Songlines

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I didn’t remember getting up or leaving, but I found myself stumbling along the riverbank, fuming. I was furious with Harry for coming out with such a ridiculous and hurtful joke. What he’d said had made no sense to me whatsoever. My aunt had used her stories of Paradise to comfort a grieving child. That I could understand. But to say that my mother’s grave was a lie? Why would he do that? It wasn’t funny, and I had never known him to be insensitive in any way.

By the time I’d calmed down enough to return to the house, Aunt Lily was waiting for me to jump in the ute so we could check the lambs together. She asked me what was wrong but I refused to tell her. Harry didn’t appear, thankfully, and for the next few hours we kept busy with the sorts of jobs that were exhausting and yet we could seldom say what we had spent all that time doing. Just stuff. Unblocking drains, cleaning out pit pumps, checking limping sheep, retrieving panicking lambs from the wrong sides of fences, retrieving panicking ewes from the wrong side of a clump of gorse, stacking hay bales, unstacking a pile of bricks like a high stakes game of Jenga because Aunt Lily was certain she’d seen a snake but it turned out to be just a blue tongue lizard, restacking the same pile of bricks … the endless tasks required for living on a farm. It helped. A lot. Because even though Aunt Lily was the only one with me, I kept feeling as if there were too many people around and all I wanted was to do and not think. By evening I crawled into bed utterly spent, but when I fell asleep, my dreams were choked by sad music and hazy memories of my mother.

By Monday morning, I had almost managed to fool myself into believing that Harry really had been joking. A part of me knew that I couldn’t ignore him forever, but I didn’t know what to do about it other than wait for him to apologise.

At recess I had just put my lunchbox away in my locker when Noah came hurrying down the concrete steps of the breezeway. He was so agitated it took him two tries to undo his combination lock.

‘Worried about today’s practice exam?’ I guessed.

‘What did you make me pick Chemistry for anyway?’ he grouched, wrenching a textbook out of his bag.

‘Oh, I just wanted your company. It’s entertaining to watch Tessa Bright blush whenever you get partnered with her. We’ve finished all the pracs for the year now though, so you can ditch it if you like. Unless, of course, you actually do want to get into Melbourne Uni next year.’

He pressed his lips together, and then changed the topic. ‘Lainie? What did you decide to do about the incident with Bane? Will you report him?’ He shoved the book into his locker and slammed the door, leaving half a tree’s worth of paper sticking out at odd angles.

‘I guess so. I should, right? I mean, he had a knife. I think he’s a bit unstable. I really should.’ And yet I felt strangely reluctant. I couldn’t stand the guy but that didn’t mean I wanted to get him expelled right before exams. But what if he really hurt someone next time?

‘I’m not sure he’s that unstable. I know it must seem like that to you but he’s not usually like that, not around most other people anyway. He’s really quite a nice guy. Don’t dob him in just because you hate him.’

‘Nice guy? Are you mental?’ He didn’t look like he was kidding. He would always see the best in people, but there was no way I could live with myself if Bane did hurt someone. ‘Noah, he had a weapon. At school. I need to let someone know.’

My friend didn’t argue further as he tried to poke some of his papers back behind the door, but it was no use. The poor things were just too determined to escape the stench of old bananas. He bent to retrieve them just as a flock of Year 8 girls came giggling around the corner. When they realised that the bum in their way was Noah’s, the giggles became rapidly hushed whispers and one of the girls turned pink. We ignored them like we always did. Girls had been acting mental around Noah since before he’d even sprouted underarm hair. But then one of the girls approached us. She had her red hair straightened to within an inch of its life and wore mascara so thick it looked like she’d taped spiders onto her eyelids.

‘Hey, Noah. Nicole said to tell you she’s catching the bus home tonight, so don’t wait for her.’

Something didn’t sit right. Something about the way her words …crinkled around the edges. She wasn’t lying, but she was hiding something. I had a knack for knowing when someone was being deceitful. Noah called it my gift. My distrust was conveyed to him with the barest gesture—a long-practised language that felt entirely natural.

For a moment he looked so weary that I thought he might just let it go, but then he took a step forward so that he towered over her and stared her down. The poor girl looked ready to faint. Then he smiled, and she blushed.

