Friday Brown (19 page)

‘No.’ I tore out a few blank pages and handed it back to him. ‘You might need it.’ I screwed the pages into twists and stuffed them into the cracks beneath the pile of sticks. Soon, a racing flame was taking hold.

Arden watched our exchange with tight lips. She had a beer in one hand, a plastic cup in the other. She saw me looking and said, ‘Rainwater. The tanks are full of the stuff. See? Mother nature provides.’

‘Don’t drink it,’ I said quickly. ‘It needs to be purified.’ I got busy building up the fire with larger pieces of wood.

‘It’s clean,’ Arden said and held her cup up to the flickering light. ‘Crystal. We used to drink from our rainwater tanks all the time.’

‘These tanks probably have rust or shit or dead animals floating in them,’ I said carefully, without looking at her. ‘Quickest way to gastro and dehydration out here.’

Carrie, squashed into a deckchair, turned and spat water into the dust. ‘You said it was okay to drink.’

‘Listen to Bear fucking Grylls,’ Arden sneered. ‘Look.’

Arden tilted the cup, poured a tiny amount between her lips. She held the mouthful for a microsecond, the barest hesitation, then she swallowed. ‘Ah,’ she gasped. She grabbed her throat, made a gurgling sound, fell into Malik’s lap and went limp.

AiAi looked around at each of us before he realised it was an act. He laughed.

After burnt baked beans and too many beers, the next few hours were a comedy of falling-down pee-stops in the dark. Carrie stumbled back with spattered jeans, scratched arms and an expression like an axe murderer was on her tail. Darcy made Joe go with her and hold the torch.

The fire burned down to a pleasant glow.

‘Where are we going to sleep?’ Darcy slurred.

‘In the church,’ Arden said. ‘It’s the only place with a decent roof.’

Nobody spoke. They were all looking at me. Even Darcy.

‘I’m just going to sleep out here,’ I said.

I rolled out my swag a few metres from the fire and arranged my bag and pillow. The canvas was so old, so deeply ingrained with dust and ash and oil, that water rolled right off.

The others followed, until the campfire was surrounded. Malik did the same but set up his swag further away from the rest of us.

Arden sat on the bonnet of the car for ages, smoking, alone.

‘If I need the toilet in the night, will you come with me?’ Carrie whispered and burrowed deeper in her sleeping bag.

‘Sure,’ I said.

Why she was so freaked out? It wasn’t like the city. There was nothing out there to be afraid of.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I loved the morning light the best. It seeped in, a one-way tide; it coloured in dark spaces until the land was flooded with silver light. The magpies’ song began while it was still dark. I’d been lying awake for more than an hour. I sat up. My muscles were cramped and stiff and my head throbbed with the sudden blood-rush.

The others were still sleeping.

I crawled out of the swag, stretched out my kinks and looked for a private place to pee behind the church. I squatted on wobbly legs next to an old lean-to stacked with rotting wood. It had been cold overnight, but not enough to keep me awake. The landscape sparkled with crystals of ice and I heard the steady
drip-drip
of melting droplets on tin. Beyond the lean-to there was a beached, battered rowboat next to a pile of planks, a rusted axe
poised mid-chop in the trunk of a tree, and a porcelain toilet bowl standing by itself in a circle of stones. A coil of barbed wire was a trap for tumbleweed. It was a scene frozen in time as if only yesterday it had been the land of the living.

I wandered a little way past what must have once been the main street, to where the rows of red gums cast looming shadows. Between them ran an almost-dry riverbed, about five metres across with smooth, pale stones and a few puddles the colour of black tea. The land was split in two: on one side rambling, twisted scrub and the bones of the town; on the other, bare yellow paddocks carved by a cattle fence.

It all felt familiar, as if I’d been there before. It was uncomplicated. I was at peace. I didn’t feel the need to look over my shoulder; I could breathe properly and my senses weren’t tripping over each other.

‘We wondered where you were,’ Bree said.

She had her sleeping bag wrapped around her shoulders and a beanie pulled low over her ears. ‘Thought you might have been dragged off by a dingo.’

I shrugged. ‘Just exploring.’

‘Did you happen to find an ensuite?’

I smiled and slid down the riverbank on my backside. I pointed to a puddle. ‘Look. Tadpoles. The eggs can survive without water for months, even years. Then when it rains, they hatch and the cycle goes on.’

