Catherine Jinks TheRoad (10 page)

That shot cleared his head like a blast of wind. He knew instantly that the wardrobe was no good. It was too easy to find. It was the first place his stepfather would look. Under the bed, in the wardrobe, behind the door – his stepfather would look in all those places, one by one. He would work his way through the whole house, getting warmer and warmer, while Nathan crouched, sweating, under a pile of towels, listening to the floorboards creak.

Nathan fought to muffle his sobs, shaking from head to toe. He was so scared. He wanted his mother. He didn’t know what to do, and his nose was running and he didn’t have a handkerchief. The garage might be safe. There was an old bedspread in the garage, and a whole lot of cans and wood and power tools. Maybe he could hide under the bedspread. But Cyrene had warned him not to play in the garage, because there were nails and things. Spiders. Poisons. Cyrene had made him promise not to go in the garage.

Nathan thought: Cyrene will save my mum.

He crept back down the hall and into the kitchen. The clock on the wall went tick,tick,tick.The fridge rumbled.Keeping low, he went to the window and peered through it, allowing only one eye to clear the sill. He saw the front yard. The fence. The gate.

The road.

There was no one on the road. Soon, perhaps, there would be: a man, walking with a gun. Would it be Cyrene, or . . .?

Nathan pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. No, no, no. It wouldn’t be someone else. Nathan refused to consider any other possibility. Nevertheless, he realised that he couldn’t just wait here and watch the man slowly come for him. His whole mind, his whole being, veered away from the very prospect.

And suddenly he remembered.

When he uncovered his eyes, his vision was splotched and blurred. He blinked rapidly, scrambling to his feet; his thoughts were now fixed on a single image, and his reasoning powers were working only on a subconscious level. He knew that he would be safe if he headed west, but not why – he didn’t logically deduce that, in running away from the house towards the ridge, he would be screened from the sight of anyone approaching the house from the east. He didn’t consider that a search of the house would give him even more time to escape, as long as nobody peered through the blinds in his mother’s bedroom, or looked through the bathroom window. He simply understood that if he moved now, quickly, in the right direction, he might have a chance.

So he began to run. He ran out the back door, down the steps, past the Hills hoist. He hurtled along until he came to the wreck of the Holden ute; didn’t bother to open the gate. He simply surged up and over it, hitting the ground with a thump. He ran and stumbled and kept on running, winding his way through the low bushes, the clumps of grass, the odd scraps of rubbish, none of which afforded him any concealment. In his purple top and lime-green shorts he was as visible as a lighthouse beacon, though he didn’t know it. The thought never crossed his mind. Instead he was thinking about the ridge ahead of him, and the pain in his chest, and the blood thumping in his ears, and the sweat trickling down his face. He was thinking about the bushes that whipped his ankles as he rushed by them. He was thinking about getting there . . . getting there . . .

He didn’t stop to wonder if Cyrene would be able to find him. Cyrene knew about the hole, and would come to it eventually. But he did wonder how far a gun could shoot. He was so far from the house, but he didn’t know . . . could a bullet still reach him, from way back there?

Was someone already watching him from the bathroom window?

‘I spy with my little eyes something beginning with “C”.’

Rose pronounced the letter phonetically, with a hard edge; she was still more comfortable with the sounds of letters than with their actual names.

‘Cloud,’ said Peter, in a bored voice.

‘No!’ Rose screamed. ‘No, you can’t say it!’

‘Peter.’ Linda half turned in her seat. She flashed him a reproving look. ‘You know how this works.’

Peter sighed. After an hour in the car, he was already desperate to get out. So far, they had sung about fifteen songs (mostly nursery rhymes), shared one apple and a packet of corn chips, listened to Louise’s latest story about her friend Jemima’s stupid dog – which got hit by traffic at regular intervals – and played a ten-minute game of ‘I Spy’ in accordance with the unique rules laid down by Rose. These rules decreed that when it was Rose’s turn, no one was allowed to guess her word until at least two people had already got it wrong. If anyone challenged Rose’s right to play the game differently from everybody else, Rose would immediately erupt, and Linda would say in long-suffering tones: ‘For God’s
sake
, does it
matter
? Just do what she wants, and let’s have a little peace.’

