Floundering (3 page)

I’m the last to wake up. The air smells of petrol and hot chips. There are semi-trailers lined up. I press a bubble of rust in Bert’s paint and my finger pushes right through.

What are you doing? Loretta says, I’ve got a table.

Nothing. Just looking.

Well, come on, breakfast.

I reach to take Loretta’s hand and she starts to swing our arms, like she won’t hold my hand if it isn’t a game. I pull away.

So whatcha going to get? she says.

I look up at her and she seems way up high, her hair silhouetted against the morning sun. I think maybe there’ll be a time when I’m taller than her, and she’ll look up at me.

Nothing, I say.

I’m going to have fruit toast. I love truck-stop fruit toast, it’s
like, thick as a brick, and with the best salty butter. You want a piece of my toast?

Nah, I say.

You sure?

I shrug my shoulders.

Okay, fruit toast for all. Jordy, she swings around calling for him. Jordy. Her voice seems to hang in the air and then disappear. The road is there, like someone has got a big black Texta and a ruler, and just drawn it on the pale dirt.

I need to do a wee, I say.

We walk towards the glass doors and they open for us. Jordy’s inside, kind of staring into space. Loretta goes towards the counter and I go and touch Jordy on his sleeve.

What? he says, angry but also like he’s surprised to find himself standing there in the middle of the room. He walks off towards Loretta. I follow the signs to the toilet and when I open the door there is a giant man at the trough. He seems as wide as he is tall. I slip past him and lock myself into the cubicle. I just stand in there. I hear him clear his throat and spit. I wait until he’s gone before I wee into the dirty toilet bowl.

Jordy, give Tom some of your chips.

I scrape the chair back and sit down. Jordy slides the basket of chips towards me. I eat one and it’s cold and soft. The oil coats the inside of my mouth. I cringe. Jordy laughs.

We should hit the road, Jack. Loretta drops her crust on the plate. All her crusts are there, brown curls of them nibbled to their edges.

Gran makes us eat all our crusts.

Gran’s not here, honey bunch. Her chair scrapes loudly as
she pushes it back. We all walk to the car.

I’m bored, I say and start kicking the back of Jordy’s seat. I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored – with each kick. Loretta gives me a smile that’s more a grimace and I kick harder. I decide I’ll kick it for the whole day. The sun inches towards me until I’m scrunched up in a small section of shade. I swap legs and keep kicking.

Why don’t you play I-spy? says Loretta.

Jordy unclicks his seatbelt and turns around.

Stop kicking my seat.

No, I say and keep the rhythm of my kicks.

He leans his long arm over and slaps me hard on the side on my head and for a moment everything goes quiet.

I’m deaf, I scream. I’m deaf.

Jordy turns back to the front and ignores me. I smash the back of his seat with both legs.

I’m deaf, I’m deaf, I’m deaf.

He leans back around and punches my legs as I kick. Shut up, he says and tries to get me in the fleshy bit of my calf.

You shut up, I say.

You’re not deaf.

I am so.

You two wanna cause an accident?

You two wanna cause an accident
? mimics Jordy and I watch Loretta swallow and jut her jaw out. I catch a vision of myself in the mirror and my face is red and streaked with tears. I hadn’t realised I was crying. I wipe my face on my school shirt and the smell of me is gross. I look around the floor of the car for some water but there are only empty bottles around my feet.

I’m thirsty, I say and they don’t say anything. I forget to keep kicking.

It means treeless plain in Aboriginal, I say, I read it on the thing.

Whatever, says Jordy.

Well, there aren’t any trees. Have you got eyes? Look. We’ve been driving for ages.

A little bit longer, says Loretta.

I need a drink.

Well, Tom, you’ve got to wait. Do you see a shop? We need to wait until we get to a shop.

She gets her cigarettes, taps one out of the packet and lights up, cupping the cigarette and her face, leaning over the steering wheel. We swerve a little and I grip the armrest, hard. She breathes smoke in and out. She rights Bert on the road. Taps ash into the rusty ashtray.

Look, says Loretta, we’ll stop here. She swerves off the bitumen onto the gravelly side road. There’s a sign with a camera on it. She stops. The dust settles.

There’s no tap, I say.

Well – so? she says. Why don’t you take a look out there?

She gets out and leans on the bonnet, smoking her cigarette.

I go stand on the dirt. There’s a little bird in the grass, a finch. I can tell it’s a finch because Pa breeds them. It sees me and flies away. In their backyard, Pa has a long cage of finches, takes up pretty much the whole yard. The birds are all caged in sections, prize birds, breeding pairs, then the useless ones that aren’t the right colours and that. They woke me up every morning – screech, screech, screech. The cages are right near
our bedroom window, so close you can even hear the flapping of their wings when it’s quiet.

