When Colts Ran (14 page)

Mrs Fripp kept the key, but there was a spare key and Claude hunted it down. It was hung with other duplicates on a rack in the mail van that came daily to a siding at the back of the station. That van had arrived and would leave in the morning. Time enough for Claude to slip it back.

The two boys in the shadows were almost there when Eddie heard the sound of metal on the ballast and looked down and saw the key lying at his feet. He waited for Claude to pick it up, but Claude stood waiting. Eddie would never be good enough to do wrong the way Claude did, as if it was the better side of good. When he picked up the key, the warm metal almost jumped into his hand.

All-night lamps burned in the junction box. The station cat ran along the platform. They followed the cat's shadow under the platform roof with its cast-iron verandah posts newly painted and crusted with a surfacing of soot. At the Refreshment Room doors Claude stood aside as Eddie fitted the key into the lock. The way the key turned felt loose, scuffed and worn over the years, and the door so easily opened that Eddie thought, as if answering an interrogation,
Well, that door opened all by itself, what was a bloke to do?

Claude held his fingers over the torch bulb and switched it on. In the dim red light made by Claude's blood, Eddie detached the dust covers from their hooks. Behind the counter were displays of tobacco and cigarettes. ‘You get those,' said Claude. ‘Here's my order – Champion Flake, Dutch Pipe Mixture, Craven A's, Windsors. Take two of each. Cover the gaps. Get moving, light your farts.' So Eddie squeezed under the counter and filled his haversack. As he adjusted the tobacco displays, closing gaps, he heard a grunt behind him and there was Claude standing on the counter, reaching up onto a high shelf where chocolate boxes made a sequence of pyramids: Cadbury's Roses with MacRobertson's Milk Trays and packets of Fantales and Jaffas, which Claude held to his ear and rattled before making a choice.

They replaced the dust covers, took a last look around, listened to the silence of the outside and backed out the door to the platform. Claude turned the lock and led the way to the forward end of the station. They crossed the rails and walked around behind the junction box to the mail van on the side rail. Claude reached up and tried a curled brass doorhandle. The door creaked open and the sound of snoring came from inside. The boys looked at each other while Claude leaned against the door to close it again. Somebody was in there, long legs in a tangle of army blankets.

‘It's Colts,' said Claude.

EIGHT

EARLY SATURDAY MORNING EDDIE
Slim and Claude Bonney took their bikes and set off on a marathon of getting away. It was a weekend's ride there and back, where they wanted to go, on a dirt track with only the sometimes-glimpsed railway line for company.

They carried blankets in bundles roped over the bars, billycans tied to the frames. A bag of chops turned blue, they cooked them and tipped them into the fire. Bonney said, ‘Leave it,' and the last sight they saw was a fringe of flame burning itself along a bare slope of withered weeds and dry thistles.

Up ahead a man ran the bare road getting closer. They saw him sink into gullies and reappear. Nobody ever ran through that empty landscape except one person – hardly anyone else was ever seen – and they tipped their bikes to the side of the road. From under the hill his noise ripped the air, breath taken through a narrow throat pipe into a bung lung. When he saw them he stopped, stood with his legs apart, head back, gulping. A Jacky Howe singlet dangled loosely from his shoulders and ribs, chest hairs showing. The boys smoked, watching him.

‘Colts,' they said, in a tone implying he'd worked out another way to annoy them.

‘Water,' he commanded, like a grinning skull. Bonney passed the canteen. When Colts finished drinking he thanked them. Eddie's eyes never quite met his. There was the shame of something like relationship. Sometimes Colts came on card nights and other times rang from towns miles away saying he couldn't make it, and Eddie watched his mother's face as his father related the word. Once Colts was even as far off as Bourke on commission from Careful Bob and he rang. When he travelled as train drover he slept in guards' vans and mail van bunks. Pamela said, ‘That would be the life,' and Jack said, ‘Dream.'

Everything in Colts's life was to do with sheep and he knew the lot. It made Jack smile. Eddie and Claude weren't rural like that. Colts eyed them over – they were smart-arsed boys in the country and Eddie a sly little shit.

‘How's your woolly ones?' they said.

Colts said Australians had it easy, Icelandic sheepfarmers slept in ice caves, lying on beds of stone, and if they started freezing they rose and hefted fifty pound rocks in circles until they were warm enough to go back to sleep. Colts said running was what he did, how he did the hours he kept – driving, sleeping at the side of the road, driving on. ‘You carry that stone with you.' He stared them out.

They watched Colts pounding back to his ute parked at a distant post. Bonney timed him at four minutes fifty-five the estimated mile. With one lung that took beating.

