The Break Read online

  ‘Now eat this.’ She passed Sam a plate with two bits of bread on it. ‘And no more snacks until your tea, okay?’

  He looked pleadingly at her and said, ‘But the fairy wrens! I saw that cat stalking one on the weekend!’

  ‘Do you have any homework to do?’

  ‘Yessss. Practise my spelling words. And do my reading. But can I go on the Mac for just a little while, Mum?’

  She looked at her watch, then nodded. ‘Half an hour, and then do your homework, okay, Sam?’

  As he trotted down the corridor to his bedroom, she heard a faint Okay, Mum drift her way.

  ‘Naaaaa!’ Sam mimicked his Mac’s ‘on’ sound as it booted up. He loved his computer, it was like having a secret companion in your bedroom — always there, waiting to start up, and a million different things to do on it. It was an old one, an LC 575, but he was hassling his folks for a 5400 for Christmas. Or maybe Christmas and birthday, seeing they were pretty expensive.

  A year ago, when his uncle Mike last visited, he’d brought Sam a modem and had set him up with a dial-up account. Sam’s dad had chucked a mega wobbly about it. He’d had a huge argument with Mike and raved on at him about bloody asking one of us before you go and bloody do something like introducing a world of bloody rubbish to the kid. Sam listened to the whole thing from his room, praying that he’d just get to keep the modem, which he did, but only after Mum had sorted the two of them out. She’d yelled, too, at both of them. She was the best. But she was strict about The Rules. Sam always had to ask if he could go online, and he was only allowed half an hour at a time. Except on weekends, when he sometimes got an hour.

  So ever since then, Sam had been checking out some of the cool sites on the internet — and there were heaps. He clicked on one of his favourite sites, a sci-fi story, updated every day by some guy in the States.

  The story just got better and better. He read it each day when he got home from school, after afternoon tea. It was mostly words, just a few pictures. He’d ask Mum, then run down to his room, which was pretty big, heaps of space for his star charts and models, and would power up his computer.

  He knew Mum got cranky sometimes when he was on the net, but that was only when she was expecting someone to call and they couldn’t get through because the modem was connected. Or when she was bored, waiting for Dad to come back from the trees. But Sam also knew that no matter how long he was on the internet, he’d always get one of Mum’s hugs before bed. The other night she’d nearly squashed him into a cardboard cutout kid.

  ‘Will we still do this when I’m, like, twenty, Mum? Do the superbearhug thing?’

  She’d nodded surely. ‘Yep, we will.’

  Nine-year-old Sam already felt squirmy at the thought, embarrassed, but kind of glad, too. He couldn’t imagine being twenty. He reckoned he didn’t have to worry for a while yet. It was a long way away.

  Sam concentrated now as his eyes scanned the screen. Valstran was getting closer — it wouldn’t be long until he took over Sawan country. Jeez, if only he had that 5400 and Netscape, he’d have faster download speed and better graphics, too. Maybe he could talk to Mike about it. Yeah, he’d mention it to Mike next time he was down, whenever that would be.

  6

  Ferg wandered through the tiny orchard, his hand lingering on the trunk of a knobbled, grey-brown plum tree as he passed. The late afternoon sun filtered through the leaves of orange trees, avocados, lemons, an almond and a pear. There was a hedge of blackberries, a tangle of raspberries. A grand old fig. All this old stuff. He couldn’t imagine his father planting it all, back in those early days. Trees need that, he thought. Long-term vision. You think you can’t be bothered with the waiting, the years, but the things always grow, and transform the place with them. And it wasn’t even business for his old man — Jack still had the dairy farm to look after, to keep turning over, day in, day out.

  The orchard had been for Ferg’s mum, for Pip. She was battling with the boys and was hopelessly homesick, she once told him. When they first built the house, it was full of fleas, didn’t even have a proper floor, and she was pregnant. ‘That’s why your dad planted that orchard, to make things a little better for us.’

  Ferg wished his old man were still around, would’ve loved to have a beer with him, hear more about those early years, see his mum with those grinning, shining eyes again. He knew that he and Sam and Liza weren’t always such good company for her. He wondered if Pip looked at him and Liza, at how things were between them.