The first morning I woke up early at Gran and Pa’s. I went out to look at them finches. There was one dead there, on the bottom of the cage. I opened the door, leaned in and looked at it. The other birds went fluttery. The dead one had poos on it. I picked it up. The feathers felt slippery and cool and it was small as my hand. I closed the cage quickly and took the bird back to our room.

Jordy was asleep, all in one corner of his bed. Our beds and covers matched and there was matching gold lamps that turned on when you tapped the base. Later Gran put up a dinosaur poster, but then there was only a watercolour picture of the beach, washed out up there on the wall. Pa painted them, always the same beach over and over again. I put the bird under the bed, wrapped in a tissue. The bird stank for a while, but one day when I looked it was gone and Gran never said nothing about it.

I can’t see any more birds here, just the grass that’s patchy right the way to the edge of the cliff. There are no fences or nothing. Just a sign saying BEWARE and a picture of a crumbly cliff and a stick figure man falling into nothing. Loretta’s still leaning on the car, blowing smoke. The cliff is way up above the ocean. It looks like solid ground but in the picture it is pancake thin, the guts blown out from under it. Jordy walks out to the edge.

Look, Tom, he yells back at me. He’s thin as the stick man. His shorts billow in the wind.

I walk a little way, stepping around the scrubby bushes.

Look, he says, leaning over the edge.

I step a little further, but the closer I get the louder the blood rushes into my ears. I look at the ground. The dirt around my feet is grey as chalk.

Look, he says. The edge is so close.

I feel dizzy.

Look. He grabs me by the arm and points down to the waves that are throwing white into the air. Way down there the rocks look the shiniest black. I can’t feel my feet. Jordy grabs a hold of my other arm and steps back a little. He pushes me closer to the edge but hangs on to my arms, so for a moment it’s just my toes touching the earth and the rest of me is out there, over the edge, the chalky dirt crumbling.

Saved ya life, he yells and yanks me back. I stumble onto my bum. My heart is pumping blood to every single bit of my body, even my fingertips are pulsing with it.

I hate you, I say. I hate you, and I grab a clump of dirt to fling at him. He flinches, but the wind takes it away and none of it hits him. He’s laughing in chuckles that seem to burst out of him like hiccups.

What are you doing? Loretta says. She’s suddenly there, her hair blowing up and around her head. She grabs us both by our school shirts. You shouldn’t be near the edge. She’s pulling me along the ground, so that the rocks are digging into me, and my shorts are coming down.

Stop, I say, you’re hurting me. She’s got a hold of Jordy too, and there’s all three of us on the edge of the cliff.

Stop it, says Jordy and pulls from her grip, you’re hurting him.
Loretta lets me go and I shuffle back into my shorts. A gull, catching the wind, flies up and hangs right in front of us not flapping its wings. I look off into the blue that seems brighter here than anywhere. A shadow falls on us.

You kids shouldn’t – oh, the man says, oh – I thought you were kids. I didn’t realise – his words hang in the air like the gull.

Pardon me? says Loretta and Gran sneaks out of her mouth.

The man blushes like a girl, from his neck right to the top of his head. Sorry, he says. He runs his hands through a thick head of grey hair. I didn’t mean anything – he looks back towards his caravan, parked near Bert, and his wife is there with her arms crossed. His wife has short grey hair, they all do. Like it’s impossible to grow old with long hair.

Because the sky’s low with Loretta’s silence he says, Where you headed?

I get up. Loretta pulls us in front of her. West, mate, we’re headin’ west, she says.

Well, nice to meetcha, he says and after standing there awkward, picks his way through the clumps of grass back to the caravan.

It’s enormous, I say, I bet it’s got a toilet in there, and a kitchen and a shower and everything.

They’re carrying their poo around with them, says Jordy.

Nosey parker, Loretta says quietly to his back. Where’d they come from anyway? What are you two lookin at? She ruffles my hair and it catches in her silver rings, pulls.

Ow, I say.

When she tries to get Jordy he dodges her hand.

Don’t, he says. He walks back to the car.

The couple are back in their caravan. I can see them talking through the windscreen, like the telly with the sound off. They’re arguing. They don’t even stop long enough to make a cup of tea. They indicate back out onto the empty highway. The gull is still there, hovering over nothing.

Loretta crouches down in front of me, You look terrible, she says, and for a second I see her forehead crease into wrinkles, but then she smiles and tries to neaten my hair. It doesn’t catch this time.

