The Best Australian Stories 2013 Read online

  ‘Maybe don’t, though,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not that I mind, just that I need to concentrate. I almost got hit by a car here once, on my bike. People come down here too fast sometimes.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Stop apologising,’ he said. ‘You do that way too much.’

  They were quiet as they drove back down the mountain. The only sound was the windscreen wipers going back and forth.

  Caroline wasn’t really paying attention to the road when Eliot let out an ‘Oh’ in surprise. They were on a straight, flat part of the road and the car felt weightless for a second and then suddenly turned sideways. Caroline reached out and clutched the dashboard with one hand and pushed the other onto the roof above her. She laughed once, one laugh, out of fear. They left the road harder and more suddenly than she expected. She looked down, into her lap. When they’d stopped Caroline looked up and saw that they were wedged into a ditch.

  They were quiet for a moment. Eliot looked around himself blankly, as if he’d been woken up and didn’t know where he was. ‘Is your leg okay?’ he said finally.

  ‘Yeah I think so,’ Caroline said.

  ‘There’s going to be damage,’ he said, trying to start the car. It took him five turns of the ignition. When he pressed on the accelerator there was the sound of the tyres spinning but the car stayed motionless. They were tilted downwards. Eliot’s door was up against the side of the mountain.

  ‘Let me get out and check,’ he said.

  Before Caroline could ask how, Eliot wound down his window and slid himself out. Caroline listened to the sound of him on the roof. There was silence and then the car started to rock. When she looked in the rear-view mirror Caroline saw Eliot perched on the bumper, bouncing the car up and down. He came back and opened his door.

  ‘I think we’re stuck,’ he said.

  ‘Can I help?’ she said.

  ‘I think I can push us out, can you drive?’

  Caroline nodded, even though she didn’t think she’d be able to. Eliot came around and helped her shift over into the driver’s seat. He wasn’t so careful with her leg this time around, and Caroline had to bite on her bottom lip to keep from wailing out in pain. She’d hoped that Eliot wouldn’t notice.

  ‘When you see me nod, put your foot down,’ he said. ‘Don’t stop until you’re back up properly on the road. Make sure it’s in reverse otherwise you’ll flatten me.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  She started the car then waited. Eliot went around to the front of the car. He looked ridiculous and tiny in front of the hood of the car, like a child at a school crossing. He shouted something and then bent down to lift the car. She wasn’t even sure if what he’d said was a word. She put her foot down and the engine kicked in, but the car didn’t move an inch. After about twenty seconds she stopped. Eliot was straining against the car, looking like he was about to have a heart attack. He stopped for a moment and looked down at the car.

  ‘Try again,’ Eliot said, after he composed himself.

  It was snowing properly now and the flakes surrounded them. Caroline put her foot down on the accelerator and again they stayed in the same spot. Caroline turned her head to check if the road behind them was clear, and so she wouldn’t have to watch Eliot as he exhausted himself. She felt like holding Eliot’s hand was the wrong thing to have done, that this had caused them to crash, that she was somehow responsible for everything. The car stalled and she tried to get it started again. The engine sounded like it was choking and then it made no sound at all.

  Eliot came and got into the passenger seat. ‘I’m not as strong as I thought I was,’ he said.

  ‘Another go?’

  ‘Will it even start? There’s no point at the moment anyway,’ he said, closing his door and making the keys chime in the ignition. Caroline wound her window back up. Eliot was breathing heavily. He pulled his hat off. Snow was hitting the windshield, holding there now instead of just melting away instantly.

  Caroline bit down on her bottom lip. She wondered what it would be like to kiss Eliot on the mouth, just once; grab him by the front of his jumper and pull him to her, holding him steady like a kite in a violent wind. She coughed.

  ‘So what should we do?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know yet. It’s not that late. Let me think of something.’

