Over this backbone, p.30
Over This Backbone, page 30
I peel my pack painfully from my shoulders, from my tender mauve hips. Sit heavily on the bench. The grass is dry and the table is dry, though I notice the wind has stopped. Even when I hold my breath I can’t hear the sound of it up high out of the valley. The moon hangs solitary as a pendant in the clear sky and the stars wink and glitter. For a long while I sit and stare up.
My tent is still wet and bloody so I toss it to the grass and yank out my sleeping mat and bag and lie out on the picnic table.
In the very early hours of the morning I creak myself horizontal, raised up from the earth, and though the emotion is still dull I do feel something—a little bit lucky.
When the birds fire up, I pry my puffy eyes open to a dawn-blue sky and the sun touching the highest ash canopies. The few dancing cirrus wisps are doused a pastel pink. I can pick the sound of lyrebird in the bush behind me, up the gully where it’s damp—a chorus of localised imitations that might fool the right person but not me.
That’s not your song, I whisper hoarsely with a small smile.
I close my swollen eyes again. I am loose and so is the world—the tension unwound. I think about weather and about how we’re all just pressure systems shifting endlessly. Nothing stays or lasts, which is both terrifying and a relief because while the calm won’t be forever neither will the chaos.
That’s the best thing about weather, I whisper to nobody, not bothering to clear the gravel from my throat. It always balances out.
I tuck my nose back into the sleeping bag.
At midday I crouch naked in the river and scrub the blood out of my tent and the vomit from my clothes. Water cascades over a narrow weir into a pool frothing with the kind of foam that rolls from the trees after it rains. It’s almost picturesque, apart from the Paddle Pop wrapper circling the water and too many insects floating on the hot air. Droplets spit from the falls into the sky and catch the sun.
I lay out my things and go back to let the waterfall crash down onto my head. I fold my legs into the pool until the pummelling numbs my shoulders.
I’ve been awake for only a couple of hours. Thought briefly about walking on, shooting the final thirteen kilometres down the track to Walhalla a day early, but then I’d have to tell Maya to come a day early and I’m done with expecting the world to bend for my existence.
The thing that makes me laugh the most is that if I’d known I would walk this hard I’d have started at Mount Skene after all, done the whole thing, still made it by New Year’s. But who’d have known I could do it? Who’d have chosen it willingly?
The sun is bright and hot. White moths and butterflies lift out of the grass as I walk back to the picnic table and I squat to set off the GPS tracker as if I’ve only just arrived. Nobody will ever know of last night and I like it that way.
I put on clean underwear, dab antiseptic cream into my chafing and leech bites and cuts and blisters, fish the purple comb from my pack and run it through my hair with some coconut oil.
I make a coffee and peel the skin from my last orange. I savour every tart mouthful.
Up until dusk, when it gets a little cold and I shift stiffly to set up the tent, I lie on my back against the picnic table, feeling both the strength and the pain in my body. Sometimes I am asleep but mostly I am watching the cumulus clouds as they float slowly, unhurried up there beyond the mountain ash canopy, up against the blue of the sky—calm, so calm.
603 km
It is just breath and step and the dark morning that gradually lightens the fog.
I cross the bitumen of the Thomson Valley Road and drop down Fingerboard Spur into a steep-walled canyon. The river sides are cliffy and spectacularly sheer and the water is quiet. Everything is still. As day sinks its teeth in, so does the drizzle, no more than a mist.
A long narrow walkway spans the breadth of the river gorge, piercing the fog. I peer over the edge of Poverty Point Bridge, trace its metal legs the fifteen or so metres into the guts of the valley with my arms resting on the railing, trying to find some significance in this moment—my last bridge. My last day. This day that I’ve seen and dreamed of. A currawong flaps out of the thick mist and almost hits a steel strut. I keep moving towards Walhalla.
