Gravity

Scot Gardner
lives with his wife and kids in the foothills of Victoria's Strzelecki Ranges. He has a weird fascination for the dance hall music of the 1920s, the way snakes gloss after they've shed their skin, and telescopes. When he grows up, he'd like to be able to breathe under water.

Also by Scot Gardner

One Dead Seagull
White Ute Dreaming
Burning Eddy
The Other Madonna
The Legend of Kevin the Plumber

 

Cover

About the Author

Also by Scot Gardner

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Epigraph

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

For Robyn

Big thanks to the guides who helped me bring this story out of the wilderness – Julie Crisp and Anna McFarlane. Thanks to my wife, Robyn, for putting up with all the brooding and mania. Thanks to Jim Micah for the sawmill experiences. Thanks to my brothers, Shaun and Liam, for their stories large and small . . . from nuddy-runs to mountain cops. Thanks to Peter Clements for the insights into acquired brain injury. Thanks to Fiona Barry for the skilful ute driving and Pauleigh Gardiner for capturing the cover images. Thanks to Richard Kubisz and Myrine Hawksworth for the Escher quote, the woodwork and the love story.

Win, lose or draw, there's always Saturday night.

It was a shit game. We won, thirty-two to eight, but I played like a dog. It would have been a different result if the boys from Eden Tigers had realised earlier in the game that I was a seriously weak link in the backline. Their two tries were give-aways that I gave away. Their lock mowed me down twice in the last ten minutes of the game. The line was broken and they scored but they couldn't convert.

My heart wasn't in it.

My heart was nowhere to be found.

The boys were suitably fired up in the change room. We showered and blasted into the front bar of the Catalpa Arms to wild cheering and whistling. I had a smile on my face but it didn't go any deeper than my lips. I'd nailed my mid-year exams and it was the first day of the school holidays but that didn't seem to count. The boys were in fine form but their pissed cheer felt like cold hard rain. I drank rum. I drank a lot of rum but it didn't seem to warm my bones, so I drank
more. Bullant was slumped in one of the couches with his arm over Sandy Willis's shoulders. Sandy's smiling cheeks were red and I didn't want to look at her. I didn't want to see her small-town ugliness; her eyes cramped around her nose and her old-piano teeth. She was more like one of the blokes than one of the women. It was the lack of choices that allowed Bully to overlook her downy moustache and the aura of unwashed armpit that surrounded her. Bully had found the lack of shame that rides with six beers and if I pressed him, he'd give me his standard response: she was prettier than a sheep.

And she wasn't related.

I didn't want to be there. I thought about jumping in the ute and driving the two hours home to Splitters Creek, across the border into Victoria. I rested my elbows on the bar and stared at the dregs in my glass. I rubbed my temples and the noise around me got louder. I caught a whiff of the bar mat and I needed to spew. I needed to get all the rum and feelings of stuckness out of my guts. I was wedged in a family that was eating me alive. Stuck at a school I didn't like, doing my last year of study so that I could fall into a job I loathed in a town I absolutely hated. I shoved my way towards the door. I slapped my hand over my mouth and the crowd who could see me magically parted.

‘Adam?' Bully shouted. I could see him untangling from Sandy and levering himself off the couch. ‘You right, mate?'

I nodded and my guts heaved. I made it to the footpath before the stuff erupted from between my fingers. Gripping a verandah post, I bent and emptied into the gutter. The pub door swung closed behind me, locking the racket in with it.
The main street of Catalpa was empty and I heard my retching bounce off the lonely buildings and rattle into the night.

Sound burst from the pub door as it opened. Bully was there with his hand on my back. ‘You spewing again, mate? What a waste of good Bundy.'

I nodded and spat. I wiped my fingers on my jeans. ‘I'm going home.'

He slapped my shoulder. ‘You'll be right, mate.'

‘Do you want your swag?'

‘Come on, mate, it's still early. You'll be fine in a minute.'

He stood there patting my back. I straightened and he stepped away.

‘See, you're fine. Come in out of the cold, mate. I'll get you something to wash your mouth out.'

I looked at his face. ‘Do you want your swag, or what?'

He shook his head. ‘Why don't you have a bit of a kip? You know, rehab. Half an hour and you'll get your second wind.'

I took the keys from my pocket.

‘How am I supposed to get home?' Bully said.

‘You'll work it out.'

‘What's the matter, Adam? You're going all freaky. What's wrong?'

A peal of laughter crept through the walls of the pub and the hard ball of indifference in my chest started to soften. ‘I don't know. I'm just sick of it. Sick of everything.'

