The Choke Page 4

  Before I opened the book, I closed my eyes. I wish. I wanted the letters to make words I could understand. I wanted to find out where the truck was going, how long until it got there, what it was carrying, what the driver put in his cabin. But when I opened the book the words didn’t make any sense. What was ngis? What was leewh? What was ilesm?

  I sat beside Noreena and Dawn in the lunchtime block. Noreena said to me, ‘Does Michael smell?’

  I shrugged. I looked across the yard and saw him sitting at the benches, his crutches leaning against the table.

  ‘His brain isn’t the right size,’ said Dawn. ‘He didn’t get enough oxygen.’ Her mother was a nurse on the night shift at Echuca.

  ‘I can’t believe you have to sit next to him, Justine,’ said Noreena, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘At least he doesn’t always come to school,’ said Dawn, unwrapping her sandwich. ‘Maybe tomorrow you’ll have the desk to yourself. Sometimes he has to go to hospital.’

  ‘What for?’ Noreena asked.

  ‘They train him to stop shaking. He gets tied to a railing and every time he shakes he loses a point. Do you want my banana, Justine?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. My stomach growled.

  She said, ‘Be a gorilla.’

  I got on my feet and dropped my arms so my hands hung low to the ground. I stuck out my chin.

  Noreena said, ‘Go, Justine!’

  ‘Ooh-oooh-oooh!’ I was a gorilla. ‘Oooh-oooh-oooh!’

  Dawn and Noreena leaned back with their mouths open, laughing like the black lorikeets over Pop’s Three; crackcrack! and down they came with Mrs Mauser.

  ‘Here,’ said Dawn. She gave me her banana.

  Over at the benches Michael sat by himself, shaking and jerking as he looked down at a book open in front of him. His body was always moving, like someone you couldn’t see was pulling the strings.

  w The afternoon was carol practice with Sabine. Sabine wore a scarf that trailed over her shoulder like a wing. You could see the sunlight through the scarf. She smelled of soap and her hair was loose around her face. Sabine came close to us when we were singing, to hear if we should be in the high group or the low. When Sabine came near I stopped singing. I breathed in her smell of soap, from her neck the colour of cream. She said, Articulate! She sang, Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la! I heard Michael groaning beside me. When he sang his face stretched, his mouth wide as if there was another Michael Hooper on the inside, trying to come out.

  At the end of the day I walked out of school with Dawn and Noreena.

  ‘Let’s go to the bakery before the bus comes,’ Noreena said.

  ‘I’m going to get a raspberry crown,’ said Dawn.

  ‘I’m going to get a strawberry tart,’ said Noreena.

  Dawn and Noreena sang carols as we walked down the street. The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown, of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown.

  A bell rang when Noreena pushed open the bakery door. The smell of bread and pies and sausage rolls made my mouth water. I looked into the kitchen and saw Relle at the ovens. She wore a white cap over her dark ponytail. When I came in she looked away.

  Mrs Mulvaney was behind the counter. ‘Hello, girls,’ she said, smiling.

  I looked at the shelves behind the glass. There was rocky road with cherries. Dawn and Noreena jangled money in their pockets. They always bought something. Sometimes Dawn gave me the last bite.

  ‘What would you like, ladies?’ said Mrs Mulvaney. Her chest was a warm mountain with the red-and-white stripes of her apron rolling over the top; her cheeks were pink. She was new—it used to be Mrs Reeves. ‘What takes your fancy?’

  Dawn chose a raspberry crown cupcake and Noreena chose a strawberry jam tart. We had turned to leave when Mrs Mulvaney said, ‘Well, miss, what about you?’

  I turned hot. Dawn and Noreena looked at me; they knew I had no money, but Mrs Mulvaney was new in the bakery and didn’t know. She used to work at the stock and feed where Pop bought his egg grit; I came with him sometimes and waited while he spoke to the boss. She said, ‘Come on, Justine, wouldn’t you like a custard tart?’ She pointed to the tray and smiled. ‘I do battle with them from the minute I get here.’ The custard tarts sat in rows and above them were peach slices in the shape of a heart.

  Dawn stepped forward as if she was sharing a secret with Mrs Mulvaney. ‘She has no money.’

