“Since when do real army brigadiers run the Cadets?” Santangelo asks.
“They don’t.”
I can tell that Griggs is confused about the Brigadier’s presence. He looks at me and I walk over to the other side of my cell, settling myself as far away as possible from both of them.
Gaol’s not that bad, especially when you’re used to crap food at school and you get Thai takeaway.
“How’s Hannah these days?” Santangelo’s dad asks me as he hands it over.
“You know Hannah?”
“Since she was your age.”
I shrug. “She’s away.”
The phone rings and the other police officer comes in holding it.
“It’s Clara,” he tells Santangelo’s dad. “She wants to talk to Chaz.” Santangelo takes the phone through the bars and Jonah Griggs snickers and makes himself comfortable on the bunk while Santangelo tries
to speak as quietly as possible.
“Hi…look…I know…Yeah, like I did it on purpose, Mum…. Okay…
you’re what?
Don’t go to their place…. She’s a liar…. She only pretends to be that sweet in front of…Oh, good, believe her over your son…. No. He’s being an a-hole…. I didn’t say “arse,” you did…. Fine, take his side….”
He hands the phone to his father. “She said not to forget to pick up the bread.” He sulks.
By ten o’clock I make a pact with myself that I will never commit a crime because gaol is the most boring place on earth. Even more boring than the Jellicoe School on a Sunday afternoon. It’s so boring that when Santangelo comes over to my side of the cell, I welcome the conversation.
“Chewy?”
I reach over and take a stick. Up close he is truly a good-looking guy and I’m curious about the Raffaela connection but don’t dare ask him about it. Santangelo has this way of looking at me, not in a pervy way or like someone who’s interested. He’s staring at me like he did in the negotiating hut. Like he has a question to ask or something to say, but
doesn’t quite know how to say it.
“Spit it out,” I say.
“Spit what out?”
“Whatever you want to say.”
He’s about to deny it, but then he seems to change his mind. “The guy…the Hermit? My dad used to take me out there sometimes, to see how he was going.”
I move closer. No one at the Jellicoe School has ever mentioned the Hermit. Their way of dealing with it has always been to pretend it never happened.
“You knew him?”
He nods. “He was a bit mad. Like obsessive compulsive, you know. He’d stand on a tree branch and dive into the river in the same spot all the time and just let the current take him away. I thought he’d die doing that, not…”
We don’t say anything for a while.
“Do you remember much about that day?” he asks.
Only that when I woke up I was in Hannah’s bed and I heard someone crying like an animal. I remember opening my eyes and seeing the blur of
her body holding on to another—a man. He was clutching onto her with grief and they were both so distraught. I wondered if he was a friend of the Hermit. I remember that I never saw the clothes I was wearing that day ever again, which was a pity because I so liked my Felix the Cat T-shirt and grey cord jeans and whenever I asked Hannah for them, she’d just shake her head.
I don’t answer. “What did your dad say?” I ask instead.
He doesn’t look at me. “I don’t know. Just that it was messy,” he mumbles.
“How messy? What do you mean ‘messy’?”
He looks up at me. “You know…messy.”
I see Jonah Griggs get up from his bunk and walk towards us. “Why are you telling her this?” he snaps at Santangelo.
He ignores Griggs. “My father cried…. I’d never seen him cry…. He told me that the Hermit had a kid….”
I feel sick. Up till now the Hermit had never possessed a life. He was just this madman who lived in the bush. But to know that he left someone behind…And then a horrific thought enters my head.
“Was he my father?” I whisper. “Is that what your dad said?”
“Why would you think that?” he asks, surprised.
Griggs grabs Santangelo by the arm. “You’re stressing her out.”
“Why is this your business? You don’t even know her.”
I feel my windpipe constricting and I know what’s about to happen. I’m trying to work out where my backpack is so I can get my inhaler but I realise that it’s out there with the cops.
Jonah Griggs looks at me for a moment and I see a frown appear on his face. “Sit down. You’re going to faint.”
The chewing gum makes my mouth feel sweet and next minute I’m throwing up mucus that is making me gag.
“Look what you’ve done, you arsehole!”
I can see them both glued to the bars that separate us. The retching never seems to end, like it’s carving out my insides and I can’t breathe. My windpipe feels like it’s choking me and I can smell the Hermit’s blood, the sickly sweet smell of it, and suddenly I
see it, plastered all over my clothes, and I see the Hermit out there on that day when the sun was so hot and I hear his whispers and I try to keep my eyes closed, but I can’t and there are parts of him around me and the blood smacking at my face and I can’t breathe and I can hear Jonah Griggs shouting and Santangelo calling out, “
Dad, Dad
,
get in here.
