Unsheltered Clare Moleta (book club books .txt) 📖

But nowhere was. She was exhausted suddenly, like some part of her had believed in Matti’s Best Place after all. Look, she said. Just, if they call you, just claim her. Temporary. I’ll give you a number you can call me on, okay? Soon.

I’m not going to call, he said. I already told you I can’t help you.

Then I’ll call you. I’ll keep calling.

Okay Li, you do that. The voice in the background again, insistent. Chris sounded as weary as her.

Li said, She’s your family too.

No. I don’t owe you anything. It wasn’t my fault.

When he disconnected the call it was very quiet. She had a sense of the continent around her, how it went on and on, and she was so far away from the fire. She listened to them. Jasmine asserting something, Dev disputing it but turning it into a joke, Eileen’s laugh, like something shaking loose. She didn’t want to be alone in the dark. So she went over and Lucas made room for her on his rolled-up swag and she sat down between him and Eileen, and the heat was good.

Anything? Jasmine asked.

Li shook her head, passed the phone back.

Lucas offered her the bottle he was holding but she shook her head again. They left it alone, picked up some argument about Wars – where the Front was now. She noticed how Dev and Mira stayed out of this, talking quietly between themselves.

Her number came up, Eileen said, beside her. Last year. That’s why they’re out here.

Li watched Dev watching his daughter, who should be at the Front now, the child he was trying to save. She remembered Frank in Valiant, looking across the kitchen table at Matti. His unreadable expression. That isn’t something you have to worry about now, sprout.

Eileen said, I lost my kids. Long time ago.

Li turned, stared. Do you know?

I know they didn’t come back.

Li tried to read it in her steady face, how long it had taken her to give up.

Eileen said, Don’t you start crying.

Here. Jasmine pushed a mug into Li’s hand. Bush tea.

The smell was pure alcohol. Li thought about that and found she didn’t care. She held the mug in both hands and drank, absorbing the burn and the after-scum of leaves. The sugar tasted real. The shock of it hit her system as hard as the spirits.

Eileen said, They were proper good kids.

Jasmine leaned over and poured more into the dregs and Li drank again. She drank steadily and with purpose, like Val. After a while she looked up and Eileen was watching.

Why are you here? Li asked her.

That’s a big bloody question.

I mean. Jasmine said you all had a thing.

Jasmine refilled Li’s mug again. Auntie Eileen’s from North, she said. We couldn’t get by up there without her. Wouldn’t even get there without her.

Where north? Li asked.

Huh?

How far north do you go?

The others had gone quiet.

Oh, you know. Jasmine indicated the general direction, spilling her drink. A bit.

Dev farted forcefully, elbowed his daughter. Mira! Is that how I raised you?

Good one, Dad. Mira leaned away and started coughing. Oh, that is so rotten.

Lucas said calmly, You animal.

Not my fault, Dev said. You all know what roo does to my guts.

Jasmine caught up. You’ll be sleeping waaay over there.

I’ll be sleeping under the tarp, he said. Right in between the two sharp thinkers who turned down a perfectly nice goat.

Li said, North’s bullshit.

Eileen said, You’d know, would you?

It’s just another place with Weather. Li looked around the faces and shrugged. There’s no way off, there’s nowhere else. There’s just the wall.

She drank into the dark parts of her brain and the drink made a path between them, step by step. They couldn’t let them in. Not her and Matti, not Safia, or Rich, or the two with the baby. Not the family with the shop that sold everything, or the dusty unsheltered walking to camps that didn’t exist anymore. And not these ones around the fire who thought they were beating the system. Because if they got in, if they all got in, then the whole continent would tip and go under and they’d all drown together. So fuck Chris, she didn’t need him. She’d find Matti herself and then they’d make whatever life they could wherever they were. Not the best place, just any place. And when they couldn’t stay there they’d go to the next place. They wouldn’t waste the time they had running to some bullshit poison paradise or walking around the wall trying to roll a six. She realised she was saying these things out loud, taking up all the air, and she bit down on the rim of the mug.

Check it out, Lucas said. Jas’s new mate can’t hold her piss either.

Val taught Li to patch, like he taught her everything else. Pretty soon she was helping him. He said she had the knack for it. Told her she’d inherit his tools and his customers one day, when he got too old for the circuit, but it had happened sooner than that.

On her twelfth birthday, he took her into a bar for the first time. Some inland town, in the lull between lunchtime drinking and night-time drinking. He ordered her a lemonade and a packet of cheese and onion chips, and a half-pint of dark for himself.

This is a special occasion, he said, and she watched the tender way his hand closed around the glass. All those dry years couldn’t cure him of the need to fall.

After that, he drank sporadically, convulsively, in great all-night inhalations. Mostly in the shearers’ camps along the circuit, where the alcohol was cheaper and more lethal. He would set their tent up a little way from the action and hurry her into bed, and later she would crawl out and watch him laughing, head back, loose-kneed. Like the other men but different. She watched him rant and slur and lose his balance. He wasn’t a tall man but