Lonely Gully: Chapter 3

Handsome truckie Lizard Blair contemplates the apparent kidnapping of his girl, a cop named Button and a quick escape. Author Meg Keneally continues our serialised novel.

Chapter Three of The Australian’s serialised novel, Lonely Gully. ​

This is “summer reading” like nothing you’ve read before: a diverse field of writers united by their connection to Australia’s national newspaper, collaborating on a novel that will captivate you through summer.

Each author had just three days to write their chapter, with complete freedom over story and style; it’s fast, fun and very funny. Tune in over the summer to see how the story unfolds.

Today, Meg Keneally takes up the story.

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By Meg Keneally

“I hope you washed it first.”

One corner of Button’s mouth drags itself upwards, a curtain lifting on a gap where a tooth was once rooted.

“Really, Jerome? A mystery crate on the back of your truck. Your girl being held where you’ll never find her. Oh, and there’s me with a bloody gun. But all you want to know is whether I’ve laundered my socks.”

There’s a phrase for what Lizard wants to know. He flashes through all the thrillers he’s ever watched, searching for it.

“I want … I want proof of life.”

Button leans into the cab, taking the pistol and digging its barrel into Lizard’s temple.

“This is all the proof you need, sunshine.”

Lizard focuses on the slick of pie-juice in front of him, breathing in its scent to stop himself screaming.

“Easy to hide a body round here,” he says. “Harder to hide a Kenworth, and I’m thinking you don’t want to draw the attention of … the cops.”

Button exhales a quiet curse, scrabbling in his pockets with his free hand, using his thumb to scroll through numbers on the phone he extracts, then stabbing it into the screen as though he wants to punish the phone for Lizard’s stubbornness.

A distant female voice answers.

“Put her on,” he says, then shoves the phone at Lizard.

Rustling, then a woman who’s not Deb: “You have one minute. I’m timing you.”

A cough – Deb’s, he knows it well from her performative hacking whenever he lights up a joint.

“Lizard?”

“Bloody fuggin’ hell, are you alright?”

“Just about. He found you then.”

Lizard moves his head slightly, feels the metal scrape against his temple.

“He found me.”

“Better do as he says. What are you going to do, come and get me.”

Not enough hope in her voice to lift the end of the sentence into a rising inflection.

“Wish they hadn’t taken my phone, I’d send you love hearts,” she says.

“Alright, that’s enough,” says the other woman. He hears Deb yell: “That wasn’t a minute, learn how to fuggin’ count!”. Then the line goes dead.

Love hearts? Deb has never sent him so much as a kissy-face emoji, never ended a text or signed a birthday card with a shaky X.

It’s why he was absurdly touched when she got the lizard tattoo. She revealed it to him one day when they were sitting on the bonnet of his car, waiting to collect Lynda from the school.

She’d slowly lifted up her black T-shirt until the diamond of the head with its blue protrusion had appeared, using her free hand to extend a middle finger to a passing catcaller with one half of his school shirt artfully untucked.

Lizard had gaped, then felt the edges of his mouth begin to lift until she punched him, hard, in the shoulder.

“You won’t see it again if you carry on like a pork chop,” she’d said. “It’s only ink.”

It’s not, though. Lizard wants to believe Deb was branding herself as his, but he suspects she had the opposite intention – she was claiming ownership by trapping the reptile, mid-tongue flick, on her body.

But now she’s talking about love hearts?

What are you going to do, come and get me.

It’s not that Deb is too frightened to give the sentence the propulsive force of a question. She’s issuing a command.

And she’s just told him where to go to carry it out.

An L-shaped windbreak of elms. Draped, at one point, with hundreds, maybe thousands of love hearts animated by the breeze.

Yes, people came from Queensland to see these Christmas lights, but all the locals had a gander too. Including Lizard and Deb.

And Button, he seems to know a lot about Lizard.

Small-time dope smuggler.

Randy Rachelle had been one of his customers.

Man of the match, Guyra vs Armidale Under 19s.

Randy Rachelle had been at that game.

Jerome.

Randy Rachelle had won the pub quiz one night by correctly answering the question: What is Lizard Blair’s real name?

Maybe Button’s the boyfriend then, finished finally with his prison-yard horticulture at Glen Innes.

But there’s one achievement he hasn’t mentioned, one that Rachelle wasn’t witness to.

Kung Fu Cooper’s fifth-most-promising student.

Kung Fu hates that name, because taekwondo is “not the same thing, dickhead.” But names here stick, adhere with sweat and lanolin from the shearing shed, and only a wanker would presume to choose their own.

Lynda had insisted he take classes with Kung-Fu Cooper, just in case his darker skin invited a schoolyard attack.

She’s always been a woman who lives in a held breath and a wince, not sure where the next blow will come from, but certain it will arrive.

Maybe, if he’s lucky, Lizard remembers just enough.

He pretends to fumble the phone, drops it down the side of the seat. It doesn’t seem to worry Button. Probably thinks he’ll have plenty of time to get it once Lizard’s dealt with.

“Alright,” Lizard says, “let’s get it open.”

“Finally, a brain cell activates,” says Button, stepping back to let him open the door.

Lizard does, slowly at first, then in a shove, knocking Button off balance.

Lizard slides out and tries a roundhouse kick, but the flexibility of a 12-year-old is long gone, so he sends his knee skyward until it connects with Button’s balls.

Button drops the gun, and misses Lizard’s hand when he tries to stomp on it as Lizard grabs the firearm.

Lizard turns the gun on him. “Off you pop,” he says.

“Do you think what’s waiting for you at the Hillgrove turn-off is any better than me?” Button yells.

Lizard shrugs, fires at the ground. Button spits, turns and begins to run off, zagging a bit – maybe the bullet clipped a toenail.

Lizard glances at the pie in the truck, oozing its entrails onto the dashboard.

“And you owe me a pie, ya bastard!” he calls at the back of Button’s silver head.

Although, now he thinks about it, they’re probably quits, because Button’s about to win his bet.

Lizard’s not going to storm Randy Rachelle’s place until he knows what he’s bringing with him, what’s worth paying him double for.

Whatever gods bother themselves with Guyra, it would be just like them to wipe the road clean of cars when he needs help, then send some Nat minister’s slow-moving motorcade when he wants privacy.

He drives to a lane he knows, lantana-choked and rocky since the man who had owned the property had shot the last of his sheep during the drought.

The Kenworth seems heavier on the journey, the wheels not quite as responsive. Maybe whatever’s in the crate is absorbing matter from the trees and the tar of the road, exerting a gravitational pull.

He pulls over, reaches into the glove box and scrabbles around, just in case there’s a courage-making durry or two from before he gave up ­smoking because Deb hates it. Comes up empty, then runs his finger through the solidifying pie detritus on the dashboard, closes his eyes, and licks it.

Out you get, he thinks. You have your orders, and you know what happens when you keep Deb waiting.

He takes the key out of his pocket and walks to the back, slotting it into the padlock, pulling the door.

Then sinking slowly to the ground, barely noticing the sharp stones under his knees when he sees what’s been accompanying him on this journey.

Meg Keneally is the author of Fled, The Wreck, and co-wrote The Monsarrat Series with her father Tom Keneally. She is co-editor with Leah Kaminsky of Animals Make Us Human and recently completed her historical novel, The Last Queen, which will be published in 2023.

Read the story so far on The Australian’s app and at lonelygully.com.au