That night they slept in a travelling stock reserve guarded by mopokes hooting over starry distances. They were hungry and talked about the Lone Gum, a long-distance lorry drivers' garage known for mixed grills – platters of steak, chops, sausages, lamb's fry and grilled kidneys, and bacon thick as planks. It was another few hours' ride and they wanted their hands around hamburger buns, stuffing in strings of lettuce and beetroot dripping egg yolk; their teeth meeting the charred crunchy meat of the specialty rissoles cooked in a side kitchen by a kindly railwayman's wife, Mrs Carmichael. Claude declared he would have a chocolate eclair to finish up, and Eddie said, ‘You've taken the words right out of my mouth, compadre.'

From the other side of a hill next morning as they were packing their camp, rolling their blankets back on the handlebars and dangling their billies, Eddie lifted his head and asked, ‘Who's that singing?'

Claude angled an ear and was just beginning to catch it when they heard a low crump like a washing-day burst of wind. Cockatoos flapped past, shrieking, heat waves spiralled above the skylined trees.

‘Somebody's copped it,' said Claude.

Fast-pedalling over a rise they saw the blue Holden burning before the fire had even turned black; the three sailors trapped inside with flame licking their bare heads.

They dropped their bikes, yelling who knew what, running with arms angled over their foreheads into the heat barrier. People were in that car rammed against the chrome bars of the seat backs. They were still alive. They were trapped. A part exploded. Smoke boomed, puffed, spread, blocked them. Claude turned his back and swore in a torrent of oaths while heat hammered his neck. Eddie covered his streaming eyes with his hands. The end of life would come as a curse, but expressed as a whim – a scatter of gravel, locked brakes. You could lie and cheat your way round everything but that.

When the smoke cleared the wreck was burnt clean, except for hummocks or hillocks of men with stripes of naval piping laid across the seat backs, still visible. It seemed they were hiding, that was all, ashamed and they needed some sort of encouragement to get up. Who could give it to them though? Swim the river, make the crossing . . . who?

This was only a second's glance but would last a lifetime.

Having dared look, the boys stepped forward to look as far as courage allowed into the blank horror. Nothing more stirred in the hot frame of the car, where stench of which description must be spared radiated on the attack. Claude turned away to be sick while Eddie walked to the trees at the side of the road dry-retching, and such trees they were – white, tortured, high-country eucalypts with bark like smoothly poured solder. Eddie put his cheek to a trunk and thought,
This tree will never burn
. He wanted to do nothing more ever in his life than had happened just before the moment when they heard the low crump in the distance and pedalled the hill to look. The moment before that singing: Eddie would live there and pull the blanket of sleep over himself.

When they came together again there was still no traffic and they began with the singing.

‘It was “Home on the Range”,' said Eddie.

‘I don't think so,' said Claude.

‘Well then what?'

‘It was more like the wind.'

‘They had their heads out the windows before they pulled them in, you could hear them, singing their heads off,' said Eddie.

‘They were in angel drive coming over that hill,' said Claude, ‘they must have been, and they lost their brakes and hit the gravel, and then it was curtains.'

A passing car doubled back, parked at an angle, waited with the engine running as white-faced passengers stared unable to credit what they saw. A man walked over.

‘You kids saw it?'

‘We was too late,' croaked Claude, while Eddie looked at his hands, turned them over and stared at the lines of life. He collected his bike from the ground, wheeled it well back, propped it against a tree. He sat on his jumper and scraped at the ground with a stick. Claude joined him and said, ‘I think we're heroes.'

The police arrived and by then the Holden was a mottled shell, its tyres flattened, the feeling already cold as if this was a car in a dump except for the secret it held. People came past rolling their windows down. They rolled them up and accelerated away. Cloud gathered, came down through the trees, and before long there was fog wetting the bitumen and dripping from the tips of leaves.

The Reverend Powell stopped on his way back from a meeting of bishops, he'd been phoned – accident, highway – and he embraced the boys to awkward submission and bade them be worshipful in prayer. Eddie looked at Claude, and Claude looked at Eddie, and they kept their eyes open while he shut his.

The police spoke to a farmer, who loaded their bikes on a truck and drove the boys slowly along the highway. At the Lone Gum Garage they had heavy china plates put before them, holding everything they wanted, and this they ate, aware of themselves as objects of amazement. Mrs Carmichael stared from the servery window with puffy eyes. She came out with a steaming teapot. An arm around Claude Bonney, she would do anything for him. They talked and then she asked Eddie whether he would like an extra egg or another ladle of baked beans. He too, anything he asked, what would it be?

They heard the crunch of wheels outside, an engine left running. It was the Sarge from the Isabel wallopers, Timmins, who stomped into the room in three big strides and rested his hands on their shoulders: ‘I came when I heard.'

Eddie and Claude squirmed under the touch. They looked down and found the pattern on the stained tabletop interesting.

‘Somebody had to come,' said Timmins. ‘In your case, Bonney, I can understand, a father with a job to do, a post to maintain. He can't watch your every move. But Slim, what is it with your old man? You do whatever you like, down to the river with a .22 shooting platypuses, and guess what, he would rather argue if it was platty pie than tell you to knock it off. Now you've seen something a kid shouldn't ever and there's just me to get you out of it.'

