After the Smoke Clears, page 16
She laughed. I was starting to like her, despite trying hard not to. ‘His dad taught him that. He was a soldier, so was his grandad.’
Her knowing this when I didn’t made the disconnect feel thick and dark and foreign. Had I imagined what we had?
‘Gus is an old-fashioned country bloke at heart – but he’d also take a bullet for you. Not too many progressive modern men would. They’d say you wanted equal rights, fend for yourself.’
Did I think he’d take a bullet for me? Or was that privilege reserved for the owner of the ‘B’ on his forearm?
‘I know who your dad is,’ Becca blurted. ‘Bit of a celebrity. Gus used to say he’d never vote ’cause it didn’t matter which box he crossed, a politician would always win.’ She laughed.
I pretended to. I knew he hated politics, but he was surprisingly community minded – there were many ways you could try and do good. Augie was just the yobbo in the tinnie saving old ladies from floodwaters, not the guy standing on a soapbox in a suit.
‘So, Gus was a rebellion for you, was he? The man of mystery with a patchy past.’ She used past tense. I didn’t like it.
‘I don’t think so.’ I was right the first time. I shouldn’t befriend this woman. Liking your partner’s exes – which I knew she was without her admitting as much – was bound to end badly. And did she have to be so direct? She’d be asking for details of our sex life next. I didn’t even talk about that with Augie.
Becca was right in a way – I was privileged, raised to respect power, education, breeding. August had none of that. Perhaps that was part of his appeal. His type was as far away from Grayson and my father’s crowd as was humanly possible. But I felt safe with him. I felt loved. I was entirely myself, and that was too rare to throw away over something he may or may not have done when he was dealing with more than most ever face.
Becca sat forward on the chair, her mug of wine in her hand. ‘I’ve known him since I was born. And I know things aren’t always black and white. If he and Brookes are responsible for whoever died at Brightside, it was a long time ago, and there was a good reason for it. Neither of them are talking – it’s their code, call it loyalty or stubbornness – but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with the Australia Day fire in our last year of school.’
‘What makes you think that?’
She sat back, he eyes locked with mine. ‘Because I’m the reason it started.’
Chapter 16
AUGIE, 1989 – Brightside
We were bone dry by the time we reached the iron gates of Brightside, first Brookes, then his sister, and me. Steph lagged behind, complaining like a pre-schooler, asking if we were ‘there yet’ every five seconds, until we were.
‘This is what I got sweaty for?’ Steph moaned, stomping through the long grass to the ring of buildings. ‘Isn’t there, like, a pool?’
I shook my head at her. I needed a minute. I’d spent one hundred and eighty days there, and left just a few months before, but the sight of it unsteadied me. I’d known every inch of it – the basketball court, the cricket pitch, those damned horse paddocks and the thistles that had spikes as long as my dick. In my mind the place was a living, breathing monster. But in the light of day, without people pulling strings, the hum of voices, the whiff of Aeroguard and cow pads, it seemed like just another abandoned place. At least, that’s what I told myself. I still didn’t want to be here.
It was clear the security patrols had been cut, and the place had gone to shit. The grass was out of control, weeds as high as my waist between each cottage, dry and crackling underfoot. Brookes pulled some wire cutters from his bag, snipped a gash in the temporary fencing and slid through. The girls followed then ran ahead to explore.
Brookes did the lap around the back of the cottages, across behind the church and down to the horse paddocks and old splintery stables, and I tried to keep up with his angst-fuelled pace. He even checked the old piggery, getting more and more worked up with every minute, more fidgety, more erratic in his movements until he stopped outside the barn.
Neither of us offered to check inside. ‘No one here, bro, let’s not worry, hey?’ There was no point. I still had nightmares of that place, one of the older kids laying into a whiskery mother sow with a chain like it was all part of the fun. That same kid doused himself in petrol later that term, lit himself up. We were told he was taken for treatment but when he came back to the cottage, rumour had it he got the cell, naked, with no water for his insolence.