  A few dry white skeletons in paddocks reminded him of how his father’s generation had cleared the land, hacking away a ring of bark from the trunks, waiting for the things to die. Trees used to be their enemies, his dad had said when Ferg told him about the tree-farm idea. They’d only got in the way of farming the land. ‘Good on you, son,’ Jack had said from the couch. ‘You’re taking this old place into the next century. That’s the way it’s gotta be.’

  Dairy farming wasn’t the staple of this town anymore, not since the arrival of the alternative lifestylers in the seventies and the vineyards and now the tourists. Things had changed for the farmers around Margaret River; they’d had to change. Ferg grew Tasmanian blue gums on the property now, but he kept a small stock of milking cows, and the orchard, to remind him of how it all began. There was big money to be had from the blue gums, and while Ferg and Liza had only begun the business a few years ago, things were looking pretty good. It had been a worry when they’d taken the plunge, and the bank was worried too, but they’d done their research, and Ferg’d completed a few units in environmental science out at the ag college, where he’d been the oldest student by a couple of decades.

  As for his brother — well, Mike had pissed off to the city.

  Ferg took out the thermos of coffee he’d made that morning, realising as he swirled it around that he hadn’t put any sugar in it. He swallowed the creamy stuff, trying not to taste the bitterness of it on his tongue.

  7

  Sam was busy charting constellations, lying on his belly on the rug, cold slits of draught coming up between the boards underneath. He heard the wind and the huge old marri going nuts out there, and was that someone knocking at the front door, or just his imagination going wild, as Nanna Pip would say? He imagined the wind was a superhero force, stealing the sound from the visitor, wrapping it up and sucking it down underneath the weatherboard house. (He’d explored under the house a couple of years ago, got his Darth Vader tracksuit pants all dusty, and found a cat’s skull right under their fireplace. Mum didn’t like the skull much, wouldn’t touch it, but Sam heard her ask Dad later how long it might have been there. He’d strained to hear his father’s reply, but couldn’t move away from the window because he was keeping a log of shooting stars that passed over their house.)

  The pale green paint was peeling off the outside of their place, but Sam liked it. The house was big and old and had heaps of different spots to explore. There was a fence where Mrs Perry’s place began, it was bent right down where they climbed over it all the time, and it wasn’t like other fences that you couldn’t go over — like the one at school. Mrs Perry always said, ‘Hello, Sam,’ in that funny voice of hers when he was crossing through her garden to get to the hill, or the river. Mrs Perry was from Scotland, that’s why she sounded funny. She called her chooks chewks. He loved the sound of their clucking and scratching and picking over the soil. Yep, he was glad they didn’t live in one of the new houses in town. Little brick boxes, Dad called them, snorting. They were all the same — all beige, he said, with beige garage doors and beige carpet inside. Sam felt sorry for the kids who lived in those beige places, and sometimes brought home a friend, showed them his bedroom, with the big window, and the marri right next to the front door, and pointed to the purply-blue blur of the blue gums in the distance, where his dad was working. But he only showed the cat skull and his charts to Jarrad. He was the only one who understood that stuff. And he was into the internet.

  The flyscre
en door creaked like a bullfrog, and Sam heard the sound of Dad’s voice, and another voice, but he couldn’t hear well enough to tell who it was. The wind. It was really howling now, and Sam wondered if the marri would be okay — it was close to their powerline, and he got up real quick to ask Dad if any branches needed trimming, or anything. Sam didn’t want to miss out on his sci-fi story, and besides, he didn’t much like candlelight, which made everyone look spooky.

  ‘Liza, Mike’s been out on the verandah …’

  ‘Knocking away like an old dero.’ Mike grinned stupidly.

  Liza laughed. ‘You dickhead, you should have just come in!’

  ‘Dickhead!’ he protested.

  They were all laughing, standing in the kitchen.

  Ferg wandered over to the kettle, shaking his head at the silliness. ‘Who wants one?’ he said, holding up his special after-work mug, a huge thing.

  ‘Yeah, tea thanks, Fergs. But a normal mug’ll do for me, thanks, mate.’

  Liza tutted. ‘Shame Pip’s not here.’

