True Blue

by Sasha Wasley

  ‘Miss Patz.’ Cameron’s voice broke the moment. ‘Have you got some kitchen towel or something? We, uh, kinda spilled something.’

  She ran to assist. Finn joined them a moment later with some Chux wipes to help sop up the turpentine that had tipped onto the table and the lino mat.

  Cameron stared at Finn. ‘You’re a copper, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I am.’

  ‘I saw you at the youth centre talk the other day.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Finn smiled at him. ‘What did you think?’

  Cameron shrugged, his face distrustful. ‘We’ve heard it all before.’

  Finn nodded. ‘I think we need a new approach to drugs ed. What do you reckon would work?’

  Cameron had clearly been raised to consider police the enemy. He shrugged again, but it wouldn’t be Cameron if he stayed silent for long, and within moments he was talking.

  ‘You gotta get to the kids younger. I’m sixteen. I’d seen more stuff than you guys talked about by the time I was twelve. You can’t shock us. If you wanna educate the kids before they start, you gotta be talking to the six-, seven-, eight-year-olds.’

  Finn paused in his cleaning. ‘There’s been talk about an early intervention program with primary kids, with older kids as mentors. We’re looking for teens who keep themselves out of trouble to work with the little kids. Do you know anyone like that?’

  When Cameron didn’t answer straight away, Tia nudged him.

  ‘I’ve stayed out of trouble,’ he admitted.

  ‘What do you reckon? Do you get along with younger kids?’

  ‘You’d be perfect for that, Cam,’ Tia said.

  Cameron shrugged again, but there was a sheen in his eyes that told Free he was flattered – and interested. She smiled at Finn.

  They left the students to it and went back to their coffees, where Free quietly filled Finn in on Cameron’s background – his brothers’ troubles and his mother’s determination to keep him on the straight and narrow. Finn’s face became bright.

  ‘He’s exactly the sort of kid we need for this new program. I’ll tell Narelle about him – she’s our community officer putting together the program. She’ll be stoked.’

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here in Mount Clair,’ Free told him. ‘Apart from being hot, you’re the kind of cop who’ll make a real difference.’

  He grinned. ‘But mostly because I’m hot, right?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  To Free’s dismay, Briggsy was right. The dam protesters were garnering more news coverage every day – and not because of what the project was doing to the river ecosystem. They had been caught trying to climb fences to get into the machinery lot, vandalising signage and even throwing rotten food at the workers. Each morning she read about it on her phone before work. Why didn’t the protesters understand that they could hurt the anti-dam movement with this kind of behaviour?

  She did the drive to the construction zone for Thursday’s rally and spotted Tom’s 4WD parked on the side of the road. Free pulled in behind it. Even at a distance, it was plain that this protest was more vocal than the one she’d been to before. She approached the ringlock fence around the site, where earthmovers and diggers were parked for the night in the red mud beyond. The crowd waved signs and chanted, their energy high.

  Save the Herne!

  Irrigation today – Devastation tomorrow!

  Think future not dollars

  Buildplex = Land Rapists

  Hamilton OUT!

  ‘What do we want?’ a woman was shouting.

  ‘Buildplex out!’ screamed the crowd.

  ‘When do we want it?’

  ‘NOW!’

  Wow. Free scoured the crowd for her sister and spotted her at last, standing with Tom beside the fence, a slight distance from the main crowd. Free made a dash through the throng to join them, hugging them both in greeting.

  ‘This is pretty wild,’ she said over the noise.

  ‘Yeah, it’s ramping up.’ Tom’s eyes were bright with interest. ‘Good to see people getting behind the cause.’

  ‘They should be focusing on the river, though.’ Willow chewed a nail, her dark eyes worried. ‘Not screaming about Buildplex. If Buildplex weren’t doing it, some other company would be. It’s the Department of Infrastructure we should be trying to get through to.’

  ‘In the end, I suppose it doesn’t really matter who they’re screaming about,’ Tom said. ‘If it gets on the news, it raises awareness.’

  ‘Look.’ Free had spotted cameras and microphones. ‘That’s the ABC radio woman. And there’s the local newspaper guy.’

