5
Frank liked the idea of living off the land, and he pictured himself pickling beetroot and biting into sweet capsicum and sun-warmed tomatoes. He’d have an area for experimentation, for exotics – prickly pears, artichokes, watermelons.
He paced out a vegetable garden, planting four sticks as markers in the corners and later in the day browsed the seeds in the camping shop. He took tomatoes, lettuce, leeks, curly beans, spiny cucumber and marrow. He bought a tin watering can and a set of different-sized forks and trowels. The woman did nothing but nod and smile this time, for which he was grateful.
On the drive home, he stopped short of the cane, turned off the engine and walked into the shade of the blue gums, to get a breath of their coolness and have a look around at what was his. Hot sheets of eucalyptus rose from the ground, and he thought of the creek where he and Bo had found the fat pale yabbies, Bo boasting about how he could put his hand underwater and come up with five clinging, one on each finger. If he had wanted to.
The evening he’d left Eliza by the jacaranda tree with the half-empty bottle of rum and crying because he’d shouted, because he’d gone all aggressive, Bo turned up with a bleeding ear and a ropy sleeping bag. ‘I gotta go away, Franko,’ he said. They’d walked out of the suburbs without speaking, Bo’s ear still bleeding down his big neck, Frank with a sleeping bag, two stale loaves and a bagful of the dark syrup stout his old man had taken to drinking, and the gasoline tins that banged against the back of his knee as he walked. They drank steadily and thumbed a lift in the back of a truck with an old cattle dog, which was on the nose, but friendly. The dog put its head in his lap and he played with its cold ears. His old man had been face down at the kitchen table as he left, breathing wetly.
They’d walked the last few miles to Mulaburry, stopping now and again to huff on a gasoline-wet tea towel, then ambling on, blinking in silence, their eyes on the sky, which was black and gold in places. Road trains blasted by them in the dark and Frank could feel the wind from them parting his hair. At Mulaburry beach they put their sleeping sacks on the sand and built a fire to keep off the biting things. Neither of them wanted the feel of a roof over his head.
Bo looked at him in a way that Frank could see he’d already got old on the inside. ‘Can’t hear nothing from me ear,’ he said. ‘Reckon she’s bust it for good.’
Frank opened a fresh bottle and handed it to him. Things beyond the gold ring of the fire moved in and out like black sea anemones.
‘Reckon you should get someone to look at that?’ He hoped not – he didn’t know where they would find a doctor and he didn’t want to be thinking about it. Not now.
‘Nah. The other one’s still going.’ Bo made a honk that might have been a laugh. The waves rumbled on. ‘I hit her back.’ Bo took a dramatic swig of the bottle.
‘Cripes, mate,’ was all Frank could think to say. ‘Well, cripes. It had to happen one day.’
Bo looked at his knuckles. He smoothed them over his lips and closed his eyes.
The air underneath the trees was hot and sweet. Even in the relative cool of the bush, Frank could feel the sun up there crackling in the gum leaves. His feet remembered the sponge of the gum-leaf floor; his back remembered sleeping on it. His wrists remembered the mosquitoes, and his mouth the creek and its crawling cold water.
He rested a hand on the bark of a tree and felt it warm and smooth in the centre of his palm. He felt his skin growing back to cover old bones that had ripped out. Then he felt eyes on him and his skin prickled, and the hair on his arms and his neck stood out. ‘Get out of it, Creepin’ Jesus,’ he said out loud but that only made the feeling worse and he walked quickly to his truck.
Back at the shack he saw that the stove door had swung open again. Not a crack this time: it was wide open like someone had had to manoeuvre a pie dish in there. He stood in front of it. It must have been a tick the stove had, the metal expanding in the heat of the sun. Either way, something had made a meal of the guts, the inside of the oven was licked clean.
When Bob turned up with a chicken-shaped gift wrapped in newspaper and leaking bloodily from one end, Frank realised it must be close to Christmas.
