The Beauty Is in the Walking (2 page)

Dinnertime at our place had become a bit ragged since Tyke left. Mum always cooked because she was old-fashioned about things like that, but if Dad was going to a meeting or playing darts he'd eat with his mates and even when he was home we would often sit in front of the TV. I preferred it that way after a while. With four in the family, our dinner table was a perfect square, but once Tyke left, all the talk seemed to escape through the open side like the luck out of a horseshoe. I would face his empty chair, giving me a clear view through the lounge room to the front door and, if it was open on summer nights to let in the breeze, out into the world he'd gone to be part of.

I was still setting the table when Mum arrived with a plate in each hand. She wasn't a small woman, although the wedding photos on the sideboard showed she was slim as a girl and the face Tyke and I knew hadn't always been so round. She'd had long hair back then, too, the same
colour as mine; these days she dyed it darker to hide the grey.

‘Peter, we're sitting down at the table now,' she called.

Tyke set down the other plates just as Dad came through from the lounge room. He didn't worry about the grey over his temples and as for his weight – well, his favourite expression was ‘You can't fatten a thoroughbred.'

Passing the sideboard, I spotted one of the wedding portraits among the black-and-white pictures of Grandad Meredith and the generations before him standing stiff and proud in their Sunday best. Mum had been Margaret Meredith before she became Marg O'Leary. The main drag in town was Meredith Street and one of the trophies Tyke had won in high school was the Meredith Cup.

Like the rest of his prizes, it stood in a cabinet in the lounge room to remind us how good he'd been at pretty much anything needing sweat and speed – before the rugby league clubs came to scout him, anyway. It was an old joke that Mum had worn out one car driving me to doctors and Dad had worn out another driving Tyke to sport.

While we ate, Mum kept up stories of what had been happening around town and people Tyke might want to know about. She'd been elected to the Shire Council two years ago and took the job of talking up the town pretty seriously. He only showed interest to please her and Dad stayed quiet. I wanted to say, ‘Oh for God's sake, Mum, stop forcing things.'

‘Will your ankle be better in time for pre-season?' Dad asked finally and that broke us out of the awkwardness.
Tyke was soon talking about players he spent his days with, guys who were household names all over the state. It was a guy thing, which left Mum the odd one out and she showed what she thought of it by methodically sopping up every lick of gravy with her last potato.

All those long drives to football games had made Tyke more Dad's son than Mum's, just as all the waiting for doctors and sharing someone's spare room in Brisbane had made me Mum's son more than Dad's.

‘Where to, tonight?' Mum asked. It was the signal that dinner was over.

‘The Royal,' said Tyke.

‘He's going to drop me at the church hall first,' I added, pushing back my chair.

‘And I can guess why you look so pleased about that,' said Dad, enjoying himself. ‘You want your mates to see you in a growling V8, eh?'

I liked the gleam of approval in his eyes. ‘Too bloody right.'

‘Have Tyke do a few passes outside first, revving the engine, so every girl in town sees you get out of the Red Beast.'

‘Nah, that'd be big-noting. As long as Mitch and Dan see me, that's enough.'

I didn't banter with my dad very often. Felt good.

On the short drive, Tyke's frustration showed. ‘What am I supposed to say to Mum, Jake? I doubt she wants to hear about Courtney. Doesn't want to know anything I do in Brissie.'

‘Just keep coming back to see her,' I said, trying to sound wise.

At the church hall my little daydream came to nothing when the footpath outside was mostly deserted. No entry charge meant no reason to linger outside wondering whether it was worth going in when the band was a bunch of wannabe locals. Inside all the faces were familiar, even those who'd left school ages ago, and there were a few of those. Most were scratching around for work and, with nothing solid to draw them into Tyke's world down the highway, they stayed here where at least they had a bed and a free feed.

Crowds were tricky for me. I didn't use crutches, but the downside was getting knocked off my feet too easily. Everyone in town knew me, of course, and mostly they gave me a bit of space, but all the same, my eyes had become a kind of radar that picked up trouble spots from ten metres away. Guidance system operational, I threaded through the bodies looking for Amy or Mitch while the band crawled around like rats, tracing leads in a desperate bid to track down some problem or other.

I spotted Bec and used her as my lighthouse, for wherever you saw Rebecca Wiley, Amy Jones would be close by. Bec's default look was a deadpan stare which made her the hardest of my group to read, but she was slim and pretty, in a black skirt tonight, and she didn't frown when she saw me, like a lot of girls who didn't even know they were doing it.

