The Best Australian Stories (32 page)

Liz pipes up, ‘Let's shave our hair. I'm serious. Hair burns, it smells like popcorn, and then it's another thing we don't have to keep clean.'

Jenna looks down at her mother the way a ship looks down at its anchor. She gets her to try some of the bark, but that effort doesn't go far. Liz spits it out and yells, ‘I want meat!'

I skin the rat in the kitchen and look around for kindling. The problem with these weekend houses is, aside from old books – and there are none left here – no one keeps any paper lying around. In the back of a closet, though, I find a metal file filled with printed photographs. The file is dry and it's packed tight and that's all I need to know. I stopped studying other people's pictures a long while back. Photo paper doesn't burn well but it burns.

With the photos crumpled and some sticks from an old deck chair, I start a real fire. Liz watches me the whole time, like I'm there to entertain her. ‘You're from Land Management, am I right?' I don't say anything. ‘Says so on the bag. Why're you helping us? Shouldn't you be busy pushing us out the door?' I continue not saying anything, which means yes.

Jenna shoots me a look. I've lost her.

‘What's wrong with a little bit of caring?' I ask, putting the meat on a skillet and moving it onto the fire. ‘Everybody needs to eat.' They fall apart if you try and fillet them. I find salt and pepper in the kitchen. There's not enough rat for three here but I'm counting on the gross-out factor working in my favour.

Jenna pours a big glass of water, which Liz waves away as she leans against her bottle. I take the glass, thank her. Jenna says she'll go look for more paper and Liz calls after her, but probably more for my benefit, ‘Good girl.'

I flip the pan to turn the meat on its side. Liz calls me over to the couch for help getting out of her raingear. ‘I love my daughter, but she's useless.' I pull the top part over her head. Underneath she's still got some control in her looks. She stands and fixes her hair more out of habit than for effect. She tells me, ‘If I had balls, I'd save myself.'

I look at her like she's hallucinating. She holds onto my waist as I loosen her rain pants and pull them down.

‘I understand Jenna's young, but, once, a long time ago, I was a nurse. Top that. You know what I'm worth out there? Even with my bones feeling like they do, the authorities would provide every comfort. I'd get fixed up and sent out in a heartbeat to one of the cities or care centres. You know what I'd see? A million dying people with no chance. Not for me. Plus, they'd split the two of us up in a second because – Jenna's a pretty girl, but I'd hope the world found a better use for her than her looks. Without me she'd end up on one of the youth gangs in a week. So, mister, I
get
that we can't stay here like this. But we're just as defenceless if we walk out into the forest. Couldn't protect ourselves from a rat, let alone any larger mammals. If we stay here and stay drunk, I don't know what comes to us, but at least I don't have to say goodbye to my daughter.'

I'm on my knees now, thinking how sweet and twisted their relationship is. I hold the pants part around her feet as she steadies herself on my head. Her dress brushes against my face as she steps out of them. She gives me a pat on the head, but leaves her fingers in my hair, twirls them against my scalp, like she's dialing one of those old phones. Jenna comes back with a pile of ancient magazines. Liz quickly moves her hand from my head as the fat on the rat starts to sizzle. I stand up in a shot and happily take the magazines, keeping an eye on Liz. I realise her face looks different now, calmer, like she wiped off her makeup when I was kneeling at her feet. She's twice my age.

We eat dinner in more or less silence. I show them how to get the most out of the rat and the bark and the spices in the house. I keep looking at them, each thinking they're giving their life for the other, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to get them out of here. Jenna is giving me dirty looks I don't like and Liz is giving me dirty ones I do.

Every now and then one of the nicer-looking female survivors may have a temporary short circuit in my direction. She'll think that sleeping with me could save her house, might lower the waters somehow. You take hospitality where you can. I don't dissemble in that situation, but I don't overemphasise the truth either. I once had to clear a two-storey housing complex and there was this woman in a first-f loor apartment who wouldn't go. Everyone else had left and I'd given her a double dose of funds for relocation – put the papers in her hands – and still she said she couldn't leave. Said she was waiting for her husband to get back, that he was away working for the state, he wouldn't know where to find her. I told her to write a note, use me as a contact if she got relocated. She just sat there with her head in her hands and her elbows on a little mahogany table that three days later would be floating in three feet of water. She said she couldn't. She asked me to stay the night, though, and said she'd see where the water was at in the morning and decide then. Thirties, spiritual, with candles and shrines all over the place, cushions instead of chairs. No sign that anyone ever lived there but her. The rain makes people imagine all sorts of things.

