Read Online The Mary Smokes Boys by Patrick Holland - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Patrick Holland
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game she always won.
Inside the house their father was asleep. Grey wrote a note and put it under the bedside lamp. He changed his shirt and wet his face and hair and came back outside.
Irene told him there was going to be a meteor shower tonight, the Alpha Centaurids. Sister Charbel had said so at school. But so far she had seen nothing.
“Let’s go for a drive,” Grey said.
Irene jumped off the bonnet and landed awkwardly on her feet.
“Where are we going?”
“Around.”
“To the pictures?”
“There’s most likely nothing on.”
“Where then? Vanessa’s?”
“Why not?”
“Can’t we do something else?”
“ What’s wrong with Vanessa?”
“Nothing, I spose.”
But for the second time in the night the light had gone out of her eyes.
IV
IRENE HARDLY SPOKE ON THE DRIVE. SHE WITHDREW out the window into the night sky. It was remarkable, Grey thought, that such an excitable girl could become so pensive. It was a trait of hers that at times seemed whimsical, but it was not insincere. She was a fourteen-year-old girl capable of genuine melancholy, that was not easily relieved once it came.
He put his hand on her shoulder and she turned from the window and smiled sadly and her eyes were like dark ponds in her odd little face. She relaxed back into the wistful expression that was hers in repose. The tops of her ears protruded through her unwashed hair. Her splotchy complexion and watery eyes ever made her appear as though she had just finished crying. She is not pretty, Grey thought. Her face was too strange to meet any standard of prettiness–yet her face was affecting. A small ache came into his heart whenever she was sad.
ON HIGHWAY 54 they rolled through darkness broken by glints of wet sorghum and the veranda lights of farm houses on stilts. Plump women in flapping cotton dresses stood watching the night from the stairs of the houses. Horses leant over wire fences and picked at the feed on the roadside.
But there were tracts that threatened the country’s peace. The foundations of a shopping centre were being laid fifteen kilometres west of the Brisbane Valley turn-off. Bulldozers and rollers that would broaden the highway sat in ditches off the
asphalt. More machines sat atop the dirt walls of enormous dams. Patches of biscuit-cutter houses appeared. The houses were set on new and overlit roads that ran circuitous routes, else to dead ends, like mazes in the backs of cheap magazines. And all the houses seemed empty. Towns were bypassed with only reflective road signs to indicate them: names and arrows pointing somewhere out into the banks of depthless black begotten by the highway radiance. But the names came to signify nothing. The places they called upon were no longer discrete.
WHEN THEY CAME into Haigslea the land opened up. The sprawl did not reach so far. The lights of houses trickled and pooled across the valley like water. Orange lamps picked out railway crossings and desultory children on bicycles lingering about the line.
Grey and Irene stopped at the high roadside pie stand called the Pieteria and bought a packet of cigarettes and two small bottles of ginger beer. Beside the Pieteria was a roadhouse hotel called the Sundowner. Across the asphalt was a big Moreton Bay fig and a paint-stripped house and a blue school bus that had not been driven in twenty years. Then the land fell hard down into the valley and in the distance was the blue ridge of the D’Aguilar Range.
Grey placed a bottle of ginger beer in Irene’s hand. She stared at it.
“You go on if you want.”
“What do you mean?”
“You go on to Vanessa’s. I’ll wait here. Ask the lady what time she closes.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
Grey uncapped his sister’s bottle with his pocket-knife and the over-carbonated drink spilled onto his hands. She was looking at her shoes. Grey sighed.
“If you didn’t want to come you should have said so earlier.”
“I did,” she whispered.
He
Inside the house their father was asleep. Grey wrote a note and put it under the bedside lamp. He changed his shirt and wet his face and hair and came back outside.
Irene told him there was going to be a meteor shower tonight, the Alpha Centaurids. Sister Charbel had said so at school. But so far she had seen nothing.
“Let’s go for a drive,” Grey said.
Irene jumped off the bonnet and landed awkwardly on her feet.
“Where are we going?”
“Around.”
“To the pictures?”
“There’s most likely nothing on.”
“Where then? Vanessa’s?”
“Why not?”
“Can’t we do something else?”
“ What’s wrong with Vanessa?”
“Nothing, I spose.”
But for the second time in the night the light had gone out of her eyes.
IV
IRENE HARDLY SPOKE ON THE DRIVE. SHE WITHDREW out the window into the night sky. It was remarkable, Grey thought, that such an excitable girl could become so pensive. It was a trait of hers that at times seemed whimsical, but it was not insincere. She was a fourteen-year-old girl capable of genuine melancholy, that was not easily relieved once it came.
He put his hand on her shoulder and she turned from the window and smiled sadly and her eyes were like dark ponds in her odd little face. She relaxed back into the wistful expression that was hers in repose. The tops of her ears protruded through her unwashed hair. Her splotchy complexion and watery eyes ever made her appear as though she had just finished crying. She is not pretty, Grey thought. Her face was too strange to meet any standard of prettiness–yet her face was affecting. A small ache came into his heart whenever she was sad.
ON HIGHWAY 54 they rolled through darkness broken by glints of wet sorghum and the veranda lights of farm houses on stilts. Plump women in flapping cotton dresses stood watching the night from the stairs of the houses. Horses leant over wire fences and picked at the feed on the roadside.
But there were tracts that threatened the country’s peace. The foundations of a shopping centre were being laid fifteen kilometres west of the Brisbane Valley turn-off. Bulldozers and rollers that would broaden the highway sat in ditches off the
asphalt. More machines sat atop the dirt walls of enormous dams. Patches of biscuit-cutter houses appeared. The houses were set on new and overlit roads that ran circuitous routes, else to dead ends, like mazes in the backs of cheap magazines. And all the houses seemed empty. Towns were bypassed with only reflective road signs to indicate them: names and arrows pointing somewhere out into the banks of depthless black begotten by the highway radiance. But the names came to signify nothing. The places they called upon were no longer discrete.
WHEN THEY CAME into Haigslea the land opened up. The sprawl did not reach so far. The lights of houses trickled and pooled across the valley like water. Orange lamps picked out railway crossings and desultory children on bicycles lingering about the line.
Grey and Irene stopped at the high roadside pie stand called the Pieteria and bought a packet of cigarettes and two small bottles of ginger beer. Beside the Pieteria was a roadhouse hotel called the Sundowner. Across the asphalt was a big Moreton Bay fig and a paint-stripped house and a blue school bus that had not been driven in twenty years. Then the land fell hard down into the valley and in the distance was the blue ridge of the D’Aguilar Range.
Grey placed a bottle of ginger beer in Irene’s hand. She stared at it.
“You go on if you want.”
“What do you mean?”
“You go on to Vanessa’s. I’ll wait here. Ask the lady what time she closes.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
Grey uncapped his sister’s bottle with his pocket-knife and the over-carbonated drink spilled onto his hands. She was looking at her shoes. Grey sighed.
“If you didn’t want to come you should have said so earlier.”
“I did,” she whispered.
He
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