Amy wasn't one of those girls, either. Like Mitch she'd known me all her life. Little kids don't notice if you walk funny because they don't know there's a normal way to do everything yet. By the time they do work it out, you've become part of their landscape.

No surprise to see Amy in jeans, and the girly-pink singlet that was her favourite, probably because she looked so good in it. She was curvy where Bec was straight, with fair hair, and skin that went red in the sun or when she was embarrassed. If there was one thing she could change about herself, she'd told me once, that was it. I wouldn't change anything about her.

‘Have you seen the guys?' Amy asked when I was close enough.

‘I was hoping they'd see me in Tyke's ute,' I confessed, shaking my head.

Before I could say any more, her face darkened and I wondered what I'd done to upset her.

Then a voice from behind me said, ‘You guys ready for a good time?'

I turned cautiously to find Callum Landis grinning stupidly at the girls.

There are some creatures that make you ask,
What was God thinking?
Mosquitoes, for instance – that buzzing noise, the sting that swells up afterwards. Nobody on earth is pleased to see a mosquito and Callum rated somewhere south of that.

We knew why he was here. His eyes had crawled all over Bec since she'd turned up in Year Nine, and
even though he'd left school last year he still fancied his chances. He was Amy's cousin, which gave him an excuse to join us.

‘What do you want?' asked Amy.

‘It's not what
I
want,' he shot back and, wrenching his hand from his pocket in a ploy he'd obviously planned, he showed off a cylinder of notes choked inside his fist. ‘I'm cashed up now. Thought you and your friends might like a bottle of something. Jim Beam, maybe.' He stared openly at Bec, who winced like he'd lobbed a jar of spiders at her.

I stifled a groan. If he cared about Bec so much, he'd remember how she'd got off her face at New Year's and couldn't stand the smell of it ever since.

At just the right moment, Dan Latchworth cruised through the crowd like a dingo parting sheep. ‘Put that money away before I stuff it down your throat,' he said and Callum made off like a kelpie kicked by a bull.

Dan was no Tyke, but he had the swagger of a hotshot footballer all the same, which made him seem bigger than he really was. Or maybe it was the way he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, leaving his shoulders and biceps tense, ready, sort of hinting at things.

‘You beat me to it,' said Bec, who released the tension from her body in a long slow breath.

‘He got away easy, then,' laughed Dan. ‘Pity, I'd love to job him one now he's on permanent at the meatworks. My brother's been doing casual for two years and Callum walks straight into the boning room, five shifts a week.'

Without meaning to, we all turned towards Amy.

She shrugged. ‘Sorry, Dan. Callum's part of the family. My dad had to put him on.'

That was how things worked in Palmerston – not that I could talk when I already had a job waiting for me next year at Merediths, where Mum was the manager.

‘Worst thing is he's living in the caravan behind our house,' said Amy, ‘and Mum keeps inviting him in for tea.' The rest of her complaint was lost as the band started up, out of time, out of tune and loud enough to hear on Mars.

Mitch found us soon after, making a space for himself at Dan's side and grimacing at the noise. I might have known Amy since nappies and wading pools, but Mitch Turley was my oldest friend, the one who'd made sure I got a bowl in backyard cricket, the one I could trust to time me, secretly, over a hundred metres when Tyke wasn't there to do it anymore. We were all together now – Amy, Bec, Dan and Mitch. And Jacob O'Leary. Sparking off one another and with the girls to mix up the blokiness, the five of us hummed like an easy tune.

‘D'you get it?' Dan shouted, leaning into Mitch's ear. He meant a bottle of Bundy.

‘Nah, got something better. Mum's car.'

Half an hour in, Dan put his hands to his ears and hammed it up, working his head from side to side as though he hoped to pull it right off. ‘Painful,' he shouted. ‘Come on.'

We followed him into the night air that hinted at a summer impatient to breathe its sticky warmth all over us.

‘What now then?' Bec asked, and when Mitch pointed across the road to his mother's car we all took it
as a decision, dawdling towards it so I wouldn't tail off. They'd been taking things slow for me so long I doubt they even knew they were doing it. Dan said something to Mitch that I didn't pick up, but the devil in their faces said they were up to something. Fine with me. Some of our best nights had started out that way and the girls would back me up about that.

Mitch's mum drove an old Barina which had three seatbelts in the back but room for only two bums. ‘We'll have to strap Jacob to the roof,' said Bec.

‘Okay, hoist me up,' and I stood beside the Barina with arms raised.

