‘It’s not hard to find,’ says Mick. ‘This is the Mitchell Highway. Keep walking until you get to the Glamorgan River sign. You can’t miss it. Once you’re there, you turn right and head for the General Store.’
‘How far is it?’ I ask.
‘Two hundred k’s,’ says Mick.
‘Two hundred kilometres?’
‘Give or take.’
I’ve been played. I’m sideways in my seat with my feet resting on the running board. I’d love to get out of the pick-up. I’d love to grab my backpack and hitchhike back to the city, but my parole comes with conditions and unfortunately my uncle is one of them. I turn around so that I’m straight in my seat, and the song fades out on the stereo.
Mick’s voice sounds different when he speaks again. ‘His name was Morry.’
I glance sideways, and he’s staring at nothing through the front window.
‘What?’ I say.
‘The old man you robbed,’ says Mick, ‘the old man you put in the hospital. His name was Morry.’
I’ve had a long time to think about what I did. I’ve gone back to that night, to the darkened house in Cullen Street, more times than I can remember. I’ve tried to make sense of it all. I’ve tried to work out what happened and why. But I never could.
And now I’m back there again.
‘His wife died two years ago,’ he says. ‘A few months before you lot broke in as a matter of fact. Been married sixty-two years, they had. Morry’s got dementia. And he’s pretty much on his own now, so he spends most of his time pottering around in his shed and making wooden toys.’
I raise my head up and snatch a look at Mick. I know exactly what he’s doing. He’s grabbing the moral high ground, getting in early and letting me know where he stands.
‘You’ve done some research,’ I say.
‘Yep.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s not just a police report,’ he says. ‘He’s a person. He has a name. And that’s something you might want to remember.’
I feel Mick’s eyes on me, but I can’t bring myself to look at him.
THREE
After about forty minutes of driving, the world outside the car starts to feel bigger. We’ve left the city behind and we’re heading north, following the signs towards the Glamorgan River.
The driving seems easy now. It’s mostly two wide lanes on either side, cut through rolling sandstone hills. As we go further, the buildings are replaced by trees, by a lush expanse of green. I grind the window down and breathe in. The air smells earthy and fresh and strangely familiar.
Neither of us says much for the next leg of the trip, I’m too busy taking in the surroundings and watching things change. We drive downhill for a while and leave the sandstone hills and the double highway behind. The road tapers into single lanes and I start to see buildings again but they’re buildings of a different kind. Peeling weatherboards and dodgy fibro shacks hide amongst the foliage as if they’re embarrassed about the way they look. Every now and then I pick up a glimpse of water through the trees.
Soon enough, Mick slows the pick-up and steers left at a turn off. We drive for a few minutes, then pull up out the front of a lonely cream-coloured weatherboard shop. The sign says Molly’s Pies and Cakes. Mick leaves the engine running and sits back in his seat. He doesn’t look at me when he talks.
‘Coffee?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’
It’s strange not knowing where I am. When Mick disappears into the shop, I look out through the open window into the leafy green hush.
It’s so different to where I grew up. The concrete apartment blocks in Surrey Heights were always noisy and buzzing with life. There was always someone around and something going on. Kids hung around and chatted after school. They sat on fences and leaned against walls. In the evenings when everyone came home from work, they’d turn their music up loud. Twanging sitars competed with doofing drum beats. People chatted and laughed and sang.
And then later, after I left Surrey Heights, after my mum died, when I headed for the city and slept rough in laneways and under bridges, there was always something to see, something to hear, something to smell.
I suppose I got used to that – all those years of something.
A few minutes later, Mick walks through the shop door with two medium-sized coffees. Without making it look obvious, I watch him as he ambles over, balancing something on one of the cups. He isn’t built like my mum. He’s fuller, bigger-boned with tanned skin and medium-length, sun-bleached hair. His face is set in a way that suggests he doesn’t smile all that much.
He catches me looking as he approaches.
‘Where are we?’ I say. ‘Shitsville?’
But Mick doesn’t bother answering. He passes my coffee through the window, and when he gets back into the pick-up, he empties two sugars into his cup and stirs it with a plastic spoon. He replaces the lid and has a healthy sip, then he drops his cup into a drink holder in the console between us and drives off.
‘Didn’t you get me any sugar?’ I say.
Mick glances briefly my way. ‘You didn’t say you wanted sugar.’
‘You didn’t ask. A normal person would have just grabbed a few extras, just in case.’
‘A normal person?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why didn’t you just say you wanted sugar in the first place?’
‘Because I thought you’d get some.’
‘I’m not a mind reader. If you wanted sugar, you should have specified that before I went in. You should have said, “Mick, can you grab me some sugar because I like to have sugar in my coffee?”’
‘Well, most people grab a few extras when they don’t know someone. That’s all I’m saying.’
‘Don’t drink it, then.’
Mick reaches for the dash. He turns the stereo up, and the two of us settle in for the rest of the drive.
There’s not much to see through the window, but looking at something other than a brick wall is a lot more satisfying than I thought it would be. I start to appreciate the things around me, things I once took for granted, like the road itself. I think about the people who carved out the earth and laid the bitumen, the people who painted the white lines down the middle of the road. I think about how tyres are made. I look at the oyster shell and wonder who the first person was to eat an oyster and say it was good. All of a sudden those things seem to be important and I wonder why I never thought about them before.
The Glamorgan River sign appears just as I start to cramp up. Mick turns left and takes a few bends. Ten minutes later he slows the pick-up. He indicates left then steers us into a gravel parking lot opposite a row of shops. The biggest shop, a double-fronted building with big windows, catches my eye. I look up and read the words painted across the shop’s awning – Chester’s General Store, Oyster Bay.
‘Pit stop,’ says Mick.
I climb out of the pick-up, and when I’m steady on my feet, I arch my back and stretch. It’s a strange feeling to be out in the open without the fences and gates, without the yellow lines to tell me where to walk. They said it’d be like this. They said that eighteen months of learned habits would be hard to unlearn.