The Choke Page 14

  Rio Bravo came on the television. I pulled my feet up under me on Stacey’s chair to watch the big man. The caravan was warm with the door closed. Honey lay at the entrance with her head between her paws. John Wayne as Sheriff Chance was keeping the brother in jail. He wasn’t scared; he could have been, but he wasn’t. Down in the valley, the valley so low, hang your head over, hear the wind blow, Dude sang. Colorado Ryan joined him, his voice soft and sweet. I closed my eyes. Angels in heaven, know I love you. Hang your head over, hang your head low…

  In my dream, Stacey, carrying Sherry in one arm, rode towards my dad on the wedding horse. He climbed up behind her, holding a long gun like Sheriff Chance. Stacey’s wedding dress was all around them, wrapping them in white. Colorado Ryan sang, If you don’t love me, love who you please. The horse reared up, bucking and kicking as it tried to throw my dad to the ground. Around them was a ditch, like the one around Steve. Stacey said, No! No! to Dad and he said, Yes. You do. I woke and opened my eyes; somebody was crying.

  I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing in this room. Who was crying? I looked around at the photos on the wall and the baby toys on the floor, and remembered that it was Stacey’s caravan. The television showed white and grey dust crackling and fuzzing. I got up and turned it off. Honey was still at the door. She whimpered at me.

  I followed the sound of crying to a door with a picture of a butterfly. Blue light came from under the door. I pushed it open and saw Sherry standing in her cot, crying. There was a light made of a blue star on the wall near the cot. When Sherry saw me she looked scared.

  I went back and opened the front door of the caravan. Honey ran out. I couldn’t see Dad or Stacey. There were two big empty bottles lying on the grass under the table. The half-built house was in silver piles lit by the moon and the stars.

  ‘Honey!’ I called. ‘Honey, come back!’ I couldn’t see the dog anywhere. What would Stacey say if Honey was gone? Sherry cried louder. I went back inside to her room. ‘Shhhh,’ I said. ‘Shhhh, Sherry.’ I leaned into her cot and picked up her toy rabbit. ‘Here you go, here you go.’ I waved the rabbit close to her face. She kept crying. I didn’t know what to do. Sherry was so little. There was a mark on her cheek from the dummy she had been sucking. I saw the dummy on the mattress of the cot. I picked it up and tried to give that to her but she cried louder and shook her head.

  I went back to the front door. ‘Dad!’ I called. ‘Dad!’ The night went on as far as I could see. ‘Dad!’ I called again. ‘Dad!’ Honey ran back into the caravan, whimpering. ‘Honey!’ I said. ‘Good girl, good girl, Honey.’

  I closed the door and went back to the cot. I leaned down to Sherry and she reached out her arms to me. I lifted her over the bars and held her. ‘Don’t cry, Sherry, don’t cry.’ She was heavy and warm in my arms as I carried her out of the room. She stopped crying. I gave her a chip from the bowl and she held it in her hands. I sat down on the chair with Sherry on my knee. Honey sat at my feet, as if she had given up on the world outside.

  It was like I was the mother and Sherry was my baby, Honey was my dog, and this was my home. If I wanted I could hook the caravan up to Dad’s truck and drive it away. We could go down the Henley Trail, past Pop’s Three and out onto the highway. We could keep going until night turned to day and Yolamundi was far behind us. Everything and every person and every place would be new, like a present never opened.

  Sherry started to cry again so I got up and bobbed her in my arms the way I’d seen Stacey do. We went around the room looking at the pictures. ‘Who’s that? I said to her. ‘Who’s that?’ I pointed at the photo of Stacey on the horse. ‘Horse,’ I said. ‘Horse.’

  Sherry said, ‘Mumma,’ and then she pointed at the dog and said, ‘Unny. Unny.’

  I said, ‘Honey. Honey.’

  Honey followed us around the room. She came with us to the trophy and the sink and the photo of Brian holding Stacey in his arms.

  We walked to the door; I pushed it open and we stood in the doorway—this time Honey stayed inside the caravan. I pointed at the sky. ‘Look, Sherry, stars. Stars.’

  Sherry pointed and said, ‘Star. Star.’

  A scream came from the half-built house. The skin at the back of my neck prickled. ‘Mumma, Mumma,’ Sherry said.