‘We're out of it,' said Claude.

‘I gather you saw the worst.'

‘They're just material like you are,' said Eddie, not looking at the man.

‘Smart-arsed, but I won't harp on that. I'll drive you back,' he added. ‘But you'll have to leave your bikes behind.'

‘No go.'

‘Might you look a bloke in the eye, Eddie Slim, when he hammers work time over fifty miles of shingle to see you're all right? It's you I'm talking to, Hubert Opperman.'

Eddie looked at him. Claude stood and the two boys gathered their paper bags of sandwiches. ‘We're all right to ride,' said Claude.

‘Another thing,' said Timmins, ‘seeing as I'm made to exasperate. Acting on information received I want you to take everything out of your pockets and empty your bags.'

They did what he said. The cigarettes told their own suspicious story, except they were only Craven A's, a cheaper sort, the rest being safely hidden. ‘What else? Dig deeper, fellas. You know what I'm looking for – a big, fat, bugger of a key.'

Eddie waited for the telltale clink of metal to slap the table but Claude's pockets were empty. It didn't seem possible, because they had ridden their marathon with the aim of getting the key back to the mail van at Lone Gum siding, which spent weekends empty and unattended, creaking in the sun, awaiting its call to make the return loop at the start of the post office week.

No, it didn't seem possible, except that when they were on their bikes, freewheeling down a long steady hill, Claude said, ‘When she finishes at the Lone Gum she goes down to the siding and cleans the trains.'

‘You gave her the key?'

‘Go to the top of the class,' said Claude. Eddie swerved closer and gave Bonney's back wheel a kick, but his friend didn't retaliate. He just started pedalling faster, and Eddie saw tears streaming back, streaking his cheeks in the slipstream while Claude screwed up his face to stop them. This made Eddie feel released and it all poured out, sick saltiness dredged from the messiness of the scrub at the side of the road and from the grim sky and the muddy, pebbly creekbanks where they stopped and splashed their faces in green weed drifting down from cow paddocks. It seemed like poor sort of country this far from home – dead, lifeless, everything coming back the opposite from how it looked going out. But when you numbed yourself pedalling it seemed to melt into your bones and you were as hard as the hills ahead.

When Eddie arrived home it was almost sunset and his father sat among the rocks overlooking the house, watching out for him. He'd have a list of misdemeanours as long as his arm and say nothing about it. Eddie rested on the handlebars and recovered his breath. He looked back the way he'd come and it was beautiful again, the creek under the railway line glinting mauve. Eddie knew that Jack had been watching him for miles, attention all screwed on him as he rode closer in his little plume of dust. But Jack grinned as if he only then realised Eddie was there, got to his feet and said, ‘Hungry? We're having cheese on toast and we're playing five hundred tonight.'

‘You're on!'

‘She locked me out of the house,' said Jack. ‘I came in with my tail between my legs.'
So their fight is over
, thought Eddie. ‘What about you, any news?'

‘Nothing much. Just a massive long ride, and we saw –'

‘I know what you saw.'

‘Mister Colts running his guts out, and –'

‘Colts! He does that.'

‘And three sailors in a car,' finished Eddie.

‘I know, I know,' said Jack, watching as the last edge of sunlight slipped under the western hills.

Jack carried Eddie's bike across the road and helped stow his knapsack. Pamela ran a bath, the chip heater thundering and always threatening to explode. Eddie was too tired for cards as it happened. It was a night for thick toast running with melted butter, for bowls of soup made from barley and mutton bones. All the colours in the bowl were gold – the fat, the barley, the onion shreds.

When Eddie was half asleep, crawled into bed, Pamela stroked his forehead and tucked his hair behind his ears. There was the shriek of a train whistle but Eddie stayed put and didn't jump to the window. Pamela stood and watched the winking lights travel across the plateau. She pulled the net curtains into a bunch under her chin. ‘Oh, it's a stock train,' she said, as if it was something royal.

They were still young, Jack and Pamela. In their life there was time for another life, and later that year Eddie learned that for all the trouble Jack had with the Department the move to Sydney was going to happen. As Jack ruefully announced, that was what happened in schoolteacher families; the frustration broke and the move came and the schools they left sank into the grass.

Eddie knew he would count himself out when it happened. Pamela would be for him. He would stay on the Isabel. She said, ‘Yes, it's better here.' He would go to the river and cross the bridge hand over hand: ‘Claude!'

‘
Who's that calling
?'

As if he wouldn't know it would be Eddie, heartbroken, without knowing why.

Eddie could see them waving goodbye from the loaded car. Then he could see them coming back in the school holidays, getting off the train, Jack wearing a white canvas cricketing hat and carrying a trout rod, Pamela coming along behind, walking almost backwards along the platform because she would be helping someone – an old lady, a small child – carrying their bags for them and neglecting her own. Or not Jack at all – just Pamela. Just her.