” I’m making this gurgling sound because I just can’t breathe and although I’m bent over away from the bars I feel hands grab hold of me, pulling me towards them. I feel arms around my chest, a mouth against my ear whispering…whispering…Jonah Griggs whispering, “Just breathe, just breathe, come on, Taylor, just breathe…just breathe.”
Mr. Palmer is wiping my face. Santangelo’s dad is there as well, placing a glass of water in my hands and helping me drink. I’m gulping it down, feeling weak and pathetically teary.
“We’re going home,” John Palmer says quietly. “Can you stand?”
I nod. “I’m sorry about the mess,” I tell Santangelo’s dad.
He smiles. “We’ll live.”
As I walk past the other cell I see Santangelo sitting on the floor with his back against the bars, his head in his hands, and Jonah Griggs standing, watching me. Like he did on that station platform. Like he did those times we lay side by side on our way to Yass. Staring like he’s never stopped. For a moment the mask slips from his face, but by that time I’m almost out the door.
It’s not until we reach the Jellicoe Road that Mr. Palmer speaks.
“Hannah’s fine.”
“How do you know?” I ask, raising my head from where it’s been leaning against the door.
“I spoke to someone who knows her. She’s in Sydney looking after a friend…who’s sick.”
All of a sudden Hannah has all these “friends.” Friends who have known her since she was seventeen. Friends who hand over letters. Friends who are sick.
“Who? You don’t understand. I know everyone she knows.”
He is keeping something from me. I can tell by the way he can’t look me in the face and that scares
me. He seems to sense this and once again I’m surprised by his kindness.
“She calls her friend, ‘Mrs. Dubose.’ That’s all I know.”
Mrs. Dubose.
“Have you heard of her?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say sleepily. “She lived in the same street as Jem and Scout Finch.”
I’m riding as fast as I can. The faster the pace, the less thought-process, and being thoughtless suits me fine. I pedal hard, my face sweating, my hands clenched on the handlebars until I feel the blood stop in my fingers. I pedal on with eyes closed and we travel, the bike and I, as if it has a mind of its own and I have no control. I skid suddenly to the side and realise that I’ve reached the ridge, an inch away from going over the edge. My face is drenched with perspiration and I look at the space below. The world sways and I sway with it until it’s like being in a hypnotic dance, almost enticing me to step over.
But my attention is drawn away by the rustling above me. In the tree. There’s something watching. I throw the bike to the side and crane my neck, my heart pounding hard. For a moment I think I see the
boy, his limbs nimble and quick, his eyes piercing into me, and then he’s gone. The knocking at my ribs in no way subsides and for a moment I don’t move because I’m petrified. Until there, in the corner of a branch, I see something else. The cat. Without thinking I start climbing. I don’t know why but somewhere at the back of my mind is the thought that the cat was the last to see Hannah. When I reach his eye level, I straddle the branch and get as close to him as possible, my arm stretched out as far as it can go. I find myself having to lean my torso onto the branch to balance and for a moment I get close, but he hisses and swipes at me and goes flying through the air, while I half fall off the branch, hanging on with both hands.
I see his shadow first, and the shock of what I see makes me gasp.
Standing under the tree, holding the cat, is the Brigadier. With the cat so compliant in his arms, he resembles some kind of Mephistopheles. As I cling on for dear life, I try to control the breathlessness within me that spells trouble.
“It’s an easy drop,” he tells me. “You’ll be cushioned by the leaves.”
I’d be happy to stay hanging off the tree for the rest of my life just so I don’t have to deal with him. But my hands begin to hurt and I know I have to let go.
There is nothing easy about the drop. It hurts when I land and when he holds out a hand, I ignore it.
He’s looking at my face closely and like every other time this man is around there is havoc in my stomach. Like a warning against malevolence. I could easily put it down to the fact that I’m still angry at him for being the one who stopped me and Jonah Griggs that time. But it’s more than that.
“Give me the cat,” I say when I get to my feet.
“Mightn’t be a good idea. He doesn’t seem to like you.”
I grab the cat from him and he goes back to his feral self, scratching and writhing in my hands, but I’m not letting go.
“Hannah—who lives here—she wouldn’t want you hanging around her place or stealing her cat,” I say.
He’s still looking at me. It’s unnerving and although I don’t want to have my back to him, I turn and walk away, clutching the cat.
The strange thing is this. In crazy dreams when I relive that moment when Jonah Griggs and I were sitting in the postman’s van in that township two hours away from Sydney, ready to set off on the final leg of our journey, I remember the Brigadier. I remember the look on his face when he pulled up in front of the postman’s van and got out of his car and walked towards us in that measured way he has. That look was directed at me and a thought has stuck in my head for all these years: that maybe the Brigadier did not come looking for a Cadet that day.
