The Rest is Weight (UQP Short Fiction) (6 page)

‘I had to work off some steam,’ he said. ‘You weren’t worried?’

‘I only just woke up. How was the club?’

‘Same as ever.’ He threw his t-shirt into the corner and got into bed, his back bent to me.

I stuck my forehead into the hard corner of muscle under his shoulder blade, my hand cupping his chest. I knew I should say something.
You can’t keep a person locked up like that. But I let the moment pass.

‘I’m glad you came home,’ I said.

He was already asleep.

Through the glass, I can hear Beijing. Bicycle bells, traffic and shouting. The grind and hiss of machinery. The crunch of a bobcat at the end of my street, chewing through old stone. The downstairs bird makes its pencil-sharpening sound, and all around the city appears and disappears, a force of nature, of chaos and confusion.

I pull my suitcase out from under the bed, stir up two years of dust that rises into the narrow light. And as I fill it, the orange cat returns to my window to watch me, cleaning carefully behind its ears.

Reason

One-two one-two
: an owl cried out from the hidden branches of a ghost gum. One of the women jumped up, strode towards the tree and started to shout. The other women sitting in the dust in a cluster rose more cautiously, but they raised both the volume and pitch of their chatter. I didn’t know their language, but I understood by the woman’s tone that the owl was being warned.

I checked my phone for the time. We should have left hours ago. I looked over my shoulder, peered into the grubby window, but I couldn’t make out the Minister inside.

The women all went quiet, their upturned faces fixed on the branches. As I watched, a young woman turned and met my eye. She had a naked baby immobilised against her shirt. She walked towards my chair and I stood.

‘That bird,’ she said, ‘he won’t leave us alone. That bird,
kuur-kuur
, he’s the man who comes through our fence in the night.’

‘What man?’ I said, looking around. There was no fence in sight. The woman smiled at me with pity, and I realised she was just a girl, still in her teens.

‘You can’t see him,
kungka
,’ she said. ‘Spirit man.’ She tilted her head at me, eyes wide.

I nodded, losing interest. I moved back to my chair but she grabbed my wrist. Her skin was rough, her grip like a vine.

‘Kangaroo bone,’ she said, and turned to expose her throat. Her eyes were black with a glint of cunning, though it could have been reflected light. She let go of my hand and put her own to her mouth to stifle a sound that might have been laughter.

I smiled faintly and stepped back towards the chair. My
phone rested on top of it, a folder of paperwork leaned
against its unsteady legs. The evening had cooled without warning, despite the stifling day, and I wished I had brought a coat.

It had been a productive day, I reminded myself. A good meeting. I kept the Minister informed, handed him the appropriate paperwork. I didn’t participate in the discussion but it was my job that would go if this fell through. While I waited outside with the women, the Minister was in the house of an elder, promising royalties. Even out here the real deals were made after the official meetings.

The young woman was still watching me. She hoisted her baby in one slender arm. ‘Don’t worry. He’s gone,’ she said.

It was true. The
one-two
seemed to have stopped. I nodded and smiled, trying not to show my disapproval. It was all superstition, the same superstition that was holding these people back.

She shifted the motionless baby again and drifted back into her group. I heard them laughing as I sat down. Telling ghost stories, I thought, with their babies asleep in their laps. I went through my papers, hearing a few English words stand out among the patter of a language I couldn’t understand.

I read over the draft agreements in my folder and checked my phone. Still no signal.

The Minister stepped out of the house and loosened his tie. He smiled, the smile that was always the same, whether the cameras were on or not. I nodded tersely. I wanted to get out of there. It had been a long day and I craved the simple calm of the hotel. It was the next best thing to the comforting wax-coloured walls of my office, its ordered piles of paper, its calm wooden furniture. I even missed the heavy portraits in the halls.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

I obeyed. I had no choice but to spend the next two years obeying orders. It was a probationary sentence, I thought, then remembered where I found the phrase: the man who left the community today in the back of the police vehicle, a battered four-wheel drive that looked as worn as any of the upturned vehicles we saw on the way there.

