The Promise Read Free Page B

framed a narrow window on the side of the house. I walked quietly behind a row of apple trees until I reached the window and stood among the trees, listening to my own heavy breaths as I watched China through the window. She stood naked before a mirror, brushing her hair. Her husband lay back on their bed, smoking a cigarette and admiring her until she turned to him.
    I walked back along the driveway to the car, gunned the engine and pulled out onto the highway. The country gradually flattened until the dark horizon fell away. Although the air was cold I wound down the window to keep myself from fading away. I could smell the sea in the wind and thought of China and the nights we’d spent in each other’s arms. I could see her hair glowing against the moon and hear her laugh.
    I didn’t want the highway patrol bearing down on me. I turned onto an irrigation road, running flat and hard into the distance. I could see a radio tower, pulsing a beam of red light across the dark sky. I set my bearings for it, as if it were the Star of Bethlehem itself.

THE TOECUTTERS
    We went in search of the bunker throughout spring and into the early summer. The story of a wartime underground command centre, secretly built upriver from the city in the event of a Japanese invasion, was well known. I’d never paid it much attention until Red half convinced me that the story was true.
    His Pa had taken a fall staggering home from the pub and broken his leg. He was staying at Red’s, where Red’s mother was taking care of the old man. There were no spare beds in the house, seeing as there were eight kids in the family. Red and his youngest brother, Charlie, gave up their shared bed for their Pa. Charlie was moved out onto the balcony on the dog’s couch, the dog ended up in the yard, and Red took the bedroom floor in a sleeping bag. It sounded like an adventure to me, but he wasn’t happy about it.
    We were down on the riverbank above the falls, watching workers with survey poles and measuring tapes and binoculars hiking across paddocks, marking the ground for the new bridge being built across the river. It was going to link the new freeway, built to connect the city to the faraway suburbs, with the other side of the river. The streets and the houses behind our own had already gone to the bulldozer, replaced by a deep canyon being gouged out by prehistoric-looking bobcats.
    I watched as one of the workers stuck his striped pole in the dirt.
    â€˜You know that where we’re sitting now, it’ll be gone soon. Vanished.’
    Red wasn’t listening. He was busy getting stuck into his Pa.
    â€˜You know he farts in bed. And drinks and smokes all night.’
    I picked up a chipped piece of sandstone and pitched it towards the water.
    â€˜Everyone farts in bed. When you sleep over at my place you fart all night.’
    â€˜I do?’
    â€˜In your sleep.’
    â€˜Okay. So some of us fart in bed. But what about this? When he wants to have a piss, which is about five times a night because he’s drinking so much, he swings his legs out of the bed and nearly knocks me out, whacking me in the side of the head with his foot. He aims for the piss-pot, on the floor, not far from my head, without getting to his feet. Most of the piss misses the pot and goes all over the floor. It will soon rot the lino and floorboards, my dad says.’
    He picked up a rock and wrapped his fist around it.
    â€˜Do you reckon your mum would let me bunk at your place?’
    â€˜How long for?’
    â€˜I don’t know, until the plaster’s off his broken leg.’
    â€˜I suppose she wouldn’t mind. We’ve got the room. She says she likes it that you say thank you after eating. And the way you take your dirty plate to the sink. I’ll ask tonight.’
    I brought the idea up at the tea table. My mother was for it, but the old man wasn’t happy. He dropped his newspaper on the table.
    â€˜That