‘When, exactly, did she tell you this?’ he asked. One of the other girls took a small step backward.

‘U … um … before maths.’

‘And did she stay for maths?’

No answer.

Noah kept staring. Waiting.

‘She has permission to do some research in town,’ the girl said, her voice rising at the end like it was a statement that needed his approval. Even Noah could tell she was lying.

Damn. Not again. Nicole was Noah’s precocious thirteen-year-old sister. The youngest of four kids and the only girl, Nicole had a tendency towards dramatic escapades. Since Noah’s two elder brothers had moved to the city to study, it was up to him to rein her in. It wasn’t an unusual thing to have to raid the town library for research, because our school was too small to have a decent one of its own, but in Year 8 that involved permission slips and parental consent that she clearly didn’t have. This would be the third time in two weeks that she’d wagged class. She was heading for a suspension.

As soon as Noah stepped back, the girl fled, not even waiting for her friends to catch up. I could hear his teeth grinding.

‘She just doesn’t care about anyone but herself, does she?’ His foot twitched like it was about to kick something. ‘Mum’s going to totally spit it. The two of them fought non-stop all weekend, you know. Dad cut the grass twice, just to get out of the house. If she gets suspended, I’m coming to live with you.’

‘I’ll find her,’ I offered. ‘I’ve already done a practice exam and did okay. Mrs Armstrong won’t care if I tell her I’m studying in town instead.’

For a second he looked like he wanted to be gentlemanly and refuse, but my suggestion made too much sense.

‘Don’t worry, it won’t take me long. She’s probably at the lake,’ I said, already heading to the staff room to sign myself out. ‘Old Mrs Jackson at the newsagent dobbed her in last time when she went to the shops, so she’s unlikely to risk that again.’

The lake was the centrepiece of the town. During drought years it hosted weekly fruit and veg markets and footy matches, and when there was water in it, well, we kind of just hung around there letting the mozzies feed on us and pretended we were at the beach.

When I got to the park that overlooked the water I found Nicole perched sacrilegiously in Nalong’s famous Carved Tree. An Indigenous resident had sliced chevron patterns into the bark hundreds of years earlier, most likely as a warning that there was sacred ground nearby. I shook my head to clear it of the memory of my daydream. That tree had been carved too.

‘You know I can set a curse on you for touching that,’ I told her.

‘That’s bullshit,’ she muttered.

‘Yeah, it is. We don’t curse people, but Harry might be a bit annoyed at you.’ Harry Doolan was an Elder of the local Aboriginal community—or what remained of it. Most of them lived closer to Horsham now, but Nalong was on a part of the river that they still belonged to.

‘Do you really have Indigenous blood, Lainie?’

‘So Harry tells me.’ I was reluctant to say much more because the truth was that I didn’t even know what my mother’s favourite colour had been, let alone anything about her family history. I didn’t know the people, the language, or the stories. In fact, I had always been so certain that I would offend someone if I went around bragging that I had Aboriginal heritage that I had never been brave enough to try to find out any more. And after Harry’s insane announcement the other day, I didn’t particularly want to think about either him or my mother.

‘What are you doing here, Nic?’ I asked as I waved to the old homeless guy who spent his days hanging around the park. He didn’t wave back.

‘Researching our Civics assignment,’ she declared with a defiant smile. ‘The one about the Dreaming.’ She pointed to a plaque the council had erected next to the tree, which outlined the local story, assuming she was being clever, but I was already a step ahead.

‘Good, because that’s what I told the school.’

Her shoulders slumped.

According to the story, Nalong had been built on the banks of a river that flowed from the time of Dreaming and spent many, many years swirling around the bones of our country, until it came out into our land in present day. It was said that the water carried the music of the Dreaming with it, and that the music helped to heal the people. I had dutifully written my own Year 8 essay on it, as had every other Nalong student since about 1980. It was a Nalong College rite of passage that even Nicole wasn’t going to escape.

‘Can’t I just pay that guy to write it for me?’ she attempted, nodding towards the vagrant who was picking a thread from the cuff of his pale grey business suit—probably his first pick from the Uniting Church op shop. It went really well with his bright green T-shirt and greasy dreadlocks. ‘Hi there, Mr D,’ she called to him. ‘Find any treasure today?’

