Dead Man’s Footsteps

22

The metallic blue Holden pick-up headed west, away from Melbourne. MJ, a tall young man of twenty-eight with jet-black hair and a surfer’s frame, wearing a yellow T-shirt and Bermudas, drove with one hand on the wheel, his free arm around Lisa’s shoulders.

The ute sat low and squat on its shocks, on wide mags shod with fatties that clung sure-footedly to the contours of the winding road. This vehicle was his pride and joy, and he listened contentedly to the burble of the V8 5.7-litre engine through the drainpipe exhausts as they drove through big, open country. To their right, plains of scorched vegetation stretched out for miles. To their left, beyond a tired-looking barbed-wire fence, softly contoured brown hills rose in the near distance, parched and arid courtesy of six years’ almost unbroken drought. A few thin ridges of trees were scattered over them randomly, like strips of facial hair missed by a razor.

It was Saturday morning and for two whole days MJ could forget about his intensive studies. In a month’s time he was sitting tough stockbroking exams, which he needed to pass to secure a permanent job with his current employers, Macquarie Bank. Spring had been a long time coming this year, despite the drought, and this weekend promised to be the first truly glorious one after the dreary winter months. He was determined to make the most of it.

They were ambling along. With six points on his licence, he was being careful to drive well within the speed limits. Besides, he wasn’t in any hurry. He was happy – intensely happy – just being here with the girl he loved, enjoying the drive, the scenery, the Saturday morning feeling of the whole weekend stretching out ahead of him.

Something he had once read was going around inside his head: Happiness is not getting what you want. It is wanting what you have.

He said it out aloud to Lisa, and she said they were beautiful words, and she agreed with them. Totally. She kissed him. ‘You say so many beautiful things, MJ.’ He blushed.

She pressed a button and music from the Whitlams thumped out of the madly expensive sound system he’d had installed. And their camping gear and the slab of VB beer thumped under the battened-down tarp behind the cab. And his heart thumped too. It was good to be here, good to feel so alive, to feel the warm air blowing on his face through the open window, to smell Lisa’s perfume, to feel her tangle of blonde curls batting against his wrist.

‘Where are we?’ she said, not that she cared. She was enjoying this too. Enjoying the break from her weekly routine of visiting doctors’ practices as a haemophilia drugs sales rep for the pharmaceutical giant Wyeth. Enjoying wearing just a loose white top and pink shorts, instead of the business suits she had to wear during the week. But most of all, enjoying precious time together with MJ.

‘Nearly there,’ he said.

They passed a yellow hexagonal road sign depicting a black bicycle and stopped at a T-intersection, beside the skeletal trunk of a Radiata pine that was topped by a thick clump of needles, like a badly fitting toupee. Immediately ahead of them rose a steep, bald hill with isolated clusters of bushes looking as if they’d been stuck to it by Velcro.

Lisa, who was English, had only been in Australia for two years. She had moved to Melbourne from Perth a few months ago and the terrain was all new to her. ‘When were you last here?’ she asked.

‘Not for some years – ten maybe. Used to come here camping with my parents, when I was a kid,’ he said. ‘It was our favourite place. You’re going to love it. Yee-hah!’

With a sudden burst of exuberance, he tramped the accelerator. The ute shot forward, making a sharp left on to the highway with a squeal of its tyres and a roar of thunder from its exhausts.

After a few minutes they passed a sign on a pole that read BARWON RIVER, then MJ slowed down and started looking to his right as they passed another saying STONEHAVEN AND POLLOCKS FORD.

After a while he braked sharply and turned right on to a sandy track. ‘I’m pretty sure this is it!’ he said.

They bounced along for five hundred yards or so. Wide open country to their right, bushes to their left and an embankment down to a river they couldn’t see. They passed a steel-girder bridge sitting on old brick buttresses to their left, then thick brush obscured the view. The track suddenly dipped sharply, then rose again on the far side. After a few minutes it widened out for some yards and ended, turning into scrub grass beyond which was dense brush.

MJ brought the ute to a halt and put on the handbrake. A cloud of dust swirled over them. ‘Welcome to paradise,’ he said.

They kissed.

Then, after some moments, they climbed out. Into total warm silence. The engine pinged. There was the scent of dried grasses in the air. A bowerbird made a sound like someone whistling yoo hoo!, then was silent. Down below them, snaking into the distance, was shimmering water and further away, beneath the fierce late-morning sun, there were bald brown hills sporting just the occasional acacia or eucalyptus tree. The silence was so intense, for a moment they felt they could be the only people on the planet.

‘God,’ Lisa said, ‘this is so beautiful.’

A fly buzzed around her face and she batted it away. Another one came and she batted that away too.

‘Good old flies,’ MJ said. ‘This is the right spot!’

‘Obviously they remember you!’ she said, as a third one landed on her forehead.

He gave her a playful punch, before arcing his hand several times in rapid succession in front of his face, giving an Aussie salute to flap away more flies that were pestering him. Then, with his arm around her, MJ steered Lisa to a gap in the brush.

‘This is where we used to launch our canoe,’ he said.

She peered down a steep, sandy slope overgrown with bracken that was a natural slipway into the river, a good thirty yards below. The water, about twenty yards wide, was as still as a millpond. A few damsel flies sat on the surface, feeding off mosquito larvae or laying eggs, and more hovered just above. Reflections of the brush on the far bank appeared in sharp focus.

‘Wow!’ she said. ‘Wowwwwwww! That is amazing.’

Then she noticed the series of white sticks planted all the way down the slipway. Each of them had precise ruled markings in black.

‘When I was a kid,’ MJ said, ‘the water level was up to here.’ He pointed at the top marker.

Lisa counted eight exposed rulers, all the way down to the water. ‘It’s dropped this much?’

‘Good old global warming,’ he replied.

Then she saw the looped hangman’s rope fixed to the overhanging branch of a tree thick as an elephant’s leg.

‘We used to jump off that!’ MJ said. ‘It was just a short drop.’

Now it was a good five yards.

He peeled off his T-shirt. ‘Coming in?’

‘Let’s put the tent up first!’

‘Shit, Lisa, we’ve got the whole day to put the tent up! I’m hot!’ He continued stripping. ‘And the flies hate the water.’

‘Tell me what the water’s like – I’ll think about it!’

‘You’re weak as piss!’

Lisa laughed. MJ stood naked, then disappeared for some moments into the undergrowth. Moments later, she saw him crawling along the overhanging branch. He reached the rope, which looked dangerously frayed, rolled over and clung to it.

‘Be careful, MJ!’ she shouted, suddenly alarmed.

Holding on with one arm, he beat his chest with the other, making a series of Tarzan whoops. Then he swung out over the river, his bare feet almost touching the surface of the water. He swung back and forward in several arcs, then he let go and dropped with a loud splash.

Lisa watched anxiously. Moments later he surfaced and tossed his head, shaking wet hair away from his face. ‘It’s beautiful! Get in here, wuss!’

He struck out, doing a couple of powerful crawl strokes, then suddenly he raised his head with a pained expression.

‘Fuck!’ he spluttered. ‘Shit! Owww! Bloody stubbed my toe on something!’

Lisa laughed.

MJ duck-dived. Moments later his head broke the surface and there was a look of panic on his face.

‘Shit, Lisa!’ he said. ‘There’s a car down here! There’s a fucking car in the river!’