The Choke Read online

  It was Pop who found me at the bottom of the yard the night after my mother left. There was a barbecue. All the Worlleys and the Lees were there, drinking, listening to music. Saw you were gone, said Pop. When I found you at the bottom of the yard you were cold as bloody ice. Christ knows where you were going. I was looking for my mother. Was she at The Choke? Did she have a boat hiding in the trees? That was the night you met the big man, Pop would say. You remember that, Jussy? The first night you met him, when he was Ethan Edwards? Pop had taken me inside and sat beside me on the couch, holding my hand as John Wayne crossed the television on his horse, hunting down the Indian. ‘So we’ll find ’em in the end, I promise you. Just as sure as the turnin’ of the earth.’ Only thing to stop you crying was the big man, Jussy. I heard John Wayne as Ethan Edwards blasting the enemy. Pop said, You get ’em, big man, and then I slept. Every time I woke, Pop and the big man were there; Pop holding my hand while the big man cracked his whip at the Comanches.

  Dad said my mother got on a train to Lismore to see her sister. He said she kicked up a stink because she didn’t want to do what a wife signed up for. When Pop asked the sister, the sister said Donna never got off the train and she didn’t blame her. If someone doesn’t want to be found, there are places they can hide; they can make a shelter in the trees, from branches, from rocks and things people don’t want. Tyres, milk crates, piles of bricks. They can use camouflage; they can hide in old cars, in skips, they can make a house from a couch or two doors. Dad said he had an idea where Donna was, a bloody good idea, but Pop said, Leave it alone, Ray. Donna is gone.

  Kirk and Steve and me and Pop sat around Pop’s fire with plates of sausages and fried eggs on our knees. Corn and peas rolled to the edges. The coals in the fire glowed orange. Everything on our plates was sticky with yolk and sauce. Pop said, ‘Eat the bloody peas.’ We stole looks at each other and let the peas fall to the ground, kicking dirt over the top. Pea cemetery. Beyond the circle of light, trees moved in the wind and crickets called to each other. Pop’s fire held us together, burning with invisible flames that wrapped around us like arms.

  Down at The Choke the river pushed its way between the banks. The water knew the way it wanted to go. Past our hideouts, past our ring of stones, past the red gums leaning close enough to touch—it flowed forward all the way to the sea.

  3.

  After I had taken the dinner plates to the sink, the telephone rang, its sound cutting the quiet. Kirk sat up straighter in his chair. Steve turned towards the house. Pop grumbled as he got to his feet. ‘Al-bloody-right,’ he said as he walked slowly back to the kitchen—Pop had to keep his gut in one straight line or he woke the bug. The telephone kept ringing. Kirk and Steve and me waited to see if it was Dad. ‘Right,’ said Pop. ‘Where are you? When do you…Yeah, son…Reckon? Yeah…Yeah…How’s she running? Check the fanbelt? You looking at three hundred mile you want to know it’s tight…Yeah, son, see you Friday.’

  Kirk said, ‘It’s Dad.’

  ‘What day is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Tuesday,’ said Kirk.

  Dad hadn’t been home since July and now it was nearly the Christmas concert. I had lost my two top and bottom teeth since he last saw me, and there were no new ones at the top yet. I was the last one in my class. If I showed my teeth there was a hole. I stuck my tongue in and out of the gap, feeling the sides.

  Steve took out his pocketknife and pulled out the blade. He turned it in his hands before closing it and putting it back in his pocket. There was only one blade, smaller than the one Pop used to cut my fingernails. Relle said it used to be Dad’s but Dad said bullshit. Relle said, It was yours, Ray, don’t you remember? and Dad said, I’d remember a knife as useless as that.

  Pop came out with a can of beer. He sat down on his chair and pulled back the ring. The can hissed as if a small snake had escaped. He said, ‘Your old man’s coming home.’

  Your old man’s coming home. When Pop spoke the words I felt our worlds—Kirk’s and Steve’s and mine—shrink and separate. The mother half was different. Ray had left one for the other. Relle found Ray and Donna in the truck. Donna was in Relle’s seat, with her arm on the handle where Relle’s arm went, her feet up on the dash where Relle’s feet used to go. Relle knew what Donna and Dad had been doing before she found them, as if her eyes had stolen away, climbed through the window into the cabin, hidden behind the mirror and seen everything that happened, then went back and told the head. I was eating Weet-Bix at the kids’ table not long after I moved to Pop’s, when I heard Pop and Dad talking.

