Over this backbone, p.15
Over This Backbone, page 15
What, he said too loudly. Clearly rising from sleep.
How could he sleep?
Is it so bad—me wanting to spend time with you?
The silence seemed so full of meaning, but then maybe he’d simply slipped back into unconsciousness.
Can I stay?
He sat up so fast that I toppled backwards onto my arse and the air was knocked from my belly with a ‘hoph’ sound. I dropped the gift onto the deck and scrabbled backwards a little.
Peta, he spat at me through the darkness, I don’t give a fuck if you stay or not, but if you do you need to let me sleep because I need to get up early, okay? Get yourself a mattress and stop talking to me, and stop bloody crying. Is that clear?
He tossed himself back to the pillow.
I sat still, tears running into my open mouth, breathing as deeply as I could through them. Tried not to cough. I grappled with my options, then rose and pulled a mattress from the attic and an old sleeping bag from the rack inside the door and lay on it on the opposite end of the verandah, thinking about how this was all over.
When he started snoring I let myself cry audibly and accepted that I’d never manage to conjure sleep, but then all of a sudden it was the bluish bird-racket of predawn.
I sat up and pulled the salted hair from my cheeks and dragged the mattress back into the shed. He slept on. The present lay beside his bed. I left without a sound. Slipped on my boots, then retraced my steps back to the ute beside the river.
I crawled onto the tray and wrapped myself around Dani, held her in the warmth trapped under the doona and the canvas of the swag. The eucalypts rustled above and the water was a loud rush. She took my hand.
Went well? she asked.
No. I think he just broke my heart.
Oh no, Peet. She rolled her tiny firm body to face mine and squeezed me. We slept tangled together until the sun dappled onto our faces.
I told her all of it as we plunged naked into the river. The mist rose up off it through the shafts of light. We hollered as we threw ourselves under, then cupped our breasts once we’d clambered out, nipples painfully iced, chattering and puffing through the goosebump-cold.
That’s bad. Why did he do that? she asked, shuffling from one foot to the other on the sharp rocks, trying to generate some heat.
I don’t know. He just did. It’s strange. But now it’s over, I guess. At least I know for sure. Maybe for the best.
You know, he did some strange things at university too, she said slowly with her eyes up on the trees.
Like what?
I heard that he punched a girl. My friend said that he stalked her. Apparently he tried to run another girl over. She shrugged then turned to me quickly. But you can’t know, can you? Because people tell lies all the time. They told lies about me too. I didn’t believe any of it.
I stared at her, shivering, dumbfounded.
Dani, did you see him do any of this stuff? You have to tell me. I have to know.
No! No—I don’t know. I don’t think so?
I folded my arms tightly across my chest and glared.
Hey now, she said finally. Grinned and hopped barefoot towards me. Oh Peta, it’s just a rumour. That’s all. Come here!
She wrapped her arms around me and our naked fronts pressed together.
I let out all the air into the crook of her neck, then mumbled, Okay. If you say so.
I considered briefly as our wet breasts and stomachs heaved together how this might’ve felt only six months earlier. How I might’ve ached for her, clung for longer.
Now it was only him. No one else could move my blood, for better or worse—only the man who had just broken me. And now I’d have to learn how to hunger for someone other.
We pulled our clothes over our sticky skin and trooped across the paddock side by side.
I saw him from afar, leaning happily against the tray of the ute with the sun behind him—dew on his work boots, his dimpled grin, the brown and white striped beanie on his head, all my labour nestling that cruel skull. I felt sick.
Morning, he called.
I hung back, scuffing the wet grass, stealing glances at him. Wondering whether he was really capable of the violence Dani had described—of the cruelty I had witnessed.
Dani hugged him and they talked as if nothing had changed.
How has it been up here? she asked.
Great! Well, great when I don’t get woken up in the night by little ratbags, he quipped and lifted his eyebrows to look at me, still smiling—something like mock admonition. He looked absurd.
