On the Jellicoe Road

  But my attention is drawn away by the rustling above me. In the tree. There’s something watching. I throw the bike to the side and crane my neck, my heart pounding hard. For a moment I think I see the boy, his limbs nimble and quick, his eyes piercing into me, and then he’s gone. The knocking at my ribs in no way subsides and for a moment I don’t move because I’m petrified. Until there, in the corner of a branch, I see something else. The cat. Without thinking I start climbing. I don’t know why but somewhere at the back of my mind is the thought that the cat was the last to see Hannah. When I reach his eye level, I straddle the branch and get as close to him as possible, my arm stretched out as far as it can go. I find myself having to lean my torso onto the branch to balance and for a moment I get close, but he hisses and swipes at me and goes flying through the air, while I half fall off the branch, hanging on with both hands.

  I see his shadow first, and the shock of what I see makes me gasp.

  Standing under the tree, holding the cat, is the Brigadier. With the cat so compliant in his arms, he resembles some kind of Mephistopheles. As I cling on for dear life, I try to control the breathlessness within me that spells trouble.

  “It’s an easy drop,” he tells me. “You’ll be cushioned by the leaves.”

  I’d be happy to stay hanging off the tree for the rest of my life just so I don’t have to deal with him. But my hands begin to hurt and I know I have to let go.

  There is nothing easy about the drop. It hurts when I land and when he holds out a hand, I ignore it.

  He’s looking at my face closely and like every other time this man is around there is havoc in my stomach. Like a warning against malevolence. I could easily put it down to the fact that I’m still angry at him for being the one who stopped me and Jonah Griggs that time. But it’s more than that.

  “Give me the cat,” I say when I get to my feet.

  “Mightn’t be a good idea. He doesn’t seem to like you.”

  I grab the cat from him and he goes back to his feral self, scratching and writhing in my hands, but I’m not letting go.

  “Hannah—who lives here—she wouldn’t want you hanging around her place or stealing her cat,” I say.

  He’s still looking at me. It’s unnerving and although I don’t want to have my back to him, I turn and walk away, clutching the cat.

  The strange thing is this. In crazy dreams when I relive that moment when Jonah Griggs and I were sitting in the postman’s van in that township two hours away from Sydney, ready to set off on the final leg of our journey, I remember the Brigadier. I remember the look on his face when he pulled up in front of the postman’s van and got out of his car and walked towards us in that measured way he has. That look was directed at me and a thought has stuck in my head for all these years: that maybe the Brigadier did not come looking for a Cadet that day.

  That maybe, in some way, it was me he was hunting down.

  The next day, Raffaela, Ben, and I decide to do an inventory of every piece of property the Townies and Cadets own on our land. We split the page in three and list them, beginning with the most valuable: the Club House. There are bike trails, walking trails, bridges, and sheds. Finally there is the Prayer Tree, which Raffaela believes should be on the top of the list. We discuss and argue about the importance of each item. The access path for trail bikes owned by the Cadets. The falling-down shed owned by the Townies. The more we discuss, the more I am convinced of the stupidity of my past leaders. The access for trail bikes, for example, would be our quickest way to town. During the Cadet season our means of transport is limited and our journey to town is twice as long. The shed once housed a car for us, which the leaders would sneak out in during the night, especially if a band was playing in one of the larger towns. But Raffaela always comes back to the Prayer Tree.

  “What’s so important about it?” I ask Raffaela on one of our morning checks around the river. Apart from the fact that all three of us feel somewhat guilty that it was handed over because of us.

  “Spiritually or pragmatically?” she asks.

  “What do you think?”

  “I swear to God, if you go out there it will change your perspective on the world.”

  “Don’t believe in God. Love the world just the way it is.”

  “Okay, then come and look at it from a pragmatic point of view.”

  “Townie territory,” Ben says. “If it’s booby trapped…”

  “It’s seven o’clock in the morning,” she reassures us. “They’ll never be up this early.”

