Solo (12 page)
I walk and walk. Halfway up a winding hill I stop to roll up the legs of my pyjama pants. My shins are sweaty and I’m wishing for water.
I reach the crest of the hill and on the other side emerald paddocks peppered with black-and-white dairy cows take my breath away. There are fences of wood encrusted with lichen. Old gates tilted with age prop against chunky grey posts. It looks like an ad for butter, or fruit cordial.
The cows have yellow tags on their ears. They stare at me vacantly and warily. In the distance I can see a kelpie nose-down and trotting – patrolling its borders. A calf jogs towards me, pauses and then springs away with its tail in the air – its belly jouncing up and down. I don’t think I have ever seen any creature so civilised and domesticated. My eyes fill with tears.
Beyond the paddocks there is more scrub and the road snakes through it. I’m not ready for the bush yet and I’m tired from walking. Instead I carefully climb through the barbed-wire fence. It snags my clothes and hair. I stop to unpick myself from its grasp.
In a dense patch of cropped grass I lie down, eyes closed and arms flung out like a starfish. Blades of grass fold against the back of my neck and tickle my earlobes in the breeze. The inside of my eyelids are vermilion. I throw one forearm across my eyes, but I can still sense the change in the quality of light when a cloud passes overhead. Insects chirrup rhythmically, and every now and then the calves call and the cows groan in return.
I hear the whisper of feet moving through the grass towards me. The Red Man. The man shaped like scissors. My monster, not in the night-time, electric-cage of my mind, but outside, out here in the daylight. My heart thumps and adrenaline shoots through my limbs. I sit up suddenly, opening my eyes. For a second the world is overexposed and saturated with colour. I see my curious calf hurtling away across the field. Thirty metres away he skids to a stop and wheels around, snorting at me, and I laugh as I rock back onto my elbows.
It feels good and it will take some getting used to.
Then I stop and tilt my head.
I say the word aloud and it sounds stupid, like a birdcall.
Car.
There’s a car coming.
I scramble to my feet and sprint for the fence. I have my leg cocked, ready to climb through when it occurs to me that I don’t know who it is. I lie down in the grass on my stomach and think.
The car will be something small, sensible and white – the safety colour. It will be an elderly spinster. Her clothes will be starched. The car will smell of hot vinyl, lanolin and baking. She will be wearing sand-coloured Pollyanna shoes and beige stockings, but it won’t hide the dark purple veins climbing up her legs like twisted vines. The flesh before her toes will bulge above the leather. On the back seat there will be a Tupperware container of homemade scones wrapped in a teatowel. She’ll be going to town to see her daughter-in-law who has a new baby.
It will be a grey ute. The tarp over the back flaps and the passenger window doesn’t close properly and whistles. It will be a farmer with a daughter about my age. He will have just bought her a new pony for her birthday. He’s going into town to the produce store. He’s bought two boxes of bees. He’s never kept bees before.
The car is louder now and when I catch my breath I peek around the fence post to the road.
It’s a dark green four-wheel-drive with tinted windows – a Pajero. I squint at it but I can’t see inside.
It could be a businessman commuting from his hobby farm, talking on his mobile phone and cursing at the bad reception out here. It could be a mum with a two-year-old spilling Popper juice all over the back seats.
I’ve never been good at asking for help before. It’s always gone badly. Anxiety scratches at my neck. I’m doing my breathing. There’s no way of knowing until you try.
I wait till the car is nearly in front of me and then I stand up, waving my arms.
There are 20 543 840 people in this country. They can’t all be bad. Sometimes you’ve got to take a chance.
The brakelights flicker twice and I think it’s going to stop, but no, it’s slowing to go round the bend and then the Pajero is gone. I’m feeling disappointed, relieved and foolish. I walk across the paddock to where the cows have settled under a tree. They ogle me nervously, but only the calves scamper away. I lean my back against the tree.
I could sleep here. I would love to sleep. My throat is parched and I can imagine the tissue inside cracking into fissures like a dry riverbed.