  ‘Shhh. Shhh, Sherry,’ I said. The scream came again. Sherry started to cry. I bobbed her up and down, faster than before. The screaming kept going. What should I do? I didn’t know. I went inside the caravan and shut the door. I was shivering. Sherry cried louder. I went down to the other end of the caravan, away from the door and into another room. I kept the lights off, rocking Sherry in my arms. ‘It’s alright, it’s alright,’ I whispered. But I didn’t know if it was alright. I sang to Sherry, Down in the valley, the valley so low, over and over. Hang your head over, hang your head low, until she stopped crying. Roses love sunshine, violets love dew. Angels in heaven know I love you. I lay back on the bed in the room, I don’t know whose it was; there was no light—I was too scared that someone would see it. I lay holding Sherry against my chest, until we slept.

  When I woke, Ray was standing over me, shaking my shoulder. ‘Get up,’ he said.

  I felt sleepy; I didn’t know where I was again. I didn’t know why my dad was there. He didn’t come into my room. Then I remembered. I was in Stacey’s caravan. Sherry was beside me. She began to cry.

  Dad said, ‘Get up, we’re going.’

  I sat up, holding on to Sherry. It was too dark in the room to see. ‘Is Stacey here?’ I whispered.

  ‘Don’t worry about Stacey.’

  ‘What about the baby?’

  ‘Put her in her room.’

  I got up and Sherry cried louder. ‘Mumma! Mumma!’ I didn’t want to let her go. I didn’t want to leave her crying.

  ‘But what about Stacey?’ I said. ‘Is she coming?’

  ‘Move it.’

  I carried Sherry into the room with the blue light. I put her in her cot. She stood, holding her arms out to me. ‘Mumma! Mumma!’

  ‘Shhh,’ I said. ‘Shhh, Sherry.’ I wished Stacey would come and pick up Sherry and give her milk and hold her. ‘Shhhhh, Sherry.’

  Dad stood outside the door. ‘Come on, Justine.’

  I walked to the truck, Sherry crying behind me. ‘Dad,’ I said, ‘where’s Stacey?’ I looked out at the half-built house, silver in the moonlight. I couldn’t see Stacey anywhere.

  ‘Get in the truck.’

  I heard crying from outside and in.

  Dad turned on the engine and we drove away from Stacey Worlley’s caravan.

  Later, when I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes, I could still hear crying. I sat up and the room spun, the way it did the day Dad taught me how to shoot. I got up in the dark, went to the toilet and vomited.

  25.

  When I looked through the kitchen window the next morning, I saw a heavy grey light all around Pop’s Three. It came down over the walls, the yard and the back-house. The curtains to the back-house were closed. Dad was still sleeping. The night before, he hadn’t said a word all the way home. He hadn’t said goodnight. It was as if I wasn’t there.

  I crossed the yard and went to the run to check on the chooks, closing the gate behind me. ‘Here, chook chook chook,’ I said, and they gathered around me to see if I had food. I threw them seeds from the drum, and they came very close and pecked the dirt at my feet. I sat on the ground near the water dish, holding out my arms. ‘Chook chook chook,’ I said. I wished they would come and sit on my shoulders and perch on my hands and cluck to me. I wished Cockyboy would use the hooks on his claws to guard me; he could show them to the enemy. Leave Justine alone! ‘Hey, chook chook chook,’ I said. ‘Hey, girls; hey, girls. Hey, Cockyboy.’ Cockyboy looked at me with his head on the side. ‘I won’t hurt the girls,’ I told him. ‘I won’t hurt the ladies. I’m your friend, Cockyboy.’ I wished the run was full of yellow babies and that they would all come around me and squeak and chirp. There would be so many
all I could see would be yellow, as yellow as the sun, and I wouldn’t hear anything but the squeaky chattering of the baby chicks all wanting me to touch them and hold them and be their mother, and I wouldn’t hear crying and instead of grey it would be gold.

  I don’t know how long I sat there. When I stood, my legs were sore and stiff. I walked out of the chook run down to the gate. There was nobody around; Pop’s fire was black coals and smoking stones. I climbed through the fence and followed the trail that went into the trees. The crying came with me. Sometimes it was Stacey’s and sometimes it was Sherry’s and sometimes it was a third voice I didn’t know. When I was in the trees the crying became softer, until it was a hum, no louder than the sound of my footsteps on the way to my hideout.