  ‘Where is she?’ asked Mike.

  Liza and Ferg looked at each other, then said in perfect timing, their voices a funny harmony, ‘Ladies’ bridge.’

  ‘Ladies’ bridge!’ Mike smothered a laugh.

  ‘She goes with Mrs Perry, once a fortnight.’

  ‘No, sorry, that’s good,’ Mike said. ‘It’s good. Poor Mum. She must miss the old man like hell.’ He shook his head.

  Not that you do much about it, Ferg felt like saying. ‘Reckon she does,’ he said.

  Fergus thought of their mother there, in the brightly lit hall with tables of oldies dealing cards. Pip wasn’t really into bridge, he knew that. I go for the social side, she’d told him one day when they’d waited for Mrs Perry to bring the car around. Despite that, he reckoned it was a good thing. She usually came back pretty cheery, with a few bits of gossip about local goings-on.

  Sam skidded in on his socks.

  ‘Hey, Sam!’

  Liza watched him take them all in before saying, ‘Dad, do we need to check the marri, cos the wind’s up and it might hit the powerline. Hi, Mike!’

  They were all looking at Ferg, awaiting his response.

  ‘Have you come to stay again, Mike?’ Sam plopped down on one of the wobbly wooden chairs, remembering the time Mike stayed in the sleep-out a few years ago when Auntie Jenny went to Europe. Liza said Sam wasn’t to bother him then, just let him be, when he had asked her why Mike looked sick, kind of bony, and never got out of bed until after lunch.

  ‘No, no, mate, just come to say hi. I was on a job out at Brenn Head, fixing a seized chipper for a bloke who does tree lopping. Thought it was a perfect opportunity to swing by.’ There was a slight pause. ‘But I am thinking of coming to live down this way.’ He looked at his hands. ‘Thinking about it.’

  His mum and dad looked at Mike. Dad’s mouth was slightly open.

  ‘Mike …’ he said. ‘When? Why? I thought you liked it up in the city. There’s not all that much to do down here, mate.’

  ‘I’d need to get some work. Seen any job ads for an itinerant plant mechanic lately?’ He laughed.

  Sam swallowed the warm, thick milk of his hot chocolate and kept hold of the cup to warm his fingers. He was getting that funny feeling in his bum, and he held on to the cup tight. It was tingling like it did when he lay in bed at night listening to Mum and Dad arguing. Sometimes he’d sneak out of his bedroom and down the hall to catch a look at their faces, to see exactly how angry they were, if they might stop soon.

  He told his bum to shut up. It was all okay, they were all sitting around now, laughing, right?

  8

  Ferg hadn’t slept. He’d stewed all night. And when he’d told Pip over their morning brew the news about Mike possibly moving down, she’d lit up. And Ferg felt like he was twelve again. Of course she’d be glad to have Mike down here; he was her son too. That thing of Pip being closer to Mike than to him, that was just a hangover from when they were kids. I was a little shit, then, Ferg thought. Fair enough if Mum thought I was a pain in the arse. That was when things were still on even ground for Mike, before he’d changed course. It really seemed like that, when he and Liza had talked about it, tried to figure it out; it was like a boat changing direction, straying from its plotted course, being blown by shifting winds. For the hell of it? Maybe. He was smart, that was for sure. Mike had always bettered Ferg at school, got top marks and slaps on the back from the old man. It didn’t matter in the end. Fergus had spent good time with the old man before he died, and they’d had Pip living with them for years now; he knew those were good things, important things. He thought they were, anyway. Maybe they were just bullshit. Mike had hurt the folks — not out of malice, of course, but out of pure fucking selfishness — and Pip still thought the sun shone out of him, never said a word against him. Maybe if she knew the truth, he’d often thought, but they’d promised never to tell her; it’d be the end of Pip discovering something like that about one of her boys.

  Ferg held a scrap of old netting over a hole in their main net for the orchard, and cut it to size. He wasn’t sure how best to secure it. A stapler? Wire? Gaffer tape? Yeah, gaffer tape, that fixed everything.