  They stayed quiet. Outside there was the sound of the wind that was whipping the snow around them. The snow wasn’t falling heavily, but it looked ceaseless. Caroline was at ease with the idea that they would be stuck on the side of the road and that snow would keep coming and bury the car completely, and that later when people came searching for them, wading through all that powder, she and Eliot would be together and healthy and fine.

  Eliot pushed on the hazard lights and they clicked on and off dully.

  In the month after Tom had left her Caroline had killed a mouse in her kitchen. She’d heard it moving about each night for a week and had finally decided that she couldn’t take the idea of it living with her anymore. She’d bought a mouse trap from the supermarket the next day.

  When the trap had gone off she’d been in bed, and she had gotten up, walked to the kitchen and turned on the light. The mouse had been lying beside the trap in the middle of the kitchen floor. Somehow the trap had broken its neck but not actually trapped it. She’d been surprised at how small it was. She had looked at it closely and seen that it was still breathing quickly, and for the first time she’d felt completely and utterly alone. To stop the mouse running off in the night she’d put an empty wastepaper basket over it and gone back to bed.

  She heard Eliot shivering and stopped thinking about the dead mouse. He was tensing his jaw to try to stop it from chattering. He had his arms wrapped around himself.

  ‘You’re too cold,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll be okay.’

  ‘You won’t. You’ll end up with hypothermia.’

  The snow was heavier now, and Caroline could no longer see where the road turned and continued down the hill; after about a hundred metres everything faded into a white-grey mist. Eliot coughed. She reached out and rubbed his back in a slow circle, like she sometimes did to Tom whenever he had a cold. She always felt she was good in emergencies. She always thought she’d have made a good nurse.

  ‘You should take my coat at least.’

  ‘I think we should walk.’

  ‘Really?’ Caroline said.

  ‘It’ll keep us warm and it’s not that far. I can help you walk. It’ll be a challenge.’

  Caroline looked away from him. His body was shaking slightly and he sounded like he was laughing, tonelessly, under his breath.

  ‘You go ahead without me,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine. Someone will come along soon.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said.

  ‘It’ll be too much of a struggle, and we’d go so slowly you’d freeze anyway.’

  She could tell he was thinking it over. He always tried, maybe a little too hard, to do the right thing. She took off her coat and handed it to Eliot.

  ‘You should go now,’ she said.

  He leaned over and kissed her chastely on the mouth. His lips were cold and for a second Caroline hoped that he would push his mouth against hers a little harder, but then he pulled away and the feeling passed.

  ‘I’ll bring back some help,’ he said, and opened his door.

  Caroline watched Eliot stand outside the car, pull on the coat, and then hesitate. He squinted into the wind, looking up the road, towards the top of the mountain, then he hunched his shoulders and started walking in the other direction.

  Inside the car there was only the metronome ticking of the hazard lights. She felt like hitting the horn to say goodbye, but then thought that he might thin
k something was wrong and come running back. She held her breath as she watched Eliot continue along the road until he became a dark shape; then, as if he was slowly being erased, he disappeared into the falling snow and was gone.

  We Are Not the Same Anymore

  Staff Dining

  Bruce Pascoe

  For Aunty Barbara and Aunty Cath

  and the brothers of the interior.

  If you split yellow stringybark you get a remarkably clean, flat face, but inevitably, several knots intrude on the plane, evidence of branches fallen in the tree’s history.

  In this case there are two small, almost horizontal knots for the eyes and a narrow recessed split for a mouth made mean by ignorance. A cruel, unnecessary thing to say, you might think, but there’s confusion in those squinty pits, a constant bafflement at the small, difficult matters of life. And there’s been a trauma. An accident as a child, a pinched nerve, a stepfather wanting to erase evidence of his paramour’s first love. Or mistake.

  The face flinches once or twice every minute and that quick grimace seems to compound the confusion, a terrible accumulation of doubt which makes his hand reach down to caress his certainty, a bunch of large brass keys, smoothed with use. And caresses.

