Mullumbimby (18 page)

‘Don't smile, ya face'll crack,' Twoboy said through red-veined eyes.

Jo didn't answer him. He'd obviously had a smoke since heading off to grab lunch. Coming to Mardi Grass first had been a mistake; they should have driven through Lismore on the way to the carnival, not postponed it until they were leaving. Now, with Twoboy thoroughly bombed, she would have to drive – and whatever mystery was drawing her to the western horizon would have to make itself known on top of the practical mental necessities of steering and navigating and not snapping at her man for getting into the yarndi that was fucking with the heads of so many blackfellas around the country. He's an adult, Jo told herself, thirty-seven years old. You're not his fucken mother. But it was bloody stupid not to have anticipated this and gone to Lismore first. Thank God Ellen had stayed behind in Mullum.

‘I think we should hook it soon,' Jo proposed. ‘I gotta work out who's dragging me to Lismore.' Hopefully to Lismore, she thought. Hopefully not to Kyogle, or Ku Klux Casino.

Twoboy pouted.

‘The mob are having a jam ... River's boys are there ... and Johnny Didge ... and that Gadigal cousin of Chris's, the fella with only one arm. Wanna come check it out?' Twoboy asked.

If only you knew, Jo thought, remembering mad twelve-hour jams in her past life.

‘Nah. Like I said, I wanna get going to Lismore.'

‘Well, I might go that way for a bit, then.' Twoboy had tricky alliances to build and maintain with the local traditional owners, not to mention the lure of the music itself.

‘Yeah, okay, you go off and party with ya mates.' Jo hated the way she sounded, but couldn't seem to budge the anger that was burning in her since Comet died. ‘And I'll go and work out this important business on me own.'

‘There's more than one way back to the Dreamtime, darlin,' Twoboy told her, proffering a joint. She viewed it with withering scorn.

‘Oh, what a load of crap! More than one way to the fucken psych ward, ya mean,' Jo snapped. With Laz's boy chronically suicidal from hydro, how could he even touch the stuff?

‘Suit yerself. I didn't know you was such a bloody dugai,' Twoboy said, when it became obvious that Jo wasn't about to soften, and he sauntered away towards the musicians.

Yeah, you go smoke up some more, Jo told him sarcastically under her breath, and find some little white girls while yer at it who want a black souvenir of their trip to the bush. A thrill of alarm ran through her at the thought of Twoboy hooking up with some random stranger, a feeling she decided to drown at the pub.

Jo had finished one schooner and was debating whether to have a second or take the back road to Lismore alone, when a slim blonde woman appeared, silhouetted in the doorway of the bar. The woman, an attractive thirty-something, wore a short green dress with a denim jacket over the top, and was yelling drunken accusations at top note:

‘Are you the fucken slut dog that wants smashing? Eh? Eh!'

As a muso, Jo had witnessed this scene a thousand times in a thousand bars. Fascinated despite herself at the drama and likely violence, she looked behind her at the other drinkers. The faces there stared back and, mystified, Jo discovered that
she
was the object of the woman's fury.

Denim Jacket had covered the ground between street and bar quickly, and was suddenly in Jo's face, breathing bourbon fumes and reeking of cones. Oh pure class, sister, pure class.

Jo slid off the bar stool and stood ready to defend herself, hands dangling loose by her side. She noted with a mixture of relief and alarm that the bar attendant had quickly removed all the nearby empty glasses. But where was the bloody bouncer? Town full to busting with cops for Mardi Grass and no law and order in the actual pub. A semicircle of interested onlookers soon coalesced around the two women.

‘I
said,
is ya the fucken big hole that stole my man while I was in lockup?'

‘What?'
Jo reeled as several kinds of new information collided at once.

‘You binung goonj as well, ya fucken slut?'

So you're a blackfella, thought Jo in mild surprise.

‘What man? What the fuck are ya talking about?' Jo flung her arms up in consternation.

‘What man?' The woman dripped with angry sarcasm, hands welded to her hips. ‘Twoboy, that what man! My man! Till I gets out and find he's got some neeew woman, everyone reckons. Nevermind we sposed to go Laura next week!'