Bully stood there in silence, nodding. In time, he rubbed the stubble on the side of his face. ‘Leave my swag, bro. Just chuck it in Thommo's ute. I'll find my own way home.'

‘Sorry.'

‘Nah, it's fine. Don't worry about it,' he said, and crossed his arms. ‘I'll catch up with you tomorrow. Go.'

He slapped the cap off my head and it span into the gutter, narrowly missing the freckled puddle of spew. I dived on it and misjudged my step. I stumbled into the middle of the road and Bully chuckled.

‘You shouldn't be fucking walking, let alone driving,' he said.

I smiled then, carefully collected my hat and walked beside the pub to where my ute was parked. Thommo's blue XR8 was parked three doors down and I offloaded Bully's swag into the back. Well, it looked like Thommo's ute. He'd work it out.

I felt a bit wide-eyed on the trip home. With the heater and the lights and the radio on high and the window down, I drove as fast as my rubbery rum-head would let me go.

I was about thirty k's from Splitters Creek when I dozed off. The wheels hacked on the gravel at the edge of the road and it woke me. I corrected hard. Too hard. I took out a white post with the back wheel, slammed on the skids and came to a shuddering halt across the middle of the tar. My fingers tingled and I breathed in but I couldn't breathe out. The air snagged in my throat and my fingers clenched and unclenched on the wheel. The car had stalled and the red lights stared at me from the dash.

I eventually had to exhale.

‘Fuuuuuck.'

Yeah, I'd survived. If I was asleep before, I was certainly awake after. More awake than I'd ever been. My skin twitched
like a rabbit caught in a ferreting net. My heart drummed a pulse into my breath.

I turned the key and drove off, swearing at myself. Fucken idiot. How did I let myself get so tired and still be driving? Never again. Next time I might not be so lucky. Next time my car could end up bloody and mangled like Simon's Cortina. There was never going to be a next time.

But there was.

The adrenaline hit from my near miss had faded.

I was three k's from home when the ute left the road.

I woke in the shallow light of dawn on Sunday morning with blood still sticky on my lips. My cap had fallen onto the seat beside me and the P plate was in the foot well. I felt no real pain. My nose had bled and dripped a neat Southern Cross on the front of my shirt. Other than the blood in my mouth and on my shirt, everything in the ute seemed normal. No bones poking out, no mangled steel or little cubes of windscreen. My breath made clouds and the windows were fogged. My back ached. My fingers and toes stung with cold but they were all things that I knew. They were typical Adam-sleeping-in-the-car experiences. It was the angle of the car that concerned me. I was reclined in my seat as though I was an astronaut ready for launch. The headlights – if the battery hadn't died during the night – seemed to be pointing to the heavens.

It was then that the realisation of what had happened cut through my foggy thoughts and made my breath ragged. I was obviously alive and for the most part unharmed but somewhere on the drive home from Catalpa, my old ute had had to fend for itself.

I rubbed a spot on the window and saw pasture rolling away at a dicky angle below me. I undid my seatbelt and pushed at the door. It clunked on the hinge and groaned. It wanted to close and I propped it open with my knee. I fell from the pilot's position onto my hands and knees in the wet and ice-crusted grass, my shoulder coming to rest against a ring-lock wire fence. The door snibbed above me. I used the fence as a crutch and got to my feet.

None of the wheels were touching the ground. The ute had left the road on auto-pilot, become airborne off the shoulder and come to rest on top of a stringybark strainer post in the corner of a paddock. In the half-light there was no obvious damage to the fence but the post had busted something and oil had dribbled like black blood over the strainer. The rear end rested on the bumper. The towbar had cut a short furrow in the rough grass of the verge. The surface of the road was two metres higher than where the ute had landed. I couldn't see the road from where I stood, with my hands on my hips.

‘Fuuuuuck.'

I grabbed my hair and wished I wasn't me. I had swerved to avoid a wombat, that's what I'd tell them. No, a wallaby. There was something wrong with the steering and I swerved to miss a wallaby and lost control. I huffed into my hand and tried to sniff my breath. It was vomit-sour and I could still smell grog. Rum-loaded Coke.

I heard a pinging diesel engine at a distance. I held my breath and could hear it getting closer. I knew I'd have to get my story straight in my head or I'd be rooted. Wallaby. What about skid marks? If I'd swerved to miss a wallaby there'd be skid marks on the road. I ran up the verge and I knew where
I was. Bullant and I had jogged past there on a hundred Sunday training runs. My ute was parked on Kent's fence-post. I'd left the road on probably the straightest section between Catalpa and Splitters Creek. There were no skid marks and there was nowhere for a wallaby to hide. I could see a patch of scrub a few k's closer to town but where I'd stacked there was no cover. Wallabys stay close to the scrub.