  The staff dining room seems to specialise in big, gruff men, refining the Australian idea of masculinity to a stern contempt.

  One massif. The belly a solid rising plain, jaw jutting above it like a crag likely to defy crampons, pitons and ice axe. He’s been adzed from wind-exposed manna gum, the trunk so writhen by gale that when split by blade a slab is hewn on a tight curve giving the face a perpetual twist of distaste. Or hatred.

  Because the escarpment of his mountain is both tall and wide it is necessary for his arms to be held a little away from the body and the hands to loll with the knuckles facing forward. This is so, not because I want to invent a brute, but because I saw a man whose arms are simian. Does he have more keys than everyone else or is their jut made more threatening for bristling beneath such a glowering cliff?

  And then there’s sallow wood. It’s a blond, waxy timber that splits nicely to a clean, well-modelled face. Perfumed too, like vanilla or a summer night when gardenias exhale. But should you paint two unblinking eyes on that wood it is a betrayal of the sweet timber. If those steady eyes level at yours with their controlled stare you feel as if the pretty wood has decided that all others are criminal, beneath and beyond the courtesy of the merest gleam of empathy. Do not burn sallow wood for warmth.

  So many of the timbers here are like this, as if repressed rage has kilned their wood hard and sapless, as if a million locomotives have hammered the grain of the sleeper to tight resistance.

  Well, whatever the case, they have a thing about doors. They like to hear them slam. Shut. The door is designed for positive closure. Steel on steel. Clang.

  One, maybe two, hold the door so that it can ease into place. Still secure, still shut, but silent. More or less. All the others, especially those with the more prominent keys, the more impassive slabs of face and mind seem to take comfort, pride in the clang. Shut. Positive closure.

  We have plenty of time to observe this room. We are invited to remain there for ninety-seven minutes. Approximately. We are intimidated by the percussive blast. Perhaps it is meant that we should be. Blackfellas. Free blackfellas. The worst kind.

  Aunt is a wallaby. A black wallaby. Solitary. Alert. Steady gaze intent above the grass. Watchful but easily alarmed. Black wallabies stay alive by their intelligent vigilance. Aunt is alive. But I see pain flay her face with each blast of the vicious door. It tells her something. Something she knows and which causes her to flinch.

  Simon shields himself with an impassive, stealthily watchful face and Muk Muk, well, he resents the restrictions, the dumb cynicism, and you can see Bolshevism brewing beneath his pastel knitted beanie, glowering like a furious gumnut baby.

  We are waiting in the timber museum, readying ourselves, pretending to have enjoyed our free lunch of ham croquettes, the shape and texture of a pit bull terrier’s turd. Three days old. No warmth and a dry resistant crust. Hand grenades are more palatable and less dangerous.

  The cook responsible for the weapons reminds you of Swelter from the Gormenghast kitchen. Your glance must land on him for less than the blink of an eye for he condemns your gaze, punishes candour with another hand grenade. Keep your head down.

  Is all this gruff neo-violence just the guard of the guard or are they recruited for being in possession of a visage capable of turning blooded beings into stone or salt?

  We look down. Wait. For release. To visit those for whom there is no release, just the heavy smoothed key turned by a hand of knotted wood, twisting the axe with a stare of cynical challenge. These other men are so nakedly blooded, so tenderly fleshed, so vulnerable to the wounds from eye and mind. Including their own. They look away from the timbered face, fighting with their own pride and human defiance. Look away. Look away. Don’t meet that eye or you will fall as a sparrow in a meek flutter of feathered breast and tiny, curling claws. Look away my brothers, Medusa doesn’t specialise in stone here, she also enjoys the small clumps of spent feathers, or, preferably, the excuse to extinguish the brave. Look away my brothers.

  Slab points to a door as if it might be our abattoir, but inside there is no evidence of blocks waiting for the axe. Every wall is covered by paintings: Maori, Chinese, Fijian, Samoan and ours. Plain old blackfella. There are Maori warriors with moko and weapons held across their chests, Fijians with aggressive tongues and murderous eyes, Buddha with his inscrutable calm but depicted against the Great Wall from which they fought the hordes with lance and sword.

