The Fine Color of Rust (6 page)

She nods. She switches screens to show me her essay and I see that at the top of the page she has made a typing mistake and it says
The Untied Nations.
I like that title. It makes me think of Gunapan, a town lost in the scrubby bush, untied from the big cities and the important people and the TV stations and the government. Gunapan keeps struggling on the way it always has and no one takes any notice at all except to cut a few more services. There are probably thousands of towns like us around the country. The untied nations.

“Why don't you look up the collective noun for bush pigs?” I must learn to use the computer better myself.

“I did—it's a sounder,” Melissa says.

“What a great word! Sounder. Sounder.”

“It's not that good, Mum.”

“Sounder, sounder, sounder. A sounder of bush pigs.”

“Mum, I have to do my homework.” She heaves an exasperated sigh that would do a shop assistant in a toffy dress emporium proud. “Please, I need some peace and quiet.”

A GOOD MOTHER
would be culturing organic yogurt or studying nutritional tables at this time of night, when the kids are asleep and the evening stretches out ahead, empty and lonely. I've checked every channel on the TV and tried to read a magazine, but it's all rubbish. I'm too hot to concentrate on a book. I should be planning spectacular entertainments for the visit from the education minister, but that seems too much like hard work. Now I'm bored. I sound like Jake. Bored, bored, bored. If I was a bloke, I'd wheel the computer out of Melissa's room and look at porn for a while.

The only trouble with the secondhand computer stand I bought is that it squeaks whenever you move it. Melissa half-wakes and moans, and I shush her and hurry the computer out of the room. I'm not interested in porn, but Helen's promised me a whole other world of fun on the internet and I think it's time I found out more about it, as research of course, to protect my children. Last time I played around on the computer, Melissa, through child technomagic, tracked what I'd been looking at the night before. “Are you going to buy a motorbike, Mum?” she asked. “What are spurs, anyway?” Now I've learned how to clear the history of what I've
been browsing, so I'm feeling daring. I pull down the ancient bottle of Johnnie Walker from the top of the cupboard, pour a shot, add a splash of water, and realize the only ice I have is flavored. What the hell, I think, and drop the homemade icy pole upside down into the glass.

Outside the flywire screens, the night noise of the bush carries on. It's not the white noise of the city where I grew up—the drone of cars and the rattle of trams, the hum of streetlights and televisions muttering early into the morning. It is an uproar. When we first moved out here I was terrified by the racket. It sounded as if the bunyips and the banshees had gone to war: screaming, howling, grunting, crashing through the bush, tearing trees apart, and scraping their claws along the boards of the house. Soon enough I realized that the noises were frogs and cicadas and night birds. Kangaroos thumping along their tracks; rutting koalas sending out bellows you'd never imagine their cute little bodies could produce; the hissing throat rattle of territorial possums; and an occasional growling feral cat. Against all that the whirring of the computer is like the purr of a house pet.

Once I'm connected to the internet I do a search on myself, in case I've become famous while I wasn't paying attention. I'm not there, so I try my maiden name, Loretta O'Brien. Someone with my name is a judge in North Carolina, and another person called me died recently and her grandchildren have put up pictures of her. She has a touch of the old scrag about her. I wonder if it's the first name that does it to us. All that unfulfilled singing potential.

The lemon icy pole sure adds a distinctive tang to Johnnie Walker. I top up the glass with water and take another sip, shards of melting ice sticking to my lips as I type in
Gunapan.
We're part of a geological survey. The Department of Lands
has posted a topographical map of the region.
Gunapan
is an Aboriginal place name. Well, duh, I think, tossing back more of the tasty lemon whisky and adding a touch more water. The next hit is an online diary of a backpacker from Llanfairfechan in Wales who stayed for a night in a room above the Gunapan pub.
One night is plenty enough in this place
, she writes.
I had very bad dreams.

