The Choke Page 3

  Uncle Ian drank from his bottle then he spread his legs apart as if there was a horse between them. ‘Remember the last one? Big bloody bulls,’ he said. ‘Must have been five hundred head, and every one of them white.’ He held out his bottle. ‘Yah, yah, get up there, you white bastards!’ He tipped back the bottle and opened his mouth. The men had been drinking from cans all day, while the kids played, but when it turned to night they drank from big bottles.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Belinda, shaking her head.

  Uncle Ian used a pretend whip, cracking it high over the heads of the bulls. ‘Every one was white, but it made no difference, they were on the way to the same place.’ He laughed and drank. ‘The same fucken place.’ He picked up a tyre that Belinda’s baby used as a seat and threw it into the fire.

  ‘Jesus, Ian!’ said Belinda.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ asked Mother Margy.

  ‘I like the smoke,’ said Uncle Ian.

  ‘Fool,’ said Pop.

  ‘What did you call me?’ Uncle Ian said to Pop.

  ‘A fool,’ said Pop.

  ‘A fool?’ said Uncle Ian.

  ‘That’s right. A fool who owes me money.’

  ‘Tight bastard,’ Uncle Ian said.

  ‘You owe me money, Ian. I found the bloody tanks. I helped you get them into the ground. Now you have to pay me for them.’

  Uncle Ian was on his feet. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Mother Margy said, ‘Settle down, Ian. Have something to eat.’

  ‘Don’t you tell me to settle down. You’re her mother, not mine.’ He held his bottle out to Belinda.

  ‘Shut up, Ian,’ said Belinda.

  ‘You owe me money, Ian,’ said Pop.

  Uncle Ian said, ‘The Japs really did a number on you, didn’t they, Bob?’

  ‘What do you know about the Japs?’ Pop spat.

  ‘I know enough.’

  ‘You weren’t bloody there. You know nothing. Bloody nothing!’

  ‘I know the Japs took your balls, old man,’ said Uncle Ian.

  Pop lunged at him across the fire, his hands like a rabbit trap around Uncle Ian’s neck. Uncle Ian staggered back. He pulled Pop off him then he punched him in the face. Pop fell to the ground. Kirk and Steve tried to hit Uncle Ian in the guts. Steve screamed, ‘Get off him! Leave him alone!’ Then Lachie and Jay hit Kirk and Steve. They were on the ground, their arms and legs thrashing in the dirt. I couldn’t tell who was Worlley and who was Lee.

  Belinda and Mother Margy rushed to Pop, and Margy put his head in her lap. There was blood on her skirt and hands. Belinda screamed up at Uncle Ian to fuck off.

  Pop was groaning.

  Belinda held the cloth to his forehead and said, ‘You’re a fucking idiot, Ian!’

  Mother Margy said, ‘Kirk, take Steve and Justine and go home.’

  ‘What about Pop?’ said Kirk.

  ‘I’ll take care of your pop,’ said Mother Margy. She unhooked Pop’s keys from his belt and passed them to Kirk. ‘He’ll be home by morning.’

  Pop’s keys clinked in Kirk’s pocket as we walked across the Worlley paddocks in the dark. It was cold in our faces and under our clothes. ‘Will Pop be alright?’ I asked Kirk. We had never seen anyone hit our Pop before or talk to him about the Japs. Only he talked about the Japs. They belonged to him. Burma and the war in 1940 and the tracks that led to Siam belonged to him.

  ‘I’m going to shoot Uncle Ian,’ said Kirk.

  ‘Me too,’ said Steve.

  We’d always been the Worlleys and the Lees; it was other people we wanted to shoot—not each other. My teeth chattered with the cold. I searched the whole sky from one end to the other as we walked but there wasn’t a single star. Only Kathy could see the stars, with her other eye.

  It was even colder inside Pop’s house then outside. We turned on the lights and stood blinking at each other in the kitchen. Kirk said, ‘I’m going to get the Mauser.’

  ‘How?’ I asked. Pop kept the Mauser in the gun cupboard; it was always locked. He never let us near it.

  Kirk dangled Pop’s keys in front of Steve and me. ‘How do you think?’