I got in the car and waited for the Minister to fasten his seatbelt before I started the engine. As we pulled out, the women watched us. Some laughed, a few waved, and the rest stood silent. The teenager with the baby stared beyond us into the trees, waiting for her moment. I thought of her after we left, turning to the group and telling the story of the white lady she spooked.

Only a hundred or so kilometres of the road out was dirt, then it should have been an easy run to town, if we managed to avoid the roos. The car was hired, a white monster. I missed my silver sedan with the little flag on the bonnet.

‘Did you reach an agreement?’ I asked the Minister.

‘They’ll be reasonable,’ he said. ‘We’ve done what we came to do – present them with their options.’ He snorted. ‘Didn’t have to stand over them. They know we could cut them off in a second. Besides, those kids need shoes.’

I wasn’t sure this last was true, but I nodded. ‘I’ll start on the report tonight.’

I hit a sandy patch and kept both hands on the wheel. To my right the moon had risen over the rocks, yellow and weak as though its batteries were running low. I concentrated on the road.

‘You’ll probably be tired from driving,’ he said. ‘Still, no harm making a start I suppose.’

I smiled inwardly at the method of his pressure. Corrugations in the track kept us silent for a while.

I arrived here by following a trail of work I found myself good at. It was always obvious to me that I would get an internship and go on to Canberra. I had no real sense of lust, either for good deeds or power. I was simply moving ahead in the most logical way. My father was a military bureaucrat, my mother his wife. I know there are paths carved out for us if we can hold to reason.

An erratic bat dashed in front of the windscreen and vanished. Instinctively I pressed on the brakes, then remembered my defensive driving course. The last thing we needed was to be bogged out here, or worse, become one of the upturned shells of cars that littered the road. I shifted in the seat.

‘You have the stats I emailed you for tomorrow?’ I asked, so that the Minister would not offer to drive, not that he ever has.

‘What? Oh, yes,’ he said. His tone was distracted. When I looked at him he turned away from me and faced straight ahead as if he had been caught lying.

‘I can resend them if you need me to.’

He yawned. ‘Shame that airline went bankrupt. We could have chartered a flight.’

I didn’t remind him it was his idea to drive, to ‘get to know the land’, as he put it. I was too busy concentrating on the road. The dirt was turning half to gravel, we were almost at the tarmac. I slowed for a wallaby that shot in front of us and away into the darkness, safe.

When we reached the paved road, I was so relieved that I let my foot relax on the accelerator. I opened the window to let in some real air. The air conditioning made my throat dry, but the dust was no less irritating. I closed the window and stared into the dark beyond the headlights.

I saw something. I had to squint to focus, it was dark, but there was something there. A vague shape on the road ahead. As we approached, it grew into a man. He was not waving, simply standing in the dirt, one hand covering his chest. Must have been an accident, I thought, a breakdown. I scanned the ditches either side for overturned cars. Nothing. When I looked ahead again he seemed to be the same distance away, just on the edge of visibility. I slowed down.

‘What is it?’ the Minister said. He leaned forward in his seat.

‘There’s a man up ahead,’ I said. ‘I hope he’s not in trouble.’

‘Where?’

‘Right there,’ I said, as patiently as I could.

‘I can’t see a thing.’ He rubbed his eyes.

I refrained from mentioning his missed optometrist’s appointments, because I was his assistant, not his wife. Instead I raised a finger, but was forced to withdraw it. The road ahead was empty.

‘He’s gone,’ I said. ‘Must have walked off into the bush.’

The Minister stared at me. ‘There’s nothing out here.’

‘Must be an outstation or something,’ I reassured him. ‘The asphalt.’

Then again, maybe asphalt did not mean houses here.

‘I’ll call the office first thing in case any of those figures have changed,’ I said. ‘We don’t want to get caught out by some small inaccuracy.’ I was speaking automatically, not really concentrating, because I was wondering how anyone could have gone so far ahead of us on foot.

Spirit man
, the woman said. Just a teenager giving herself nightmares for kicks. But the imaginary bone in the fist at her throat. The pity in her voice:
You can’t see him.
Their laughter rang in my head, sneaking in under the whine and rattle of the engine.

