Buried a Life

I hear a noise. I drop to the ground. A plume of dust kicks up as my beer belly hits the dirt. I’m in the middle of North Coast bushland at least an hour trudge in all directions. There shouldn’t be anybody here. That’s why I chose here. The dust settles on my sweaty forehead as I army crawl up a small termite mound to get a better angle at where the noise came from. In the clearing I see a man, wearing a collared shirt and trousers, in the final stages of planting a tree. He plunges the shovel into the dirt making the same noise that had just startled me. My heaving breath disturbs the loose dirt near my mouth. Don’t breathe in the dust. Even the cicadas won’t drown out a cough.

The tree still has tags on it. Did he just buy it? It’s not a native. I realise I’ve craned my head into visibility to get a better look, so I slide back down the mound. I don’t want him to see me. Maybe he can feel my eyes on him like you can in traffic when you catch the car next to you staring. I close my eyes. Can’t feel my eyes on him if they’re closed. This feeling of getting caught is an unexpected rush. Like when a long shot comes in at 30 to one. My fatigued body feels revived with this adrenalin. An excitement I have missed. I’ve gone from an overeating, beer-swilling, desperate gambler to a peeping Tom. Not even a fall from grace for me. I didn’t even want to be out here. In the boiling sun. Thirty kilograms overweight. Cholesterol choking my arteries. I’m out here to save my marriage. And, apparently, my life. That’s what the doctor told me. My wife’s doctor. Not even my own. I don’t have one. Didn’t need one for 45 years. Until now. I don’t really want to change, either.

I hear the shovel drop. I quietly slide forward again to watch as he pats the soil down around the base of the tree with his shoe. He picks up the shovel and snaps a look in my direction. Did he see me? Hear me? Sense me? If I don’t move I’ll look just like a log ... Yeah, a lazy log, I know, not much of a stretch. He shovels up some leaves and bush floor debris and tosses them around the loose soil. He looks around again as if to check he is alone. Can he hear the wheezing of an unfit 45-year-old? Nothing to see here, mate, just a termite mound with a log lying on it. He slings the shovel over his shoulder and disappears into the tree line in the opposite direction to where I am. Thank Christ. I don’t want to have to explain why I’m out here.

Yeah, so I saw the doctor last week and, look, I know I’ve been buying incrementally bigger clothes for the past 10 years – my thighs now rub holes in my jeans; jeans that also need unbuttoning during most meals – but I was finally at a place in my life where I was comfortable, comfortable being referred to as fat. Like when you reach the age you feel okay about being called old. I knew the doc was going to say something about my weight. But when I stepped off his scales and he uttered the word “obese”, it took the wind out of my lungs like the surgery’s steep staircase had. He follows that up with instructions to stop drinking, stop gambling, stop smoking and stop eating fast food. Stop living? I shot back at him. Stop killing yourself was his response to that. Ouch!

So that’s how I found myself on this long bush walk in an area too far for most people to trek in to. I had come here to perform a private ritual, to rid myself of the things the doc said were killing me. My “last” pack of ciggies, half a bottle of bourbon, two cans of Resch’s, the black book I jot my racing tips in, plus the lucky pencil I use to fill in my betting slips. Being a bit more off the beaten track also spared me the shame of exposing my pudgy body wrapped in a sweat-stained, too-tight T-shirt, all red-faced, huffing and puffing on this daily exercising mission to save my life. The day-one plan was to burn these wretched things ... Yeah, I know, in Australian bushland! Do you watch the news, dummy? I’m an idiot. I know how bad the bushfires have been and most of them started by idiots, just like me. Well, thankfully, this idiot forgot to bring any of the paraphernalia to start a fire. Not a match, not a lighter ... not even a pair of glasses to bend the sunlight in to some sort of flame. Maybe my id knew better or my id is short for idiot.

When I stumbled upon the termite mound – yeah, I mean stumbled – I was wrecked from the walk and I thought, “This is a landmark worthy of a lifesaving ritual”. I dug a hole deep enough to place these items in. First the bottle of bourbon, next the beer, finally my smokes and then my betting book and pencil. Quick confession: I know I said earlier I had dropped to the ground when I heard the shovel, but the truth is I was already on the ground, passed out in a state of exhaustion. The heat, the trek, the digging ... I was cooked. His shovel hitting the dirt actually startled me out of my exercise coma. Haven’t done exercise like this since I can remember. Although, after I grab a coldie from the fridge, I do a shimmy, a side step and a fake a pass to the pouffe on the way back to the couch ... but that’s really the extent of my exertion. That actually feels pretty good, telling the truth – makes me feel lighter. Just like burying this stuff will.

Once he is out of earshot, I wander down to check out his handiwork. Sure enough, it’s not a native Australian tree, it’s some sort of coniferous number. Two tags on it. One tag with care instructions and the other with letters and numbers – a code maybe and maybe a price scribbled on it. Thirty bucks. Not bad. Why is he planting a tree all the way out here? Some sort of commemoration? A memorial? Maybe he’s also burying a black book? Or a body? Nah, hole’s too small for a body. Big enough for a severed head, though. There’s that rush of excitement again. What if I have caught a killer? A serial killer? I quickly scan the tree line around this clearing. Do I feel eyes on me? Nobody else knows I’m out here.