Mitch grinned at me for a sec then turned away to open the driver's door. ‘No, do it,' I hissed under my breath, at the same time shooting my eyes towards the girls. When you've been friends for so long, you don't need any more than that.

Dan had heard and now he was grinning too. They took hold under my shoulders and, when my chest was on top of the car, heaved my legs after me, turning my body until my nose was level with the windscreen.

‘You got any rope to tie him down with?' Dan asked.

Bec and Amy thought it was great, especially when a car passed in the street with the driver's face staring out through the window in grown-up horror.

‘No rope. Got a couple of bungee cords.'

‘That'll do,' said Dan casually and taking them from Mitch he hooked them into my belt and the other ends over the edges of the roof. ‘Should hold him okay.'

No way were they going to drive off with me like that. The aim was to outlast the girls and Amy quickly obliged when Mitch jingled his keys. ‘Hey, you're not serious, are you?'

Game over. Dan unhitched the bungee cords and helped me down. ‘Good one, Jake,' he said.

Whatever the jokes and contortions and the mock battles over how we'd fit into the tiny car we were always going to end up with Dan and Mitch in the front and the girls and me across the back. Amy took the middle, leaving me by the window to enjoy the warmth of her leg pressed tightly against mine and dream of things Tyke had stirred up in the garage.

We headed away from the streetlights, along the highway at first and then onto the unlit roads cut into the hills above town.

‘My legs are going to sleep,' Amy complained. ‘How far are we going?'

‘Bit further,' Mitch replied, like it was no big thing. I'd guessed already and waited for the girls to work it out.

‘Hey, this is Kibble's place, isn't it?' Bec said at last.

The car went silent until Dan piped up, casually, ‘Thought we'd pay our respects to the old horse.' By this time Mitch had killed the engine, although he let the headlights pick out the barbed wire drawing straight lines into the darkness. Then, with a twist of his fingers, they died, too.

‘Jesus!'

‘What do we do now?' I asked.

‘I'm getting out,' said Dan.

‘No, don't,' Amy shot back at him, but he'd already cracked his door to let in the air of this place and, whether
we wanted to or not, we were all imagining what had been done to the horse.

‘The police didn't say what he used,' said Bec.

‘A knife wouldn't have been sharp enough, that's what I heard,' added Mitch. ‘Had to be a razor.'

You'd think we were one of those therapy groups where they go round a circle with everyone having a say. Amy went next. ‘Dad knows one of the cops. He said the cuts were like a surgeon's. They reckon Jack the Ripper was a surgeon.'

She was only repeating what had been whispered all over town. The newspaper had called him The Ripper right from the start and, since there was so little to go on, a faceless human shape slinked through the nightmares of every soul in Palmerston.

‘Might have been something from another world,' said Bec.

‘Don't,' Amy snapped at her.

I told them what Tyke had said in the garage. ‘The guy who did it will be long gone by now.'

‘I don't know. What if Bec's right and it's not . . . you know . . . human?'

Dan bent low, speaking into the car. ‘Come on. Let's go find where it happened. You got a torch, Mitch?' There was enough moonlight for me to see his lips curl into a grin that immediately jumped to Mitch's face as well.

‘We're staying here,' said Bec and she took a grip on Amy's arm as though she feared Dan would drag them both into the night.

‘What about you, Jake?' asked Mitch.

They were up to something and wanted me in on it, blokes against the girls, like our little stunt with me on the roof. ‘What's the ground like?' I asked.

‘No, you're staying here with us,' Amy announced and she took hold of my arm tighter than Bec had grabbed hers. I liked her touch, even if it was from fear not affection, and the way it promoted me to protector – not a role I'd played before.

‘Barbed wire can be a bit tricky,' I said, not even mentioning my legs.

We listened to Dan and Mitch joking as they climbed through the fence and when their voices had faded we simply watched through the car windows as the torchlight picked out where they were.

‘The light is like the eye of some monster,' said Bec.

‘Don't talk like that,' Amy demanded sharply. The tension twanged through her body as she twisted beside me, trying to follow the guys. On the hillside, the light went out.

‘Oh shit,' Amy wailed. ‘We shouldn't have come here,' and she hunkered between Bec and me, head down and arms tightly around herself as though all the warmth had gone out of the world.

Girls can be hard to read. What seems genuine can be an act no different from what Dan and Mitch were doing up there in the darkness. You just don't know how much to take seriously, and if you get taken in you end up the loser. I'd been caught plenty of times and, in the back
seat of Mrs Turley's car that night, I didn't know which way to jump.

