The train seemed empty by the time it got to the Hawkesbury River. Sarah looked out at the neatly spaced cement pylons left from an old bridge. Pelicans squatted on two of them. She pushed her nose flat against the glass, tried to see herself out there, on top of the pylons. Or falling into the river. She could feel, if she thought about it hard enough, the cool wash of the green. She could stay there, in the river. There were houseboats on the Hawkesbury. She remembered that from somewhere. She could live on a houseboat. Live there and not talk to anyone. Except maybe once a week when she had to park the boat and go to the local shops. It would be great. No-one could ever find her there. There was a Hawkesbury River stop, but the train zoomed past it. Sarah tried to sleep instead. Tried to read the sports pages of The Herald, left on the seat beside her. Tried to do anything but think of the house in Boolaroo or the hospital in Teralba.
That house. Before she’d left it, there had been a blanket quietness. They had crept around each other, that mother and that father. And Sarah too, creeping around, asking nothing, asking for nothing. Now and then at night, the dull thumps through the wall. Ruth had stopped screaming by then. All eyes looking at the ground. Once, Sarah had found Ruth crying. It was late at night, after a hospital visit day. Sarah woke up to the moon in her window and the sound of little sobs from outside her room. She opened the door and walked to the lounge, placing her feet carefully on the lino floor. Ruth was huddled on the ground, her head on the couch. Even in the dark, with just a sliver of moonlight, Sarah could see her back shaking from the crying. Sarah stayed, watching, silent, until the moon passed behind a cloud. Then she went back to her bed. She didn’t visit Kari after that. Persistent Vegetative State they said. Terrible shame, terrible accident. The day Sarah left, Ruth stood at the back door waving and saying ‘be careful, be careful’ and wiping tears from her face. As if anywhere could be more dangerous than that house.
No, that’s enough. Fassifern already. Sarah counted through the stops, tried arranging them in alphabetical order and calculating the time between stations. Booragul. Sarah could see the glimmer of the lake in the distance. Tried to slow the train down with thoughts of Zan, standing small on the platform of Central station, her big medusa hair waving about. She could see the sludge of Cockle Creek before the train passed Teralba. Breath was coming tight in her throat. Think harder. Trying to remember other, newer things. But didn’t want to remember Zan either. Not Zan, not the way she’d looked away when Sarah pushed the piece of paper into her hand, saying here’s their number, ring me. Zan hadn’t even said, sure, sure I will. Just looked away at the station clock.
The sign for Awabakaal flashed past outside the window. When Sarah saw the light shining off the cars piled up in the yard of Ted the Wrecker’s, she pushed her fingers into her eyelids, hard. The smoke from the Sulphide. Everything looked grey.
The ticket office at Cockle Creek station was empty. Sarah watched the train curling away up the hill. Her shadow was long on the cement platform. A line of ants trailed from the closed door of the women’s toilets, right across to the stairs. She stretched herself out on the warm concrete and watched. One ant had a crumb of something, twice as big as its own body. Sarah watched its long journey, the crumb held over its head. When she put her hand in front of it, the ant detoured. Just veered off and set itself off on the right course again. She put her hand in front of it again. Nothing, no change. She held her finger over the insect, moving so that she kept a shadow cast over the ant-trail. No response from the ant. Even when she brought her hand down close, right near the ant’s head, nothing changed. They didn’t seem to panic, ants. She pushed her finger flat against it, squashing it into the cement. The ant-trail continued. Ants crawled over the small corpse. Sarah’s fingers smelt of something like aniseed. Ants guts. She put her forehead against the cement and lay like that until she heard footsteps on the gravel path outside the ticket office.
Across the road from the station, the sulphide works pumped grey-white clouds into the hills. The sulphide worker’s club was right next to the station, a red brick building which looked more like a suburban house than a club. The gravel car-park was full.
She stood outside the glass doors, peering in at the shadowy shapes passing behind. A man in a green safari jacket came out through the door and held it open for Sarah. ‘Going in?’ He was all smiles.
‘Is there a phone in there? I need to ring a taxi.’
‘Where are you going? I’ll give you a ride, sweetheart.’
‘No thanks. Really. I’m fine.’ But for some reason, she wanted to fall on the ground with laughter.
‘Your loss. Phone’s first on yer right.’
The carpet inside was a bright orange and brown check. The giggles in Sarah’s chest were beginning to swim up her throat. A woman in red stilettos teetered over.
‘Member?’ She had lipstick on her teeth.
‘Am I a member? No.’
‘I’m sorry, members only, unless you can be signed in by a member. The book’s over there.’ The woman looked ready to teeter off again.
‘I just want to use the phone. To ring a taxi.’
‘Oh. Well then. Through here.’
The lipsticked woman followed her into the small square room with two red payphones lined against the wall. Like a guard-dog, she stood at the door, baring her teeth at Sarah. A large manshape pushed past her. ‘Just comin in to use the phone Dot. Gunna ring the old lady, teller to gedder bloody arse downere. Just won twenty bucks on the pokies.’
‘Well done, Macka.’ The woman touched him on the arm, as if there was any skill in sticking twenty cents in a slot and pulling handle.
‘Hey,’ Macka was looking over at Sarah, ‘it can’t be, can it?’ He came closer, breathed right into her face. Lager. ‘It is. It bloody-well is. Isn’t it? I’ll be buggered with a barge pole if this isn’t Mal Sweet’s kid.’
The lager and cigarette smell shot into Sarah’s nose. The laughing had gone and the sickness was back. She pulled the rucksack back onto her shoulders and pushed past Macka, with him yelling behind her ‘Hey, isn’t it?’
She mumbled at the lipstick-woman ‘I think I’ll walk,’ and shoved past her too, and out past the orange carpet and the glass doors, and out; into the hot grey air of Boolaroo.