Peter Carey - His Illegal Self

The old man was a retired schoolteacher who had been cutting loads of firewood to sell in town. He had seen Che. Oh yes, indeed, he said. He saw him very well. Little fellow, a good set to his shoulders.

Dial tried not to be frightened by his hands, about one inch wide at the knuckles.

Don’t you worry, Mum, he said. She let him take possession of her hand, it was like being inside a big warm bag, or being in touch with God or aliens.

He’ll be back, he said.

He had been dead. Now he was alive. No one was going to prod his bloated white sausage body with a pole. She ran back to the Peugeot so quickly that by the time Trevor arrived she had turned the car around.

Trevor took his seat, but left the door open, one bare foot resting on clay.

Let’s go, she said.

He looked at her wearily, his eyes squinted. What’s the plan?

Furious, she drove down the track and he had no choice but to close his door.

So what’s the plan?

There was no damn plan except she could not go into the valley and be stared at. She was beyond the pale. She killed her cat. She killed her boy. When she came back on the road she swung left toward Yandina, looking out the window at the wiry scratching undergrowth, and when they came to the Cooloolabin fork she swung away from town. She could not bear to be looked at. She drove past the house where the boy had drunk the milk. She did not know she had come down this road, so short a time before, hundred-dollar bills sewn inside her hem.

Turn here, he said. She did not recognize Bog Onion, but she obeyed, her stomach churning at the steepness of the track, the precipitous drop along its edge.

Suddenly Trevor was like a dog with its ears pricked.

What is it?

He leaned forward, resting his forehead against the dusty sun visor, peering ahead and to each side.

Stop, he called.

She slammed on the brake and the Peugeot locked and sledded. Oh God, she said. What is it?

But Trevor was already out and stumbling, running up the hill. She pulled on the hand brake, but it would not hold. In the spit-smeared mirror she saw Trevor pick up something-candy wrapper, that’s what she thought. He jumped back in the moving car and handed it to her.

Ben Franklin. One hundred dollars U.S.

His eyes were slitted.

Drive, he said.

Brake light all the way.

Dial pulled up beside a burned-out shell of a Volkswagen, bullet holes along its door, a ruin consistent with her stomach, knotted in a tangle of dread. She watched in the mirror as Trevor got out and circled behind her back. Would he be her benefactor or her assassin?

Arriving at her open window, he turned off the engine and snatched the keys.

Oh please, she said. I wasn’t going to run away. But why did she even say that? What was she thinking-that she had crossed the Mafia? And was it like that? She tried to read his eyes but he held the door open, a match between his teeth.

I should stay here, she said, in case.

He escorted her to the path, the one he had forbidden her the first time. His hand on her arm was not rough, or brutal, but really rather soft, as if he thought kindly of her and might protect her, but she thought of how gently cats hold prey inside their mouths.

Was his anger just about his one hundred dollars? She followed him like a lamb, through the scratchy lantana, the whispering ferns, boneless, without the will to run. He was a pissed-off criminal, clambering out along the horizontal trunk of fallen tree and then doubling back inside like a possum, a ferret, an animal unexpectedly supple and sleek, its muscles and tendons showing through the skin. He dragged out the blue banana bag, showing her his teeth before letting it fall, like trash into a compactor chute, rushed and violent, raising dust. He tore out a paint-splattered plastic sheet and a fistful of sandwich Baggies each big enough to hold two ounces. He shoved the Baggies in his shoplifter’s pockets and lay the sheet in the blue shadow of the fallen tree. The wind was gusty from the west. The plastic rose and fell until he subdued it with rocks and logs.

He held her gaze a moment. She did not know how to look at him. His pupils were keyholes. The wind blew and schools of eucalypt leaves turned like silver knives above her head.

Kneeling before his bag, he removed a fistful of currency and tucked it beneath the plastic sheet. She thought this was a good sign-but how could she know what to hope or fear in the awful nothing of this day.

As he defended his stash from the thieving wind, he was shiny and fast, really lovely in his wild and muscled way. He gave a final wad to Dial and pointed at the bone, a cow bone big enough to brain him with.

Put Australian money under that.

Cool, she said, her heart racing.

American, he pointed to two broken yellow rocks. U.S. dollars under there.

She sat cross-legged on the plastic, her skin sweating like processed cheese. He held up a single crumpled hundred-dollar bill, the one he found up the road. There was a violent gust of wind and the plastic rose and brown leaves tumbled past their knees. Something fell or thudded somewhere.

What?

Ssh.

He held his finger to his lips and turned back toward the track.

She stood too.

Stay, he hissed.

He clambered up the muddy bank, so fast that clumps of dirt sprayed on the sheet. She waited, aware mostly of the sky, its storybook blue, its invisible violent life.

He returned quickly.

Was it him?

She watched him pack the rest of the money.

That’s yours, he said, OK.

His eyes held hers so tightly that it took a while to see that he was holding two Baggies filled with money. If you needed it, he said, you could come here yourself. His voice was very level. You wouldn’t need to send a child.

She was slow to understand him.

It’s yours, he insisted. I’m keeping it for you. This is too far for him to come without a grown-up.

You really think I would do that to him?

He shrugged.

She had to stand so he could take the plastic sheet. When he climbed back up the bank to hide the bag she waited.

He said, You going to wash?

I wouldn’t do that to him, she said. What sort of monster do you think I am? You want to make this all my fault?

He walked off ahead of her drying his hands on what passed for his backside. She stood by the Peugeot while he searched inside both the burned-out wrecks and under one of them. She could not stand the accusation.

But then he exclaimed and her heart was suddenly in her mouth and she was right beside him, willingly his ally, squatting on the gravel when he emerged from beneath the Volkswagen, all that dull ashy anger washed from his eyes.

In his hand was a second hundred-dollar bill, and a green avocado.

He pushed the avocado at her-it had been gnawed, was still quite fresh, a pale creamy green. He showed his own teeth.

Get in the car, he said.

She obeyed, starting up the engine when he gave the silent signal.

She put the car in gear and heard the cry, the thump against her seat, and she turned to see Trevor dragging up a squirming boy-life from the backseat. It was a puppy-boy held by the neck, slimy, muddy, white, its arms wide, spreading its fingers, and all its boy face swelled up with grief or bites, left eye closed, mouth open.

The car shuddered and jerked. Dial jumped out while it was rolling, ran around the lethal front, opened the back door, tugged the stowaway, violently, as if pulling a rabbit from a hole, held the shivering bawling thing against her breast.

When Trevor charged at them she had nothing to protect herself against the tumult of his fatty orphan’s heart, the saline, mucous, the awful sac of grief so big it burst itself wide open.