Hope Farm (20 page)

I thought about him in the truck, his agony. And all those earlier times, when I'd talked on and on about Dan and he'd listened with such avid interest. He was possessed, like Ishtar had been when Miller carried her up the stairs and her head fell back and her whole face softened. Ian's symptoms were different — where Ishtar's were joyous, lush, expansive, his were anguished and furtive, acutely self-conscious — but what was the same was the total transformation, the loss of control.

I knew about homosexuality. At every school I'd been to this was the greatest crime.
Poofter. Faggot. Lezzo.
And, despite all the lip service that was paid to the ideas of diversity and doing away with labels in the various group houses Ishtar and I had lived in — and despite being told that sex didn't have to be only between a man and a woman — I had never actually met anyone who was openly gay. I did, from those frank and excruciating kitchen-table discussions in the group houses and also from the probably less reliable things kids at school said, have some idea of what gay men did when they had sex, but this all belonged to some speculative, theoretical realm. And so, when I thought about Ian being in love with Dan, I didn't think about sex. Not consciously anyway; if it was there, it was in some screened-off area of my mind.

So Dan, with his own enslavement — watching Ishtar in the dinnertime firelight, running round doing chores for her — was responsible for Ian's suffering and didn't even know it. I closed my eyes. It was like a chain of dominoes toppling down, each person hurting the other. And however much I tried to place myself on the outside, an untouchable observer full of disdain or pity, the truth was that I was in there too, somewhere, falling.

Before Ishtar got back I wrapped the photos in paper and then a plastic bag, and grabbing the trowel, took them out into the bush. Halfway down to the creek I dug a hole under a crooked flowering gum and buried the package there, smoothing the dirt and covering the place with leaves.

A few days later I was walking back from the bus stop when Dan came past in his truck and stopped to offer me a lift. I could hardly say no, and so found myself sitting again in loaded silence beside him as we bumped along.

‘You and your friend all right?' he said. ‘After the other day?'

‘Yeah.' I tried not to look at the dark hairs that showed at his wrists, to think about him and Ishtar, the blurred limbs, the saturated light.

‘They been leaving you alone, those boys?'

‘Yeah.' It was true; who knew how long it might last, but they hadn't bothered either of us since Dan's intervention. I sat forward in the seat. We had reached the turn-off for the hut. ‘I can get out here.'

‘Sure?'

‘Yep.' I reached for the door handle, and was unexpectedly seized by a bout of meanness. How pathetic he was, hanging round Ishtar for so long when she wouldn't even see him. ‘Unless you want to come in?'

He gave a tiny laugh. ‘No.'

‘Why not? Don't you want to see Ishtar?' It was the blade-like voice of one of the prissy girls at school, hand on hip, eyes narrowed.

Dan waited for a few moments, and then when he spoke it was so directly, so honestly, that my nastiness immediately collapsed. ‘Of course I do,' he said. ‘But I know she doesn't want to see me.'

I sat in mute shame. Suddenly, all I felt was a deep, deep tiredness, and the same secret desire I used to get with Ishtar, but that I hadn't felt for ages — to be younger, smaller, carried in his arms, wrapped in a blanket maybe, or held in his lap, looked after.

‘Thanks for the lift.' I climbed down to stand in the lee of the open door.

‘It's okay.' He smiled and tipped his head in the direction of the hut. ‘I can't help it, you know. It's not something you get to choose.'

I looked at him, his lean figure behind the wheel, the length of his legs, the hands loose in his lap. Like the slightest warm breath it came sliding in, that sense I'd had when I first met him, of openness, of potential, of all the freedom and opportunity in the world sprawling beyond as if he was some kind of portal. I thought of Ishtar when she was low — in the place she was now — the endless, joyless, downcast tramping of her circular paths: work, chores, sleep, work. The shadows that reached from her, that sapped, that snaked and tightened like a smothering vine. It was too good, Dan's light, his freedom — too good to waste.

‘How much have you saved?'

‘What,' he said, ‘money?'

