‘It’s OK, love,’ she said, ‘we found it. I superglued it back in and he’s eaten steak on it and everything.’
Keith explained that he hadn’t come about the filling, he’d come about paint.
‘Merv,’ she called into the van, ‘dig out that aquamarine gloss.’ She turned back to Keith. ‘We got it to do the van but it was too bright. Good for a shop but. Excuse me asking, but what are those lines on your face?’
For a moment Keith didn’t know what she was talking about. Then he realised.
‘It was the sheet,’ he explained. ‘When I was asleep last night. It got scrunched up under my face.’
He didn’t explain that it had been a drip sheet. Or that it had got scrunched up because he’d been tense all night in case Curly had come by and sprung him sleeping on the store verandah and called the cops.
The woman’s husband appeared with a four-litre paint can and the woman insisted on opening his mouth and showing Keith the filling. Keith didn’t mind because the can was two-thirds full.
The next four vans didn’t have any paint, but then Keith hit the jackpot.
A youngish bloke with tattoos stuck his head out of his caravan window and grinned when he heard what Keith was doing.
‘Your lucky day, mate,’ he said.
He told Keith how he’d been employed by the Department of Main Roads to paint the white posts by the side of the highway and how he’d painted them all the way to the opal fields and then had got bored and chucked it in.
‘Do you need any brushes or turps?’ he asked as he pulled the tarpaulin off the back of his ute.
‘No thanks,’ said Keith, wishing he hadn’t spent all his money except eleven cents buying brushes and turps from Curly.
The bloke swung a ten-litre drum off the back of the ute.
‘It’s white,’ he said, ‘with reflective particles.’
Keith couldn’t believe his luck.
He thanked the bloke and said he hoped the bloke found enough opals to pay someone else to paint the white posts. Then he started rolling the drum towards the store.
After a bit he stopped.
A news bulletin was just beginning on a radio in one of the vans.
Keith listened carefully, but there was no mention of any nationwide searches.
Keith wondered why not.
Perhaps Mum and Dad hadn’t gone to the police.
Perhaps they didn’t want to find him.
Perhaps they were glad he’d gone.
He pushed the thoughts out of his mind.
He was much too busy to be a worry wart.
By the time Keith was halfway round the diggings, word had spread that he was doing up Curly’s place and people gave him paint without even being asked.
Two kids from the Aboriginal family Keith had met the day before ran up and gave him a half tin of Royal Purple and a full tin of Mandarin Orange, which they explained were unwanted Christmas presents.
The ultraviolet man popped out of his corrugated-iron hut and handed over a quarter-litre of matt black left over from painting the metal detector he’d been using before he got his ultraviolet machine.
A man with a beard and a European accent rode up on a motorbike and tossed Keith nearly two litres of Signal Red. He said he’d been using it to paint signs around his shaft saying Trespassers Will Be Stabbed but he didn’t need it now because he’d become a Jehovah’s Witness.
Even as Keith was thanking the man for the paint and the pamphlets, he saw the sun glinting off yet more tins as people carried them towards him across the mullock heaps.
Keith crouched in front of the store and picked up Dad’s hammer and levered the lids off the twenty-seven tins of paint and gave them all a good stir except the four that had gone solid.
By his calculation he had eighteen and a half litres.
It’ll be enough, he told himself. When Curly said twenty he probably thought I’d be slapping it on like an amateur. He didn’t know I already had a fish-and-chip shop and a Toyota Corolla under my belt.
Keith poured the Royal Purple into the Department of Main Roads Reflective White and stirred until he had a pastel violet that was just like the Autumn Crocus on the golf buggies at the Orchid Cove Resort.
He looked at his watch.
Nine forty-three.
The woman in the pub had said that Curly usually got back from his card game on Sundays at about six.
Eight hours and seventeen minutes left.
Time to start painting.
Keith didn’t look at his watch.
His neck and back and arms were aching too much to make the effort, plus there was no point as his watch was covered with a big dollop of Mongolian Beige.
He needed all his strength to keep painting and not fall off the stepladder.
He finished the Celery Green section of the guttering and grinned wearily as the applause broke out again.
It had been like this for a couple of hours now. Every time he used up a colour the crowd that had gathered to watch would give him a clap.
That’s probably what’s kept me going, he thought, as he forced his wobbly legs down the stepladder. That and the food and drink. If he’d eaten everything they’d offered him he’d have exploded and Curly’s store would have been even more multicoloured than it was now.
Three verandah posts to go and he was finished.
Keith washed the brush in turps and dipped it into the Poinsettia Masonry Acrylic.
He heard a ute pull up and turned anxiously, hoping it wasn’t Curly.
It was the young bloke with tattoos.
‘Do you want a hand?’ he yelled.
‘Rack off, Gibbo,’ said someone in the crowd. ‘This is art.’
Keith grinned again.
It wasn’t just mates who knew how to say the right thing.
Then, after Keith had finished the verandah posts and was giving the door another coat to use up the Flaming Pink, he heard another ute pull up, this time with a long skid and a crunch as it ran into a parked truck.
Keith watched Curly climb out of the ute.