Jo stood facing the woman, paralysed with angry confusion. If only everything and everybody would go away. If only things could return to how they were before Comet died, before Twoboy arrived, before the divorce stole her real family away. If only life could be simple, and easy, and sane. But
if only
wasn't going to stop any of this. She had to actually do something, had to act before she found herself stuck permanently in the middle of a Jerry Springer episode.

The woman had a couple of mates lurking behind her; there was no way of knowing whether they were ready to step in or not. Safest to assume they would, with the bouncer still MIA. Jo was taller than the blonde woman, and a bit heavier, but she was no pub brawler. Denim Jacket, on the other hand, looked like she was in her element.

‘What's your name, love?' Jo spoke as calmly as she could manage, given the surges of adrenalin pumping through her like she was hooked up to a fire hose. Don't lose it, she told herself. Do Not Lose It. This silly bloody woman's done nothing to you ... not yet.

‘Carly Wetherby, don't wear it out!' The woman was breathing from high in her chest, gulping air.

‘Well, Carly Wetherby, here's the drill. If Twoboy
wants
to be your man, then you're very bloody welcome to him. He's out there yarn-died up somewhere, so you go fucken talk to him about it.'

Jo flung a furious hand towards the door, then narrowed her eyes at the woman. Tried to imagine what life Carly had lived to bring her to this point, stoned and fulldrunk, about to punch on in a pub with someone she'd never met. Ready to bash a stranger and wake up back in custody with a hangover and a whole lotta nothing going on. It seemed unbelievable to Jo that Twoboy could have ever been with this person, but that was a conversation for another time and place.

‘Oh, he wanna be my man, orright,' Carly spat. ‘Don't you worry bout that!'

Jo indicated the open door to the street and Carly paused. Beneath the jeans and t-shirt Jo was clearly a ball of muscle waiting to be triggered into action. Carly teetered.

‘I'm telling ya, he's my man – so ya better back off real fucken quick, goddit?' Carly snapped.

‘You got nothing to worry about there,' Jo replied, holding her anger in with increasing difficulty, ‘you're welcome to him, so why don't ya just go find him?' It occurred to her that any of the dozen wooden chairs within reach would make excellent weapons to defend herself with, if Carly decided to take things up a notch.

The cops arrived as the bouncers ran in from the back bar.

‘What's up this time, Carly?' the bouncer asked, provoking another angry torrent of abuse directed at Jo. The female cop seized her by the upper arms and propelled her unceremoniously into the waiting paddy wagon. The crowd outside booed; a couple of teenagers boldly kicked at the wagon, then melted back into the masses.

‘You here to make trouble too, are ya?' the male constable snarled at Jo. She turned to him with a crinkled brow and spread her hands.

‘Do I look like trouble?' she asked him, a little shrill.

‘You tell me,' the cop glowered, looking like he was itching to unsnap his handcuffs. He glanced at the bouncer, who gave a small headshake.

‘No,' Jo said tightly, ‘I don't. I'm just having a quiet beer.'

‘Didn't sound very fucking quiet to me. You wanna watch yourself, alright?'

The cop looked her up and down, threw in another long blue-eyed glare for good measure, and then sauntered back outside to where, from inside the paddy wagon, Carly was leading the crowd in song.

Jo shook her head and turned to the bar for the second beer she had intended to pass up. There was a conversation to be conducted with Twoboy about Carly Wetherby, but it wasn't a conversation she was in any great hurry to have.

‘You okay?' asked the nose-studded woman serving behind the bar, as she replaced the trays of empty glasses. ‘She's a bit of a drama queen, our Carly.'

‘Oh, yeah, you know. Never a dull moment,' Jo answered into her beer, a bit shaky on it. Not with Twoboy in my life, anyways.

‘The woman's totally fucken womba,' Twoboy protested as the Commodore sped towards Murwillumbah. ‘And I
told
you I had a psycho girfriend in Ipswich for a while.'

Jo narrowed her eyes at him and shifted the car into third, fishtailing around the corner so fast that she frightened herself.

‘You didn't tell me she thought you were still together!' she argued, accelerating out of the bend and spraying gravel. A family of waterhens on the verge scattered in fear of their lives.

‘It didn't occur to me. I thought she had another six months to serve!' Twoboy grabbed onto the handle above the door in alarm.

‘And that would have been alright, would it?' Jo asked in disbelief.
Out of sight, out of mind. How did intelligent men get off, behaving like such cretins?

