Deeper Water (24 page)

He smiled at that. ‘I guess so.’

‘It’s all gone now.’

I thought of all those secrets I’d stored in there, all my desires. They’d spilled out. Uncontainable.

‘You want to see my room?’ I asked, knowing that he would.

When I opened the door I remembered my unmade bed, strewn with leaves and sticks, the rumpled towel laid out in the centre. I hesitated, but Billy was right behind me, and in the end I switched on the light and stepped in. There wasn’t really anywhere to sit, just the big old bed, the desk covered with all my things, and my clothes hanging there along the wall.

Billy looked around slowly.

‘I forgot to put my sheets back on,’ I said, by way of explanation.

Billy nodded, but he didn’t comment. I wandered over and perched on the end of the bed and he moved towards my desk. Reaching out, he touched one of my nests.

‘I see heaps of these things when I’m working,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you collected them.’

I wasn’t sure how to explain what I loved about nests.

‘Sometimes you see those ones with all the moss in the centre.’ Billy’s voice was steady, and I had to admit he was making a valiant attempt at conversation. ‘They’re the ones I like.’ He picked a nest up and held it gingerly in his hand. ‘You know, where the bird has chosen the softest stuff for the inside.’ He pointed to the middle as though I mightn’t know what he meant.

I nodded, watching his fingers as they traced the centre of the nest.

‘Did she say anything when you dropped her off?’

‘Nah.’ He put down the nest and patted his pockets. ‘But she gave me this to give ya.’

He pulled a stone from the pocket of his pants and stretching out his arm, he dropped it into my palm. ‘I guess it means something to you,’ he said, turning back to look at my collection.

It was a sucking rock. Anja and I had rocks for all different purposes, but there were some we liked to suck like lollies. They were smooth and flat and felt just right on the tongue. I slipped it into my mouth, knowing it had been in hers. That was as good a way as any to remember her.

‘You haven’t got much stuff,’ Billy said, turning back around to face me. ‘Some girls, their rooms are full of shit.’

I tried to imagine Billy in the rooms of other girls. It was hard to picture. I slid the stone from my mouth back into my fingers.

‘You alright, Mema?’ His voice was soft, his head cocked to the side. I wasn’t sure how to answer that. My thigh was tender from where Rory bit me. Thinking about it made me want to cry again.

‘Rory bit me real bad.’

‘The little blighter.’

‘Yeah,’ I touched the inside of my thigh through my skirt. ‘He got me good.’

‘He bit you up there?’ Billy went still, staring at the spot.

‘He was hiding under my skirt.’

Bending down, Billy grasped the hem hanging at my ankle. ‘Give us a look, then.’

He didn’t pull the fabric up, but peered at my face, waiting.

I nodded, wanting him to see.

It was odd watching my legs appear under the slide of the fabric. They were so familiar to me, but under Billy’s gaze they looked somehow new. The higher up my legs he pulled the skirt the more I wanted him to see. I thought I’d only desire Billy in the darkness—out in the paddocks, the stars overhead and the grass beneath—but I didn’t. I could feel the throb of it building in me there, right under the light, in the middle of my room, with everybody home. The skirt came up high, the bruise appearing, a sudden scarlet.

Billy stood there looking at it and then he crouched down, right there between my legs.

‘It’s a beauty.’ He glanced up at my face. ‘He must have been real mad.’

More than anything I wanted Billy to touch me the way I touched myself.

‘You got your rags yet?’

I shook my head, but something about the way he said it made me close my legs. I’d had spots of blood that morning, so I knew it was near. Probably by tomorrow I’d be bleeding. I shifted myself a little away and he dropped the hem of my skirt, the fabric flopping down again around my ankles. Standing up, he stepped back from me.

‘When do ya think you’ll get them?’

I shrugged. ‘Anytime now, I guess.’

‘You gotta tell me,’ Billy said, ‘so I can stop thinking about it.’

It surprised me that he’d worry about that. That he’d even think it was his problem.

‘It’d be my baby too.’ His face was stubborn, like he was getting ready to hold his ground.

I nodded, ’cause that was true enough. But there wasn’t going to be a baby.

‘I’ll tell you. It’ll be soon.’

We were silent then. Billy turned, like he wasn’t sure where to be.

‘Billy?’ I asked, thinking of the trees.

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you know they’re going to burn all the camphors at the sugar mill?’

‘Everyone knows that. They’re going to pay for the chips by the tonne.’