Curly looked dazed.
Not by the accident, by what he was seeing.
Keith watched as Curly took in the Crushed Strawberry, Aquamarine, Morning Mist, Velvet Moss and Celery Green roof and guttering; the Matt Black downpipes; the Autumn Crocus walls; the Vivid Coral window frames (that was inspired although I say it myself, thought Keith, mixing the Signal Red and Mandarin Orange like that); the Flaming Pink door with the Dull Red Anti-Rust handle; and the Corfu Blue, Autumn Yellow, Pale Eggplant, Grecian Dusk and Poinsettia verandah posts.
Keith held his breath.
Curly’s mouth hung open.
Then the crowd broke into cheers and applause and slapped Curly on the back and told him he had the only general store in Central Queensland that was not only a major tourist attraction but could also be used by aircraft for navigating in heavy fog.
Bit by bit Curly’s face relaxed into a grin and soon he was inviting everyone in for cold drinks on the house.
On the way in he shook Keith’s hand and asked Keith to autograph the bottom of the wall.
Keith proudly painted his signature with the last of the matt black and said he’d be in for a drink in a sec but first he had to do a bit of guttering he’d missed.
He forced his rubbery legs back up the stepladder.
As he smoothed on the last brushfuls of Morning Mist he looked across the roof at the vast plain that stretched away to the horizon.
Suddenly the inside of his chest felt vast as well.
With happiness.
And the feeling didn’t go away when he realised he was having it. It stayed there right up to the moment when he finished off the piece of guttering and was just about to climb down the stepladder and saw, in the distance, coming towards him along the dirt road, getting bigger by the second, the Tropical Parrot Corolla with the Hot Sunflower speed stripes.
11
I’m a worry wart
, thought Keith.
I must be.
I’m standing here with a knot in my guts when all that’s going to happen is that Mum and Dad are going to pull up in the car and jump out and fling their arms round me and laugh and cry, and when they start getting cross about me running away from home I’ll tell them about our exclusive use of Curly’s mine for the next twenty-four hours with legal ownership of all the opals we find and they’ll be so excited and overjoyed they’ll do cartwheels and handstands and agree that me running away from home was the best thing that ever happened to us as a family.
The knot in his guts was still there.
He watched the Corolla skid to a stop.
His mouth was as dry as the dust swirling around him.
The doors of the Corolla flew open and Mum and Dad leapt out.
Keith’s blood felt as though it was pumping around his body twice as fast as it usually did.
Maybe I’m not a worry wart, he thought hopefully, maybe I’m just excitable.
Mum and Dad were running towards him laughing and crying at the same time.
Keith decided to tell them about the mine straight away, just to be on the safe side.
‘Mum,’ he said, ‘Dad . . .’
That was as far as he got because Mum and Dad swept him off his feet like two cyclones and hugged him and kissed him and gripped his head in their hands and buried their faces in his chest.
‘Great news . . .’he said, but his voice was muffled by Mum’s hair.
‘. . . we’ve got . . .’ he said, but the words were lost in Dad’s armpit.
. . . an opal mine,’ he said, but neither of them could hear him because they were both talking at once.
‘We thought you’d been kidnapped,’ said Mum.
‘We thought you’d got sick and collapsed on the way to school,’ said Dad.
‘We almost called the police,’ said Mum.
‘We almost called an ambulance,’ said Dad.
‘Then Tracy told us what had happened,’ said Mum.
‘Then Tracy told us where you’d gone,’ said Dad.
Through the tangle of arms around him Keith saw something that made him stop trying to speak for several seconds.
Tracy, stepping out of the Corolla.
She gave him a nervous grin.
Then Keith realised Mum and Dad had stopped speaking too.
The lull before the storm, as Mr Gerlach always put it when he stared quietly out the window for a few seconds before giving a noisy kid’s ear a twist.
‘Mum, Dad,’ said Keith, ‘before you get angry about me nicking off, I’ve got something to tell you.’
Mum and Dad gave each other a little glance.
‘Son,’ said Dad, his voice sounding a bit strange, ‘we’re not angry. We’re just thankful you’re OK.’
‘We understand the stress you’ve been under, love,’ said Mum.
She and Dad exchanged another glance.
At least they’re not still avoiding looking at each other, thought Keith.
Then Mum and Dad noticed the store.
After they’d stared at it for what seemed to Keith like several hours and then turned to Keith and seen the paint on his hands and clothes, their faces took on the expressions he knew so well.
Mum furrowed.
Dad drooped.
‘Oh Keith,’ said Mum.
‘Why do you keep on doing this sort of thing?’ said Dad.
‘Because,’ said Keith, ‘I like it.’
He hadn’t meant to say that.
Quickly he added what he had meant to say.
‘I did it to get us an opal mine.’
He waited for Mum and Dad’s delighted response.
It didn’t come.
Give them time, thought Keith, they’ve had a long trip.
He gave them two hours.
During that time they spoke with the woman in the fluffy dressing gown, moved into the caravan park’s one overnight van, found a phone box, rang Tracy’s parents, had showers, had something to eat, and asked Keith questions about his trip.