I’ll get up and find the river soon. I’ll drink from it, even though the counsellors told us not to, unless we boiled it. I’ll rest my eyes first. Even through my eyelids I can sense the branches swaying, letting the sunlight dapple my face.
I don’t have any sense of time passing, but I’m jerked awake.
‘Poss!’ The voice whispers. I’m groggy, but I know only one person would call me that. Even before my eyes are open properly I’m scrambling backwards on the heels of my hands.
He’s leaning over me with a look in his eye that’s almost tenderness.
‘Get away from me!’ I yell in his face. The animals lumber to their feet in alarm. They thunder away and I can feel the weight of them through my hands.
I clamber to my feet and run. I can feel his hand reach for my ankle, graze the skin, but he misses. I run across the field, glad of the soft surface.
I look over my shoulder. Scott is standing under the tree with his hands on his hips. I’m drained. I knew escaping was too easy. I knew the whole time.
I’m running. I don’t know why I’m running because he will always find me. He’s my monster.
I’ve found my star picket. I’m stumbling through the bush, leaning against it periodically to get my breath back.
Valderee, Valderah, Valderee, Valderah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
When Scott comes for me again I’m going to stab him – probably in the guts where it’s softer. I’m going to stuff him in a hole. Then I’m going to go back to my campsite, eat a can of baked beans and wait for my bus.
That’s what I came out here to do, because it’s all about what you can get away with. It’s not about justice, only stealth, speed and opportunity.
I’m practising my breathing. My legs are shaking and I can’t stop them. I lean against the trunk and the bark presses against my back. I can feel ants climbing up the inside of my shirt. I grip my star picket so tightly that my fingers have gone numb.
He’s coming. I can hear him wheezing and gurgling as he runs through the bush. I can hear his feet scuffing through the leaves and the crunch and snap of twigs under his feet. He’s getting closer.
I could let him pass. I could squat down and wait till he’s gone. I will find my way out. I could leave him here. Then what?
In two three, out two three.
I have to do this, or he’ll chase me for ever. Even if I lock the doors and bar the windows, in the night when I wake up I’ll wonder if he’s in the kitchen in the dark, waiting, or stealing down the hallway. Every time I close my eyes I’ll hear him. He’ll be around the corner of every street. He’ll be on the other side of every tinted window.
He’s close now. I can smell him. His footfalls are so close I can feel them through the soles of my feet. I take one more deep breath.
Then he’s there. Right by my side. He passes me. I whirl my stake around and crack him across the back. He stumbles and lets out a yelp. I thwack him in the calf. He falls and rolls away from me. I rush forward and hold my stick to his chest. He looks up at me, frightened. The veins in his forehead are raised and I can see the pulse in his neck.
I jab him hard with the picket. I feel it connect with bone. I stab him again, hard in the sternum. He cries out in pain, and I grin. The muscles in my cheek twitch just below my eye.
I’ve never felt so strong. I have him. I’m standing over the Red Man with my stake hovering over his neck. I can see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat.
The sweat is dripping off my nose. I can see the drops bursting in little flowers on his shirt.
His lips are cracked and the skin is lifting like fish scales. He’s whispering something. I can’t hear it. His eyes are wide and he’s lying on his back like a dog.
I could stab him through the neck. The flesh is soft and the stake is heavy. Gravity would do half the job. I could leave him pinned to the ground, limbs flailing and gargling as he drowns in his own blood. I press down and I can see a circle of shadow in the depression where the stake digs into his flesh.
All I have to do is push. It would be easy. I’m surprised how easy. As easy as throwing rocks off a bridge. Push him into eternity.
The Red Man is waiting. I need to decide if I’m the sort of person who throws rocks at cars just because there’s no net.
I would like to kill him. It would give me the same kind of satisfaction as sinking my chompers into Paul Hiller’s arm in the canteen line, or shoving that loaf down Short-sleeves’ throat.
I tell Scott the joke about the serial killer.
‘. . . So then the serial killer says, “
You’re
scared? I have to walk back by myself !”’