  And the blackfellas, what do they do? Do they grimace or scowl or threaten the throats of lambs who dare? No, they plait baskets, kick footballs, offer their fists cushioned by gloves, they dance, befeathered by colourful birds.

  It breaks your heart to see the peace of our people, the mildness of our hope, the sweetness of our defiance.

  Sweetness, Bookman? Surely you’re gilding the lily. Admirably loyal but misleading don’t you think? Well, no, even though our boys are clad in the bottle-green of their penitence, our difference is in the gentle finning of our cross-hatched fish, the brolga still warmly tucked and folded in the egg, blue wrens screen-printed on a shirt, a man’s shirt, the sweet gaze of the kangaroo. Yes, sweet, I see them every day, well on the other days, outside, lashes long and girlish batting above the eyes of does.

  We are different, we value different things. Unfledged birds within the egg are no match for haka or the fish hook carved from the bone of a Maori slave who has it explained to him by the cousin who cut his leg off that when he gouges the eye into that hook with a gimlet, that it is his eye, the slave’s eye, so that when the shark takes the hook, his leg bone, he will see deep into the mouth of his consummation.

  No, we are different. This is not to boast, compare or deride, but to explain how, we in this country, think of different things. When allowed.

  We have left the lumber yard of impassive flitches and have entered the singing forest. We are surrounded by art. How could it be any different. Today it is just our boys. Koorie day. We watch as twenty different brushes draw colour in unerring lines. Fish, kangaroos, echidna, brolga, wren. We are different.

  Alan is silent, his face downcast, but even at that angle you can see him struggling with huge emotion, as if nursing a great sorrow, a deep regret. He’s razored a fine paint brush to within two bristles of extinction, and with whispering caress paints a meticulous grid on the soul of a barramundi. For four days he does not look up from that quiet concentration except to lean on his elbow and stare at his fish or draw those two bristles through his tight lips, sharpening the accuracy of his intent.

  ‘My mother is dead,’ he says at last, in answer to a question I have not asked.

  Brad has a
scar across his shaven skull which stretches from ear to ear and another old injury that has crimped one eye so that the pupil glints from beneath the damaged lid. It’s not a face you want to meet for the first time after dark.

  We’re supposed to be teaching writing but they are painting in such deep peace, only malice or paternalism would ask them to attend to anything else.

  Aunt, arms akimbo, but heart still exposed, leans across to him. ‘That is gorgeous, my brother.’ The look of alarm and doubt that crosses his face would make any Aboriginal cringe with knowledge of that doubt, the knowledge that sometimes such compliment, such acknowledgement is often accompanied by an intervention or an Act which requires you to disown your cousin. I know that look, my brother, and I know that Aunt will not let you live with the doubt. And before I’ve finished wishing her to smooth the feathers of the startled owl, she touches his arm and says, ‘Truly, my brother, it is beautiful.’

  And I see that other look pass across his wounded face, because I know it well, feel it on my own, which is why I pick up a brush as if its brand is of great interest to me. I dread that he might cry. If that’s what men did.

  Len sits beside me, toying with a brush, as if he too is fascinated by logos and quality. He passes things to other artists: tracing paper, paints, cups of tea, cotton-covered boards. And then sits back and watches. Silent, but his face open, young, a tic of eagerness at the corner of his eyes and lips.

  At last he dips a brush into a pot of umber and paints one single straight line directly on the table as if he’d been reading too much about Giotto.

  I stare at the line. He lays down his brush.

  ‘It’s true what you said, Uncle, yesterday. We talked about it last night, we are learning our culture. We want to learn. We’re sick of this shit. We want to become good men.’

  I stare at the brush through glimmering eyes, too afraid to look up unless I do that thing men do not do.