Freedom Ride (17 page)

Micky nodded.

“I didn’t mean to be rude or anything.”

“It’s okay.”

The way he said it made me feel it wasn’t, but that he didn’t want to talk about it any more.

“Okay, well, I better get home. Be seeing you around.”

“Maybe,” said Micky. He waved and walked towards the Station.

I waited a moment before riding home.

The first week of school was stinking hot. Even worse than the usual Walgaree February heat. The asphalt in the playground softened and the grass withered faster than the new gardener could water it.

I kept an eye out for the Aborigine kids who were supposed to be coming to Walgaree High, just in case Micky was one of them. There were no Aborigines, but wisps of stories fluttered around the schoolyard like icy-pole wrappers. The long and the short of it was the Aborigines weren’t coming because of the “racial tension” around town. I didn’t know if I was relieved or sad.

On the upside, avoiding Wright wasn’t hard. Like the rest of our form, he and his goon mates, as well as Keith and Billy, spent lunchtime and recess flexing their new senior status on first formers in uniforms at least three sizes too big for them. I watched from the library window as they ordered the new kids to pick up rubbish, hand over cricket bats and surrender food.

In class, it was a little trickier to avoid Wright and his idiot friends. I arrived early so I could sit up the front, and waited until everyone else had left before I did.

That strategy worked okay until Friday afternoon. The air in the classroom was thick and heavy, making each breath an effort, when Mr Simmons strutted into the room. For some reason, he decided we needed a seating plan, and set about rearranging where everyone sat. My spot? Up the back, sharing a double desk with Ian Wright.

Four and a half days of keeping out of his way, and now I had to sit next to the sweaty lump.

Simmons paced the platform, droning on and on about algebra, before setting us to work. I stared at the sums on the blackboard until the symbols and figures merged into a grey mass.

Sweat dripped down my spine, plastering me to the desk’s backrest. I longed to be back at Walgaree Caravan Park with Barry and Mrs Gregory. Painting, mowing, scrubbing, fishing, even cleaning the toilets would be better than basting in my own sweat next to Wright.

A crack echoed through the stuffy room, jolting me back to the classroom. Sniggers stuttered from the front row. I knew without looking that Simmons had hit the blackboard with his ruler.

“Finished your work, Bower?” Mr Simmons now slapped the wooden ruler against his palm.

“Not quite, sir.”

Head down, Ian Wright mimicked my words loud enough for only me and the girls in front to hear. “Not quite, siiiir.”

Marian and Nancy giggled.

I gritted my teeth.

“Bower, rather than daydreaming about girls who wouldn’t look at you twice, you’d be better served concentrating on your work.”

Ian Wright’s burst of laughter smashed against the blackboard and sprayed back at me.

I swiped sweat from my upper lip and stared at the peeling skin on the nape of Marian Cavendish’s neck.

Simmons wasn’t done. “Maybe I should have transferred you to the remedial group, Bower.”

Marian spun around to look at me, long plaits slapping her shoulders. I closed my fingers around the hem of my school shorts.

Mr Simmons stalked down the aisle, swinging the ruler like a baton and slamming it onto my desk.

He leaned close. “You will finish before the bell.” His breath smelled like death. “Is that clear?”

I forced myself not to flinch. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He tapped the ruler against his palm as he stalked back to the front of the room.

Ian Wright sniggered. “Piss yourself, Bower?”

I ignored him and copied an equation from the blackboard.

After a lifetime of sweat and boredom, the bell announced the end of the day. Even the bell struggled in the heat, droning more than ringing.

Mr Simmons rushed to be the first out of the room. Wooden desktops slammed like falling dominoes. I hung back, watching everyone race out as though a bomb was about to explode.

Outside, I shielded my eyes from the sun’s searing rays and sucked in a breath of air. Sure, it was hot, but it was better than that fetid air in the classroom. I shouldered my bag and trudged to the bike shed.

Keith backed his bike out of a stand.