I laughed a single sound because that was expected, but I didn’t feel the humour in it.
Hey, he said and came to me. You’re beautiful. Thank you for the present. It’s amazing. A perfect fit!
He hugged me to his chest. I let him, confused.
You’re welcome.
Oh happy birthday! Geez, twenty-eight years old, Dani called from behind me with her head in the cab. Right, Ben, we’re heading up for breakfast. You can jump on the tray if you want. Peet, get in!
She shut the door.
My face must have betrayed some bewilderment because he looked at me and said, All good?
I opened my mouth to reply, but he was already stepping around me and onto the ute, and it was clear we wouldn’t speak of it because it wasn’t big enough to speak of.
So I climbed into the cab with my hair dripping down my back and the whole broken thing drifted away untouched.
We’re rotten the next day. Mum maybe less than the rest of us. She hunts down coffees while we moan and rattle.
I spend an hour or more at the boot of the car sorting food and swapping parts of my pack out and in. There’s been a leak in the drop box—Shellite. It doesn’t seem to have breached the ziplocks, so I take the food, but wonder how deeply the fumes will have permeated the rice and oats. Too hungover to worry.
Should we just buy a new tent for you? asks Mum. There might be something open in Jindabyne by now?
We have a shed full of them. That’d be a waste, says Dad with a dismissive wave. Come on. Let’s just get this done.
You can stay here for the day if you want, Peet. Just relax and hang out. I can do the drive alone, says Otis.
Don’t be dumb, I reply.
We pile packs and gear into the red car and blast the air con while we cross the beige plains of the Monaro even though it’s cold out, just because our heads are hot. We listen to Triple J, commenting on its regression—not what it used to be, too poppy. Stop for a pie and a coffee in Bombala and are revived. Otis connects to the speakers and we listen to Blackstar—Bowie’s final album.
I’m jittery as we pass Cann River, more so as we near the coast. Something about travelling backwards again or veering off course altogether sets my nerves off.
We pull up the gravel drive just after eleven o’clock. Can taste the salt on the air, and though I can see that the waves are only small, the sound of them travels across the sandbar and the estuary, hits the brick house on the mud cliffs as a roar. Otis opens the back gate and Mordy bolts across the lawn to grip our hands in his toothy mouth and drag us about, twisting and writhing in labrador ecstasy. I try to halt him for a pat, but his attention diverts to a nearby stick and we’ve lost him.
Mum makes us all iced cordial while I retrieve the tent from the mezzanine.
We sit on the deck.
Are you sure you’ll be okay, Otis? It’s such a long drive, Mum says with that characteristic concern.
Should be fine. He shrugs.
I feel guilty in an unhelpful way.
What if he’s not fine? Whose fault is all of this?
We should go, hey, he says. I’ll download some podcasts.
Mum hugs me like I’m slipping through her fingers, kisses my face until I splutter away from her.
Thank you for letting me be part of your big walk, she says.
Dad grips me to his chest harder than usual. I’m nonchalant about their excessive affection, yet I pin Mordy to the ground and do the same to his resistant body, kiss his warm black ears until he drives a hind leg into my abdomen and bounds free. It’d just be so easy to stay—to surf here in the sun.
We drive away in Otis’s little white hatchback after midday while we still have the energy, back the way we came like tracing over a line to thicken it.
How bizarre, how bizarre, I mutter to the window as the bluetooth connects.
The Monaro feels just as long and wide on the return. Sheep camouflaged as grey boulders and vice versa. He says he’s fine to drive it all so I sit prostrate, a useless passenger.
We’re peeling out of Jindabyne when he turns down the current podcast—the eighth for the drive, about David Bowie’s Berlin years—and asks the question point-blank. Out of character for someone as conflict-avoidant as he is, but he shoots all the same.
Peepee, what’s happening with Ben?
We’re just friends, I say automatically, like a gag reflex.
He nods, eyes on the road. That’s good—because he’s an absolute arsehole. I don’t think he’s worth any time or effort at all.