‘I didn’t know.’ How blinkered I’d been. Happy in this little bubble. Because it was easy and knowing these things was hard. I kept thinking of my tree, the one I’d pressed against in the night, the feel of it against my breasts.

‘I’ll probably get some work out of it,’ he said. ‘It’s the type of thing I do.’

‘Work for one of the contractors?’

He nodded, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

‘Will all the farmers do it?’

‘Depends how good it pays. It’s a lot of mess to make if they’re not paying much a tonne.’

‘There’s frogs in the camphors. Endangered frogs.’ In the brightness of my room it sounded like a feeble defence.

‘They’re noxious weeds, Mema.’ He said that like there was no possible response. It was irrefutable. ‘You know what’s funny?’ he added. ‘I reckon it’d cost more to run the machinery and truck the chips from the paddocks than the mill would be making from burning the stuff.’

I didn’t get what he meant.

‘The whole scheme will be running at a loss.’

‘What?’

‘Well, if it costs more to chip up the camphors than they are making from burning them, that means someone is probably subsidising the whole deal. Government or someone.’

‘Because it’s green?’

‘So they say.’

I thought about that for a minute.

‘But everyone keeps saying it’s about the money.’

‘Well, it is, but not in the way you’d think.’

None of it made any sense.

‘Billy, you know it’s not okay, right?’

He just shrugged. Turned half away from me, I could only see the side of his face.

‘Mema,’ he said my name like it hurt, ‘sometimes I just want …’ He lingered there, out of reach, searching for words. ‘Just … be with me awhile,’ he started again. ‘It’s all over and in a flash you’re gone.’

It was true. When I was with him there was a part of me that kept an eye out for the exit. It made me jittery even thinking about it.

‘I don’t want to feel stuck.’ I didn’t know that until I’d actually said it. ‘Any more than I already do.’

‘But I won’t hold you to nothing,’ Billy said, finally. ‘Sometimes I just want to be near ya.’

I smiled then, but I knew I must have looked sad. All the mismatched desires, sitting heavy on my chest.

‘Guess I should let you rest.’

He was right that I was tired, so I didn’t try to change his mind. I kept thinking of the frog man and how I was going to have to call him. Step outside my comfort zone, swim against the current. Billy was peering at my face, trying to read it.

‘I’m sorry I told Johnno, Mema.’ I could see he was ashamed. ‘It was all just so weird I had tell someone.’

I guess I knew what it was like to hold a secret.

‘I didn’t like seeing you so torn up out there,’ he whispered. ‘You two looked like bushrangers on your last legs.’

Tentatively, he stepped up towards me, leaning down to give me a kiss on the cheek. Careful, like I was made of glass.

‘The last stand.’ I sighed, closing my eyes, breathing him in.

I liked the feel of his face up close to mine but he shifted away, walking across the floor. I heard him grasp the door handle, but he didn’t turn it. I opened my eyes. His face was full of things he’d never say, as though he was the poet and I was the muse, but we didn’t share the same language. Turning the handle, he opened the door and stepped across the threshold.

‘Well, see ya tomorrow,’ he said from the other side. And I suppose that’s what we had—the possibility of tomorrow.

I closed my eyes. Listening intently, I heard the faint slapping of his feet on the front steps, slipping out into the night.

The morning after the fire, I woke at dawn and trekked straight up the hill to find what was left. It was strange seeing all the burned tree trunks scorched black and leafless where usually it was so green. I tried to focus on the bright shoots that would soon sprout, on the regeneration, but it was hard standing there amongst the wreckage. The door house was mostly gone, just bits and pieces littered about. Jim was nowhere to be seen and I was glad. They’d usually keep him in the lockup till he dried out. I hoped he’d come up and see there was nowhere left to be.

I walked past the rubble, looking for Anja’s hut. Further up the hill there were still patches of green. The fire had hopped from spot to spot, not burning the whole place through. It took me a while, but in the end I found it. Still standing, even though the flames had come close. I stepped through the door and the weight of Anja’s absence hit me in the belly. Even with everything that had happened, the force of the feeling took me by surprise. There were traces of her scattered about. The odd stray lipstick, a few dirty clothes. I gathered them up for safekeeping. Her mother’s old piano seemed to fill the space, and I thought of all the ants living inside. How invisible they were unless you banged the keys. And that got me thinking of all the other things I didn’t see.

