Free The Riders by Tim Winton Page B

man!’
    â€˜It’s true. Nothin works and no one gives a shit. Perfect.’
    â€˜And what did Jennifer do?’
    â€˜She painted.’
    â€˜Houses?’
    â€˜No, art painting. Well, you know, she had to have a try. She was okay, I thought. Trouble with Jennifer is she can turn her hand to anything. She’s quite good at a lot of things, but she wants to be a genius at one thing. Maybe it’ll happen. One day. She deserves a break.’
    â€˜You love the girl.’
    â€˜I do.’
    They coasted into Shinrone, rain drifting oblique in the lights of the little town which seemed choked with parked cars.
    â€˜Arlo Guthrie was here last year, Scully. I came to see him myself. Remember that song:
    Comin into Los Angeles
    Bringin in a coupla keys
    Don’t touch my bags
    If you please, Mr Customs ma-aan!’
    â€˜I remember. That’s a drug song, Pete.’
    â€˜It never was!’
    Scully took the bottle from him and laughed till it hurt.
    â€˜One of them U2 lads was down from Dublin to see the auld Arlo. I nearly knocked him over in the pisser. Where would we be without music, eh? It’s not really a drugs song, is it?’
    Scully only laughed, nodding.
    â€˜Fookin hell!’
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    I N THE HOT WILD FUG of the pub that night, Scully lost the anxiety that had come upon him a couple of hours ago. The band tossed from jig to reel and the dust rose from the foul floors with the stomp of dancing and the flap of coats and scarves. The fiddle was manic and angular, the tin whistle demented, and the drum was like the forewarning of the headache to come. Someone came in with a set of pipes and an old man grabbed up the microphone and the fever of the place subsided as a ballad began. Scully couldn’t recall a sweeter sound that the sad soughing of those pipes. This was no braying Scots pipe; this was a keening, a cry loaded with desire and remorse. The old man sang with his tie askew and his dentures slightly adrift, a song of the Slieve Blooms, of being left behind, abandoned in the hills with winter coming on. Scully listened, transfixed, until in the final chorus he put down his glass and shoved his way to the door.
    Outside it was raining and there was no one in the street but a sullen black dog chained to a bicycle. Across the road the chipper was heating up his fat for closing time, his hard fluorescents falling like a block of ice into the street. Scully’s face was numbin patches, and he stood with his cheeks in the rain, trying to account for his sudden moment of dread in there. That’s what it was, dread. It’s a song, Scully.
    Pete stood in the doorway, peering out. ‘You’re not goin to puke, now are ye?’
    â€˜No, I’m fine.’
    â€˜You don’t like the music?’
    â€˜The music’s great. Grand, in fact.’
    â€˜By God, there’s some rascally girls from Tullamore in there.’
    â€˜Go to it, son.’
    â€˜You alright, then?’
    â€˜I’ll be in in a moment.’
    Pete slipped back into the hot maw of the pub and Scully shook the rain from his face. The black dog whimpered. He went over and let him off the chain. It nipped him and bolted into the night.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    A MID THE GREASY STEAM OF a parcel of chips the pair of them drove home singing.
    Keep your hands off red-haired Mary
    Her and I are to be wed
    We see a priest this very morn
    And tonight we’ll lie in a marriage bed . . .
    They came to the odd little tree in the middle of the road with its sad decoration of rags, and Scully asked about it.
    â€˜A wishing tree,’ said Peter, stopping beside it and windingdown the window to let in a blast of cold air. ‘People tie a rag on and make a wish.’
    â€˜Does it work?’
    Pete guffawed. ‘Does it fookin look like it, son? Does the country seem so much like the island of Hawaii? Not many of us get our wish