Free The Rest is Weight (UQP Short Fiction) by Jennifer Mills

window, but I couldn’t make out the Minister inside.
    The women all went quiet, their upturned faces fixed on the branches. As I watched, a young woman turned and met my eye. She had a naked baby immobilised against her shirt. She walked towards my chair and I stood.
    ‘That bird,’ she said, ‘he won’t leave us alone. That bird, kuur-kuur , he’s the man who comes through our fence in the night.’
    ‘What man?’ I said, looking around. There was no fence in sight. The woman smiled at me with pity, and I realised she was just a girl, still in her teens.
    ‘You can’t see him, kungka ,’ she said. ‘Spirit man.’ She tilted her head at me, eyes wide.
    I nodded, losing interest. I moved back to my chair but she grabbed my wrist. Her skin was rough, her grip like a vine.
    ‘Kangaroo bone,’ she said, and turned to expose her throat. Her eyes were black with a glint of cunning, though it could have been reflected light. She let go of my hand and put her own to her mouth to stifle a sound that might have been laughter.
    I smiled faintly and stepped back towards the chair. My phone rested on top of it, a folder of paperwork leaned against its unsteady legs. The evening had cooled without warning, despite the stifling day, and I wished I had brought a coat.
    It had been a productive day, I reminded myself. A good meeting. I kept the Minister informed, handed him the appropriate paperwork. I didn’t participate in the discussion but it was my job that would go if this fell through. While I waited outside with the women, the Minister was in the house of an elder, promising royalties. Even out here the real deals were made after the official meetings.
    The young woman was still watching me. She hoisted her baby in one slender arm. ‘Don’t worry. He’s gone,’ she said.
    It was true. The one-two seemed to have stopped. I nodded and smiled, trying not to show my disapproval. It was all superstition, the same superstition that was holding these people back.
    She shifted the motionless baby again and drifted back into her group. I heard them laughing as I sat down. Telling ghost stories, I thought, with their babies asleep in their laps. I went through my papers, hearing a few English words stand out among the patter of a language I couldn’t understand.
    I read over the draft agreements in my folder and checked my phone. Still no signal.
    The Minister stepped out of the house and loosened his tie. He smiled, the smile that was always the same, whether the cameras were on or not. I nodded tersely. I wanted to get out of there. It had been a long day and I craved the simple calm of the hotel. It was the next best thing to the comforting wax-coloured walls of my office, its ordered piles of paper, its calm wooden furniture. I even missed the heavy portraits in the halls.
    ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
    I obeyed. I had no choice but to spend the next two years obeying orders. It was a probationary sentence, I thought, then remembered where I found the phrase: the man who left the community today in the back of the police vehicle, a battered four-wheel drive that looked as worn as any of the upturned vehicles we saw on the way there.
    I got in the car and waited for the Minister to fasten his seatbelt before I started the engine. As we pulled out, the women watched us. Some laughed, a few waved, and the rest stood silent. The teenager with the baby stared beyond us into the trees, waiting for her moment. I thought of her after we left, turning to the group and telling the story of the white lady she spooked.
    Only a hundred or so kilometres of the road out was dirt, then it should have been an easy run to town, if we managed to avoid the roos. The car was hired, a white monster. I missed my silver sedan with the little flag on the bonnet.
    ‘Did you reach an agreement?’ I asked the Minister.
    ‘They’ll be reasonable,’ he said. ‘We’ve done what we came to do – present them with their options.’ He snorted.