‘Not your business.’
There’s a pause.
‘My name’s Jake.’
‘I don’t want to talk.’
‘I come from over west, near Brisket.’
‘Never heard of it — Jesus, do I have to pay you to shut up as well?’
I decide his name is Ken, short for Kenneth. He probably works on a prawn trawler. He is the sort of character who is grouchy but ultimately friendly.
The rest of the ride is silent, and we pull into a car park at the beach, and he draws up under some fir trees.
‘Git in the back,’ says Ken.
As I climb in under the tarpaulin, Ken pushes his hands against my bum and squeezes. It seems a strangely affectionate thing to do after being such a ratbag in the cab. Underneath the tarp everything is light blue and glowing. Ken and his skin and me and my skin all look illuminated, and his teeth look very white against his green face. It’s warm in there with the sun making it smell of hot plastic. I smile at Ken and he holds my ankles and turns me over, not that gently, so that I can’t see his face.
‘Take em off,’ he says and I feel down to unbutton my shorts. It’s embarrassing, the idea of getting your bum out at some man you don’t even know. But I manage it, and he tugs them down and all of a sudden he is hot and damp and all over me, pushing and squeezing parts of him into me and swearing all the time he does it.
‘Up,’ he says and pulls on my hips, so that I am on all fours, and he grunts into me. ‘Make some fuckin’ noise,’ he says, and so I bang on the floor of the ute with my fists. ‘Not that sort of noise, you retard,’ he shouts, before I understand what he means. It’s a strange thing making the noises he’s after. There is an eyelet in the tarp which shows how white it is outside and I watch that and make the noises he wants, pleased that my back is turned to him so that I don’t also have to make the faces as well.
Grunting away and saying encouraging things like ‘Yeah, like that,’ Ken strokes my midriff in a way that could almost be friendly. He reaches up and feels my boobs under my T-shirt, and then back down the sides of me to where he is working away. He is starting to gasp and between us there is a racket of moans and shouts while I look at the white circle of sky. He presses his thumbs into the dips of my haunches, and then screams and falls backwards off me.
‘What the fuck’ve you got!’ he shouts with the air that’s left in his throat. I turn around to look at him. He looks so angry with his trousers round his ankles and his dick cuddling up to him that I nearly laugh, and he kicks at me with his tethered legs.
‘What is it, girl? Fuck I didn’t even wear a rubber.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I try to say, and he almost throws me out of the back tray into the white, with my shorts around my knees and his wetness all on me. He charges out of the truck a moment later, as I am pulling my clothes back on and I think he’s going to hit me, he comes so close to my face.
‘What the fuck is that on your back?’
‘Just scars,’ I say.
‘Scars? From what?’ He looks suspicious but his fists have relaxed. I shrug.
‘An accident.’
‘What kind of accident?’
I don’t know how to answer so I stand there, scratching my arm for a bit.
‘An accident at sea,’ I say finally, because the words feel good to say and that is where the worst things happen.
He presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. ‘Fuck,’ he whistles quietly, ‘thought it was some sort of AIDS.’ And he spits on the ground next to me. ‘You should tell people you got that. It’s not fair to make people pay for damaged goods.’
Kenneth turns without giving me any money and gets into his truck. He drives away without a glance in my direction and just as I realise I’ve left all my stuff in the cab, I see my bag sail out of the window to land in the road. I collect up my things and stuff them back in, check to see if maybe he’s put my thongs in too, but he hasn’t. I walk back into town barefoot with bits of melted bitumen sticking to my heels. I haven’t thought about my back like that before, that other people will see it and ask what it is. It was my first go at having lie-down sex, how was I supposed to know which bits have to be unscarred, which bits you can get away with.
23
The crows roosted in the treetops. Their blackness against the darkening sky made me want to get the gun and scatter them. From the house, I took a gas lamp so we wouldn’t have to keep the fluorescent on, the last of the bread, which was stale, and some butter and honey. I put the coffee pot on the stove to fill up the thermos. Out the window, the light faded in waves, the tree branches became longer, hanging on to their shadows. I found two of my thickest jumpers and wrapped a half-bottle of whisky in one before I put it into my bag. I pulled out the box of cartridges I kept at the back of the kitchen cupboard. I took one out and weighed it in my hand. Dad trying to teach me to shoot cans out the back when I was small. He’d given me a cushion to hold against my shoulder so the recoil didn’t leave a mark and Mum wouldn’t throw a drama. ‘Remember,’ he’d said close to my ear, the soft gust of beer on his breath, ‘the human eye senses movement before all else.’
The triplets had run out into the garden then, like a pack of baboons and Dad and I had pretended to pick them off one by one until Iris had leant out the window and shouted at us, ‘Stop it, you fucking derelicts!’
I closed my fist around the cartridge.
It was too early to call, and too close to the last time. But if it was Iris who answered, she’d hang up straight off anyway. I held the phone in one hand, the cartridge in the other, squeezing. It rang a long time and I imagined Mum getting out of bed, wrapping herself in her dressing gown and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Phone calls at unusual hours were always bad news; I should have waited, she’d be worried. The voice when it picked up was deep and unfamiliar, a man’s. For a second I thought Dad was alive after all, it had all been a trick. He didn’t answer with Mum’s usual Hello, 635? He said, ‘Yep?’
I opened my mouth and almost responded.
The man sniffed. ‘You there?’ he said. When I left, the triplets were small boys. Now I supposed they were not. The voice cleared its throat, there was the muffled sound of the earpiece being smothered by something, like he held it to his shirt front. Maybe it was early enough to be cool in the house, maybe he wore a jumper, or a sweatshirt with a hood.
‘Mum?’ I heard him call away from the speaker, not over-loudly, but like he was testing, seeing who was near him. ‘Iris?’ There was no response that I could hear. His voice came back to me. ‘Listen, I’ll get the money, okay? Message understood, loud and clear, I’ll have it by the end of the week. Please don’t call here, it’s got nothing to do with me mum — she’s not well. End of the week, I promise, man—’
‘Who in hell are you—?’ I heard Iris close in the background and the phone slammed down in its cradle fast and loud enough that the line crackled before it went dead. I looked at the receiver in my hand and lowered it gently back into its cradle. Behind me, the door opened and Lloyd stuck his head in.
‘I think it’s started,’ he said, his face white. The phone rang and we both looked at it. I’d forgotten to withhold the number. It rang and filled the house. I’d never heard it do that before.
‘Are you going to answer that?’ asked Lloyd after six rings. I shook my head. Inside that mouthpiece, everything from before. The hot smoked air, the birds. The salted ends of my hair when it flew in my mouth. My family.
I unplugged the phone from the wall and the silence was instant. I rested my rifle over my shoulder, nodded to Lloyd, and we headed back to the shed.