  It felt awful to relive old jealousies. The thoughts corrupted you, scored your insides, and he knew he had to just let it be. Maybe it was part of why he’d only wanted one kid, one Sam. So he couldn’t slip into that himself, as a father, being closer to one child than the other — so cruel, so unkind. Thank god Sam would never have to deal with that.

  Who knows if you’ve made the right choices, Ferg thought. You can’t ever know that.

  Ferg reckoned he knew one thing. He had something in him for Sam that he didn’t have for any other soul on this planet.

  9

  Cray’s week home was up. He had hardened in the last twenty-four hours, his face less fluid, his mind bringing the desert back into focus in preparation for the coming transition — from Freo, Rosie, their nights out, swimming at Leighton, cooking up meals for the two of them that could have fed ten; to the donga, pressure and stress, extremes of heat and cold, no recreation except drinking and swearing, and borderline inedible canteen food.

  ‘God, and Shitslinger!’ he moaned, closing his eyes for a moment against the thought. Four more weeks, he reasoned. Four more, and he’d be back here, in their bed. And then it’d be time to go again, to go through all this again. ‘Bloody hell!’ he yelled, chucking the papers against the wall.

  ‘Oh, don’t, Cray.’

  ‘Rosie, this promotion, if I get it, things’ll be so much better — two weeks on and one off. And I’ll get to move out of the donga, too. Never thought a brick-and-tile in the middle of nowhere could look so good.’ He let out a breath. ‘I bloody hope I get it.’

  ‘You’d better stop thinking about it till you find out for sure, Cray.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. The extra money could come in handy now, though.’ He threw her a cheeky look. ‘Now that you’re a lady of leisure. Or is that bludger? Slacker?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’ll have to do a few cheap meals, then, won’t we? Toad-in-the-hole on Tuesdays, and Wednesdays can be toasted sandwich night. And there’s always Mum’s best liver on toast for Thursdays. Mmm-mmm.’

  ‘Oh, god,’ he croaked.

  Rosie fell back onto a pile of pillows and cushions. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do. No job. No hope. May as well just give myself up to the Church. Didn’t you know, Cray? God has a plan for my happiness. Oh, here’s one — I heard it the other day: God has no problems, just plans.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Cray said, pulling her towards him. ‘Well you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Forbidden fruits create many jams.’

  ‘Oh. My. God.’ Rosie cringed. ‘You’ll need to take your hand off my boob, then, won’t you.’

  On that last night they walked down to the Seaview to meet friends, play pool over a few pints out the back. The pub was conv
eniently located opposite the local brothel, something everyone seemed to know but Rosie, until one day Marty made a crack about the knocker shop and she unravelled the facts along with some of her naivety.

  The Seaview, like its neighbour opposite, was fairly grungy, barmaids still proffering a titty kitty some nights. Other nights there were bands out the back, local outfits trying to break into the Freo music scene. While the old guys drank themselves into oblivion at the front bar, shoving notes down sticky cleavages, the younger Freo crew hung out near the poky stage out the back.

  When the band had finished its second set, Cray and Rosie’s group stood around their keg-for-a-table and watched the musos packing up their equipment.

  ‘Poor bloody drummer,’ said Marty. ‘He’ll still be here at midnight.’

  ‘’Nother round?’ said Salt.

  Cray yawned. ‘Nah, not for me. Got an early start tomorrow. Unfortunately.’

  ‘Oh, mate!’ Marty said. ‘Let’s get you back in the water again, four weeks tomorrow, okay? Wash off that mine dirt.’

  Cray laughed. ‘We do shower up there, you know.’

  ‘Together?’ said Salt.

  ‘Not generally.’

  ‘Shame for you, mate.’

  ‘Fellas!’ Rosie interjected. ‘I reckon I’m getting rather … tired too. Salt, can you get Nat to call me when she has a chance?’

  ‘Sure thing, Rosie, will do.’

  Rosie and Cray took the slow wander home through the dark shushing streets of South Fremantle. The walk took them past cottages with clutters of bikes out the front, towering sunflowers and the occasional gargoyle. The conversations they shared on these walks were ones where they thrashed out new views, relinquishing some after a few streets, and settling on perhaps one crucial belief by the time they’d passed the hospital.