Again, you smiled. But it wasn’t your charming one this time. It was smaller and sadder.
“And your money? Do you still have it?”
You threw your hands out to the house. “All buried into this wood somewhere, into this place … what other use is there for it?”
“So,” I began, “when you leave this place, you’ll have nothing? No money, no family, no future …?”
Your smile stopped. “I’m not going to leave this place. Ever.”
You stood up, your healing done.
I didn’t sleep again that night. I’d gone to bed with too many questions. I heard your voice just before dawn, murmuring. I tiptoed down the corridor and pressed myself against your door, listening. But you didn’t make another sound. Maybe you were dreaming.
I found you in the kitchen, with the morning sun flooding in through the window and over your skin. You were soaking rags in a bowl of dark brown paste that smelled like eucalyptus and dirt. Your hands were scabby; swollen, too. You took out a rag and asked me to help. As I wrapped it around your wrist, you looked out of the window, impatient to get on with something.
“Gonna be a hot one,” you said. “Maybe even get some rain, one of these days, if we’re very lucky … if it keeps building like this.”
“If what keeps building?”
“The pressure. When the air gets heavy like it is now, it’ll burst at some point. It’ll have to.”
I’d felt the pressure, too. For the past couple of days, the air had felt alive, clinging to my ears like it was trying to get inside and pressing its heat against me. I wondered, sometimes, if I stood outside with my arms open wide and waited, whether the air would press me all the way back home.
You took your hand away from me and tested how tightly I’d tied the bandage.
“Good,” you murmured. You opened a drawer and dug around in it.
“How did you get this here?” I asked. “All this wood and equipment?”
You pulled out a small metal clasp. “I had a truck.”
“That’s all?”
“And time.” You motioned for me to attach the clasp over the bandage I’d tied, securing it further.
“What else?” I stretched the small elastic of the clasp, digging its metal ends into the bandage. Then I kept hold of your wrist until you looked back at me.
“All right.” You sighed. “There is somewhere else…. It’s a shell of a place, really, not too far. Old mine site. I kept stuff there before I needed it. Then I just started building. I started years ago, when I first had the idea, before I even knew I wanted to bring you here, too.”
“Can we go there?” I asked quickly. “This mine site?”
“There’s nothing there.”
“Must be more than here.”
You shook your head. “The land there’s been raped and taken, everything’s dead.”
I coiled away from your words.
“I’m serious, Gem. There’s only a hole in the earth that’s eaten everything up. It’s repulsive.” You opened the door to outside. “You coming?”
I shook my head, my heart quickening a little. If I could only get to your keys, maybe I could find this shell of a place you mentioned. If it was a mine site, there must be people there…. There must be something.
I watched your back as you walked away, toward the outbuildings. Then, for the billionth time, I searched through your kitchen. I was becoming more convinced that you carried the car key on you.
I went to the spare room. I ran my finger down the spines of the books and pulled out a few. There were no maps in them, nothing to tell me where I was. I looked at a book called The History of the Sandy Desert and flicked through some of the photographs: the different landscapes and the pictures of aborigines you’d said were once here. I traced their faces, wishing they’d never left.
I pulled out the next book: a field guide to Australian flora. Then I had a brain wave. Perhaps I could figure out where I was from identifying the vegetation around me. I thumbed through the pages. Some plants looked familiar, like the ones in the section on spinifex. I read a line: Spinifex triodia dominates the vegetation of more than 20 percent of Australia, and occurs in all states except Tasmania. Brilliant, I thought, I really could be anywhere … except Tasmania.
I opened the cabinet. There was a stringless guitar and a saggy football on the bottom shelf. I pushed them aside and something black and leggy scuttled away, disappearing into the darkness at the back. A thin thread of spider-life hung from the corner. I didn’t look any farther in there.