‘Frank!’ called Bob, pitching the parcel at him like a football. He caught it, letting it swing a little behind his body, taking it deep. ‘An invitation for you. From the wife. She sends you this chook to sweeten the deal – hasn’t been plucked. If you’d rather spend Christmas with a plucked and gutted bird you’d better give that back an’ come an’ stay with us the holiday.’
The package was still warm and he had the feeling the chook had been killed just before Bob left home as an afterthought for a good joke. He looked down at the bundle, black and white and red all over.
‘Well?’ demanded Bob.
‘Love to.’ Christmas had not occurred to him. ‘Thanks.’
‘Right,’ said Bob, turning towards the car. ‘You’d better chuck ol’ Jozé back to me then.’ He put his arms out ready to catch. Frank threw bleeding Jozé back high and tall, and the chook landed in Bob’s arms. He clambered back inside the cab, putting the newspaper bird on the passenger seat, ignoring the blood that already stained the seat cover.
‘I’m telling you this for your own good – I got a kid who’s seven and won’t put up with visitors without presents.’ He started the engine.
As he began to back away Frank called, ‘What time should I come round?’
‘Come round early – we open presents after breakfast.’
When the van kicked up dust and noise, and Bob’s arm lazed out of the window, his usual long still wave, Frank shouted after him, ‘Hey! Hey! What day is it?’ but Bob didn’t hear.
Down at Crazy Jack’s Toy Basement he was faced with a wall of stuffed animals, a wall of dolls and a wall of things in khaki, an army made of plastic. Inspecting the firing mechanism on a civil-war cannon, he put his hand up to his face and said loudly, ‘Buggeration.’ When he took his hand away a small girl was watching, and he smiled and looked around hoping her mother hadn’t heard. The kid picked up a stuffed dragon and backed away from him like she was dealing with a hostage situation. He smiled wider to show that he was friendly, and the girl turned on her heel and ran away down the next aisle.
He’d forgotten to ask if the Haydons’ kid was a boy or girl. What kind of an arsehole was he anyway? Choosing was hard enough – and there didn’t seem to be much in the way of a neutral toy. He stepped back from the dolls with bendable legs and breathed through his fingers.
A shop assistant with pink lip gloss to match her pink pinafore came over. ‘Can I help?’
‘I have to buy something for a seven-year-old.’
‘Boy or girl?’
‘Not sure yet.’
She looked at him strangely, but smiled. ‘Well, why don’t you pick a boy’s toy and a girl’s toy, so when you make up your mind which one the kid is you can give it the appropriate gift.’
He liked her use of the word appropriate and saw that her hair was thick and a strand curled at her throat. ‘That’s a good idea – you think you could help me pick out something for the girl – I like this cannon if it’s a boy.’
She eyed the cannon in his hand. ‘That’s kind of crappy, don’t you think?’
He looked down at the toy. ‘I suppose it is.’
‘How about this?’ She took down some sort of disc that shot out of a bow-type attachment. ‘It whistles as it flies.’
‘Does it?’
‘Sure.’
‘Well, I’d better have it then.’
The badge on the girl’s rounded front read ‘My Name Is Leonie’, with a happy face at the end of it. My Name Is Leonie saw him looking at her badge and puffed out her chest. Softening her voice and picking up a pornographic-looking Barbie doll she said, ‘And this is the kind of thing that little girls like.’ She handed it to Frank with a glossy smile and walked saucily back down the aisle to the till.
He parked by the bay with the idea that he might read the paper in some cool spot, perhaps with the rocks as shade. There was no breath off the water as he ankled about in the shallows, absently scanning the paper. No chance of rain for Christmas Day.
LOCAL SWIMMER STILL MISSING
Come home for Christmas, pleads missing girl’s father. Local
girl and Home Counties swimmer Joyce Mackelly has been
missing since Tuesday, 19 November. Joyce, fifteen, left her
weekend job at the Blue Wren coffee shop in Mclean at 5.30
and was last seen hitch-hiking between Camel Bay and
Rayners Island.
Poor bastard.