  The Prayer Tree is located smack in the middle of the property within easy distance of the Jellicoe Road. It’s the area I am the least familiar with because it’s closer to the township and there are no proper tracks to reach it from where we are. In actual fact it is a chore getting to it and in the future Ben advises that we should hit the Jellicoe Road and access it from there.

  By the time we reach the clearing we have grazes from flying branches and our bodies itch from insect bites. The clearing is small and the tree takes up most of it. I look up and am shocked at just how massive it is. It’s almost like Jack’s beanstalk and probably one of the highest trees I’ve ever seen on this property. Right at the very top, lodged amongst the branches, is a small house, cleverly camouflaged by a creative paint job. But it’s the trunk that fascinates me the most. There are carvings and symbols and messages and history.

  So much romance and so much ugliness. A girl named Bronnie, her name in love hearts with almost every boy around; a boy named Jason who hates wogs, Asians, coons, and towel heads. And poofters, too. The patience it would have taken him to carve out so much hate.

  The messages are everything rolled into one. Wise and uncool. Profound and repugnant.

  We circle the tree over and over again, trying to decipher all the messages.

  Do you remember nothing stopped us on the field in our day?

  I stare at the words, tracing my fingers in the grooves created by the carving.

  “Your hands are shaking,” Ben says.

  Because I’ve heard these words so many times before.

  “Check this one out,” Ben says to me.

  Kenny Rogers Rules.

  “Who?” I ask, still wanting to return to my dream lyrics.

  “You don’t know who Kenny Rogers is?” Ben asks like he can’t believe it. “‘Coward of the County’? ‘Don’t Fall in Love with a Dreamer’? ‘Islands in the Stream’? ‘The Gambler’?”

  It’s like he’s speaking another language and he shakes his head with great disappointment.

  “You need to get in touch with the seventies and eighties, my friend.”

  I find myself reaching up and touching words engraved right in the middle of the tree. It’s bigger writing than the rest. MATTHEW 10:26.

  “Maybe it’s one of those ‘God is Love’ quotes,” Raffaela says, coming up behind me. I think of Hannah’s manuscript until I realise that Ben and Raffaela are staring.

  “So where’s the pragmatism you promised me?” I ask.

  She points up. “We have to go up for me to show you that.”

  Hanging off the tree is one of those floppy rope ladders like in a trapeze act, except that here there is no net. Raffaela grabs hold of it.

  “How do you know it’s secure?” I ask.

  She tugs at it and shrugs. “I just do. Santangelo’s anal about things like this.”

  She begins climbing and the ladder swings around. “One at a time, though,” she yells down.

  I look at Ben. “You’re next.”

  It’s not like I’m scared of heights. There’s been many a night that I’ve climbed out of my window and swung off the tree just outside it. But this thing is massive and I think I’d rather be climbing branches than a flimsy ladder that’s attached to nothing I can see.

  By the time it’s my turn, Ben has already freaked me out with his dramatics. I begin the ascent, concentrating hard on each step, making sure that my foot is on the next rung before I step
off the previous one.

  When I reach the top, Raffaela and Ben help me up.

  “Close your eyes,” Raffaela instructs.

  “Are you insane?”

  “You’re on solid timber,” she reassures me. “It’s very sound and we’re holding on to you, anyway. You’ve got to close your eyes.”

  I’m convinced that if I hear something about being able to see tomorrow and it’s bloody beautiful I’ll throw myself off. I stand up straight, however, and close my eyes.

  “Open.”

  I’m standing on a landing, the wall of the tree house behind me. Directly across my torso is a piece of wood, preventing me from falling over the side.

  Raffaela points in front of me. “The town.” She turns me to the left. “Cadets.” Then she turns me to the right. “Us.”

  The tree house has the most amazing and comprehensive view I have ever seen. Hills and valleys and houses and steeples, symmetrically cut farm blocks and vineyards. It is lush and hazy in the morning glow and I feel a rush of something inside me. I turn to the right and look in the direction of our Houses. I can see the six of them, looking closer than they actually are to each other. I see the little cottages in between that belong to the House co-ordinators and beyond that I see Hannah’s unfinished house by the river.