There was a dirty sewing machine on the middle shelf that looked older than me. I turned the knob on the side and watched the needle move slowly up and down. I wished it would magically sew out some sort of map, telling me how to get home. I pressed my finger to its tip. It was rusty but it was still sharp—surprising, really, considering how old it looked. I twisted the needle until it snapped off in my fingers. I ran it across my palm, tracing my lifeline. I stopped in the middle of my hand, testing myself. Could I push it straight through? How much would it hurt? How much damage could this thing really do?
I heard the kitchen door slam and the sound of you marching through the house. I closed my hand over the needle and shoved it into the pocket of my shorts, quickly shutting the cabinet door and heading back to the bookshelf. I pulled out The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and waited. You came into the room. Lately you’d stopped asking me what I was doing all the time, and that day was no exception. You just looked at me for a moment before you started pacing, pacing around the room as if it were a cage. You threw your bandaged hands into the air as though appealing to some sort of god.
“I can’t do anything with hands like these,” you said gruffly. “Do you want to go for a walk or something?”
I nodded, thinking of the mine site.
You took a basket. It was an old red plastic supermarket basket, with the words Property of Coles fading on the side. You held it at your side, swinging it as you walked. You greeted the camel as we stepped through her pen. As we got into the shadow of the boulders, you stopped and looked closely at the vegetation growing around its edge. You touched the leaves of a small, shrubby plant that looked a bit like spinifex. I thought about the plant guide I’d seen and wondered if its similar gray-green leaves could provide me with some sort of clue. I asked you what it was.
“Saltbush,” you said. “Grows everywhere.”
“Shame.” I touched the diamond-shaped leaves. “I thought it might be special, like rare or something.”
“He is special.” You squinted at me. “You could fill books about this fella—he’s tasty if you cook him right, and he helps with swelling, toothache, digestion….” You grabbed some of the thin, scaly leaves, putting slender branches of them into your basket. “He’s one of the few plants that can not only handle all the salt in this earth but thrives on it,” you added. “So that makes him pretty useful.”
“What are you using it for?” I ran my finger over a leaf.
“These!” You held up your bandaged hands. “Plus, I thought we could have some for dinner.”
I tried to pull the leaf off, but it just crunched in my hand. “It doesn’t look tasty, it looks dead.”
“You hear that, Saltbush?” You spoke to the plant, not me. “You’re dead. Dead as a doornail. Quick, snap out of it!” You laughed as you turned to face me. “Out here things pretend to be dead, Gem. It’s their survival tactic. Underneath, they’re bursting with life. Nearly all of a desert plant’s growth is below the soil.” You took the crumbled leaves and touched your tongue to one of them. “I guess it’s a bit like us in the city, or the city itself … dead to look at, but underneath, it’s tingling. See, look at this.” You took a step to point out a root growing in a gash in the rock. “This doesn’t look like much, does it?”
“Dead as the rest.”
“But it’s just dormant, ready to come alive again.” You ran your finger over it. “Next time we get rain,
this root will grow and flower. Then, a few weeks after that, it’ll have fruit—a kind of desert raisin. Amazing, right, for something to lie silent so long …?”
You didn’t go into the Separates, just continued walking around them. After you’d put some more leaves into your basket, you sat and leaned against the matted black trunk of a large tree. You reached behind and stroked its side.
“And this one is desert oak,” you murmured, “the largest, and most tragic, of them all.”
Saltbush, desert raisin, desert oak … there must be clues within those simple names. I repeated them over in my head, trying to imprint them there. I picked up a fallen leaf, crisped by the sun, and stuck it in my pocket with the needle. I sat down, opposite you. The needle stabbed a little into my thigh as I bent my knees. I put my hand in my pocket and pressed again at the tip. As you kept stroking the tree trunk, I rolled the needle in my fingers. I watched how your throat moved. When you swallowed, your Adam’s apple moved like a target. You reached up and took some of the tree’s whispering leaves in your hand.
