Penny checked on Theo for the tenth time, threw a few more bags of whitebait over the top of him, then went into the kitchen. It was almost more than her life was worth, trying to ignite the ancient gas oven, but she persevered. She didn’t want to bother her uncle. Watching football on TV was one of the few things that still seemed to give him pleasure. Penny nestled the beef shoulder in a bed of parsnips, pumpkin and potatoes, then put extra vegetables in an oiled pan for herself. The 1940s kitchen was pre-rangehood, so Penny opened the window, then frowned. Ray wasn’t watching TV at all. He was standing in the driveway, smoking, staring at the road. She studied him. Once upon a time, he would comb his few thin wisps of hair over his bald pate. Lately, he’d forgone this small conceit, and the remnant strands hung like limp mouse tails around his ears. A fully-laden log truck was approaching, and Ray shrank back as it roared past, air brakes screaming, rattling the windows.
Penny rinsed her hands and joined him out the front. ‘What’s the score?’
Ray stamped the butt of his cigarette into the withered lawn. ‘I lost track, love.’
Penny hugged him. He was skinnier than she remembered. ‘Come on, Unk. Let’s have a talk.’
Ray followed her inside and sat at the kitchen table. ‘Something smells good,’ he said.
‘What were you thinking about when you were outside?’
Ray wasn’t much of a talker, more of a listener, but he gave Penny’s hand an affectionate squeeze. ‘I was thinking how things have changed. You know Pete, stood down the same time as me? He’s depressed something chronic, is Pete. The bastards repossessed his harvester and you’d think he’d lost his missus. To the bank she was just a tractor, but she wasn’t. She was family. Pete and Big Valma were partners, they looked after each other.’
Penny nodded. Bush crews relied on their machines, even loved them. A man’s machine conferred on him his status in the forest. Penny knew Big Valma, a giant harvester painted red and black like a dangerous spider, a pinnacle of mechanised logging. Pete never had to leave her comfortable, tinted, air-conditioned cabin. Valma weighed thirty tonnes, and boasted a Cummins 300 horsepower diesel engine. Her felling head cut a fifty-metre swathe of destruction in all directions. Hydraulic chainsaw teeth sliced through trees with shocking speed. Curved blades, like talons, seized them in a deadly embrace. Finally, rotating roller wheels forced the trunks inexorably through the de-limbing knives.
Penny had seen this monster at work and it gave her nightmares. But to Pete, Big Valma was a cherished workmate and ally. Early on in the forest wars, someone had smeared human excrement over her cabin doors. Although far worse was done to equipment later on – sliced electrics, gravel in drives, sugar in fuel tanks – the greenies couldn’t understand how profoundly that first insult had hurt the loggers. It provoked an enmity deeper than they could ever have imagined. Still, in spite of Pete’s grief, Penny couldn’t help but be pleased to see the back of Big Valma.
‘Know just how Pete feels, love. I miss the old Kenworth something shocking.’ Ray had leased his truck to Johnno for the layoff, unable to afford to let it lie idle. Penny had a soft spot for the big rigs herself. As a child she’d loved to ride them, perched high above the road beside her uncle, lulled by the engine drone, cocooned from harm. Later on, she got her own heavy vehicle licence and gained a new respect for what it took to drive them.
Truck drivers needed to keep up punishing speeds to meet their quotas, and she’d been blind to so many things that suddenly mattered: bridge heights, sharp turns, telephone wires. She had to rely a great deal more on other road users. How grateful Penny was for a courtesy flash of the headlights when overtaking, letting her know that her truck had cleared the car, and there was room to safely move back into the left lane.
When hungry or needing to pee, she couldn’t pull over wherever she wanted. She needed a truck stop with enough room to turn, and better meals than day-old hamburgers. Experiencing the road through a truckie’s eyes made her appreciate the considerable difficulties they faced in simply getting from point A to point B.
‘Johnno reckons this layoff’s all part of the curse,’ said Ray.
‘That’s silly. There’s no curse, you know that.’
‘No I don’t, love.’ His voice raised an octave. ‘What about Scott?’
Penny felt a chill. She was glad that Ray was opening up, but her chest ached at the mention of Scott’s name. He’d been her dearest friend forever and ever. One day last year he’d been taking tie-down cables off his load, when a log stacked too high above the stake tops rolled off and killed him. Scott’s death had spawned a confusion of superstitious stories. But Penny hadn’t blamed any curse. She’d blamed Burns Timber for tempting drivers to overload their trucks. She’d even tackled Fraser about it.
'A terrible business, what happened to your friend,’ Fraser had said. ‘Simply terrible. But be assured, my company’s official policy warns contractors to comply with weight thresholds.’
‘Maybe so, but unofficially it encourages them not to by paying for loads two tonnes or more above the limit. Some mill managers even hand out fat bonuses.’
