Tunnel Vision

by Andrew Christie

John put the left indicator on and slowed for the exit to Ocean Shores. “Just north of Brunswick Heads. About an hour from the border.”

  “You’d better go pick him up. He sounded pretty bad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know…upset, like he’s in trouble,” Tony said.

  “Is he with Rashmi? What’s his number? I’ll call him.”

  “He was calling from a public phone. Southport Mall. I told him to wait there, by the phone.”

  Chapter 28

  Comprende

  “Hey, you. Dickhead.”

  Billy tensed. A bunch of local kids had been hassling him ever since it had started to get dark.

  “Yeah, you. What are ya doin’ here?” One of them had broken away from his mates and was walking towards where Billy sat on a low wall. The kid wasn’t the biggest one but big enough. Bigger than Billy—they all were. He held a can of beer in one hand and was waving a cigarette around in the other. “Hey. I’m talking to you.”

  They’d been shouting stuff at him for a while now. Billy had decided that if they came close enough, he was going to kick the first one in the balls. After that, he’d get the shit kicked out of him, but that was probably going to happen anyway. Unless he ran. And he wasn’t running anymore. Fuck that. Everything had been fucked up since he and Rashmi had run away from Sydney, and it felt like things kept getting worse.

  Dave had driven them out of Toolongolook without stopping, leaving all their stuff behind. His camera too. Dave said they couldn’t stop, said they had to leave right away. Billy wasn’t going to argue; he wanted to get as far away from the farm as possible. Rash was riding up front, talking fast, telling her grandfather what had happened. How those two crazies from England wanted to know about some gold. How they hit Billy, and then how he hit him them with the frozen meat.

  Dave turned in his seat and looked at Billy. “You took one of them out?” He said it like he didn’t really believe it.

  Billy shrugged. “Lucky.”

  “It wasn’t luck,” Rash said. “He took them both on, and they had a gun.”

  “You were both lucky,” Dave said. “They’ve killed two of my friends. They killed Kurt, honey.” He put his hand out to her.

  Rashmi looked at him. “No. We saw him… He gave us a lift.”

  “It happened after that. That’s how they found the farm.”

  “No. Not Kurt. No...”

  “I’m sorry, baby. He’s gone. The cops took his body away.”

  “No, no.” Rash was sobbing, banging her head against the side window.

  “One of them’s still at the farm,” Billy said. “The one I knocked out.”

  “I didn’t see anyone,” Dave said. “Must have taken off.”

  “He was on the floor of the shed when we rode off on the quad bike,” Billy said.

  Rashmi was still sobbing, but neither Billy nor Dave had anything else to say. Billy was wiped out. His head kept dropping, and then he’d jerk awake.

  He must have fallen fully asleep, because the next thing he knew, it was light and the Land Rover had stopped. He sat up, pushing his hair out of his face, wiping dribble off his mouth with his sleeve. They were parked in the forecourt of a big self-storage warehouse.

  “Where are we?” Billy asked.

  “Shhh. Rashmi’s asleep still,” Dave said. “I have to pick up some stuff I’ve got stored here.”

  Billy nodded, sitting up and peering into the front seat, where Rashmi was curled up, leaning against the door.

  Dave slid out of the driver’s seat, leaving his door ajar, and came around to Billy’s side. “Get out, will you? We’re going to head inland, stay out of sight for a while, work our way up into the territory, maybe head for Darwin. The stuff we need—camping equipment, tents, sleeping bags—it’s all in the lockup here.”

  “Okay.” Billy nodded and slid his feet out the door.

  Dave led him away from the Land Rover. “We’re going to need some food for the road. I’ll be driving right through till it gets dark, and then we’ll find somewhere to camp. While I get the gear out, you go get us something to eat.” He pointed down the road towards a couple of shops with a few cars and trucks in front. One of the shops was a convenience store; the other was a café. “They do good coffee down there. I’ll have a large cappuccino and a toasted sandwich. Ham and cheese.” He held out a fifty-dollar note. “Get something for Rashmi and yourself too. Quick as you can. We can’t hang around here.”