  The protest’s spokeswoman made a speech to the media about corruption in the government planning department and then went into a rant about the Buildplex construction company’s lack of ethics. The crowd cheered each statement of condemnation and shouted ‘Shame!’ whenever the Hamilton name was mentioned. Willow and Free exchanged glances.

  ‘What the hell are we even demonstrating against here?’ Willow murmured.

  Tom wore a frown too. ‘The protest’s angle has certainly shifted,’ was his remark.

  To their relief, an environmental scientist was in the crowd, and the ABC reporter interviewed him as well. That moved the protest back onto the ecological issues. But there were still a number of people in the crowd shouting angrily about Buildplex and Amanda Hamilton. As soon as the reporters left, Willow tugged on Free’s hand.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘I don’t like listening to that woman squawking on about Buildplex. Yeah, they’ve got a bit to answer for, but they’re not the main problem. Let’s get out of here before the police arrive.’

  ‘Okay,’ Free agreed.

  Finn was rostered on right now, she recalled. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be called out to deal with the more rambunctious protesters. As a supporter of the antidam movement, he would surely be torn between his job and his conscience. She followed her sister and Tom back to the cars, where they said their goodbyes.

  ‘I’m going to write a post in the Save the River group tonight,’ Willow said, her mouth set in a line. ‘We need to stay focused on the real issue here, and not turn into a lynch mob.’

  ‘Yeah!’ Free gazed at Willow with heartfelt admiration. ‘You’ll say it so brilliantly, Will.’

  She waved them off and headed home, wishing she had some way to help. Realistically, all she could do was share Willow’s post. Articulating cogent arguments on political issues was not exactly Free’s forte.

  Oh – of course! She could share the post on her artist profile! She had over two thousand followers on there. That would be a great way to raise awareness. And there was her Herne 365 project on Instagram. She could use social media to show the Herne in all its glory – the hard, cracking beds in the dry season, and the gushing fury during a flood. She could share her photos along with Willow’s words – and then she could pay to boost the post so that more people saw it.

  Free spent the evening picking photos to create a powerful collection that showed off the beauty of the Herne River and its ecosystem. As soon as she spotted Willow’s post, Free shared her photos and her sister’s inspirational words about staying true to the essence of the movement – to call the government to account over the Herne River ecosystem – and not to slam the bland corporation which had won the rights to complete the dam project. Free immediately got a slew of likes and comments, so she paid twenty dollars to boost the post.

  Waiting for Finn to get home from work, she watched her post’s visibility skyrocket. Some of her students were liking and sharing, too – she saw Cameron’s name, and Jorja’s, then Tia’s. Cameron had commented, I want to go to the next protest!

  Free smiled. Okay, she might only be a little cog in the machine, but this was one way she could use her skills make a difference.

  Free loved her students’ engagement with the ceramics art form. She introduced them to more advanced techniques than they’d tried before, and they made practice tiles to exp
eriment with drying and bisquing. Free tried to make sure they learned from their failures and successes.

  ‘You know how you kept picking it up while you were working on it?’ she said to Cameron when his practice tile emerged warped from the drying process. ‘That’s called overhandling.’

  He looked at it critically. ‘It’s kind of cool, though, the way it’s shaped. Twisted like a piece of bacon.’

  ‘It is cool,’ she agreed. ‘If it was a sculpture, it would be so cool! But it’s a tile, and it won’t stick to the wall properly unless it’s flat, so maybe next time try to stop yourself from picking it up, okay?’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ he sighed. ‘It’s just easier if I can move it around while I do the relief.’

  ‘Believe me, I know exactly what you mean,’ she commiserated. ‘Choose a smaller piece of gyprock to work on next time, so you can turn it more easily.’

  ‘What about mine?’ asked Petra. ‘I didn’t overhandle, and it still bent.’

  ‘Yeah, but I think I remember seeing you using a lot of water, is that right?’

  ‘Yeah, to make it smooth.’