He turned the page and as he did a leaf slipped out and fell into the water. A grained photograph turned black in a wave and he scooped it up and put the pulp back between the pages of the newspaper, which he balled up. He hadn’t really wanted to know anyway.
There had been nothing that he could even think of buying Bob and Vicky in town. Drink was the get-out clause; he could take them champagne or a crate of beer. It was stale, going to spend Christmas with this family who had taken him on like an old friend even with him acting mad as a coot. He should probably take some as well as a present. As he tumbled these thoughts over, he waded further out, so that the water seeped into his shorts and even though it was not particularly cool, it was better than nothing, and he sat down in the sea, the newspaper a wet rock in his fist. The waves were small and water swilled round his neck. Something surfaced a little way away, a lazy flop in the water. Mullet probably, this close to the river mouth. He kept his eyes on the spot and saw it surface again over to the right this time. A flash of belly. A biggish fish. It splashed again and at the same time something bumped his calf, and he nearly shot out of the water. Making the sound of a kicked dog, he saw that it was not a shark – he was sitting in a shoal and a blunt-headed mullet was nosing at the back of his knee. The tameness of the fish, the water thick with them and their oil-slicked backs and tin-can bellies chopped the waves. A flock of gulls appeared from behind the rocks and dived again and again, noisy white streamers into the torn-up water.
Must be a school of prawns going around kicking up mud, he thought, hands on hips, watching the spectacle. Next time he was in town he would pick up a net. The shoal moved to his left in front of the bream hole, where he saw the shells of untouched oysters, hundreds of them. He felt the sun cutting off the water and hitting his cheeks, and he waded over, feeling for his knife in his back pocket. Nothing said Christmas like a hatful of wet shells.
‘Ta, Mum,’ he said out loud as he gouged at the rocks.
It was too hot to sleep the night before Christmas and Frank lay on top of his sheet listening to a frogmouth bark and hiss in the banana tree. My Name Is Leonie and a smiley face. My Name Is Leonie’s tongue wetted her bottom lip, which was glitter-pink and thick with plastic colour. She was something between a doll and a person; and less and less a person, the buttons on her pinafore stretched over her breasts. She had a long neck and the sound of her rucking up her pinafore rustled in the cane and came right into the room. She went on for miles, the gingham sliding over her acres of white thigh. She put a finger in her mouth. She put a finger in her knickers. She didn’t wear knickers – no, she did, and she took them off slowly, again and again, her dress unbuttoned from the top and showed her pineapple-sized breasts. She held her vulva open and licked her pink lips. She sucked on a toy cannon as if it were a lolly stick.
The frogmouth barked.
She slipped the cannon inside and moaned in time with the banana tree. Her tits her snatch her lips.
He lay still in the still night and thought for a second he could smell gasoline. The frogmouth barked. A wind blew and he put the heels of his hands over his eyes and pressed until they ached.
The Haydons had a big house, lifted high up on flood stilts. A veranda ran the whole way round it, with faded hammocks and pot plants dotted about the place. Wind chimes hung silent in the heat. Vicky wore a fancy red Christmas dress that she swelled from, thick in the arms and thighs with a narrow waist, the kind you thought you could get your hands round. She wore the remainder of red lipstick and when she smiled there was a speck on her tooth. She smiled at Frank and held her arms high. ‘Frank! Happy Christmas!’ She moved forward to put the raised arms round him and planted a kiss, hard, on each cheek.
‘Good to see you, Vicky. Happy Christmas to you too and thanks for having me over.’
Vicky waved her hand in front of her face like there was a smell, and from behind the shield of her legs a dark-haired child peered, clutching a large unpeeled carrot. The kid watched him from underneath a heavy brow. It was impossible to tell what sex it was.
‘Mum’s drunk,’ said the kid, who was swatted on the head.
‘It’s Christmas, Sal, your mum’s allowed a drink at Christmas – this is Sal – the youngest. Now, what’ll it be, Frank? A Bucks Fizz? Bob’s just mixing up a batch.’
