His Illegal Self

16

She had gone through Sydney and Brisbane on chocolate bars and Coca-Cola, trusting the force of her will and energy to reach the other side. It was what she was used to doing, and of course there had been more to it than Hershey bars. In the aftermath of Susan Selkirk’s death she had trusted Harvard men to save her. She knew famous people, Dave Rubbo, Bernadine Dohrn, Mike Waltzer, Susan Selkirk obviously. On the run with Che she had trusted the Movement, most particularly that Harvard representative of Students for a Democratic Society whose silky penis she had once loved holding between her lips. It was he, with his large hand resting very lightly on her forearm, who had persuaded her that they would be safe and cared for in Australia.

We’ve got people there, he said.

What crap that turned out to be.

It was the Movement which had provided the passports, so she was given to understand, although what the Movement was by 1972 depended on whom you were talking to. Some like Waltzer were now campaigning for the Democrats; Bernadine Dohrn and the others had formed the Weather Underground. Susan Selkirk had belonged to a faction that had threatened to shoot Mike Waltzer. Instead she’d gone underground and blown herself sky-high.

Dave Rubbo said he was in an alliance with the Black Panthers. He showed Dial an AK47 and gave her air tickets from San Francisco to Honolulu to Sydney, Australia. He scared her. She took the bundles of dollars not understanding the transaction. She bought nuts and candy and comics for the flight. She had no guidebook, no Australian currency. She had no idea of what Australia even was. She would not have imagined a tomato would grow in Australia, or a cucumber. She could not have named a single work of Australian literature or music. Why would she? It was only temporary. She persisted with this all the way up to Yandina, through the storm, the stolen money. It was only when Trevor and the boy ran into the bush, when she was left alone to face the bulge in Jean Rabiteau’s pants, she knew she had fallen into a pit she would not get out of easily.

She picked up a sturdy broken branch, maybe four feet long.

Are you on the Pill?

The branch was seared by fire, black as velvet in her hands. Looking at the Rabbitoh’s excited eyes, she thought, He has no idea what I could do to him.

The Rabbitoh stepped forward and she knew that this had always been her destination. She had a father with bullet wounds in both his hands; she should have trusted that.

Cool down, babe.

She saw his fragile collarbone, felt the heat of tropical sunshine on her back, heard the flies attempting to crawl into her ears.

She swung at him and he stepped back, stumbling. This moment had been waiting all her life. This was always going to happen but who could have known? Who could have told her? When, in 1957, she huddled in the doorway of the Girls’ Latin School, waiting for the janitor to arrive for work, it was this that was on the other side of that bright green door, not the silverware her mother wished for her. Fish fork, salad fork, dinner fork. The fish fork is shorter, with broader tines to pick out bones. The salad fork is shorter than the dinner fork, and has one tine on the left side that is thicker than the others. This way you can cut the lettuce without a knife. She had no time for silverware. She would crack his fucking collarbone if need be. She could not imagine what came next. In New York she could not imagine Philly. In Philly she could not have imagined Seattle. In Seattle she could not have imagined the Australian Builders Labourers Federation where she had brought the boy and her request for help. She sat beneath the neon wondering who controlled the Australian garment industry, who decided on these Chinese zippers down the front of the maroons and dirty greens. Albania, she thought, must be like this.

But she was cute. She smiled at them. I’m sorry, this particular young man said. He was big and plain with worryingly short hair. They had gone to sit in a coffeehouse in Harris Street, Ultimo. Che was pouring sugar into his Coca-Cola. The young man talked to her earnestly, gazing somewhere above her shoulder.

This is not something we can involve ourselves with. He spoke like this, politely, dully. To Dial he sounded English and when he cupped his hands around his teacup she saw him like someone in a film who would say guv’nor.

He was just so completely straight. He was blunt, with conscript’s hair.

You know who Dave Rubbo is, right. And she was not wrong to expect he would. Those boys had gone a long way since Somerville, gone from playing politics, to being the revolution. She was here because there was an alliance, Dave had said so. This Australian dork was meant to be the vanguard, but he waved all this away.

The executive will not support this, Dial. It’s not like you’ve dodged the draft and we have to hide you.

Draft for what, she asked, watching Che’s Coke bubble up and spill across the table. She found the young man glaring at her directly.

What?

You’re joking! he said, wiping up the Coke himself.

