Absolution Creek (8 page)

Once clothed, Scrubber lit the gas stove for the last time, his fingers delving in the mess drawer. He scattered screwdrivers, spanners and redundant salad servers onto the sink. Outside the wind howled mercilessly, rattling broken weatherboard and aged glass.

‘Go your hardest,’ Scrubber mumbled, stabbing a hole in his belt with a metal kitchen skewer and tightening the leather another notch. By the time the kettle boiled and the tea leaves had steeped good and long, his saddle bags were packed. Supplies, camp oven and billy were about the extent of his needs. What the heck: he threw in a change of clothes. On the sink was a length of rubber tubing, the sawn-off ends smoothed by sandpaper. Scrubber swished it under the tap, dried it on the front of his shirt and rotated it into the hole in his neck. Though he doubted at his age the hole would close over, habit and the slightest improvement in his speech ensured the morning ritual continued. Now he was starting to feel a semblance of his old self.

The black tea made Scrubber’s gums ache and his bowels excitable, a familiar bodily state signifying the survival of another night. In celebration of the event he mushed up two slices of toast smeared with a near inch of Vegemite. Dog tilted his head, gobbled up his own share of toast, and washed it down with a bowl of water. If his Veronica were alive, Scrubber knew she’d be telling him to sit down and eat, to steady up a bit. Well, having spent his life either upright or horizontal he wasn’t changing now, not even for the whisper of a long-dead woman who’d argued that being pleasantly plump never killed anyone. It did Veronica. She was plain fat.

Now the leaving day was upon him, Scrubber opened the wardrobe. A mangle of clothes that were too big for him and a couple of Veronica’s floral dresses sat in a heap on the floor. He kicked the long-unused items to one side, pausing to give one of her scarfs a sniff. It was a mottled yellow affair and it still smelt of strawberries. Veronica’s signature scent was, in Scrubber’s mind, lolly water. Made from hard candy, he reckoned. However, he stuffed the scarf in his pocket before hesitating at the tin box, which was now revealed in the bottom of the wardrobe. He eyeballed the box for long minutes, his hands reaching out once, twice, before finally making a lunge for it and sitting the box on the end of his rumpled bed.

‘What ya reckon?’

Dog cocked his head sideways.

‘Hmm, figured as much.’ Scrubber eyed the box off a bit, scratched his stubbly chin; eyed it off some more. It was a business this repaying of an old debt. Dog, two front paws on the sagging bed frame, lowered his whiskered muzzle to the sheets and whined. With a glance heavenwards Scrubber raised the latch, the hinge flicking open easily. He took it as a sign and lifted the yellowing newspaper to reveal a leather draw-string pouch. He always was one for good serviceable items, the kind people didn’t make any more. Delicately he lifted the pouch clear of its nest and weighed the bag in one hand, then the other. The leather cord was intact and appeared strong. He tested the strength of the roughly modified tobacco pouch, ensuring it looped securely through the hand-stitched hide.

His task completed, Scrubber nodded at Dog, who gave himself up to such determined scratching with his hind leg that he fell over backwards, four legs flailing in the air like an upturned tortoise.

‘Dog, this ain’t no time for histrionics.’ Scrubber tied the pouch to his belt, knotting it once, twice. He grappled with a small brown paper parcel in the tin box and shoved it deep in his trousers. Then he picked up his swag and rifle, flicked off the single bare bulb, slammed the front door and wound the brass key in the lock, tossing it into the dark. There was nothing sentimental left in him, not for material things, anyway. Besides, it wasn’t like he could pack it all up in his coffin. Though, come to think of it, he didn’t plan on having one of those.

He stood on the hill, the wind blasting his face as it rolled up from the valley below. The eight hundred acres he still owned was a paltry reminder of what lies at the end of a bottle, although to be fair the drink probably didn’t come first. This was hard country, where granite thwarted livelihoods and winter could kill man and beast alike. The property deserved a last look at least. The best parts might be long gone, but Scrubber liked to think a cannier, younger person would put his toiling to good use. So he envisaged the wind-cropped paddocks, the rangy cattle, and he meandered along the creek with its rush of water and age-smoothed stones, his body never leaving the worn tread of the front door.

‘You ready then?’ Scrubber scraped his boots on the edge of the cement step.

Dog yawned into the misting air. Above, the frill of an eagle hawk’s wings was silhouetted against the sky.

Satisfied by his reflections, Scrubber skirted the fallen-down garage as he clumped to the stables. Three horses waited in anticipation, their nostrils flaring. They were a knowing triumvirate, and Scrubber, pleased to be fulfilling their fantasies, spoke to them low and gruff, his fingers covering the hole in his neck so the words could escape. He saddled the one he’d named Veronica, loaded Samsara and Petal with his goods, and shut the stable door behind them as he left.

A line of grey cloud hung low on the horizon. Scrubber didn’t go much for creeping dawns. The ones that came fast and shiny in summer appealed the most. Funny how these ones appeared more ominous as the years passed, as if they could catch him unawares. Scrubber waggled a finger at the sky. He had an agenda and his own timeframe. Neither God nor that thing in the east were getting him until it was good and done.