I could see the tractor crawling up the valley below me. A green and gold John Deere with a bucket on the front and a plastic roof attached to the roll bars. It was Chris Kent's tractor and he was hugging the fence that came to a corner underneath my ute.

I checked my clothes then felt the crusty blood in the stubble on my top lip. I'd go for the sympathy vote. I jogged down the hill to the ute, rested a hand on the fence as if to steady myself and rubbed my forehead. I kept rubbing my head until Chris Kent arrived and parked the tractor. The hand brake rasped. He left the engine idling, skipped down from the cab and across to where I stood.

‘G'day, Adam, you right mate? What happened? You okay?'

‘I . . . it was . . .' I puffed. The diesel exhaust turned my breath into clouds.

‘Do you want me to ring your dad? Do you need an ambulance?'

‘No! No, it's fine. I'm fine. I must have got a blood nose when I was knocked out but I'm fine now.'

He nodded and looked at the ute. ‘Nice parking. What happened?'

‘It was . . . it . . . a fucken wombat ran out onto the road. I tried to miss it and . . . I don't know . . . maybe there was
something wrong with the steering. I tried to correct, started skidding and left the road. That's all I remember.'

Chris had his hands on his hips. He looked me up and down. ‘Wombat? Jeez, you were unlucky, mate. Haven't seen a wombat here for years.'

A nervous laugh tumbled from my lips before I had a chance to censor it. ‘Yeah, that would be right.'

‘My boys used them for target practice. Shot hundreds of the bastards. I suppose it was only a matter of time before they moved back in again.'

‘Yeah, bastards.'

Chris crouched and looked at the underneath of the ute. ‘Post has sheared the sump plug off. You were bloody lucky. You won't be driving it, though. Do you want to do any work on it while it's up on the post? I can give you a hand to get it down if you like.'

I laughed, but Chris didn't smile. He'd probably used a strainer post as a hoist before. Sometimes, in Splitters Creek, you have to improvise.

‘I probably should have a go at getting it down before it falls down,' I said.

Chris pushed on the door. The ute was rock steady.

‘I reckon, if I bring the loader up here, I'll be able to slip a chain through the chassis and make it safe so we can undo the fence wire. We take one of those cross braces out and I'll probably be able to lower it beside the post. I've got a long chain there. Probably drag it up onto the road for you if you want. What do you reckon?'

What did I reckon? Chris Kent gave me the impression that he could get the car on the road again with a length of
baling twine and a piece of chewing gum. ‘Sounds like a plan,' I said.

I
climbed under the ute.
I
undid the wire.
I
ripped out the cross brace. Kent sat in the tractor and eventually shunted the ute to the side and lowered its wheels onto the ground. He unhitched the chain and took off through the paddock on the tractor. He dragged a metal gate open and drove onto the road. I was elbow-deep in the wet grass, looping Chris's long chain onto the tow ball, when I heard a car crunch onto the roadside behind me.

Cappo. Cappo in the big police four-wheel drive.

I dropped the chain and cracked my knuckles on the bumper.

Cappo got out of the car. He just looked like normal old Cappo for a minute. His uniform looked like any old work shirt from where I was. As he stepped past the bull bar on the patrol car and slipped his wide-brimmed hat on, I knew I was in deep shit.

‘G'day, Adam,' he said. His tone was friendly but I knew I was fucked. ‘Do you want a hand, mate?'

‘Yeah, nah. It's fine, Cappo,' I said. I picked up the chain and dropped it on my foot. It hurt like hell but I didn't make a sound.

Cappo kept coming.

I busied myself with the chain and almost crawled right under the ute, trying to hide my rum-breath.

Cappo crouched beside me. I smiled but he was looking at the chain. ‘Give us a go. I'll show you a trick,' he said.

I backed off – right off – and Cappo tied the chain in a knot around the tow bar, looping the hooked end onto the length I'd dragged up to the back of Chris Kent's tractor.

Cappo jogged to his car and I swallowed hard when the red and blue lights cut into the morning grey. He stood with his arms crossed as Chris attached the chain to the towbar of the tractor.

‘Straighten the wheels up, Adam,' Cappo said.

I pushed the steering wheel and the tyres pulled at the grass.

Chris told me to clear out and I closed the door. He hit the throttle and the car rolled effortlessly up the bank and onto the road. Cappo opened the door of the moving ute and guided it onto the grassy verge.

