Friday Brown (20 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Joe, Silence and I wandered back to the circle of fire.

Carrie had her hand deep in a bag of Doritos and AiAi sat cross-legged on the ground between her legs, drinking beer again.

‘We’re telling campfire stories,’ Arden said.

‘It was disgusting,’ Darcy said. ‘Malik said how this family had their house broken into and all their stuff was taken. But not their camera. So, when they took the film in for processing they found all these pictures of the burglars mooning. And when they zoomed in they could see the family’s toothbrushes stuck up their arses. And they had been using them since the burglary.’

‘It isn’t true. It’s an urban myth,’ Joe said. ‘True stories are even creepier.’

‘I’ve got one,’ said Carrie. ‘Our next-door neighbours
went away for a few days and somehow our other neighbour’s dog got into their backyard and killed their rabbit. It was all covered in dirt and slobber. So this woman is horrified that they’ll find out and she takes the dead rabbit, washes it, blow-dries it, and makes it look like natural causes.’

‘Gross,’ AiAi slurred.

‘I’m not finished. So, the neighbours get home and they tell my mum that the weirdest thing happened—their rabbit died the day before they left and they buried it in the backyard. And when they got home it was back in its hutch.’

‘Freaky,’ Arden said.

‘Another urban myth,’ Joe argued. ‘Notice how everyone always said it happened to someone they know?’

‘Bah, humbug. It’s true,’ Carrie said, but she sounded unsure.

‘I have one,’ I volunteered. ‘This is a true story.’

‘Go on,’ Arden said and swigged her beer.

I told it just like Vivienne told it to me. The setting was almost the same: a dying fire, ghostly gums all around, bitter cold. The hairs on my arms were standing up and I had the keenest sense that with Vivienne gone, this was my story to tell. My history. Campfire stories were in my blood.

‘We lived in a two-roomed hut,’ I began, and their orange-glowing faces all turned to me.

I was three years old. Vivienne and I were there all alone, nineteen kays from anywhere, her man away droving. There was bush all around, flat land with no horizon. We had an ugly, yellow-eyed dog called Croc. He was ten generations of mongrel, but he was whip-smart and he wasn’t scared of anything.

One afternoon, Vivienne was hanging wet sheets. I was playing by the woodheap when a metre-long red-belly black snake shot out, writhed past my feet, and went under the house.

‘Snake!’ I yelled and pointed at the gap between the house and the ground.

Vivienne snatched me up with one hand and a heavy, club-ended stick with the other. We waited, but the snake didn’t appear. Vivienne set a saucer of milk near the gap to entice the snake out. For hours, Croc eyeballed the gap where the snake had disappeared, but it didn’t show itself.

A thunderstorm formed overhead and we went into the hut. The sky was churning, purple and black, and a single bolt of lightning struck the woodheap. It sparked and started to burn, but a torrent of heavy rain doused it. Vivienne took me and Croc into the kitchen. She put me high up on the wooden table and told me to stay there with Croc crouched on guard beneath.

Vivienne could withstand more than this; the land was cruel and her life had been lonely and tough. With nothing but her stick and her yellow-eyed dog, she fought bushfires and floods and fended off loners who knocked at her door, vagrants without conscience. A drifter had chopped and stacked her woodheap in exchange for food and she’d given him extra as thanks, only to discover he’d built the woodheap hollow.

Once, when I was sick, she rode our ancient mare hard for thirty kilometres to get help, with me draped across her lap. The old mare dropped dead and Vivienne walked the whole way home with me on her back.

I fell asleep on that hard table, while Vivienne and Croc stood vigil, their eyes on the corner.

Near midnight Vivienne was reading, attuned to the slightest noise and every quiver of Croc’s tail. Thunder boomed and wind rushed through the gaps of the old hut; lightning flared, illuminating the room. The fire burned low and Vivienne dozed with her hand on the stick. Her eyes were drooping, but still she waited for that devil snake to show itself. Croc dozed, legs twitching, chasing snakes in his dreams.

Almost morning. Weak, grey light poured through the curtains and Vivienne needed to use the outdoor toilet. She couldn’t hold on any longer. Out of habit, Croc followed her. She lay the stick next to me on the table and closed the door quietly behind her.