Twoboy shrugged.

‘I just didn't think it was an issue,' he said. ‘How the fuck do I know what's going through her tiny mind? C'mon, Jo. You can't seriously think...'

Jo was silent as she digested Twoboy's protests. He was right about one thing. He had definitely mentioned the crazy woman, all those weeks ago. He hadn't said she was locked up though. Or what for – dealing yarndi.

‘What were you even doing with her?' she asked with genuine curiosity. It seemed completely out of character.

‘Horizontal folk dancing, mainly,' Twoboy joked, then pulled up at Jo's expression. ‘Oh, I dunno, we hooked up at a party, and then after that she'd call me Friday nights and it was always pretty easy to go and have a drink and ... well, you know. It wasn't anything serious.'

Not for you maybe, Casanova, reflected Jo. Cruising through life with no thought for the vulnerable women you hurt along the way.

‘How long did this go on?'

‘Three or four months. I was about to end it when she got busted. I was like, hasta la vista, baby.' Twoboy was looking out the window and jigging his left leg.

‘So did you tell her the good news today?' Jo asked tightly. Twoboy looked at her in suprise.

‘Yeah, of course! I lied and told her I was getting engaged, actually, so there'd be no room for confusion. Ya gotta be clear with these people.' Twoboy took Jo's left hand off the steering wheel and kissed it, laughing.

‘Wanna get married, my darlin?' he twinkled through still slightly reddened eyes.

Jo snatched her hand back. Dickhead.

‘So I suppose she's on the warpath now,' Jo muttered, picturing Carly finding her alone on the farm and setting to work with waddies.

‘Nah,' said Twoboy, ‘she's just working off some prison shit, that's all. She'll have a new man to harass this time next week, nothing surer. I promise.' Twoboy used his index finger to tuck Jo's hair behind her ear, and then he left his hand resting comfortably on the back of her neck, massaging it. His voice softened as he said that Carly was irrelevant – didn't Jo understand that? Today had been about meeting with some of the neighbouring traditional owners, yarning them up about the Native Title fight, and making sure that Uncle Oscar hadn't managed to undermine the Jackson position since their last meeting. The smoke around the fire had cemented the neutrality of the younger lads for the time being, and Twoboy was well pleased with his day's work.

‘I hope you're right,' Jo told him, ‘cos I didn't sign up for any of this psycho bullshit. She was like that woman in the Blues Brothers.' She barely slowed as the Commodore roared across a narrow one-lane bridge.

‘I'm sorry, babe. Maybe I did need to talk it through with her. But it's all over now, ancient history.' Twoboy shuffled CDs. After a minute he looked up. ‘Why we headed this way – I thought we were going home through Lismore?'

Jo explained in taut words of one syllable that her head was overflowing with the day's dramas, and she didn't feel at all in tune with whatever was dragging her over to the sunset side of Bundjalung country.

It would be a waste of time to detour through Lismore in this mood. Which meant the entire trip had been a day spent off the farm when she could have been building the cattle yard, or spraying those bloody camphors, or riding Comet–

‘Hey–' Twoboy said, smiling.

Jo grunted back without taking her gaze off the road. It was hit-a-roo and wreck-the-car time, just on dusk. And why should she smile
back anyway? Twoboy was a long way from her good books, now. How very typical. Stupid-arse men with their leftover relationships and their selfishness and their inevitable need to go and get stoned when she had important things to do. Well, fuck him. Putting her priorities last, and–

‘Jo!'

‘What?'

‘Did we just have our first fight?' Twoboy teased, poking the now-healed scar on her upper arm. ‘We did, hey? Didn't we?' His teeth gleamed very white in the fading light.

‘Fuck up and let me drive, or I'll strangle you with ya own dreads.'

Twoboy gave a great bellow of laughter. Then he slid The Last Kinection inside the CD player and disappeared into the music all the way to Murwillumbah, while Jo quietly stewed behind the steering wheel.

‘But I'm nearly an hour late already!' Ellen erupted as Jo drove up onto the footpath beside the cemetery and parked the ute.

It was Saturday afternoon. Ellen held a wrapped present and was wearing her favourite top of the moment, the one that informed the world its owner would rather be sleeping. What happens at fourteenth-birthday slumber parties these days? mused Jo. Probably not a lot of sleeping. Probably better, in fact, for a single parent not to dwell on the question too much.

