Chapter Two

 

The next morning was cool, and still, and the grasses around accommodations glinted in the dew. A peewee stalked timber by oregano, its walking a stopstarting, skimming for bugs that Shazza never saw.

                  Beattie was slow down the wooden steps by the veranda, sticking to the edges, riding the rail. She didn’t trust the middle of a step. She smiled at Shazza, her puffy, cherry cheeks pushing her eyes smaller, no matter, for need not have large eyes those who look to see.

                  “Mornin’ lovey,” she said.

                  “Thanks for comin’ with us, Bea.”

                  “Ohr, you silly thing, course I would. Carn, let’s go see a bloke about a gun.”

                  They walked together by a river clutching fog. Masked lapwing plovers etched cacophonic screech that scratched like records skipping. A duck bowed to its stream. Cuts of a sleepy mother-sun carved new fingers that re-emerged round every bend. A tirri tirri shot its bum at the day from rusty fencewire, facing sixteen directions at once and barking orders to all, it’s crown a permanent frown for an eyebrow.   

                  “Where you gonna find a dragon?”

                  “Mountains, probly.”

                  “Orh yeah. Which mountains?”

                  “I was thinkin’ the south?”

                  “Bit cold.”

                  “Yeah, maybe.”

                  “Why don’t you go east? Darren Driver goes that way a bit I think.”

                  “East, ya reckon?”

                  “Yeah, I’d say East. Course, I don’t know nothin’ about slayin’ a dragon.”

                  “Ohrr, nah, me either,” Shazza said. “You don’t think I’m mad?”

                  “I reckon where you go, madness follows.”

                  “Yeah, sry about that.”

                  “Naaah – I don’t mean it as an ill thing, lovey. I like watching you goin’ about the place, doin’ the things you do. I just wished you’d like it, too.”

                  “Ohrrr, just gotta do stuff sometimes.”

                  “Needs doin’, gets done?”

                  “Yeah, but also… for me. It might not need doin’, but it still needs to get done. Does that echo a sense?”

                  “Course. All you are is you.”

                  Shazza took Beattie’s hand and gave her a landing for a cuddle, which Beattie took in that loppy way she does, never as a crutch but an amalgam, her body shorter than Shazza’s - always ready for touch; to synchronise, in sitting or singing or stepping, and to be around, to have around, and in its orbit nourish.

                  “Howyagarn?” asked Gary Ranger.

                  Ranger accommodation was a bit up the river, on a rise in a forest clearing. Gary sat on his veranda, whittling a limb into a unicorn. Wooden filings pirouetted from the plain of his blade, some of them landing in the hair on his toes.

                  “We’re good thanks lovey, do you remember Shazza?”     

                  “Ohrr yeah, yeahnah, I remember Shazza. Mornin’ Shazza.”

                  “Mornin’ Gary.”

                  “Shazza’s lookin’ for a gun, Gary.”

                  “Ya are?”

                  “Yeh.”

                  “Ya want me to shoot somethin’?”

                  “Nah, she just wants the gun.”

                  “Just the gun, Gary.”

                  He stopped mid-whittle, his blade sunk. When he got momentum going again, the action would leave an imperfection in his unicorn, but Gary didn’t seem to mind ‘bout that, not to worry, Gary didn’t seem to mind.

                  “Ya… but I’m… gun… and you… wadda ya wantin’?”

                  “Shazza wants to borrow a gun.”

                  “Borrow a…” he mouthed the words like they were eggs with character, “wadda ya wanna borrow a gun for?”

                  “I wanna slay a dragon.”

                  “She wants to slay a dragon.”

                  “A dragon? But ya can’t slay a dragon…”

                  “Gary Ranger!” snapped Beattie.

                  Gary dropped his unicorn. He sat up like he had bindies in his dacks; back straight, knees straight, bolt still, eyes at nothin’, and frozen at that.

                  “Sry Beattie, it’s just the guns are ranger guns, and Shazza’s not a ranger – ya not a ranger are ya, Shazza?”