  You should have been more careful, Ray.

  Accidents happen.

  Yeah, and now I’m stuck with your bloody accident.

  The table was so low it kept me at the height of their knees. If they didn’t look down they forgot I was there.

  I can take her.

  Not where you go, son.

  Where do you think I go?

  I know where you go.

  Where’s that?

  Leave it alone.

  Just saying, I can take her.

  Drop it, Ray.

  Where would he take me? Where would we go? Nobody knew exactly where Ray went or what he did.

  Behind us, the back-house stood dark and locked. The flames of Pop’s fire and the lights from the kitchen didn’t reach far enough to show it, but you could see its outline. It was another sort of black. The back-house was where Ray lived when he was home. The only thing missing was a shower. Ray filled up a bucket with warm water from the tap at Pop’s sink, then he hung it over a pipe with a funnel. When Ray was away the back-house was locked, the curtains closed. If you looked in the window you saw your own reflection. After the phone call the back-house seemed to grow bigger, as if Ray was pressing out the walls from the inside, reminding us, like the heads inside the red gums.

  After dinner Relle came by to pick up Kirk and Steve. ‘Ray’s on the way,’ said Pop. Relle didn’t look at me. She never had. Not once. Any kid but Donna’s. She couldn’t identify me, as if I was an accident that hadn’t happened. I felt the hole in my mouth with my tongue. Who is born on their knees? Who doesn’t know the right way out?

  Relle had black hair in a ponytail and her eyes were narrow like Steve’s—she kept the edges tight. Every day she drew dark green lines around them. ‘Oh yeah?’ she said. Her eyes gleamed. ‘When’s that?’

  ‘Friday,’ said Pop.

  ‘He’s going to teach me how to shoot,’ said Kirk.

  ‘No, he’s not,’ said Pop.

  ‘He said he would.’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘Danny’s uncle is going to show us if Dad doesn’t. When he gets back from Gympie.’

  ‘Bloody Gympie,’ said Pop. ‘Want a beer, Relle?’

  ‘No, Dean’s at home. And I’m on the early shift tomorrow.’ Relle worked at the bakery in Nullabri. She started at four thirty in the morning when it was still dark. Just before the bakery opened she painted all the tops of the donuts with the flavours. But she never ate a single donut. The donuts could sit in shining rows—pineapple, lime, chocolate, strawberry—and she didn’t care. She didn’t even need a taste.

  Kirk said, ‘Damn.’ Dean was Relle’s new boyfriend.

  ‘We got to go, boys,’ said Relle, jangling her keys. ‘Get in the car.’

  ‘Can we stay here?’ said Kirk.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because there’s shit to do at home. Dean wants you to help him move the rubbish from down the side.’ Kirk and Steve groaned. ‘Get a move on,’ said Relle. ‘I want to pick up dinner for Dean on the way.’ The boys got up and followed Relle through the house. They wanted to stay the night at Pop’s, closer to where Dad would be coming to, closer to where he would park his truck, closer to where he would sleep and drink and be.

  After they left I went down the back and checked on the chooks. I hooked my fingers through the wire of the run, leaned in close and saw the shadows of the girls sle
eping on the roosting bars. Cockyboy was keeping guard at the top. He made a small warning cluck in his throat. I breathed in and smelled them there, the Isa Browns alive behind the wire, heads turned into the warmth of their feathers.

  I went back inside, sat on my bed and looked through Road and Track. I saw a white Ford F100 with the same long aerial as Dad’s, the same bull bar. I cut down one side, and along the bottom. Now I was ten I cut the edges smooth and straight. I’d been doing cut-outs since I moved to Pop’s. I had to hide the good ones; if he needed paper to light the fire he came to my room. I got off the bed and put the truck on top of the pile in my cupboard. Dad would be home on Friday. It wasn’t enough time for the teeth to break through the gums. I pushed my tongue in and out of the hole. Kirk said, You could stick Brian Chisholm’s torch in the hole and go to work in the mines. You could get paid.

  Friday was three more days. There wasn’t time.

  4.