‘Yeah.'

He squinted, calculating. ‘Well …'

‘Enough for the ticket?'

‘Yeah. Easily.'

The urge to cry filled me like the quick, upward wicking of the tabs of litmus paper we dipped in liquid in Science class. ‘You should go then,' I said, and shut the door and turned to the tunnel of leaves.

The morning after the incident with Dean Price, Ian had been back at the bus stop as if nothing had happened, but I didn't see him out in the bush for a few days. Then one afternoon we ran into each other on the creek path and there wasn't time for either of us to escape.

‘Oh, hello,' he said, gazing into the high branches of a tree.

‘Hi.'

We stood for a few moments, mired in awkwardness. Surely something had to be said. I knew what I could say, what I wanted to: that I didn't care about the photos, that I didn't mind how he felt about Dan, that none of it mattered really, everyone did silly things, I had too. But he didn't want to talk about it, that was obvious, and suddenly I could feel, like an invisible audience, all the jeering faces of the whole school, and hear the insults —
poofter, faggot
— and it occurred to me that if I did say anything about Dan then Ian would probably just deny it. In the end all I could manage was to mumble, ‘I got rid of those photos.'

It was as if I hadn't spoken. He went on studying the tree. Then he took a greaseproof-paper package from his pocket. ‘Cake?' He held it out. ‘It's lemon.'

With a mixture of relief and guilt — because I knew that by quailing before that imaginary crowd of onlookers, I'd failed him as a friend somehow, even if it was what he wanted — I unwrapped it and bit into the crumbly, yellow slab.

He took the paper and screwed it up, tossed it in the air, tried to catch it, missed, and bent to retrieve it. ‘So,' he said, ‘shall we
repair
to the bridge?'

I swallowed the lumpy mouthful. ‘Okay.'

We were at the bridge — maybe it was that day, or another around the same time — when Jindi appeared, stumping along the edge of the dirt road. She was wearing a mustard-coloured velour dress with stains down the front, and running shoes that were too big.

‘Jindi.' I checked the road behind her. ‘What are you doing here all by yourself?'

Ignoring this question, she came right up to us and stood, gripping the railing. ‘Miller's lady's kicked him out,' she announced.

‘Jindi …' I didn't like her being out here; she belonged at Hope, safely confined. She was only five — wasn't someone supposed to be looking after her?

‘What lady?' said Ian.

Jindi leaned against the rail. ‘You know. His lady who whispers and who he used to keep in his room.'

Ian widened his eyes at me.

‘But she comes out now,' Jindi went on. ‘Val makes her soup and they play cards in the kitchen. Sometimes I play too, but her hands make me feel sick. They're all yellow, the nails, and she drops her cards they shake so much.'

‘It's his wife,' I said to Ian. ‘There's something wrong with her.' With relief, I spotted someone — an adult — coming up the road.

‘Wife?' Ian threw up his hands. ‘A wife? This sounds
dramatic
.'

‘It's not really,' I said. ‘They're married, but they're not — together, you know. It's just because she's rich, I think. He gets money from her.' I turned to Jindi. ‘What do you mean, kicked him out? Where's he gone?'

‘He's living in the bad paddock. You know, where the bones are.'

I looked down the road again. It was Gav; I could see the flash of his bare legs under his sarong, and the glint of his glasses.

‘The
back
paddock, you mean?'

‘Yeah. In the shed. He's got a bed in there, and a fire. I'm too scared to go close, but I hear him, he sings and calls out. Even at night. I heard him when I was going to the dunny.' A cobweb hung from the side of her head; there was a leaf caught in it that quivered as she spoke. ‘When we were having dinner he came in and he was crying.'

‘He was crying?'

‘Yeah. It was scary. So loud.'

‘Did he say anything?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Well, what?'

‘He said, “Dawn, it was nothing, take me back, don't you need me.”' Jindi's eyes bulged with the effort of her performance, and the leaf danced up and down.

‘This is better than
Days of Our Lives
,' said Ian. ‘And what did Dawn say?'

