The Choke Read online

  Pop’s mouth shut tight, his lips pressing hard against each other as if they were trying to hold back what happened.

  ‘Get on the horse, Justine,’ Dad said. ‘Take my hand, then put your foot on mine.’

  My dad leaned down. I took his hand. I stepped towards the horse and its dark eyes rolled back in its head so I could see the whites. It stepped away from me as if it was scared. I tried to put my foot on Dad’s boot, but my foot wouldn’t reach. I could feel Kirk and Steve watching me as I tried. Dad took his foot out of the stirrup. ‘Just get your foot on my boot,’ said Dad. ‘Come on, Jussy.’ He wanted me to do it; he was sick of being in Pop’s drive and sick of trying to get me on the horse.

  A blackbird swooped down and the horse jumped. ‘Settle down,’ said Dad in a low voice. ‘Easy, girl, easy.’

  As I lifted my leg to try to put my foot on his boot, he grabbed hold of my hand and pulled me up and over the back of the saddle. I was looking at the dirt on the other side from way up on the horse, as it skipped and swerved. Dad laughed and then he righted me so I was sitting up behind him. The saddle tipped me towards him; I was so close I could smell the cigarette smoke in his jacket.

  I watched as Kirk turned and walked back into the house. His head was down. It was his birthday, one month late. But it was his birthday. As he walked, the half that was the same in us shrunk to nothing.

  ‘Hold on, Justine.’ Dad pulled my arms around him. ‘You right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. The horse was trembling and hot and damp, pulling beneath us.

  Pop called, ‘Ray, leave Justine here.’

  Ray said, ‘Let’s go, Jussy.’ He pulled one rein so that the horse turned and headed for the trail. ‘Giddup, girl!’ said Dad, flicking the reins over her shoulder. The horse started to trot, jiggling me against him.

  Dad said, ‘What do you want to call her, my special girl?’ Did he mean me or the horse? Who was the special girl? He kicked the horse. ‘Come on, get up there!’ he said.

  The horse began to canter along the trail away from Pop’s Three.

  Dad kicked it harder. ‘Get up there! Get up there!’

  The horse began to gallop, its hooves clattering on the dirt road. When I looked down I saw the pebbles flying out from under its hooves, like shrapnel. The faster she went the easier it was to ride her. I held on to my Dad as the red gums of Yolamundi rushed past. I forgot the hang of Kirk’s head as he turned to leave, I forgot that it was his birthday, his dad, his ride, and that I took it, I took Kirk’s ride.

  ‘Silver,’ I called out to Dad. ‘Her name is Silver!’

  ‘Hi ho, Silver!’ shouted Dad, leaning forward.

  The moon in the sky that night showed the tops of the trees on the other side of the fence, the leaves and branches glowing. Pop and Ray drank from their beer cans in front of Pop’s fire.

  ‘Reckons he can get a thousand bucks a ton,’ said Dad.

  ‘Bullshit, son,’ said Pop. ‘A thousand bucks?’

  ‘I heard it from the horse’s mouth.’ Dad tipped his beer in the direction of Silver, in the paddock on the other side. ‘A thousand bucks.’

  ‘How much is towage? Did he say?’

  ‘He said it was all-inclusive.’

  ‘Did you believe him?’

  ‘He’d be a fool to bullshit. He wouldn’t take the risk.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Check it out. Drive up there and do a few loads.’ Dad drank from his can. ‘Got my eye on a block backside of Nullabri.’ Dad said one day he was going to build a house on a block and stay put so Pop wouldn’t have to look after me anymore.

  Pop said, ‘Right.’ Dad was talking more since Silver came.

  I walked to where the horse stood in Pop’s paddock. She was eating grass with her head down. Her coat glowed as if the light from the moon was under her skin. ‘Silver, Silver,’ I whispered, putting out my hand. She sniffed my fingers. I patted her nose and leaned closer. She smelled like the chooks and the grass. Her eyes were made of black water, as if it had been poured into the bowls of her face. I climbed through the wire and sat on the ground in front of her. River water seeped into my pants. Silver smelled my hair. She pushed at my head and snorted her warm breath against my ear. I heard Pop and Ray laughing from the yard. Dad said, ‘Bugger that for a joke! Fuck, no!’ I put my hands up to Silver’s face and stroked her forehead. She pulled at the grass around my feet. ‘Silver, Silver,’ I said. I stood up and put my arms around her neck. She let me hold her. Her chest was so strong, so wide and warm. ‘I love you, Silver.’

