She cackles and says we’ve mucked about with the wrong family.
I call after her: ‘It’s the year of the duck and that’s what Pat is, so you can’t touch us!’
But she’s already gone.
‘You’re gonna need a lot more than a duck,’ says Larry. And Larry was right.
18 I can get you out
I hate it when people ruin a perfectly good name. For example, Amanda Pearson let me fall into the creek during a trust exercise at school camp. Joke was on her because I love getting wet, but I don’t trust Amandas now. And even though Tina Arena is a gift to humanity her name has now been soiled for life. Turns out this pokie witch is another Tina and her brother is the one and only cop in town. Darren. Two minutes after she storms out of the pokie room a police car skids into the hotel car park. Darren walks inside like a bow-legged cowboy, pulling his belt up under that big playdough beer gut of his. The wrong Tina’s following behind, all smarmy-like. Lawrence steps forward and says he doesn’t want to press charges.
‘Well, that may be, Larry, but it’s not that simple.’ Darren smiles like Lawrence has 1.5 brain cells and wears a tea-cosy for a hat.
Pat then sidles up and says HE wants to press charges for assault on account of the swollen eye he is sporting, but it all gets out of hand and soon he’s screaming at Darren. Then Tina hits Pat over the head with her pink fluffy handbag, but it’s Pat who Darren handcuffs and throws into the back of the paddy wagon! He’s a bent copper; bent in all the wrong directions no doubt about it.
So I have to sit in the front seat with him all the way to the station which was so close to the pub I could have walked and got there faster, but I’m guessing big Darren drives everywhere just to show off. He smells like cheap soap. The small little white bars you find in motels that are not even wrapped in paper. And his breath is a brewery, which is illegal because he’s supposed to be a teetotaller under the uniform.
‘What are you doin’ with this fella, luv?’
‘Who I keep company with is none of your concern.’
‘Everything in this town is my concern.’
This part of the story should be made into a conspiracy movie because it is a pavlova piled high with trouble and nonsense. Darren chucks Pat into the cell down the back of the station and says he’ll stay there until the wrong Tina is reimbursed and that in regards to the black eye, well that was a matter of self-defence. Although Pat can’t see us, I can see him and he’s prowling that cage like an angry bear. I try to burn a hole through the bars with my eyes, turn my anger into a laser beam but I was totally un-super. No special powers at all. Pat gave all his money to the wrong Tina back at the pub to try to smooth things over, and she just pocketed it like nothing ever happened.
‘Now the thing I’m trying to figure out is what’s goin’ on here,’ Darren calls out to Pat. He looks me over then turns back to the cell.
‘You a kiddy fiddler or what?’
What Pat says is dead rude. Like a swear jar had broken, spilling *&%$##$@% all over the floor. The whole time Darren just watches Pat with a blank face. I get scared when I don’t know how to read people.
‘You know, I can’t abide cursing. It really fuckin’ shits me.’ And then copper Darren smiles because he is being ironical. His brewery breath floats out of his mouth again and I feel sick.
This is Ghandi’s might-over-right for sure. If we want to get to the boat I’ll have to take charge of the situation. Like a fox that chews its own paw off to get out of a trap, I’ll have to let part of me go too.
When Darren goes to take a piss I scramble over to the cell. Pat’s knuckle-popping hands are wrapped around the bars. I look him square in the eyes, through all the fury to the centre. ‘I can get you out.’
Pat is yelling after me but I don’t look back, not even one time.
•
I saw it as we drove into town. They all look the same, and maybe in a way I’m drawn to the treasures that are waiting inside: all the dreams people thought they could buy back but lost for good. The bell over the door tinkles. It’s a friendly yellow sound, makes you feel like you’ve been there before. I know I have to focus because if I look at anything for too long I’ll be in danger of losing my way.
‘G’day, luv.’
The man behind the counter’s reading the Trading Post, drawing perfect circles round things that take his fancy. I rummage around in my bag and hold it in my hand. Close my fingers tight around it and press it into my skin. I feel them coming back, running through my body, like an electric current, those memories. Let them come out of the necklace and into my heart where I can keep them safe.
I can let go because now it is empty of her and what she’d been to me. The man carefully holds it up, looks at all those rainbow moonstones so perfect and round, just like the circles on his paper. And I bet he’s wondering why is it called a rainbow moonstone when it’s as pale as snow.
‘Where’d you go gettin’ something like this?’
‘It was an air loom. But now it’s empty.’
He looks me over and wonders if I’m the real deal or not. ‘This yours to sell?’
I nod and we hold each other’s gaze. Not sure how he could understand what was going on, but his eyes crinkled up at the sides like my cat had just run away and I was putting up posters hoping someone had found it.
‘Yeah. That’s the way it goes,’ he says.
I don’t know if he rips me off like wrapping paper at Christmas but I feel in my bones like a fair and honest deal has been done. I pocket the money and piss bolt back to the police station. Run across the road and get morse-coded by a car swerving to miss me. BEEP, BE-BEEP, BEEEP!!!
And then I’m inside again, running through the corridor, sharp turn past the water fountain and up to the front desk where dirty Darren is finishing off a packet of Smith’s salt and vinegar chips. The worst flavour of all, of course.
‘Oh. We have decided to grace this humble establishment with our presence again.’
Him trying to be a wordsmith won’t throw me off my game. I burn through his smarmy smile with a steely glare and run my fingers over the money in my pocket, soft and smooth with a rubber band holding all those notes together. I flick that band one, two, three times over, all while I stare that copper down. Flick, flick, flick.
I don’t want to touch Darren in case he stains my soul so I chuck the money on the desk.
‘A woman of independent means, are ya?’
Pat yells out, wants to know what’s happening, but dodgy Darren is like a kid in the All American Candy Store off Chambers Street, eyes lit up wide like he’s got a Babe Ruth bar, four Reese’s peanut butter cups and a bag of corn candy all to himself. He takes the rubber band off and slowly flicks through the notes, licking his finger with a slimy goanna tongue.
‘’Bout eighty bucks short, luv,’ he says, smiling. ‘Come give us a kiss and we’ll call it a day.’
Thinks he’s got one over on us.
Pat starts shaking the bars and breaks that swear jar all over again with his &*%$$#@@**&&%$#$@. But quick as lightning that memory-horse bolts through my mind and brings me something useful.