Peter Carey - His Illegal Self

Then she cried outright. She wanted to live somewhere pretty but she did not know how. All she was doing was building a shelf to hold the rice and lentils. It stressed her too much. She made sketches early in the morning. She made him shop with her at Day and Grimes, the hardware store, trying to make up her mind about brackets and screws.

The strawberry-nosed men in white coats asked, Can I help you, missus.

No thank you.

She did not get it-neither did the boy, not yet. She was a hippie, therefore she must be shoplifting. Also, the drunk-nosed men were thinking of the naked bottoms of hippie women at the swimming hole. They had been there after work, those good daddies, parking their utes off the fire trail.

At night Buck returned to lie beneath the roaring propane lamp, and the mother and the boy pulled his ticks off one by one. There were cattle ticks, on his back and stomach, and tiny grass ticks which lined up along his ears like babies feeding at their mother’s teat. They used tweezers, a little kerosene. How they were together was more fine and tender than this sounds.

Dial read Huckleberry Finn out loud and the air was muggy as Jackson, Mississippi, white ants swarming around the hissing lamp, everybody running for their lives.

It was not until the end of the wet season, in early March, that their first visitor came knocking at their open door, not the Rabbitoh, who Dial had been prepared for, but Trevor. He squatted at the table, and his big new belly pushed against the buttons of his Hawaiian shirt; the boy was pleased to see him. He had gotten all bright and shiny, a whole new layer of fat beneath his skin.

I’ve been away, Trevor said.

You were on vacation?

Most likely Trevor had been in prison.

Yes, he said, his eyes roaming the room until they settled on the shelf.

I know it’s not level, Dial said.

Trevor shifted his attention to the curtains and his face split open in what was a real big grin for him.

The mother ran her banged-up hand roughly through her hair. Fuck you, she said. I’m a homeowner now. She did not know whether to be pissed or pleased.

Pretty, Trevor said, not looking at the curtains anymore.

Thank you, said Dial, going pink along her neck.

And what about his nibs here? asked Trevor, not looking at the boy.

Well you can ask him, she said, smiling so much she was embarrassing.

Would he like to come and help me in my garden?

The boy had been pleased to see Trevor, his visit being the first event to break through the endless veil of heat and flies. He certainly did not mean to sneer at him. He was not aware he now curled his lip at him, showed all the pink shiny gums and square white teeth.

Some other time, said Trevor.

Jesus, said Dial later, we don’t have to be at war with everybody.

I’m sorry, Dial. I didn’t know. But he had that nasty jealous feeling, so he did know after all.

Be interested in his goddamned garden.

The boy was frightened when she yelled at him.

He said, Will you read some more?

The road to Trevor Dobbs’s hideout was like he had bragged to the boy already-outlaw, very steep, rutted, washed away, potholes, tank traps, killer rocks, one stained black with oil, the death of an auto owned by someone who had no business. It was on a road that didn’t want you any more than you wanted it. On the high side of the cutting there was wild bush but no shade at that hour and the dirt was baked hard and comfortless.

There were no threats or skulls or crossbones nailed to tree trunks but at one place there was an abandoned Volvo in a tree. It seemed to have slid down the hill and then skidded backward into space and there it had come to a stop with its back wheels stuck in a burned old wattle. The front wheels had slipped clear off the edge of the road and it clung to the yellow clay road with just inches to spare. Beneath it was nothing but giddiness.

The Volvo had gotten burned, at the time of the accident or later, you couldn’t tell; it was black from fire and brown from rust and thin as cigarette paper, like an eaten wasp abandoned in a web. As the boy and the mother approached they heard a rustling sound in its dark throat. Then-loud flapping, or slapping. The boy’s hair was too heavy to stand upright, but it pulled at his scalp and filled his neck with fright.

Then a huge black bird-a vulture, he thought, but a turkey actually-flew out the front window, leaving the shell of rust to rock and sway like a dead flower on a brittle black stem.

The boy’s heart was in his ears, his legs were aching. He asked, How will he know where to find me?

Who, baby?

My daddy, he said, his throat stinging.

Dial squatted down before him, her too-big eyes watching him as though he were a mouse in a gluetrap, something she did not know how to kill.

Have you been thinking about your daddy?

What did she think he thought? Forever, through the sweaty nights and burning days.

Oh baby, she said, and reached out to hug him. He tugged away and walked on up the hill, feeling the biting gravel sneaking in between his feet and rubber thongs. Every day his skin got hurt or broken.

Che, talk to me.

I’m Jay, he said. He did not have many ways to hurt her.

Jay, we’ll tell your daddy where you are.

He feared that was a lie but at the same time he hoped it wasn’t.

How?

I’ll write a letter.

He was maybe ten feet farther up the hill now, looking down at her at last. When?

Tonight.

Do you love my daddy, he asked.

She lifted her big scratched hands up to her breast. He understood, or thought he did, but he turned and continued up the hill and did not look at her misery until they arrived, finally, on a wide saddle where it seemed the road had led to nothing more than five big drums of diesel fuel.

Where now? he demanded because he was still angry, because she was meant to know.

She pointed and he saw there were many sets of pale tire marks, not following any single course, but all proceeding in the same direction, ending in a bit of gray among the big trees, a sort of nothing that made his mouth go dry. He followed her toward this blur and only when they were very close did he see it was a heavy net which had been thrown like a spiderweb across a building.

Then he could see a high wall punctuated by thick gray timbers, standing upright like trunks of trees, and the space between filled up with yellow clay and on top of the walls he could make out a corrugated iron roof which had been painted black.

He did not want to go in there.

Dial took him by the hand. But she did not know what it was any better than he did.

I don’t think this is his, he said, but he allowed himself to be persuaded forward. It was hard to say what they entered, maybe a shed, a barn, a hut, a garage, a fort-all of these in fact-the bones of the construction would eventually turn out to be a hay shed Trevor Dobbs had stolen from Conondale on New Year’s Eve; he had unbolted it and carried away the steel trusses and the roof in a “borrowed” truck. He had driven it up the potholed hill and unloaded the shed and had the truck back home before the first day of 1968. Who his accomplices were, he never did say. He made a lair, a compound. Mud brick walls, one foot thick, bulletproof.

The boy had a very strong feeling he would get in trouble just for going in, but the high wooden gate was open and it was either follow Dial or be left behind. He discovered lengths of milled timber leaning against the inside walls, also many narrow sheets of glass on which was printed TELECOM. A small silver trailer home was parked in one corner. In front of it were piles of sand, gravel, sawdust, black stinky stuff the boy would soon know all too well. Half of the floor was concrete and the other half was dirt and where the walls were not yet finished you looked straight onto the vegetables, some of which-the lettuces, for instance-were growing inside.