“Hello,” I said.

“How’ve you been?” he asked, as though everything was like it used to be.

“Good. You?”

“Not bad. We’re …” He stopped for a moment as though weighing up what he said next. “… going to the pool. Come with us.”

“I don’t think so.”

Keith’s face clouded over. “Suit yourself.”

“Look out, idiots.” Wright’s voice echoed against the tin shelter. He rode back from the school gate, down the middle of the path. A group of younger students wobbled into the dust and grass to avoid him. He skidded to a halt behind Keith. “What’s keeping you, Axe?” He looked me up and down. “Oh, right.”

“Hello, Ian,” I said, my voice even.

His hunched shoulders and grip on the handlebars oozed menace. “Pity they banned your friends, eh, Bower?”

“What are you talking about, Wright?”

“Yer nigger mates. Turns out they aren’t coming to our school, after all.” Wright snorted. “Too stupid.”

I raised my chin. “Nah, that can’t be it, Wright. They let you come here.” I wrenched my bike onto the path and rode away.

I woke with a start, ripped from the silky black of sleep. I lay still, listening hard.

The creak of the tin roof.

The rustle of leaves in the wind.

The screech and scrape of the shrub branch against my window.

All familiar sounds.

As my eyes became used to the dark, the grey and black shapes turned into familiar objects. The lamp on the bedside table looming over me, the turned wood bed post.

A light outside my closed door glowed golden and warm.

What time was it? The cream strips on the clock hands and dots on the numbers were supposed to glow in the dark. Supposed to. I sat up to turn on my lamp. A door slammed. Or was it something banging into a wall?

I turned on my lamp with a soft click. Colour filled my room. One twenty-five.

Nan had gone to bed early, exhausted she said, but infuriated was more like it. There’d been more about the Freedom Ride on the radio news. She’d clutched the edge of the sink, lips puckered, listening while the smooth voice explained the bus would leave later next week. She slapped the radio off, slammed pots, banged pans and thudded the oven door closed. Once the casserole was in the oven, she declared she had a headache and huffed to her room.

As it was Friday night, Dad was at the RSL, so he missed the performance.

I served myself dinner – stone and mud casserole, by the taste – watched television for a while, then went to bed.

Now, at 1.26 in the morning, I was awake.

I peeled back the sheet and crept to the door. Ear pressed against the cool surface, I listened. A rumbling sound rolled down the hall. Voices? Too late for the television or radio.

I placed my hand on the doorknob and twisted. My eardrums felt ready to burst. As the door swept across the carpet, the rumbling cleared to voices.

Though I couldn’t hear the words, I recognised Nan’s no-nonsense tone. The other voice – low, jerky, crying – was harder to pick.

I inched forwards, careful to avoid the creaky parts of the hallway, and stopped at the kitchen door.

The rumble became words.

“Calm down, Frank,” snapped Nan over the moans and muffled sobs. “No one is going to jail.”

“But the car …” It took me a moment to recognise the voice as Dad’s.

“Stop it.”

I jumped at the harshness in her voice.

“Pull yourself together.” I heard her brisk footsteps and prepared to flee, but they changed direction to the front entrance. I heard the whirr of the phone dialling then Nan spoke. “Fred, it’s Dawn.” Her voice dropped to a mumble.

She had to be talking to Dad’s friend Fred Jackson, the mayor and owner of Jackson’s Car Sales and Crash Repairs.

What had Dad meant about the car?

Heart thundering against my ribs, I slipped past Bluey’s covered cage to the back door. It opened without a sound. The flywire was tougher. I held my breath as the spring stretched and pinged. Once the gap was wide enough I slipped outside and eased the door shut. A hot wind shook the trees. Leaves, twigs and bark dropped from the gum over the fence and swirled against my legs. Ahead of me, parked not beside the house or in the garage but on the lawn with the bonnet pointed at the back porch, was Dad’s car. I could smell steam and heat from the radiator and hear the ticking of the engine cooling.