But the soft click of the door and the sudden silence woke me. I slid off the table, onto the floor, still half-asleep.

My mother and Croc were missing. I was alone, only three years old.

But I wasn’t alone. An evil pair of bead-like eyes glistened at the gap between the wall and the floor. The snake inched out, testing danger with its tongue, then slid out further.

I reached up for Vivienne’s stick.

Further.

I raised the stick above my head and brought it down before the snake had a chance to retreat.

Whack!

I hit the snake with the clubbed end of the stick. It smashed down and broke its spine near the tail-end of its body, but there was still nearly a metre of angry snake, moving, darting at my bare feet with pinkened fangs.

Whack!

I severed its spine halfway, but still it came. I backed into the corner and raised the stick again.

Vivienne opened the door. The snake had three enemies and didn’t know which way to go. Its rear half was limp and useless but its single-minded dying wish was to inject venom.

Croc advanced on one side, his yellow eyes gleaming with deadly intent. He’d killed hundreds of snakes; he’d die by snakebite, never old age, as snake dogs do.

Croc darted in. His jaws clamped down behind the snake’s head and he snapped it like a whip. The snake landed belly up, flipped itself over, and kept coming.

Vivienne snatched the stick from my hand and brought it down near the snake’s head. She missed. Croc slashed the snake with his teeth but it was still too quick. Vivienne hit again and skinned the end of Croc’s nose.

She scooped me up under her arm and swung again, one-handed. She dropped me onto the table, but the momentum carried me up and over the side. I rolled onto the floor, gasping, and opened my eyes.

The snake’s mangled head was centimetres from my cheek.

Croc gathered his body to launch but Vivienne had him held by the collar.

‘Friday Brown, do not move!’ she said.

The snake stared at me. If it wasn’t just a dumb creature with a half-smashed head I’d have sworn it was dragging out those final moments, summoning every last drop of venom, loading its gleaming fangs, for me.

Vivienne stayed Croc and bent low under the table. Slowly, she opened her fingers like pincers. She held her hand poised over the snake’s tail, ready to grab should it strike. Croc hunkered down next to her, set to spring.

We stayed like that for what seemed like forever. The sun came up, a huge burning orb. A golden shaft of light poured through the window and cut like a laser across the floor.

Still Vivienne waited.

The burning beam crept onwards, across the dusty floor and over my leg, my arm, my face. It hit the snake full on. In slow motion, it blinked, and Vivienne struck. She clamped down on its tail, dragged the snake backwards and summoned her yellow-eyed dog.

Croc had the final say. He’d die by snakebite
—
but not that day.

Croc crushed the snake’s head between his teeth. He carried it to Vivienne and, when he dropped it at her feet, Vivienne picked up the carcass with her stick and threw it onto the fire.

‘We sat together, the three of us, and watched the snake burn until there was nothing left,’ I finished.

It was Vivienne’s story, but now I’d made it my own. Vivienne had never been able to say with any surety what had happened in that room while she was gone, and the truth is, I couldn’t remember any of it. By making the story complete, it left me feeling like I’d finally taken ownership of my own memories. With her gone.

Darcy and Carrie were speechless, gripping each other’s arms.

Malik’s perpetually bored expression had softened into something like mild interest.

Silence was staring at me like I was the new Messiah and AiAi was wide-eyed, his beer tipped over and soaked into the dust.

Arden sighed. ‘That’s a great story.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. I waited for her smile to tell me she meant it.

‘What happened to the dog?’ AiAi asked.

‘I…I can’t remember. He died, I guess.’

‘And it’s a true story?’ Arden shifted in her deckchair until she was leaning forwards, her elbows pinned together on her knees, her chin in her hands. Watching me with an expression that was far too intent. ‘You’re sure?’

‘My mother told it to me. Many times.’ I hated the bubble in my throat. I hated that my voice had to squeeze past it to get out.

‘Did she really?’

‘Yes, she really did,’ I said, puzzled.

‘Fascinating, don’t you think,’ she said, ‘that the snake blinked. Snakes don’t have eyelids.’

Malik barked a laugh.

‘What?’ In the back of my mind I knew this was fact. A fact that bored a hole through the middle of Vivienne’s story—and my memory.