That maybe, in some way, it was me he was hunting down.
The next day, Raffaela, Ben, and I decide to do an inventory of every piece of property the Townies and Cadets own on our land. We split the page in three and list them, beginning with the most valuable: the Club House. There are bike trails, walking trails, bridges, and sheds. Finally there is the Prayer Tree, which Raffaela believes should be on the top of the list. We discuss and argue about the importance of each item. The access path for trail bikes owned by the Cadets. The falling-down shed owned by the
Townies. The more we discuss, the more I am convinced of the stupidity of my past leaders. The access for trail bikes, for example, would be our quickest way to town. During the Cadet season our means of transport is limited and our journey to town is twice as long. The shed once housed a car for us, which the leaders would sneak out in during the night, especially if a band was playing in one of the larger towns. But Raffaela always comes back to the Prayer Tree.
“What’s so important about it?” I ask Raffaela on one of our morning checks around the river. Apart from the fact that all three of us feel somewhat guilty that it was handed over because of us.
“Spiritually or pragmatically?” she asks.
“What do you think?”
“I swear to God, if you go out there it will change your perspective on the world.”
“Don’t believe in God. Love the world just the way it is.”
“Okay, then come and look at it from a pragmatic point of view.”
“Townie territory,” Ben says. “If it’s booby trapped…”
“It’s seven o’clock in the morning,” she reassures
us. “They’ll never be up this early.”
The Prayer Tree is located smack in the middle of the property within easy distance of the Jellicoe Road. It’s the area I am the least familiar with because it’s closer to the township and there are no proper tracks to reach it from where we are. In actual fact it is a chore getting to it and in the future Ben advises that we should hit the Jellicoe Road and access it from there.
By the time we reach the clearing we have grazes from flying branches and our bodies itch from insect bites. The clearing is small and the tree takes up most of it. I look up and am shocked at just how massive it is. It’s almost like Jack’s beanstalk and probably one of the highest trees I’ve ever seen on this property. Right at the very top, lodged amongst the branches, is a small house, cleverly camouflaged by a creative paint job. But it’s the trunk that fascinates me the most. There are carvings and symbols and messages and history.
So much romance and so much ugliness. A girl named Bronnie, her name in love hearts with almost every boy around; a boy named Jason who hates wogs, Asians, coons, and towel heads. And poofters,
too. The patience it would have taken him to carve out so much hate.
The messages are everything rolled into one. Wise and uncool. Profound and repugnant.
We circle the tree over and over again, trying to decipher all the messages.
Do you remember nothing stopped us on the field in our day?
I stare at the words, tracing my fingers in the grooves created by the carving.
“Your hands are shaking,” Ben says.
Because I’ve heard these words so many times before.
“Check this one out,” Ben says to me.
Kenny Rogers Rules.
“Who?” I ask, still wanting to return to my dream lyrics.
“You don’t know who Kenny Rogers is?” Ben asks like he can’t believe it. “‘Coward of the County’? ‘Don’t Fall in Love with a Dreamer’? ‘Islands in the Stream’? ‘The Gambler’?”
It’s like he’s speaking another language and he shakes his head with great disappointment.
“You need to get in touch with the seventies and
eighties, my friend.”
I find myself reaching up and touching words engraved right in the middle of the tree. It’s bigger writing than the rest.
MATTHEW 10:26.
“Maybe it’s one of those ‘God is Love’ quotes,” Raffaela says, coming up behind me. I think of Hannah’s manuscript until I realise that Ben and Raffaela are staring.
“So where’s the pragmatism you promised me?” I ask.
She points up. “We have to go up for me to show you that.”
Hanging off the tree is one of those floppy rope ladders like in a trapeze act, except that here there is no net. Raffaela grabs hold of it.
“How do you know it’s secure?” I ask.
She tugs at it and shrugs. “I just do. Santangelo’s anal about things like this.”
She begins climbing and the ladder swings around. “One at a time, though,” she yells down.
I look at Ben. “You’re next.”
It’s not like I’m scared of heights. There’s been many a night that I’ve climbed out of my window and swung off the tree just outside it. But this
thing is massive and I think I’d rather be climbing branches than a flimsy ladder that’s attached to nothing I can see.
By the time it’s my turn, Ben has already freaked me out with his dramatics. I begin the ascent, concentrating hard on each step, making sure that my foot is on the next rung before I step off the previous one.
When I reach the top, Raffaela and Ben help me up.
“Close your eyes,” Raffaela instructs.
“Are you insane?”