  “They can see everything,” I say.

  “With a good pair of binoculars they’d be able to see inside our rooms,” Raffaela says.

  I turn to look at the Cadets, already out of their tents and preparing for the day.

  “Who needs satellites?” Ben says.

  “That’s what interests them the most,” Raffaela says pointing. The Jellicoe Road.

  “They have a bird’s-eye view of every single part of this area. If they are up to no good, they know exactly when someone’s coming up or coming closer.”

  “So they’re spying on us.”

  “I actually don’t think so. I think they love the view and it’s a pretty good space for just hanging out,” she says, walking inside the tree house. Surprisingly it is solidly built and we follow her in, sitting on the floor, taking in the space and possibilities. “I think the eighties mob named it and built a makeshift something up here. I don’t think it’s ever been as solid as it is now, but that’s a Santangelo thing. I think he even wants to tile it. That’s the wog in him.”

  “So you used to come up here when we owned it?”

  She nods and smiles. “Anyone who was at the school and came from the town did. Come on. Look at the view. It’s awesome. God’s country.”

  “You can take the girl out of the town but you can’t take the clichéd Townie out of the girl,” Ben says.

  “Well, it is!”

  “Bet you’ve been up here with Santangelo,” Ben says.

  She goes red and walks out onto the landing. We follow her and breathe in the freshness.

  “They want to meet again. Tomorrow night. This time in the Club House,” she says.

  “Have the Cadets agreed?”

  “They think so. They reckon you’re never too sure with Jonah Griggs.”

  On the Jellicoe Road a car appears in the distance.

  “Townies,” Raffaela says. “We’ve got about ten minutes to get out of here.”

  I go down last, taking a closer look at Hannah’s unfinished house by the river. Except I realise that it’s almost finished. It’s only the stuff inside that needs to be done, and the idea of its near-completion frightens me beyond comprehension.

  Later on that night, I’m awakened by a sound. I stay still for a moment, my ears alert, heart racing, wondering if it was just one of those loud bumps in dreams that don’t actually exist. When I can’t get back to sleep, I get out of bed and quietly make my way down the stairs. I hear the breathing of those in the dorms and stand at their door for a while, watching them. I notice Chloe P. in someone else’s bed, clutching onto her for dear life, and there’s Jessa in the corner, snoring quietly and contently. The music of it all brings a smile to my face. A candle burns in the corner and I go over and blow it out.

  I open the front door and step outside and the cool wind brushes my face, almost caressingly. As I stand looking out into the darkness, it’s like I can hear the pulse of everything out there. I remember the Prayer Tree and all those names and scratchings, every one of them with their own story, and I wonder where they all are now. Is Bronnie still in love with any of those boys? Does Jason still have so much hate? Do any of them still think of their time on the Jellicoe Road?

  I’m about to go inside when I notice that at the bottom of the steps of the House is my bike, which had disappeared from behind Hannah’s house. I look out again, wondering if whoever has returned it is out there watching.

  When I walk back inside, I pass the common-room and I find myself looking for a bible. Matthew, chapter ten, verse twenty-six. Whatever is now covered up will be uncovered and every secret will be made known. I wonder where such a message belongs amongst the Bronnies and Jasons of the world.

  I go to sleep thinking of Hannah’s character, Webb, who speaks of things I sometimes dream, and suddenly I’m sitting in the tree with the boy. He leans towards me and speaks but no sound comes out of his mouth and I ask him over and over again to say it louder, until I exhaust myself. So I read his lips, my eyes straining, every part of my senses aching, until I’m miming his words, and when I wake, Jessa and Raffaela are standing at the end of my bed, staring.

  “Was I shouting?” I ask, my voice croaky.

  “You were crying.”

  “The whole time?”