  “Sure,” Billy said. “Cappuccino, and a ham and cheese.”

  “Toasted,” Dave said.

  Billy nodded and headed for the café as Dave turned towards the big storage building.

  When Billy returned to the storage place fifteen minutes later, he had a cardboard tray with three cups of coffee in one hand, and three white paper bags with toasted sandwiches in the other. He also had a large bag of peanut M&Ms stuffed into one of his pockets. The car park was empty.

  It took Billy a while to realise what Dave had done. He walked up and down the car park, looking to see if Dave might have moved the Land Rover, perhaps to a loading area. He looked inside the building, but no one was there. He peered down the street and even walked back down to the café in case he had misunderstood, to see if Dave was waiting for him down there. But the black Land Rover wasn’t anywhere.

  He thought maybe he’d taken too long, and Dave had decided to go get petrol. That had to be it; they’d be back soon, he told himself. He sat down out the front of the storage place to wait. The coffees were getting cold, so he drank his and ate his sandwich, hoping to see the big black four-wheel-drive come around the corner.

  Billy had no idea where they’d gone or where he was. Had Rashmi been in on it? Had both of them decided to dump him in the middle of nowhere? When the tears started, he didn’t know how to stop them. They were slow at first, leaking down his cheeks, wetting tunnel soot that was still smeared on his face. Soon they became floods. He bawled like a baby; he shouted. At Dave, at Rashmi. At those English bastards. All the pricks with their fucking guns, all the ones who hurt people. At John too; he was another. All of them. All of the bastards who wouldn’t leave him alone. Why couldn’t they all just leave him the fuck alone? His back still hurt; he wanted a shower. He wanted to sleep. He just wanted to lie down and be left alone. He sat there hiccuping and snivelling, ignoring anyone who bothered to look at him.

  Eventually the tears had dried up, but his anger hadn’t. He wiped his face and blew his nose on the napkins that had come with the sandwiches. He had exactly $21.50, the change from Dave’s fifty. He had two cold cups of coffee and two toasted sandwiches. He drank the coffees, left the empty cups on the pavement, and started walking. The first thing he had to do was to figure out where the hell he was.

  He walked for hours, eventually finding a main road and a sign that said, gold coast. He knew that was in Queensland. A couple of young surfers gave him a ride to the beach, and then he walked till he found a shopping centre and some public phones. That was when he rang home.

  Tony told him to stay put. He said John wasn’t far away and was looking for him. Tony would call him, get him to come pick Billy up. So Billy stayed there, within sight of the phones, all afternoon. It had been okay until the local yobbos had turned up.

  “Hey.”

  Billy spun around, thinking someone else had come to hassle him. Instead he was looking up at John, at his outstretched arm. “Hey,” he said, taking John’s hand, allowing himself to be pulled up to standing.

  “Are you all right?” John held on to his hand as he squinted down at him.

  Billy nodded as he felt the tears spring to his eyes again. “Yeah. I’m all right,” he sniffed. He didn’t want to start crying again.

  John pulled him forward, put his arms around him. “Jesus, I’m glad to see you.” Billy hugged him back, grateful to have someone bigger and stronger there. Glad not to be alone.

  Seeing the two of them hugging started the loca
ls up again. “Hey, freak. Who’s this? Your bum chum?” the biggest one yelled.

  “Yeah. Dirty, fuckin’, crybaby poof. Why don’t you piss off?” another joined in.

  John pushed Billy away, holding him at arm’s length and looking at him for a moment. He flashed Billy a mad grin.

  “Don’t,” Billy said.

