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  ‘Remember,’ Ricky said, as we approached Jade’s stop. ‘Three bends after the weir you’ll come to this huge cluster of wild tobacco plants—the ones with the green berries. Now, don’t go trying to smoke the shit. My cousin Willy did once and the poor prick got real sick.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Ricky. I won’t.’

  ‘Right.’ Ricky’s eyes were now focused on Jade, who was strutting up the aisle. ‘Anyway, in the middle of those tobacco plants is a big hoop pine. Can’t miss it. Stretches right up to the fucken clouds, hey.’

  Jade took her seat and Ricky shifted next to her. Jade pecked him on the cheek, turned to me. ‘That’s right, Trysten. The pine tree. That’s how we came across her house. We were just wandering along the river and I saw that tree and thought it looked familiar, then remembered it was the tree you could see peeking up from the river behind Jessica’s house. Head up the bank from the tree, through some scrub and voilà.’

  It had been Jade’s animated telling of the discovery a few weeks before that’d given me the idea of skipping school and making my own way, under the cover of the river, to the back of Jessica’s house. I’d told Jade and Ricky my plan straight away and they both reckoned it’d work.

  Jessica’s stepdad had loosened the reins a bit and was letting her talk on the phone, but only to other girls. So Jade phoned her up and laid out the plan, then came back to me with the date Jessica had proposed to chuck a sicky. Twenty-third of June, my birthday—she’d remembered, yee-fucken-ha! I was so chuffed I smiled for half a day.

  Jade handed me a folded piece of paper and brushed my cheek gently with the back of her hand. ‘Happy birthday, Trysten.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, unfolding the paper. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A little something to help you get there.’

  I looked down at the colourful paper. It was like she’d read my mind. Even though Ricky had gone through the directions a hundred times, I still reckoned there was a decent chance of me taking the wrong turn and ending up lost.

  The map Jade’d drawn wasn’t so much a map as a rough sketch of the town, the river snaking through it and the main landmarks I needed to watch out for. She wasn’t much of an artist, but she’d put some real effort in. Stick figures were drawn near the landmarks: two down the laneway next to school, smoking, a family of them in the playground behind the pool, two soccer teams of them in Mitchel Park. She’d even drawn a copper-coloured bull and a yellow and black DANGER sign next to him. She’d coloured the river light blue, even though it was really a murky green. There were the two bridges I had to pass under, with square red boxes on top that I guessed were cars. While everything seemed in proportion in size to everything else, the hoop pine took up half the page and there, in front of it, was Jessica’s house. And at the back window, was a smiling stick figure with wavy hair.

  ‘What’s that supposed to be?’ I pointed to the pink blob on Jessica’s roof.

  Jade sighed. ‘A love heart, of course!’

  ‘Ha!’ Ricky said as we pulled up in front of the school. ‘Looks more like a real heart. Tell ya, if it was me I’d’ve drawn a different organ, hey!’

  ‘Shit, Ricky!’ Jade slapped him on the arm. ‘You’re such a pig sometimes.’

  As Josie brought the bus to a stop and flung the doors open I took a deep breath and watched the kids move down the aisle. Some, like Chook Boy, shuffled slowly, as if they’d rather stay on the bus than face another day at school. Others leapt off their seats and charged down, excited to see their friends. I moved off at a steady pace, thinking about the next steps of my plan, the steps immediately before me: hop off the bus, walk along the footpath with Jade and Ricky towards the front gate, then, once Josie had pulled off and was out of sight, tear across the road and bolt down the laneway.

  As I stepped off the bus, Josie said, ‘Here’s to a good clean wholesome birthday for you, young man.’

  ‘No other way for it, hey, Josie.’

  I hit the footpath smiling, but as soon as I looked to my right and saw Jade and Ricky, that smile tumbled from my face.

  They stood a few metres ahead, arms linked, blocking half the footpath. Their faces were panic-stricken.

  ‘Down!’ Ricky barked. ‘Now!’

  I crouched and waddled like a duck towards them. ‘What? What’s wrong?’ I peered up.

  ‘Carroll,’ said Jade, seething. ‘Behind us. Front gate.’