Back in Bert we’re driving fast towards the sun. I can feel the little scratches on my lower back. I lick my finger and rub them. I look – there’s no blood. Not even a scab, but it stings with the spit. I try to nestle into the seat. Wrappers crunch under my feet.

I rest my head against the glass and it vibrates my brain. I shake my head, shake the vibrations out my ears. I see the shine of sunlight on a car by the side of the road. It’s the white and blue of police and another car with all its luggage out, as if it has vomited its guts up.

Shit. Get down, says Loretta. Jordy and I look at her. I feel slow from the hours and hours of doing nothing. Get down, she yells at us. She pushes on Jordy’s shoulder. Get down.

I scrunch down in the seat but too late. As we pass them I see the faces of two teenage boys, pale and wide-eyed, with long hair blowing into tails. The police officer standing there with his face in shadow under his hat. They could be brothers, them boys. Now all I can see out the window is blue sky. Get down, she says.

Stop touching me, says Jordy.

Get down, she says it softly, almost to herself.

No.

The seat is rough against my cheek. It smells of off orange juice – like a school bag.

What’s the matter? I say.

Nothing, nothing’s the matter.

Can I get up now?

Yep.

I look out the back window and we’re heaps past them already. There are no cars behind us. No one chasing us.

You gotta do what I say, alright? she says.

I hear Jordy sigh.

Alright?

Yeah, I say.

You too, mister, she says to Jordy. But he’s staring out the window like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen, not the same stuff we’ve been looking at for hours and hours. We come to a border. There’s just a big sign saying Farewell. On the other side there’s one that says Welcome. There’s a giant service station.

Now can we get a drink? I say.

What’s wrong?

Shhhh, she says.

It’s dark. We are all silent and Bert putt-putts – the engine cutting in and out. The highway is running slower beneath us. Loretta tries to pull over but when Bert stops dead we’re still half on the road. Loretta has her hands on the steering wheel, she looks sideways at Jordy. It’s so quiet now. The engine makes little ticking sounds. I wind my window all the way down. The desert smells nice. Bert’s headlights make the bushes look flat, like cardboard.

Guess we stop here, says Loretta and then she giggles. The laugh sounds wrong, too high. We gotta get this baby off the road – out you pop, both of you. I hear Jordy sigh. I open Bert’s door. The three of us stand together out there, looking at Bert.

We just have to push it a little bit off the road, says Loretta. Jordy, you drive.

No, he says.

Tom, you drive.

I look up at her in the dark. You don’t have to actually drive, you just got to steer the car while Jordy and I push it a little. It’ll only be for a second.

Okay.

Get in the front.

It feels funny to open the driver’s door. I get into the seat and the steering wheel is far away. I can touch it with my arms stretched out straight.

Perfect, she says. She leans over me and fiddles with the gearstick. She turns the wheel a little to the left. She positions my hands. Okay, so hold it there – eight o’clock, twelve o’clock – and we’ll be just fine, she says. She closes the door. I want to hang my arm out the window, like Loretta does, but I don’t. I hold tightly to the wheel, it’s warm and sweaty under my palms.

Just hold it steady, Tommo, she yells at me and quieter, Come on, Jordy, help me. You gotta push.

I feel Bert rock beneath me, and I hear Loretta swearing. I look back, and they look scary in the weird red tail-light. I realise I have let go of the wheel. I grip it again, but I don’t know if I’m gripping it in the right spot.

Loretta, I yell.

Just hold it, Tom.

But Loretta.

Bert begins to move forward. It’s a quiet sound without the engine: the crunch of gravel beneath the wheels.

Turn the wheel, Tom, Jesus. I don’t know what way to move my arms, so I just grip the wheel tighter. Bert stops moving. Loretta is at the window. She wrenches my arms to the left. There, she says.

I hold it steady, and look down into my lap. They push Bert and the car inches off the road.

Were you even pushing? she says to Jordy.

Yeah, he says.

She stalks back to the ignition and the headlights turn off.

Out, she says and opens the door.

I can’t see anything for a minute, so I just stand there quietly. I reach my hand out and touch the dusty side of Bert with my fingertips. He’s warm and I feel okay. Loretta’s face goes bright with her lighter, then there’s just the orange spot of her cigarette and the smell of smoke. I see her spot of light come close to me, pass and then she’s opening the boot, rustling.

It’ll be alright in the morning, she says, but she’s saying it to herself.

Jordy walks off into the bushes. I can see a little now, but it’s a way of seeing where everything is different shades of dark and frightening. I follow Jordy out there because I don’t know what else to do. I put my hand out to touch a bush, but it’s spikey as pins. Jordy turns around. Stop following me, he says.

I’m not, I say. I let him walk further away. Did you hear that? I say.