‘Amazing.’ She smirked and followed me.

I offered a squirming tadpole. ‘Isn’t it? He doesn’t
know he’s going to grow legs and lungs. The information’s all there, waiting for the right time, packed in his DNA.’

I thought of Vivienne, her hands next to mine, turning a small creature so I could inspect it and be amazed. How she made everyday things seem like a miracle.

Bree pinned her hands under her armpits and shook her head.

‘I heard there are caterpillars in Antarctica that defrost for just a few days at a time,’ I went on, determined to raise her interest. I scooped another handful of water and let the tadpoles wriggle through my fingers. ‘It can take them up to ten years to eat enough vegetation to pupate. Imagine that. Imagine if we could be frozen in ice for a whole year and then wake up and start eating like nothing happened. Makes us seem so fragile, don’t you think?’ I smiled at her but she was staring at the ground.

‘Whoopie-doo.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t you sleep?’

Her mouth twisted. ‘God, didn’t you hear it? In the night? All that rustling and squeaking. I was lying there listening to it with my heart in here,’ she pointed to her throat. ‘Carrie too. Arden ended up sleeping in the car but that was probably because she was pissed off with Malik. What the fuck did she bring us here for?’

‘There’s nothing out here big enough to carry you off,’ I laughed. ‘Maybe a camel. Sorry,’ I rambled on.
‘But animals adapt. One caterpillar and one green leaf against a whole frozen continent. That tiny thing knows exactly what it’s born to do and it survives against all the odds.’

‘Look at you,’ she said.

‘What?’ I smoothed down my hair. I knew I must look awful. ‘What?’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile.’

‘Of course you have.’ I blushed. ‘I smile all the time.’

‘Not from here to here.’ She drew a line from one ear to the other with a finger. ‘See, I’m just not feeling it.’

‘Feeling what?’

‘Whatever it is I’m supposed to feel. You know, some deep connection with the land, or whatever. What a load of shit.’ She wrapped the sleeping bag around her shoulders.

‘You’re pretty hard on yourself.’

‘I want to go home.’

‘Me too. Wherever that is.’

Bree raised her eyebrows. ‘Carrie said something happened with you and Wish.’

Self-consciously, I touched my lips. I thought about the false Friday Brown he’d kissed, and compared that image to the real me. But he hadn’t turned up that night, so I decided maybe he wouldn’t have wanted either.

‘Nothing I want to talk about.’

‘Come on, tell me,’ she prodded. ‘Did you catch the Wish fish?’

‘More like he got away.
And
he stole my bait.’

She was shocked. ‘Did you two…’

I got what she was thinking.
‘God,
no. Bad choice of words. Nothing happened. I’m glad it didn’t. He loves Arden.’

There was a distant pop, then another, like something exploding.

‘Well, why wouldn’t he?’ she said. ‘Come on. I smell food.’

We walked back to the campsite.

‘You’re ruining this for me,’ Arden was yelling, her hands on her hips and her feet apart. Her insult wasn’t aimed at any one person; it was flung wide like a net. She had her back to us but spun around when she heard us approaching.

‘The fire’s going out,’ she accused. ‘And you’d think somebody would know enough to open the fucking cans.’

Carrie retreated behind the car.

Silence was sitting up, still inside his sleeping bag. It looked like it was bleeding orange sap. The dirt surrounding the campfire was sprayed with baked-bean buckshot. A couple of gaping, blackened cans bubbled and spat in the dying coals. A sickly, sticky odour made me screw up my nose and cover my mouth.

AiAi returned from wherever he’d been, zipping his jeans. He gauged Arden’s mood, then slunk away.

Bree and I turned to look at each other.

Her mouth twitched and one deep dimple appeared. ‘I’m not that hungry,’ she said.

‘Me neither,’ I agreed.

We giggled and Silence, who looked like he was wearing most of the exploded beans, laughed too.

Arden stalked off.

A few minutes later, she was dragging junk out through the door of the old church, making a pile of iron sheets and planks that would have to be moved again anyway.

Malik helped, stripped bare to his waist.

In the end, nobody could stomach beans for breakfast.

I grabbed a piece of stale bread and toasted it on the end of a stick, then ate it dry.

AiAi did the same. He burned three pieces before he got a colour he liked.

I stoked up the fire and rolled my swag, then followed Carrie and Silence into the church.

‘Shit,’ Carrie said under her breath. ‘This is worse than I thought.’