  We followed Kirk to the door at the top of the stairs. The stairs only led to the gun cupboard. Pop built it when he first moved in. A bed for Mrs Mauser, he said. Kirk pulled the door to the stairs open. The stairs going down were so dark you couldn’t see the bottom. Steve took my hand and held it tight. Kirk stepped through the door and Steve and me followed. We hadn’t been down before; Pop didn’t let us. I catch you kids anywhere near the gun cupboard and there’ll be trouble. You understand?

  Every step it seemed to get colder. The only thing warm was Steve’s hand in mine. We didn’t talk. We stayed close, as if hearing each other’s breath and feeling the heat from each other’s skin would keep us safe. At last we came to the bottom.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Kirk. I heard his hands brush the wall.

  ‘What?’ Steve asked.

  ‘The cupboard—it’s too high,’ said Kirk. ‘We can’t reach it.’

  ‘Hook your hands together and I can climb up,’ I whispered. ‘Then I’ll put the key in.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Kirk. ‘You take the keys, Steve.’ I put my hand on his shoulder and my knee in the cup of his hands. We leaned against the wall. ‘When I count to three,’ Kirk said. ‘One…two…three.’ He pushed me up and I took hold of the narrow cupboard.

  ‘Pass me the keys,’ I whispered.

  Steve passed the keys up to me. I had to let go of the cupboard with one hand to take them. ‘Which one is it?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Not the big one,’ said Kirk, his voice breathy and strained from holding me. ‘Not the one for the truck.’

  I felt for the smaller keys and then I felt the gun cupboard for where the lock was. I stuck in the smallest key but the lock didn’t turn. And then I dropped the keys.

  ‘Ouch!’ said Kirk, letting me go. I came down on top of him. Steve started laughing and then I did, and then Kirk did. Our bodies shook with laughter harder and faster than they shook with the cold. I felt my brothers against me, their bodies warm and laughing in the darkness.

  When we were quiet, Kirk said, ‘Try again.’

  We got up, our bodies looser and warmer. Kirk hooked his hands and I put in my knee and Steve pushed me up too, his hands under my bum. We worked together; this time we knew what we needed to do. Steve passed me the keys and I found one that wasn’t as small as the one before, with sharp edges, and I stuck it into the lock, turned it and the door of the gun cupboard opened.

  ‘Take the keys,’ I said to Steve, passing them down.

  ‘Are the guns there?’ Kirk asked.

  Pop kept two brother-pistols with the Mauser. Company for Mrs Mauser, Pop told the Isa Browns. Those pistols never bloody miss. If I had them in my hands in Burma it would have been a different bloody story. I felt for the guns inside the cupboard. Pop never even let us open the door to the stairs. You keep clear of my guns. I catch you bastards anywhere near that cupboard and you’ll know about it. I felt something long and cold and metal.

  ‘Is it the Mauser?’ Kirk asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I told him.

  ‘Get it,’ he said.

  As I lifted the gun out of the cupboard, something hard clattered across the ground, raining down on Kirk and Steve.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Kirk. ‘Bullets.’ The Mauser was heavy in my arms as Kirk helped me down.

  ‘Pop’ll kill us,’ I whispered.

  ‘Pop’s not here,’ said Kirk. ‘You and Steve pick up the bullets. Give me the gun.’ Me and Steve got on our hands and knees and scraped up the bullets, stuffing them in our pockets. Kirk said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  We followed Kirk upstairs into the living room. Cold came off the windows in waves. Outside the night was black. Kirk put the Mauser on the coffee table and we sat on the floor around it. None of us knew how to load it or shoot it. Pop never showed us. He didn’t want Dad showing us either. W
e had only ever seen it when Pop took it out to clean it. Pop hovered over it like it was a baby he didn’t want us to hold.

  We touched the trigger and the black handle and the barrel. Kirk picked it up and aimed it at the window. He made the Mauser jump as if a bullet had shot out of the end. ‘Kapow. Sorry, Uncle Ian.’

  ‘Gotcha, Uncle Ian,’ said Steve.

  We took the bullets out of our pockets and rolled them across the table. They were shiny with sharp heads to pierce the skin. The Mauser held us to it and to each other, as if it was a magnet and we were the metal. We sat a long time, leaning back on our hands when we didn’t need to touch it anymore. When we heard a noise we didn’t care, we had the Mauser, we could shoot that noise and we could shoot the bastard that made it.