His stomach turned – youngest? Bob’d only mentioned the one kid – what if they were both boys? He couldn’t give a Barbie doll to a boy. And what the hell sex was this first kid anyway?
‘That’d be great, thanks, Vicky.’ He worried he was overusing her name. He supposed Sal must be a girl, because Sal was short for Sally, though you wouldn’t know to look at her. She was a Stig of the Dump.
Walking up the steps of the veranda, he tried to catch Sal’s eye, tried to make some kind of tongue rolling or friendly wink, but the kid was having none of it and frowned deeper still at his efforts, holding up the carrot as if using it as some kind of protective talisman.
Bob was squeezing oranges, or rather a robot was doing it for him. ‘Vick’s present to me,’ he said proudly, placing a whole orange in the shoot and following its progress down the perspex tube; watching it get pulped and ground into liquid.
‘That’s very impressive, Bob,’ said Frank, ‘my gift is a bit less useful.’ He handed the plastic bag to Vicky, who nosed into it hungrily.
‘Aw, Frank, youse shouldn’ have! Look, Bob, oysters!’
He wasn’t sure if she was being overly polite, or was drunk, or really liked oysters, but it seemed a pretty good reaction regardless.
‘Goodonya, mate,’ said Bob, not taking his eyes off the journey of the oranges. ‘Oysters make me sick,’ said Sal.
It became clear pretty soon that there was no other child – or if there was, it had moved out and wasn’t interested in spending Christmas with its parents. Either way, Frank gave Sal the doll and relaxed. The kid seemed quite taken with it, he thought. She disappeared, holding it with a look of having a great many important things to get done.
The three of them set about shucking oysters and Bob told a long story about his brother that ended cheerfully with, ‘An’ you could see right through the hole in his hand!’
They sat and ate and gabbled like a troop of magpies. It wasn’t two o’clock before they were all drunk and red in the face.
‘For you,’ Vicky said, wobbling over to him and grasping his hand. She pulled him over to the window, yanking him like he was an unwilling child. He glanced at Bob to see what he thought of his wife grabbing hold of someone she hardly knew, but Bob sat in his easy chair, a red paper crown square on his head, beaming at the two of them. Vicky pointed outside at the yard full of chickens. Two young chicks were cordoned off. ‘Kirk and Mary,’ she explained. ‘Only runty ones, I’m afraid, but they should come good.’
Frank looked at the chickens, a bubble of panic growing in his chest at the idea of caring for the birds.
‘Jesus, Frank! Don’t look so pale!’ crowed Vicky, pleased by his shock. ‘It’s a piece of piss – feed ’em and stop the foxes eating ’em, and you’ll be in eggs up to your balls.’
Frank blinked. ‘Far out, that is a generous gift. I . . . thank you.’
‘Can’t live on farmland without chooks. Who’d wake youse up in the morning?’
‘Why Mary and Kirk?’
Bob swilled his Bucks Fizz from cheek to cheek, then swallowed hard. ‘Sal names ’em. See all those chooks?’ He pointed to the yard where about a hundred chickens shucked and scratched and ruffled. ‘Sal names each an’ every one. This arvo, we’ll be sitting down to Simon.’
Sal appeared in the doorway and looked darkly at her father. She held her carrot close to her chest; it wore the pink jumpsuit that Barbie had worn earlier. Barbie the doll did not reappear for the rest of the day, but Barbie the carrot got by very well, with a seat to herself at the dinner table.
‘Who’s yer friend?’ Frank asked when they had all sat down and Simon had been quartered. She fixed him with one large black eye and said nothing. Vicky rolled on her hips to face him, poking her tongue in her cheek to dislodge some food stuck there. ‘That,’ said Vicky, ‘that is a carrot.’ She looked at Sal and Sal looked at her plate, kicking her legs under the table. ‘Ain’t it, sweetie-pie?’
‘Vick,’ Bob said quietly.