  The next morning the sun came in through my window, yellow and bright. My room was the only one at the front of the house; I was the eyes of Pop’s Three, and could see the end of the road. I looked in my shelf and found my school skirt and a t-shirt. I got dressed and went into the kitchen. Pop was making his tea, his dressing-gown hanging loose around him. I poured Rice Bubbles into a bowl. The radio played the news. Pop rolled himself a White Ox. ‘Bloody Vietnam. It’s 1971, for Christ’s sake, and we’re still getting them out…’ He sighed and shook his head at the radio. ‘Jesus, Lizzy…’ Lizzy was his wife; she died in Ballarat Hospital in 1952. That was nineteen years ago, but for Pop it was only yesterday.

  The smoke from Pop’s cigarette and the steam from the tea curled around each other, searching for an exit. Pop took another suck, and looked at his White Ox. ‘The kindest animal,’ he said.

  I said, ‘Pop, what day is it?’

  He took a sip from his tea. ‘Wednesday.’

  ‘And tomorrow is Thursday,’ I said. ‘Then it’s Friday.’

  ‘Well done, Justine,’ he said. ‘I knew you went to school for a reason.’

  After breakfast Pop rolled another smoke and passed me the egg basket. The Isa Browns were waiting in the run. Pop stood at the open gate as Cockyboy stepped out first, looking from side to side, his red comb wobbling. There were long claws on the backs of his legs, like hooks. ‘Hey, Cockyboy? You taking care of the ladies?’ said Pop. The girls came next. ‘Hello, ladies; morning, girls; here, chook chook chook.’ The White Ox on Pop’s lip bobbed up and down, like a tiny waving arm.

  Pop passed me the old water, full of seed shells and dirt. I tipped it out and carried the dish to the tap. I filled the dish with clean water and brought it back to the run. Then I took the egg basket to the chook boxes. The eggs were warm and smooth in my hands.

  ‘How many?’ Pop asked me.

  ‘Five,’ I said.

  One time a hen wouldn’t move out of the box. ‘Nesting,’ said Pop. ‘Leave her alone.’ When at last she left the box to peck for seeds I looked in her nest. There were six eggs sitting in the straw. I heard the babies tapping on the shells from inside, squeaking and chirping, as if they were calling for help. I picked up one of the eggs and cracked open the shell with my fingers, but the chicken inside wasn’t ready. I could see right through its skin to its bones. Its eyes were closed and its neck was loose. It wasn’t big enough. I pushed the chicken back in and turned the egg around so Pop wouldn’t see the hole I’d made, then I put it back into the nest. But a fly must have flown into the nest and found the hole. Five chickens hatched from the eggs and one didn’t hatch at all. When Pop turned over the last egg he found the baby chicken with a maggot in its guts. Pop’s face turned red. He said, Leave my chickens alone, Justine.

  I carried the basket of eggs up to the kitchen, then I put my empty schoolbag on my back. ‘See you, Pop,’ I called, but he’d gone into the chook house. I could hear him talking as he cleaned the run. Natural! Hell! Jesus! Lizzy! Right! Pop talked to the chooks and the radio and the television and the big man, he talked to Cockyboy, to the fire and the beer cans and his White Ox. And he talked to Lizzy. Lots of the words were just sounds, spoken under his breath, so I couldn’t tell one word from another. Then a word would be spoken loud. Fault! Sandy! Know! Blood! I didn’t know where the words began, what came before and what came after. It was like trying to read; I could only guess.

  I walked along the Henley Trail to the bus stop, stepping over the puddles that were there, even in summer. In Yolamundi the grass and the roads and the bush were always damp and shining with the Murray. It lay in long shallow puddles under the trees, it darkened the roads and filled the potholes. The red gums knew how to grow in the river. They didn’t care how deep it got, how wide, how fast it flowed, they dug in and held on and kept growing.

  As I walked I sang carols for the concert. I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know. My school shoes pinched my toes at the top of every step. Where the treetops glisten and children listen. The concert wasn’t far away now. May all your Christmases be white! Before the fall-out with the Worlleys I never walked the trail alone. I would cut across the paddock to the Worlleys’ farm, and walk along Dray Road with whichever of the Worlleys was going to school that day. There were six cousins. One was a girl called Kathy and the other five were boys and some were brothers. Kathy wasn’t a cousin; she was a sister. Kathy was small with one eye that looked far into the distance.

  Jamie, the oldest Worlley, used to walk out in front as if he was Cockyboy and we were the chooks. Before the fall-out we would be together on the school bus. The cousins made a lot of noise. Jamie always sat in the middle of the back seat; he stretched out his arms on both sides and said, ‘Ah, all mine.’ Nobody knew if I was a Worlley or a Lee. We were all together.

