Over This Backbone, page 17
Oath! I almost cried with the relief of impending escape.
He collected me from the train station in Albury late on the Friday night, and he looked tired when I climbed into the car—older somehow. There were more freckles along the bridge of his nose, burns across his hands from the wood stoves. His red hair was long and tangled.
How is it up there? You lot coping?
He sighed. Can I be honest?
Always.
It’d be better if Ben would just fuck off.
Oh, I said quietly. Has he been there recently?
Keeps fucking volunteering.
What has he done that’s so bad?
He shrugged. Just makes everything harder by existing.
Can you tell him to go?
No. Jen thinks the sun shines out of his arsehole, he spat.
I nodded and didn’t press him further—embarrassed by association and not yet ready to tell him about the extraction, because the pain still in my chest meant that I wasn’t yet rid of him.
On the way out of Albury we bought a cheap frozen sack of garlic bread and cooked it in an old piece of foil on the overheating engine of his Subaru while we drove. By the time we hit Mountain Creek it was near ten o’clock at night and the bread was semi-defrosted and tasted carcinogenic.
We can call it a carbecue, I said with my cheeks stuffed.
You’re a dickhead, Tommy grinned.
We climbed Mount Bogong close to midnight in the clearest, stillest, full-moon calm. Camped on the rocky summit three hours later, two small grubs curled beneath the stars. We woke at dawn to a blustery April southerly biting through our sleeping bags.
There was a working bee at the big stone hut and if we pitched in we’d have hut memberships for the winter—easy access to the best skiing in Victoria. We walked the few kilometres from the summit to the work party.
I was the only woman under fifty. Carried the heaviest logs I could find and laboured uphill with gravel sacks on my back. It felt good to be physical.
What are you trying to prove? Tommy asked as the sweat pooled into my eyeballs. He and a wrinkled leathery man pushed and pulled at the crosscut saw.
That I’m stronger than you, I said, and all of the old blokes laughed.
But it was because there was a hard-muscled boy from Tasmania there who’d brought a litre of expensive whisky in a canvas bladder and a sack of abalone that he’d shucked on the coast the day before, and I wanted to impress him. He dripped confidence like the world was at his feet. It was—his dad was a doctor and he’d grown up flying planes. He was short and stocky and green-eyed, so unlike Ben. His confidence hooked me in.
He’s a bit sexy, don’t ya think? I asked Tommy over lunch.
He shrugged, Dunno. I’ve seen him in a couple of back-country magazines. He can ski, I guess.
Tommy skied better than anyone I knew, so I took the praise to mean something.
But, he added, I don’t reckon he’s a good person.
Jealousy looks hot on you, I grinned. He corked me in the thigh then we fought for the last piece of cheese.
Later, the Tasmanian and I talked about skiing while we hauled stones from the creek to the hut.
There’re a couple of chutes off Bogong that you want to be pretty solid on, he said under a sheen of sweat. Not for the faint-hearted.
How long have you been free-heel skiing for? It’s pretty niche.
Long enough to be fine on those chutes. You?
Since I was thirteen. But you’d flog me. I hear you’re pretty talented.
Nah. He grinned. Just a sucker for an epic.
He had a partner. It didn’t matter to me; that wasn’t the point.
Later we sipped from the bladder and chewed buttery abalone and watched the sun set while the hut roared with the celebrations of the work party. We sank into inebriation and watched the stars, and then Tommy went to bed throwing a dumb knowing smile at me. Left us alone on the stone steps.
You’re a cracker, Peta Rafe, said the Tasmanian.
Why do you say that?
Because it’s true, he laughed.
You’re orright yourself, I smiled slightly. To be honest, I can’t tell if I want to be you, or …
Go on, he grinned.
… be your grandfather.
He punched me playfully in the arm and we both laughed in that quiet way that ebbs to silence. We stared at one another. I could feel my pulse in my jaw.