I stayed. She did it like she hadn't been with anyone in some time, as did I. When I woke up it was still dark. She was asleep, but grabbing onto me like I was a life preserver. I let her. There've been a lot of times with this job when I've seen people holding onto things that didn't make sense, thinking that if they just kept a photo album, their grandmother's wedding ring, a lucky stone, that it would keep them safe when the water reached the door. That night, in this woman's apartment filled with crystals and little shrines to nothing, the only foolish thing this woman had to hold onto was me. From what I've seen, people usually come to reality and save themselves. Despite all the feelings we think we've got for our loved ones and our attachments, when push comes to shove most people figure out how to travel light. In the morning she let go of me, got dressed and left, without taking any mementos, without leaving messages. With barely a goodbye for me. Just closed the door and got on the bus.

So I'm thinking that once I get them out, if I make my way back to the main station and explain myself or, better, find my mare, I could be back here in a week. They'd be gone or dead or one of each.

Liz has her own plan and doesn't waste time. After dinner, she says she wants to shower out back under the gutter of the house to get the smell of the animal off of her. I should shower too. Doesn't mention Jenna. The last thing I want to do is get wet, but the laster thing I want to do is not get laid. Liz tells Jenna, who's looking sick to her stomach from dinner, to keep watch on the fire. Liz seems almost sober, grabs the driest sheets for us as she marches out the side door. I don't need more encouragement than that. I turn my back, strip down in two breaths, and turn again to present myself. She's smiling, which makes me feel better than I've felt in weeks. She has me unzip her and lets the dress drop straight down. I pull on her shivering shoulders, attempt to straighten her. She tries to hold still for me to just look at her, to stop massaging her joints. It's not so much that she's appetising, but she needs me. She looks over my body and tells me I'm not as scrawny as most city boys.

Then she says, ‘Listen to it. That rain. Isn't it spectacular?' Spectacular now? Fortunately, I'm not in my question-asking mode. We're standing there like Adam and Eve, or Abel and Eve, if you count the age difference, which only makes it sexier tonight. She hands me a slab of soap and walks into the waterfall, pretending to keep a respectful distance from me. She drinks a great load of water and coyly wipes her teeth with her fingers. Rat is stringy. She gargles and spits, with an inviting smile. I get under, yelling from the cold, and then rinse my mouth. We can only be under for two seconds before our bodies have to come together for the warmth. Hers is nice, but it feels kind of soft, deflated, like life's gone from it. Still.

We both start laughing at what's obviously about to happen. Just then about fifty deer run up the hill past us. I hold her tight, like I could possibly protect us if they got scared and rumbled toward us. One after another, for about thirty seconds, they leap as best they can off the wet ground. It's one of the few times in this job where I do nothing but watch. We can't really see more than their shapes, like shadow cut-outs bounding across the black horizon, the rain white in front of them. You can feel their weight as they pound across the mud. Then they're gone and I'm not cold anymore because I've got a naked someone in my arms. She's buzzed and I'm buzzed.

‘There'll be more coming through,' I tell her. ‘Then Land Management, and if you don't have title to this house, they won't be nearly as nice as I'm being about asking you to leave.'

She licks my chest. ‘You
are
being nice. I guess we'll have to move on.'

‘I can make sure you get to a high town safely. Put in a word that they shouldn't split you up.'

‘All right,' she says, like I convinced her in two sentences. It seems sudden, but so does the fact that we're taking a shower, so I feel only proud that I've helped her to let go. We rub each other to keep warm and get clean, staying under the water longer than we need. Maybe my body's not so bad, maybe it's inspirational enough to get them somewhere dry. They'll take a day or two, since we're going on foot, but I could use the company, especially if she stays this friendly. They probably will get split up in the new town – skills are skills – but at least they'll be saved. And then I can collect another horse and come back for the wine and the art on the walls.