  Mrs Mulvaney frowned, then she leaned over the counter, her chest broad and full against the glass. ‘Tell you what, Justine,’ she said. ‘You choose something that you’d like and I’ll cover it for you, hey? I’m a millionaire this week.’

  I looked up from my feet into her warm pink face and she said, ‘Go on, what would you like?’

  I swallowed. I didn’t know what to do. I looked up and down the rows as my stomach burned and growled. There were too many to choose: rocky road, lamingtons, hedgehogs. I’d looked at them and wanted them too many times. Dawn and Noreena were watching me, waiting. Relle could see me from the back, holding up the line. Any kid but Donna’s. The whole shop was waiting.

  Then Mrs Mulvaney said, ‘How about we start with a pie, then I’ll put an eclair in a bag and you can eat that for afters. How does that sound?’ I nodded. My throat felt tight. ‘Good, that’s what we’ll do, then.’ Mrs Mulvaney took a pie out of the warmer with her tongs, squirting sauce in the crack at the top, then she took the eclair from the cake tray behind the glass. She put them both in brown bags, and when she passed them across she squeezed my hand. ‘You enjoy those, pet.’

  Dawn nudged me. ‘Say thank you.’

  I looked up at Mrs Mulvaney. The bags were heavy and hot in my hands. I couldn’t speak.

  Noreena frowned. ‘Justine,’ she whispered.

  ‘Leave her alone, Noreena.’ Mrs Mulvaney smiled at me. ‘Go on, pet, you enjoy every bite.’

  Dawn and Noreena and me sat on a bench and ate our pies and cakes, swinging our legs. After I ate my pie and then my eclair, everything inside came down like an anchor, into the ground. When I walked to the bus stop, I sang the words too. The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown, of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown. If I could have spoken the words to Mrs Mulvaney they would have been, Thank you, Mrs Mulvaney.

  When I was getting on the bus I saw Mrs Hooper, Michael’s mother, going down the school steps beside him. Michael’s crutches were under his arms, his schoolbag on his back. When he came to the kerb he put the crutches down first, then he used them to swing himself towards the car. He leaned forward and opened the car door. Mrs Hooper didn’t help him get into the car. She left him alone and went around to her side. I watched as they drove away.

  On the bus on the way home I felt full and warm. Outside of the bus window I saw trees with black cockatoos in the branches. There were Worlleys at the back but nobody said anything to me. Nobody knew when Dad was coming home; there was no warning.

  Before the fall-out Dad was friends with the uncles. Mother Margy used to say, Handsome Ray, and give him apple pie when we were at the caravans. Everybody drank beers and ate steaks and the caravans stood around us in a circle—each caravan for a different Worlley family, all glowing with light and television, all loud with kids and babies and music from the tape recorder. Mother Margy piled up the pie for my dad, poured on the cream and said, The girls can’t stay away from handsome Ray, can they, Ray? Lucky I’m old, hey? Stacey Worlley sat on her camp chair by the fire, her eyes never leaving Dad; every step he took, every sip he swallowed, every word he spoke.

  Before Stacey Worlley got married and changed her name to Chisholm, Dad and Stacey used to go together. When we went to the Worlleys for barbecues, Stacey sat on Dad’s knee. She turned her body round and kissed him and both her legs were over one of his, as if he was a horse. Her jeans were so tight they were like pale blue skin. Soon Dad and Stacey would get up and go into one of the caravans. When they joined the fire again Mot
her Margy said to Stacey, ‘You know he’s a heartbreaker, don’t you, Stace?’ Mother Margy’s hand was on Dad’s leg, like she was trying to hold him to the chair. ‘He comes and he goes.’

  ‘That’s why I’ll never marry him,’ said Stacey, kissing my dad.

  ‘That’s why he’ll never ask you,’ said Mother Margy.

  Relle said Stacey was a slut even after Stacey married Brian and changed her name. Brian Chisholm worked in Goonyella where he dug coal with a machine that had five levels. It took a team to work it. Relle said, Bloody Stacey, it may as well be written across the back of her skirt. Goonyella was in Queensland.

  Stacey found Brian around the same time as the fall-out. He asked her to marry him, and then it was over between her and Ray. The same as it was over between Pop and the Japs. If I ever saw one round here I’d get out the Mauser, Pop told the chooks. Don’t worry about that. I’d take his head off without looking back.

