Beth

Moths circle the verandah light, the smoke from my cigarette rising in a jagged line. I draw deeply and let the smoke charge my lungs, imagine its swirling as a remedy rather than a wager with the future. My father was a pack-a-day man and it killed him in the end, the cancer spreading through the right lobe with the kind of efficiency no other part of his body could manage. Every time I try to quit, something challenging seems to happen, to the point I think my body assumes one necessarily follows the other. An addict’s logic maybe, but this isn’t the time. The psychologist will be here at ten tomorrow and we’ll be on show – every action, every quirk, every unclean surface. I spent the afternoon being my mother’s incarnation, having finally found a reason to make dust my enemy. I’m not taking any more risks with Freya. If I could avoid this psychologist visiting I would, but it’s out of my hands. I haven’t told Freya yet. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since she returned, the ferocity with which she sliced up that painting still burned into my mind, and the mournfulness of those groans.

Something rustles through the Barley Grass near the toolshed – a snake, or the possum on an evening jaunt. As a kid, I used to believe any night rustling was Hobyahs. My father would read me the story from the Grade Two reader he still had, compelled for some reason to initiate me into the horror he and his classmates had felt in their formative years. The Hobyahs were dark-caped creatures who inhabited the bush and loved nothing more than to eat people. The version of the story my father learned in school included a dog named Dingo, who, as punishment for barking to warn of the Hobyahs’ approach, had its tail cut off, then its legs and head, so it could no longer bark, which placed in danger the lives of its master and the master’s wife. It all ends well. The dog is reassembled and saves the day, and the Hobyahs are no more. But I’ve heard of farmers afraid to harvest at night, unable to free themselves of the spectre of black-hooded creatures out there – creep creep creeping, out from the gloomy gullies, run, run, running, through the grey gum-trees – especially when the wind travels through the wheat. The story was told to stop children wandering off into the bush at night, the fear of this happening wildly disproportionate to the numbers of actual disappearances. But I can’t help thinking that the moral lies elsewhere.

Those who warn of the true dangers risk dismemberment.

I take one last drag, put the cigarette out in the carburettor I use as an ashtray, brimming with butts. Not a good look. As I shove it under the couch, I notice something wedged beneath its sagging bottom. I drag it out. It’s a chequered tea towel tied at the corners to create a bag, the kind you see hanging from a stick in pictures of the swagmen who travelled through here during the Depression. There are things inside. It wasn’t here yesterday or I would’ve seen it when I came out to sweep.

I glance at the door. Freya’s inside, asleep on the lounge-room couch. Her night in the desert seems to have worn her out. The knot is tight – I could wake her, but I’ve already got it halfway loose.

Inside is a collection of objects, worn and glazed with dust. I lay them one by one on the couch, five in total. They look ceremonial in the moonlight. The largest is an empty pop-top bottle with teeth marks on the white spout, so chewed it can’t have been only thirst that was in need of relief. Beside it is a small penknife with a dark wooden handle, the blade curved from being sharpened so many times. I pick it up and run the blade under my nose. Nothing, except the discreet tang of metal.

The next object is a semi-transparent stone the size of a walnut. I hold it up to the flame of my lighter. It’s amber-coloured, some sort of resin, like you find around the base of an Austral Grass-tree after a fire has been through. My father’s generation called them blackboys, their charred trunks eerily like a family group standing above the burnt land.

The fourth object is a faded matchbox, standard Redheads, scratch marks on the strike paper. I open it. Grains of sand collect in a corner.

Only one match left.

So is this why she walked out of the desert? No water. No means to make fire. A random farmhouse, one that looked abandoned. In search of a tap. The next part of her plan – whatever it might’ve been – interrupted by me.

The last object is a piece of folded paper. I open it carefully, some of the creases in the paper already torn. Hand-drawn in pencil is a map of the desert, its familiar trapezoid shape and network of tracks. There are no contours, though a few of the highest points are marked and named, along with any access to water. One Tree Hill. Eagle Swamp. Wild Dog Spring. And its boundaries are clearly marked – state border to the west, most of its eastern limit river. The others are all farmland, like my place – hemming it in – reminding me that the other day as I was driving into town, a cloud of pesticide blew across the road from a neighbouring property and into the desert. That the chlorine stink it carried with it smelt of death.

I fold the map and place it with the other objects in the centre of the tea towel. Tie the knot back around this small medley of possessions – possibly everything Freya has in the world. I was sure she’d run away and then thought better of it, deciding that, at least for the moment, I’m her safest bet. Yet for all I know, she went to claim her belongings so she could come back and add me to her collection.

Belonging. Such a fraught word.

More rustling in the Barley Grass. Hungry possum. Debunked Hobyah.

I put the bundle back where I found it.

One more cigarette.