“You’re on solid timber,” she reassures me. “It’s very sound and we’re holding on to you, anyway. You’ve got to close your eyes.”
I’m convinced that if I hear something about being able to see tomorrow and it’s bloody beautiful I’ll throw myself off. I stand up straight, however, and close my eyes.
“Open.”
I’m standing on a landing, the wall of the tree house behind me. Directly across my torso is a piece of wood, preventing me from falling over the side.
Raffaela points in front of me. “The town.” She
turns me to the left. “Cadets.” Then she turns me to the right. “Us.”
The tree house has the most amazing and comprehensive view I have ever seen. Hills and valleys and houses and steeples, symmetrically cut farm blocks and vineyards. It is lush and hazy in the morning glow and I feel a rush of something inside me. I turn to the right and look in the direction of our Houses. I can see the six of them, looking closer than they actually are to each other. I see the little cottages in between that belong to the House co-ordinators and beyond that I see Hannah’s unfinished house by the river.
“They can see everything,” I say.
“With a good pair of binoculars they’d be able to see inside our rooms,” Raffaela says.
I turn to look at the Cadets, already out of their tents and preparing for the day.
“Who needs satellites?” Ben says.
“That’s what interests them the most,” Raffaela says pointing. The Jellicoe Road.
“They have a bird’s-eye view of every single part of this area. If they are up to no good, they know exactly when someone’s coming up or coming closer.”
“So they’re spying on us.”
“I actually don’t think so. I think they love the view and it’s a pretty good space for just hanging out,” she says, walking inside the tree house. Surprisingly it is solidly built and we follow her in, sitting on the floor, taking in the space and possibilities. “I think the eighties mob named it and built a makeshift something up here. I don’t think it’s ever been as solid as it is now, but that’s a Santangelo thing. I think he even wants to tile it. That’s the wog in him.”
“So you used to come up here when we owned it?”
She nods and smiles. “Anyone who was at the school and came from the town did. Come on. Look at the view. It’s awesome. God’s country.”
“You can take the girl out of the town but you can’t take the clichéd Townie out of the girl,” Ben says.
“Well, it is!”
“Bet you’ve been up here with Santangelo,” Ben says.
She goes red and walks out onto the landing. We follow her and breathe in the freshness.
“They want to meet again. Tomorrow night. This
time in the Club House,” she says.
“Have the Cadets agreed?”
“They think so. They reckon you’re never too sure with Jonah Griggs.”
On the Jellicoe Road a car appears in the distance.
“Townies,” Raffaela says. “We’ve got about ten minutes to get out of here.”
I go down last, taking a closer look at Hannah’s unfinished house by the river. Except I realise that it’s almost finished. It’s only the stuff inside that needs to be done, and the idea of its near-completion frightens me beyond comprehension.
Later on that night, I’m awakened by a sound. I stay still for a moment, my ears alert, heart racing, wondering if it was just one of those loud bumps in dreams that don’t actually exist. When I can’t get back to sleep, I get out of bed and quietly make my way down the stairs. I hear the breathing of those in the dorms and stand at their door for a while, watching them. I notice Chloe P. in someone else’s bed, clutching onto her for dear life, and there’s Jessa in the corner, snoring quietly and contently. The music
of it all brings a smile to my face. A candle burns in the corner and I go over and blow it out.
I open the front door and step outside and the cool wind brushes my face, almost caressingly. As I stand looking out into the darkness, it’s like I can hear the pulse of everything out there. I remember the Prayer Tree and all those names and scratchings, every one of them with their own story, and I wonder where they all are now. Is Bronnie still in love with any of those boys? Does Jason still have so much hate? Do any of them still think of their time on the Jellicoe Road?
I’m about to go inside when I notice that at the bottom of the steps of the House is my bike, which had disappeared from behind Hannah’s house. I look out again, wondering if whoever has returned it is out there watching.
When I walk back inside, I pass the common-room and I find myself looking for a bible. Matthew, chapter ten, verse twenty-six.
Whatever is now covered up will be uncovered and every secret will be made known
. I wonder where such a message belongs amongst the Bronnies and Jasons of the world.
I go to sleep thinking of Hannah’s character, Webb, who speaks of things I sometimes dream, and
suddenly I’m sitting in the tree with the boy. He leans towards me and speaks but no sound comes out of his mouth and I ask him over and over again to say it louder, until I exhaust myself. So I read his lips, my eyes straining, every part of my senses aching, until I’m miming his words, and when I wake, Jessa and Raffaela are standing at the end of my bed, staring.
“Was I shouting?” I ask, my voice croaky.
“You were crying.”
“The whole time?”
Jessa shakes her head. “Your mouth was moving but nothing was coming out,” she says.