“Some say this tree has the spirit of the dingo,” you continued. “Or that he’s an ancestral being with flowing white hair…. Some say when the wind is right, he can take out his roots and move across the landscape. But to reproduce himself, he has to die first.” You crushed the leaves and then rolled them on your palm as if you were a reporter on TV talking about grain or seeds. “You see, his seedpods won’t open until a fire rips them apart. After the fire, the seeds inside scatter on tiny wings and the tree’s range extends.” You dropped the leaves and patted the tree’s bark. You smiled, pleased I was listening, thinking I was interested. “I’ve seen trees like him burning,” you continued softly. “… Burning like torches, destroying everything around them with their chaos, but making new life, too.” You leaned back against the bark, and the blackness of it rubbed off on your neck and hair. A small beetle fell onto your shoulder.
The needle was so tiny I could hardly feel it in my hand. I clasped my fist tighter until I was sure of its thin, hard steel. I looked back to your face, to your evil and beautiful eyes. I knew what I wanted to do. I leaned toward you, assessing how far it was from me to you. Three feet? Four? You thought it meant that I was interested in your story, so you kept talking, grinning like a kid.
“When most things die in a bushfire,” you continued, “the oaks survive … in a way. They benefit from going through the flames, or their children do.”
“And the rest of the plants?” I said, stalling for time to think.
“The fire kills off everything so the oaks can live. It’s clever, very human, actually … to wait until everything’s killed off before moving in.”
You shut your eyes tight then and wrapped your arms around the tree behind you, hugging it to your back. I opened my fist and looked down. The needle glinted in the sun. I watched the sunbeams dancing on your face, turning you sluggish. I chose that moment, tipping forward toward you. My knee made a twig crack. I froze, crouched like an animal. But you stayed as you were.
“Maybe, when it all ends, it will be us and the desert oaks,” you murmured, “battling it out.”
I was only inches from you. You must have heard me there, but you kept your eyes closed. Maybe you thought I’d changed my mind about you. Maybe you were imagining that when you opened your eyes I would be right beside you, wanting to touch my face to yours. You even licked your lips, putting moisture into those dry cracks and hollows, ready.
I spun the needle between my finger and thumb. I held it out toward you, my hand trembling. But I carried it to your eyelid. I stopped breathing, trying to steady the needle. I lined up my hand. Then I brought the tip down until it pricked your delicate skin.
You stiffened immediately.
“One move and I push,” I said. “It will go right through your eye and into your brain.”
“What is that?” You frowned. “It’s from the sewing machine, isn’t it?” Then the corners of your mouth moved, and you started laughing. “Does that mean you’ve stitched me up?”
I jabbed the needle into your eye, not hard, but enough to let you know I was serious … enough to stop your laughter. You flinched away, bashing your head back into the tree.
“I want the keys to your car,” I said. “Give me them now and I won’t push any harder.”
“Of course, you want to escape. I thought we were getting over that.” You sighed. “Let me come with you.”
“No.”
Cautiously, you opened your other eye. You found my gaze. “You’ll die out there, Gem. Let me come.”
“Why would I take you? I want to get away from you.”
You kept looking at me. I wondered if you were going to try to scare me, try to threaten me with what you would do if I didn’t do what you wanted. I kept a firm pressure on your eyelid.
“Tell me where that mine site is.”
“Trust me,” you whispered. “It can’t be like this.”
“Yes it can. Tell me where it is, where are the people?”
With my other arm, I felt down your shirt, checking your chest pockets. Then I went for your shorts. You didn’t resist. Maybe you liked me feeling you up, or maybe you didn’t have the strength to argue that day. I found a single car key resting against your left thigh, in the bottom corner of your shorts pocket. I grasped it tightly. I didn’t know what to do then. Should I keep holding the needle to your eye and make you walk me to your car? Stab you with it for real? Or should I just run?