Jake calls out in his sleep. He does this—occasionally shrieks in the night—but it means nothing. Bush pig, I think, refilling my glass and pulling a strawberry icy pole from the freezer. It's weeks since I've been tempted to drop the kids at the orphanage and drive to Melbourne to take up my new life of glamour with a hairless, odorless body. The little bush pigs have been behaving quite well. Now I realize that was the calm. Something's coming, but I don't know what.

I lean back and sip my drink—Johnnie and a strawberry icy pole, it's a Gunapan cocktail—and click away until I'm looking at the guest login for online dating in Victoria. I hesitate on that page awhile.

“It's not only weirdos,” Helen told me once. “Some blokes look quite handsome. Although that does seem to be mainly the shorter ones. Anyway, you don't have to do anything. It's soft-core girl porn.”

I select
Rural southwest
and
Male
and
Over six feet
and
Doesn't matter
about children. Then
Go.
The screen comes up with five photos on the first page and a big list of other hits. One hundred and forty-two single men in rural southwest Victoria? This deserves a green icy pole and another shot of Johnnie.

I read about Jim, who likes long walks on the beach and romantic dinners. Jim lives in Shepparton in central Victoria, many hours' drive from the beach. Giuseppe has two grown
children and likes working out. Mel loves movies and romantic dinners and golf, and would like to share his wonderful life with a special lady. Joe's looking for a happy busty lady with no issues. Good luck, Joe.

As I scroll down the list I start finding these people funnier and funnier. Matthew's spent a lot of time working on his spirituality and he'd like to meet a woman with the same interests so they can grow together. Like a fungus, I think. Shelby would like a petite Asian lady with large breasts who's open-minded and looking for a good time. Hey, Shelby, most of the men in this town pay good money for that. I open up my password-protected email and send Helen a message.
Looking for a handsome wealthy man with no issues and a Beemer. Must love slumming it and buying expensive presents for the lady in his life, and have no objections to feral children.

I slump back into the kitchen chair, which is a few inches too short for the computer table. My neck hurts. The screen in front of me has ads all over it. Casinos, jobs, real estate. Maybe I should look for a new house to rent, one that doesn't heat up to 400 degrees. Thinking about real estate reminds me of the hole in the bush on the Bolton Road.

I type
Gunapan development
into the search bar. You get thousands and thousands of answers in these searches and none of them are what you want. The council minutes are online. That should send me off to sleep. The local supermarket's car park resurfacing process is described in glorious detail. I cannot understand why these things would be on the internet. I find the council's forms for applying for a building permit. I try another search, this time on
Gunapan bush.
Then I type in more place names from the local region combined with
development
and then I try
bush clearing
and then something else and by this time I'm pretty tired of it but I click
through to one more page and that's where I find the article.

It doesn't have Gunapan in the title, or even in the article, which is from a newspaper in Western Australia, and which is talking about a resort development to take place on twelve hectares outside Halstead. Outside Halstead? The map in the article shows where the development will take place and I can see that it's the old bush reserve in Gunapan, but our town isn't mentioned. Only a few lines about how the development may help to
revive the depressed small community nearby.
Depressed! The only depressed person here is Brenda, and even she picks up during the Gunapan Fair.

The company building the resort is a Western Australian developer
with successful resorts in Queensland, WA and the Territory, as well as significant investment in plantation forestry and logging.
I want to print this page out but the printer's still in Melissa's room.

“Mum?”

The cry comes from down the hall. Jake's awake.

“Mummy.”

He only calls me Mummy when he's frightened. I clean up the browser and close it down, then hurry to Jake's room, taking deep breaths to expel the smell of Johnnie from my mouth. Jake's nightlight is on, a rotating globe with fish painted on the outside and a static seascape behind. The mechanical rotation of the outer plastic globe makes a reassuring grinding sound once each cycle like the slow purr of a contented cat.

“What is it, Jakie?” I whisper from the doorway.

“I'm not a bush pig,” he whispers.

“Of course you're not,” I say firmly. I sit down beside him on the bed and rest my hand on his hot, sweaty chest. “Why would you think that?”

“They said so.”

“Who said so?” Anger starts to rise inside me. I remember I started thinking about bush pigs after Melissa and Jake began joking about them. “Where did this come from, anyway?”

