Mullumbimby (24 page)

She looked around for Twoboy then, and discovered him propped in front of the pet shop, pursuing an ongoing project.

‘Let me outta here, you cunts,' Twoboy enunciated in a low clear whisper. The parrot cast a fascinated eye over him.

‘Probably trying to work out if you're a person or a tree,' Jo said as she joined him, flipping his long dreads up in the air. The parrot flapped its wings loudly inside its steel cage.

‘Hello, cocky,' it said, turning its head sideways to get a better look at its visitors.

‘Let me outta here, you cunts,' Twoboy repeated patiently, and
was answered with another banal greeting. He pursed his lips and shook his head. He'd been trying to revolutionise the bird for ages. Was it a slow learner, or was he a bad teacher? Probably it needed lessons more often than once a week.

‘We should just let it out straight up, eh,' Jo proposed, resting a fingertip on the sliding door of the cage. Bloody pet shop, caging and wiring up anything they could. Fence em in, boys, fence em in. Make everything in the world live inside a tight little metal square, so we can feel safe.

‘If I was still twenty and the Angriest Black Man in the World, I would,' Twoboy replied, not taking her seriously.

Fuck it, thought Jo, as the bird's yellow crest rose in wary response to her finger. She slid the door wide open and stepped away from the cage. Let nature take its course, she thought. Let the rivers run free, and the cockies fly high.

‘Christ, Jo, what are ya doing?' Twoboy slid the door back into place before the bird had a chance to react. Inside, the shop attendant had stopped fussing about with goldfish and was staring suspiciously at the two dark figures beyond the glass.

‘Striking a blow for liberty!' Jo laughed an anarchist's laugh and opened the door wide a second time. ‘Look at it, poor thing, sitting there like a fucken martyr to white Australian values.'

Twoboy quickly closed the cage again, then took Jo by the hand and marched her briskly around the corner of the building, to where the creek looped behind dense thickets of beach hibiscus. Jo stumbled a little, noticing, beneath her great surprise at being swept away from the caged bird, how much rubbish had been washed up against the wall of the shopping centre by the last high tide. A dozen brown iced-coffee bottles lay alongside torn plastic bags, bits of white styrofoam and old rusted Coke cans. Someone out there was missing a near new Adidas shoe as well. Jo felt a familiar sense of despair that her country was subject to such treatment.

They reached a spot well away from the shops and Twoboy stopped. When Jo was with him, he lectured, interrupting her
indignant protests, she always,
always
had to be thinking of the dugai law, and the consequences of breaking it–

‘Oh, for fuck's sake...' Jo began, pulling her hand free in irritation.

‘Look at me,' Twoboy insisted, as he released her hand. He threw his arms wide in demonstration, his brow furrowed and his tone grim. ‘Look at me, Jo! I'm a big, powerful, educated black man! Nobody –
nobody
– in this country, except for a few Goories, thinks that I'm a good idea. And you want to break the law when you're standing beside me? Do you think I can afford to get locked up
now,
with the case about to go before the tribunal? Christ almighty – what were ya thinking!'

Jo stood riveted by the incandescent anger in Twoboy's stance.

‘But it wasn't you that opened the cage,' she argued, ‘and I wouldn't let you go down for something I did.'

Twoboy laughed a short, harsh laugh and shook his head at her naiveté. It was a hell of a long time since Jo had to worry much about police, living in the liberal northern rivers with her ambiguous colour, her female good looks and a straight job that kept her off the street each day.

‘As if any white gunjies are going to take a look at me and keep on going,' he told her angrily. ‘I've got Cop Killer written all over me. There's any street crime within bloody cooee of me and I'll be the one responsible, Jo, come on down and smell the coffee, girl.'

Twoboy's chest heaved as he stared at Jo, assessing whether or not he was going to be safe around her.

‘I just feel so sorry for him, poorfella,' Jo muttered. ‘I wasn't trying to get you in any shit.'

‘I know,' Twoboy said. ‘And if it was up to me I'd drown the prick who invented birdcages in his own piss. But when you look like me you learn to pick your fights, Jo. Right now the only fight that matters a pinch of shit is the one with the tribunal. Everything else has to be on hold till after October, okay?'

‘Okay,' said Jo in a small voice, secretly vowing to come back to the shop alone and free the bird.