  It was our first night in the house without Pop. Kirk helped me pull my mattress into the boys’ room and put it between their beds. He laid the Mauser beside me, its butt on my pillow. ‘She can sleep with you,’ he said. I pulled my blankets over me and the gun. Kirk hung his hand down so he could touch it in the night.

  Early in the morning, when the light was still grey, I opened my eyes and Kirk was holding the gun. ‘Putting it back,’ he whispered.

  ‘Don’t forget a chair.’

  Mother Margy dropped Pop home in the Dodge later that morning. ‘Took him to the hospital in Echuca,’ she said, when I came out the front.

  I said, ‘Are you okay, Pop?’ There was a row of black stitches on his forehead.

  He said, ‘Fucken money.’

  ‘Forget it, Robert,’ said Margy. ‘It was the booze talking.’

  ‘Bullshit. It was all Ian.’

  ‘Give it time.’

  ‘Fuck time,’ said Pop.

  Mother Margy got back in the Dodge, shaking her head. She drove away and Pop went inside and rolled a White Ox. ‘It’s always fucken money,’ he said, putting a match to his cigarette. His skin was puffed around his eyes, and he looked pale. There was blood crusted under the line of black stitches. ‘That’s it, Justine. You don’t go there again. Same goes for your brothers. The prick owes me.’ He sucked back on his smoke. When Pop spoke to me, it was the same as when Dad did. The words were there, but it was as if they were speaking to themselves. I was just an excuse.

  That was two years ago. Now the Worlleys and the Lees were different sides of a war, like the one Pop fought in 1940. Me and Sandy against the bloody monkeys. They weren’t made of the same stuff; God knows what flowed in their veins, but it wasn’t blood. Now I walked the Henley Trail alone.

  5.

  I could see the forest on one side all the way to the bus stop as I walked. Down there, through the bulging red gums, was The Choke, and my hideout. Come all ye faithful, I sang. A cockatoo screeched and I raised my pistol. Crack! Down came the bird. Joyful and triumphant…Crackcrackcrack! Down came a tree and a cloud and the sun.

  When I got to the rock that Pop put by the side of the trail to show me where to stop, I gave it a kick. I stuck my tongue in and out of the gap in my teeth and looked down the road. There would probably be Worlleys on the bus. Before the fall-out, all of us kids used to sit together. Now the Worlleys left me alone on the bus, as if I was invisible.

  When I saw the bus coming I stepped closer to the edge of the road. The bus slowed down and drew in, mud sloshing around the wheels and splattering the sides. The Worlleys looked away when I stepped between the two rows of seats. They never knew if Dad was home; it was safer to leave me alone. They knew about Pop’s Mauser too; they’d seen him cleaning it. They’d heard him talk about the brother-pistols and how far they could shoot, how it only took one bullet.

  I kept my eyes down and chose a seat at the front as the bus turned out of the Henley Trail into Yolamundi Road. The sun was warm through the glass. I heard the Worlley cousins talking and laughing at the back, but soon a lot of other kids came on at the different stops, and they were between me and the Worlleys, and I couldn’t hear them anymore. I pressed my nose to the window. One more day and Dad would be home. I put my tongue in the gap—in out in out in out, even if it hurt.

  6.

  Soon the bus arrived at the school. I stepped down without looking behind me and walked up the path. Nullabri Primary School had yellow play squares, a green patch for the monkey bars at the front, and an oval at the back with bushes for a fence. Lots of kids were coming in through the gates. Dawn and Noreena leaned on the monkey bars. Noreena had long hair with a green headband to match the uniform and she was the main friend.

  ‘Hi, Justine,’ said Dawn.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  Noreena said, ‘Did you brush your hair this morning, Justine?’ I pulled at the knots at the back of my head. ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  The bell rang and we walked up to Mrs Turning’s classroom.

  Mrs Turning stood at the front, waiting for us to sit at our desks. I sat next to Kathy Worlley. She looked away.

  ‘Good morning, class,’ said Mrs Turning.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Turning,’ everybody answered.

  ‘I hope you have all completed your homework because we are going to begin with spelling practice.’ Mrs Turning came from England; she showed us on the map with the class pointer. A great distance from here and different in every way! ‘Please take out your workbooks,’ she said.