Even Arden’s determined efforts had not made a dent in the mess. Fire had ravaged the church once—maybe more than once—and the air tasted stale and smoky. Most of the pews were more or less intact but they were charred and brittle, breaking apart. The whitewashed walls were covered with graffiti, dripping with yellow stains. There was no glass left in the windows. Birds had moved into the rafters and a one-eyed crow watched us from above, head tilted, its good eye aimed down. Our
footsteps echoed on the scarred wooden floor, black with dirt, grease and burns.

Arden broke from her frantic pace and wiped her arm over her face, leaving a clean, pink spot on her nose.

‘Don’t just stand there,’ she snarled. ‘If we all pitch in it’ll be cleaned up by tonight.’

‘No fucking way am I sleeping in here,’ Carrie said and squashed a spider with her foot. ‘I’ll take my chances out
there.’
She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder.

Silence wheezed agreement.

‘How about you, country girl? Scared of a few spiders?’ Arden challenged.

‘Just the redbacks,’ I conceded. ‘But if we bomb the place, that should fix them.’

Carrie laughed. ‘Now there’s an idea. Let’s blow the place up. Looks like it’s been bombed already.’

‘I meant spider bombs. Those cans of insecticide.’

‘I’ve started a list of everything we’ll need,’ Arden said, waving a piece of paper. ‘Let me know if you think I’ve forgotten anything. Malik and I will do a run tomorrow morning.’

‘We need more water,’ I reminded her.

‘Oh, shut up about the water, will you?’

Near dark, we were all filthy, bleeding and exhausted. Arden’s vision was a long way from being realised and the air was still choked with dust. We’d cleared a large space, enough for living and sleeping. Six rows of pews were gone, ripped apart and stacked up for firewood, the rest wiped clean and lined up along the walls for seats.

Much to the others’ disgust, Arden and Malik laid out their swags to claim the raised platform where the preacher’s pulpit would have been. I wasn’t too bothered. Up there, the floor seemed fragile.

The other buildings were beyond hope. The pub was a wreck, a house of cards ready to fall in on itself. It was plain dangerous to go in there. The squat, plaster houses were nothing but walls—no roof, no floor. We’d found a few useful things—a shovel, a crowbar, a dresser and a rickety table—but most of the half-buried artefacts that looked promising had disintegrated on touch.

We looked like a group of dirty savages, collapsed around the fire. I smelled burnt toast again but, thankfully, no beans.

Joe was smoking on the steps, alone. I went over.

‘I’m in mourning,’ he said, showing me his empty packet.

‘Arden’s going shopping tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I’m sure she’ll get more for you.’

‘She said we all have to give up,’ he said, miserable. ‘Part of her vision for a better world. But there’s nothing else to do out here.’ He crushed the packet and dropkicked it into a bush. ‘Where are you going?’ He gestured towards my torch.

‘I just came to see if you were okay. Come over by the fire. It’s freezing over here.’ I switched on the torch and flashed an S.O.S. on his face.

Joe squinted and waved me away. ‘I want to sleep for a month. When I wake up, I want this all to be over.’

I sneaked into the church and pilfered two cigarettes from Arden’s packet, which was sitting on top of her precious tin. The tin that I supposed had money in it. I wondered how much she had stashed away, how long she’d been saving up for her plan to take over the ghost town. I picked the tin up, felt the
thunk
of something shifting inside, jiggled the lock, then put it back carefully inside the impression left in the dust.

‘Abracadabra, alakazam,’ I said to Joe. I reached behind his ear and pulled out one cigarette. I held it under his nose.

He inhaled the scent of it, a cheeky smile on his lips. I handed him the second one and he gripped my hand for a moment.

‘I’m going to call a referendum,’ he said seriously. ‘I’m pretty sure we all want to get out of here. How will you vote?’

I shrugged. ‘Even if you get enough votes, do you really think it’ll make a difference? Sounds like Arden’s put a lot of effort into this.’

‘I was hoping the fact that she has to shit in the woods like all the other bears might change her mind.’

‘It probably will. Give her a few days.’ I was enjoying myself. I felt more at ease, more
sure
of myself than I had in a long time.

Silence materialised. He tugged at my sleeve.

Joe got up, lit a cigarette and took a long, blissful drag. He sighed through a stream of smoke. ‘Yeah. A few more days. We can all survive that.’