‘Alright then.'

Twoboy sighed and put his arm around Jo's shoulders. They walked together across the car park towards the Commodore. From its cage at the front of the pet shop, Jo saw, the cockatoo observed them weaving their way through the parked vehicles, and perhaps a new and unnameable feeling rose up in the bird's breast, for its yellow crest bounced fully forward with fresh vitality, and it spread its white wings wide–

‘Let me
outta
here, you cunts!' the bird screeched, bringing the shop attendant at a dead run.

‘You there?' yelled Therese the next afternoon, slamming the Astra door harder than necessary, then walking straight into a faceful of low-hanging mango blossom.

Jo had just managed to fix the busted sprayer and was about to attack the baby camphors which were flourishing in the dip. ‘How'd ya be?' she asked, putting the sprayer down now. Warrigal and Daisy let out belated woofles when they noticed Therese approach. ‘Yeah real good guard dogs you are,' Jo told them. Not.

Therese flung herself onto the veranda steps and lowered her head into her hands.

Jo got two beers and silently handed one over.

With stubbies cracked, the saga began: Therese was really getting divorced this time, cos she was fucken
over
it. Amanda's mother had fallen for the umpteenth time last night. Nothing broken, but Amanda had received a testy summons from the family. She had to come to Brisbane and stay with her mother for a month while the soft tissue damage healed and the others, who claimed they'd done their share and then some, got on with their busy, busy,
busy
lives–

‘Do you know how sick I am of being the disgusting family secret?'

‘A month,' Jo repeated doubtfully.

‘I could fucken strangle Denise,' Therese added savagely, her jaw thrust forward, shaking a fist beside her ear. ‘We just about had Mary
agreeing to sign up for respite care a few months back, till Denise went and told her that she didn't need it. Like
she's
gonna look after her, the maggoty white fuck.' Then Therese adopted a stubborn old-lady tone: ‘I keep telling you, I don't
need
any help. I just need someone to pick me up when I fall over, that's all...' Christ. When every day she's on the phone, complaining that she could be dead for all anyone cares, and why won't Amanda just come back to live in Wynumn and look after her?'

Therese sculled a mouthful of beer and then let loose a roar of frustration at the African tulip tree. Two king parrots feeding on its blossom bolted for their lives, flapping wildly away over the top of the house. Jo watched them go until they were dark specks over the dam, headed for Wollumbin before they slowed, at the rate they were going.

‘Settle down, you're scaring the horses, mate. Why can't Denise do it, then?' Jo said, toying with the thin shoulder straps of the sprayer, testing the weight of fifteen litres of dilute glyphosate. ‘Tell her she's undermining the institution of marriage,' she added with a grin.

Therese laughed bitterly. Denise was in Canberra on business for the next two weeks. ‘And she never lifts a fucken finger to help anybody else if there isn't a buck in it,' she added. ‘Do you know any hit men? Someone's gotta die this time.'

‘I know a wog in Mooball who'll bust faces for a carton,' Jo responded, unable to mask a broadening grin. ‘But I must say I'm not hearing the dharma here.'

‘I'm a Buddhist, luvvy, I never said I was a fucken saint.'

‘Greed. Anger. Delusion,' Jo recited piously.

‘Yep, good description of Amanda's shithead family. Not to mention homophobia, racism and fucktardness.' Therese's dark eyes flashed. ‘I really wanna get bombed and ring em up and tell em what I think of em, the maggots.'

‘Well, before you do that, grab another beer and come and watch me spray these camphors, mate. That's the only kinda killing I want round here,' Jo ordered. Picking the sprayer up again, she wondered
if Amanda would really go to Brisbane, and whether Therese would make good on last year's threats to end their relationship if she did. Ageing parents were an issue Jo herself would never need to face: a stoned driver on the wrong side of the Gold Coast Highway in 1989 had made sure of that.

As they walked up to the paddock, Therese's furious energy translated itself into action: she insisted Jo fit her with the backpack and show her how to operate the wand, then let her loose on nature. Every so often, Therese came back to where Jo was sitting beside the Top Dam with the glyphosate concentrate and a diluting bucket, and refilled the plastic reservoir of the sprayer. Waiting for the fifth refill, Therese finally cracked a smile.