  ‘That fucktard!’ Ricky shook his head and spat onto the footpath, the gob only narrowly missing my hand.

  Jade looked to the bus. I followed her gaze. There were only a few kids left to get off.

  ‘Listen!’ Jade said. ‘As soon as Josie closes that door you need to turn around, keep low and dash to the back of the bus. Then, as she’s pulling out, move along the other side of the bus for a bit and cut across the road and down the lane. The bus will block Carroll’s view. And if it doesn’t, don’t worry, Ricky and I will create a diversion.’

  Two senior boys walked past, looked down at me and smirked.

  Josie flung the doors closed. ‘Go!’ said Jade. ‘Now!’

  I darted round the back of the bus. Josie eased onto the road. I moved to the side of the bus and jogged alongside it for twenty metres. There was the laneway to my right. Now or never.

  Before I shot to my right and across the road towards the lane, just as the bus was passing the front gate, I spotted Josie peering at me through the side mirror.

  She shook her head then slowed the bus a little, lingering in front of the gate.

  Blocking Carroll’s view. Giving me more time!

  I winked, gave Josie the thumbs up and, before she started moving again, before I darted across the road, she winked back.

  I charged across the bitumen road and into the dirt lane.

  I’d made it. I’d fucken made it!

  I was only a few metres down the lane when I heard Carroll’s voice booming.

  ‘HEY! HEY!’

  Fuck! I bolted, kicking up dust. He’s onto me.

  ‘HEY!’ Carroll’s voice again. ‘Break it up, you two!’

  You two? Jade and Ricky!

  I rounded the bend, crouched behind the corner of someone’s fence, and looked back.

  With a small crowd growing round them (Chook Boy front row, eyes almost popping out of his head) and Principal Carroll stomping towards them, Ricky and Jade were going at it against the fence.

  Ricky’s hoodie was already on the ground, and Jade’s green blazer was next to it, and they were clawing at their remaining pieces of clothing like they intended to take every single one of ’em off and do the deed right then and there.

  After walking under the second bridge at the northern end of town I consulted Jade’s map to check whether to take the right or left fork in the river, then folded it up and slipped it into my back pocket.

  I marched along the cow tracks, which zigzagged through the tufty grass and patches of weeds, past trees and under vines, humming a tune that I wasn’t even sure of the name of. The fog had lifted, the sky above was clear as. The pale green river’s surface caught the reflection of overhanging branches, birds that darted overhead, and the quarter moon still hanging right in the middle of the sky. Then, as I rounded the last bend, as the river widened into a place that looked like it’d make a good swimming hole, I saw in it the reflection of a massive tree trunk.

  I looked up.

  In the middle of the forest of wild tobacco the hoop pine towered straight up, impossibly high, as if it were scraping the very sky.

  I pressed forward.

  At the edge of the scrub I picked a sprig of yellow flowers from a wattle tree and walked across Jessica’s backyard.

  Halfway across I looked up.

  There she was. Face pressed against the window. Eyes sparkling brighter than ever, and her smile stretching from ear to ear. Then she disappeared, twirling, sending her ocean hair into a storm.

  Footsteps sounded from inside the house, and then there she was, at the top
of the back steps.

  She bounded down them and I ran towards her. When I reached her I hugged her as hard as I could and kissed her even harder, and then, hand in hand, we tore up those stairs and into her bedroom.

  28

  With my eyes glued to the ground like a member of a search party, I shuffled through the bottom paddock hunting for bush rocks—kicking down into the clumpy grass with my steel-capped boots and listening for a tock sound. Mick’d promised me and Dad a hundred bucks for three tray-loads’ worth. Dad said if I collected them he’d do the delivery and I’d get seventy-five of that hundred. I was up to my last load. I only had one to go—but it had to be a big one. Mick’d said the last load could’ve been fuller, so I didn’t want to disappoint this time. And with the sun sinking, getting ready to straddle the peaks of the ranges and then disappear behind them, I was running out of daylight.

  I swung my boot back and kicked down into the grass, sending a dozen grey moths fluttering out when I heard that tock I’d been listening for. I knelt down, pushed the grass aside, and as soon as I saw her, I knew she was it. Covered in patches of lichen, flat top about half a metre wide—just like the one that’d been in the last load that Dad’d said was a beauty and would be perfect for Mick’s garden steps. Straight away I dug round the edges, and after a fair amount of jiggling her back and forth I’d ripped her out of the ground, and picked her up and cradled her to my chest.