  Kirk and Steve and me hadn’t been down to our hideouts since Dad had come home. I straightened the wall of branches, then I found more, thick with dry leaves, and stacked them one on top of another against the pole-tree until you couldn’t see through them. I found Pop’s old towel, half-buried in the dirt, and shook it out, before spreading it over the roof. I made a door that could be pulled closed so you didn’t know a door was there. My hideout was as safe as Chief Puma’s teepee. I picked up a stick with a point and wrote a sign in my own letters. It said keep out in a code nobody could read. Letters that didn’t move. Every one a barb of wire in its own shape. Keep out.

  I swept the floor inside with another leafy branch until it was smooth. I found a short, thick log and made a shelf for supplies. I carried in armfuls of dry leaves and put them on one side to make a soft leaf bed. I tidied the ring of stones and found kindling and wood, ready for a fire. The hum of crying grew softer as I worked, hardly there. I found more branches and built walls around the walls, so everything was covered and camouflaged. Even Kirk and Steve wouldn’t recognise it. I grew hot as I worked, not thinking of anything but my keepout home, not Stacey and Sherry or the caravan or my dad leaning over me, Wake up, move it! Not remembering the drive home, Dad’s emptied-out silence, as if he had left something behind at Stacey’s and he was glad and quiet and calm without it, the same way he was after he shot the bullets into the cans.

  I left my keepout and walked down to the river. I saw a grey kangaroo watching me through the trees, its paws up, dark eyes unblinking. There was a joey tucked into its pouch, its face turned towards me. The joey was safe in its pouch, held, nowhere else to go, his mother behind and above him. The pouch was a home and a coat and a car for the joey. I closed my eyes and felt the pouch around my body and back and legs, holding me close. I was held and I was free. When I opened my eyes I saw another kangaroo behind, then another and another, until every tree and rock and branch and bush was a kangaroo, all of them still, waiting and watching. I took a step and then every kangaroo—the mothers with joeys in their pouches, the fathers with their fists raised, the brothers and sisters still growing—turned and bounded away from me deeper into the bush. In one second every kangaroo knew it had to move, to escape the danger.

  I walked along the river, dragging a stick behind me. I could hear Sherry’s and Stacey’s cries twined together. What happened at the caravan? What did my dad do? I didn’t know the words for things—I had no answers.

  Soon I came to The Choke. I watched the water flowing in one single direction. I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes, then opened them to see trees and river, then closed them. The hum of crying was so quiet that the sound became part of the Murray. I didn’t belong to myself anymore. I had no mouth or eyes or thoughts. I didn’t need anything to change or be different. I didn’t wish Aunty Rita would come back. I wasn’t waiting for a letter I couldn’t read or a telephone call Pop wouldn’t give me or another visit she couldn’t make. I wasn’t wishing it was school, so I could see Michael, be with him, have his help. I didn’t need to find words, or read them. The hole inside me was filled, the same way the bullets filled the holes of the Smith—then even that smooth surface disappeared and I was part of things that couldn’t be seen. I don’t know how long I was there. There was no time.

  26.

  That night Pop didn’t light a fire and we ate dinner in the kitchen. It was eggs and a tomato. When I did the dishes I checked the back-house windows for light but there was none. I hadn’t seen Dad all day. He hadn’t come out to get water for his shower, and when Pop called, ‘Time to eat, Ray’, Dad didn’t answer. It was as if he wasn’t there, even though I knew he was. After dinner Pop lay on his couch with his hand over his gut. ‘Go to bed, Justine,’ he said.

  I couldn’t sleep. The crying grew louder. It was Sherry and Stacey, and another voice. The cries were both inside and outside, far away and close. If Aunty Rita was here she could put her arms around me like John Wayne did to Feathers; she could put the pads to my head and send in a volt, and when I woke she’d say, How about a walk?

  I don’t know what time it was when I heard Dad go down the hall and out the front door. The glow of his headlights shone through my window. I heard the rumble of his engine turn down the Henley Trail in the direction of the pub. In my dream Sherry held my hand as Honey led us down the road. Honey kept turning around to make sure we were there, still walking, still following. We came to a train station with a sign I couldn’t read. I didn’t know if a train was coming, or how long we had to wait.