  ‘It’s just, if there’s too much water in the clay, it will dry slowly in certain parts of the tile, so you’ll get warping. It’s like when you get drips of water on paper – the wet bits shrink as they dry, which pulls the whole piece of paper into a funny shape. You need your clay to be pretty dry when you’re making tiles.’

  Petra stared at her warped tile, her mouth turned down in vexation.

  ‘Guys, it’s okay,’ Free told them. ‘These are practice tiles. This is why we’re making them – to make sure our final tiles come out exactly how we want them.’

  ‘Mine’s got some fluffy crap stuck to it,’ said Ethan.

  Free examined his tile, which had dried beautifully flat, but did have, as he’d said, fibres caught in the clay. ‘I think they might be gyprock fibres from the edges of your board. Remember how I said to tape the edges? That’s why.’

  ‘Huh. I heard you say tape it, but I thought you were just being paranoid and didn’t want us to scratch ourselves on the edges.’ He grinned.

  She smiled back at him. ‘No, there’s method to my madness.’

  They made another batch of tiles and dried them. These were better, with minimal warping. Free got them to make yet another batch and then, when the first ones were almost leather-hard, they used them to practice with underglazes. They had to make use of the school’s existing underglaze collection, since the new ones had not yet arrived. Free taught them to wipe the clay dust away with a damp cloth and score in a design with a needle tool. Then they painted in their designs and worked with fettling tools to reiterate the lines. While they were working with the glazes on a Monday morning, she got a hit of the dreadful sulphur odour.

  ‘Who let Polly off the perch?’ Cameron held his hand over his nose.

  Free laughed. ‘Is someone using the white underglaze?’

  ‘That’s gross,’ said Jorja, holding her nose.

  ‘Open a window!’ Free called to Tia, who was the pink-faced culprit with the offending bottle.

  Tia did so. ‘Sorry! I really need the white.’

  ‘How we suffer for our art,’ said Free. ‘I can’t wait for the new glazes to arrive.’

  ‘I’d rather change my design colours than smell that again,’ Jorja mumbled.

  But it was abundantly clear that Aidan still thought the new glazes were an extravagance.

  ‘I’ve had the Year Tens using the existing supply of underglazes on our practice tiles,’ he remarked over lunch one morning.

  He stirred his chia pudding with a teaspoon and kept his eyes on Free until she weakened.

  ‘How are they going with it?’ she asked.

  ‘Excellent. They’re really coming along. It’s amazing what a solid drilling in art theory can do for an amateur.’ He dipped his teaspoon into the grey pudding. ‘There’s a lot of the school’s glaze store still remaining. I hope these new ones you’ve ordered don’t go to waste.’

  ‘Haven’t you noticed any issues with the glaze–clay match?’ she asked with a pang of self-doubt.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said, his tone careless. ‘We haven’t done any clear-glazing yet, of course. But so far, so good.’

  Free bit her thumbnail and stared down at her Cruskits. Hell. What if he was right about the old glazes being fine for the clay? Had she wasted the school’s money?

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Aidan gave her that tight-cheeked smile, his pale eyes bright with amusement. He dropped his voice and touched her hand. Ugh. His touch was as clammy as a cadaver’s. ‘I won’t mention anything to Jay. It can be our little secret.’

  The knot in her stomach tightened. ‘I’m pretty sure we really did need those new glazes.’

  He lifted his eyebrows with a we-shall-see expression and popped the spoon in his mouth. He used his upper lip to smooth the pudding on the spoon. It was like watching someone feed a tall, gangly baby and Free wanted to vomit.

  ‘Hey, Free.’ A young woman – the accounting teacher – stopped by their table. ‘I loved that post you did on your Facebook page about the river. It was really inspiring.’

  ‘Oh! Thanks. Um, my sister wrote the words.’

  ‘No, I mean the photos. You’ve really dedicated yourself to the river cause. I felt quite emotional, looking through those pictures, and I’ve only lived in Mount Clair for a couple of months. I love that you’re not afraid to stick it to Buildplex. Fight the power!’

  The woman made a resist fist and grinned at Free. She didn’t even notice Aidan. Clearly, she had no idea he was the Crown Prince of Buildplex.