Feelings flood me, so many they come as one, but I manage to extrapolate two—guilt for my lie and gratitude for my brother.
For sure, I say. Thanks, Otie.
He twists the volume back up and we don’t mention anything else meaningful before we reach Dead Horse Gap.
The car park is empty, but the sky isn’t; clouds thick and wet like papier-mâché. Otis hauls my bag from the boot, grunting, while I wrench on my socks and lace the boots.
Can’t believe we were here this morning, I say and tuck the two apples I’ve stolen from home through the safety pins of the pack lid. The little orange tent is stuffed deep down. Everything in its place.
Can’t believe I have to drive to Melbourne from here. He yawns and rests his arse on the tiny car bonnet.
I’m sorry.
Come here, he smiles.
We hug. Then I drag the enormous pack up my leg, swing it onto my wrecked shoulders and buckle it over my chafed hips, and Otis calls out, Have a fun month of walking, you crazy thing.
I turn and grin, wave my pole in the air, take in the image of him where he stands tired-eyed and smiling. I walk into the fading light to the sound of his little car pulling away and feel overwhelmingly grateful and dangerously anxious and so brim-full of love for them all that I don’t even know where to place it.
And then I’m alone again.
208 km
I groan when I see the tents clumped together, multicoloured nylon raised above the grass. A shifting circle of headtorches punctuating the darkness beyond the silhouette of a hut. It’d been peaceful walking alone. The night cool and clear and full of my breath and footfall, of unseen creeks and frogs.
Alone—a second chance to move unaided. The smoothness of the last section hadn’t quite counted because she’d been there like a crutch. Mum, steady and constant.
As I step through the night, I tell myself that I am untroubled by it, the aloneness, that the ache in my gut is anticipation, not the hole left by her.
Just me, on my own.
But now I’m not. I pause at the intersection to the hut with my torch off. I watch and hope they don’t want to talk because I don’t have the energy, but as I descend towards them, I still call out, Hey, because I can’t not say something.
I place my pack on the periphery of the tents where a small space is flat enough to perch the orange dome.
There are indistinct greetings and someone shouts, Hi, come over!
Sure—gimme a sec.
Tent up, and food and stove yanked free, I potter towards them by the light of my headtorch with my Tyvek draped over my arm like a waiter with a tea towel.
They’re cooking in a tight circle of twelve, though a boy in a striped beanie and a slightly older man in a down jacket with a stubbly beard have shifted to create a space for me. They’ve attached a headtorch to a purple drink bottle which glows centre circle like a mood light.
Where have you come from, the boy asks as I unfurl the white sheet over the dirt.
Just Dead Horse Gap today—but I started in Canberra.
A few headtorches flash towards me and a loud plaited girl with a Cheshire cat-grin says, Shit! You doing the Alps Track? Alone?
Yeah. Trying my hardest to anyway, I say while I light my stove. Where are you all from?
We’re a university group from Bendigo, says the boy with the striped beanie. We’re doing the Long Walk subject—there are a few other groups out too. This is day five of twenty, but it’s nothing as hectic as the Alps Track.
I laugh. Knew it! You can pick outdoor edders from a mile away. What year level are you?
Mainly first year, couple of second. Are you an outdoor edder, too?
Yes. Well … no. Not really. I grew up with it, but haven’t studied. I’m coming to the university in Bendigo next year, though!
The man in the downy looks up.
Really? says the girl with the grin. After you’ve done something like this on your own? As if you’d have anything left to learn. You’ll be teaching the classes by then. So cool.
There are always things to learn, I say.
The man in the downy lowers the pressure on his gas stove. He seems like the leader of this group, worth a shot.
You wouldn’t be James, would you?
He stirs his pot of beans and nods, I reckon I would. Which mutual friend sent you?
Ben Granger, I say.
Gee. We used to be real great mates. How do you know him?
I blush. Well, we’re friends, I guess.
He stares at me and grins before twisting the stove to a stop. He spoons piping hot beans into his gob and he nods.