We come in and stand by the fire, huddled together in the same sheet. I'm feeling a slight added bonus that Jenna, who's made herself scarce, is losing points over the fact that I'm about to screw her mother. I suggest another hit of wine and Liz takes a small, measured sip. It's not her main interest at the moment, she tells me, letting the sheet fall off her back. She's on me, pushing me into the couch. I am grateful and obedient. I'm learning from every move she makes, from her speed.

She is all action, climbing over me, taking what she wants, enjoying her own exertion. Eventually, though, she lets her guard down, her touches gets rounder, the kisses get sweeter, and she settles in to tenderly devour me like we've been doing this for years. There's no room for me to move so I lie back and enjoy it all. When I look up I see that her eyes are shut.

*

The rain isn't so hard in the morning and I suggest we do a quick forage so we'll have a day's supply with us and won't have to hunt for food as we walk. As we gear up for this, Jenna offers to stay behind and pack while we find food. By now she understands my mantra: necessities, not attachments. Liz comes with me. She is eager to learn now and keeps the pace. I show her the pines, but she wants to go further into the forest. I show her a fern, a mushroom. She makes me try them both first, before we fill the bag.

So she's carrying the bag and I'm hugging a hickory tree, showing her where sap is leaking, saying it's ‘a quick source of energy', when suddenly there's a fire in my thigh. I fall off the tree and land on my back in a muddy ditch. I look down at my leg, at a hole in the gear where the bullet tore through the outside of my thigh, then over at her. Liz is holding my gun steady as she backs away from me.

‘Stay away from us. Just keep away, don't come back to the house,' I hear, under the sound of the rain, as she pulls back into the woods and disappears.

The gunshot, though I didn't even hear it, started a stampede of animals in the area and the ground around me begins to beat. I pull myself next to the tree's trunk and hope they don't come this way. It's about ten deer, looking for a new place to live. They're thin, confused, darting through the trees. For what seems like a while I sit there watching them go and admiring Liz for what she did, what she thinks she's doing. I wonder what it's going to take to make them give up on each other, turn them into survivors.

One animal gets stopped by a branch and then sets off in another direction. I wonder what these animals were holding on for, before they finally decided to save themselves. I wave at them, try to direct them to higher land, but they're too frantic even to see me.

I hold the hole in my pants open so the rain can wash out the wound. She didn't want to kill me, at least not so she'd know she had. The entry and exit are so close that they connect in a tall ‘O' in my skin. It burns like there's metal in there, but I can see the bullet's gone through. Going to take forever to heal. I tie it all up with my undershirt.

I'm soaked now and the bleeding's still pretty heavy, but I've got to get up if I'm going to make it anywhere and I can't exactly go back to them for help. I hoist myself to half-standing against the hickory tree, zip open my body belt and see she left me with half my bullets so I wouldn't feel any missing when I put it back on. I won't look at the wound again until later because nothing can be done anyway.

The rain's easing up, but I'm moving, I'm moving. There was a light in a house in the valley yesterday, maybe someone's down that way. Someone who might take pity on a government man, see me for what else I am.

I'm imagining the person who finds me. A real country woman, a Labrador, about my age, who forgives this mutt. What else? Let's give her red hair to her shoulders with freckled skin and sleeves rolled up above her hard-worked forearms. She does what has to be done and keeps a smile through it all, a sincere one. She helps me up onto an old wooden work table where she's made thousands of meals for her family, cuts open my pants carefully, enough so she can see the wound. I'm in a farmer's kitchen, shelves lined with bottles of pickled vegetables stored for harsh weather (and still not all eaten, even now). She'll have the exact right topical to wash me up, some secret concoction her family's used for a hundred years. There's a metal bucket full of fresh sunflowers by the sink. Dry towels, a gentle touch, golden light streaming into the room from a faultline in the clouds. And this woman, she's so glad to see me. She's waited patiently through all these months of hunger and rain for me to crawl ashore.