He doesn't answer. His steady breathing makes my hand rise and fall as he drifts back to sleep.

•  •  •

NEXT MORNING I'M
waiting for them at the breakfast table with a pile of bacon on a plate and the spatula jutting from my hand. Melissa and Jake both sit down at the table without speaking, without looking at the bacon. I dish the crispy strips onto buttered toast, slop on scrambled eggs from the frying pan, and hand them a plate each.

“What's going on?” I ask. “What's this bush pig business?”

“Nothing.” Melissa has her stubborn face on.

Jake's eyes begin to redden. The circles under his eyes are even darker today. The heat went on and on all night until even the bugs got exhausted and stopped making noise at about four in the morning. There was an occasional crack as the tin roof shucked off the heat of the day and the house settled and sighed. Not only did no one sleep properly, I'm also feeling the effects of my romantic night with Johnnie Walker, and I'm in no mood to be messed with.

“I don't want silence or sulking or tantrums. Tell me what it's about. Who called you a bush pig, Jake?”

Silence. My throbbing head. Jake and Melissa stare at their plates. The crispy bacon is wilting, the eggs are getting cold, the toast is going soggy. The urge to shout is rising in me and I want to smother it—I must not become a shrieking single mother.

“So . . .” I lighten my tone of voice. My back is still to the children. “I'm not cross. I want to know, that's all.”

“I had a project on bush pigs,” Melissa says.

“Then why would Jake be upset?” I turn around to face them, my expression a mask of control and calm.

“I called him a bush pig.” Melissa shoves a blackened curl of bacon into her mouth as if that will stop me asking her questions.

“Is that it, Jake? Did your sister call you a bush pig?”

Melissa's staring so hard at Jake he'll start sending off smoke in a minute. He crosses his hands over his lap.

“I need to go to the toilet,” he says. Little liar.

“It's true! It is, Mum. I did call him a bush pig. I'm sorry.”

Something smells here. I'm sure she's lying. But she's as stubborn as her father. I turn to Jake.

“Lies come back to bite you on the bum. You know that, don't you, Jake?”

“I want to go to school now,” he says for the first and probably last time in his life. “Did you put a banana in my lunch?”

The boy is obsessive. I take the banana out of his lunch box and open Melissa's.

“I'm not having it!” she yelps.

“What is it with bananas and this family?” I say. “They're good nutritious food and they're cheap.”

“They stink!” Jake and Melissa say together.

By the time I've finished the washing-up, Melissa and Jake are ready to head off. I drop them at school and drive on to the Neighbourhood House, sweating in the hot morning sun.

At ten thirty my sister Tammy calls to let me know Mum's in hospital in Melbourne.

“WHAT'S THAT NOISE?”
Jake has an unerring knack for asking awkward questions.

He leans down and peers under the seat between his legs, sits up and cranes his neck, looking around the corridor. I reach over and poke him to be quiet.

“Mum, your bra is creaking again,” Melissa whispers crossly.

“Sshh,” I tell her.

“It's creepy, Mum. You should throw it out.”

“I'm sure you'd be very happy to have me arriving at school to pick you up with my breasts flopping around.”

“Oh, disgusting.” Melissa looks as if she's about to faint.

“You'll have these troubles soon enough, my girl.”

“No, I won't, because I'm never buying underwear at the two-dollar shop.”

I was sure I'd never told anyone about buying that bra at the two-dollar shop. It seemed such a bargain until the creaking started. Even with that, I thought it was a waste to throw it away.

“You can go in now, she's decent,” the nurse calls from the doorway of Mum's room.

Jake runs in first, calling out, “Hi, Nanna!” Melissa and I follow more slowly. Jake stops as soon as he gets in the doorway and sees his nanna tiny and yellowish in the big hospital bed. He backs up and presses against me. Melissa stands rigid at our side. Their nanna's bed is one of four in the room. Two are empty. An ancient man with a liver-spotted head is snoring in the one diagonally opposite.