Yep, it was all coming back. Even when I sprinted away from the memories of this place, they caught up. The faster I ran, the harder they hit. If I was in flight mode, Brookes was up for the fight and it was escalating fast – stomping from cottage to cottage like Mad Max, throwing bricks through windows, yelling at the clouds. ‘Show yourself, you fucking coward!’ he called, yet it was obvious no one was here to listen. Was he still searching for ghosts?
I waited for his tantrum to run its course, like it always did, hoping the release was somehow cathartic for him. But his anger didn’t ebb. When he was close to hyperventilating, I stood behind him and grabbed him around the shoulders like a human straitjacket. ‘You’re alright, mate.’ Thrashing. Kicking. He struggled a little more, socked me one in the nose, but I hung on until he calmed. Eventually the rage turned to tears and my oldest mate sat in the gravel, yanking out clumps of old grass, roots and all, kicking the dust. An icy shiver ran the length of my arm. Trying to tell myself that they were just buildings was drowned out by voices telling me to run.
‘The water and power are cut off. There’s, like, tumbleweeds in the hallways and holes in the walls. I can’t imagine any of the old gang are desperate enough to hang around. We should just piss off.’
Brookes’ eyes were misty, his breath ragged and fast.
I stepped closer to where he sat, patted his back with a slap. ‘Let’s go get some chips, huh?’
He shrugged, said he’d go find the girls. I huffed, but figured I had to follow him, and walked around the old weatherboard A-line cottages. So quaint. So homely. What a beautiful setting to turn around troubled young lives, I’d heard the politicians say on open day, the smell of scones in the oven, the cream and jam in the centre of flowery tablecloths.
I stalled at Cottage 9. My ‘family’ cottage. The place we were meant to be taught we were ‘lovable’.
My heart was in my mouth and the taste of metal strong in my throat, but I charged towards the derelict building, unwilling to let an empty room get to me. No one can make me feel anything. The girls were inside, exploring, but not a minute later I heard Steph scream. Without thinking, I ran inside. It was, at once, terrifying and familiar. The kitchen ripped out, the bunks gone, the parents’ quarters empty but for an old heavy wardrobe no one could fit out the door. The smell remained. The smell of boiled cabbage and disinfectant. My stomach heaved.
Steph was pressed against the wall in terror.
‘What?’ I asked, looking where Steph was pointing. ‘A fucking spider? That’s all?’
‘It’s just a huntsman waiting patiently to pounce on its prey,’ Becca joked. She grabbed an old jar and picked up the huge crab spider from a pile of leaves that had gathered in a corner. As it jolted into the jar, Steph raced as far away from it as she could get. ‘That thing was as big as my hand!’ She almost sounded Australian when she said it. ‘We don’t have them in the States.’
The door slammed, the room darkened. The sound of the creak of the hinges set off something. Every corner unlocked a memory and triggered another, like falling dominos. First it was lame stuff – the twins blowing a tune on two recorders at once, one shoved up each nostril. The oatmeal that tasted like Clag. Then the memories dived deeper. The Friday night brawls, the initiation ceremonies. The incessant fear that at any moment you’d be called upon to do a hundred push-ups, clean the bathrooms for some made-up sin you’d committed. I slept with one eye open the whole six months. I took a breath, telling myself it was just fibro. It couldn’t hurt me. But the walls bent in, the air was sucked from my lungs and my feet shuffled me back until my heels hit the wall. Heavy sinkers weighed down my veins, and a deep ache pressed heavy on my soul. I thought I’d gotten over this in the months I’d been away, but here it was, taking hold of me as fierce as ever.
Becca’s voice brought me back. She handed me a water bottle, like I was some old man, but I pushed it away. Brookes sat by my side, a look of resolve on his face.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Steph laughed.
‘Your face is what’s wrong with him, bitch!’ Brookes said, scowling at her.
‘Calm your farm, dude,’ Steph laughed and walked outside.
Becca stayed and sat by my side, which only made me feel pathetic. So, ignoring the wobble in my legs, I got up. ‘Just need a sec,’ I said and she nodded, went outside.