‘I can’t be responsible for a few rogue managers,’ said Fraser. ‘But I’ll do more to enforce the rules.’
For a while log weight limits were policed, but the drivers themselves had objected, complaining they couldn’t make a living without the extra payments. Within months things had returned to the dangerous status quo.
Ray was pacing the kitchen now, more agitated than she’d ever seen him. ‘It’s not just Scott. There’s trouble in that bloody forest every way you turn. The protests, the breakdowns, the accidents. Those poor coppers that fell from that tree. One of them hippy girls told Johnno she were a white witch.’ Ray looked a little shame-faced for spreading this rumour. ‘Reckoned her coven cast a spell to protect the Tuggerah.’
Penny sighed and put the kettle on. ‘Remember in grade six when my rabbit died, I broke my arm, and I had to have my tonsils out all in first term? Fiona Williams said that she’d put a hex on me. You told me not to confuse bad luck with superstitious mumbo jumbo.’
Ray finally stopped his pacing. ‘I remember.’ He smiled at the memory, and sat back down at the kitchen table. ‘You must think me a silly old fool.’
‘Never.’ Penny kissed his cheek.
‘All I know for sure, love, is that Johnno bloody well better be looking after me old mate, or he’ll have more than the curse to worry about.’
Ray’s old mate was his twenty-year-old Kenworth rig. He knew its moods, and it knew his. It must have felt like abandoning a friend to turn his faithful truck over to someone else. The crowd roared in the lounge room. Penny went to check the score. ‘Carlton’s ahead by six points. Only a few minutes left, come and see.’
Ray trailed in after her, scowling. ‘It’s time this state had its own AFL team. Who cares about bloody Carlton?’ With that he rolled another cigarette and went back outside.
Penny couldn’t believe it. Ray was a rusted-on Carlton supporter, had been all his life. Sure he wanted a Tasmanian team. Everybody did, everybody always had. But that had never killed his passion for the game before. No, this was something else, a kind of general dissatisfaction with life itself. It had Penny very worried.
Trifle. Trifle always cheered him up. ‘I’m going down the street. Want anything?’
‘Tobacco,’ he said. ‘And a few packets of papers. I’m a bit short today, love. Can I fix you up later?’
It wasn’t like him to ask. Ray knew how much she hated him smoking, but anything to make him happy. As she walked over the narrow bridge into town, a log truck thundered by. It barely slowed. Penny cowered against the railing, watching the towering load of logs sway alarmingly as it sped around the bend. Ray wouldn’t drive like that, no matter how punishing his roster.
A group of children were playing in the civic park beside the bakery. A girl waved and sang out to her. Matilda Murphy and her little brothers, Ben and Tyson, ran over, clutching cinnamon doughnuts.
‘Hello,’ said Penny. ‘Those look yummy.’
‘We’re here with Great Gran.’ Ben pointed to where Margaret Murphy and Doris Briggs were sitting on a park bench, their heads together.
‘Good morning, ladies,’ called Penny, and they nodded a greeting. Why were they staring at her like that? Emily Bourke, exiting the shop, did the same thing.
‘Are you getting divorced?’ asked Matilda.
‘No,’ said Penny. ‘What a question, Tilda.’
The children giggled and ran off.
Inside, Penny handed over her string bag. ‘I’ll have one of those sponges and a pipe loaf please, Colleen.’
‘Of course, dear. I’ll pop in some scrolls as well. They’re on the house. And an apple turnover for your uncle. He loves them, he does, and you have quite enough on your plate without having to cook his favourites.’
Colleen packed the bag high with goodies. How curious.
‘Colleen, I have no more on my plate today than I did last week, and I don’t remember you handing out free cakes then.’
‘Oh, but we didn’t know then, dear, did we? Although some of us suspected, of course.’
Penny spotted the Murphy children peering in the window. Her throat was suddenly dry. ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Colleen, but I wish you’d tell me.’
‘Oh, you poor love. They say the wife’s always the last to know. But it’s not really my place, is it?’
Penny’s smile stiffened. ‘Just tell me.’
Colleen beckoned Penny forward with a conspiratorial air. ‘Your Matt dropped that Yank off at Margaret’s, bold as brass, right in front of Doris …’
Penny tossed her head. ‘So?’
‘At seven o’clock this morning.’
The shop seemed airless and Penny had to steady herself against the counter. ‘Thank you, Colleen.’ She took her bag and fled down the street, combing through the conversation she’d had with Matt that morning. She examined every word, every nuance. He hadn’t said that Sarah stayed overnight at Binburra, but he hadn’t said that she didn’t either. Sins of omission, sins of commission. How had the game really been played? Then it struck her: Matt’s uncharacteristic desire to clean up the house before she got there … to make the bed.