There was a CD player in the car, but music wasn’t permitted any more. There had been too many arguments about what should be played, when, and for how long. They did have a walkman with headphones, which Rose didn’t much like, but Peter and Louise had to share it – twenty minutes for Louise, twenty minutes for Peter – and right now it was in Louise’s custody. She was sitting over by the other window, one bony brown knee drawn up to her chin, trying to stick heart-shaped decals onto her painted toenails as her head bobbed up and down in time to the music that was pouring into her ears. Stupid music

– Britney Spears, no less. The same song over and over again, its tinny beat leaking out of the headphones and bothering Peter like a mosquito’s whine. He tried to ignore it.

‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘Um – “C”. Okay. Something beginning with “C”.’ Gazing out the window, he tried to spot another object that would satisfy Rose. But it was difficult, because there wasn’t much to see. Dirt? No. Bushes? No. Power poles? No. The road was slightly raised above ditches on either side; parallel to the ditches there were white posts, evenly spaced, with red reflector patches on them. A line of trees marked the passage of a creek somewhere off to the right.

‘Creek,’ said Peter.

‘What?’ asked Rose.

‘Creek. That begins with “C”.’

‘Where’s a creek?’ Rose struggled to peer out the window.

‘Show me.’

‘There. Where the trees are.’

‘What trees?’

‘There.’
Peter stabbed at the glass with his finger. ‘Over there. A long way away.’

‘I can’t see it!’ Rose wailed, and Peter rolled his eyes.

‘You can’t see the creek, Rose,’ Linda explained. ‘It’s behind the trees.’

‘You shouldn’t be saying “I spy a creek” if you can’t actually see it,’ Louise objected. She was rewinding her tape again and could hear the discussion through the padding of her headphones. Rose’s forehead wrinkled as she pondered this new suggestion.

‘Louise!’ Linda’s tone was full of warning.

‘Yeah, butt out,’ said Peter. ‘If you want to play the game, gimme the walkman.’

‘Was it “creek”, Rosie?’ Linda interrupted. ‘It wasn’t, was it?’

‘No.’

‘All right. My turn, now. Um . . . “crow”.’

‘No. Your turn, Daddy.’

‘Um . . .’ Noel put on a great show of thinking hard. ‘Let’s see now...something beginning with “C”. Would it be ...a cloud?’

‘Yes!’

Peter wished with all his heart that he could do something in the car without getting sick: read, preferably, or use a play station, or do a crossword . . .
anything
. Louise didn’t get sick. She could stick decals on her toenails and plait Rosie’s hair and write in her diary without suffering a single pang of nausea. It wasn’t fair.
The Stones of Amrach
was sitting right beside Peter, tantalising him with its well-thumbed cover (which depicted Presprill with his shield on his back, gazing out over the lake of the Tann towards Amroth), and he couldn’t even open it without risking an immediate descent into wretchedness.

Sullenly he focused his attention on the endless, boring stretch of outback beyond the road, which the display at the Visitors’ Centre had identified as being of a ‘semi-arid’ nature. Semi-arid. If this is semi-arid, he thought, arid must be sand dunes.

‘Peter.’ Rose tapped his shoulder. ‘It’s your turn.’

‘What?’

‘It’s your
turn
.’

‘Oh.’ He looked around the car. They had already nominated the words seat, mirror, steering wheel, radio, hand, foot, map and bag. There wasn’t much left to suggest that Rose would recognise. Gearstick? No. Fuel gauge? No. Shifting his gaze to the road unrolling before them, he saw a truck approaching in the other lane. It was big and white, and belching black smoke. It was the first vehicle they had seen in ages.

He said: ‘I spy with my little eyes something beginning with “T”.’

‘Truck!’ Rosie crowed, and Peter nodded.

‘Right,’ he said.

‘Well done, Rosie!’ Linda exclaimed. Noel declared that Rose was a very clever girl. Peter settled back into his seat again, glancing at his watch. It was nearly half past eleven. He was getting thirsty.

