The Maskeys, page 4
‘Don’t suppose you’ve seen Rodney about of late?’ Eric asked the barmaid, as she poured him a schooner of beer.
‘Rodney?’ she said, taking Eric’s money without a smile.
‘You know,’ he said, fumbling for words, ‘little guy – big clothes.’
‘I know who you mean,’ she said, with a side-glance at the Livestock Association president, who was enjoying his morning glass. ‘Haven’t seen him but.’ She moved off.
‘He’s been a menace in this town for too long,’ the livestock expert interjected.
‘Rodney?’ said Eric.
‘George Maskey, of course.’
Eric nodded, calling his thick hive of dreads to order over his left shoulder.
‘Naples’ cemetery is full of George Maskey’s work,’ he added, ‘most of em unmarked graves.’
Eric watched someone walking by.
‘How is Gayle taking it?’ the livestock expert asked, with a curious curl of his lip.
‘Gayle?’
‘The fire.’
‘She’s pretty cut up,’ Eric said.
‘I bet.’ He shuddered. ‘Twice now.’
Eric moved to a nearby table, not liking the tone of the old busybody.
‘Twice!’ the busybody repeated in saleyard volume. With a fleshy red finger, he caught the barmaid’s attention for a refill, and they shared a smile.
Eric checked his watch and downed another mouthful of his suds, keeping a close eye on the street outside. While, nearby in the pub’s secluded gaming lounge, invisible to everyone except Serenade – who sees everything (and who was enjoying a harmless flutter on the Queen of the Nile) – a tiny figure, in hugely oversized camo pants and coat, heavy boots and cap, Rodney, the weasel, secretly listened in.
Serenade ashed her cigarette. ‘Someone’s looking for you, Rodney.’
He shooshed her with his finger. Then the little figure in big clothes returned his sunglasses to his face and his heavy army backpack onto his narrow shoulders, and – after giving the credits on his machine to Serenade – lumbered head-down through the public bar and out onto the street, seemingly oblivious of the barmaid, the livestock expert – and Eric.
But oblivious Rodney was not. Ever. He saw all. Though he himself, in his oversized clothes, was notorious for his invisibility. The weasel fell out onto Main Street, crossed the road and entered the town’s small supermarket, certain that Eric had followed him.
While he waited for Rodney to reappear, Eric lit a smoke. When twenty minutes later he finally emerged with his groceries, the weedy man in camo, lugged his supplies to his troop-carrier vehicle. Rodney lifted his pack into the back and saw Eric jump into his own wheels, parked close by.
Keen not to lose Rodney, Eric turned the ignition.
But Rodney did not board his truck. He ambled toward the mobile library that visited town once a week.
Inside, he was greeted by the librarian, Helene. ‘Hullo, Rodney.’ She smiled.
He cleared his throat. ‘Mornin, Helene.’
She took a moment to look closely at him. ‘Got something for me?’ the pleasant woman enquired.
He pushed his hands deep into his camouflage coat and pulled out a thick paperback.
‘What did you think?’ she asked.
‘Best one of hers I read, I reckon,’ he said, passing over the Di Morrissey novel that he had borrowed the previous week. ‘Almost don’t wanna give it back,’ he added humbly.
‘I knew you’d love it. Such a good storyteller, isn’t she?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, fidgeting.
‘Publishes one a year,’ the librarian added, impressed.
‘I’d go crazy up there without a good read,’ he said, downcast. ‘It’s just me and Sandra. And she ain’t sayin much.’
‘How is Sandra?’ the librarian asked.
‘She’s well. Sandra’s always well.’
Helene looked at him tenderly. ‘Are you taking care of yourself, Rodney?’ she asked, reaching out to touch the sleeve of his coat.
Rodney shrugged.
The librarian had known Rodney many years, but from time to time she still found herself touched by the strangeness of him. She gave him a motherly look that he enjoyed. ‘You’ll love this one even more, I’ll wager.’ She went to the shelves to produce another title.
