The Fine Color of Rust (3 page)

Only one of those things came true, but I've always loved that bit of bush. I'd come out here with the kids sometimes in the early days and walk the tracks, listening to the sound of the bush, when I could hear it above their endless chatter, and smelling the minty eucalypts.

We've just swung into the Bolton Road when Jake asks if he can have a Mooma Bar from the supermarket. His chicken-pox has dwindled to a few annoying itchy spots, but they won't let him back into school yet, no matter how much I beg. He's bored and tailing me like a debt collector. Any excuse to get out is good.

“There's no supermarket out here.” The moment I speak I see a shopping trolley on the side of the road. Someone must have walked that trolley five kilometers. Unless it was tossed in the back of a ute and driven here. Further along the road is one of those orange hats they use to steer drivers away from roadworks. A couple of minutes on we see a load
of rubbish dumped a few meters off the road. A dozen beer bottles lie around the charcoal of an old fire with what looks like bits of an old picnic bench sticking out of it. A heap of lawn clippings molders beside a brown hoodie and a pair of torn-up jeans. I slow down, pull the Holden over to the side of the road. The trees still come right up to the roadside, but behind them is light, as if someone is shining a torch through the forest.

“We came here on my birthday,” Jake reminds me.

He's right. We came out two years ago with green lemonade and presents and a birthday cake in the shape of a swimming pool. Kyleen and Maxine and their kids came, and we played hidey at the old shearers' hut. Three kangaroos burst out from behind the hut when we arrived and crashed off through the bush. We called them “shearing kangaroos” and Jake thought that was a real kind of 'roo till Norm put him right. But now I can't make sense of where that hut might be. The face of the forest is completely different. Ahead of us, a wide dusty dirt road leads in through the trees. I can't see the picnic area. And that light through the trees is wrong.

I drive along the bitumen to where the dirt road enters the bushland.

“I don't want to go in there,” Jake says.

More rubbish litters the side of the track—plastic bags and bottles, juice containers, old clothes, building materials—as if this piece of bushland has become the local tip. I peer along the track. It seems to lead into a big clearing that wasn't there before. The bush used to stretch way back. I would never let the kids run too far in case they got lost. Now if they ran off they'd end up standing in a flat empty paddock the size of a footy field.

“Footy field,” I mutter. “Maybe they're building a new footy field.”

That can't be right, because even the old footy field is in trouble. The footy club has a sausage sizzle every Saturday morning outside the supermarket to raise money to buy in water. All the sports clubs around here are desperate for water. Some have had to close down because the ground is so hard it can crack the shins of anyone landing awkwardly on the surface.

“Let's go. I'm bored.”

“Hey, Jake, open your mouth again and show me your teeth. I think it might be time for a trip to the dentist.”

That always shuts him up. We climb back into the Holden and reverse into the Bolton Road to continue the journey to our new windscreen.

“LOOK AT ALL
these cars, Jake.” We pull in with a mighty shriek of brakes at Merv Bull's Motor and Machinery Maintenance and Repairs. “Why don't you hop out and have a look around while I talk to the man. Look at that one—a Monaro from the seventies! You don't see those much anymore. Especially in that dazzling aqua.”

Jake purses his lips and rolls his eyes and waggles his head all at once. He keeps doing this lately. I wonder if he's seen a Bollywood film on the diet of daytime television that filled up chickenpox week.

“Are you trying to get rid of me, Mum?”

“Yes.”

He sighs and swings open the car door. He slouches his way to the shade at the side of the shed while I quickly pat down my hair in the rearview mirror before I step out of the car. I can't see any sign of Merv Bull. A panting blue heeler stares at me from the doorway of the shed as if I'm a piece of meat.

“Hello?” I call. “Mr. Bull?”

The blue heeler slumps to the ground and lays its head on
its front paws, still staring at me. The sign on the side of the shed says
Nine to Five, Monday to Friday.
I look at my watch. Ten fifteen, Tuesday morning.

Jake scuffs his way over to my side. “There's no one here, Mum, let's go. Let's go to the milk bar. You promised that if I . . . you would . . . and then I . . . and then . . .”