Keith kept his answers short.
Then Tracy told Keith about their trip. How the car had broken down and they’d had to wait seven hours for a man in dirty orange overalls to come and give them a tow back to his garage where he’d taken another four hours to fix the engine and had tried to sell them a microwave.
‘That’s Mick,’ said Keith. ‘I painted his mate Col’s truck.’
Mum and Dad looked pained.
Tracy leaned over to Keith and whispered, ‘The store looks great.’
He gave her a grateful grin.
But something was wrong.
Why did she look so anxious?
‘Have you found any opals yet?’ asked Tracy.
Keith decided everyone had had enough time to recover from the trip.
‘That opal mine I mentioned before,’ he said, ‘it’s ours for a whole day. We can dig up as many opals as we like and keep them.’
He waited for Mum and Dad to be overjoyed.
Mum and Dad exchanged a glance.
Mum put a hand on Dad’s arm.
Silly me, thought Keith. Of course. They’ve had the whole trip down here to get used to the fact that we’re going to be fabulously wealthy and immensely happy.
Keith saw them swap another glance.
Look at the difference it’s made to them, he thought.
Gazing into each other’s eyes.
Touching each other.
‘Keith,’ said Dad, ‘we’re all going back to Orchid Cove first thing in the morning. You as well.’
Keith was sure he hadn’t heard that right.
Maybe someone had just exploded some gelignite out on the diggings and the shock waves had distorted Dad’s words.
Dad said it again.
Keith stared at him in disbelief.
Squinting at the road across a Tropical Parrot car bonnet for two days must have left Dad with temporary brain damage.
‘Don’t you understand,’ Keith said to him, ‘we’ve got our own opal mine. For a whole day. We’ll never have money problems again. No more migraines or tummy upsets or arguments.’
Keith turned to Mum.
She’d understand.
‘Keith,’ she said, ‘let’s all go for a little walk and get some fresh air.’
Good idea, thought Keith. Fresh air’ll help certain people’s brains work properly.
They all stood up.
‘Tracy,’ said Mum, ‘would you mind doing the washing up while we have a little chat with Keith?’
Keith was about to protest. How dare they treat Tracy, the person who’d helped them get to the brink of wealth and happiness, like a servant?
But before he could say anything Tracy had said, ‘Sure, no problem,’ glancing anxiously at Mum and Dad.
Right, thought Keith angrily, wait till I get you two outside.
Outside it was dark.
They walked to the edge of the caravan park and stood staring at the mullock heaps, which were glowing faintly in the moonlight and looked to Keith like coconut macaroons.
Concentrate, Keith said to himself.
He knew it was very important to choose the right words, the words that would persuade Mum and Dad to stay for just one day so they could find the opals that would make them all happy for the rest of their lives.
But it was hard with Mum on one side and Dad on the other and both of them with an arm round his shoulders.
He didn’t want to think, he just wanted to enjoy.
He decided to use telepathy and sent a double-strength message to both of them.
Change your minds.
‘Keith,’ said Dad softly, ‘I wasn’t being honest with you before.’
It’s working, thought Keith joyfully.
‘I wasn’t either,’ said Mum, ‘we both weren’t.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Keith, ‘I understand.’
‘Keith,’ said Mum, and there was a little sob i
n her voice which made Keith realise with a stab of fear that he didn’t understand at all.
‘Love,’ she went on, ‘Dad and I have decided to split up.’
‘Not just in the shop,’ said Dad, the sob in his voice too. ‘For good.’
‘But we want you to know,’ said Mum, ‘that we both love you as much now as we always have.’
‘And we always will,’ said Dad.
Keith knew what he should be saying.
That it would only take a day.
Half a day.
A couple of hours.
And that once they had the opals they could all stay together forever.
But he couldn’t get the words out through the numbness.
All he could do was stare at the mullock heaps, which were still glowing faintly in the moonlight and looked to Keith like graves.
12
Later, after Mum had whispered to Dad that Keith probably wanted to be by himself for a bit and they’d both hugged him and gone back to the caravan, Keith saw a torch beam moving towards him through the darkness.
For a moment Keith thought it was Mum come back to tell him they’d changed their minds.
It was Tracy.
‘You OK?’ she asked as she got nearer.
Keith turned and stared at the mullock heaps.
He’d never felt less OK in his life.
‘Have they decided to do it?’ Tracy asked softly. ‘They were yakking on about it for hours in the car when they thought I was asleep. Are they gunna split up?’
Keith bit his lower lip hard so the pain was all he’d have to think about.
It didn’t work.
He turned and glared at Tracy.
‘One more day, that’s all I needed,’ he said bitterly. ‘If you hadn’t stuck your mug in I’d have been OK.’
In the glow from the torch he could see how much he’d hurt her.
Tough.
He didn’t have time to worry about that.
He stared up at the black sky.
The stars glittered like a schoolbag full of opals emptied out onto a bank manager’s desk.
It wasn’t too late.
He turned and ran into the darkness.
The pickaxe he’d spotted while he was painting the store was still there, lying half under the verandah.