Winter solstice part 3

 

They drove through the night to Ellis Creek Road. Jayden looked over to Matt as he was driving. They turned into an orange gravel road. It was jarrah forest, deep and funky with fungi. He could smell the damp settling in for the night after a day’s meagre sunlight. ‘Close now, yeah?’ He asked Matt. The forest was crowding them now. Jayden could feel it closing around the car. Forget Matt’s bikie family, the trees were enough. They stopped the car at the pine plantation growing in the middle of the jarrah forest.

‘This is the spot,’ said Matt.

‘Hey, we’ve got these,’ Jayden handed Matt an MDMA tab. ‘Special occasion. Let’s go picking.’ The two young men stuffed some beers, rollie papers, water and plastic bags into their backpacks. Jayden locked his car and they walked into the pine forest.

The moon was fully over the trees now and making shadows of them. Their boots trod quiet upon the pine needles. Snuffling of roosting cockatoos and the scampering of critters up trees. A bird flew overhead and screeched at four points of the compass. ‘Owlet nightjar,’ said Jayden. ‘How do you know that shit?’ Said Matt. Jayden couldn’t explain that. Too many references to his Mum’s knowledge would be getting weird now.

‘Do you think anyone’s out here?’ said Matt. ‘… oh hey hey here we go, Jay!’ Matt’s whole dank demeanour changed into a capering Catweasle. In the groove of the trees, he shone his phone torch on a grove of tiny mushrooms. They poked out of the pine needles like tiny fists, all yellowy and nippled in their centres.

As they both stared at the psilocybin mushrooms, Jayden felt his trip coming on. It was almost as though by looking at them, they communicated their properties to him. He bent down to one of them and tapped its cap to loosen the spores into the earth before he picked it. His back teeth began thrumming as the MDMA kicked in. He closed his fingers around the stem of the mushroom. He could feel the muscles in his crouch and the moon’s benevolence. He knew the owlet nightjar was watching him. His balls were tingling and the forest was saying, ‘Best leave now, son!’ The mushroom screamed as he broke it.

Jayden picked just one magic mushroom. The noise of his plastic bag in the moonlight, as he dragged it out of his backpack and put the mushroom inside, felt deafening. Matt was running between channels of pine trees and shouting in a kind of whisper. ‘Oh my God, Jay, Jay! There’s fucking heaps of them.’

Then Jayden saw lights and he wasn’t sure if the lights were behind his own eyes or in front of them. But then Matt was running towards him, his backpack jogging on his back and a white plastic shopping bag swinging to one side. ‘Turn off your light man,’ he said. ‘Got plenty anyway. Turn off your light.’

Matt was on his own trip, Jayden realised. But turning off their phone torches was probably a good idea. They walked together up a slope in the pine plantation until they got to a peak where they could see down to a water reservoir.

Jayden tried. ‘You know Matt, we’ve been mates since like forever.’

The full moon lit up the water.

‘What the fuck,’ Matt said. ‘Dad killed someone. He’s going to jail, Jay. He killed someone.’ Matt began to weep.

Jayden put his arm around his friend’s shoulders. ‘Mum will really like these shrooms too,’ he said and then remembered that night out poaching, when he felt scared and small and cold and his Mum was ranting about poetry or something and about the end of the world.

 

 

 

 

Winter Solstice Part 2

 

Jayden shivered. ‘We’ve got hours to wait.’ He switched on the TV. The opposition leader was saying something about nuclear power and renewables. His mouth seemed to move free of the rest of his face. ‘These arsehats wanna kill us all,’ said Jayden. He’d finally enrolled to vote after a summer saturated with Friendly Jordies videos.

  Matt shrugged. ‘Turn it up, then Mr Man can’t hear us,’ he said and so Jayden did.

  ‘Maybe we should get a room at the pub,’ he said, ‘and a counter meal by a raging fire.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe some old geezer will play an Irish fiddle and we’ll all sing and raise our beers.’ Matt chortled. He was starting to warm up. Whatever was bothering him during the drive seemed to fritter into this more recent drama. ‘More likely is the local chapter will get wind of us being here and run us out of town.’

   They sat for a few hours on the double bed, watching culture wars and other wars play out on the TV. Jayden had a bag of kangaroo biltong and Matt, two bags of Samboy chips and their makings were several tiny sandwiches which they gainfully imagined was a complete food combo.