‘I'll be two minutes, tops,' Jo promised through the open window. Did the jahjam think she wanted to spend a second longer at work than she needed to on a Saturday, for Chrissake?

Ellen muttered darkly and hunched down in the passenger seat, oppression radiating from every pore.

Jo sprinted a few steps and scissors jumped over the weldmesh fence. She grinned broadly as she landed on the balls of her feet among the outermost headstones. That was the upside to slaving over a hot farm; she was as fit as she'd been when, at twenty, she'd jammed all week and played loud sweaty gigs every weekend.

As she slid her key into the bronze lock of the storeroom, Jo heard a small animal scuttle away from her in fright.
Rattus rattus,
no doubt, the scourge of the new world. Old world. Basho wanted her to bait the vermin, but Basho could go jump off a cliff. It was bad enough that millions of camphors had to be sprayed to stop
them taking over her and every other farm in northern New South Wales. Rodents in the storeroom were a small price to pay to know that
mulanyin
wasn't hunting carcinogenic frogs in the roadside ditch; to see the parrots and fairy-wrens and butcherbirds on the farm and know that their eggs wouldn't fracture in a mess of poisoned fragments before the chicks had a chance to hatch. Long Live the Mullum Organic Rodent, Jo insisted to Basho's bafflement – although she wouldn't have said no to an occasional visit from a deadly organic cat.

‘Two minutes is way up!' called Ellen, drumming her left hand urgently on the outer panel of the ute door to underscore the point. Hmm. The kid's really keen on this birthday party. Were there boys involved? Drugs? Boys
and
drugs?
Girls
and drugs?

‘Yeah, rightyo, don't get ya flaps in a knot,' Jo replied, retrieving her forgotten phone from beside the sink.

As she fumbled hurriedly to lock up, Greasy Hair walked slowly past the storeroom to her habitual perch. Sundays were the usual time for families to come and visit, the day when fresh flowers appeared on the graves and weeding was done by hands other than hers. On Mondays, Jo was always interested to see if any of her silent charges had had a visit. But it was Thursdays that Greasy Hair came, as though in her isolation she was unwilling to belong even to the diffuse company of mourners. She would spend an hour sitting beside the grave of Jemima Smith, and then take herself silently away again for another seven days. Unable to contain her curiosity, Jo had asked her once if Jemima was family. No, the woman said quietly, she was my best friend, and Jo hadn't dared to ask any more questions. But now Greasy Hair had turned up on a Saturday. Jo made a mental note to check if it was Jemima's death anniversary this week.

As Jo headed back to the ute, Greasy Hair caught her eye and lifted a mournful hand in greeting. The woman's bearing spoke of an ongoing struggle to retain dignity: cheap K-mart sneakers with worn soles, old purple acne scarring on thin pale cheeks.

‘G'day mate,' Jo offered, feeling unusually friendly. ‘Here on Saturday this week?' That was how social interaction worked, wasn't it? You stated the bloody obvious, and then they did, and then ultimately, after endless ritualistic chitchat, someone finally said something containing information or meaning and then there was actually a point to the conversation?

‘Yeah. I can't make it out this Thursday.' The woman answered, doubling her annual word total in one fell swoop. Jo nodded, encouraged by this uncharacteristic verbosity. It was tempting to offer Greasy Hair a cup of tea to enjoy while she sat by Jemima in the cool winter sun. How bereft would a person have to be to visit a grave every single week? How grief-stricken, or how lonely? Jo was on the verge of suggesting it, and going back to unlock the shed where the kettle lived, when Ellen screeched from outside the fence in indignation.

‘Maarm! Can you hurry up?'

‘Ah, bloody hell, no rest for the wicked. See you next time,' Jo said hastily.

‘Who was that?' Ellen asked, crankily adjusting her bra strap with unnecessary force. Jo told her about Greasy Hair's Thursday visits, adding casually that she'd been tempted to offer the solitary woman a cuppa. Ellen looked daggers at her mother.

‘You know I'm an hour late for my party, and you
still
want to make her a cup of tea?'

‘You'll get to your party,' Jo retorted. ‘God only knows what kind of life she's got.' How cruel the young are, she reflected. How selfish and hard.