I shook my head, trying to clear it and then stepped back out the door to find Anja’s hollow. After some searching I saw it, the space that had always been her safe port. Not burned out, but scorched in places. It was a big old eucalypt, turned a soft grey colour, completely hollowed out on the inside. One side of it was split and if you were small enough you could squeeze through, right into the middle. I peered through the split but it was hard to see inside. In the end I pushed myself through. I didn’t much like small spaces, though I’d been in there with her from time to time. It smelled like the forest floor—of soil and damp. There wasn’t much room to move, but I crouched down low, thinking of how Anja used to sleep in the hollow when she was real little, curled up like a frightened animal. Then I saw it. Her special box, pressed up against the side of the trunk. I pushed it through the split and squeezed myself out.

It was a little smaller than your average shoe box, and worn with love. I knew what was inside, all her treasures, much the same as mine—special sticks and rocks and seeds, a few polished-up gemstones from her dad, the odd piece of jewellery. And the note her mother left behind. Sitting on one of the roots I opened the lid to check. It was all there, just as I’d pictured it, but right on top was a snippet of paper with my name.

Mema
, it said,
look after this for me
.

And I smiled, knowing she’d expected me to find it. I hugged the box to my chest, holding all those pieces of her close. Putting the lid back on, I tucked the box under my arm, picked up her other things and headed back down the hill. My heart was lighter after that. Anja had left her treasures in my keeping. She didn’t feel so gone from me.

In the afternoon the SES came to fish out Hamish’s hire car. I could hear the sound of workmen on the bridge and I wandered down towards the creek to see what all the ruckus was. Frank was there too, his truck parked off to the side, surveying the procedure.

‘Mema,’ he said, touching the brim of his hat.

I smiled hello. Didn’t much feel like talking. A couple of the men nodded in my direction.

‘It took them a while to locate the vehicle,’ Frank said. ‘That silvery brown colour, it blended right in.’ He looked across at me, unhurried. ‘Wedged down deep it was.’

I guess Frank was thinking it was a near miss. That it could have been Hamish they were fishing out and not just some big chunk of steel.

‘One of them swam right down and attached the winch.’ He pointed to the line of cable coming out of the water. ‘Job’s almost done now.’

The SES blokes had parked their truck on the other side of the bank so they could hoist the car straight out of the water. Someone turned the winch on and the slow whir of it filled the air. At first nothing happened, as though the cable was endless, but eventually it got tight, and even though the car was underwater I swear I heard the grating of metal against the rocks. Suddenly it slid into view, a monster from the deep. The cable strained, the hum grew louder, and in a few seconds the boot of the car broke the creek’s shimmery surface. Then it was halfway up the bank, scraping backwards along the grass, water streaming from around all the doors and windows.

Out of the creek it didn’t seem so ominous.

‘Big fish,’ Frank said. ‘Quite a catch.’

But it was about as far from a living thing as I could envisage. I wondered about Hamish’s laptop and his phone, whether they’d be trapped inside, waterlogged and useless, but I didn’t cross the bridge for a closer look.

‘Frank?’ My voice came out quiet, his name my first word of the day. He turned to face me in that slow way of his. ‘Do you think you could teach me to drive?’

When Frank smiled the lines on his face spread upwards in waves.

‘Mema, it’d be my pleasure.’

The car was right up on the bank by then. It seemed oddly untouched and new. Frank and I stared across at it, waiting to see how they’d haul it away. It took a while, but eventually the men got it up onto a trailer.

Then it was gone as though it had never been.

At dusk the creek takes on a certain colour. Velvety brown. Without the dappled sunshine, its depths are muted and mysterious and all the creatures seem to come closer to the surface. The catfish linger on their nests and the eels float by like black ribbons. The turtles perch on the flats of exposed rocks and the kingfishers fly past like the brightest of talismans. Sometimes you can fool yourself into believing that the water is not alive with other beings, that when you step in, the world is all your own. But at dusk you can’t forget. As the creek envelops your body and you slide into its depths, you know that you are sharing—that the world has many eyes, but not all of them are on you. Small leaves and berries fall from the trees, and even their tiny weight creates a stir in the water, a multitude of small circles spreading across the surface until their edges meet and meld.

By that shadowy time the terrain has altered. Infinitesimally, the rocks have shifted and the current ebbs around them in different-shaped swirls. Stepping in, you must tread carefully, for by evening the creek is new.

They say every hero has to leave home, but I haven’t gotten there yet.

I think of the world, big as those expanding rings stretching out into the unknown. In my mind I see them widening and widening, but then I remember the world is a sphere and eventually the rings are going to blend together somewhere on the other side. Maybe I could start thinking of the whole universe, all the stars extending out forever, infinite. But that seems a bit much to swallow.

I’m just taking things one step at a time.