“I’m sorry about just then–if you were embarrassed.”
“ No.”
“I guess you’re mostly harmless,” the girl smiled. She handed him a folded piece of paper. “This is my number. If you’re ever in the city and want to hang out, give me a call.”
He took the piece of paper and put it in the back pocket of his jeans.
“Sure. Thanks.”
“Do you think you will?”
“Will what?”
“Come visit me one day?”
“Sure. Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Without doubt.”
Through the doorway he saw Irene had come inside. She was sitting on the bench next to Raughrie Norman who had only
moved twice in the night. She smiled at her brother standing in the door. By the light of the kerosene lamps he noted the pretty blue dress whose foreign name he could not remember, the small Benedictine crucifix she wore on a bracelet instead of around her neck tonight, the elfin ears that showed through her blue-black hair that was perfectly combed. He excused himself and went in and sat down beside her.
Raughrie Norman was telling her about the fancy girl who Grey had sat with through dinner. Then he told her, if she wanted it, he would go to the bar and buy her a ginger beer. He was glad of her company. Sometimes the boys neglected him without thinking. She told him if he was happy to get it she would take a bottle, and he set off eagerly in the direction of the bar. He pushed his body gracelessly through the crowd waiting for drinks, determined to carry out the commission from the only girl in town who had ever treated him kindly.
She rested her head on Grey’s shoulder.
“I saw you talking to that girl over there by the door. She seems nice.”
“She is. She’s from the city.”
“She’s pretty, don’t you think?”
“No.”
She smiled at him. It was late. It was late and whoever he was, he was not coming.
She took his hand.
“Will you dance with me?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Come on.”
She pulled hard on his hand and he stood up and walked with her to the foot of the stage. The Ellis boys’ band played a slow, plaintive tune led by violin. The long-bearded elder brother called the tune “Horses.”
“What are you frightened of?’ She put his arm around her waist.
He felt a stab of pain when he heard a woman’s approving
voice from one of the tables, saying how decent it was of him to stick by his poor sister. The woman did not see the desperation gathered in furrow lines across his brow. Grey pressed close to his sister, but suddenly not too close. He opened his eyes and saw Raughrie Norman smiling innocently at him from the wall with a bottle of ginger beer in his hand, and his heart was eased. Then he saw the respectable people of town sitting at the tables and he felt hollow again. Then he closed his eyes and prayed that all that had troubled him of late was an iniquitous dream, a dream that would dissolve and all would be as it had been, and she would be his own small sister again, as she had always been, and he did not care who watched.
When the music stopped he clenched his fists to stop the trembling in his hands. Some of the diminished crowd clapped. Grey hurried off the floor and away from the applause without taking Irene’s hand.
Thiebaud had danced with every girl and now all of them had left. He came over from the bar.
“I’m finished here.”
“Why don’t we go to the creek?’ said Raughrie Norman.
“And do what?’ said Thiebaud.
“Light a fire and drink. I got green ginger wine in your glove box. Remember?”
“It’s too cold.”
But there was nowhere else to go.
V
THEY COLLECTED ECCLESTON FROM HIS HOUSE. HE WAS sitting alone on the back stairs and staring at the road. They walked to the bend in Mary Smokes Creek. The only water was pooled in the deepest channel of the bed and tainted with algae.
The waters of the country were changing. Once, Mary Smokes kept a little running water most of the year. These last few years it was either dry or flooded. So much timber had been pulled out of the high catchments in the north that streams’ headwaters had collapsed entirely, and when it rained broad sheets of water fell down into Mary Smokes whose bed had become full of bars and braids and gullies. Thousands of miles of watercourses were lost. Instead of the old courses there were newly cut flood channels, and a few old pirate streams like Mary Smokes, where the rocks and timber lifted out of the bed meant the water did not stay. These might threaten roads and buildings given a great rain, but there was no water in them now. Only those who walked the country knew these things.