  ‘This is bizarre,’ Matt said at one stage, ‘watching the news on telly. Like, you have no choice about what comes next. You can’t just click on it or click past it. It’s …’ here he held his palms, fingers outstretched, in front of his face ‘ … it’s just like right there you know? Right in your face. Kids getting blown up. Homeless. No choice.’ He leapt up and stalked around the room. ‘Let’s go outside for a smoke.’

  The moon was rising above the karris when they went outside to the car. Matt had chopped up the weed during the drive so Jayden packed the first cone, filled the juice bottle with water and handed it to Matt. ‘Here you go, now chill the fuck out Matt.’ He couldn't work out why Matt had been so upset about the news.

  At around midnight, they drove away from the mill house, heading south towards the Ellis Creek Road. Jayden looked sideways at Matt. ‘Want some M?’

  ‘Fuck yeah.’ Matt was looking at his phone. ‘This guy Mr Man has just put us up on Facey.’

  ‘What? How did you find him?’ Jayden’s stomach stirred, turning.

  ‘Wasn’t that hard. Had a look around town. Who’s renting out. I’ll read it to you right? Think he knows my Dad.’

  ‘Well that makes sense.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Matt looked at his phone again. ‘Why would you even think he knows Dad?’

  ‘He just had this …vibe. Like your Dad. Sorry Bro. It’s something I thought when I saw him.’ Jayden hated this. Pale karri trunks flashed by in the headlights of his tinny car and he wished he could slow, pull over the car and make all this right.

  ‘Ok. Here’s what he said.’ Matt read from his phone.  ‘“Just got a couple of young punk pickers turn up at my house. Anyone in?” ‘

  ‘Jesus! What’s his user name?’

  ‘Shroom Daddy! Ha ha ha. What a fucking idiot.’ Matt started poking at his phone.

  ‘Can you call your Dad?’ Jayden asked. A four wheel drive overtook them, white dashes on the road glaring in the headlights. It slowed ahead of them on the bend.

  ‘I can’t call Dad,’ Matt said. He was really shaking now. Jayden tried to concentrate on the road. Dark shapes of micro bats flittered across his windscreen. They crossed the other bridge that demarcated the town, a thwomp as the little Toyota crossed the bridge.

  ‘I really fucking love poaching’, his mother had told Jayden, on a night when they were alone on a river, sitting in a tinny with several metres of hidden net beneath them. Drowned corks and lead weights trained on subterfuge to the bottom. Jayden was ten years old and his Mum was training him, even then. ‘Look. Look around you! Everything is honest here,’ she stage whispered, her black curls blowing around her head, ‘You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that. That’s the playwright, you know the guy?’ She began pulling up her illegal nets and piling them into the deck of the boat. Jayden could remember her sudden, angry brown hands moving as fish fell all over the checkerplate and her unmeshing fish into boxes. ‘There is no cure, son. We’re all fucked,’ she said. ‘Still, ain’t this moon alright?’

  ‘The moon’s coming up,’ Jayden said.

  ‘Dad … Dad,’

  ‘What happened Matt?’

  ‘Dad. Last night.’ Matt collapsed into his phone. Jayden checked him as he was driving.

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘Dad, he drove into this bloke last night. He fucking killed him. He was at the Balcatta BP. He saw this guy, he swerved and then he killed him. They say it was deliberate.’

  ‘Jesus fuck. Okay Matt. Let’s stop. We need to talk about this.’ Jayden was putting on his indicator.

  ‘No no,no! Keep going.’

  ‘Honestly, it’s your Dad.’

  ‘My Dad, yeah. My fucking Dad.’ Matt shook his head. He was still looking at his phone. .’Let’s go to Ellis Creek Road.’

 

Winter Solstice Part 1

 

Three hours out of the city and the sun sitting low behind them, Jayden and Matt entered the karri country. There they were, one minute driving past paddocks and scrub and next minute Jayden’s little hatchback was enveloped in blonde, serried ranks of the enormous trees. Some valleys the sun now failed to reach and these places were dark, the sky closed over with feathered, crown shy canopy.

  ‘It’s claustrophobic ey,’ Jayden commented.