Bec rolled down her window. ‘Hey, guys, what's with the torch? Turn it back on so we know where you are.'

No reply.

‘I don't like this,' said Amy. ‘What if something's up there?'

‘The guys are just playing games,' I assured her.

‘You don't know that for certain,' she came back at me.

‘I mean it, Ames,' I said, taking her hand as gently as I'd spoken the words. ‘They're laughing their heads off and hoping we don't hear them.'

She gripped my hand in hers and, encouraged by this, I slipped my arm around her as naturally as I'd ever done anything in my life. I was playing the protector, but I couldn't help wishing the way she leaned into me was a sign of something else.

‘I wish they'd come back, so we can get away from here,' said Amy. ‘I want to be where there's light and people.'

I pulled my arm away from Amy and opened the door.

‘What are you doing?' both girls asked in a single burst.

It was quicker to do it than explain. Once I'd fought my way free of the back seat I wrenched open the driver's door and fumbled with the switches until the road flooded with light. The keys swung in the ignition after I'd knocked them in my blind search.

‘Hey, guys, Amy's freaking out,' I shouted over the roof of the Barina. ‘Come back down so we can get going, okay?'

But there was no torchlight, no reassuring call from the hillside, no sign of the boys.

‘What's that?' cried Bec, who'd wound down her window again, hoping, maybe, to hear the thud of shoes picking a way down the slope. There
was
a thudding noise, in fact, although too frantic and irregular to be the guys. The escalating sound drew our eyes towards the road where something shot into view, making all three of us jump.

‘It's just a rock,' said Bec.

Dan or Mitch, or both of them together, had rolled a stone the size of a pumpkin down the darkened slope, making sure it missed the car, of course. A plaintive voice drifted down. ‘Help us. Please get help.'

Amy was losing it, big time. ‘What if they're not faking it? Maybe there
is
something up there. We shouldn't have come.' She clambered out of the back seat and latched her arms around me so desperately I grabbed at a door just to keep us upright. Bec followed out of the car and put her arms around Amy from behind. I saw fear in her face as well.

‘You
do
know it's a scam,' I said to Bec, over Amy's head.

She nodded without giving up her frown. ‘My brain says so. I just can't convince the rest of me.'

I knew what she meant. The stories about Kibble's horse would scare the shit out of Superman and being so
close to where it had happened, isolated, in the dead of night . . . I wanted to be among the lights of boring Palmerston as much as anyone. Maybe my fear leeched into Amy as she huddled in my arms, or was it Bec's admission that tipped her over the edge? She began to tremble.

‘It's only the guys being stupid,' I whispered in her ear, just as a wild cry shot free from the darkness.

‘He's got a knife. Oh God, a knife!' and after that it didn't matter what I said. Amy put her hands over her ears and let out a howl as miserable as anything I'd ever heard.

‘Jacob, you've got to stop this,' Bec pleaded.

‘Into the car,' I replied and once Bec had shifted across to the far window and Amy was safe beside her I shouted over the roof again.

‘The game's over, guys. Amy's getting upset. Turn on the torch and come back to the car.'

An expectant silence stretched across the darkness, then, ‘Ah, ah! There's blood everywhere.'

Stuff it! I pulled open the driver's door again, only this time I fell into the seat and used my arms to pull my legs into place. The Barina was an automatic, like Mum's Astra and, although Mum would be surprised to hear it, Tyke had taken me for a few lessons. Before I could talk myself out of it I'd started the engine and steered the Barina around the steady curve of the hillside.

‘No, we can't leave them. What if they really are in trouble?' Amy shouted, grabbing at the door handle and for a moment I feared she'd go completely hysterical.

I stopped the car and turned round in the seat, reaching for her hand as I did it. ‘They were bunging it on, Amy. I saw them smirking at each other before they took off into the paddock. We'll let them sit in the dark long enough to get sick of the game, then we'll go back. Are you okay with that?'

I squeezed her hand to make her respond.

She glanced at Bec. Maybe she was thinking of what Bec had said earlier about her brain believing, but the rest of her going to jelly. ‘Yes,' she said weakly. ‘I'm a fool, I know. It's just that it seemed so real there for a minute.'

Bec put her arm around Amy and drew her backwards to relax against the seat. Did she throw me a look that said, ‘Good job,' or was I imagining things?

