Lonely Gully: Trent Dalton’s Chapter 2

Superstar author and journalist Trent Dalton continues our progressive summer novel with handsome truckie Lizard Blair in a spot of bother: a mysterious cop, a dropped pie and some alarming news.

Chapter 2: Lonely Gully, The Australian’s serialised summer novel.

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, Trent Dalton continues the story.

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By Trent Dalton

 
Only on three occasions in the crooked-line life of Lizard Blair has he ever found cause to release his grip on a curry pie. January 15, 2003. Ten-year-old Lizard, resting on his silver Repco Radical BMX behind the Guyra cricket club, mashed a hot curry pie in the face of his best mate, Dasher Lloyd, who had just made the foolish mistake of casually referring to Lizard’s mum, Lynda, as a “mad gin”.

Valentine’s Day, 2019.

Lizard was watching Game of Thrones with a beer and a curry pie when the love of his life, Deborah Thornberry, walked into the living room dressed in nothing but an emerald-green satin dressing gown.

She dropped a needle on the Aldi retro record player and turned the television off. Chris Isaak sang Wicked Game and Deb closed her eyes and twisted her hips slowly as her perfect fingers untied the perfect knot on the dressing gown belt revealing the blue-tongued lizard tattoo that crawled southwards from her exposed belly button toward a safe and peaceful locality that Lizard had named in bed, long ago: “Funky Town. Population: One.”

Deb opened her eyes that Valentine’s Day and the words that came out of her mouth were less a proposition than a commandment: “Put that fuggin’ pie down and dance with me, boy.”

And here’s the mighty Lizard now, reluctantly releasing his grip on a Freaky Stanley curry pie for only the third time in his 28-year-old life, placing all that satisfying and dubious half-eaten curry mix on the dashboard of the still-rumbling Kenworth, pulled over on the side of the New England Highway.

“Nobody calls me Jerome,” he grumbles, with a raised eyebrow, a laser-sharp right eye turned to the cop holding the handgun by his side.

“I could call you a lotta things, Jerome Blair,” says the man in the police uniform.

“Tax evader, 2016 through 2019. Small-time dope smuggler, January through March, 2013. High school dropout, June, 2008. Man of the match, Guyra vs Armidale Under 19’s, November, 2011. You bagged eight wickets that day. They just couldn’t spot that in-swinger could they?”

Lizard chuckles to mask his confusion and fear, runs his eyes over the badge on the policeman’s chest.

A name on the badge: “Button”. The policeman’s hair is short and white. Snow-white. White as blank paper. White as the whites in his electric blue eyes. His lips offer a fixed and curious half-smile, as if he’s permanently on the verge of belly laughter. A body carved from rock.

Either his police uniform’s too small or his muscles are too big. Lizard reminds himself how most New England Highway cops aren’t built like this guy here with the badge saying “Button”.

Lizard knows all the cops in Guyra and he sure as hell doesn’t know this guy.

“Who the hell are you?” Lizard says.

“I’m the man who must inform you, Jerome, that you have unwittingly and most regrettably placed yourself inside a great big steaming pile of peril.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What sorta peril?”

“The deadly sort, Jerome,” Button says. “The in-way-over-your-pot-hazed-school-dropout-head sort. The sort of peril you crawled head-first into, Mr Lizard, the day you agreed to move that crate for your old friend, Tick Tock Tammy Meadows.”

Lizard’s memory runs back over the brief conversation he shared with the reclusive and enigmatic Tick Tock Tammy in the high grass yard of Lonely Gully.

Button continues to talk.

“Do you even have the faintest idea of what you are carrying back there?” he says.

Lizard remembers asking Tick Tock why the crate was so big. Bigger than normal, that is. Nothing like the crates Tammy normally used to transport wool and farm supplies.

“A rather mysterious-lookin’ crate wouldn’t you say, Jerome?”

This crate was closer in size to the large timber shipping crates he could fill with four new tractor tyres when he worked that summer at Norton’s Ag Machinery Specialists on Ollera Street, Guyra.

He remembers asking Tick Tock why she was so hell-bent on moving the crate so quickly.

He’d never seen Tammy in such a rush; never seen Tick Tock so evidently running out of time.

“I’ll pay you double if you move it today,” she said. “No more questions.”

And nothing lifted the mighty Lizard’s tail quite like the words, “I’ll pay you double”.

“I suggest you get out of the vehicle, Jerome,” Button says, gripping the black handle of a fully-loaded automatic pistol.

Lizard looks out his window, turning his head right to see if there is still traffic coming from behind him.

The line of cars that was once behind him has now disappeared.

He then looks ahead through the Kenworth windscreen. No cars on the highway. No traffic. Nothing coming both ways. It’s the sleepy afternoon dead hour in rural Guyra.

Not a soul on earth to be seen nor saved. Danger Town. Population: one.

“Mmmmm, nahhhh,” Lizard says. “I think I’m gonna just push right on up this road.”

“Well, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to disagree with you there, Jerome,” Button says. “Lemme tell you what’s actually gonna happen now. You’re gonna crawl outta that truck and then you’re gonna take the key that’s in the right-side pocket of your pants and then you’re gonna open that great big padlock hanging off that great big box back there and I’m gonna take a look inside.”

Lizard laughs. Shakes his head.

“Sorry, Officer Button,” he says. “I won’t be doing that.”

Button smiles. He releases a short guttural laugh and turns his eyes to the dashboard of the Kenworth.

“I bet you one delicious Freaky Stanley curry pie that you will,” he says.

Button is beaming now, overjoyed by the endless possibilities, all the perilous potential outcomes, of this one simple roadside interaction.

“What makes you so confident?” Lizard says.

“Because you got that gun? Hate to break it ya, Officer Button, but this ain’t the first time I’ve had a blue-eyed cop try to scare me with a gun.”

Button howls with laughter now. He briefly puts his hands on his knees to control his unswallowable mirth.

Then he puts his handgun behind his back and holsters it in the tight space between his belt and lower spine.

“No, you don’t understand, Jerome,” he says. “The reason I’m so confident is because it’s not me who actually wants you to open that big wooden box.”

“It’s not you?” Lizard says, confused.

“No, it’s not me,” Button says, slapping his thigh. “It’s Deb.”

Lizard’s mouth is suddenly dry. He tries to swallow but nothing’s working now in his throat.

“Deb?” Lizard says. An ocean turning in his stomach, like he’s about to spew half a curry pie out the Kenworth window.

“Yeah, Jerome, that pretty lady friend of yours. The one with the blue-tongued lizard crawling across her belly. We were talking only an hour ago. She actually told me to tell you something. I‘ll say it real slow so you don’t miss nuthin’: ‘Do … exactly … what … he … says … Jerome … if … you … ever … want … to … see … me … again’.”

“Deb … she … you … Deb … told you that?”

“Yeah, she sure did,” Button says, wide-eyed and smiling. “It was the last thing she said before I stuffed the sock back in her mouth.”

Trent Dalton writes for the The Weekend Australian Magazine. He has won two Walkleys and many other awards for his journalism and worldwide acclaim for his bestselling novels Boy Swallows Universe and All Our Shimmnering Skies and Love Stories. He is one of Australia’s most beloved writers and can’t resist a what’s in the box mystery. Twitter: @TrentDalton. Instagram: @trentdaltonauthor

Read more at lonelygully.com.au