  John patted his shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said, still grinning. “I’m in the mood.” He crossed the space to the young men before they could react, grabbed a handful of the biggest one’s T-shirt, and drove him backwards into a plate-glass window. The kid grunted, John’s weight driving the air out of him. His can of beer clattered to the ground and rolled towards the gutter, leaving a trail of froth across the pavement. John pulled him forward again, so their foreheads were touching, and spoke through bared teeth. “How’s your day been, mate? Eh?” He gave the kid a firm shake. “Hey? How’s it been? Because mine’s been pretty shit all things considered. And now I’m in Queensland.” The kid tried to pull his head away, but John wasn’t finished. “And I fucking hate Queensland.”

  The kid twisted to look across at his friends, but they were busy drifting away. “We was just joking, mate. We didn’t mean—”

  “You’ve got about two seconds before I forget myself and start kicking the living shit out of you.” John shook the boy hard. “Do you fucking comprende?”

  The teen shook his head and started to stammer something.

  John didn’t give him a chance to get it out, pushing him backwards towards his friends. “Go on, fuck off.” John gave him a final shove that sent him sprawling across the footpath.

  Billy watched the others pick up their friend and retreat across the road. The further away they got, the more vocal and brave they became, but still they kept moving away. John turned back to Billy and shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “They weren’t going to do anything,” Billy said.

  “Maybe.” John glanced back at them. “I needed to let off some steam, though. It’s been a bastard couple of days.”

  “Yeah. What happened to you?” Billy was looking at the line of black stitches across John’s shaved scalp.

  “This?” John touched the stitches. “I got myself mugged, didn’t I?”

  “How…”

  “Long story. I’ll tell you on the way home.” He looked down at Billy. “And what about you, mate? You look like shit.”

  Billy glanced down at his filthy T-shirt and shorts. Scratches and cuts covered his knees and arms. “I lost my stuff.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve got your bag and your camera. Rashmi’s stuff too.”

  “You went to the farm?”

  “Yeah. And the tunnel.” John wrapped his arms around Billy, hugging him harder this time.

  Billy winced. “Hey, they’ll start calling us poofs again.”

  “Let ’em,” John growled.

  Billy nodded again and sniffed.

  John sniffed too as he put his arm around Billy’s shoulder. “So where’s Rashmi? Is she all right?”

  “Dunno. Probably. She’s with her grandfather. I guess they’re still together. He dumped me this morning at one of those storage places. Drove off without me. Then I walked and hitched a ride here. Rash was asleep. I don’t think she would’ve let him if she was awake.”

  “Why did he ditch you?”

  Billy shrugged. “Don’t think he likes me much. Probably thinks I’m the one who got Rash into trouble.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe. She’s probably his golden girl, just an innocent bystander. Come on. Let’s go. The ute’s up there. Let’s get out of this shit hole.”

  Billy followed John across the road, wincing as he stepped off the kerb.

  “Are you really all right?” John asked.

  Billy rubbed his knuckles across his back. “Back’s a bit sore. I came off a quad bike.”

  “That was you? You made a mess of that bike.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Neither of them mentioned Ruth, with half her head missing in the tunnel.

  They drove south, back towards Sydney, working through the nighttime traffic on the Gold Coast Highway, till they were back in New South Wales. When they got on the motorway, Billy started talking, his head against the window as he watched the reflections of the oncoming headlights. He told John how they’d caught the bus to Brunswick Heads, how Rashmi’s grandfather wasn’t there. How a man called Kurt, a friend, had given him and Rashmi a lift out to the farm. How Dave had said Kurt was dead now.

  “Yeah,” John said. “I heard about that.”

  “Dave said it was them, those mad English people.”

  They stopped for the night at a little town called Woodburn. Billy had been having trouble keeping his eyes open for quite a while. The town was stretched out along one side of the highway, with a big river on the other side of the road. John pulled the ute into the driveway of a motel in the middle of town. Across the road, Billy saw a park and the dark line of the river reflecting lights from houses on the far side. After they’d checked in, John went looking for something to eat while Billy made use of the bathroom.

  He stood under the hot stream of water in the shower for a long time before he reached for the little bar of paper-wrapped soap. He’d never been in a motel before, but he liked it. He liked the way the toilet had a paper ribbon across it, as if breaking the seal were somehow important. He liked the tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner too and the packets of little soaps and the white anonymous towels. It felt like you could be anyone you wanted in a motel room.