I see something beneath the tree. I bend down and pull out a short length of black plastic. It has the familiar notches and tongue of a cable tie. It’s been cut. Where’s the other half? Was it used to bind somebody’s limbs? Is he watching? He could hit me over the head with the very thing he’d use to dig my grave and nobody would ever know. Or tie me up with a cable tie and leave me here. Or maybe I could catch a killer and get a reward? My thoughts much braver than my actions, I take off home as fast as my heavy legs will take me. My calves burn with every step while my chest wobbles like panna cotta.

The next morning, I wake before my wife to head back to the clearing again. I mention nothing to her of what happened yesterday. Although restless to begin with, my mind racing with that day’s activities, I slept uninterrupted; my bravery replenished. My plan is to pull the tree out by its roots. Unearth its secrets. My joints crack and creak as I sneak out of the bedroom. I almost gasp as I’m confronted by a photo stuck to the fridge door. It’s a picture of me, taken at a recent footy match: I’m shirtless, beer can in one hand, biting into a meat pie, gravy droplets on my chest. I look like a slob. I guess it’s open season on body shaming in this house now. Just in case my wife thinks the grunt I make every morning when I put on my shoes isn’t enough of an indignity, a picture of me at my fattest seems to be the ticket to deter me from stuffing my face. I guess she didn’t have the same mental image of the doc prodding at my overhanging verandah gut I stored to curb my snacking?

I take an apple out of the crisper and a defiant swig of water from the jug I’m not meant to swig out of. Wife zero, me one.

Every muscle in my body aches, I have no idea how I’m going to hike again for an hour. The thought of my legs carrying me along that sandy track to the clearing seems an impossibility. Only the constant scenarios my mind conjures about the tree dull the pain enough for me to keep placing one foot in front of the other. Maybe there’s treasure buried beneath the tree? Money? Drug money? Hush money? Mafia money? How much could there be? Ten grand? Twenty grand? Fifty? With gambling out of my life, I could really do with a windfall.

I collapse again at the termite mound, exhausted, cramping, muscles burning. I lose my nerve. I lay hidden on the termite mound waiting for something to happen. Nothing does. I go nowhere near the tree. I wait a little while before heading back home in the hopes the next day I catch him red-handed.

But day after day I hide on the termite mound waiting for something to happen. Too scared to exhume whatever is buried beneath the tree. Too scared to get caught if he returns. Until finally on week three there are two huge breakthroughs. When I arrive on the Thursday morning, there are four new trees planted, two conifers and two native eucalypts. I also find another cable tie. He must have done his dirty work after I left. Such rotten timing. For me, at least. Should I start coming here in the afternoon? What do these new trees mean? More severed heads? More money stashed away? My mind again was off and racing. Oh, the second breakthrough: this week was also the first time I didn’t collapse upon arrival. Must be getting used to the hike.

Over the next week, I begin to toy with the idea of bringing a shovel to dig up at least one of the trees. But every day I leave the house without the shovel. I make excuses. What if he comes back and finds me digging up his tree? Who knows what secret he’s hiding or what he’s capable of? Was I even ready for the truth? What probably scared me most was the idea it could actually be nothing. I was obsessed. Coming here to spy on these trees had become my routine. If the trees are planted here for no reason, how would that make me feel? Meaningless? Like finding out the meaning of life and realising it’s nothing more than a random lottery of luck and chance. Like the scratchie ticket I store in my safe. Eight of the nine panels have been scratched. Two of the panels have $20,000 uncovered. What lies beneath the final unscratched panel? Another $20,000? Making me a winner! Why can’t I bring myself to find out? Why can’t I scratch it? I’ve stared at it for hours. Could it be that unscratched and unresolved things give me hope? Once it is scratched and it’s not a winner, all hope is lost? Am I afraid something good might happen to me or something bad? No wonder I drink ... ahem ... used to drink. For all the nothing I do once I get here, I sure do a lot of thinking.

By week five I have shaved about 10 minutes off my trek in and my legs no longer burn. Again, on a Thursday, three more trees show up. I’m fuming. That’s it, I decide I will now stay all day every Thursday. This is a pattern. Just hide and wait. Find out what they’re burying.

But day after day. Nothing. Not a single person. Surely if it’s money they will come to collect it soon. I alternate the time I get here: morning, afternoon, midday … I even go at night. Never again. I vary the length of time I stay and always remain until sunset Thursdays. Nothing.

In week eight I jog most of the way in. Not because I like jogging. I just want to get there. Catch him. I begin to seriously think about digging up all the trees and finally scratching that lottery ticket. I can no longer stand the suspense. If I bring a shovel maybe I should bring a handgun? For protection. Too dangerous, too many people get killed by their own gun when turned on them by a perpetrator. Where do I even get a handgun? To get a gun do I need a licence? Is it like getting a car licence? Will I have to pass handgun tests? If they’re crazy enough to walk an hour in to the bush to plant a tree, surely they’re crazy enough to kill me for digging up their secret. Their stash. It wasn’t worth it.

