Free Arms Race by Nic Low

triumphant. This is his treasure. Look.
    She placed a stack of old VHS boxes in my hand. I turned them to the light. Beneath
a layer of dirt I saw pink flesh and open mouths. Girl on Girl. Screamers. Young
and Fuckable .
    Oh.
    They’ve still got tapes in them. Creepy!
    I opened Young and Fuckable . There was an unmarked home-recording VHS tape inside.
I closed it and handed the tapes back.
    I have to go outside, I said again.
    5
    We left the shack and I walked on ahead by myself. I needed the open air of the bush.
I passed down the slope and began to breathe, but the trees thinned and I came immediately
to another clearing. In the centre, with a commanding view of the plains to the west,
was a house-sized mound of charred debris. I felt sick. A skeletal chimney rose from
a rubble of half-burned books and timbers gagged with weeds.
    I shaded my eyes from the noontime glare and saw it all. The man drunk in bed with
his guilty pleasure burning quickly down. His hand wavering with sleep, the glowing
tip sighing into polyester sheets. Suffocated into waking. The dead terror of pulling
yourself hand over hand down your own greasy hallway, birthed out the front steps
into the night while at your back your life was quickly and mercilessly used up.
The terrible heat on your face. The smoke in your scorched lungs. The loneliness
to follow. Screamers. Young and Fuckable .
    Christie walked among the ruins.
    The poor guy, I said. Pete told me about him. He burned the place down smoking in
bed.
    What a stupid old fuck, Christie said.
    I rounded on her. You know what, I said. I think Pete fancies you.
    Christie flushed. What? So? He thinks I’m your daughter.
    Shall I tell him you’re not?
    What are you going to say? You know how I was sucking my daughter’s tits—well, that’s
not my daughter?
    He didn’t see anything. I’ll tell him on Monday you’re not available. He’ll be disappointed.
I reckon you’re the only thing young and fuckable this side of Perth.
    Fuck you, Christie said. That’s not funny.
    No, fuck you.
    What’s the matter with you? She sounded close to tears.
    I stared at her, standing among the ruins in knee-high grass with her lips askew
and her hair a dark tangle, and I was damn near overcome with the force of my need.
I felt rage in me, rage and hunger, incoherent, geological. I had a vision of a girl
flung back in the grass with her jeans around her ankles and someone, some weathered
old man, me, straining away on top. I dropped my gaze.
    It’s this place, I said. It’s getting to us.
    Christie said nothing.
    I need a break. Can we go into town? Have a meal at the pub?
    She nodded warily. Okay.
    6
    In the truck on the way in, Christie broke the long silence.
    Maybe it’s the mine,
she said.
    What is?
    Why everything feels so weird. Like the mine has some kind of—negative energy.
    I don’t know about negative energy, I said.
    You’re the one who said the place was getting to you. She paused. Maybe the mine’s
like a scar. Or a wound that hasn’t healed. What if something bad happened there
in the past?
    I don’t know. I doubt it.
    But what about those bullets, and the ute and that burned house?
    I shrugged. It’s the past. It can’t affect us.
    Christie turned her head away and was quiet. Dusk was settling over the bush and
I switched on the headlights. When I looked over again, I thought she had fallen
asleep. Then I saw her watching my reflection in the glass.
    Steven, she said.
    Yes?
    If the past can’t affect us, how can we affect the future?
    I took one hand from the wheel and squeezed her thigh, and smiled. By having children,
I said.
    As the light faded into evening we came past the stockyards and into the town. There
was a wide street of neat shops with a handsome stone pub at the corner. Four-wheel-drives
and utes filled the car park.
    We sat for a moment with the engine ticking in the stillness.
    Let’s get