He left his turret of a house on the treeless peak as light fingered its way over the tuft of hills in the east. The horses were frisky for old girls and he steadied them with a tug of the halters and a slap across Veronica’s boney skull. A man had enough to put up with without suffering an extended show of enthusiasm.

Figuring nine miles a day, Scrubber reckoned on reaching his destination a bit past the winter solstice. It was a manageable ride of some 700 miles and, if done with purpose, achievable. The thing he liked the best about the venture, apart from finally honouring the oath, was the thought of looking over his shoulder as he headed west. The further he rode the longer the minutes would stretch. Scrubber could almost taste the extra days of life this undertaking would afford him.

Dog gave an excuse for a bark and settled into the morning, tongue hanging from one side of his mouth, tail swaying happily.

‘Anyone would think this was an adventure,’ Scrubber said as he stretched the cotton scarf protectively across his windpipe, patted the pouch at his waist and thought of the men in years past who’d tried to do their best by the girl Cora. None of them really succeeded. One would lose Cora to save her, another would end up dying for her. And him? Well, he killed for her.

Chapter 5

T
here was a scatter of leaves overhead, the creak of iron. The great branches of the leopardwood swayed above the homestead, the tree’s canopy stretching protectively over the building. The highest branches were twisted and dark as if a great fight had occurred to find both air and space as it grew upwards from within the homestead. The remaining branches, dense in both number and leaves, spread from the thick trunk, which leant precariously towards the outside of the building. It was as if some force had leant against the interior of the building and pushed it outwards, so that boards bulged from top to bottom. A single leaf fluttered to the base of the great tree to rest on the uneven floorboards where its roots laid claim to its surrounds. The sun dropped a little lower, the angle of light disturbing a tiny brown lizard on the speckled bark. The creature absorbed the last of the day’s warmth before scurrying upwards towards the ceiling.

With open palms, Cora touched the bark of the leopardwood and felt the surge of energy from its living centre. Pressing her forehead against the knobbly tree she felt the great heart of the woody plant wrap her in love.

‘So that’s it then?’ a voice queried, slightly bemused.

She turned towards the rumpled bed and the dark-haired man; one leg entangled in the white sheet, his arm flung carelessly across a pillow. Cora wished she had woken earlier, left before his waking. The cotton billowed out and upwards as he flung the sheet from his body, his lean frame bare. She watched him dress, slowly, methodically: navy work shirt, heavy cable jumper, pale jeans frayed at the hems. When he sat to pull on grey woollen socks, his hair falling over his forehead, she almost relented.

‘It would never have worked.’ Her words were as crisp as the air. The wind scattered the leaves from the great tree in her bedroom, piling them in a dusty corner of the veranda.

‘That’s what you said last time.’

‘Well, I’m doubly sure now.’ The fact that James was smiling only made things worse. It was as if he could see beyond her words to the truth of things.

He pulled on his boots with decisive movements. ‘Every time we get close, really close, you pull away from me.’ He touched her cheek. ‘Nothing else matters you know, Cora, except us.’

Cora visualised her fingers on his, held her breath as the pressure from his touch met the warmth beneath. There was a momentary pause before the inevitable. It was like passing beneath a bridge from shadow to sunlight yet her decision held her fast.

James tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and gave her a wink. He made her feel such a girl again, with his cheeky grin and his habit of standing so close that there was little choice but to look up to him. Nearing his mid-forties, James was in his prime. Any woman would have been proud to have a younger man such as he in her bed. And, ten years his senior, Cora was well aware of what she was giving up.

‘We can’t live in a vacuum, James, you know that. Life doesn’t allow it.’

‘Well, you seem to be doing a good job of it.’

Cora directed her attention to the leopardwood tree in the corner of her bedroom. Men were impossible, she mused. Relationships were impossible.

‘Ah yes, the silent treatment,’ James said lightly. ‘What a tragedy you are, Cora Hamilton.’

After he left, Cora sat stiffly on the bed. She glanced at her reflection in the dresser mirror. A straight almost patrician nose was complemented by rounded cheeks and generous lips undiminished by age. Fine lines etched oval eyes. Her neck was not yet scraggly, her hair still black and lustrous. Despite the thin line of a scar that ran close to one eye, some would say she was in her prime. Why then was she so cursed by the past that she was afraid of sharing her future?

The scent of him lingered and warmed her like a caress. Despite the presence of the great tree, the room felt bereft. That’s what she hated most, what she’d always hated: the great gulf of emptiness that followed their leaving. And they all left, eventually, in one way or another. She couldn’t go through that again: the heart-wrenching hurt. Cora cradled her head, wishing she were different, yet remembering, always remembering.

On the quietest of nights, when the sky was a glassy pond, the memories of the past years hovered about her. They came like drifts of windblown leaves through the blue haze of the scrub and carried the scents of the old days. And like the spirits of the people who roamed the land before white man knew what he trod upon, Cora conjured up her own dreaming, for she couldn’t escape from the past.