‘I must've been a serial killer in my previous life. I'm enjoying this,' she said, directed a final dribble from the almost-empty sprayer onto a yellow fireweed.

‘Well, I hate using the shit,' Jo answered, screwing her face up, ‘but camphors are camphors. Hey, leave that fireweed, it's easy to pull out by hand – the less poison on my land, the better.'

‘Do you reckon Denise'd shrivel and turn brown in four days if I sprayed her with Roundup?' Therese grinned and mimed dousing her sister-in-law.

‘I certainly don't think it'd do her much good,' Jo laughed, ‘I always have a big shower and a couple of cups of green tea after I spray, to mop up some of the toxins. There. You're good to go. But only the camphors, eh?'

‘Roger wilco,' said Therese with satisfaction, heading back to kill the exotic saplings that would take over the entire valley, given half a chance. Large, attractive, fast-growing trees that didn't drop branches, they had seemed the ideal schoolyard tree to some long-forgotten bureaucrat who had installed them in playgrounds across New South Wales. Now the hills and valleys of Bundjalung country were cloaked with the green cancer that choked out the native trees, and were pretty useless to most of the indigenous animals, too. One day, Jo had promised the land on her arrival, only indigenous trees and plants would
grow on her farm. She would wipe out the camphors on her twenty acres before she died, along with the fireweed, the crofton weed and the lantana. If the task didn't kill her first, that is.

‘How's the art coming?' Jo asked Ellen, ruffling her hair to show that she approved of the Miracle of the Washing Up. Ellen jerked her head away, and soaped the pan from last night's dinner, scratching hard with a scourer at the dried film of soy sauce, before placing it in the rack with their two plates, two forks, and an assortment of coffee cups.

‘Alright.'

‘Gonna be ready for tomorrow? Three hundred bucks, remember?' Jo pressed, hoping in vain for more information. She still didn't even know which drawing Ellen was going to submit.

Jo had decided not to say anything about the Granny Nurrung problem. Hopefully the art teachers together could overrule any god-bothering opposition, and, anyway, there wasn't any point being negative. If Twoboy had taught her anything, it was the value of enthusiasm. You Got To Accentuate the Positive, he sang down the phone line nearly every time he called, confounding her inner pessimist and putting the bloody earworm in her head till she could scream.

‘No,' Ellen oozed sarcastically, ‘it slipped my mind, that three hundred dollars, I mean why would
that
be something I'd remember? I've already finished, okay? Just don't ask to see it.'

Jo stuck her tongue in her top lip and gazed at Ellen.
No work of art is ever finished, only abandoned.
Who said that? She couldn't remember. Plus, this kid needs a haircut. Tight dark curls spiralled wildly over Ellen's forehead and down her shoulders. In fact–

‘Is that a dread in your hair?' Jo asked, peering, and a little disturbed. Ellen stepped backwards, hand to her head.

‘Maybe.'

Jo cocked her head, imagining Ellen with dreadlocks. A part of her
didn't like the idea of her little girl looking like a Nimbin feral. On the other hand, Ellen would be on any hypocritical opposition to dreads like – as the Yanks said – a duck on a june bug. Whatever the hell a june bug was. What would a Bundjalung equivalent be? Like a mibun on a rabbit? Like crows on roadkill? Like a white consultant on an Aboriginal community?

‘Hmm. Are you sure you want to go there?'

‘No. That's why I've only got one.'

‘Fair enough.' Jo paused. ‘Well, what about Athena?'

Ellen shrugged.

‘Can't you do it? I did the washing up.'

Big green eyes found a razor's edge between defiance and pleading. That jahjam is getting very freckly, Jo noted, as well as tall. Have to be onto her to use sunblock this summer.

‘Mum – stop looking for excuses. It's time you got back on her. Otherwise, why even have horses?'

Jo looked away, down at a corner of the kitchen floor, knowing that Ellen had a point. Except now it was
horse,
singular, a fact which still burned in her gut. She poured and drank a glass of water at the sink, upending the glass beside the gleaming frypan. Perfect, even the stainless steel grooves of the sink were shiny and suds-free.

‘Okay. I'll ride up and see Chris. Do some homework but, eh? You won't get any done this weekend if we're painting the ute.'