The track snakes above the canyons and then above the town on the old tramway cutting. I look down on the empty houses and the chimneys that don’t let out smoke. Up ahead is a sign.
There is no great bustling welcome party, nobody waiting at ‘the end’, but then I don’t even know what the end is. Maya will be here somewhere, but I can’t see anyone.
The grass and dandelions around the green wooden sign are tall and scraggly, like they haven’t been cut for months. I stop in front of it and read:
OLD STEEL BRIDGE 7KM
MT ERICA 23KM
MT BOGONG 267KM
MT KOSCIUSZKO 445KM
NAMADGI NAT PARK (ACT) 680KM
Most of these numbers don’t apply to me. I bite my lip and glance around like someone might notice, but nobody knows that I am seventy-seven kilometres short.
Am I seventy-seven kilometres short?
I have been counting all of the mistaken kilometres too, all of the infuriating discombobulated accidental kilometres that weren’t even on the Alps Track itself. I wonder if they do actually count—and, if so, should I also have counted that distance I covered to the toilet or to collect water or to find a nice swimming hole? The kilometres of coast I wandered in search of moon snail eggs? The distance I covered walking from one wood stove to the other in the Farm kitchen?
Or should I only count my steps on the track itself?
I look at the sign and wonder how one single thing can ever be separated out.
I take a photo of myself on my film camera anyway. I’m not sure whether the self-timer has worked or whether I have even framed myself in the shot, but this peeling pile of painted wood in its nest of thistles doesn’t seem to matter as much as it once did. I just don’t care.
The end, I say to grass and wet weeds. And then, without a backwards glance, I go down the stairs and into town.
You have finished, I think over and over. It doesn’t stick—I don’t feel it.
I walk back and forth along the narrow hilly street that is lined with old, gold-relic houses and shopfronts, neat picket-fenced gardens. And then I see her, strolling up the road in her plain T-shirt and long shorts. Maya smiles and holds out her arms.
Peet, you absolute champion! She swoops me against her. Congratulations!
I’m sorry, I say. I’m a bit wet.
Who gives a shit? Let’s get a coffee.
We go to the only cafe that is open. At the door, she pauses while I drop down my pack.
Have you got your certificate yet?
My what?
Come on, she chuckles. You’ll love this.
Inside, behind the counter, is a surly woman with the layered bob of the middle aged and breasts long and low enough to tuck into her jeans. I track mud onto the lino and she raises one narrow eyebrow. I stand before her, a bedraggled rat.
A latte please, says Maya, and …
A long black, thanks.
And, continues Maya, this one has just finished the AAWT. May we please have a certificate?
Have ya? the woman says. Do it on yer own?
Kinda. Dunno if I can claim that.
Ralph! she shouts, and I jolt.
A portly man in a greasy white apron comes out from the kitchen and stands at the counter. He has a kind face that is marked by acne from long ago.
She’s done the Walk, says the woman and then she goes to the coffee machine.
Oh, well done. Ralph smiles. How long did it take you?
Um. To be honest, it’s hard to know what counts. I had a rest in the middle. Maybe … thirty-three walking days?
That’s quick. He nods as he reaches beneath the counter for a piece of paper with an official blue letterhead. He goes to the corner of the kiosk where there is a small table and a prehistoric desktop computer. He slips glasses over his nose and clicks erratically.
He says, Your name?
Peta Rafe. I spell it out for him.
The woman slides two horrendous-looking coffees across the counter. Maya pays. A printer starts up and then Ralph comes back, slaps the A4 sheet onto the bench where the top right corner soaks up a wedge of black coffee. He takes up a pen and scribbles across the bottom, finally handing it over to me with a flourish.
Thank you.
I press it beneath my arm—the certificate, with its greasy fingerprints, wet brown corner and the cook’s signature.
Wait! He reaches under the counter again and this time brings out the familiar metal diamond—bright yellow, the black outline of a mountain with stylised legs striding inside, ALPINE TRACK across the base. A track marker.