  The bus stopped at the rock. As I walked down the trail to Pop’s Three I looked up at the trees leaning over me. O the rising of the sun, and the running of the deer, the playing of the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir, I sang to the highest branches. Dad was coming home tomorrow. I stopped my singing. In out in out went my tongue.

  7.

  I saw smoke rising at Pop’s Three. I walked through to the yard. The fire was lit, and Pop was on his knees at the chook run tightening the wire. The chooks pecked at the ground around him. ‘Hellfire alright…not human! And after all that, what for?’ The chooks tilted their heads as they listened to the rise and fall of Pop’s words.

  ‘Hi, Pop,’ I said.

  ‘G’day, Jussy.’ He turned to me, a White Ox balanced on his lip. There was chook shit on his cheek, caught in the cracks. ‘Doing a bit of a fix-up.’ He looked towards the back-house. Then he took the rake from against the wall and held it out. When Dad was on the way home Pop cleaned, trying to get ready.

  I put down my schoolbag and raked the grass, dragging butts and chook shit and bottle tops to the fence. Pop put the old straw from the chook run into the wheelbarrow, wheeled it out and tipped it at the far edge of the Three. He got shovels from the shed next to the run and we scraped out more shit. I broke up the bales and we spread new straw across the run. I filled up the chicken drips at the tap and put egg grit into the plastic bucket, then I brought it down to the feed tray.

  Pop leaned on his shovel. ‘Ladies, your new home awaits,’ he said, tipping his head.

  The chooks gathered around him, pushing against each other, hoping they would be the one he would pick up and hold and stroke when he sat in his camp chair.

  ‘Going to pull in a bit of fuel from down the back,’ he said, getting into his truck.

  I walked towards the fence; Cockyboy watched from the rail, his eyes like hard black pips.

  When I first came to Pop’s Three, seven years ago, Cockyboy scratched my face. I was chasing the hens. I wanted to pick one up and take her into my room. Pop said, If you can catch one she’s yours. I chased the hen one way, and then another. Kirk and Steve and Dad called, Go, Jussy, go! They laughed and cheered. Go, Jussy! Go, girl, go! Cockyboy came for me, his feathers gold and red and gleaming, his red comb and black eyes coming for my face! I screamed and my cheek stung. I don’t know if it was his beak or his claw that drew the blood. I cried. Pop said, ‘He’s just showing you who’s boss.’ Later, in the bathroom mirror, I saw a long red hook line under my eye, like the scythe that hung in Pop’s shed.

  I put down the rake and went into the chook run. I picked out three eggs. Everything Pop cooked had the yellow yolk, like a sauce. I sat down by the hen boxes, holding the eggs carefully in my hands. The chook run smelled of clean straw and feathers. It was quiet in there. I leaned against the boxes. One more day then it was Friday.

  Dad never said what he did when he was away. When he’d been home a while, resting, having a beer with Pop, talking on Pop’s telephone, the secrets started to cook, like bread in the pan, its crust breaking as the secrets rose, pushing his guts up to his throat. Dad’s skin was a layer stretched tight. That’s when he needed to go away, to let out the secrets where Pop couldn’t see. Things he wanted, things he didn’t have a name for.

  Then he came back home, empty. To rest, keeping still in the back-house, sometimes coming out for a beer, sometimes saying, Good to see my special girl again, hey, Juss. Talking on the telephone, holding it close to his mouth so you never heard whole words. If you came into the room when he was on the telephone he showed you where the door was with the angle of his head: ‘Out.’

  When Pop came back with the wood I helped him unload it from the trailer. The shoes pinched my toes every time I bent to pick up another piece.

  ‘Red River’s on the box tonight, Jussy,’ said Pop. We carried our egg and potato and corn into the living room. ‘The big man as Tommy Dunson.’ Pop turned on the television and the picture fuzzed and snowed. ‘Fix it, Jussy, darlin’,’ Pop said, sitting on the couch. I left my dinner on the coffee table, got up and moved the aerial. I twisted it and turned it until the picture stayed steady, then I let it go and slowly stepped back. There was John Wayne as Thomas Dunson, riding his horse to Red River. ‘I knew I took you in for a reason, Jussy,’ said Pop. I was the only one who could fix the aerial; nobody else.