  Billy watched himself in the mirror as he dried off, his skin pink from the hot water, where it wasn’t bruised. All the dirt was gone, the stuff you could see, but he wondered how long it would take to get rid of the rest of it. The stuff inside him.

  He rummaged in his bag, pulling out his last clean T-shirt and a pair of jeans that weren’t too dirty. He pushed his fingers through his damp hair, trying to get most of it onto one side of his head and generally pointing in the same direction. The Billy peering back from the mirror looked fresh and clean. Maybe that was the best he could hope for.

  He was sitting on one of the beds, flipping through TV channels, when John returned with burgers and milkshakes. “Truckie joint,” he said, passing Billy a paper bag. “Only place open. Twenty-four-hour burgers. Hopefully the truckies around here know their hamburgers.”

  They ate without talking, watching an old movie with the sound turned off. Lots of big fluffy haircuts, shoulder pads, and guns that never ran out of bullets.

  Billy’s milkshake was thick, cold, and chocolatey. He finished it off, sucking air and bubbles from the bottom of the container. “Well, the truckies know their milkshakes anyway.”

  John grunted a reply around a mouthful of burger.

  Billy burped then said, “Will we get back to Sydney tomorrow? We need to make sure Rash is all right.”

  John wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “She’ll be all right. Her grandfather will look out for her. And to tell you the truth, my sympathy levels for that family are running low.”

  “But…her grandpa, he had a shotgun. He’s… The way he killed Ruth…like it didn’t matter, like it didn’t mean anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was glad to see Rash; she was all that mattered. The rest—Ruth, me even—it was like we were just in the way.”

  “He already had the gun?”

  “Must have. I thought he had a gun when he first showed up at the farm, a pistol. He was holding it behind his back before he realised who we were. Like he was expecting to have to use it. He knows how to shoot, and killing Ruth didn’t seem to bother him at all. He’d never even seen her before.” Billy grabbed a paper napkin and wiped his mouth. “I’m glad he did it, though. She was going to shoot me, but…I think he’s dangerous.”

  “Would he hurt her?”

  “Rashmi?” Billy wasn’t sure. “No. I don’t think so.” He put the napkin in the empty milkshake container a
nd crushed it in his hands. “Probably not on purpose. But I think bad things happen around him. Why else would he have a gun?”

  “All right, I’ll call her mother.”

  Billy picked up the food wrappers and empty containers and stuffed them into the bin while John called Sally. There was no answer, so John left a message and called Tony. John told him that he’d found Billy, that he was okay. They’d be home tomorrow. Then John held out the phone to Billy. “He wants to talk to you.”

  Billy took the phone. “Hello?”

  “Billy? Man, are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Good, good. Listen, John says you’ll be home tomorrow. I’m gonna make that tuna bake you like.”

  “Thanks…”

  “With the potato and cheese on top.”

  “Great…”

  “Okay, mate,” Tony said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Billy handed the phone back to John and lay back across his bed. “When you were up at the farm, did you see any sign of the other one? The man, Manny?”

  “The one you clobbered? No, mate, there was just the old woman in the tunnel. And she was very dead.”

  “Her name was Ruth.”

  “You sure they were English?”

  “Yeah, like on television. They had the same accents. And they said they were from there.”

  “What were they after?”

  “Some gold. They said Dave had some gold that didn’t belong to him. None of it made any sense. They said this gold belonged to them, and some other bloke must’ve given it to Dave.”

  John raised his eyebrows. “Did they say how much?”

  “Nineteen million Ruth said.”

  John whistled. “That’d be enough.”

  “They said this other bloke stole it in England. What would that have to do with Dave?”

  “I don’t know, but I think we’re going to have to ask him sometime. Let’s get some sleep now.” John pointed the remote at the television, and the screen went black.

  Chapter 29