‘Native tribes,’ I explain. ‘The people of the plains.’
‘I’m the only native tribes around here,’ Geoff says. ‘This is my mother’s country. If there were any Indians or whatever out here, I’d know about it, okay?’
I unclench my hand. Geoff takes the chance to spring up and he lopes towards the others, shaking his head. He moves slowly but with force, like a much larger man.
I can see him through the trees, conferring with the team leader. Joe will come looking for me. I should hide, I know what is coming, but I can’t move. It is the bush around me. On each side the bush is keening: the sound of its defeat clatters like rusty chain mail. I can’t move.
‘Far out,’ says Joe, pushing his way through the branches towards me. He gets his phone out and shakes it. Then he puts it back in his pocket. No signal here, only smoke and satellites. He glances back at where his troopy squats in the shade, holding contact with the outside world like a pebble held in a fist.
Joe comes close and kneels on the ground beside me.
‘Wayne, mate, are you right?’
‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘Do you want me to ring the social worker?’
‘Yeah.’
Mary drives up to the car park in her little red car. By the time she gets here I’m eating a chewy steak sandwich with the others. The back of the truck is full of everyone’s weed bags, piled high. We’ve cleared a little space in the bush which will probably grow back overnight, like a beard.
Joe is talking about the company whose mess we’re cleaning up.
‘They come in and take what they want then piss off,’ he says.
‘Cowboys,’ Sharon agrees, and everyone looks at me.
I look at Mary walking up the track.
She comes over, her cheerful smile barely hiding her exhaustion. ‘You all right, Wayne?’ she says. Mary’s the one that got me into this volunteer work and at the time I must have agreed it would be good to get out in the bush and do something useful. I didn’t have much choice. Now cdep’s gone they have to make people like me do the shit jobs. Basket cases.
‘They got to you,’ I say.
‘Yeah, Joe rang me,’ she answers. ‘Are you right? Do you want to come back with me?’
‘Yeah, okay.’ I know what she’ll say if I argue.
In the car we don’t talk about anything for the first ten minutes and then she starts asking questions.
‘Do you remember what you were doing this morning, Wayne?’
‘Weeding,’ I say.
‘After that.’
‘Had a steak sandwich.’
I shuffle in my seat. The air conditioning is too cold. I play with the vent. She smiles on the other side of her mouth, the side she thinks I can’t see.
If I tell her about the horse she will only ask difficult questions. Like in a movie, it is best to give them information in little pieces. If you tell too much at the start they will get bored and if you don’t tell them anything they will get annoyed with you. Unlike a movie, if you tell them everything at once they make an appointment for you to see someone at the ward.
‘I was hiding from the Indians,’ I say, trying to sound sheepish.
‘Really? What kind were they?’
‘The plains kind.’
‘How many of them?’ Mary must be tired, because she doesn’t make the joke she usually makes about plain or self-raising Indians.
‘I’m not sure. More than a dozen.’
She does an impressed whistle.
‘I didn’t get as many weeds as everyone else because of them. Do I have to go back next week?’
‘No, Wayne. You don’t have to go back.’ She rustles the things in the tray between the front seats until she finds a small, flat box.
‘Here, I borrowed this for you.’ The box has my name on the front in yellow letters.
Back at my flat we have cups of tea and watch the dvd. She asks questions, but not too many. I tell her things, but not too much.
When the credits roll, Mary does the washing up even though I tell her I will do it later, and then she lets herself out.
At night, after Mary has gone, I can hear them charging past my flat. They are there on the edge, outside in the dusty plains. Perhaps they’re riding Georgia, waving the scalps of the captured aloft on their spears. The image runs across the inside of my eyelids like a tiny projection. I squeeze them shut to stop them from burning.
After a while I can’t hear them any more, only the cars on the highway. After a while I centre myself. I know they are right there, on the edge of things, but I’m not scared. Let them make their circle around me, let them dance and holler. Without them, there are no edges, no frontiers, just the bush chattering, leaf against leaf. With nothing left to fight against but itself.
