A Young Woman Surrounded by Redbacks

 It was starting to get dark and Isabel had the most isolated part of the journey ahead of her: the drive through the Goonoo Forest, at the end of the long trip from Lismore to Dubbo. She’d been driving since eight that morning; she was seven months pregnant and had to make frequent toilet stops. She was headed for her parents’ home, shatteringly, alone.

Her partner, Foxx, told her last week that they couldn’t be together any more unless he could bring Indigo, a girl he’d met at uni, into their relationship. Isabel was distraught enough to call her mother, who said straight out to her, “Is he crazy? Isabel, don’t put up with that crap! Get out of that situation! Come and live with us.” Isabel didn’t want to return to Dubbo, to her parents’ house, to the dry, dusty and characterless hometown that she’d been so eager to escape from after high school, but for the moment she could see little option. She told herself it was just while she found her strength again. And she didn’t want to have her beautiful baby alone. So she packed her old Toyota station wagon with as much as she could fit in and left Foxx to explore his freedom with Indigo in Lismore.

Isabel cried all the way to Casino. She pulled herself together to concentrate on the twisting, climbing and steeply descending road through the ranges, and then she cried again at the petrol station in Tenterfield when the lady behind the counter asked her if she was all right. Isabel shook her head and hurried to her car. As she drove south and farther inland, the country opened up: large grazing properties took the place of dark and moist forests; the road ran straight instead of creeping around hairpin bends or edging over narrow bridges; even the road kill changed from small mashed possums to big tumbled kangaroos. Cars were fewer too; sometimes farmers raised a finger from the steering wheel to wave as they passed, the heads of their faithful kelpies poking around the cabins of the utes.

As it got warmer with the rising sun and the drier air, Isabel regained some composure. She had hours to think about her relationship with Foxx and to review her life in Lismore. She’d gone there to study Complementary Therapies, and on her first day had met Foxx—he was studying permaculture. They shared a house and then a bed. And she thought they were a couple. But Foxx had other lovers, and if she protested or even intimated that she was jealous or angry, he’d accuse her of hang-ups, of judging him, of projecting her morality on him. For Isabel, it wasn’t just a moral issue—it was also a health issue: chlamydia seemed to be almost as common among the students as head lice were among school children. When she discovered she was pregnant, she had a urine test and was hugely relieved to be free of infection. Of course, she told Foxx about the dangers to their baby from STDs and he promised to be careful, but Isabel correctly understood that Foxx was saying he’d be limiting his affairs but not stopping them altogether.

At that point she should’ve realised their relationship was doomed. Instead, she tried to reason with him, to love him, to serve him, to enchant him with a sweet vision of their future together as a family—the very thing she now knew he was anxious to avoid. God, she’d been naive! Stupid girl!

She looked at her watch. She’d be in Dubbo before night fell. That was a bonus; so was the beauty of the wattles that lined the road through the forest: clouds of golden yellow flowers were everywhere suspended a metre or so above the ground along the roughly graded gravel gutters and as far as she could see into the thin scrappy trees either side of the road. She’d forgotten how beautiful the dry, inland bush looked in spring.

Her car veered, determined, towards the wrong side of the road. Adrenalin surged through her body and she tensed, sat forward and focused. Isabel took her foot off the accelerator, and eased the car back to the correct side of the road. Something big was broken! She coaxed her sluggish Corolla, despite its eccentric bias, off the road. She braked and the car stalled, half on the road and half on the dirt. Isabel started it again and parked safely off the road.

Luckily, no cars were travelling towards her as she veered. She looked in the rear-view mirror: there were no cars or trucks behind her. Isabel struggled out of her seat and walked around her car. The driver’s side front tyre was flat; a large scab of rubber torn from the re-tread. And the car had sunk into the soft soil. She’d have to change the wheel, and set up the jack on a flat stone so it wouldn’t sink under the weight of her overloaded car.

Isabel looked again along the road in both directions—no cars were in sight. She opened the boot and started shifting bags of clothes, boxes of books and DVDs, music instruments and blankets. She levered the heavy, grimy tyre from its well in stages—her protruding stomach made the job difficult. She looked for the jack; it should be in the well with the spare but it wasn’t there. Where was it? Shit! Last week Foxx had borrowed her jack to change a tyre on Indigo’s car and he hadn’t put it back. Bloody typical! Isabel tried to call her parents on her mobile but had no service: the Goonoo Forest was too remote. A car sped past travelling north.

She would have to flag down a car and ask for assistance. There were no other options. Isabel opened her passenger door, pushed aside her handbag, and sat down weary, frustrated and needing again to pee.