What? says Jordy.

That?

What?

There are shifting shapes ahead, and the sound of breath,
movement through the bushes. I don’t know whether to run towards Jordy or just turn around and run the other way. I stand there not knowing. I realise the moon is out, it hangs there like something half made.

The shapes come closer and a scream doesn’t quite reach my throat. I can smell them now, of manure and dry fur. The smell of some sort of animal, but they don’t have that comfort smell of hay, of grass or barn. They’re all around us.

They’re cows, Jordy says.

They breathe loudly. I reach my hand out to touch a flank. I can feel the startled skin beneath my fingers. The skin jumps away from me. I step back and into another warm animal. I try to stand still. The cows run. They brush against me. I close my eyes, hold my breath, make myself as small as I can. Through the sound of their hooves I can hear Loretta laughing. Her laugh is loud and sharp. I’m scared. I try to picture my dad standing with me, his hand on my shoulder. Then the cows are gone. I open my eyes and Jordy’s there, close.

Did you see that? he says. So weird.

I want him to be quiet so that I can think about everything for a second. I feel maybe it’s something special that all those cows were there. Like we should be quiet, and it should be cool, like when Gran makes us go to church.

I think it was special, I say to Jordy, then I want to bite my words back inside my mouth.

Special
? he says. Special, like you’re a retard?

He walks back to the car.

No, I say, not like that. The feeling of the church has gone. There is dust stuck to my sweat. I walk out of the dark.

Inside Bert it smells of alcohol and cigarettes. In the front Loretta has a little bottle she takes a swig from.

What’s that?

It’s just so that I can sleep.

But it smells.

Shhh. Enough.

She takes another swig. Jordy is silent. I try snuggle into a corner but everything I touch feels hot and horrible. I can see a triangle of the sky. It’s so big and far away. It’s telling me I’m nothing. I close my eyes and count to one hundred. I don’t know when I fall asleep, maybe seventy-seven.

Loretta, Loretta, I say. She is curled up in a ball on the front seat. Her bare feet hanging off the edge. Loretta.

She wakes up and looks straight at me. She has creases from the pillow on her face. Her eyes look too blue.

What?

Nothing.

She puts her face back in the pillow. Fuck, she says, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Are you okay? I say.

Yes.

Loretta.

Just give me a minute, okay. It’s too early, she says.

But it’s already hot, I say. Her empty bottle is on the ground. She burrows into the pillow and it feels like I wait there for a long time. I see the sweat begin to bead on her skin. Jordy is crouched outside in Bert’s shade. He draws lines in the dirt, then smooths them over, then draws them again.

Loretta, I say.

Okay, she says, okay.

She pushes the pillow over the seat. It plops onto the rubbish in the back. She gropes for her sunglasses with her chipped- nail-polish hands. The chips of polish are smaller now, just little spots in the centre of each nail. She finds the glasses, puts them on. She opens her door. Her bare feet on the dirt.

Hot enough? she says. Jesus.

She swings her legs back into Bert and turns the key in the ignition. He coughs into life, then out of life.

Fuck.

What’s wrong? Jordy says from his side of the car.

There’s nothing wrong, we’re just out of petrol. I think.

Are you serious?

Don’t take that tone with me, Jordy. I smile to hear Gran in her voice again, then it’s gone.

Why didn’t we get some before?

I thought we were going to make it.

You’re so dumb, says Jordy.

You’re so dumb, she says.

You’re dumb.

Is this what Gran taught you? To talk back?

No, it’s what you taught me, he says.

They stare at each other. I stare at them.

What are we going to do? I say.

We just got to wait, honey bunch.

My school bag is squashed up under Jordy’s seat. I pull it out. The zip makes that zip sound. I see my exercise books with my name written in my careful handwriting on the front. It still looks a bit wonky and some of the letters of my
name are in capital letters that shouldn’t be. I wonder why I’ve never noticed that before. The blue lunch box is in there and when I pull it out it rattles. I open the lid and it’s the smell that comes first. It’s a banana that’s gone black and flat. I poke it with my finger and it’s like jelly. It makes me shudder. I throw my lunch box out onto the road. It looks strange out there.

What’s that smell? says Loretta.

Nothing, I say.

Look, there’s something coming. Look. Quick. Tom, get out there and hail them down.

Huh? I say.

Get out there on the road and hail them down.

We all get out of Bert. I imagine what we might look like to someone driving past. Jordy and me in our crumpled school uniforms, but they’re so dirty that I don’t reckon they look like uniforms anymore. Loretta’s got clothes she changes in and out of and back into again from her suitcase in the boot. She kind of looks clean, but her hair is tangled and wild. All of us have sunburn blooming on our arms and cheeks.