In the end you decided it for me. You started laughing again. You reached up and grabbed my arm. Before I realized it, you’d dragged the needle away from your eye. You looked at me, with both eyes, your hand gripped tight around my wrist.
“Don’t be pathetic,” you said, your words clear and controlled. “If you’re really that desperate, Gem, just go. See how far you get.”
I was gone before you’d finished the sentence. I held that key so tight, thinking you’d be after me at any moment, pushing me back down to the ground with those strong arms. I didn’t look back. I ran straight through the saltbush, the spiky leaves scratching against my legs. A sprig caught on my shorts and I took it with me. I hardly felt it. I leaped over a small termite mound. I could see your car, parked next to your painting shed, with its hood pointing forward to the desert. I just hoped you’d left some things in the trunk … water, supplies, gas. I hurtled through the opening to the camel pen. The camel got up and trotted toward me. But I sped past her.
“Bye, girl,” I panted. “Sorry I can’t take you, too.”
She ran beside me for a few yards, her loping stride worth about three paces of my own. I wanted to let her out but couldn’t risk the time.
I got to the car and jammed the key into the door. It didn’t turn. Too stiff. Or I had the wrong key. I wrenched it from side to side, almost snapping it off. Then I realized the door wasn’t locked anyway. I pulled it open, and it creaked loudly, stiff on its hinges.
I looked back. Bad move. You were walking from the Separates toward me, your arms and the red basket swinging by your sides. You weren’t hurrying. I don’t think you thought I could drive, you seemed convinced I couldn’t escape. But I knew I could. I pulled myself up into the driver’s seat. Slammed the door. Shoved the key in the ignition. My feet were a long way from the pedals, but the chair lever was too clogged up with sand to correct it. I sat on the edge of the seat. The steering wheel was so hot I couldn’t hold my hands against it for long. There was no air in that car. Just heat. I tried to remember what Dad had said: Turn the ignition, foot on the clutch, gear in neutral. Or was it gear in first? I glanced back at you. You were walking faster, shouting something to me, but I couldn’t make it out. You were through the camel pen.
I turned the key. The car lurched into life and made a huge hop across the dirt. And that moment when the car surged forward, I thought I had done it. I was leaving! Then my foot slipped, and it stopped. Stalled. My chest bashed into the steering wheel.
“Come on, come on!” I shouted, thumping it. You were about thirty feet away, less probably. “Just move!”
You were shouting something, too. I pumped my foot against the pedals, rocking my body, almost willing the car forward. Something wet was running down my cheeks, sweat or tears, blood for all I knew. You were holding your arms out toward me in some kind of plea.
“Why, Gemma?” you were saying. “Why do this?”
But I knew why. Because it was my only chance, because I didn’t know when I’d leave this place again. I shifted back into neutral. I turned the key. I don’t know how I was remembering how to do it all. It was like a different part of me had taken over, a more grown-up, logical part that remembered these things. I pressed the accelerator, not too much. And the car didn’t stall; it just rumbled, waiting. When I’d watched you the other day, you’d eased the clutch off slowly. I tried to do the same, while pressing down farther on the accelerator with my other foot. The car roared back. I gripped the steering wheel, keeping me balanced on the edge of the seat. You were coming.
You suddenly realized that I might actually do it. You started running toward me, your face twisting into an angry shout. You threw the basket at the car and it clunked against the roof. Sprigs of plants spilled down the windshield. But the car was still roaring, straining like a dog on its leash, waiting to escape. I eased off the clutch. I tried to be gentle, tried doing it like you had done, but I screeched off into the sand with a wheel burn that would have made my friends proud. I screamed so loud then, I’m surprised the search parties didn’t hear.
But you heard. Your face was right beside the window, your hands pressing against the glass and clawing at the door, your eyes hard. I pushed the accelerator farther down, and the car bunny-hopped in the sand. I felt the tires spinning. You dived at the car, your hands scrabbling at the side mirror. You got a grip and hung on.