‘Well, thanks for thinking of your daughter first, before some complete stranger.' Ellen folded her arms and frowned at the dashboard. ‘Or don't I count?'

‘She's not a “complete stranger”. She comes here every week.' Jo realised with a sudden small shock that this was true. She didn't know the woman's name, or her occupation, if she had one, nor did she know where she lived or with whom. She didn't even know the exact relationship of Greasy Hair to poor dead Jemima, whether
friend
was a
euphemism for
lover
or not. But even with all this lack of information, Greasy Hair had still turned into something that wasn't a stranger. She was an ongoing presence in Jo's life, and now Jo felt an odd sense of unease develop, as though the woman's unspoken pain and isolation had somehow managed to insinuate itself into her own days.

‘You always do this!' Ellen blazed at her mother. Hot teenage tears were building behind her eyes and she was going to yell them away. It was an old story: apparently Jo had endless time and compassion for the world,
sans
Ellen – but not for her, who had to be as stolid and tough as Jo herself was, and who had better not require affection more than once every blue moon.

‘It's not fair,' howled the murderous two-year-old inside Ellen's chest. ‘Not fair at all.'

‘Always do bloody what?' Jo snapped, accelerating past the hospital.
Always.
Christ, teenagers. When would Ellen grow out of it and turn back into the delightful person she'd been at eleven? I at least had had the grace to run away to Aunty Barb. Ellen, on the other hand, Jo sensed, was going to stay and fight her mother's authority to the bitter death. She'd tried giving her
On the Road,
followed by
Rule of the Bone,
but no good. Things were altogether too easy for her daughter, Jo reflected, at 287 Tin Wagon Road.

‘Nothin. Forget it.' Put other people first. Make me feel like an accident, an afterthought. The freak mistake that killed your music and ruined your life. Ellen turned away as the tears trembled inside her eyelids, blurring the cane paddocks along Main Arm Road into a fuzzy green waterscape.

Jo glanced at Ellen's cold narrow shoulder and at the back of her head, and gritted her teeth at both these. The gulf between them was widening each day. Sometimes she could almost feel it physically, the tearing apart of mother and child with words and looks; with deeds done and undone. A psychologist would probably say the kid was separating from her, all very normal, but whatever the reason, Ellen was rapidly turning into a royal adolescent pain in the arse.
Brattus brattus.
Time she went and had some time with her
father in Sydney. Maybe Paul held the missing magical ingredient that would bring her happy curly-haired Ellen back, make those green eyes sparkle again.

‘Sorry, sister, no can do,' Therese said, as she stacked her marking into a tall perilous column beside the computer. ‘We're going to Brisbane Friday night. Amanda's got Mary for the weekend.'

‘Again?' Jo asked. Amanda had been up to Wynumn twice in the past five weeks. Therese nodded slow exaggerated nods as she raised her eyebrows high, meaning Amanda's mother was bloody hard work, especially after a week on Special Class at Ocean Shores. She poked irritably at her marking tower, which was trembling and threatening to collapse onto the tiled floor.

‘Yes, again. Mary had another fall yesterday. And of course the family think Amanda's the total bitch from hell because she won't just move up and live with her till she drops off the perch.'

Jo grimaced sympathetically. Amanda's aged mother was in that hideous limbo world where she needed a fulltime carer and had none. Because Amanda wasn't out to half her family, it seemed obvious that she, an apparently single woman with no kids, was the ideal candidate for the job.

‘Serves the homophobic fuckers right if
they
end up doing it all. But daw, poor me – I'll hafta stay home and be Nigel No Friends!' Jo said, shelving her plan to go to Kym's for the weekend and snap herself out of the blues.

‘Can't Chris feed the animals?' Therese proposed.

‘Nah, she's been sick for a month. I really should go visit her.' But Jo knew Chris loathed visitors when she was sick; her mysterious depressions made her less welcoming of her friends, not more. ‘Ah, doesn't matter much. Ellen'll be old enough to leave at home one of these days. And anyways, I can't really afford the petrol.' Jo sighed a tiny sound of despair, meant only for her ears.

Therese gave her friend a sideways look from where she'd begun
emptying the dishwasher of its clean plates and glasses. She'd heard that same sigh from three of the special kids' mums this week.

