghy up and fastened it. She heard a car door slam and Mike’s voice cry, ‘That’ll do. Leave her there. What do you think?’

  The river, lying still, transmitted voices.

  ‘Yeah, some place,’ Boggsie said.

  Ellie’s stomach heaved. She thought she was going to vomit, and she stood for a moment with her hand pressed to her mouth. Then she climbed the bank and broke through the trees.

  His truck was pulled up beside the stove shed. He and Mike stood at the edge of the garden, talking to Annie, while a woman wearing cut-off jeans rolled a cigarette on the carriage steps.

  ‘Hey Ellie, look who’s here,’ Mike called.

  She was dizzy and could not see properly. Mike and Boggsie were flat as though pasted on a wall. She stopped short of them.

  ‘Get him out of here.’

  ‘Take it easy, Ellie. Hear what he’s got to say.’

  ‘I’m not interested. Get him out.’

  But it was too late. Boggsie had set foot on Good Life and that was enough.

  ‘All it is, Ellie, I was out of line back on the orchard,’ Boggsie said. ‘So we’ll shake hands, eh, and start again?’

  ‘No,’ Ellie said.

  The woman by the carriage laughed and lit her cigarette.

  ‘Listen, Ellie,’ Mike said, ‘and get it straight. You don’t run this place. I’ve already talked to Terry, and he says Boggsie and Tina can stay. OK? Boggsie’s going to help with the community room. Ellie, he was a plumber. We can use a plumber here.’

  Boggsie spread his mouth in its pasted-on smile. ‘I’m a tradesman,’ he said. The woman laughed again.

  ‘You know what he did to me, and you asked him here?’

  ‘Ellie –’

  ‘It’s your marijuana, isn’t it? You need him to help sell it.’

  ‘You better shut up about that.’

  ‘You can get in trouble,’ Boggsie said.

  ‘Hey, just a minute,’ Annie said.

  ‘Keep out of it, Annie. This is Ellie and me,’ Mike said.