  It’d been a hard day’s work, and my arms were already feeling like jelly before I picked up that big one—bigger even than the one I’d helped Dad haul up from the creek. The muscles in my arms, my legs, my back were straining and caning. Strange sounds like the ones Dad made when he hauled something heavy—booossshkaaaa and ooooyaaaaa—were escaping from my mouth. But I pushed forward, and for those last ten metres, even while my legs felt like they were about to buckle under me, I kept my eyes on the trailer ahead and my mind on the prize.

  Seventy-five bucks! And every cent was going to be spent on Jessica.

  We hadn’t braved another rendezvous at her house, but last weekend, after a month of fighting and pleading with her mum and Paul, putting her case forward—Trysten’s not like that dickhead Michael, and I really like him and you can’t control me forever and fine, if you don’t let me see him, I’m out of here!—they’d allowed us to meet up and see a movie together at the cinemas in Big Town.

  Guess they figured we’d be limited in what we could get up to in there. Which was a bit true. We couldn’t do everything, but tucked away in the dark corner near those red curtains we could still do some stuff. Mum’d dropped me off there with twenty bucks, which hadn’t even covered both our tickets, so I felt pretty scabby making Jessica pay for the drinks and popcorn. I wasn’t going to make that same mistake when we met for our second movie date next weekend. With seventy-five bucks I was planning on buying both our tickets and two jumbo popcorns and frozen Cokes. Plus, while I waited to meet her at the cinema steps, I’d be hiding a huge bunch of flowers behind my back.

  I reached the ute, the muscles in my arms and back and chest burning something fierce, like they were ready to sear through my skin and set my shirt on fire. I reckoned when Shaun got back from the coast, where he’d gone with Sarah to scope out some apartments for when they moved, my arms would be nearly as big as his. The work with Dad was paying off in more ways than one.

  With one final boooosshkkaaaaa I lifted that last rock to shoulder height, and tossed it into the tray. It landed on top of another rock with a clack, which made me wince; Mick didn’t want any cracked ones and I sure as shit didn’t want to go and try to fetch another. But the rock didn’t crack. Instead, it wobbled for a moment on top of the one it had landed on, then rolled into place, nestling in the last remaining gap.

  I rubbed my blistering hands, taking in those rocks all packed tightly together. Then, with the sun nearing the tips of the ranges, splashing a warm orange over the entire valley, I turned and crossed the paddock and made my way up the driveway.

  While I walked I thought about those rocks, wondering where they’d come from, how they’d got there. We’d had a casual teacher for Geography a couple of weeks back. He was a wild-lookin’ one—brows bushier than Dad’s, frizzy hair and a long wispy goatee—and the class’d been the biggest bludge ever. He sat on top of the teacher’s desk, swinging his legs, and told story after story, not really fazed if we listened, or chatted among ourselves. I already knew bits and pieces of what he’d said, but I was one of the few listening. There’d been something in the way he was telling it, like one big long rambling yarn, and for the first time in a while I thought school wasn’t half bad. He told us about how the land in the area used to be. How right up to the border and hundreds of ks south was covered by this massive scrub. He told us about how the local Aboriginal people, like Ricky and his mum’s ancestors, lived off the land and took care of it. He told us about how one day these loggers, like Jim Davis’s great-grandfather, came and changed everything. How they started clearing the forests for the red cedars and how now all that’s left of that massive scrub are patches here and there. He told us how before all that, way way back before anyone was living round here, how there was this big volcano that stretched right up to the sky and erupted one day and shaped the valleys and the rivers and the mountains and the ranges.

  Maybe all those rocks had been one whole mass once upon a time—a cliff on that volcano, or a big boulder. Then maybe one day they’d been torn apart in that eruption. Maybe they’d travelled thousands of ks down some ancient river to end up where I found them. Then during all those years they’d been shaped and changed by the elements, and now they were together again in that tray.