‘You okay, mate?'

Jo's mouth twisted sideways. She shrugged with one shoulder. Yes. No. Maybe. She regularly lay awake thinking of fences and numbers; she went to sleep the same way, tossing and turning before sleep did finally arrive with its nightmares of unpaid bills and flooding creeks. And since their abortive trip to Lismore, a nagging anxiety about Twoboy had joined the other fears swirling in her head.

Twoboy was scrupulously respectful of Jo and Ellen, but his acid response to Carly had troubled her. In her worst moments, sleepless as the early morning light arrived on the eastern horizon, Jo could imagine the same male derision being turned in her direction one day. Twoboy was quick to reassure her when they were together, but the court case was reaching determination stage, and he'd barely been out of the city for three weeks. Jo had had plenty of time on her own since Mardi Grass to imagine what she had with Twoboy warping into just another tangle of unmet needs and unvoiced accusations. She had a recurring vision of him telling some other woman in a year's time, ‘Jo? Ah, she's bloody womba, I told you that. Ancient history'.

‘Talk to me, girlfriend,' Therese said, hopping backwards up onto the kitchen bench and peeling a bright orange mandarin that colour-matched the carp on her forearms.

Rather than answer, Jo turned away to a brochure on the fridge. Sangsurya Buddhist Centre.
Two days of mindfulness in the beautiful Byron Bay hinterland.
A grey-haired woman with familiar brown eyes looked out from beneath the heading.

‘You going to this?'

‘Bloody oath, she's amazing. You should come,' Therese's voice leapt.

‘Do I look like I need a fucking guru? Anyway, I'm broke, I'll just go fishing. The river's my church.' Poverty had one sole redeeming feature – it was the perfect excuse for getting out of stuff. But what
was it about those eyes? Were they blackly Eurasian like Therese's? No, that wasn't it.

Therese was giving her the unrelenting look that always made Jo uneasy. To stop herself from fidgeting under the microscope of friendship, Jo folded her arms and glared back.

‘So – you been getting down to the water much lately?' Therese probed.

Now Therese had one bossy hand on her hip, her lips pursed. ‘You've been fishing, swimming ... going for walks on the beach, I suppose?' Jo looked out the window. It had been countless weeks. Three months probably, since that night at Bruns beach with Chris. And even then she'd needed dragging away from the work of the farm, that early hauling and clearing and burning of old crap that had almost been forgotten now that the place was finally beginning to take shape and look like a home and not a rubbish dump.

‘Well?' Therese had her head to one side, mandarin peel wadded in one hand and her cheeks bulging with the soft juicy fruit.

‘I've been flat strap on the farm,' Jo said feebly, prompting a loud scornful raspberry from her friend.

‘I didn't think so. What if I shout you?' said Therese on impulse. ‘Go on. Do it this once, and I'll never hassle you about it again.' Her gaze didn't waver.

Jo fingered the brochure, intrigued by the clarity in the eyes of the teacher. Somebody with eyes like those might be able to see certain untellable things, Jo mused. Because nobody knew. Nobody else knew what it was like to wake in the night and be unable to get the picture of Comet drowning out of her mind, to endlessly imagine him being held underwater by the bloodied wire while the brown creek water filled his nostrils, his throat, his lungs. Nobody knew, because Jo absolutely refused to risk hearing the words:
but he was only a horse.

Maybe going on this retreat could help her sleep again. Or make the nightmares stop.

‘Whaddya got to lose?' Therese kept prodding away. ‘It's two days out of an entire lifetime. My shout.'

‘Ah, for fuck's sake,' Jo looked up, surprising both of them. ‘Alright, I'll go.'

Athena nosed in the corners of her feed bin, making it clang against the fence rail where it hung. Jo refused to think about the blank space ten metres away where Comet used to eat. She stroked the old mare's neck instead, leaning in to the smell and feel, the absolute comfort that was warm horse. Athena had grown a fuzzy winter coat and no longer looked much like the sleek thoroughbred she'd been at Main Arm in April. Ringed at a distance by four steers with unrealistic hopes of getting their moist black noses into her breakfast, Athena flattened her ears and looked around at them, boss of the paddock. When the very last pellet had been hunted down and devoured, the mare turned to go and drink from the bathtub by the front gate.