  But in the morning when I went out to see her, the paddock was empty. I could see the prints of her hooves in the grass.

  ‘Horse is gone,’ said Pop from the back door.

  ‘Gone where?’ I said. Pop came down to the fire, his dressing-gown around him, a White Ox on his lip. He threw sticks into the smoke of his coals until there was a flame. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ I said.

  He pulled out a burning stick and lit his fag. ‘Don’t know that either.’

  ‘Will he be back today?’ I asked.

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ said Pop.

  ‘Will he be back this morning?’ I asked. I picked up a bottle top and threw it into the flame.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Pop. We stood, Pop and me, not knowing, waiting in the space left behind.

  When Pop was in town at the stock and feed shop, I went out to the paddock. ‘Here, girl; come on, girl.’ I held out my hands to her and she came close and I felt her warm breath on my fingers. I closed my eyes and led her through the gate, then I put one foot in the stirrup and swung myself over. I felt her underneath me, stepping one way and then another. She felt hot and I smelled her sweat. ‘Easy, girl, settle down, settle down,’ I said. Then I kicked her, ‘Yah! Yah!’ and we took off around the yard. I held on to the reins with one hand; with my other hand I made a gun and shot it in the air. Pchoo! Pchoo, pchoo! She’s mine, all mine! We galloped through the house, out of the front door and down Pop’s road. Faster and faster, Silver’s hooves clacking on the road, the stones flying. Hi ho, Silver!

  16.

  You never knew where Ray was when he was gone. He spoke on the telephone and you never knew who he was speaking to. His friends changed. He went out to places to meet them, but he never said where. Pop told the chooks, he said, Since that day at the hospital. That was when it started. That very day. The hour she left us. A different boy after that. Nothing but secrets.

  When I came home from school on Friday I saw Dad sitting at Pop’s fire with Aunty Rita.

  ‘G’day, Jussy,’ said Dad. ‘You remember Rita, don’t you?’ Dad sucked back on his cigarette.

  ‘Hi, Justine,’ said Aunty Rita.

  I couldn’t look up at her. I looked at her feet—she was wearing boots like my dad’s.

  ‘Justine,’ said Dad. ‘Say g’day.’

  I kept looking at Aunty Rita’s feet; they were almost the same size as Dad’s.

  ‘Justine?’ said Dad. ‘Say g’day.’

  ‘Ease up, Ray,’ said Aunty Rita.

  ‘Say g’day, Justine. Go on.’

  I kept my mouth closed; I didn’t want Aunty Rita looking at my teeth.

  Aunty Rita said, ‘You’ve grown a lot since I last saw you.’ Her voice was strong like Ray’s but soft like a woman’s.

  ‘When was that?’ said Dad.

  ‘Justine must have been…four,’ said Aunty Rita. ‘Don’t you remember? Pop and I had words.’

  I could feel her eyes on me. Heat moved up to my face.

  ‘Oh yeah, that time,’ said Dad. ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘You look like your mother,’ said Aunty Rita.

  Dad said, ‘Like I need reminding.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with being reminded.’

  I stole a look at her. Her eyes were the same colour as my dad’s but there was light behind the circles. I could see into them. She was tall like Ray, wi
th wide shoulders. She wore almost the same clothes as him: checked coat, boots, checked shirt. She said, ‘So, Justine, does that make you nine?’

  I said, ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Open your mouth when you talk,’ said Dad.

  ‘You open your mouth, Raymond,’ said Aunty Rita.

  Dad looked away.

  ‘Ten,’ I said.

  ‘Ten!’ said Aunty Rita. ‘You’re getting there. You want to show me your room?’

  ‘Where’s Pop?’ I said.

  ‘Sandy’s,’ said Dad. ‘He won’t be back for a while. It’s okay, go and show Rita your room.’

  Aunty Rita got up from her chair.