Jindi grinned. ‘She said, “No, I don't, you can buy your own damn tractor next time, and your own damn shirts.”'

‘Jindi!' called Gav, who had stopped a small distance away. ‘Come on! Don't run off like that — we didn't know where you were!'

‘Then what happened?' said Ian.

‘Well.' Jindi drew herself up, making the most of the time she had left. ‘He went away again, and Dawn asked Val for a glass of wine.'

I went to have a look myself, creeping down the side of the hill to hide behind the island of blackberry. It was more a shelter than a shed; it only had three walls. Peering through the looping, barbed branches, I saw the mattress, pillow, and blanket, and the place where he'd had a fire — but Miller himself wasn't there. Scanning in every direction and seeing no one, I went closer, to where an outcrop of brambles provided a last hiding spot. There were whisky bottles and cardboard wine casks and their emptied silver innards scattered round, and beside the mattress the big bong from his room, and a couple of Dawn's pill bottles.

I heard him before I saw him, coming back from the direction of the outdoor toilet. He was singing, one of his trumpeting, foreign songs, although the vowels were slurred and he broke off now and then. As I scurried round the far side of the blackberry mound, his head appeared above the seed tassels that whistled and sighed at the tips of the long grass, and there was something short-sighted and bleary in the way he was listing along that I recognised: he was drunk or stoned, or both. I took off up the hill, bent low. When I got to the tree I looked back down; he was on the mattress, just a horizontal streak of colour from this distance, browny-gold and pink.

We had been at the hut maybe two weeks when I walked in from the dirt road one afternoon to find his car parked on the track and Miller seated on the bench outside the door. I froze, still under the cover of overhanging branches. He sat with one leg cocked, the ankle propped on the other knee; his head was tipped back against the wall. I waited. It was hard to tell — I wasn't quite close enough — but I thought his eyes were closed. I stood still for a long time. He didn't stir, but then when I tiptoed past, heading towards the creek, I was sure I caught a movement — an open slit under one lid, the tracking glide of an eyeball. I tried not to but couldn't help breaking into a run.

I hid and read until the sun got low. When I returned I was sure he must be gone, but as I got closer I heard the rumble of his voice, and I stopped and stayed by the side wall, peeking carefully round the corner. He was up off the bench and standing, blocking the doorway. Ishtar was on the other side of him, in her work clothes, arms folded.

‘No,' she said quietly.

Miller opened his arms as if appealing to the whole world. There were dark patches at his armpits. I noticed also that there was a tidemark of grime where his skin met the fuzz of his beard and hair, and the collarless pink shirt he was wearing was covered in stains and black at the neckline and cuffs.

‘You have to,' he said. ‘You must.'

Ishtar didn't answer.

‘This morning,' said Miller. ‘Early. I saw two cockatoos. In the pink sky.' He raised an arm, skimmed his hand. ‘They made a big circle, right over Hope, and then over here. And then they took off.' He fluttered his fingers. ‘They went north.' He smiled. ‘See?'

Nothing from Ishtar.

‘I needed a sign,' said Miller. ‘I asked for one and it came.' He stepped nearer to her and my stomach clenched. He reached and took her hand, which lay limp and unwilling in his. ‘Don't you see?' It sounded as if he was making an enormous effort not to shout. ‘We need to get away. Just the two of us. We need to make our own life, away from here. Away from other people. I'm ready. The car is full of petrol.'

Ishtar didn't move or speak.

‘What is it?' He lifted her hand, as if trying to tug out a response. ‘Is it Dawn? You think I'm a bad husband, abandoning her?' He peered into Ishtar's face, his eyebrows lifted. ‘That's what you're thinking, isn't it? But! Aha!' He stepped back again and dropped her hand, raised a forefinger and smiled, a slow, droop-eyed smile that broadened until his whole head seemed to nod with the weight of it. ‘This is what has come to me, Ishtar. This is what I now see. I will be freeing her. I will be releasing her. Because our marriage cannot be saved, and do you know why?'