In the yellow glow of the hut window, I saw that his eyes were the same colour as mine. The whisky swelled my tongue and my limbs. Finally we hugged goodnight.
I lay beside Tommy’s quiet still body beneath the tarp and thought about the Tasmanian rather than Ben, which in itself was a triumph. The grip on me was loosening a touch.
241 km
So Daddy called the cops on you?
James says it as I trudge like a dead weight from the still campsite. Turn when I hear it, and see him grinning in the shadow of his tent vestibule, brewing coffee. I lean on my pole and shrug.
Guess so.
You okay?
Guess so, I laugh. It’s done now. I’m just tired.
That was one of the most bizarre awakenings I’ve ever had, he says.
Me too. It felt like a dream.
We gaze across the wet grass at one another, the light ashen, scanning for something unsaid. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.
Peta, he says, I hope you love it—the walk, the track. You’re everything he said you were. Be safe.
I’m always safe, I say, forcing a smile. James does too.
But the fatigue and surrealness of the night before cling heavy to the corners of my mouth, droop my face downward and pin it there. I let my features melt into a scowl again and am too tired to shift them. I walk out with a wave.
I stop at the top of the first hill and dial.
Dad, I say. What the hell?
Peta, are you okay? We’ve been worried.
Of course I am. I was just camping with some uni students and the police woke me up. Why the hell did you call the police? I thought you’d died!
Rage is seething up and down my throat. My stomach constricts. All of those students who would be above me at university have now witnessed this pathetic show of incompetence. All of the anger I feel towards myself is coming for him.
Well, mate, you’re alone, you’re anaphylactic, there was a blizzard forecast. We hadn’t heard from you for over twenty-four hours, which was the timeframe for us to take necessary action. Dad speaks in a clipped and even tone.
I set off the tracker!
We hadn’t heard from you. No message came through—there must have been a glitch, which might happen if it is wet?
Oh …
We tried the satellite phone and you didn’t answer. We’ve had a very stressful night, my girl, he explains. Mum was really worried—she’s had Remi over here all night talking her through the likely scenarios.
She called our local cop too?
Remi is a friend as well as a cop, and she was great. She’s the one who suggested calling the Jindy police and they were more than happy to head out to look for you because they were bored as shit on night shift and wanted to go four-wheel driving.
Well, that checks out, I say, deflating a little.
So you’re okay, supergirl?
I sigh, anger dissipating.
I’m fine, Dad. I’m sorry if I stressed you, but I have to go—expensive call, battery and all that. Tell Mum I’m sorry, but I’m completely unharmed.
Okay. Call us when you have phone reception.
Sure, I say. Love you.
I hang up feeling foggy and rattled, and keep trudging down towards the small wooden bridge that crosses Tin Mine Creek. As I step onto it, my eye jerks to a slip of white flapping against the boards. I drop my pack and bend down.
Take me. Return the favour.
The note is on a scrap of paper in a plastic snack bag tried to a cord and the plank. It jostles and yanks into the creek below. The handwriting is a neat cursive, which is not a font I associate with the calibre of beer that I drag from the water. A VB—the rope wrapped twice around the lip of the can. Alone and cold as ice.
I laugh at the dumb luck of it, scan the note for a name or a reason or a sign. There’s nothing.
A wedge of sun muscles through the cloud, lighting up the bridge, and the water dances patterns across my hand and the can. I turn and nestle it deep into my pack, hoping that the cold might hold while I walk. I fold the note inside the front pocket.
A VB, of all things, I say to the sky. On the day I hit Victoria.
I chuckle and the sun patch widens.
I wonder when I will ever be able to return this particular favour—this tinny to this bridge. Maybe never. I take the beer anyway.
Cowombat Flat is wide and nestled below the headwaters of the Murray and Mount Pilot, an open green plain drenched in sun, the creek cutting through its centre. The wreck of an old RAAF plane, or remnants of it, are still strewn at the western end. Most has been scavenged since it dispersed across the grass in 1954. Ironically the mountain was named Pilot before the pilot crashed at its base, Dad had said when I once asked him about it. Funny that.