As I came to a rare corner, the moon appeared to grow brighter and dim again, a trick of the changing light. Alice Springs appeared as an orange glow between the sudden hills. Canberra glows like that when you drive towards it in the night, and it means you’re under half an hour away. This town is so small, I knew we must be close.

‘Is it eighty here?’ the Minister said. I looked down. I was driving too slowly, holding the wheel too tight.

‘I was looking at the ranges,’ I said. But they looked dull and featureless to me, just dark lumps like the piles left by an earthmover on a kerb. I wondered what would possess someone to want to live out here. I watched the speedo rise.

The night was broken by a flash of movement, black and white and red like a bad joke. I felt something big hit the bull bar and I pressed the brakes so hard the Minister had to grab the bar above the glove box with both hands. It happened in less than a second. I did not have time to think about my driving, only to brace my body against the spin. But we didn’t flip over. Either luck, or engineering. It was only after we squealed to a stop that I realised I’d remembered not to swerve. We sat in the awful silence for ten, twenty seconds, the time clicked out by the hazard lights.

‘Shit,’ I said. My shaking hands were glued to the wheel.

‘Don’t worry, it’s just a roo. I’ll make sure it’s dead,’ he said, suddenly brightening. He wiped his hands on his knees. I imagined this was what he meant by getting to know the country: taking a story home to impress the gang with his outback know-how. It was all depressingly schoolboy, and he forgot the tyre iron. I unfastened my seatbelt and climbed out of the car.

‘Nothing,’ said the Minister, adjusting his tie. He bent to look under the car. ‘Nup.’

I walked back along the highway, checking both sides of the road. The moonlight was bright enough to see by. I saw a lump on the verge a way behind us, a big roo, but as I got closer I could tell by the smell that it had been dead for a while.

I gave up and turned towards the car. Then I saw the man I must have hit rise in the headlights. He was standing in the middle of the road, beyond the Minister. He was clasping something to his chest. His hand half covered a red patch on his shirt. He looked solid enough. He looked alive. I slowly raised my hand to him in a greeting that I realised might look like surrender.

The Minister was leaning on the car, bored now that he had nothing to club. He was staring at his shoes, probably thinking about getting them cleaned. I was glad he was distracted. I thought I might have time to assess the situation, deal with the injury, cover my tracks.

The man raised a hand to me from beyond the car. It was clenched. He held something in the fist. The red shape was revealed on his chest. My heart raced. I must have hit him hard. I thought of first aid, of broken ribs, and whether or not you were supposed to bandage them. I thought of damage control, media contacts, the name of the journo from the local paper. How much cash I had in my purse. I am a good problem solver. I breathed. I walked slowly, without taking my eyes off him, until I could focus.

It wasn’t blood. It was a shiny pattern on the shirt. I recognised the logo of a Melbourne football team. It was just some man out on the road for his own reasons. Maybe I didn’t hit him. Maybe he was looking for something he dropped. There was a reason. There was a reason he was gone by the time I reached the car. He went somewhere.

‘Mustn’t have hit it hard enough,’ the Minister said when I get back into the driver’s seat. ‘Bounded off into the bush I’ll bet.’

I started the engine. ‘He went somewhere.’ The blood pounded in my ears. The problem seemed to have solved itself. I drove carefully back to town, both hands on the wheel.

In my room at the hotel I opened my laptop and my folder of papers. I stared at the notes from the day’s meeting until they swam. In one corner I’d written the word
practical
in small capitals and underlined it twice. But I couldn’t remember why.

I stepped outside to breathe some non-conditioned air and blink the words from my eyes. I could hear drunks in the riverbed, the laughter of women. Beyond that, as if through a tear in the night, came the high trill of the division bells. It must have been a car alarm, or simply my imagination, because I was a long way from Parliament House. I rubbed my hands together for warmth.

Beyond the hotel’s artificial oasis I could see the ranges, lit up by the moon. They still looked ugly to me, spoiled somehow, but there were arcs in the rock: patterns formed and broken over geological ages. There must be some logic to it, but I couldn’t see it. I thought instead of what might be upturned, and what kept buried.