‘I meant that the snake was blinded,’ I stammered.

It didn’t matter anyway. The moment was gone. The
memory was flawed. I was left with a sense of loss.

Arden wasn’t finished.

‘I’ve heard that story before,’ she said. ‘I can even tell you who wrote it and what it’s called. It’s called
The Drover’s Wife
and Henry Lawson wrote it and if your mother told it to you and said it happened, that makes her a liar. And a thief.’

Darcy snickered and put her hand over her mouth. ‘I knew she was full of shit.’

Joe said, ‘Shut up, Darce,’ and wouldn’t look at me.

Arden smiled. ‘Sorry to be the one to burst your bubble. Hey, like I said, it was a good story.’

I was suddenly light-headed. I felt sick.

In the quiet that followed, I saw my life in flashes. Every campfire tale that Vivienne had told, every edge of me that was defined by a memory, all the glittering recollections that stacked up to make me who I am—they were revisited. Not in a fast-forward, ‘you’re about to die’, flickering-vignette kind of way. It was more like seeing a magician’s act, exposed. I wasn’t a kid anymore, the one who believed without question. If I was honest, I hadn’t been for a long time.

In that moment, doubt finally extinguished belief.

I saw Vivienne’s invisible wires, the smoke and mirrors, her sleight of hand. It sounded like a good story. Why didn’t she just tell me the real version? I hated her. I hated her for leaving me, for leaving me half-done, for leaving me out of the joke. I was nothing, and it was her fault.

I tried to stand but my legs had no substance. I blinked away tears but my chin wobbled. For something to do I grabbed a beer, opened it and slugged a mouthful. It was warm and gassy, unpleasant.

Bree watched me, her eyes dark and shimmery. ‘AiAi, pass me a beer.’

Joe said, ‘You know, you could say the same about every staunch little Christian. Doesn’t make them any less a Christian just because the Bible is a bunch of far-fetched stories that lasted more than one generation.’

Carrie nodded. ‘What about the Dreamtime?’ She glanced at Bree. ‘Sorry. No offence.’

Bree just shook her head.

Silence’s features twisted into such intense fury he looked ten years older, a whole lot taller. He walked over to Arden and pointed his finger at her. ‘You’re mean,’ he rasped. ‘I hate you.’ He broke into a fit of coughing that doubled him over, but his finger stayed there.

Arden flinched, recovered. She grabbed his finger and curled it under, then threw his hand away. ‘I’m just being honest. Get that out of my face.’

Malik stood and shoved Silence hard in the chest.

Silence landed on his back. He propped himself up on an elbow. His jeans were stained red with dust.

Carrie and I moved to help him up but he pushed us away.

He smiled at Arden, pointed his index finger again, and drew a line across his throat.

‘I hate you,’ he hissed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

We needed something good to happen.

Sleep was restless, tangled. It turned out the church didn’t really count as shelter, not with so many gaps and missing windows. The wind started at around midnight; it sucked and blew and played the old church like a woodwind instrument. I woke often. So did the others. We staggered into a washed-out morning and a fine, misty rain.

Arden and Malik left early to get supplies.

‘Looks like we’re stuck here for a few more days.’ Bree watched them leave. ‘Imagine if they didn’t come back? We’d probably die out here and nobody would even know where to look.’

‘Nah,’ said Joe. He looked up. ‘Don’t forget the eye in the sky.’

AiAi took him literally and scanned the clouds.

‘People probably come here all the time,’ I said. ‘Photographers. History buffs. I don’t think we’re truly isolated.’

‘Not like your hut, huh?’ Darcy sniped. ‘Bet that was a long way from anywhere.’

‘Hey, Darcy. Something for you.’ Carrie pretended to reach into her back pocket, then flipped out her middle finger.

Joe laughed.

Silence mooched past us without a glance, his hands in his pockets, hood pulled tight around his face.

‘I’ll see if he’s okay,’ I said and went after him.

I followed him all the way down to the dry riverbed. Except it wasn’t dry anymore.

‘It’s flowing!’ I said. Fresh water—here was our good thing. ‘It could be melting snow from far away. Or maybe there’s an underground spring somewhere.’