  Jessa shakes her head. “Your mouth was moving but nothing was coming out,” she says.

  “What was I saying?”

  Raffaela shrugs. “I’ll get you some water.”

  She leaves the room and Jessa sits on my bed. After a moment or two I know that she’s worked out what I was mouthing.

  “Taylor,” she says quietly, confused. “You said that your mother wants to come home.”

  Chapter 10

  I’m dreaming. I know I’m dreaming because I’m in a tunnel and in reality I don’t do tunnels. And down in the tunnel I smell something vile. I can’t identify it, but it consumes my whole being and I start to choke, unable to breathe. But then a hand grabs me and pulls me out and I know it’s the boy in the tree in my dreams and he tries to resuscitate me, but his mouth is rotting and his breath is foul. And I scream and I scream, but nothing comes out.

  Thoughts of my mother begin to consume my every moment and they sweep me into an overwhelming feeling of bleakness and a desperate need for Hannah. Sometimes in the middle of the night, Raffaela knocks on my door when she sees the light coming from my room but I ignore her. I just sit up and try hard to stay awake because sleeping isn’t safe anymore. I find myself Googling any name I remember my mother using. It was never the same name for long and that probably had to do with the profession she was in. She tried to change my name once or twice, convinced that someone was after us.

  “They’ll take you away from me,” she’d say. “They’ve done it before.”

  But I didn’t want my name changed. It was all I had.

  The cat is no more settled than when I brought him home but I refuse to let him go. Sometimes I head to Hannah’s place straight after school and try to get some rest there or I sit up in the attic and read. In this room I feel comforted. I like the box-like quality of it, the way the roof slopes, the perfectly cut square in the floor, the trapdoor that blocks out the world below, the skylight that on a clear night allows you to see every star you would want to see in the galaxy. Sometimes after we had been working all day on the house, Hannah and I would sit up here and just talk. She never spoke much about her family except a few times in this room. If I asked her anything about them she’d just say they were all gone and that if she allowed herself to give in to the whole sadness of it, she’d never ever be able to operate like a normal person again.

  “I’ve been in that void,” she told me
once. “Don’t you ever give in to it.”

  But I want to give in to it sometimes, only because I’m tired and the feeling that I’ve had for a while—that something is hunting me down—becomes all-consuming and I’m frightened that one morning there will not be enough to keep me going. Except maybe the pages I’m holding in my hands. They comfort me, these characters, like they’re my best friends, too. Like Jude felt when he returned that second year and they were waiting for him. Give me a sign, I keep on saying to whoever can hear me in my head. Give me a sign.

  But most of the time I wonder how much Hannah is a part of this story and this school. Was she the leader of a community who thought she was weak and usurped her first opportunity they got? Did she experience a coup at the hands of a Richard-like, fascist-loving, backstabbing creep? And where did she get this idea that there was peace between the Townies and Cadets and us?

  I find some chapters to read that seem intact. I’m running out of them because so many are half-finished or written in a scrawl that I can’t quite understand. There’s this part of me that doesn’t want to deal with the fact that one of these characters is lost to them and I’m frightened that I will come across the chapter where they find him, because I know, deep down, that it’s not going to turn out the way I want. That someone in this story is not going to get out of it alive. It’s how I feel when I think of the boy in the tree in my dreams. Is he there to prepare me for something so devastating that it will lodge me in that void that Hannah spoke about?

  Just when I’m about to work out a sequence of pages, I hear a window smash and I jump. I had locked the front door on purpose. Because Hannah’s house without her didn’t seem so safe anymore.

  Quietly I crawl to the hole in the floor and peer all the way to the bottom. I see nothing but shadows and hear nothing but the sounds of breathing. I want to call out but something frightens me into silence and I sit and wait. Listening. I hear the heavy sound of footsteps on the wooden stairs as they make their way to the second floor. My heart is rattling uncontrollably. I reassure myself that nothing out here can be too frightening but I’m anxious all the same.