I’m hit with joy when I see the field and charge towards the Murray River at a half run, then halt at its edge, feeling like I should be crossing the liquid border, the wiggly split between New South Wales and my home state, with a more symbolic gesture. Can’t think of what, so I just dip the toe of my right boot into the water and say, G’day, Vico, then hop my way across the protruding stones and climb to the high point of the clearing.
There’s a fire pit and my tent goes up beside it. I spread the damp contents of my pack and my clothes out in the afternoon warmth. Drape my shirt over a rock that rims the fireplace and notice a stick of purple in the coals. It’s a comb—one of those wide-toothed, broad-handled ones that claims to gently detangle rather than rip. I shake off the ash and walk shirtless back to the Murray with my VB in one hand and the comb in the other, the grinning girl’s block of chocolate beneath my arm.
The water is shallow and quickly becomes mucky as I stir it with my feet, but I submerge myself naked as best I can, razz my hair in the clearest pool to loosen the grease, then find a rock on which to perch. The VB I sink into a tight dam of stones to cool a little before I take to my hair with the comb. There is an undeniable ripping. I don’t care.
I crack the beer when the knots are torn free and it’s the first time that a VB tastes like hoppy joy rather than piss-water. I chew on the chocolate blissfully.
I wonder for a moment why my feelings are bucking me round so wildly, that anger at my dad and now this content, but with the creek lapping at my ankles and the sun out, I just bask in it while it lasts, the absurd high, still and reptilian, perched between states in every sense of the phrase.
May 2016
It was three weeks until I saw him again. We’d barely texted a word to one another and the May cold was the sharpest it had been. There was a party at Dani’s house on a Saturday night and we both went.
Dani was living in a caravan on her parents’ block of land on Phillip Island, surfing and working on an organic farm, picking vegetables and driving tractors. Dom was a carpenter once again and was living with her. The connection between them had only strengthened since the Farm.
Ben and I both ignored one another in the dewy paddock by the caravan, played the game of who can hold out the longest and care the least. The sea was everywhere—in the damp grass and the cold salt wind.
At the esky, Dom squeezed me against him. He smelled the same—musky and human, like the bed in the Cob Home where Dani and I had slept, like the jumpers I’d borrowed from him on blustery beach holidays when we were kids.
He said, You seem happy, matey.
I reckon I might be.
So where’s Ben? You haven’t spoken much tonight. Everything alright there? You are still seeing each other, right?
I searched and saw him talking to Dani by the fire.
Yeah, nah—we’re just doing our own thing, I said. I shrugged and felt more mature than I was.
He winked, nodded and cracked me a beer.
Maybe Ben felt the redundancy as a magnetic force, maybe not, but it was him who sought me out towards the end of the night. I’d slammed enough beer to spin my head and he’d obviously done the same.
Oi Peetie, he called from near the drive.
I’d been on my way to bed but hooked back towards him.
Hey, stranger. Long time, no see.
When we hugged, he was sitting on the top rail of the fence, so I slid between his legs and pressed my face into his stomach. The smell of him shook me and I felt the muscles of his back beneath the puff of his jacket.
How was your time away? Did you win the fireman race thing?
He laughed. You mean the stair climb? Nah, I didn’t win. But I came second in my category and I did it fully kitted, so I’m not too upset. Mask and everything.
Nice! I slid onto the rail beside him. You’re stronger than you look.
You look just as strong as you are, he smiled at me and his hand came onto my thigh. It was so possessive and familiar. I felt the pulse in my cheeks, the uncontrollable flush.
What else did you get up to in Tassie?
Not heaps. I stayed a friend’s place in Hobart for a few days. She did her best to entertain me, he chuckled.