  She followed me into my room. The room was the same length on all sides, one of the walls was light green, one had wallpaper, and the other two had wallpaper that Pop had painted over white; I could still see the stripes underneath. Aunty Rita looked at my bed, and around at the walls, then she went to the window and leaned against it, looking at the road outside. I heard her sigh. She turned around and sat down on my bed, near the pillow. I sat on the other end.

  ‘How is school?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘If you’re anything like me school is bloody awful. The best thing about school for me was that it finished.’

  ‘Do you want to see my cut-outs?’ I said.

  ‘Sure,’ she said.

  I took my piles of cut-outs from the cupboard; trains and trucks, cars and motorbikes, helicopters, caravans and boats covered the blanket. Aunty Rita ran her hand over them. She looked at them carefully, taking her time. She picked up a train made up of a long row of coloured carriages and said, ‘This is a good one.’ She leaned back against the wall and looked up at the train in her hands. ‘You could get to the other side of the world on a train like this. Imagine how much of the country you’d see. Imagine how nice it would be falling asleep at night.’ She put it down and picked up a picture of a motorbike. ‘Steer clear of these,’ she said. She looked at a pile of Ford pick-ups. Some in colour, others black and white. She said, ‘Just like Ray’s…’ She put down the cut-outs. She looked up at me, her face worried. ‘He been back long?’

  ‘Two weeks,’ I said.

  ‘Do you see him much?’ she asked. ‘How often does he come home?’

  ‘Sometimes. He’s away a lot.’

  ‘What’s he doing out there? Anyone know?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Kirk and Steve come around?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘When Relle lets them.’

  ‘Relle…’ She snorted softly through her nose. ‘Do they look after you?’

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Your brothers.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Aunty Rita got up from the bed and looked out of the window again. She drummed her fingers on the windowsill, turned around to me and said, ‘You want to go for a walk?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Aunty Rita helped me put the cut-outs back in a pile. She picked up the photograph of the train. ‘Can I keep this?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Aunty Rita folded the picture in half and put it in her coat pocket. ‘Remind me of you,’ she said.

  We went through the house and out of the back door. Dad was drinking a beer at the fire.

  ‘Okay if we go for a walk?’ said Aunty Rita.

  ‘If Pop finds out he’ll take down the Mauser,’ said Dad.

  ‘I can deal with Dad. Come on, Justine.’

  We walked across the yard towards the gate. Cockyboy sat on the top rail. ‘Bastard rooster,’ she said.

  ‘That’s Cockyboy,’ I said.

  ‘It always is,’ said Aunty Rita, picking up a small stone. She threw it at Cockyboy’s feet. He squawked and jumped down from the gate. ‘Bugger off, Cockyboy,’ said Aunty Rita. ‘We’re going for a walk.’ She pushed open the gate.

  17.

  It was a warm, grey afternoon; the sky was clean and thin. The trees ahead stood knotted and twisting.

  Aunty Rita said, ‘Do you like it at Pop’s, Justine?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I answered, my eyes on the path. I had only lived in one other place: Moama, when Mum and Dad were together. Dad had a barbecue against the wall, close to the window. He was drinking from a can of beer and waiting for the barbecue to get hot enough for the sausages. Suddenly the glass of the window behind the barbecue shattered. I watched as a spider’s web of cracks spread from the centre. Mum screamed. I ran towards her, scared of the glass. She kept screaming. She didn’t stop.

  Dad said, ‘You fucken better.’

  It wasn’t long after that she was gone.

  ‘Does he look after you alright?’ Aunty Rita asked me.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dad. I mean Pop. Your granddad.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Food in the fridge?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Alongside the beers, right?’

  ‘He keeps the beers in the laundry,’ I told her. ‘Next to the washing machine.’

  ‘Right…’

  Our feet followed the narrow trail. I could feel her behind me; Dad, but not Dad. His sister.

  Soon we came to the trees, their trunks as wide as bulbs. You could see the roots above the ground, trying to cover every direction. The branches moved slowly. Their bark red and pink and cream, peeling back, showing the bones. Their leaves silver-green in the grey light.

  Aunty Rita said, ‘I forget all this.’ She lifted her arm and looked up. The trees made passages that led to the sky. Aunty Rita took my hand. ‘Makes me dizzy,’ she said. ‘So beautiful.’

  We kept walking. I heard crickets. Soon we came to the Murray. It flowed wide and brown, tiny waves across the surface.