  The Worlley farm had three caravans in a circle, like a town. Geese guarded the circle, hissing and biting if a car drove in. They watched over Mother Margy’s pansies, and the wrecked cars, and the piles of planks and the calves that were born too soon. The geese had their own island in the middle of the Worlley dam. The foxes tried to swim across but the geese made a line, joining their wings one to the other, hissing and honking. There was a rusted car with no windows coming out of the dam. Uncle Ian said, That’s where you end up if you drink and smoke pot at the same time, and Dad said, As long as you had fun on the way down.

  Before the fall-out, when we were friends with the Worlleys, Pop and me and Kirk and Steve went to the Worlley farm for barbecues. One day Pop found a long piece of yellow plastic at the scrap yard. He rolled it up and took it under his arm back to the Worlleys. Pop and Uncle Ian lined bricks across the top of the plastic and laid it out so the plastic ran down the hill. ‘Turn on the bloody hose!’ Pop called out to Uncle Ian.

  We were all there, waiting for the water to come from the hose: Jacky and Lachie and Kathy and Jamie and Tyler and Ee Worlley and some more of their cousins from Wodonga, and Steve and Kirk and Kirk’s mate Danny and me. Water came blasting from the hose and Pop pointed it at the plastic. The kids screamed and shouted.

  Jamie Worlley went first. Shouting as he slid, both hands in the air. Then we all went down; we went down alone and we went down together, screaming and laughing as we slid. Pop and Uncle Ian stood on the sides shouting, ‘Go, you beauty, go!’ The Worlley farm was so full of Worlleys and Lees and cousins and friends it felt like the whole town was there. We belonged together.

  Jamie went into the caravans and came out with bottles of shampoo and detergent. ‘Don’t tell Mum,’ he said. He squirted the bottles over the yellow plastic slide then he turned the hose on as hard as it would go. Bubbles rose up in clouds. Jamie shouted, ‘I am the bubble man! Watch me fly!’ He slid down on his stomach, his arms out wide, and the bubbles covered him and flew up around his head and into the sky. Then the rest of the cousins and the brothers and the sister and me slid through the sweet-smelling bubbles.

  Back then, two years ago, Jamie was already fourteen. He took off
his t-shirt and I saw muscles like water currents on his shoulders and chest. There was a long red scar down the middle of his back that that was raised at the sides. When he saw me looking he said, ‘Somebody dug it.’ Then he said, ‘Nah, it was from a knife.’ Then he said, ‘The truth is it was from a dogfight.’ All the cousins wanted to touch the scar but he said, ‘Justine first.’ The cousins made a line behind me. Jamie said, ‘Go on, Justine, touch it.’ I stared at the scar. Jamie said, ‘Go on, it won’t bite.’ The scar still looked sore, as if the dogfight wasn’t long ago. He said to me, ‘Justine, you’ll be the first person to touch it.’ The scar was long and thin and red down his back. Jamie looked over his shoulder at me. He said, ‘Go on.’ He stepped back, so we were closer and I reached out and put my fingers on the scar and it did bite me! It leaped from his back and bit my fingers and I jumped away and screamed. Jamie laughed and then all the kids reached for it with their bubble hands, touching it quickly then jumping away when the scar tried to bite.

  Every day that summer we went over to the Worlleys. The uncles had beer for Pop, and Mother Margy gave Pop food. Eat, you skinny bastard, she said. Pop ate up the steaks and the chops, the potatoes and bacon and bread and corn. He took sips of beer between bites and raised his glass to the uncles and his smile opened his face so I could see inside where the Japs got him.

  On the night of the fall-out we were all sitting in the middle of the Worlley caravans, by the fire. Only Ray was missing; he hadn’t been home for a long time. Pop said it would be any day now, that he was finishing up a job in the Territory and he’d be back in time for the Yolamundi muster.

  ‘He never makes the fucken muster,’ said Ian Worlley. ‘Ray knows better.’ When it was time for the Yolamundi muster the forest filled with cows charging in every direction, their bellowing as loud as the branches that crashed and broke around them. The men charged through the trees on their horses, rounding the cattle up to the yards where they were branded and cut and drenched. The kids hung off the fences and shouted ‘Giddup there, giddup there!’ as the cattle ran into the crush.