Hello, Satan
I said hello, Satan,
I believe it’s time to go.
‘Me and the Devil Blues’
Robert Johnson
The metal of the capsized shopping trolley forms a hard, cold grid against Andy’s bum. It cools quick with the night. Andy knows the devil is not going to show up until later but he figures he might as well wait here.
By his dumb plastic Hulk watch, a little kid’s watch he got from his dad last year – I’m not getting you a new watch until this one has broken – there are still two hours to go. The servo on the corner has already shut but the light is still on inside. Andy can see the man walking around, checking the locks and turning off the lights in the fridges. Finally the man lets himself out of the servo in the dark and locks the front doors, then gets in his little orange car. Andy thinks it might be a Torana but he isn’t sure. There is only one streetlight to see by now.
After the Torana has gone, a couple of semitrailers rattle past, one after the other, leaving traces of diesel in the air. The town where Andy lives is not on the highway any more, not since they built the bypass, but it’s only a diversion of about ten kilometres, and the place is still set up as a rest stop for truckies, so a few still come through. At the other end of town the servos are bigger, with giant spaces for the trucks to park and big rooms for drivers to eat dinner, halls almost, even though there are only ever one or two people in there at a time. They are bright, twenty-four-hour places. But the end of town where Andy is waiting is quiet and dark. That’s why he chose this crossroads.
There’s a little breeze, but not much, so although it’s cold it takes Andy a long time to start shivering. Once he does he gets up and walks around the roundabout to warm up, counting each road, one-two-three-four. It’s a circle in the middle, not a cross, but he hopes it will do. He considers pacing a pentagram shape in the roundabout, but tall grass is in the way and it’s boggy in the middle, so he settles for walking around it.
After nine circuits, he returns to his spot on the trolley. He watches a taxi pull into the darkened servo. The rear passenger door opens and a woman spills out. Not falls, spills, Andy thinks, like she’s a knocked-over cup of tea. There’s a burst of yelling from the driver, and the taxi speeds away. The smell of sulfur hangs in the air.
Andy stares at the woman. She is still lying on the ground, a red and gold puddle slightly blurred at the edges. When he squints, he sees the puddle is a red dress and a lot of blond hair. He stands up and itches his hands, thinking maybe he should go over there and see if she’s all right.
The woman pushes herself up on both arms and stands slowly. She’s liquid on her legs. She staggers left, then right, a well-dressed castaway on a beach. She lurches forward, tumbling across the road. Her gold heels are very high and Andy is fascinated by the way her legs move like those of an insect. He still spends a lot more time looking at insects than girls. It is only when she comes close enough to be crisp at the edges that he realises she is very drunk.
T
he woman stops a couple of metres from Andy and smiles haphazardly in his general direction. He forgets to smile back. She sits, really only falls backwards onto the ground, and fishes a soft pack of cigarettes out of her pocket. After several attempts, she manages to extract a cigarette. She puts it in her mouth and offers the pack to Andy. He’s old enough to glory a little in the offer, but sensible enough to say no.
Andy sits down on the trolley and itches his hands again. It’s prickle-cold.
‘Itchy hands means you’re gonna get rich,’ the woman says, looking cross-eyed at her cigarette.
Andy smiles then, but the woman doesn’t see Andy smile because she is busy patting her lap, her shoulders, the sides of her legs, and her half-covered breasts.
‘I left my lighter in my purse,’ she tells the cigarette. ‘Shit. I left my purse in the taxi.’
She lifts herself half-heartedly from the ground, but falls back again, waving a hand at the air. The cab is long gone. Gone somewhere far beyond the effort of standing upright. She wipes one muddy hand on her dress.
Andy shuffles over on the trolley to make room for her. She doesn’t look at him.
‘The ground’s wet,’ he prompts.