  Kathy and me took our books out from under the desk.

  ‘We shall begin with the A list and work our way through. Please choose a clean page to begin.’

  Everybody was quiet for Mrs Turning. She had been at the school since the start. Her hair was grey and pulled back into a tight ball at the bottom of her neck. I put my pencil to the page and pressed. Mrs Turning said, ‘Spell animal, please, class. Animal.’

  Kathy started to write. I pressed my pencil into the page. I saw letters backwards. S came before Q, T came before D, E came before B. When I started at Nullabri Primary my teacher was Mrs Bettsbower. When Mrs Bettsbower said, ‘Who wants to go first?’ I put up my hand. Mrs Bettsbower said, ‘Justine, can you find the word girl in the box?’ I got up from the floor and went to the box in front of the class, but I couldn’t find the word girl. Mrs Bettsbower said, ‘Justine, open your eyes.’ But my eyes were open, and I was looking. Where was it? Mrs Bettsbower said, ‘What does girl begin with, Justine? Think. Can you find the word that begins with g?’ I looked and looked but I couldn’t see a single word that began with g. I saw other words: Ma. Tac. Yob. I. Nus. But there was no girl. Mrs Bettsbower frowned. She said, ‘Sit back down, Justine.’ I felt a hot wave flush over my face as I went back to my place on the floor. I looked at my feet. Mrs Bettsbower said the word was there, in front of my eyes, but I couldn’t find it. I didn’t put up my hand after that.

  It was because I was born back to front. My words were breech, like me. Every year finished and I never caught up. Anything that had a word, or numbers in a row, I had to guess. I watched other kids for clues. I stood back in the line, I noticed the way the pencil moved, I heard the start of an answer and sometimes that was enough for me to know how to finish. But not always.

  I looked at Kathy’s paper. She drew the line going around, and then the straight line going up, like a back for the circle. I did the same. I waited for the next letter and I did the same line going down, then back up.

  ‘Justine!’ said Mrs Turning. My pencil jumped across the page. ‘Are you looking at Kathy’s page?’

  I couldn’t speak. I stared at the leg of the desk.

  ‘Are you? Can you answer me, Justine?’

  But I couldn’t.

  ‘Is that what you are doing? Is it?’ Mrs Turning pressed her lips tight, waiting for me to answer. ‘Do you know what looking at somebody else’s work is called, Justine? Let me tell you: it’s called cheating. Get up and go and sit beside Michael Hooper.’

  I stayed where I was; I always sat next to Kathy.

  ‘Justine? Can you hear me, or must we have our ears checked? Move!’

  I turned to look at Michael Hooper. Hi
s head rolled on his neck like a flower too heavy for its stem. His chin was wet; there was a bib around his neck. His crutches leaned against his desk. Nobody had ever sat beside him.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me, Justine? I said get up and sit next to Michael.’

  Everyone was quiet. Nobody went near Michael. If he tried to speak he groaned.

  ‘Justine!’ Mrs Turning said. ‘Move!’

  I got up, pushing back my chair.

  ‘Take your workbook and pencils with you. You can stay next to Michael for the rest of the term.’

  I walked slowly to Michael’s desk. I put my workbook on the table beside him and sat down. He tried to turn his head to look at me, his eyes rolled. ‘Read to your husband,’ whispered Matt Dunning. Brian Lawson snorted.

  Mrs Turning said, ‘Class! Attention, please. Spell ancestor.’

  I sat on the furthest edge of the chair. I looked towards the window. Down at The Choke the banks would press in, but the water would keep flowing; it couldn’t be stopped. I heard Michael breathing as I put my pencil to the page. He was trying to write, his arms shaking, his legs jerking. I drew lines going up and down, over and over.

  Soon it was free reading, with a no-talking rule. I chose a book with a truck on the cover. The man in the mobile library said, Every book contains a dream. The truck had silver fenders and four lights. It had too many wheels to count. There was an aerial out the top so the driver could hear the news of the road. I traced my finger over the cover. I wished I could drive the truck wherever I wanted to go. At night I would pull over on the side of the road and play, ‘You’re My Best Friend’ by Don Williams. If I woke in the night the song would still be playing. ‘You’re My Best Friend, You’re My Best Friend,’ over and over.