  As I got further up the driveway I heard Mum’s singing floating out the kitchen window and the chhhh chhhh chhhh of Dad’s handsaw as he sawed some new planks for the back verandah. I looked up. While the shadows were stretching, the fading sun was splashing everything else—the house, the huge fig tree, the eucalypts out the back, Shaun’s shed—all different shades of orange.

  Keeping my eyes up, I thought of those rocks again, and how they were a bit like us. Our family. How we’d broken apart and come back together and how we might break apart again, but we’d always come back to the place that’d shaped us. Back home.

  I kept pressing on up, smiling, feeling real happy and warm.

  But the feeling didn’t last long. Halfway up the driveway I stopped at the spot in line with the dairy, which, whenever I’d got to it for the last few months, gave me a sharp sting in my heart like someone was brushing a thistle over it. I couldn’t even look at the dairy, because it made me think of Trev. The one stone not coming home.

  Months’d passed and we hadn’t heard a word. Mum said when we did it wouldn’t be from Trev himself, but from some copper doing the notification that he’d carked it under a bridge, or in a park, or at a mate’s party, or at a pub. She reckoned Trev knew what was coming, and that instead of waiting round, dragging it out, he was going to bring it forward.

  I told her what I’d said to her heaps of times before: that I was sure Trev’d be back. That he wouldn’t have left without a goodbye, a note, nothing. But she said that’s how he’d always been—here one day, gone the next. And that he’d never been big on goodbyes, particularly the forever kind. She said he probably saw himself leaving as a kind of parting gift to us, that he’d been thinking of us in his own strange way. That he didn’t want any of us to find him dead in the dairy one day, pale and eyes popped out of his head. Jesus, Trysten, just think of it. You wouldn’t want a zombie Trevor haunting yer dreams, would ya?

  But while I knew deep down it was true, I still held on to the hope that one day Jim’s cattle truck would chug along, pull up at the front gate and Trev would jump out with a big hooroo. And in thinking that, I knew, at some stage, just in case, I needed to get across to that dairy and clean up that mess I’d made when he’d gone.

  I peered over to my left. Golden light splashed through th
e open door. Not much light, but enough to get started on the job.

  I marched across the paddock, and looked inside.

  It was trashed! The shitty old foam mattress that I’d cut a gash in with a piece of broken glass as soon as I’d got in there and then chucked off his pallet-bed was leaning lengthways against the wall. The pallets that I’d got to next were smashed to kindling. The bookshelf was busted in two, the crates were crushed, another window smashed, and the door was hanging from one hinge.

  I stepped over the weeds growing in the doorway, and once inside the dairy got stuck right into it. I piled all the smashed furniture in the corner, used a bit of bent wire to screw the door hinges back on the doorway. I plucked some of the weeds and used them to sweep up all the broken glass. I grabbed two more old pallets from out the side of the dairy and brought them in, laying them where Trev’s bed had been. Then I pulled the foam mattress away from the wall and, as I did, I saw that the graffiti I’d written about Trev had been crossed out. Well, most of it had. Trev’d left one word, then added to it.

  Trysten Black has

  NUTS that are oh so small,

  And a brain no bigger than a cricket ball

  But that’s not so important, ’cause if truth be told

  The young man also has a heart of gold

  And it’s as big as they come

  Shining brighter and bolder than the mighty sun.

  Acknowledgements

  A heartfelt thanks to the Byron Bay Writers Festival, especially Marele Day, who was with Tryst and me from the very first line. To Varuna, the National Writers House, and all those who make it magic. To Annette Barlow for her faith in my work. Christa Munns and Hilary Reynolds for the thought and care that went into the edits. Sarina Rowell and Jill Runciman for the meticulous proofreading. Brett Rufus (Soldier On) and Chris Thompson-Lang (Frontline Yoga) for shedding light on the experiences of wounded soldiers. Janet McKinnon for her careful reading and considered feedback. Dusk Dundler, my big brother, for helping me find my voice and hone my style. Mum and Dad, Bob and Marg, Aunty Bec and all my other friends and family members who got behind me so I could get behind the desk. Lastly, biggest thanks of all to Angie for your ruthless red pen, your endless reserves of patience, and all the love and laughter you brought on this long long journey.