  At lunchtime Pop and me were in the kitchen eating toast when Dad came inside. It was the first time I’d seen him since we came back from Stacey’s. His skin was without colour, like my black-and-white cut-outs. You couldn’t see through the glass of his eyes. His hair looked damp. Something was gone from him, and something had been added.

  ‘Heading off this afternoon,’ he said to Pop, opening the fridge.

  Surprise leaked through Pop’s face, changing the lines of his mouth, deepening the tracks. He said, ‘I thought you were doing a job for the Martins.’

  ‘Changed my mind,’ said Dad, closing the fridge.

  Pop stood, shaking his head. Dad coughed up from his throat and spat into the sink. Pop frowned. Dad said, ‘Fuck off, Robert.’ He barely opened his mouth. The words slipped out the side, then he turned on the tap and started to fill the bucket for his shower. Pop puffed out air and kept his mouth shut. When the bucket was full Dad carried it towards the back door.

  ‘When are you home again?’ said Pop.

  ‘Could be a while,’ said Dad.

  Pop took a breath. ‘Right.’

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘No problem, son,’ said Pop. Pop had lost something that belonged to my dad a long time ago, something that was his—Ray’s—most special thing, more important to him than his truck, than the Smith, than Silver. Ray had been missing it since he was a boy in the photograph. They both knew it was Pop’s fault. Dad went through the back door with his bucket. Pop leaned against the bench. He breathed out and looked at his hands.

  After lunch I lay on my bed, and cut trucks into pieces. I left the metal doors hanging from the bodies, the exhaust pipes dangling from the trays. I cut off wipers and bumper bars and fenders and horns. When I heard the sound of an engine coming down the road I looked through the window and saw a police car. I jumped up from my bed and ran out the back. ‘Pop!’

  Pop stuck his head out of the chook run. ‘What is it?’

  ‘The cops.’

  The cops had come to Pop’s before. They’d been looking for Dad. A girl from Melbourne said he held her down and put his coat over her face behind the Rochy pub. It was a black-and-red checked coat and it brought the girl’s world in so close she could smell it. Cigarette smoke, beer and petrol. But Mother Margy said Ray was with her that night, not at the Rochy pub, so how could he have done it? They were at the farm playing cards. A lot of the Worlleys saw him that night, they could testify. They played game after game; Mother Margy could remember Ray’s last hand. She said it was the ace of spades that led the deck; she’d never forget.

  The girl was from the big smoke; the wind from the city blew her in, twirling her through the air
like a leaf in autumn. She had never seen the world so close as underneath Ray’s checked coat; she could hardly breathe, there was no distance or space. But Mother Margy said, Oh, bullshit, these city girls, tarts, wind blows them in, pity it can’t blow them out, and the cops drove away. Pop said, Don’t shit in your own nest, son. Ray didn’t fight him. He looked at the ground at Pop’s feet. He said, Al-fucken-right, Dad.

  The other time the cops came it was about a robbery in Albury at a house in Cobble Street. The wife said that she and her husband woke up in the middle of the robbery and caught my dad by surprise. She said my dad shot her husband with a sawn-off shotgun. The wife identified Ray but the husband said, No, no, it wasn’t him. The wife said, My husband had a bullet in his neck! How could he be sure of anything? My dad said to the wife, Bullshit. Ask your husband how he knows me, darlin’. Ask him why there’s a bullet in his neck. The wife said to her husband, You’re a coward. You know who did this to you! But the husband wouldn’t say it and he told the wife to be quiet.

  When Dad came back from the police station that day, Pop raised his eyebrows at him and said, Luck runs out, son.

  Pop looked towards the back-house. ‘Jesus,’ he said. He shook his head as he walked up to the house. ‘Jesus Christ.’

  I followed Pop down the hallway. There was knocking at the front door. ‘Go into your room,’ Pop said to me.

  ‘Can I see the police?’ I asked him.

  ‘Go to your room, Justine,’ Pop said. But I didn’t go to my room; I went with Pop to the front door.

  Pop took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. When he opened the door two policemen were standing there. One was old, with a moustache and a stomach as big as a barrel under his shirt, and one was young, with his cap low over his eyes. There were guns in their holsters, and black poles hung from their belts.