  ‘In tiger country now,’ Matt said. He’d been quiet on the trip south, not his normal cocky self, a lot of time spent looking at the blue screen of his phone, finding murder ballads on Spotify or glaring out the window.

  They crossed the river into the old timber town.

  ‘Place is just up here.’ Matt had the maps app open on his phone and Cave’s sombre tone was replaced by a chirpy female voice: In 300 metres, turn left onto Sheffield Street. ‘Dunno why we even need an AirBnB, Jay. We’ll be out all night anyway.’

  ‘Promised my Mum.’ Jayden didn’t mind admitting this to his best mate. Twenty four and still beholden to his Mum but Matt knew why and didn’t tease him.

  It was an old mill house, one of many lined up like a little town, opposite the abandoned timber mill. Green shade cloth flapped listlessly against weatherboard walls, presumably to block the afternoon sun on hot days. Smoke curled out of a steel chimney. The house looked like a rental and Jayden wondered how that even worked. He stepped onto the veranda and knocked on the zed door. Matt stayed in the car.

  A man stepped out so quickly he must have been waiting on the other side of the door. ‘Are you two the pickers?’ He looked at Jayden and then to Matt in the car. His face was curiously soft and hard, a criss cross of scars on one russet eyebrow but his skin pale, like he’d stayed indoors all his life and still managed to get beaten up. About as pretty as a ditch, Jayden’s Mum would say.

  ‘Pickers? Nah,’ Jayden turned to Matt, avoiding the man’s raptor stare. ‘We’re heading south. Hopetoun tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay. Just don’t want any pickers stayin’ here. Fucken parasites. Come on, I’ll show you the room.’

  Now that the sun had set on the shortest day, the cold crept out of the earth. The room they’d paid for online was out the back of the house, a veranda that had been converted into a sleepout using mismatched corrugated iron. It was clean and freezing cold. A double bed, a small white plastic blow heater and an ancient television.

  ‘Toilet and bathroom through here,’ the man gestured to what used to be the back door. ‘And if you want to make a coffee in the morning, use the kitchen.’ For some reason, he reminded Jayden of Matt’s Dad. The way he spoke, a man who didn’t bother with menace to be unsettling.

  The man looked at his phone. ‘Matt and Jayden,’ he said but still didn’t introduce himself. ‘Have a good night boys,’ and then disappeared into the house. Matt dropped his backpack and stared around him.

  ‘What the fuck? Have you locked up the car?’

  ‘Let’s just have a cone first.’

  ‘Not in here mate. He’ll smell it. Also, I asked if there were two beds but there’s only one.’ Matt’s gaze around the room and stopped at the wooden chair with a single towel folded on the seat. ‘I don’t mind sharing a bed with you, my brother but I’m not sharing a fucking towel.’ He stuck his hands deep into his hoodie pockets.

  Jayden stooped to flick the switch for the heater. Nothing happened. ‘Heater doesn’t work,’ he said unnecessarily and then tried the TV. ‘Maybe the power’s off out the back here.’ From under the back door there was a thin strip of yellow light and then a wisp of wood smoke from woodstove inside. There was a knock from the inside of the back door.

  The door opened inwards and the man stood, framed by light, holding a stack of towels. He came in and set them down on the chair. ‘Need some extra towels, ey?’ He went back inside the house and came out with an extension cord and power board. ‘Use this for the heater and telly.’

  After he’d left again, Jayden and Matt stared at each other.

  ‘D’you reckon he’s got a camera in here?’ Matt said.

 

Solstice

Hiya bloggers. My Auntie recently asked me what the hell is going on with A WineDark Sea, because I haven't posted anything since February fire tower days earlier this year. I'm very aware that this kind of 'sorry I haven't posted for a while' can be the death rattle for many blogs. Not the case here. I've been taking a break because I haven't had many funny or entertaining stories to tell in a season when West Australians have had the driest summer on written record. We've had mass tree deaths and water carting politics going on between towns. On one day, most of the schools in the south west were shut down due to fire risk. During this period, I haven't felt able to contribute in any kind of meaningful way to the blogosphere and it was my Auntie who finally bailed me up about it last week. (Thanks Auntie!)

So, yes I'm going to write about this period. Maybe it's important to document this time of the anthropocene. It's raining now. Sheets of rain have been hammering us all day. The swans have left the inlet ('They didn't even leave a note!' said my Mum).