Floodwater had gouged three extra feet out of this Mary Smokes bend through the summer. The three feet were plainly visible now the water was gone. Grey dreamt of dark water rushing round here in the night with no one to see it. Many times these last summers he had gone to the creek after a storm and saw the water had bent and snapped steel railings on concrete bridges; and when rain last fell in the west, the water in Mary Smokes tore flood-level markers set six feet deep in limestone
clean out of the ground. And these things always happened at night, as though the water wished to keep itself secret.
IN THE WOODS they collected kindling and a couple of knotted eucalypt branches and made a fire. Eccleston was silent. The boys reckoned he must be drunk already. Flagon threw strips of bark into the fire that flared and crackled and died. The knots smoked sweetly for a long time before they caught and the smoke burnt their throats. The knots promised warmth through the night.
The bottle of Scotch that Eccleston had brought from his house was gone and they were forced to start on the ginger wine.
Thiebaud uncapped the bottle.
Grey watched Eccleston staring at Irene. Eccleston turned and met Grey’s eyes across the fire. Then he said he had to check on Possum and stood up.
“You want a lift?’ Thiebaud asked.
“I feel like walking.”
He walked up the bank and out of sight.
Thiebaud turned to Grey.
“What’s up with Ook?”
Grey shook his head.
They were near drunk now, all but Irene. She was going to Amy’s house tomorrow for lunch and must not be sick. She had taken a half-shot of whisky and a ginger wine at the fire.
Raughrie Norman was asleep on his duffel coat and Thiebaud and Grey were talking about the girl at Tiger Scrub Hall and Irene was laughing at them when she shifted her feet beside her and her dress came up above her knees and Grey saw the long red scratch marks on her legs. The marks were made by fingernails, and he felt the marble-sized hole inside him grow wider and the wind come howling through it. Soon all the noise of the world was gone except that which came from the scratches on her leg and he thought, if it is going to be this way no matter what, if it is inevitable …
“Thiebaud,” he said, without shifting his eyes from his sister. “Did you ever want to ruin a thing, so no one else could touch it?”
Thiebaud threw his cigarette into the fire and lay down.
“The drink’s caught you.”
GREY SINGED A strip of bark in the flames and let the wind tear at the ash. He sat up beside his sister. The other two lay asleep on the opposite side of the fire. He could see sleep and the little drink clouding her eyes. Quiet came off the plain and the dry creek. The eucalypt wood cracked and split apart with the heat. The splitting wood and the sucking fire were the loudest sounds in the night beside the quiet of the creek and plain.
“Irene, do you love me?”
“ What do you mean? You’re my brother. You’re my best friend in the world.”
“But,” he dug the heel of his boot into the dirt, “do you love me?”
“Of course.”
He sighed.
“Of course.”
“What is it?’ She put her hand on the nape of his neck.
“I just–’ His face twisted with pain.
She smiled at him. She felt good amongst these boys who were so brotherly to her. She had been the centre of attention tonight at the fire. They would not treat any other girl so. If only she knew what he had done for her. You’re spoilt, he thought. He did not smile back at her. He looked into the fire.
“You’re spoilt.”
“What’s wrong with you?’ she laughed. He did not answer. “Well, sulk then, you fool.” She spoke loosely, tiredly.
“You think I’m a fool? Maybe I am, and in that case you can go to hell. Don’t speak to me.”
Tears came at once to her eyes.
“Grey? I didn’t mean it.”
Tears were in his own eyes but he refused to let them fall. He turned away to face the dark and he thought again of the long red scratches on her leg and his tears fell in rivulets before he even knew he was crying.
He was properly drunk now and the hard edges of the world had begun to fray and resemble the shifting fire. He felt reckless. He would twist the knife.
“You’re not much, are you?”
“What?”
“You seem like something special, but you’re no different than any of the others, than anything in this world.”
She took his arm and held tight. He only stared into the fire. Her voice trembled. “Grey, stop it.”
He threw his singed strip of bark into the flames. He whispered, “Irene, come with me.”
“Where?”
He pointed to the dark of the cedars.