For me? I ask.
He smiles with crooked teeth.
Congratulations.
In Maya’s car, I can smell my feet.
Do you want your boots back? I ask.
She laughs and says, Nah mate, they’re yours. You’ve earned them—and they’re putrid.
I smile and look down at the certificate.
It feels bizarre, I say, shaking the paper.
What does? Finishing, or getting an official document signed by the local cafe to say you finished it?
Both, I laugh. No, I just thought I’d feel different at the end. Which is ridiculous, because why would I? I was never going to magically become a changed person.
Maya shrugs. You might be. You might not see it yet. It can take a while to see how change looks in real life.
I nod and watch the mountain ash flash past.
Hey, where did you camp on your second-last night? she asks. That was a strange spot, where you set off your tracker. Especially in that storm.
Oh, just somewhere up on the knoll, I reply with a small smile. A little flat spot.
She nods. Now you’d better tell your parents that you’re done.
Oh yeah.
I flick aeroplane mode off on my phone and expect a deluge of messages—all of those friends who haven’t forgotten that today is the day that I’ll finish. But then I remember that I haven’t told them. Nobody knows.
My phone jams and glitches with the incoming notifications, but they aren’t from my friends. They’re all from him, dotted across the short time that I have been walking—through the days and the nights and the early hours of the mornings.
The messages tell me that I have made a mistake and that I don’t understand; that it is all my fault and that he is sorry; that I am a cunt and that he is and that he’ll kill himself and that he wants to hurt me. He tells me again and again that he’ll do it, top himself, and that I’ll regret it. That I should be grateful for all that he’s done for me, taught me—driving and climbing and sex. Then he says he’s sorry again. He tells me to come to the Farm for New Year’s Eve so that we can work this all out, so that he can apologise and so that I can. He tells me that he will never work in outdoor education again because the rumours about him are toxic and they are lies that he knows I’ve been spreading. He says that he is going to join the police force instead so that he will be respected. He says I wasn’t worth it.
I scroll the messages, exhausted again, slightly sickened. Then I turn off my phone.
So, New Year’s Eve. What will you do tonight? Maya asks. You’re welcome at my brother’s in the city, but it will be boring as all hell.
They’ve invited me to the Farm.
She is silent as we come into Tyers and turn into the public toilets. She stops the car.
Peta, you don’t owe that place or anyone in it anything, she says. Do you know that?
I’m starting to know it.
We climb out of the car. I transfer my things to the white hatchback and shut the boot. We face one another.
Maya. Is everything okay? These tests—you’re going to be alright?
She smiles gently, I will. One way or another. I might need to ask you for help, soon enough. But we’ll get through it.
You know I’ll do anything for you, I say and grab her into a tight embrace. Thank you.
She smiles, goes back to the driver’s side, but then climbs onto the step of her car so that her head comes up over the roof.
Hey, she says. You might not believe me yet, but one day you will. What you did was big, and it wasn’t easy, and it shouldn’t have felt easy. And you have changed. You’re not the same seventeen-year-old kid I shared a cabin with at the start of last year. You’re my hero, mate. Let yourself feel that pride.
I smile a little. I believe her.
We climb into our separate cars. I put the certificate and the yellow marker on the passenger seat, and as I pull out I think about this finish line—the unromantic way of it. My gold medal is a diamond track marker spattered with bacon grease and I laugh out loud because it’s just about perfect.
Maya turns her car left and I go right, and that is that.
In Bruthen I see the road to the mountains—to Omeo and the Mitta Mitta and the Farm. I see it and I pass it, accelerate across the bridge over the Tambo and drive in silence until I am at the brick house on the cliffs.
The afternoon is warm and I’m struck by the taste of salt on the air, that briny scent of home—fish and seaweed and two-stroke and mud flats and pelican shit. Of the ocean that today is gentle and soft.
