Brothers & Sisters - Charlotte Wood [89]
I put my foot on the bottom step of the staircase. It shook from side to side and knocked against the silo, sending an echo across the yard. Some cockatoos perched high in the gum tree we had pissed against earlier in the day squawked and flew into the sky.
I began to climb the stairs.
‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ Nez called out to me as she gripped the metal rail of the staircase while keeping both feet planted firmly on the bottom step.
‘Probably not,’ I called out as I kept on climbing, without looking back to see where she was.
As I moved quickly around the outside of the silo I could hear Nez calling, ‘Jesse, hang on, will you? Hang on.’
I knew that if I didn’t wait for her I would eventually have to go back anyway. I sat on a step and looked down at the ground, about fifty feet below me. When Nez finally reached me she was wheezing badly and her cheeks were the colour of beetroot. She had the camera around her neck.
I got her to sit down next to me and do the breathing exercises taught to her by a welfare nurse when we were in care together one time. As I counted each breath for her Nez looked across at the ugly scar on the side of my arm, just below my elbow.
‘Tell me how you got that, Jesse.’
‘What, now? We’re supposed to be climbing. Anyway, you know how I got it. I’ve told you a thousand times already.’
‘I know you have, lots of times. But tell me again, please. I’ll count my breaths if you tell me the story about the scar. Please?’
The story was about how I’d fought off a vicious dog that had attacked me in the street one day, when I was about six or seven. As I’d done each time I’d gone over the story, I acted the scene where I’d poked the mongrel between the eyes, forcing it to release my mangled arm from its jaws of rotting yellow teeth. After the dog had retreated up the street, back to the junkyard it came from, I’d looked down at my arm, at the bloodied hunk of flesh that had been almost ripped away.
Nez leaned across to me and traced the jagged scar with a fingertip. She knew exactly what question to ask next.
‘Did it hurt, Jesse? When the dog bit you?’
‘Yeah. It hurt like hell. But not nearly as much as when they stitched me up at the hospital. They couldn’t find no anaesthetic and no small needles, so they stitched my arm back together with something about the size of a knitting needle. It was all rusty and probably full of poison. The same needle had been used to stitch manure bags together. That hurt a lot more than the dog bite.’
‘Is that a true story, Jesse?’
‘What do you think?’
She lightly touched the scar again. ‘I guess so. I guess so.’
I stood up. ‘Come on. I’m going up to the top. You coming or not?’
As we climbed higher and the staircase wobbled and shook some more, Nez grabbed hold of my t-shirt.
When we finally reached the top I stood on a wooden platform surrounded by a wire frame. It was like being in a giant birdcage. I looked through a rotting gap in the floor to the ground, which was now maybe eighty or a hundred feet below where we were standing.
Nez looked up. ‘It’s beautiful up here. So close to the sky.’
I could see the ribbon of highway cutting through the scrub where we’d come from last night, and in the opposite direction, the town laid out as flat and empty as the land around it.
Nez pointed to the town. ‘Can you see her, Jesse? Can you see Gwen?’
I looked down on the map of streets, and searched for Gwen’s red dress. While there were one or two people moving about like ants, there was no sign of her.
‘No. I can’t see her.’
Nez slipped the camera over her head and clutched it in her hands. ‘I’ve got us in here. Gwen and me and you.’
She looked through the wire cage and down at the ground for the first time. The colour faded from her face. She threw herself around me and held on tightly. I was not sure if it was the staircase shaking or just her body. Eventually she took a step back,