She followed him. She held his coat and sometimes his hand when she could not see. He stopped at a place where the fire was only a broken flicker and the sweet smell of the woods overcame that of smoke. He faced her. He put his trembling hand on her blue cheek, ran his fingers down inside her collar. She did not shy away … If she had it might have been possible. If only she would wince. The pale light brushed her pale, pale face and she was so beautiful tonight he knew he would die of it. He hated that anyone else should see it. He wished it were something he alone could see. And he knew he was alone, that nobody saw it but him. And he knew that everyone could see it. And still no one could but him. He was so tired. He closed his eyes and put his head on her shoulder and dreamt that the boys and the town were vanished, somewhere beyond the creek in the east, and that he and his sister were sitting in their house on the plain alone, and she was cold and there was no fire; and he lit a fire in the stove with the money he got working horses that day; and then to keep it burning he burnt all the money he made the day
before, then all the money he would make tomorrow, then all the money he would make every day of his life; then he burnt bits of timber he took from the house, just as he had seen Eccleston do, and then all was alight, and the lacquer hissed and she smiled at the beautiful colours; and then he made a fire for her of the woods; and while the woods were burning he led her to the bank of Mary Smokes Creek and he brought her a drink of the water in his hands and they stayed there on the other side of the water, on the opposite bank from the world, on the wide and starry plain where the wind and the sound of rushing water were their only companions and they needed no others, for every speechless word she spoke was intended only for him and intended only for this night where there was no future.
The wind rose and snapped a branch from a distant tree.
“What is it, Grey?”
“It’s nothing. It must be nothing.”
The cold wind tumbled down around their ears and rained leaves on the ground and blew Irene’s hair about her face.
He lowered his head so she might not see his tears.
“Grey, tell me what’s wrong.”
But he did not answer her. She sighed. She pulled up the hood of her duffel coat and sat down on the floor of the wood, looking now at Grey, now back through the trees to the fire. They stayed there in silence.
She stood.
“I’m cold. I’m going back.”
“Here.”
He led her.
He stirred the coals.
“Get in close,” he told her. And he put down his oilskin jacket for her to lie on.
When she was asleep he walked back to his truck and drove to town.
HE TOOK A drink at the Workers’ Club then argued with a boy from Crows Nest. The boy brought Grey out onto the street and pulled his head down and landed two sharp elbows, one to the cheek and one behind the ear, and Grey fell bleeding to the side of the road. When he woke he sat down against the back fence of the hotel. By the time he realized he was too sick to drive home everyone on the street was gone.
He walked back to his truck. He sat at the wheel and looked across the street at a pane of broken glass held together with tape, at a smear of blood on the three-ply wall that was festooned with twinkling fairy lights. He wondered if the window had anything to do with him, if the blood was his own. He tried to remember what he and the boy had fought about.
I am not happy, he thought, as he sat buzzing-headed and watching the road. The purpose of life cannot be happiness. Else why, when I know things that would make me happy, that would make everything all right, am I driven toward things that will not?
He put his forehead on the steering wheel and put his hands together and prayed. Then he decided that that was not the kind of prayer God heard, even in His infinite pity. But Grey did not want that anyway. He did not know how to shape what he wanted into prayer or even into words. He fell down on the seat and slept until dawn.
VI
HE SAT UP IN THE TRUCK WITH A FIERCE HEADACHE. He got out and leant against the bonnet and smoked and drank cold tea from his thermos. At the end of the dirt road the morning sun lit wild flowers and feathertop that grew up through the railway tracks. A palomino horse stood behind wire in a rectangular yard of the flowering grass watching him. He drove home.
HE RE-STRAINED THE wires of his back fence. He had no strainers and did the work with pliers, hitching doubled cuttings back around the fence posts, reefing on the wires, levering them around the old wire with the handle of the pliers. He cut his hands on the rusted barbs. At the end of the day three lengths of barbed wire still hung loose enough to be moved by the wind. He packed a forty-four-gallon drum full of nagoora burr, stick and an old tyre and lit it. He stood by the drum and watched Eccleston’s horses make a game of running into the same wind that rattled his fence and moved the haying winter grass and twisted the flame in the drum below the pale sky.