‘Too easy,' I said. I thanked Chris as he packed up the chain. He nodded and told me I owed him a beer. He said he'd fix the fence later and not to worry about it. I told him I owed him at least six beers.

I thanked Cappo and he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a pad and pen.

‘So, Adam, what actually happened?'

‘Oh, bloody wombat,' I said.

‘Wombat?' Cappo said, and raised one eyebrow.

‘I swerved to miss it and . . . I don't know . . . maybe there was something wrong with the steering. I lost control. I wasn't going fast. Maybe sixty or something like that.'

‘What time was it?'

‘Probably three o'clock.'

I explained that I must have been knocked out on impact and that I hadn't woken until dawn.

‘What happened to your face?'

‘I think my nose hit the steering wheel or something. I'm fine, though, no damage done.'

‘No, the scratch under your eye.'

I felt my cheek. I'd forgotten about the fight I'd had with my brother.

‘Simon,' I said.

Cappo just nodded and wrote. ‘Had you been drinking?'

‘No. Yeah, I'd had a couple with the boys. That was in Catalpa at about eight o'clock.'

He nodded and moved to the patrol car. He opened the door and took out the breathalyser. I tried to stop the panic that was churning in my guts from leaking onto my face. I smiled and looked into the paddock.

He fitted a new plastic mouthpiece to the machine and held it to my lips. ‘Just blow in there, Adam, until I say stop.'

I sucked a huge breath and blew until the machine beeped and there was no air left in me. He didn't say stop.

Cappo looked at my eyes and shook his head. ‘It's positive.'

‘Whaaat?'

He looked up the road and when he glanced at me again, his eyes were as cold and humourless as log yard ice. ‘Bit more than a couple with the boys.'

The panic in my guts burst. It ruptured like a garbage bag and spilled its fucked-up load of emotion into my veins. Rotting lumps of sadness, shards of rage and the smell of something dead inside. My heart pumped and the mess spread through me, turned my limbs to logs and stole the air from my lungs.

Tears.

‘Sorry,' I said.

‘Bit late for that,' Cappo said. ‘Bloody idiot.'

He pointed to the four-wheel drive. ‘Let's go.'

I had to wait for a car to pass before I could open my door. I wiped my face on my sleeve and rubbed my eyes. The car slowed for a gawk. Jai Murray's old burgundy Commodore. Bully was in the passenger seat. He stared, mouth open, as the car crawled past. He turned and looked some more through the back window. The brake lights flashed, then Jai hit the gas and they lumped towards Splitters Creek.

I washed my face in the sink at the station and Cappo got me to blow into another machine. It buzzed like a compressor. He had his hand over a printer output but the machine grunted and stalled. The paper had jammed.

‘This is a bit of a formality,' he said. ‘No matter what your official blood alcohol level is, you'll need to hand in your licence.'

I nodded.

He held out his hand.

I saw a window of opportunity. A chance to crawl out of the shit-pipe ride my life had become.

I shook my head. ‘It's at home. I can go and get it if you like.'

He lowered his hand. ‘If I'm not here when you get back, put your licence in the letterbox.'

‘Okay.'

‘I just don't get it, Adam. Two types of people drink and drive: people with a death wish and dickheads. Have you got a death wish?'

I snorted. ‘No.'

He looked right at me and shook his head. ‘Minimum two
months' suspension. Two hundred and fifty buck fine. Could be more. You'll be back on the school bus next term. Are you working up at the mill on the holidays?'

I nodded.

‘And walking to work,' he said.

I just kept nodding. I felt a steely calm. ‘I'm sorry, Cappo. I should have . . . I should have done a lot of things.'

‘Stop apologising. Save it for your old man. Save it for Simon, for Christ's sake.'

I nodded some more but now I was staring at the floor. I could handle Dad and his impotent Christian rage. And getting caught made me the lucky drink driver in our family. Unlike Simon, I didn't write my car off. I didn't come home from hospital a busted retard.

I didn't kill my best mate.

‘Thanks,' I said, and left.

And I
was
thankful. In some respects I felt deeply indebted to Cappo. As well as saving me from myself, he was my last straw. I looked over my shoulder at the cop shop and felt my wallet in my pocket. The wallet with my driver's licence in it. I wanted to run but I ignored the adrenaline fizzing in my limbs and breathed deep. Tried to relax. Look sad. Look calm. I'd need the power in reserve. I'd need every drop I could muster for later. Save it all up for my final run at the line. I knew I'd need it to crack through the gravity of Splitters Creek and find a new life.