I waited for the usual crush of anxiety, jealousy, panic. But it didn’t come. My body still wanted him, sure, but I was also at peace with myself and my place.
Sounds like what you needed, Ben.
What about you? He moved the hand from my leg to the back of my neck. What have you been up to these couple of weeks?
The goosebumps spread across my shoulders and chest.
I told him about the outdoor education trip to Cowombat Flat and about university. I told him about Tommy and the Bogong adventure, then about the boy from Tasmania and the whisky and the abalone.
Sounds like this guy had a crush on you.
Nah. Just a connection based purely on skiing, I said, but I swelled with the possibility that it was more. Are you going back up to the Farm soon?
I just came from there, actually.
I thought about Tommy’s comment—that it’d be better if Ben would just fuck off—and I wondered why he kept going back. Did he not feel the hostility like a punch in the gut?
That place has a way of getting its teeth into you, I said.
It’s not just that. He shifted on the rail and withdrew his hand and laughed nervously. I miss the staff when I’m away, he said.
The staff as a collective?
Oh. Of course, I nodded. I felt brave and drunk, far from him. I felt like I could finally say the things I’d wanted to say.
Hey—listen. I’ve been meaning to ask, but I haven’t because I didn’t believe her, so I thought there was no point …
Spit it out, you goose, he laughed.
Dani told me that you did some things at uni—like, punch someone? Stalk someone or, maybe, try to run them over? It sounded so fucked and far-fetched that I didn’t believe it but I thought that I had to ask.
He stiffened, shook his head.
Those fucking cunts can’t stop tearing people down, he spat. They’ve been spreading lies about me as long as they’ve known me. It’s not true, Peta. Of course it’s not fucking true.
He paused to let the words settle, and I nodded, considering him.
I asked without emotion, So you don’t lie?
Don’t start this shit. I haven’t lied to you.
Okay. Is there something going on between you and Anna?
I expected him to baulk but he didn’t hesitate.
I stayed in her room on the last program, he said. She invited me because it was cold on the verandah at the Top Shed and it’s nice to share a bed. So I stayed.
Did anything happen between you?
Why would you even ask me that?
Because I’ve been thinking, I said evenly, that I have a right to know for both my mental and physical health whether you’ve been fucking other people if you want to keep doing this with me. I guess … I’m not sure that this is right for me anymore, so I’d really like you to tell me if you’ve been with others. Anna, or even this girl in Tasmania, or anyone else. I want to know. Like, should we start using condoms? And what kind of expectations should I have? Does that make sense?
I felt the words lift a tangle of emotions from my stomach. He breathed heavily.
I can’t … he began, but then fell silent and stared at the ground, sucking air.
I’ve been jealous, I continued, watching my feet swinging merrily between the fence rails. Sometimes it really killed me, Ben, but I’m learning how to be okay with it. I’ve been happy and am meeting lots of new people and feeling much less absorbed in you. It’s been good for me to stand on my own feet. I feel more like myself again. So what I’d really appreciate is the truth, because then I can make an informed decision. Fair request, don’t you think?
Like I’d kicked a switch, he started to sink slowly, fold his face down into his lap and shake.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, he muttered through the tears, while I sat in numb shock beside him as he rocked.
Ben.
I’m just a fuckwit.
No, you’re not. We’re working it out. It’s a hard conversation, but we’re good. I still care.
I’m a fuckwit. I’d be better off dead. Then no one would have to deal with me. That’s what you all want.
The blood that pumped was like a cold flush. Had I done this? Caused this buckled state? I’d never before seen the confidence leave him.
No. No, that’s not what I want. I turned and pulled his face to my chest and he quietly cried into it. Small, high noises came from the back of his throat. I could feel the wet from his eyes and nose soak through my shirt. We rocked. I waited for him to tear himself free, to say something that once again unseated me, but he didn’t. We were tangled together, for once, in vulnerability.
Why are you crying? I asked after a few minutes.