‘Good and fat!’ he said, as she passed it to him. ‘Lots a readin in there. Somethin I can get me teeth stuck inta!’ At the uttering of that line, he shut his lips hard. In the sorry catalogue of physical faults that Rodney felt he was, his teeth brought him the most shame: small and brown, like a junkie’s – like his mother’s – they squatted inside his mouth, aloof from each other, as if determined to repel intimacy within it.
‘See you next week, Rodney,’ Helene cried after him, when he abruptly hurried out of the library at the arrival of another customer.
Back on the street with his book, Rodney saw Eric still not driven off. He climbed into his truck, put his library book down on the passenger seat and began to drive, aware of Eric being in clumsy pursuit.
Abruptly, he turned off the Naples Road into the unsealed no-through-road that Eric shared with the Maskeys. And Eric suspected he’d been spotted. Disappointed, he drove down into his own place and parked at the studio, now occupied by Jay and Leanne.
At Longwhile, Rodney watched Eric disappear. He was getting from his truck when Billy Maskey emerged from the house. ‘It’s the good-lookin Maskey,’ the weasel remarked, as Billy drew near.
‘No relation to George.’ Billy smiled as he strode past.
‘Welcome back,’ Rodney went on. ‘Must be good to be home,’ he burbled nervously.
Billy reached his car. ‘I swear you like this family more than any of us do, Rodney,’ he said, shaking his head.
Rodney heard Billy’s words with an inscrutable expression on his face: some envy, some admiration, some loss. In a flash it was gone, as was Billy in a spray of gravel. Rodney jumped up onto the verandah and knocked. While waiting, he frowned to notice that the Maskey dogs had escaped. The weasel hated it when people were careless enough to let their dogs loose.
‘Hello, Mrs Maskey,’ Rodney said, taking off his sunglasses when Hilda opened the door to him.
She was wearing a heavy canvas apron that she often donned when doing mosaicking in her studio out back. ‘Hello, Rodney.’ She smiled. ‘Is something wrong?’ She untied her apron and removed it.
‘Mr Maskey here?’ he asked.
Hilda shook her head. She closed the door and led Rodney into the living room.
Down by the creek, still feeling disappointed his stalking had been derailed, Eric cut a forlorn figure as he paced around Jay and Leanne’s campervan. The couple were making toast in Eric’s kitchenette. Jay sensed that Eric was troubled. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked, leaning in the studio doorway.
‘It’s probably nothing,’ Eric said. ‘I just think I might have had some little weasel from the village following me.’
‘Why?’
‘After my dope, probably – it happens,’ he said of the crop he had told the young couple was his own. ‘You couldn’t spare me your van for an hour?’
Jay was unsure.
Leanne appeared behind her boy. ‘You’re not gonna prang it?’ she said.
‘He’ll be easier to follow in a vehicle he doesn’t recognise – I’ll have it back tickety-boo,’ Eric said, with a shake of his dreads.
Jay threw Eric the keys, and he set off, leaving them feeling uneasy.
At Naples Road, Eric turned left and parked behind a tree. There, he waited for Rodney.
While waiting, he saw Celeste arrive back at the farm after her morning in Civic Park. Parking beside a cluster of car wrecks near to Rodney’s truck, Celeste – who did not like Rodney and who was ever suspicious of everything her soon-to-be mother-in-law did – remained in her sedan, curious to see how long it took for the weasel to emerge from the house.
Inside Longwhile’s living room, Rodney had declined Hilda’s offer of a cup of tea. She came from the kitchen with a glass of water. He took a tiny sip, put the glass down and fidgeted nervously on the lounge seat.
‘What’s wrong, Rodney?’ Hilda asked.
‘I had to shake your neighbour, Mrs Maskey. He were followin me.’
‘He was?’ Hilda went to the drapes and looked over at the remains of Eric’s cottage. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yep, Mrs Maskey. Pretty sure. I’m really alert.’
‘What is he up to?’ she wondered aloud.
‘Somethin about the fire, probly.’
Hilda turned away from the window and looked closely at Rodney. ‘You didn’t …?’
‘No Mrs …’ Rodney said. Of her notion that possibly Rodney had been the fire’s culprit. He began to blush under her scrutiny. ‘Probly nuthin,’ he said, getting back to Eric. ‘I can handle him anyway,’ he said, making for the door, in a hurry to leave.