Behind her, she heard a vehicle slow and pull off the road. It was a mini-bus full of footballers. Red and black streamers, attached to the side-view mirrors, fluttered the length of the bus. Isabel recognised the colours from her years in Dubbo: it was the Wellington Redbacks. She could hear boisterous singing and cheers. She wiped her eyes, smoothed her hair, and stood as the bus stopped. A middle-aged man dressed in jeans, a shirt and tie, got out of the bus. He was carrying a beer.

“Having trouble, sweetie?” he asked. He frowned as he saw the flat tyre and the soft sand beneath the wheel.

“Yeah. Can you help? I’ve got a spare tyre but I haven’t got a jack. Have you got one?”

“I’ve got something better than a jack. I’ve got a football team that’s just won the grand final. The mood they’re in, they could pick that car up and carry it wherever you wanna go! Where you headin’?”

“Home. To Dubbo.”

“Don’t worry, love. We’ll look after ya. What’s ya name?”

“Isabel.”

He walked back to the bus and yelled above the hubbub. “We got a lady to help, fellas! Everybody off!”

Twenty young men, of all shapes and sizes, but all dressed in the same Redbacks shirt and tie, and all carrying a beer, filed off the bus. Isabel smiled. She glanced at herself in the car window: she wasn’t unhappy with what she saw, despite her advanced pregnancy. She smoothed her hair again. The boys gathered around her car. Three of the team stayed near the bus; they turned towards the bush to urinate.

The older bloke, the coach, took charge. “Fellas, this is Isabel.”

“Hello, Isabel,” the team intoned like school children greeting their teacher in the morning. They all laughed.

Isabel flushed red and smiled. It was disconcerting to be the centre of attention of twenty young men.

“Isabel hasn’t got a jack so I need the forward pack to lift the car, and you backs can make yourselves useful by changing the tyre.”

The team put their beers in a line on the dirt. They pushed and shoved each other as they got organised. No one wanted not to have a job.

Eight of the biggest, beefiest blokes shuffled forward and arranged themselves around the front of the car. Two had bandages around their heads, one had a black eye and another had an abrasion the length of his forearm.

The young bloke with the black eye called: “Crouch! Touch! Pause! ENGAGE!” Isabel’s car was lifted nearly a metre high. The rest of the team cheered. Isabel hoped they wouldn’t hurt her car.

Two boys had the flat tyre off in a minute; it was slickly passed like a football along a line of backs and dropped in the boot. The spare was similarly passed forward and quickly put on the car.

“Drrr! Drrr!” The backs expertly mimicked the sound of a pneumatic tool as the wheel nuts were tightened.

“You can drop it down now.”

“Gently, boys, gently!” the captain of the forwards commanded, and the front of the car was placed delicately on the sand.

Isabel went to thank the men but groaned instead. Her baby had done a somersault.

“Your baby just moved!” gaped the man with the abrasion. “I saw it through your shirt!” 

“It moves all the time now, but that was a big one!”

“Can I feel it?” asked one of the boys who’d changed her tyre. He seemed genuinely curious. He was also emboldened by beer.

Isabel felt safe. And it was almost a way to thank them for their help.

“Yeah, okay.”

Isabel took his hand and placed it on her belly. His hand was nearly twice as big as hers. His face lit up. “Jeez!”

“You feel that?” Isabel asked.

“Yeah!”

“That was probably a foot moving.”

“Can I feel?” asked other backs.

Isabel guided their hands to where the baby was moving.

“Holy crap!”

“Roll up! Roll up! Feel Isabel’s baby moving!” the leader of the forwards bellowed.

Other players stepped forward to place their large meaty hands gently on Isabel’s stomach. She didn’t feel threatened; the blokes were obviously intrigued, and they were easily satisfied: once they felt a lumpy movement they were happy. They picked up their beer and joined the rest of the team clambering back on the bus.

The man with the black eye and a few of the forwards lingered.

“We’ll move it so you don’t get bogged when you start up,” he said to Isabel.

“Around the back, boys,” he called. Isabel steered as they pushed her car onto firmer ground.

Somebody tooted the mini-bus’s horn. It was time to go: they had a historic victory to celebrate at the pub.

“You go ahead of us and we’ll follow to see you home safely,” the beefy forward said. He and his mates jogged back to the bus. A song had already started.

“Thank you so much!” Isabel called, and waved to the bus. Probably only the driver saw her. He waved back.

Isabel drove away. The bus pulled out behind her.

An hour later, at a set of lights in Dubbo, the bus turned left as Isabel turned right. She beeped her horn to say goodbye. Half a dozen hairy arms extended out windows and returned her farewell. For the first time in months, Isabel felt protected and valued—by precisely the type of uncultured sports-mad boofheads she’d left Dubbo to avoid. When she got home, she burst past her anxious parents and rushed to the toilet to pee. Then, with her insistent bladder relieved, she hugged her Mum and Dad properly.