As Jake goes on with his extended thesis on why I should buy him a Violet Crumble, I shout, “Mr. Bull!” one last time. A man emerges from the darkness of the shed. The first thing I notice is that he's hitching up his pants. He strides forward to greet me and stretches out his hand, but I'm not shaking anything I can't be sure was washed. When my hand fails to arrive he pulls back his arm and wipes both hands down the sides of his shirt. He's standing between me and the sun. I can't see his face let alone its expression.

Jake's jaw has dropped and he's staring at Merv Bull as if he's seen a vision. He's this way with any man who's around the age of his father when he left.

“Hi,” Jake whispers.

“Hello.” Merv Bull leans down to shake Jake's hand. “I'm Merv. Who are you, then?”

“Jake.”

“Pardon me?”

Jake's awestruck voice has soared into a register that only the blue heeler and I can hear.

“This is Jake”—I step in—“and I'm Loretta. I think Norm Stevens told you I was coming?”

“Ah, you're the windscreen.”

“That's me.”

“Can't do it till this afternoon, sorry. But you could leave the car here and pick it up at five.”

“Sure.” I put on a bright fake smile. “Jake and I'll walk the five kilometers back into town in this shocking heat and have a pedicure while we wait.”

“We could stay here and look at the cars,” Jake whispers.

Merv Bull shades his eyes with his hand and looks down at me. I can see him better now. Norm was right, he's handsome in a parched, rural bloke kind of way. Blue eyes and dark eyelashes. Looks as if he squints a lot, but who doesn't around here. He's frowning at me like a schoolteacher frowns at the kid with the smart mouth.

“I do have a loan car you can use while yours is in the shop. To get you to your pedicure, that is.”

“Ha, sorry, only joking.” I'm turning into a bitter old hag. I'm reminding myself of Brenda. Soon I'll become strangely attracted to beige. “That would be great. Any old car will do. I mean, hey, we are used to the Rolls-Royce here.”

“Mum! That's not a Rolls-Royce. It's a Holden!” Jake beams proudly at Merv.

“You certainly do know your cars, mate.” Merv pats Jake on the shoulder.

Now I'll never get Jake out of here. Merv, to be addressed hereafter as God, goes back into the shed to get the keys for the exchange car, and Jake and the blue heeler trot faithfully after him. I watch his long lanky walk. My husband never walked that way, even though he was about the same size as Merv Bull. My husband, Tony—God love him wherever he may be and keep him there and never let him come back into my life—was a stomper. He stomped through the house as though he was trying to keep down unruly carpet; he stomped in and out of shops and pubs, letting doors slam around him; he stomped to work at the delivery company
and stomped home stinking of his own fug after eight hours in the truck; and one day he stomped out to the good car and drove off and never stomped back.

We'd been married ten years. I never dreamed he'd leave me. After the second year of marriage, when I fell pregnant with Melissa, I settled down and stopped fretting that I'd married the wrong man. It was too late, so I decided to try to enjoy my life and not spend all my time thinking about what could have been. I thought he had decided that too.

A month after he'd gone a postcard arrived. By that time I'd already finished making a fool of myself telling the police he must have run his car off the road somewhere and insisting they find him. The postcard said he was sorry, he needed to get away.
I'll be in touch. Cheque coming soon.

Still waiting for that cheque.

“It's the red Mazda with the sheepskin seat covers over by the fence.” Merv Bull hands me a set of car keys on a key ring in the shape of a beer stubby. “She's a bit stiff in the clutch, but otherwise she drives pretty easy.”

“Been getting a lot of business?” As I speak I take Jake's hand in mine and edge him quietly toward the Mazda before he realizes that we're about to leave his new hero.

“It's been good. They told me it'd take a while to get the ordinary car business going again, especially since no one's worked here for a few years, but I guess I've been lucky. I'll probably have to get an apprentice when the big machinery starts arriving.”

“Big machinery?”

“For the development. Whenever it starts. I thought it was supposed to be in Phase One already. That's what they promised me when I bought the place.”