I ventured into what was left of the boys’ bathroom. That’s where the strip searches happened, a bunch of brothers sitting around making sure we had no contraband after our weekend visits home. I took it out and pissed all over the tiles. It was satisfying, watching the yellow river settle in the grout that they’d made us clean with a toothbrush. I walked away, left it to stink.
The late-afternoon cicadas gave way to the soft churring notes of nocturnal frogs and birdlife. We got out of there – outside was always safer – and headed over to the amenities hall with its high ceilings, large windows, less dark corners. There was even a fireplace. The main doors were wide open, the windows smashed, and everything that wasn’t bolted down had been nicked or trashed. The background of the main stage, the set of so many crappy nights of bullshit concerts about God and peace and other myths, was now vandalised with painted cock and balls and random graffiti tags. The place had gone to ruin, with nothing but stained old mattresses, a bookcase of prayer books and a few broken chairs inside. The whole place smelled like possum piss.
Brookes dumped his bag on the ground, opened the canvas top flap and pulled out a wide-tipped aerosol. The can rattled as he shook it harder than necessary, approached the main fireplace and started spraying the outline of a word across the wall in his signature block, in a font size taller than him.
DEVEL.
Brookes sprayed saliva over me as his goofy laugh rose in his throat. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d spelled it wrong. The graffiti shone red and vibrant in the dim light.
‘What does that even say? Stupid loser can’t even spell,’ Steph said.
Brookes looked wounded, like he’d self-combust, and started to bash his hand on the side of his temple. He prided himself on his destruction of public property.
‘Haven’t you heard of them? They’re a new reggae group,’ I bullshitted, and that shut her up. ‘They rock. Aren’t they American?’
‘Oh, yeah, that’s right,’ Stuck-up Steph said.
I smirked at Brookes. The whole place smelled like dead rat and rot, the carpet sodden in places from the rain leaking through the smashed skylight.
‘How can grass grow inside?’ Steph asked, disappointed at the standard of accommodation.
‘God’s will,’ I joked.
‘You don’t believe?’ Becca asked.
The fact that medieval bullshit got any airtime in schools made me shake my head, but I’d forgotten Becca was still into Jesus. ‘No more than any other supernatural being – The Hitchhiker’s Guide answers the ultimate questions of life.’
Becca tilted her head. ‘Like what?’
I twisted my lip, and thought about my favourite Douglas Adams quote, the one that made total sense, more than any bible verse. ‘Like how it should be enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it, too.’
Becca rolled her eyes. ‘Since when did you get so philosophical?’
I’d had time to think in this place. Most of the thoughts weren’t good ones.
‘I’m cold,’ Becca said, the cool wind in her hair.
‘This will help!’ Steph said, holding up a bottle of vodka and taking a slug, passing it around.
I took a huge swig. Becca shook her head.
‘Time for you to do your thing, Pyro,’ Brookes called.
‘What – in here?’ I asked, my throat still burning from the booze.
‘I don’t think they’ll care if you stain the carpet,’ Becca said, picking up an old shoe and throwing it further away with a look of disgust.
We moved some of the furniture around, chucked a stenchy mattress out of the main area we decided was the least feral. I needed a calming effect, but I wasn’t letting the place burn down while we were still in it. The bathrooms had been partially demolished, and I slid a half-wrenched-out shower base into the cleared space to be the foundation of my creation.
I was keen to take an edge off the creeps I’d felt ever since we’d cut through the fencing. I couldn’t help but think the brothers were watching. One of them had chased me right under the sink with a cattle prod, laughing the whole time. Snapping the legs off one of the broken chairs I could still imagine old mate Jock-itch telling stories from, I made a classic teepee-design bonfire in the middle of the centre court of the amenities hall. And it felt good.
‘Fuck you!’ I yelled, sipping vodka from the bottle, the heat burning my throat. With no lights, the only glow was from the bonfire, and it cast distorted patterns on the walls. For some whacked reason it made me feel closer to Mum, as if the ghost of her was in those flames, furling in the air, watching over me.