The bearded man scowled and didn’t answer, but got up from his park bench and began to wander around with his hands in his pockets, scanning the ground like he really did expect to find something useful. It was how he spent his days. Always in this park. Harry had once assured me that he had somewhere reasonable to sleep at night though.

‘He looks old enough to have been around when this tree was carved. I’m sure he knows more of its backstory than—hey! Ow!’

She only just managed to save herself from landing on her head when I grabbed her ankles and lifted them, sending her sliding backwards down the sacred tree trunk.

With a resentful stomp, she followed me to the library.

‘Hi, Mrs Hamilton, could I please see the local papers from November and December, 1998 and ’99?’ I was talking as softly as I could because it felt like everyone was listening. The library was in the same building as the council office, so there were quite a few people busy at their desks on the far side of the room.

The librarian had a face so wrinkled it made me wonder if she had been heritage listed along with the old building she worked in. Perhaps one of the heritage restrictions prevented the town from letting the poor woman retire. At least it meant she was proficient at her job. She took less than two minutes to emerge from the back room with an armload of newspapers.

I sat across the desk from where Nicole was scratching out her essay with cranky strokes. When I flipped to the obituaries in the first paper, it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for.

Gracewood, Lucas. 3.6.1973-21.11.1998. Lost to the river and sadly missed. To Lily he was the best brother in the world. Adoring husband to Annie, and loving father to Lainie, to whom he will finish reading Snugglepot under a more graceful sky than this one.

A vivid memory sprang up like a pouncing tiger, of Aunt Lily shaking her head at something I’d asked her and pulling a book from my shelf, which she clutched to her chest before leaving the room. She’d been trying to hide her tears but I’d known she was crying. I always knew when people were crying. I must have been very young because the room still had the pink curtains I’d accidentally torn when I was four, when I’d charged at Noah with a plastic sword. I’d never asked her to read Snugglepot and Cuddlepie to me again after she’d taken it away.

‘What’s the matter, Lainie?’ Nicole was leaning away from me as if my tear-filled eyes heralded some sort of contagious disease.

Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium … By the time I got to Sodium I was able to shake my head dismissively at her, my emotions back under control. She turned back to her essay with the tip of her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, but she didn’t chew on it like Noah always did when he was concentrating.

It took me a bit longer to find my mother’s death notice, because it wasn’t really an obituary. It was a bite-sized article in one of the 1999 papers, stuck below an article about Y2K, simply saying that the coroner had finalised his report and declared the death of Annie Gracewood as suicide by drowning. She had died exactly one year after my dad.

My aunt had always been gentle with me whenever I’d asked about my parents. I knew my dad had drowned trying to save my mother and me. There had been some flash flooding and my mother had lost her footing; she couldn’t even grab onto anything because she was carrying me. Dad had managed to get us both to safety, but got swept away in the process. I’d also known my mother’s death had been suicide, but the drama of it … one year exactly …

‘East of the state park. Along Old Redwood Road,’ came a smooth male voice behind me.

‘You mean the Gracewoods’ place?’ Mrs Hamilton asked, distracting me from my soap opera imagination.

Nicole and I looked at each other. She peered around me to see who was talking. Kolsom, she mouthed silently.

‘Yes, I need to see a copy of their land title,’ the man replied.

I turned in my seat to see a man in a dark suit leaning towards the librarian. He looked to be in his early thirties and had a serious chin, soft hands, and a briefcase with a Kolsom logo on it, and he was frowning at his mobile phone as if bewildered by the lack of reception. Mrs Hamilton flicked her eyes to me, subtly asking my permission. Kind woman. Smiling, I gestured to her to go right ahead.

For five minutes or so I sat with my hands behind my head, chewing on my pen and amusing myself by listening to the man’s frustrated sighs as he checked, rechecked, and cross-checked the title with no less than three different maps. Eventually I gave Nicole’s essay a quick skim-read and then we prepared to leave. I glanced back at the man holding his phone up to the window looking for Nalong’s ephemeral reception, and a shiver ran down from my hair to my toenails. Just like I could tell when someone was crying or being deliberately devious, I suddenly had no doubt that this man was someone who made Nicole look as honest as the bathroom scales.