“Right.” I've lived in this town for years and I still haven't got a clue what's going on. “So that big hole in the bush on the Bolton Road is the development?”

“Yep. But for the moment what I've got is cars, and there seems to be no shortage.”

I look at him again. I want to ask if it's been mainly women customers but I don't. I will have to tell Helen about Merv Bull. If Merv is single and if he doesn't hook up with anyone in a hurry, he'll be a rich man in this town. He'll be mystified at how many parts appear to have simply fallen off cars. I inch closer to our loan car, still not letting on to Jake what I'm doing.

I stop as my arm is yanked backward. Jake has caught on and he's trying to pull his hand out of mine.

“Can I stay here, Mum? Please!”

“No, Jakie. Mr. Bull has to do his work.”

“I'll be quiet, I promise. I'll look at the cars. You go and I'll wait here.”

Merv Bull looks at me.

“He can't bear to spend a minute without me,” I say.

“I can see that,” Merv answers.

Finally we maneuver Jake into the car with a promise of a workshop tour when we return.

“How much will it cost?” I remember to ask as I pump the accelerator and turn the key the way I would in the Holden. The tiny Mazda lets out a roar of protest. “Sorry, sorry!”

“Might drive a bit differently to your car.” Merv calmly waves the exhaust smoke away from his face. “Should cost about a hundred dollars. Maybe a hundred and twenty, but no more.”

While the magically vanishing husband was not good for
much, he did know how to change the oil in the car and do a few odd jobs. He probably could have managed fitting a secondhand windscreen. Now I have to pay for everything. And with Jake sick I'm taking time off work, and I have even less money than usual.

“Feeling better today? Ready to go back to school?” I ask Jake with a frisson of desperation as we drive along in the Mazda. The ride is so smooth we don't even have the sensation of movement.

“Can we have a car like this?” Jake asks. “When's Auntie Patsy coming to visit? How long will we be in town?”

“No. Soon. Until I've finished photocopying the Save Our School flyers and it's time to pick up Liss.”

Helen's waiting to pick up her neighbor's boy at the school when Jake and I zip down the road to collect Melissa. I execute a neat U-turn, a feat impossible in the Holden, and pull up at the gate. Helen almost falls out of her car.

“Oh my God! A new car! Where'd you steal it?”

“It's a loaner from the mechanic.”

“Oh.” She screws up her face in sympathy. “Hey, a letter arrived for you at the school. Melissa's probably got it. Another one from the minister about the school.”

I don't ask how she knows. I never ask how she knows what we watched on television the night before and what brand of hair dye I use and how Melissa's grades are going. But now I know something she doesn't. I decide I'll wait and see how long it takes her to find out about the new mechanic.

“Do you know what the letter says?”

“Loretta! As if we'd open your mail! But we've all guessed. It says, ‘Thank you for your recent letter. I'd like to take this opportunity' . . . da de da de da.”

Melissa appears at the car door, holding out the minister's
envelope as if it's a bad report card. I take it and fling it on the front seat, and Melissa leans through the passenger-side window and peers inside the car. “Is it ours?” she asks.

“Nope.”

“Actually,” Helen calls out on the way back to her car, “I've booked in to that new mechanic for a service, too. I've heard he's very good.” She waggles her bottom and kicks up a heel. Of course she knew.

Poor Giorgio, I think. Giorgio is the old town mechanic, pushing eighty, bald and bowlegged. We've all used him for years to keep our cars running with bits of string and glue. I decide I'll keep going to him for my servicing, even if he is getting so absentminded that last time he forgot to put the oil back in the engine. Luckily Norm noticed the car hadn't leaked its normal drips onto his driveway.

•  •  •

WHEN I GET
back to the garage I'm devastated at having to return the keys to the Mazda. We've been around town ten times playing the royal family, waving at everyone we know.

“That'll be eighty dollars. Didn't take as long as I thought.”

Jake's rigid beside me as I hand over the cash. Melissa stands next to him chewing her thumb. I've had words with Jake in the car about not nagging Merv for a tour.