When I smile, my lip splits. I lick it and taste a drop of blood.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ I tell him, with my stake still in his neck. ‘But you can’t come after me any more. Get it? This is over. I’m leaving you here. I’m walking back by myself.’
He laughs at me. He is laughing hard and his red eyes are bulging.
‘What do you want from me? I confessed. I’m repentant. What else is there?’
He’s rolling on his back, his red face grins.
‘You can’t kill your history,’ he says to me. ‘You have to live with it.’
‘What?’
‘The things you do. You have to live with them, every day. For ever.’
I stare at him. ‘But I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry about what happened to you. I didn’t know that it would turn out like that.’
He stops laughing.
‘Can’t we have a truce?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘You don’t get it. Everything you do you have to carry with you everywhere. It doesn’t go away, no matter how repentant you are. There’s no truce, Mackenzie.’
‘Ever?’
‘Ever.’
Then I turn around. Using my stake like a walking stick, I head back into the bush.
There’s a road. I found it before. I’ll find it again.
In the clearing, my tent slumps in creases and folds like an old woman’s face. The ludicrous metal tripod is tipped on its side. I can see a few scuffs in the leaf litter, but other than that there is no sign that anything has changed.
I stand on the rock at the river’s edge and watch the water jostling against the stones. I slip my pyjama top over my head, step out of the bottoms and stand naked on the rock for the moment, letting the sun soak in. A willy wagtail scolds me from a low branch, and the river applauds. I slide into the icy water. The cold numbs my flesh, takes my breath away. The water tugs at my hair and steers my limbs downstream as I breaststroke against the current.
When my muscles start to fatigue I hold my breath, turn belly-up and let my body drop to the bottom. I open my eyes and see tiny bubbles escape from my nostrils and race each other to the surface.
The water spills off me as I climb onto the bank. I lie flat on a long, warm boulder. My fingers creep over the rock surface into tiny hollows the size of thimbles. The sun tingles like gentle teeth. A breeze touches my skin where elastic hems would normally be and I feel exposed and hardy at the same time, like a cactus flower.
When I am dry I duck into the tent and dress in fresh clothes. I inspect the cuts on the bottom of my feet. The serrated edges are grey and swollen from the water. I’m surprised, once I pull on a pair of thick socks and my boots, how little they hurt.
While the fire crackles and spits into life I take down the tent and roll it back into its olive-coloured bag.
The camp counsellors will be here soon. I wonder whether they will just toot the horn or come along the track to collect me.
I feed my pyjamas to the fire and peel back the lid from a can of baked beans. The translucent flames dance and weave through the fabric like lively sprites. The smoke drifts over me, heating my face, while my wet hair soaks the back of my T-shirt. I have never felt so clean.
I hear the eighteen-seater trundling along the road for a long time before I see it through the trees. I extinguish the fire with a billycan of river water and then I carry my bags along the path to the side of the road.
The counsellors took me straight to the sick bay. Bethany lay on a cot with her face slack and dopey. She smiled when she saw me.
‘What happened to you?’ I asked.
‘My coping strategies got away from me,’ she murmured.
I sat down on the side of her bed.
‘The drugs they give me make me shuffle when I walk. You know.’ She frowned. ‘Do you know?’
‘I know,’ I told her.
Bethany took a sip of water. I helped her put her glass back on the bedside table.
‘I’m going to get you a whistle and a light for attracting attention. You can wear it around your neck for whenever those coping strategies get out of control.’
She smiled again. ‘Toot, toot,’ she said to me.
Callum was sitting in the courtyard outside. I could hear guitars and drums in the mess hall – people practising for the jam session after dinner. Most of the others had gone kayaking for the afternoon. A few stretched out on the lawn reading, plucking at the grass and talking.
‘How was finger-painting?’ I asked, dropping my bag.
He shaded his eyes with his hand. ‘I’m definitely cured. You?’
I smiled. The skin on my face felt tight. ‘Actually, it was better than I expected. I was all ready to slay the demon, but I changed my mind.’
‘It’s still out there?’ He mocked a gasp.
‘Yes, I suppose he is.’ I scuffed my feet along the bricks.