Mmhmm, he says around a mouthful. You must be Peta Rafe.
I raise my eyebrows.
He told me all about you. The girl wonder walking the track alone. He smiles slyly. Told me to keep an eye out for you.
Why’d you say you used to be great mates?
He pauses. Things change. Sometimes you run out of steam.
Right. I empty rice noodles into the pot which is now boiling.
Change of subject. Your dad is Connie Rafe, right? Bit of a legend in this field.
So I hear.
His mouth turns up on one side. Gonna follow in his footsteps? he asks. Become a principal?
I can’t even take a bearing.
Before I can answer, the girl with the grin starts a line of rapid-fire questions about the track: gear and weight and headspace and kilometres and blisters. I answer while I curl rice noodles around my spoon and eat. After the second mouthful, I know that the Shellite has truly permeated every cell of every noodle, each mouthful spreading a bitter poisonous tang through my gullet. I fear for the morning porridge—wonder whether it will make me vomit, whether it will hurt to shit. I try to concentrate, but my palate burns.
Finally, there’s a pause in her questioning and I turn to James.
Where are you lot heading tomorrow?
Tin Mine Huts. We’ll see you there, I guess?
I’d reckon.
Good. He nods. We’ve got things to talk about.
In the tent once I’ve ceased rustling, I can hear them debriefing the day, unpacking their learning as a group. They talk about the tensions they feel with one another. I think about how nice it is to only rely on yourself.
James tells them that the weather is shifting, coming in cold and wet—asks how they plan to manage this. Someone softly spoken says that they’ve been thinking of facilitating a solo walk, the first ten kilometres, for something different and for the thinking space. Puts it to the group and receives murmurs of assent. James asks whether tomorrow is the best day to enact such a plan. The student leader is determined.
Finally the group shuffles and moves apart, calling their goodnights.
The weather is changing; it seems like there’s more on the move. I sleep uneasily, toss like a fish out of water, like my body feels the shifting atmosphere too.
April 2016
We were in a cave above the plains of the Wimmera which sprawled like a patchwork rug—paddock panels stitched with fence lines and spreading to hazed obscurity. Up high were lizards and peregrines and wasps and us with our chalky nails and caked sweat.
It was warm for mid-autumn and we were one hundred and fifty vertical metres above the paddocks and scrubby base of Arapiles/Djurite, that rough-hewn island of rock and life and clinking gear in the sea of agriculture.
You know, you’re pretty good at this, Ben had said when I hauled myself into the cave. He kissed me through the sweat. I was floating on endorphins and something terrifyingly close to love for him—the smooth darkness of his hands, his competence. The perfect week of dirt and scaling cliffs and fucking quiet beneath the tarp.
The ropes were coiled neatly into the cave, because Ben was fastidious like that—careful with my safety here in a way he wasn’t on the ground. I stretched my legs out before me and the dark skin was almost black in the creases. Fine dirt from the dusty campground.
We tore with grimy fingers a hot cross bun and fed the shreds into our mouths. I’d carried it in the day pack as I’d followed him up the climb. He ate most of it, then shuffled so that I became wedged between his legs. Our safety leashes were tight. He rested his back on the cave so that I could lean against him. We were so high, teetering, but when it came to ropes I knew he’d make sure I was fine. I trusted him.
I took a breath. Had been holding a question in like it’d bite if I let it fly. Waiting to ask away from his friends with their inside jokes and bouldering pads and gear talk. Waiting for his mood to be right. A time when he wouldn’t snap, because that’s how I moved about him since the night at the Farm—carefully. Like it’d all scatter and be gone if I acted too hastily, if I cared too much.
This moment of affection—the hands resting on my stomach and breath in my hair, it was some small mercy, a nudge of courage.
I put my hands on his and said, Ben.
Mmm?
What are we doing?
Having a snack, he yawned. Just need a drink, then I’ll keep going—the last pitch isn’t too hard.