‘Can I have a drink please, Mum?’

‘Yes. Hang on.’ Linda began to rummage around in the overstuffed bag at her feet. ‘Water or juice?’

‘Juice, please.’

‘Can I have some too?’ Rose piped up.

‘What’s the magic word?’

‘Please
.’

‘When are we getting to the roadhouse, Dad?’ Peter asked.

‘Soon.’

‘Can we stop there for lunch?’

Noel glanced at Linda. ‘Well...I know Mum’s made some nice sandwiches . . .’

‘I wanna ice cream!’ Rose cried. Her memory for treats was tenacious. Though she often forgot to say ‘please’, she remembered very clearly stopping at Coombah roadhouse on the way to Broken Hill, because Noel had bought ice creams there. Linda glared at Rose over the top of her headrest.

‘You won’t get
anything
if you talk like that!’ she snapped, whereupon Rose began to chant her request in a singsong voice.

‘May-I-have-ice-cream-
please
?’

‘We’ll see.’

‘
Please
, Mummy? I said please!’

‘If you eat your lunch, you can have an ice cream.’ Linda looked at Noel. ‘Could we eat lunch there, do you think? Would they let us, if we bought ice creams? I seem to remember some tables and things . . .’

‘I’m hungry, Mummy.’

‘Oh, Rose. You just had all those chips.’

‘But I’m still hungry.’

Peter propped his elbow on the armrest, cradling his chin in his hand. Whiz, whiz, whiz – the white posts flew by. So did another sign advertising ‘Mario’s’, which was sitting forlornly out in the middle of nowhere. (Peter didn’t know what ‘Mario’s’ was, exactly, because they were always going too fast for him to read the small print.) There hadn’t been any fences for a little while, and he wondered why. He saw a crow strutting about, looking for road kill. He spotted a bare, stony ridge rising up behind a distant thread of green.

‘All right,’ said Linda, ‘we’re almost there, so we’ll eat lunch now, and then stop at the roadhouse for an ice cream. What kind of sandwich would you like, Rosie? Vegemite, peanut butter, ham

or cheese? I won’t ask if you want tomato.’

‘Vegemite.’

‘How did I guess. Peter? What do you want? We’ve got ham and tomato as well.’

‘Ham, please. With mustard.’ Peter leaned towards his mother in anticipation, and found himself looking out the left-hand windows of the car. What he saw made him frown, and check his watch again. Eleven thirty-five. It was an hour and twenty minutes since they had left Broken Hill.

‘Dad?’ he said.

‘Mmm?’

‘Coombah roadhouse is about halfway, isn’t it?’

‘About that, yes.’

‘And it takes, like, three hours to get to Wentworth?’

‘Approximately.’

Plastic bags rustled as Linda rooted among the sandwiches. Peter studied the country to his left, which was similar to that on his right – saltbush downs under an intense blue sky, scattered here and there with spindly trees, salt pans, dirt tracks.

‘So we should be at Coombah in a few minutes?’ he asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘Then where’s the lake? Remember after Coombah we were driving along, and you said we were driving through a dry lake? Remember? Shouldn’t we have reached that by now?’

There was a short silence. Linda passed a Vegemite sandwich to Rose. Louise had her eyes shut, caught up in the spell of Britney Spears. Noel flexed his fingers on the steering wheel.

‘We’ll get to the lake in a minute,’ he said at last. Linda stuck her head between her knees again, searching for a ham sandwich. Her voice sounded muffled as she observed: ‘What do the signposts say? The distance markers? They should be able to tell us how long before we reach Coombah.’

Good point, thought Peter. He hadn’t been studying the little green signs that gave you your distance, in kilometres, to the next significant locality. There had been too many other things going on, and besides, he wasn’t sitting on the left hand side of the car.

But after accepting a sandwich and checking if it contained mustard (it did), he once more turned his attention to Louise’s window. Louise had taken her headphones off. She was asking for a cheese and tomato sandwich. Before Linda could explain that there weren’t any cheese and tomato sandwiches, Noel said: ‘There’s a sign. Up ahead.’