                  “Nah.”

                  “Yeh – Shazza’s not a ranger, so I shouldn’t.”

                  “Yeah, they said he’d say that didn’t they Shazz?”

                  “Wh… who did?” asked Gary.

                  “Ohr, no-one. But they did say it.”

                  “Yeah,” Shazza added, shrugging, “guess they were right.”

                  “They were?!” whined Gary.

                  “Yeh,” Beattie said, and started walkin’ away. “Ohr well.”

                  Gary Ranger stood up. A dandruff of curled wood shed from his lumpy body.    

                   “Nah, yeah, nah, but if they said it… and I’m… hang on…”

                  “She needs a gun to slay a dragon, Gary.”

                  “She can’t slay a dragon.”

                  “They said you’d say that.”

                  “Wha- they did? Why’d they say that?! Hang on…”

                  “He mustn’t like being right, Shazz.”

                  “Yeah… nah… Gary Ranger mustn’t.”

                  “Nah, I do! Being right is one of me favourite things, I’m heaps good at it.”

                  “Well, that’s what we heeeeard, Gary, but we needed to see. And if ya don’t give Shazza the gun, she can’t not shoot the dragon to prove her wrong, to prove all of them wrong, and prove you right, can she?”

                  “Ohhhrr… ohrrrrrrr… yeah… yeah, that makes sense, yeahnah, yeah.”

                  He stared at them, wearing an expression of confidence as whittled as his wood. The longer he held it, the more it threated to fall off him, so he scratched his head and squinted at rising mother-sun. Later, Beattie would call the pose: inherently fuckable.

                  They wandered back along the river. Shazza carried the gun, a .222 rifle, in a leather holster. When Gary had asked how many bullets it might take to slay a dragon, she threw out 27, though she had no idea, so he gave her 26 bullets, now he did.

                  “Oh, look, look, look – it’s a fish, see!” Beattie said, with a thrill worth a bottle.

                  Shazza looked about the water but all she saw was water, and pretty riverstones under. Beattie lined her arm down Shazza’s gaze, pointing to a spot not far from the shore.

                  “You see him? Same colour as my bracelet, he’s lookin’ back at us I reckon.”

                  And then Shazza did see him, a rainbow trout. How a creature born of rainbows could be so elusive Shazza didn’t understand, but she was glad it had shine, and glad again she’d seen the fish.

                  “He’s a clever one, isn’t he?” she said, and she chucked the rifle back up on her shoulder, finding a more comfortable spot.

                  “He sure is,” Beattie said.

                  But how she said it was a bit funny. The joy she’d wrought to bring the fish to gaze had since diminished.

***

                  Once accommodation was nicer. It was bigger, even with way less people to live in it, and it was never the wrong temperature, its residence got first walk at dinner and guaranteed seats at restaurants outside of homeplace, and extra windows because once accommodation had gardens, too, and rooms with a view.

                  Shazza went to accommodation thirty-five-one-oh-six. It was twice as much accommodation as regular, with stairs to reach beds up top. Paris Server answered the door, at once relieved and afraid to see Shazza Picker.

                  “How is she?” Shazza asked.

                  Paris looked a foot beyond her shoes and Shazza knew the answer. They found her father out back by his homeriver, grading Tekimiti Cleaner’s effort. Shazza waved to Gilbert Cleaner tending to the piano inside, and Samantha Gardner tending to roses.

                  “There’s a slippery feel on the ladder, Tekimiti Cleaner. Do you think the homeriver ladder should be as slick as a riverstone? That isn’t something you should think, not at all, stop thinking that. That’s it, all around, Tekimiti Cleaner, all around.”

                  “Father.”

                  “Daughter,” he said, puzzled to see her. “Why are you at my accommodation at this hour?”

                  “How’s mother?”

                  “How’s your…?! Why aren’t you in the fields?”

                  “I’m off to slay a dragon; see, I have a rifle.”

                  “Ohhhhrrrrr what?! How? You can’t have a rifle.”

