His Illegal Self

30

The road to Trevor Dobbs’s hideout was like he had bragged to the boy already-outlaw, very steep, rutted, washed away, potholes, tank traps, killer rocks, one stained black with oil, the death of an auto owned by someone who had no business. It was on a road that didn’t want you any more than you wanted it. On the high side of the cutting there was wild bush but no shade at that hour and the dirt was baked hard and comfortless.

There were no threats or skulls or crossbones nailed to tree trunks but at one place there was an abandoned Volvo in a tree. It seemed to have slid down the hill and then skidded backward into space and there it had come to a stop with its back wheels stuck in a burned old wattle. The front wheels had slipped clear off the edge of the road and it clung to the yellow clay road with just inches to spare. Beneath it was nothing but giddiness.

The Volvo had gotten burned, at the time of the accident or later, you couldn’t tell; it was black from fire and brown from rust and thin as cigarette paper, like an eaten wasp abandoned in a web. As the boy and the mother approached they heard a rustling sound in its dark throat. Then-loud flapping, or slapping. The boy’s hair was too heavy to stand upright, but it pulled at his scalp and filled his neck with fright.

Then a huge black bird-a vulture, he thought, but a turkey actually-flew out the front window, leaving the shell of rust to rock and sway like a dead flower on a brittle black stem.

The boy’s heart was in his ears, his legs were aching. He asked, How will he know where to find me?

Who, baby?

My daddy, he said, his throat stinging.

Dial squatted down before him, her too-big eyes watching him as though he were a mouse in a gluetrap, something she did not know how to kill.

Have you been thinking about your daddy?

What did she think he thought? Forever, through the sweaty nights and burning days.

Oh baby, she said, and reached out to hug him. He tugged away and walked on up the hill, feeling the biting gravel sneaking in between his feet and rubber thongs. Every day his skin got hurt or broken.

Che, talk to me.

I’m Jay, he said. He did not have many ways to hurt her.

Jay, we’ll tell your daddy where you are.

He feared that was a lie but at the same time he hoped it wasn’t.

How?

I’ll write a letter.

He was maybe ten feet farther up the hill now, looking down at her at last. When?

Tonight.

Do you love my daddy, he asked.

She lifted her big scratched hands up to her breast. He understood, or thought he did, but he turned and continued up the hill and did not look at her misery until they arrived, finally, on a wide saddle where it seemed the road had led to nothing more than five big drums of diesel fuel.

Where now? he demanded because he was still angry, because she was meant to know.

She pointed and he saw there were many sets of pale tire marks, not following any single course, but all proceeding in the same direction, ending in a bit of gray among the big trees, a sort of nothing that made his mouth go dry. He followed her toward this blur and only when they were very close did he see it was a heavy net which had been thrown like a spiderweb across a building.

Then he could see a high wall punctuated by thick gray timbers, standing upright like trunks of trees, and the space between filled up with yellow clay and on top of the walls he could make out a corrugated iron roof which had been painted black.

He did not want to go in there.

Dial took him by the hand. But she did not know what it was any better than he did.

I don’t think this is his, he said, but he allowed himself to be persuaded forward. It was hard to say what they entered, maybe a shed, a barn, a hut, a garage, a fort-all of these in fact-the bones of the construction would eventually turn out to be a hay shed Trevor Dobbs had stolen from Conondale on New Year’s Eve; he had unbolted it and carried away the steel trusses and the roof in a “borrowed” truck. He had driven it up the potholed hill and unloaded the shed and had the truck back home before the first day of 1968. Who his accomplices were, he never did say. He made a lair, a compound. Mud brick walls, one foot thick, bulletproof.

The boy had a very strong feeling he would get in trouble just for going in, but the high wooden gate was open and it was either follow Dial or be left behind. He discovered lengths of milled timber leaning against the inside walls, also many narrow sheets of glass on which was printed TELECOM. A small silver trailer home was parked in one corner. In front of it were piles of sand, gravel, sawdust, black stinky stuff the boy would soon know all too well. Half of the floor was concrete and the other half was dirt and where the walls were not yet finished you looked straight onto the vegetables, some of which-the lettuces, for instance-were growing inside.

Dial called Trevor’s name.

This is his hideout, the boy whispered.

Shush, she said. He followed her close between the lettuces out into the garden which was dotted with new plantings among the wild pumpkins and zucchinis and eggplants bulging huge and purple from a bed of yellow flowers.

And there was Trevor Dobbs, holding cut greens across his fat and muddy penis.

The boy did not wish to see his penis, not any part of it, and he was relieved to sense that Dial felt pretty much the same.

I brought your assistant, she called. Her voice was very bright and made-up cheerful but her face was coloring and she turned, just like that, and left.

Dial was running away from him. She should not do that. He ran after her, back in among the shadows of the shed, but she was gone. He sat on a pile of bright yellow sand trying not to cry.

After a while he was aware that Trevor had come inside and had gone into the trailer. He tried not looking at him but saw he did not have much bottom and what he had was very muddy. He came out wearing a pair of shorts.

Then Dial appeared again.

Are you OK, she asked the boy.

He would not even look at her.

Trevor was now washing the green stuff under a hose. Water flooded across the floor or perhaps it was the garden.

You can stay, Trevor said to Dial.

She squatted down so she was the boy’s height. It was a dumb suck-up thing to do.

What time do you want me to come back?

He was angry she would make him feel so scared. He turned his back on her and walked out into the garden and pretended to look at things.

When?

When I’m done, he said, wanting to hurt her but not wanting her to go.

Then Trevor was coming toward him dragging a sort of sled, a length of rope around his neck.

This is a pallet, said Trevor. Which was wrong. A palette was what Grandma used to paint with, but Trevor could not read or write, he said that once before. Now he tied both ends of the rope to the front wood slats so it was a long sort of harness and then showed the boy how to put it across his chest and pull it. Like a dog.

Trevor did not waste any time in squatting down to talk. He led the boy to a nasty-looking pile of stuff and said that it was a waterweed that he had harvested from Lake Something-or-Other and now he was going to use it as mulch. Do you know what a mulch is?

By now it was clear Dial had left him.

I’m only a kid, he said.

A mulch stops the water escaping from the ground, Trevor said. We put it around the vegetables and it stops the weeds as well. So what you can do to help me is-put as much of this weed on the pallet as you can pull, and then drag it over to those little cauliflowers. Do you know what a cauliflower is?

How long do I have to do this?

As long as you want.

Half an hour, he said.

Then he would go home.

Half an hour is good, said Trevor.

Later the boy saw him down at the bottom of the garden swinging a pick. He had got naked once again, but now the boy was busy with the dark heavy weed all mashed together like hair when the shower got blocked. He patted the matted stuff around the cauliflower seedlings where, to his confusion, his nostrils filled with the dank and distant long wave smell of Kenoza Lake. Then he did cry, secretly, mourning everything he lost, all the cold empty hollows, the marrow stolen from his bones.