council wire fence, while going undetected by police or, worse, concerned parents who have been pressuring the local council to build a footbridge across the highway for years. But this morning the motorway is empty. I take my time slipping over the guardrails, whistling ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ as I go.
Beyond the motorway is Racecourse Road, edging the Deagon Racecourse where, this early Christmas morning, in the half-light of a slow-waking sun, a young female rider does trackwork on a plucky mahogany thoroughbred. An old man in a beanie watches her ride, leaning against the racecourse fence. He looks a bit like Slim, but it can’t be Slim because Slim’s in hospital. Houdini Halliday is trying to escape from fate. Houdini Halliday is hiding in the bushes, ducking down as the skeleton in the cloak with the sharpened sickle snoops around him.
‘Merry Christmas,’ says the old man.
‘Merry Christmas,’ I nod, quickening my pace.
Only four trains running today and the 5.45 a.m. train to Central stops at Bindha Station, beside the iron pipes and the exposed factory conveyor belts of the foul-smelling Golden Circle Cannery, not so foul-smelling today because the cannery is closed. There was a Golden Circle one-litre can of orange and mango fruit juice in our St Vincent de Paul Christmas charity box that was dropped off yesterday afternoon by a warm-faced woman with ginger hair and red polished fingernails. There was a can of Golden Circle pineapple slices also, canned and shipped by the good folks of the Golden Circle Cannery beside Bindha train station.
The old red truck is waiting where Slim’s note said it would be waiting. It splutters in neutral on the corner of Chapel Street and St Vincents Road. The front of the truck is all fat curves and rust, like something Tom Joad would’ve driven on the road to California. The back of the truck is four iron walls forming a rectangular box with a blue canvas top, the size of Dad’s kitchen. I grip the shoulder straps on the backpack I’m carrying and approach the driver’s side door.
A man sits at the wheel smoking a cigarette, right elbow resting out his window.
‘George?’ I ask.
He’s Greek, maybe. Italian. I don’t know. About Slim’s age, bald head and chubby arms. He opens his door and slips out of the truck, stubs his cigarette out beneath a pair of worn running shoes that he wears with thick grey socks that bunch at his ankles. He’s short and stocky but quick in his movements. A man on the move.
‘Thanks for doing this,’ I say.
He doesn’t say anything. He opens the back of the truck, swings the metal back door wide and latches it to the side of the truck. He nods me up. I climb into the truck and he climbs up behind me.
‘I won’t say a word, I promise,’ I say.
George says nothing.
The truck is filled with crates of fruit and vegetables. A box of pumpkins. A box of rockmelons. A box of potatoes. A pallet jack by the left wall. By the rear door is a large empty square crate sitting on a forklift pallet. George leans over into the crate and pulls out a false wood bottom two-thirds of the way down into the box. He nods his head right two times. I’ve read enough silent nods from August to know that what he means is, ‘Get in the box.’ I drop the backpack in the box and lift my legs over the side and lie down in the box.
‘Will I be able to breathe in here?’
He points to drilled air holes on each wall of the crate. It’s an impossibly tight fit, only achieved by lying on my left side with my legs pulled up hard to my belly. I cushion my head under my backpack.
George assesses my fit and, satisfied, lifts the sheet of wood that forms the crate’s false bottom and places it over my crowbarred body.
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Do you have any instructions for what I should do at the other end?’
He shakes his head.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘It’s a good thing you’re doing. You’re helping me help my mum.’
George nods. ‘I’m not talking, boy, because you don’t exist, you understand?’ he says.
‘I understand,’ I say.
‘You stay quiet and you wait,’ he says.
I nod three times. The false wood bottom comes down over my body.
‘Merry Christmas,’ George says.
Then the darkness.
*
The engine rattles into life and my head bangs against the crate floor. Breathe. Short, calm breaths. No time