She hesitates, but concentration crawls across her heart-shaped face, and she hauls herself up onto her shoes and stilts over. She sits, heavier and warmer than she looks. Her warmth is very close. Andy doesn’t know what to say, so he looks at his watch.
The second hand – Hulk’s fist – moves jagged towards midnight. It’s almost time.
‘I’m Andy,’ says Andy.
‘Jolene,’ the woman answers. ‘You know. Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jo-leeene. Do you go to Gumby?’
‘Yeah,’ says Andy. He hasn’t recognised the song, but he knows Gumby. It’s the nickname of the local high school. The uniforms are green.
‘What year are you in?’ she asks. Her hot face is bent towards his; he feels slightly scalded.
‘Seven,’ he says. She squints at him. ‘I mean I start in a few weeks,’ he admits.
He looks into the night for signs of movement, circles of flame, puffs of blue smoke, but there’s nothing. In the corner of his eye he can see that she’s trying to put the cigarette back in the packet.
Another truck passes.
Andy peers.
No one appears out of the dark yonder.
He takes the packet off her, and the cigarette, which is lipstick-stained. He returns it to its nest with the others, and hands the lot back. She clenches the pack in her left hand.
Andy looks at his watch again. Both hands are right on twelve. The second hand is jammed there too, shaking in its place like a frightened animal. It’s finally broken.
‘You haven’t seen anyone else around have you?’ He lifts two fingers to his head like horns but quickly puts them back in his lap.
Jolene smirks.
‘What, like Mickey Mouse?’ She puts her hands to her head and flaps them. ‘The Easter Bunny?’
‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Who then?’
‘I said don’t worry about it.’ That scalded feeling again, which he realises is him, blushing. He blows on his hands and puts them to his face, pretending he is treating the cold. This makes the blushing worse. He’s glad it’s dark. He toys with the button on his broken watch.
‘You meeting your girl-friend?’ She sounds the word out like a song, the way his dad does. Even worse, she presses her leg against his. Andy moves a millimetre out of its reach. He jams his hands between his knees and squeezes. The harmonica in his top pocket cuts into his upper arm. He shakes his head.
‘What’s her name?’
‘I’m not meeting anyone!’
‘Whoa,’ the woman says, laughing. ‘Easy, tiger.’ Her teeth are pointed. Andy isn’t sure whether he should get off the trolley now or stay there. He’s worried if he stands it will tip her into the mud.
‘I used to meet my boyfriend over there.’ She gestures towards the service station. ‘Behind the servo. But I got rid of him.’
He wonders how she got rid of him. Maybe like his dad gets rid of cockroaches, by putting down baits. She must have had a dozen boyfriends.
‘Uh-huh,’ he says.
‘All the boys at school are dumb.’
He thought she was at least twenty but she must be seventeen if she’s still at Gumby. Andy feels a little safer. He un-squeezes his legs – his knuckles were starting to go numb anyway – but is careful to keep to his side of the trolley.
He looks at his watch again. It’s still stuck on midnight. He knows he won’t get a new one. His dad will come up with another excuse. He screws up his face against the feeling that is trying to come in. He is good at this. He keeps it out.
Jolene leans towards him, opening her mouth in a grin. Her mouth is a cave of smells, rotten and sweet. Her pointed teeth are stained red with wine and lipstick. The smell of smoke is stuck to her, it hangs in her hair. Andy begins to consider a certain possibility.
‘Hey, I’ve got an idea,’ she says.
Andy stares, sniffs, nods faintly.
The woman’s smile gets wider and she puts a hand on his knee. ‘Let’s make a deal,’ she hisses.
Andy’s heart snaps into double tempo. This is it. He wonders why he didn’t feel the electric pulse he thought he’d get when she first arrived. He thought there would be circles of fire, puffs of smoke. He thought meeting the devil would be like standing in a bucket having static passed through you until your hair stood up, like the experiment they did at school. Not like this.