‘No. Rodney. Wait.’ Hilda took him by the shoulders. ‘I’m worried about you, dear.’
Rodney smelt wine on her breath. He frowned.
‘You know,’ she went on, ‘Duncan Reynolds was no good.’
‘Please don’t never mention him again, Mrs Maskey,’ he said, reaching at the door for escape. ‘It ain’t safe. And I hate to think of it.’
Hilda released him. ‘What you did, you did to protect our family.’
‘Please, Mrs Maskey. I betta go.’ He opened the door and stepped onto the verandah. ‘I’ll keep an eye on that one for ya,’ Rodney said, of Eric.
Hilda and Rodney heard a car door squeak and both looked over to see Celeste alighting from her sedan. She fumbled with Damon’s baby capsule. Ignoring her as he passed by, Rodney got into his truck and drove away.
Celeste entered the homestead and found Hilda at the window in the living room, observing Rodney drive from the property. ‘I don’t like him,’ Celeste said, putting down the capsule.
Hilda outstretched her hand, made raw and powdery, with her mosaicking. ‘Money,’ she said.
Celeste dug into Damon’s capsule and pulled out a roll of notes.
Hilda took them.
Celeste picked up the capsule and made for the door. ‘Caleb doesn’t trust the weasel either,’ she said. ‘He never looks you in the eye.’
‘He looks me in the eye,’ Hilda said.
Celeste knew it would be wisest not to antagonise her future mother-in-law yet somehow could never resist an opportunity. ‘But you and him have something special, don’t you?’ Celeste snipped, with a sly grin. ‘I wonder what that is?’ she said, the screen door banging closed on her last words.
Parked behind a tree and thicket of shrubs, Eric tapped his fingers impatiently, waiting for Rodney to reappear. When the weasel sped past changing up gears, Eric resumed his tailing of him. The couple’s campervan was rattling on the poorly maintained arterial road, like a tin can full of coach-screws.
Unaware that he was still being followed, when the snakelike bends of the Naples Road straightened, the weasel rolled down his window to recover from the emotions unleashed by Hilda’s mentioning of Duncan. While composing himself, sniffling, wiping his nose, some sweat from his forehead, he entered the section of the road where shade from trees gathered thick on the ground even at the height of the sun, and where even on the hottest of summer days the air was sweet and cool, like a drink of water.
Soon enough, Rodney drew near to a letterbox that belonged to no-obvious-house. Here, he took a sudden right, without indicating.
Eric saw and parked beside a tree. Then by foot he hurried back to where Rodney had turned.
With the summit of the Knuckle a daunting sight in the distance, Eric started up the fire-trail, following after Rodney’s fumes and the sound of his engine. The climb began steeply, and after a few hundred metres, Eric became confused when he could no longer hear the truck nor smell diesel smoke. The track forked. On a hunch, he followed in a northerly direction.
More trekking followed, and more after that, and still there was no sign of Rodney. The foliage was changing, and Eric found himself in the hottest part of the afternoon, without water, and being closed in by a cloying green membrane of wild cat’s claw and lawyer vine. The air was old and humid, and he wondered at the sense of pushing on with still not a clue of Rodney’s truck in sight. Increasingly irritated, he felt his dreadlocks snag on a sticky vine, and as he reached up to free his hair, two large pythons in a grotesque braid landed heavily at his feet.
Eric fell backwards over a log, in the process ripping hair from his head. He yelped in pain – but kept as still as he could, while the skirmish played out at his ankles; until, slowly drawing his feet away, he realised the reptiles were mating. Not fighting. Their drama none the prettier for it.
When at last the snakes had disappeared into the undergrowth, Eric got to his feet and pushed on as best he could up the track, choked with weeds and grasses – where ticks liked to wait. Soon the way became impassable, and he knew he had taken the wrong fork. Bamboo stalks and spikey vines blocked whatever path had once existed, and without a large cane knife or something similar it seemed impossible to continue. The Knuckle’s grim energy began to get to him. He was alone, with no water; there was no one who knew where he was, and not even he could be sure. Except that wherever it was, he did not feel welcome.