With the car rolling again I was more aware of what I was doing. Driving, for God's sake, and on a gravel road I didn't know. I searched left and right for somewhere safe to turn around and ended up going a kilometre before a side road allowed enough space for a U-turn. By then Amy was sitting up straighter and she even managed a laugh at something from Bec that I didn't hear.

We were close to Kibble's paddock by this time and when I saw torchlight on the road ahead I called back to Amy, ‘See, they've come down off the hillside.'

She leaned forwards, searching through the windscreen until Mitch and Dan came into view, hands held up against the glare of the lights and not a drop of blood to be seen.

‘Bastards,' said Amy as I brought the Barina to a halt, but there wasn't any malice in her voice and after that things happened pretty fast.

First Mitch yanked open the driver's door. ‘What the hell! No one's supposed to drive this but me. If Mum finds out, she'll hang my balls on the clothes line.'

‘So don't tell her,' Bec called calmly from the back seat. ‘Jacob drove like a pro, anyway.'

The matter of my mangled legs hung in the air, whether anyone mentioned it or not, but Mitch was steamed and he wasn't letting me get off that easily. ‘What was I supposed to think, the way you drove off and left us here?'

‘It was the only way to make you stop.' If I went on about Amy she'd feel worse than she already did and even now, when I checked over my shoulder, she was still a little shaky.

Mitch circled the car with Dan, more for show than anything, and when there wasn't a scratch he cooled down. ‘You shouldn't have taken it,' he said finally, but in such a meek voice I wondered if he was feeling sheepish because of the way Amy sat in the back, deflated and wishing she was anywhere else.

Nothing sheepish about Dan, though. ‘Oh, for Christ's sake, you knew it was us mucking around. Why do you think we brought you out here? Just a bit of fun. I can't believe you drove off like that.'

I was out of the driver's seat by this time, with Dan only a metre away. ‘Amy was freaking out and you wouldn't stop, even when I told you to.'

He didn't like me saying that. ‘But you knew it was us,' he repeated, as though it was our own fault. ‘Isn't that right,' he said, poking his head through the driver's door to confront the girls in the back seat.

‘Yeah, I knew,' said Bec. It was the truth, maybe, but that wasn't the point.

Dan turned his attention to Amy. ‘Come on, Ames,' he coaxed, putting his hand on her knee with surprising tenderness. ‘You knew it was us as well, didn't you?'

She took longer to answer, all the while holding his gaze as though she was going over the whole thing in her mind. Finally, she glanced towards Bec and said, ‘S'pose I did.'

Dan pulled back, triumphant, and turned to me. ‘See, you're the one who went too far, Jacob, pulling that stunt on Mitch. Wasn't funny, mate.'

Dan touched the tip of his forefinger to my chest – the faintest contact backed up by his footballer's body. ‘Don't ever play me for a fool like that again, Jacob,' he said.

It was an odd moment, especially with Mitch watching from so close. Dan was warning me, threatening me even, which didn't seem right among friends, but he'd let something else slip without meaning to. When I'd taken so long to turn around he must have thought I wasn't coming back at all and, for those few minutes, he'd been as powerless to make me as I'd been to stop him taunting Amy.

Mitch reclaimed the driver's seat, Dan flopped in beside him and I squeezed into the back with the girls in exactly the same spots as before. Dan still had the torch and, twisting
round into the gap between the seats, he shone it under his chin to create ghostly effects. It was funny now that Amy fear's was gone – and Dan's anger. He was his laid-back self again, cranking up the radio as Mitch guided us through the curves and creek crossings to rejoin the highway.

We were halfway back to town when Amy leaned close and spoke into my ear. ‘Thanks for stopping them the way you did.'

I put my arm around her again in friendly affection and left it there, knowing the guys had eyes only for the windscreen and Bec wouldn't notice in the darkness. After a minute or two, Amy leaned away to break my hold, but I tensed my arm, keeping her in place, and since my hand stretched far enough around I pressed it flat against her stomach, wonderfully aware of her warmth beneath my palm. She might have sat up and said in front of the others, ‘Jacob, what are you doing?' but she didn't, even when I pressed more tenderly, leaving no doubt I had hold of her. She shifted a little, as though trying me on for size. Just short of town, she turned to look at me and I wondered what I'd find on her face if I dared take my eyes away from the window.

Mitch dropped us off one by one, first Amy, then Dan who lived in the next street. Dan stood holding the door open while I came round to replace him in the shotgun seat then waited patiently until I'd pulled my legs aboard before closing the door. You'd think his harsh words to me below Kibble's paddock had never happened.