‘Okay,’ he says, trying to sound casual. He wriggles forward on his seat a bit so he can see her face in the dim light. Her eyes are dark, a reddish brown, and her hair disguises any trace of horns. But maybe the devil doesn’t need horns. Maybe he – or she – can just take any form she wants to, like Mystique out of X-Men.
She lifts one of her hands. It is small and girlish. The white palm faces his.
‘Truth,’ she says.
‘Uh-huh.’ Andy nods, placing a hand against hers. There is a little pressure, and the slightest electrical pulse passes between them.
‘Anything you say and anything I say from now on has to be the truth. And you can’t tell anyone. What happens on the roundabout stays on the roundabout. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ Andy nods again. This must be preliminary. The hands fall but don’t detach. They shake awkwardly.
She crushes his hand and waggles it. He tries to shake back more vigorously, but her grip is all wrong. He lets his hand fall into his lap like a caught fish. He waits, but she doesn’t add anything else to the contract.
‘Now what’s the matter?’ Wine breath fills his ear with a frightening sweetness.
‘Nothing. I thought you were gonna ask me something else.’ He sniffs.
Jolene laughs like a woman of the world.
‘Maybe I am,’ she says.
Jolene talks. Andy doesn’t talk. He sulks and every now and then looks over his shoulder. He wonders whether maybe his soul isn’t ripe yet, if there’s an age you have to be for this, like there is for drinking and driving and all that other stuff.
Jolene talks and Andy listens. She tells him the whole story of her night, which involved some drinking, and some driving, and some more drinking, and then breaking up with her boyfriend of three months when he ‘blew a gasket’.
‘I told him to go outside and cool off and you know what he did? He went home. He went home and left me. He left me at the bloody Workers’.’ She is sober in her fury.
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Andy says.
Her eyes go to ground. ‘Least he didn’t hit me,’ she says. ‘Not this time.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘Maybe not now. But don’t
worry. Give it a few years and you’ll be just like the rest of them.’ She pats him on the knee. Andy pushes her hand away.
‘Men,’ she says, through pointed teeth.
Andy looks away. It’s so cold that his eyes sting.
‘Sorry,’ she says.
‘What for?’
‘Saying you were the same as everyone else. Who am I to judge? Maybe you’re not.’
‘Maybe.’ Andy doesn’t look up. His hands are cold. Neither of them has moved in what seems like an hour.
‘Do you know any songs?’ Jolene grins.
‘Nah.’
‘Truth,’ she reminds him.
He pulls the harmonica out of his pocket and holds it up.
‘Whoa, the blues, huh. Cool. Play us something.’
‘It’s my dad’s. I can’t play it yet.’ He doesn’t put the harmonica to his lips, just shines it against his pants leg. When she reaches for it, he snatches it away.
‘Did you steal that?’
He shakes his head.
‘Truth,’ she says.
‘I borrowed it, is all.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘What would you know?’
A semitrailer starting up on the other side of town makes a hiss like chips hitting a fryer.
‘Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jo-leeene . . .’ Her voice cracks. He puts the harmonica back in his pocket, where it pulls at his shirt, eight times heavier than before.There are no more trucks.The street is dead quiet. There are no more trucks and Jolene forgets the verses of her own song.
It feels like a miracle when the sun starts coming up, a miracle they might ever be warm again. Andy can’t stop yawning. The crisp air, full of moisture from the fields, is tickling his nose and scalp and making him want to sneeze. A rooster crows. He is suddenly aware of how much this town smells like the animals that live here. It has a sheepy smell, and he turns to tell Jolene this, but she’s looking off into the distance with a sad, tired face.
In the light, her face is freckled, her eyebrows unevenly drawn. The dress is no longer shimmery with glamour; it’s just a cheap one from the Target Country shop, he’s seen them in the window for $24.99. It’s muddy at the hem and smells like smoke and beer.
The Rest is Weight Page 8