The fire roared, sucking the oxygen from the room, flicking embers onto the crusty old carpet as it came to life. Luckily most of the windows were smashed and we had enough airflow to not be smoked to death. Brookes and Steph cosied up in the corner trying to get the Orchybottle bong to work, while Becca and I focused on the fire. She sat, cross-legged on a pink beach towel, the dancing glow from the fire highlighting the curves of her neck. The dry branches crackled, but died out fast without catching the logs. Becca had found old magazines in the toilet block and started balling them up.
‘It’s dying. We need kindling.’ She threw a book at my feet.
I froze. ‘Rip a book?’ They were Mum’s words. A memory of her smile as she finished up work one day at the council library, filing cards in those tiny wooden drawers.
Becca smiled, holding one up. ‘Is that look because you’d miss Classic Prayers for the Modern World or is burning books against the Library Monitor’s code?’ She ripped it in two.
I laughed. ‘That was grade four. You remember that?’
She smiled, those green eyes flashing in the crimson light. ‘I remember you before you were Pyro.’
I remembered everything about her. How she dropped care packages to the cottage after Margo shoved me here. How she understood my mum. How she was the only one who didn’t judge. Before Mum died, before I came to this place, we’d fooled around every Friday club night behind the school pool’s grandstand. It was quiet and dark and despite the chlorine in the air, kind of nice, overlooking the state school oval. We hadn’t quite gotten back to that schedule since I got out. All that seemed like a dream now. I threw her a Playboy I’d found under one of the single seaters. ‘That I can destroy.’ That, too, had been ruined by this place.
She laughed and started ripping it up, commenting now and then about the shape of the boobs and what fruit they resembled. ‘Honeydew melons.’ She held up a centrefold with huge norks.
‘I’m more of an orange man myself,’ I said, the nips of vodka I’d had earlier kicking in.
Her cheeks went pink in a way I hadn’t seen in months. ‘I missed you at swim club.’ Her eyes locked with mine. ‘I was hoping you’d do the weekend visits, like Brookesy did.’
I shrugged. Coming home only made going back more unbearable.
We’d smoked half our weed stash and drank most of the vodka and were feeling the effects of both. We didn’t even notice the waning of the batteries of Brookes’ ghetto blaster, only that something sounded a little off with 1927’s ‘If I Could’.
Steph came over and pulled up Becca to dance with her, and I watched the two girls attempt a tipsy slow dance, the heat of vodka on my tongue, the weed dulling my senses. Was this what I needed? To make new memories of this place to erase the old? Or was I just refreshing the paint, making the picture brighter in my mind?
Brookes stepped into the light of the fire, passed me the Orchy bottle with the hose. I could barely hear the skid of brakes above the sound of the fire crackling and the stereo dying a slow death, but the arc of light across the roofline confirmed my fear.
‘Shhh … there’s someone here,’ I said. I could tell by the lumpy cam and a worked exhaust that it was a Holden Torana. I had names for all the ingloriously ugly models and this one I’d named Keen on account of the mustard paintjob.
The girls stopped dancing, hid behind an old mattress that covered most of the window and gawked outside, still giggling like it was a game.
‘Who’s got a yellow Holden?’ Steph said louder than it needed to be. ‘Total bogan.’
My eyes met Brookes’. There was only one, and we knew who owned it, and what that meant.
We were in deep shit.
Chapter 17
LOTTI
Otto’s eyes opened wide from what I’d hoped would be his proper all-night sleep, but apparently was just a late afternoon nap. ‘When’s dinner?’ his sleepy voice asked.
There was no way I was taking this kid out again, so I called over to the tavern and ordered some hot chips with tomato sauce via room service and they said they’d be ready in ten. When they hadn’t arrived in twenty, I called back.
‘It ain’t the Hilton, precious. You gotta come get it, hon. It’s at the bar window. Near the pokies.’ Another parental fail.