  Aunty Rita said, ‘This was where I used to come when I lived here. I came here all the time.’

  We walked along the path that followed the edge.

  ‘Do you come down here much?’ she asked me.

  ‘Pop only lets me if Kirk and Steve come too.’

  ‘I reckon that might put you in more danger,’ said Aunty Rita. ‘Relle still giving Pop hell?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I answered. ‘She’s still giving him hell. Especially when Dad’s back. She doesn’t like Dad, but then she does. Then she really does.’

  Aunty Rita laughed. ‘You keep quiet, Justine, but you got a lot to say, don’t you? Once you warm up.’ Then she said, ‘I was like that. But I never warmed up until I left home. Even then it took a long time.’ She seemed to be talking to herself. ‘Not until I met Naomi.’

  ‘Who’s Naomi?’

  Aunty Rita put her hand against a tree. ‘My friend,’ she said. ‘My good friend.’

  We walked for a while more.

  ‘I got a friend,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yeah? Who’s that?’

  ‘Michael Hooper.’

  ‘That’s a nice name,’ she said. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘He’s got a map book,’ I said. ‘He knows all the countries. And he can read. He can count. He’s strong,’ I said. ‘He’s really strong. And he can sing. He’s not scared. He could be scared, but he’s not.’

  ‘I like the sound of him. How long have you been friends?’

  ‘Not that long. Only this term.’

  ‘It’s good you found him. What do you guys do together?’

  ‘Um…we talk, we eat his lunch. I don’t know…he helps me.’

  ‘That’s good, Justine. That’s really good.’

  We climbed over a log in the path. Then I said, ‘He doesn’t always come to school.’

  ‘Oh? Why is that?’

  ‘He has to go to hospital.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To see the nurses. They make him stretch his legs.’

  ‘Why do they do that?’

  ‘He didn’t get enough oxygen. His body…it doesn’t always do what he wants it to.’

  ‘That must be hard,’ said Aunty Rita. ‘For him. And hard for you when he’s not
there.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s a lot better when he’s there.’

  ‘Good,’ said Aunty Rita. ‘I am glad you have him. And I bet he’s glad he has you. Friends can really make the difference.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘They really can.’

  We stopped at the tyre swing. It hung from a long rope that was tied to a branch growing out over the river. Aunty Rita pushed at the swing, and the tyre bounced away from her. ‘Want to go for a swim?’ she asked me.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. Even though the light was grey, the sun was warm behind it.

  ‘I can’t look at this river without having a swim,’ said Aunty Rita, unbuttoning her shirt. ‘Even in bloody winter.’ She pulled off her boots and jeans and stood on the bank in her underpants and bra. She was Dad, and she wasn’t. She turned to me. ‘Last one in is a rotten egg!’

  I pulled off my dress and scrambled down the bank. Aunty Rita was already jumping for the tyre. She held on and pulled herself up to standing. She pushed with her legs, leaning back, looking up to the clouds. The tyre went up and up, then down again, her back straight and hard as the statue of the Nullabri soldier, her shoulders broad and smooth, her body alive with the electricity she gave out at Tarban Creek. Up and down she swung, higher and higher. When the tyre was out far enough she let herself fall into the water and screamed.

  I laughed.

  Aunty Rita climbed out, drops of river water flying from her skin. ‘Your turn,’ she said.

  I sat with the tyre between my legs and held on as my Aunty Rita pushed me higher and higher. I could feel my mouth open wide, wider than the hole in my teeth, and I screamed and laughed, ‘Nooooooo!’ and Aunty Rita pushed me higher still.

  ‘Let go!’ she cried. ‘Let go, Justine!’

  I flew up, up, up into the light, then fell under, into the cool water of the Murray. When I came to the surface, paddling my legs and arms, there was my Aunty Rita, grinning at me. She splashed me, the water spraying up between us. ‘Take that! Take that!’ I splashed my Aunty Rita. ‘Take that!’

  ‘Take that! Take that!’

  We climbed onto the bank and sat together, ants crawling around and over our toes and ankles. I drew a heart in the dirt with a stick. Slowly, holding the stick with a pencil grip, I wrote a J and a 4 and an R. I did it slow as I could. I wanted the letters in the right order: J 4 R.