  Pop and me sat on the couch balancing dinner on our knees. Thomas Dunson’s help was Groot, but what could Groot do? He had a limp and spoke in a voice too soft to hear. Pop said, ‘We brought nothing into this world and it’s certain we can carry nothing out,’ at the same time as Thomas Dunson. ‘Every time you turn around, expect to see me, ’cause one time you’ll turn around and I’ll be there. I’m gonna kill ya.’ Pop knew all of Thomas Dunson’s words as if he had lived another life as Thomas Dunson.

  When the movie finished Pop said, ‘Wish you were around when Sandy and I were in Burma, big man. Would have been a whole different story, Duke. Bastards.’ He turned off the television and the room was shocked with the quiet, as if Thomas Dunson had left without warning. Pop rolled a White Ox and drank from his beer. ‘Your father’s coming home Friday,’ he said, but it wasn’t me he was talking to. They were just words. He could have been telling Thomas Dunson.

  At school on Thursday morning, I was about to sit at the desk beside Kathy Worlley.

  ‘Don’t forget your husband,’ said Matt Dunning. He turned to Michael.

  ‘Piss off,’ I whispered. I looked at Michael, shaking and jerking at his desk. I wished I could sit beside Kathy and copy her straight lines. Michael’s head rocked back and forth. All the time I had been at Nullabri Primary he had been there, shaking and jerking in his seat, but I had stopped seeing him. Everybody had. I went to Michael’s desk and when I pulled out my chair, I knocked one of his crutches to the floor. Other kids laughed as Michael bent down, jerking to the side as he picked it up.

  Mrs Turning said, ‘This morning is the multiple-choice comprehension test.’ She walked around the class, putting the test on every desk. ‘Please place a tick in the circle beside the correct answer.’

  I heard Matt Dunning and Brian Lawson laugh. Brian said, ‘Give your husband a kiss.’

  I closed my eyes and said, I wish, but when I opened the test and looked at the words the letters had changed places. I saw ecided, tnagele, esponser. I saw letters in a row, DCAB. I couldn’t read the sentences. Michael kept moving and pulling, his arms jumping, his neck going stiff then loose, stiff then loose. I put my pencil to the paper. It didn’t matter which circle I ticked. Michael scratched at the page—his pencil missed the paper and marked the desk. I ticked inside some circles then stopped. Michael and me were the same. That’s why Mrs Turning put me with him; we couldn’t do anything.

  After the test the reward was free reading. I took my book with my dream of the truck on the cover but I didn’t make a wish to understand the story. I didn’t open the book. I put my fingers on the truck and looked through the window at the light coming from the sky. I closed m
y eyes and saw the truck waiting for me under the light, ‘You’re My Best Friend’ playing on the stereo.

  Michael took a book from his desk. He opened it and smoothed down the pages with his shaking hands. There was a lot of writing on every page, little letters, lots of words. There were maps. There were photographs next to the maps; pictures of animals, snow, trees, whales. Men with sleds and dogs. Boats. Arrows going up and arrows going down. Michael turned the pages of the book until he came to a big blue country. Then he went as still as he had ever been and leaned over the page.

  Michael went home at lunchtime that day. His mother was at the door waiting. She smiled at him. They walked out together and she didn’t help him.

  8.

  That night, I lay in bed and my tongue found the gap, in out in out. The teeth were there when Dad left and now they weren’t. I closed my eyes and watched scissors cut the air above my head into pieces. My bedroom was on the top level of a truck that could travel over land and sea. I brought the food up with a pulley; hot pies and chocolate eclairs and orange juice.

  ‘When will Dad be here?’ I asked Pop the next morning.

  Pop sat in the sun that was coming through the kitchen window and smoked. ‘He’ll be here when he’s here,’ he said, turning his cigarette in the light as if he liked the clothes it was wearing. The news was playing on the radio. ‘Bloody communist, Whitlam,’ said Pop.

  I stirred sugar into my Rice Bubbles. You never knew when Ray would come. Sometimes he’d call Pop and let him know; other times it was a surprise. A year ago, when I was nine, I was walking along the Henley Trail back to Pop’s. It had been raining and there were deep puddles on the road. The Murray was high, spilling over the sides. The grass under the trees glowed green. I sang as I walked. Red and yellow and pink and green, Purple and orange and blue, I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too. Sabine was teaching us. Listen with your eyes, listen with your ears, and sing everything you see.