                  “He said you’d say that.”

                  “And ya can’t slay a dragon! Cripes, you’re bloody cooked! Tekimiti, tell her –“

                  “Yes, sir, what would you like me to say?”

                  “She reckons she wants to slay a dragon; bloody tell her she’s cooked.”

                  “Of course, sir. Shazza Picker…”

                  “Sharon Picker, Tekimiti, use her true name.”

                  “Sharon Picker, sir Ash once-Picker asks me to tell you you’re cooked.”

                  “No, don’t say it like that, tell her – she reckons she can slay a dragon; she’s cooked! Tell her!”

                  “You reckon you can slay a dragon, she’s er- you’re cooked.”

                  “Cripes...” father once-Picker sighed before turning his attention roseward. “Samantha Gardner, my daughter Sharon Picker reckons she’s gonna slay a dragon.”

                  “Does she? When’s she gonna do that?”

                  “Wh- never!!!”

                  “Heading off after this, Sam.”

                  “K.”

                  “No, she’s not – no you’re not, ya can’t slay a dragon, ya bloody can’t!”

                  “Is mother upstairs?”

                  “You’re cooked, daughter. Cooked as her. Yeah, she’s upstairs.”

                  Upstairs, Paris waited for Shazza to be ready before she inserted the thin key into the copper padlock. The sound of the key, the scrape of the lockhook unsheathed from the bray, the vibrations could be felt through the wall, it was well to be ready.

                  Paris held the handle.

                  “Miss once-Picker, your daughter Shazza is here to see you. Are you receiving visitors?”

                  The silence that ensued was a gravity.

                  “Thanks Paris.”

                  Shazza entered.

                  The room was as big as Shazza’s whole dorm, but it was mistreated and carried an odour of fresh rot and fast acid. For all the fortune of a riverview the windows stood clothed in shame, denying mother-sun, and in its embrace, day; only the trickiest of slips cut malingering fingers into that place unwanted. Framed photographs, their glass long removed, were strewn about the floor as downward as jammed toast. The wallpaper, once flowers, was now an abstract of dried and drying liquids among holes.

                  “Have ya talked to Alison Medicine for me?”

                  The form of two gaunt feet stuck out of a cupboard.

                  “No, Mumma. She can’t give you milkflower.”

                  “You! Wouldn’t!”

                  “I’m goin’ away for a bit, Mumma. I’m off to slay a dragon, and I just wanted to pop in and see you and Father ‘for I went.”

                  She let something a lot like silence linger. The smell of being there never diminished, but it did change. Toilet smells and badfood scents and the aromas of cleaning and uncleaning; in a way they talked now, a spoken wordless cacophony, another kind of funk.

                  “Okay. I love you, Mumma.”

                  The cupboard stirred.

                  Shazza looked to see a hint of face in the darkness, the glint of whites on blacks on sunken orbs.

                  “I don’t regret havin’ you. I regret I didn’t do enough to watch you slide into this world stillborn.”

***

                  Shazza found Beattie in the field. Even with a late start she had already overtaken other pickers. She hummed and swayed her secret tidal, and for the gentle tussle of morningwind the corn-flake stalks might have followed her tune.

                  “Well howdy howdy babydoll,” said Shazza.

                  Beattie beamed and offered palms.

                  “Look at ya, lovey, ya seem fixed for adventure.”

                  Shazza straightened the rifle on her shoulder and showed off her backpack.

                  “I am.”

                  It returned then; that thing which sucked an edge off whimsy, a slow leaking that willed to sadness. Beattie felt it. Shazza felt it. It was plenty.

                  “Ya gonna be safe?”

                  “Yeahnah, yeah. Course.”

                  Then Beattie upped and cried the kinda water the stalks weren’t livin’ for and in doing became lost to them, and littler, and those palms shook with an offer. And Shazza upped and cried the same and went to her to be replenished.

                  “Bye Beattie.”

                  “See ya with ya dragon, Shaz.”

                  They held one another in the corn-flake stalks, bent funny.

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