Australia is in Vietnam?

His cheeks were red, his eyes blue and cold.

Right? She tried to catch herself. Vietnam.

But he was already standing, an earnest lanky boy, raw jawed, with heavy workman’s boots and a tartan shirt. It’s a shame, he said, you never learn more about the countries that you fuck with.

But he had misunderstood who she was. I’m in SDS, she said. Dave Rubbo’s friend.

He stood with his big hands grasping the back of the chair, looking down at her, the dress, the golden hair she had washed that morning. He laughed through his nose. Good luck, mate, he said to Che.

Thank you, said the boy.

It was not until Bog Onion Road that she could no longer ignore the extent of Dave Rubbo’s deceit, but by then she had other creeps to deal with.

When Trevor came back into the clearing, she threw the lump of wood down at the Rabbitoh’s feet and walked toward the boy. His hand was sticky but she held it tight.

Where are we going?

There was always a way forward. She dragged the boy, resisting, toward the road.

Oh come on. The Rabbitoh was slinking after her, his hands outspread. Don’t be so uptight.

We’ll drive you, Trevor said. He had to raise his voice because they were already well up the first hill. Do you want a receipt?

Receipt for a fucking robbery, she thought. But she had money left, whosever money it was. She would damn well need it too, and all she knew was she must buy a map, find out where she was. She must go where no one knew about this treasure, this currency that she could not change.

Her name was Anna Xenos. Xenos meant displaced person, stranger, a man who arrived on the island of Zákinthos years before the birth of Christ.

Trevor called, Don’t you want to know where I live? His was a full-chested shout, filling the steep valley of peeling trees.

She paused a moment, looking down the track at the two men.

You should get his address, the boy said quietly.

If she had been nicer she would have answered him but she had too many battles raging inside her head. She was imagining their bodies, her’s and Che’s, found decaying in woods.

What about our money, Dial? Shouldn’t we get his address?

Shut up, she said. OK?

She left him to trudge up the track behind her huge hard fury.

Can you, she demanded, just for once, not have an opinion? You’re seven, for Christ’s sake.

She waited for him to tell her he was almost eight. He didn’t. They walked some more, a little slower.

He knows my daddy, he said.

He stopped then and he stood before her, his arms straight by his side, so armored against her that his little gray eyes had become pinholes in his face.

No, she said. He does not.

I think he does, Dial. I’m pretty certain.

She thought, You’ll go mad with this, not knowing who you are.

He knows about my daddy then, he said. He shoved his hands into his tight little pockets and stared up at her, a dreadful rigid smile upon his face.

No, babe.

He can tell my daddy where we are.

Sweetie, do not do this to yourself.

She had not meant to be harsh but now his chin began to wobble and he would have broken down if he had not heard the Ford laboring up the hill toward them. She pulled the boy off the track, with his face against her stomach, but as the car came to a stop beside them, he slipped free.

Come on, called Trevor, his thick arm lay in the open window. Get in.

No thanks, she said, but the boy was already at the car.

Nothing’s going to happen, Trevor said. He’s sorry. He nodded toward the driver. He’s a creep.

I’m meant to be a Christian, said the Rabbitoh, his eyes shining like an animal’s in the darkness of its hide.

Please, Dial, can we?

She opened the door and she and the boy sat close together with the kitten in its cardigan between.

Say you’re sorry, Trevor said. She was not displeased by his authority, the bulldog body, the thick neck.

The Rabbitoh then apologized and she watched him fold himself across the steering wheel. She thought of the pleasures of submission, a topic she knew more about than she was ready to admit.

Shush, she said to the Rabbitoh, as if he were a child to be forgiven, not some shit with a very nasty knife and a sense of sexual entitlement.

Trevor turned in his seat and held her eyes. John has written you a receipt, he said slowly. You don’t want it, OK, but can I give it to his nibs? It’s got my postal address? he asked the driver.

It has, he said.

Trevor gave the piece of paper to the boy, who seemed to read it, but it was unclear how much of this was a performance. He certainly folded it extremely carefully before undoing his rubber bands to accommodate it with his stuff.

Abandoned on the highway they watched the Ford turn toward the back road and leave its blue exhaust lying on the blacktop. They were left alone in the shadeless heat, buffeted by the big trucks, dirt swirling up beside them.

Can we just stop going places, Dial?

Soon, she said.