Even in the dim light from the house, the car looked wrong. The bonnet was twisted and buckled. The windscreen was a mass of crazed lines with an open circle above the steering wheel, about where Dad’s head would have been. I touched the mangled bonnet, feeling a wet sleekness beneath my fingertips. Headlights lit up the side of the house. I raced to the back door, careful to close both silently, and tiptoed past Bluey to my room.

I hadn’t been under the sheet long when the door creaked open. I kept my breathing slow and steady while whoever it was stood in the open doorway, I supposed checking to see if I was asleep. After the door closed I rolled onto my back.

What. Was. Going. On?

After the person who’d opened my door was gone, I lay as still as I could, listening to the rumble of conversation. There were footsteps and cars coming and going. I must have drifted off to sleep, because the next thing I knew the magpies were warbling and shards of sunlight were spilling across my bed.

I rubbed sleep from my eyes and stumbled to the kitchen. Nan stood at the sink, shelling peas into a metal bowl.

“Morning, Nan.” I took the Weet-Bix from the pantry.

She looked up from the peas. “How did you sleep, Robbie?”

“Good. Like a baby. Only not really like a baby. Babies wake up a lot, don’t they? I just slept and slept.” She frowned. Why couldn’t I just have said good?

“Where’s Dad?” I asked, looking at the empty seat at the end of the table. Saturday mornings Dad would be seated at the end of the table, eating toast.

Today the seat was empty, the ashtray clean and the glass of orange juice untouched.

Something, fear maybe, flickered across Nan’s face. “He’s … he went to see Fred. Sort something out. Business.” She busied herself rearranging the pea pods scattered across the newspaper. “What are you doing today?”

“Work, after I finish my jobs.” I took my bowl of cereal to the table, ready for another attack on Barry or at least a dig about Micky.

“There are clean shorts in the laundry.”

I froze, spoon halfway to my mouth. “Thanks.” I stared at the soggy Weet-Bix floating in the sea of milk.

What was that about?

“I’m all done, Nan,” I called from the back porch.

“Mind you work hard for the Gregorys today.”

“Yes, Nan.” No questions about jobs being done properly, or extra chores. Mind you, I wasn’t complaining. I trotted to collect my bike from the garage. Not for the first time this morning, I scanned the empty space where Dad’s car had been last night. Before I had mowed, I studied the grass for anything – oil drops or pieces of broken windscreen. But all I found was flattened lawn where the car had been parked.

Totally confused and wondering if I’d dreamed the whole thing, I rode to work.

When I arrived at the caravan park, Barry was in the office, face grim, with the telephone pressed to his ear. He smiled a greeting and beckoned for me to come inside.

“How many?” he asked, scribbling notes in the open ledger.

He listened and nodded. I busied myself tidying the shelves stocked with emergency supplies for campers. Not that there were many campers left. Aside from the two on-site vans and permanent residents Gert and Hitch, there were only four vans in the park.

“We’ll fit eleven girls in the on-site vans.”

More silence and nodding, before Barry straightened up. “You will not sleep in the bus. No, I mean it. It’s no problem. The girls in the vans, and you bring tents for the men. Great. Thirty-three people, arriving Saturday, February 13 for two nights. No, no, I insist. No payment. Thanks, Trevor. I’m looking forward to seeing you too.” He hung up, leaving his hand on the receiver for a moment.

“Thirty-three. That’s a big booking,” I said.

Barry raked his teeth over his lower lip. “Robbie, that booking. Well, it might be easier for you if you don’t work here for a bit.”

“Why?” I squeaked. “Have I done somethi–”

“Hear me out.” He tapped the pencil against the ledger. “That booking was for the students on the Freedom Ride bus.”

“So they are coming to Walgaree?”

“First stop Wellington, then Walgett and us. They’re staying in church halls in most towns, but because St Joey’s hall is being restumped, Trevor has asked if they can stay here.”