I take a shower in the empty house, then feed the fish in the tank by the door. The filter hums but the house is otherwise silent. I go downstairs to the laundry to the drinks fridge and take out a beer.
There are people walking on the footpath out the front and I watch them from the bench beneath the flowering gum. They stop to look out to the ocean and the estuary where boats cut white lines through the water, and figures wade with beach umbrellas, towels and bait buckets from the far side. Mostly they walk towards the pub where the town will be gathering to drink the new year into existence.
I watch them and think about how this should feel sad—this flat end, no great celebration or revelation. But it doesn’t. It feels calm.
The landline rings inside, but I let it go. I would call Mum and Dad except I can’t bring myself to look at my mobile again—all those toxic messages, all that poison.
The mozzies come with the evening air, when the sky is alight with vibrant reds that die to mauve. I slap them for a bit, but when they motor to my ears with that familiar whine I go inside.
Just for a moment, I think to myself when I lie back on my bed.
It is New Year’s Eve. I’m asleep before the dark has truly come.
Because it is habit, I climb out of bed before dawn. I track across the tiled kitchen to the coffee machine and flick on a light. When I look out the window I only see myself reflected back—hair long and wild with curls, eyes large and awake. On the bench there is a slip of paper that I hadn’t noticed yesterday.
It says:
Supergirl! You did it! We love you so much and are so proud of you.
We wish we could have seen you finish but we’ll celebrate when we’re home.
Get into the surf as soon as you can.
Mum + Dad x
It would have been written before Christmas, before I started the final section, and they can’t have known that I’d finish, but of course they believed I would. I realise with a pang that I haven’t even taken the time to call them.
While the coffee machine heats up, I dash to the car through the warm morning that is lightening a touch and I take my phone from the passenger seat. As the coffee spits into the mug I text them.
Made it! Thank you for the note. Thank you for everything.
I love you. I’ll see you in the sea.
The phone glitches as I type because there are more messages coming, from him but also from others—Otis, Finn, Anna, Dom, Dani, Leigh, Tommy, Oma. Word must have spread. I read them grinning and bent over the kitchen bench while the world brightens. Then I straighten and take a deep lungful of air. I go to Ben’s contact, scroll to the bottom and press Block this caller. I delete his messages and I put the phone facedown—I will reply to my friends later.
I sip my coffee in my underwear on the lawn. The air is warm—tastes like summer. The sky glows with early dawn and I look out to the entrance where the Snowy River normally muddies the ocean, where the water is normally so thick you can’t see what’s beneath, where a fickle break normally crashes treacherously to the sandbar and churns into the estuarine outflow, brown from silt and farm waste.
But today it is clear and clean. The waves peel from out at sea, long rides that crumble luminous white foam towards the beach, then dissipate into crystalline water hued with turquoise. The entrance is on.
I tip the bitter dregs of my coffee down my throat, leave the mug on the verandah, roll up the garage door and take my board. In my underwear I run the narrow bush track two stairs at a time.
The estuary is glassy. The scrapes and bites and chafe sting as they are doused with salt. My hands cut the surface of the water and I hit the far sandspit at a run.
The ocean is cooler than the estuary—saltier, clearer. So clear that I can see through to the ribbed bottom. I can see that there is nothing but sand and water, even without the sun, even out the back where it is deep and my feet hang far from the ocean floor. I peer down and wonder if it means that I am braver now because I am here, surfing this unsteady break that I normally avoid, surfing it alone and at dawn. But I know that I’m only surfing here because today it is letting me.
The first wave rises as the sun does, and I’m on it, flying as the world turns gold. It takes me almost to shore and I paddle back out through the smooth lull, then sit and face the dawn.
I laugh, and halfway through the sound I tip sideways into the water with my legs around the board, my toes to the sky and my fingers to the corrugated sand, and I stay there, suspended—upside down and inside out, with a throatful of liquid salt like something finally cut loose.
Acknowledgements