On a rock, he sat awhile to rest.
It was his first time trying to hike the landmark, and he was wondering why on earth he’d ever believed anyone could cultivate marijuana up there. No one could grow anything in that terrain, except disillusioned. It was too steep. Too rocky. So where had Rodney driven his troop-carrier? Where did that other fork lead to? A small camp area the size of a tent, where he lived in between tending Maskey’s crop – that could be hidden in any wild tract of state forest …?
Getting back on his feet, Eric took a piss and caught the pungent whiff of a welcome breeze. It chilled the perspiration on his face and neck, and carried upon it the smell of privet. No, not privet. Dope. It was marijuana Eric could smell. His energy changed. He must be close.
Getting down low, he peered into a thick clump of bamboo and thought he could see a way through. He began to squeeze himself among it. The way was horrible, prickly and cloying, but somehow he made it. After extricating himself on the other side of the canes, he stood and found himself perched on a narrow ledge beside a rock wall. It was mossy, and water trickled past in easy reach. He took some sips and wiped his brow.
He inched along the rock face, dangerously close to the edge. But where minutes earlier he would have feared being picked up and hurled from such a narrow pass as an unwelcome intruder by the grim spirits of the place, he now felt strangely fearless as he looked out over the caldera, toward the north-west, drinking in the cooling breeze.
In this higher place he felt he was in the presence of different spirits. Friendlier ones. He stumbled into a lush glade, like a page from a Little Golden Book. Two pademelons were nibbling on grass. Not the nasty cutty grasses he’d just been trudging through on the verge of tears: this green carpet was sweet and soft, the rainforest floor it sprang from thrilling and moist. Finches and wrens darted from tree to old-growth tree, feeding on pollen and native berries. Eric took a moment to marvel at his surroundings.
The pademelons dispersed, and dwarfed by the fat florid trunks of giant gums, Eric followed his nose, until moments later he saw Rodney’s truck. He froze. He dropped to the ground. Then, on his elbows, he began to crawl. Arriving into bright sunshine, he found himself at a three-walled timber stall, overflowing with what smelt to be blood and bone fertiliser. Hiding there, he could see Rodney stuffing items from the truck into his backpack. Such a puny man, Eric thought, short, skinny – razor-sharp features on a face too thin – and sad – he trudged up a neat path with his supplies.
When the coast was clear, Eric prowled on like a graceless cat and, from cover, watched the weasel arrive into a wide forest opening and then disappear from view. Wishing for binoculars, Eric moved closer, to the twisted trunk of a tall fig, flabbergasted at what was revealed: a beautiful garden, an oasis of marijuana; the smell from the bulbous sticky flowers was dizzying. Stalking nearer to a flowing stream, he saw Rodney’s camp site: clean and cared for, with thriving vegetable beds. So different to what he was expecting.
Catching his breath, Eric thought of George Maskey’s place, Longwhile – the unkempt grass, discarded farm machinery, bogged mowers, car wrecks and general junk that surrounded it – and understood at once that this plantation was all Rodney’s doing.
Eric watched the strange sight of the tiny man unpacking foodstuffs from his backpack at the entrance of the sizable canvas tent that he slept in.
When Eric observed the way Rodney was organising the groceries, a shame passed through him. Not of the type that would be normal to feel, if you were spying on someone unselfconsciously going about their own business in the privacy of their own home; Eric’s was a different type of shame. One he had often experienced: so quick to underestimate.
He dismissed the unwelcome feeling from his mind, and his eyes followed Rodney back to his truck, where the weasel removed a large cane knife. He examined the blade ostentatiously, as he walked with it. And after leaving it by the entrance to his tent, he went to a nearby tree, where he had a mirror and shelf attached, with his combs, toothbrush and other toiletry items about a makeshift basin.
Standing at the mirror, Rodney was disappointed to confirm his suspicion that he had been trailed by Eric. And in the reflection he had a clear line of sight to the interloper, hiding. Without flinching, the weasel reached for a hairbrush, of the plastic type that fits in the palm of your hand, and he began to groom his hair.