Vicky looked down at her plate. ‘Sorry, Sally, love,’ Vicky said, and she reached out across Frank and squeezed her daughter’s fist as it gripped its knife. Vicky tutted a little and leant back in her chair.
Frank surprised himself by standing up and on standing realised he had become pleb-head drunk. He held up his glass. ‘Thank you for having me,’ he said like a schoolboy, ‘and Happy Christmas!’ which made everyone apart from Sal cheer, although she sat a little straighter in her chair and watched, the hugeness gone from her eyes.
‘Happy f*ckin’ Christmas!’ roared Vicky and they all snorted with laughter, even Sal, who couldn’t resist the word.
Vicky was telling a story and Frank couldn’t recall where it had started or what it was about, all he could see was the three of them, the small family feeding together, heads low to their plates, they all held their forks with a cocked little finger. A fogged memory crept in of a time at the shack when his mum had still been alive. The way he remembered it, when they were all three inside, the shack had taken on their smells and noises, soaked it up: the big hooked fish, the endless hand-washing and table-wiping, the filleting, oyster shells, clams in milk and school prawns, until the floor and the ceiling had smelt of burnt seawater.
In the early dark evening his mother started a game of bloody beetle and the three of them kicked back, inhaling the fug of themselves, eating shellfish with hammers and pokers. In bed, he’d found a dry fish scale stuck to his face, a mother-of-pearl toenail, and he’d put it under his tongue for safe keeping, for luck.
From nowhere the words came out of him, ‘Still no word on the Mackelly girl?’
‘Nah.’ Bob pushed the paper crown on his head back with his fork. ‘Poor Ian. Cripes I’d hate to be in his shoes.’
Vicky refilled her glass and drank from it deeply.
Stupid thing to say at Christmas. He felt his food go dry in his mouth. ‘Probably just gone walkabout, don’tcha think? Teenage girl, small-town-type thing?’
‘Probably,’ said Bob unconvincingly. ‘Still, that’s not much use to her parents on Christmas Day.’
‘Guess not.’ There was more quiet. ‘I made a break for it when I was a grommet. Headed for China.’ It was a lie, he realised once he’d said it.
‘China eh? What’s so good about China?’
Vicky laughed. ‘I’d run away to China just for those little deep-fried mussel parcels they do down at China Jack’s,’ she said, taking her nose out of her glass and focusing on the ceiling.
The skin of her throat looked soft.
‘Be easier, don’tcha think, just to pop down to China Jack’s?’ Bob said.
‘Well,’ said Vicky, standing and clearing the plates. ‘If my cheap-as-chips husband would take me out there once in a while I wouldn’t have to run off with the bugger.’
She winked at Frank.
‘Oh, I see!’ boomed Bob. ‘It’s not just his China food you’re after? It’s Jack’s sprats as well!’ Bob roared at his own joke, thumping the table with his fist and Frank smiled, watching Vicky box the crown right off her husband’s head.
In the early hours of the next day, long after Sal had gone to bed of her own accord, Frank made to leave. He patted Bob’s shoulder; Bob was slumped in an armchair, a beer warmed in his hand, and the black stub of a joint rested blunt and dead between his fingers. His eyelids drooped. Vicky showed Frank to the door and put her hands under his armpits in a strange close hug.
He knew what was going to happen, because he could feel her breath on his neck. He had the feeling that anything that happened that night wouldn’t be counted and what was the harm in kissing a woman on Christmas night, with her husband and child in the next rooms?
But he made sure his eyes were fixed well over her head when they untangled, and even though some of her hair caught in his mouth he didn’t look down to her face. He may have kissed her forehead lightly and he may have wanted to kiss her mouth but instead he slurred, ‘Nice Christmas, Vick, ta for the chooks,’ and he wobbled to his Ute in no fit state to drive, and over-gently put his charges, Kirk and Mary, clucking and sleepy, on the passenger seat while Vicky watched from the open lit doorway, so that he could see the dark shapes of her thighs through her dress. As he backed clumsily out of the drive, he saw the naked body of Barbie, folded in half and stuck through a hole in the incinerator.