  ‘Hah. Yeah,’ said Free, hoping Aidan wouldn’t say anything horrible.

  The accounting teacher moved on and Free locked her eyes on her lunch. Within moments, Aidan had launched into conversation with the sports teacher about a cycling meet. They chatted and guffawed about their sport as only self-satisfied alpha males can. Relieved, Free immersed herself in her phone messages. It wasn’t until she was finishing her lunch that she caught the word ‘eco-Nazis’ and realised Aidan’s conversation had shifted.

  Kent, the sports teacher, was barking his staccato laugh, which always made Free think of a hyena.

  ‘Haven’t heard that expression before!’ he bawled in the drop-and-give-me-twenty voice that Free was sure all sport teachers possessed. ‘Is that anything like a feminazi?’

  ‘All cut from the same cloth.’ Aidan shrugged. ‘The same unhygienic organic hemp cloth, I’d say.’ He joined Kent in another hyena bray, like an inferior male attempting to ingratiate himself into the pack.

  Free left the table and, for a few minutes, she understood why peaceful protesters sometimes got violent.

  On the nights that Finn wasn’t working, Free either stayed at his place or he stayed at hers. Max snoozed between their legs, apparently perfectly content now that his two owners had worked out they belonged together. Free missed sleeping with Finn when he had to work a night shift. They exchanged spare keys so he could join her in bed when he got home. She loved waking up to find him next to her.

  When their days off coincided, they hung out together – long hours in bed, or treks in a borrowed 4WD to explore a gorge or hunt out remaining waterfalls as the dry season took hold. Sometimes they simply kept one another company in between their own pursuits – for Free, painting, online chats with international friends, and ordering art supplies for her customers; for Finn, jogging, football practice, or doing odd jobs around either of their units. He often cooked dinner for them, since he was better at it, although he claimed to love Free’s pasta.

  It felt so easy. Every now and then, Free remembered that her contract would end in a couple of months and she would have to go back to Patersons. It would be a ninety-minute drive just to spend a night with Finn. She pushed the thought away. We’ll work it out somehow, she told herself.

  The term break was upon Free before she knew it. She had originally planned t
o go home to Paterson Downs for the whole two-week break, but she put off her visit until the first Thursday, and even then only stayed for a couple of nights. She missed Finn too much. She longed to see his Kimberley-creek eyes light up and to feel those big, strong arms slip around her waist. She drove back to her unit on the Saturday morning that marked the middle of the holidays. Knowing that Finn had to work until three, Free messaged Beth to see if she wanted to go to Galileo’s for a coffee. Late morning, they met at their usual table.

  Free had barely even been served a drink when it started.

  ‘Do you think this relationship with Finn will last beyond the end of your lease?’ Beth asked, her gaze locked on Free’s face. ‘You’re going back to live at Patersons when your contract ends, right?’

  ‘Yeah, probably.’

  ‘He’s only here in Mount Clair temporarily, isn’t he?’ Beth said. ‘He probably won’t stay here for too long.’

  ‘He doesn’t have plans to leave.’ Free couldn’t help getting defensive. ‘He loves it here.’

  ‘Everyone does, at first.’

  Beth’s knowing face was too much for Free. ‘You’ve still got it in for him, and yet he’s done nothing wrong. Give the guy a break, Beth.’

  ‘He hasn’t heard from the ex-girlfriend at all?’

  ‘No!’ Free snapped, but then she had to back-pedal. ‘I mean, I don’t think so. I haven’t asked.’

  Beth raised her eyebrows. ‘You might want to ask.’

  Free gave such a forceful huff of frustration that it caused her to splash chai latte onto her skirt. ‘He’s not interested in her. He’s interested in me. Why’s that so hard for you to grasp?’

  Beth had the decency to look surprised. ‘It’s not at all difficult for me to grasp, as a matter of fact. I can see precisely why he’s interested in you. I just don’t know about his staying power.’

  ‘No-one knows anything about anybody’s “staying power” until they trust them enough to find out,’ Free reminded her. She rubbed at the stain on her skirt with a napkin. ‘Just give him a chance, Beth.’