She says, They’ll stop for you, sweets, come on.

But why? I say.

It’s better if you do it.

She taps me on the back and gives me a smile that’s a present – there you go. The bulk of a truck on the horizon. It takes a while to get close. I walk out there to the middle of the road. On the white line because it feels like it’s cooler with my feet on the white. I can smell my lunch box. I wave my hands at the truck. It’s heading straight for me. I wave at it. I say to myself, Hello truck. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello.

Loretta’s there beside me, and she pulls me from the road by my shirt.

You crazy thing, do you want to get run over? she says.

But you said to wave it down.

I know, but I didn’t say to get run over.

She leans down and kisses the top of my head and I pull away. It doesn’t matter, she says.

Way past us the truck stops. Wait here, she says, I’ll go talk to him. She adjusts her clothes and disappears into the heat haze.

She’s taking forever, I say.

What do you want me to do about it?

I don’t know. I’m bored.

He’s chewing a stick. He spits bits of twig out beside him. We’re both huddled in the shade of Bert, close to the dirt. I pick ants off my feet.

Jordy, do you remember from before?

Before what?

Before, when we were little. Do you remember Dad?

Who says we have the same dad?

He spits out the twig and the spit forms a perfect ball on the gravel.

I hate you, I say and get up, being sure to brush the dirt off my shorts onto him.

Well, I hate you, he says then laughs.

I start walking towards the semi-trailer. I can smell the road cooking, and wonder if I’m disappearing into the heat too. Then Jordy’ll be alone and crows can pick at his bones. I look back and Bert is a yellow smudge. The truck looms tall and clear. I see
Loretta jump down from the cab. Against the truck she looks little as a girl. She swings a petrol can at the end of her arm. When she sees me she waves a little wave, like fancy meeting you here. We walk towards each other. I hear the truck start up. It drives away. She smells of petrol.

Gee, she says, I’m tired. It’s so hot.

Jordy was mean to me.

Really? That’s what big brothers are for, though, you know that, right?

No. He said we didn’t have the same dad.

Oh. She rolls her eyes and sighs. Sweetie, that’s just not true.

I look away and we walk together not talking, staring straight ahead.

But Loretta –

Tom, I’m way too hung-over for this conversation. He’s just trying to get to you. Don’t listen to him.

I see a kangaroo’s paw by the side of the road. It doesn’t have the rest of its body. It’s perfect, the pads of the paw face up, like it’s waiting for a high five. I want to put it on a string around my neck. Or just hold it in my hand for a moment. But Loretta’s already walking away, so I leave it, and now it looks like it’s waving goodbye. I trot to catch up. Loretta sighs. I can hear the petrol sloshing in the can.

What did the trucker say then?

Nothing.

But he gave us some petrol.

Yep, he sure did.

Was he fat?

Does it matter?

Do you reckon all truckers are fat?

She looks down at me and nods her head. Yeah. She shakes the can up and down. Yeah, she says.

So we can go now?

Ahuh.

I’m hot, says Jordy. He’s still down in the dirt. Loretta ignores him. I look at Jordy and think that we don’t look alike at all.

She unscrews the petrol cap and tries to pour a little of the petrol in, but most of it goes down the side.

Damn, says Loretta.

What? I say.

Nothing.

You need a funnel.

I know.

She pops the boot. I look in and all her clothes are out of her bag. She digs deep in there but comes up with nothing.

I was just thinking one might appear, she says. She blows up at the hair stuck to her face, but it stays there, stubborn. She goes to just keep pouring petrol down the side of the car.

Wait, I say. Do we have scissors?

She shrugs, Yeah. She points to the glove box.

I find a shiny pair, hairdressing scissors. I grab an empty bottle from the rubbish tip in the back. They all make hollow sounds against each other. The one I got crackles when I stab and slice it all the way around. The top comes off with a raggedy edge.

Here, I say. Use this. I turn it upside down, twisting off the cap. Looks like a funnel.

Hell, who’s a real man, eh? She takes it from me, pours the petrol slowly. It works.

I saw it on the telly, I say. Jordy’s watching us from across the car. He gets in the front.

Done, she says.

She throws the petrol can in the boot, on top of all her clothes, and flings the funnel to the ground. Slams the boot. Jumps in the front.

Get in.

I look at the funnel. I hear Bert cough to life, smell fumes. Loretta revs him hard and whoops loudly.

Tom, come on.

I’ve forgotten to call shotgun again. I leave the funnel there, open the door and get in, telling myself to stop being such a pussy. It doesn’t matter, it’s just a bottle cut in half.