By the third month, six more trees had popped up, all natives, I was beside myself. How could he evade me again? How was he doing this? Is he trying to send me over the edge? Right, that’s it. I’m digging them all up.

I decide to buy a drone and send it up to hover in the air while I dig. Sort of like surveillance, so if he tries to sneak up on me, I will see him coming and get ready to battle ... or hide? Unfortunately, the first drone I did a test run with was way too noisy. Triggered my paranoia way too much to dig at all. He would hear it and I would lose the element of surprise.

The next drone I bought was less noisy but it was so small a single gust of wind smashed it to pieces on a red gum.

Four months and 20 trees now cover the clearing. Planted in no particular order. All miraculously planted at a time when I wasn’t there. Save the first one. All still with tags. All non-native coniferous plants or native eucalypts. I take my position on the termite mound again. Less of a dust plume now as I drop to my belly from my vantage point. I scan the tree line for any human movement. What am I missing? Different trees but the same tags ... Could these tags hold the clue? I check my pockets for something to write on. I stopped taking my phone weeks ago because jogging with it chafed a hole in my leg. I then remember ... the little black book I buried. I carefully exhume the book and my lucky pencil. I fondly look at the two cans of beer and the bottle of bourbon like old acquaintances. I can barely imagine them in my life right now. I sketch up a rough map of the area, walk around the clearing and add the details from each tag to the appropriate triangle I have made on the page to represent each tree. I stare long and hard at the book. Does this mean anything? Is there an order? What do these numbers mean? What do these letters mean? Could this refer to the amount of money hidden beneath each tree? Why couldn’t I have caught them in the act? Maybe they’re still in the car park?

I pocket the black book and run towards the car park as fast as my legs will take me. There are three cars parked here but no occupants to be seen. I take down the licence plates, make and model of each car. This would become my new routine. Each day I run past the clearing and onto the car park to take down the number plates. Some days there would be no cars and some days cars I had seen before. I got to know the terrain pretty well and shaved a fair bit of time off the journey. But there were no new trees added to the clearing, so I eventually bypassed the clearing and ran straight to the car park. At the start of each week, I would check the clearing for changes. And then I resumed laying on the mound in wait. Day after day. Again.

Finally, one Monday afternoon, I arrive to see three trees missing from the clearing. Gone! They had been dug up and the soil had settled back down like they had never been there. I see footsteps in the soil ... they look fresh. I rip off my shirt, tie it around my head to catch the sweat and take off at top speed in the direction of the car park. Could I catch them? Is that possible? Finally!

My legs felt good and raced even faster than my mind. As I approach the car park, I can see one lone van parked there. I had never seen it parked there before. In large letters on the side of the van were the words “Dave’s South Coast Nursery”. He’s a long way from home! A man in a collared shirt steps out from behind his van and smiles at me. It was him, the same guy from five months earlier I had spied from the termite mound.

Turns out Dave was relocating his nursery, met a girl and wanted to move everything including his business from the South Coast to the North Coast. He’d been using the site to test which plants from his nursery would thrive and which ones wouldn’t do so well on the North Coast. He, too, had a little black book in which he wrote the tag numbers to track how each tree was faring. He planted them so far in the bushland, would you believe, because he didn’t think anybody would be crazy enough to head in that far. Plus, he loved the hike in and out. Kept him fit, he reckoned.

So, the incredible mystery – my obsession, my life – that kept me entertained for five months was finally over. Solved.

I really should have been more upset with this. I was kind of disappointed but I pushed those feelings aside and offered Dave my services. I didn’t need to ask him twice and I had nothing better to do.

I jogged back home later that afternoon, slightly annoyed yet slightly amused. All this energy, all this time, I had never once considered this innocuous solution to the tree mystery. I had wasted so much energy hoping for riches or severed heads.

My wife had just pulled in to the driveway as I got home. I must have looked a sight. Grubby shorts, T-shirt as headband, chest and torso dripping with sweat. She snaps a photo of me with her phone before I have a chance to protest. She then walks over and gives my sweaty face a kiss and says, “I love you for doing this”. “Doing what?” She kisses me again, picks up her handbag and walks inside leaving me on the driveway perplexed.

Over the next couple of weeks, I help Dave relocate his remaining trees and then the rest of his South Coast nursery. Another thing I did – which you won’t believe – I asked my wife to scratch the final panel off my lottery ticket. I couldn’t do it, I don’t gamble anymore, remember? No, we didn’t win. It uncovered 20 bucks, not the $20,000 we needed to win. But it felt good finally knowing that outcome. I was no longer scared, I guess.

After the trees were sorted, I helped Dave landscape the new nursery and didn’t notice my wife had replaced the photo on the fridge with the pic she took of me on the driveway.

So it was even more of a surprise when the doorbell rang one morning and I could see the muppet from brekkie TV out the front of my house. Two photos of me then appear on the telly: the pie-eating one and the T-shirt headband one. I open the door and the bozo tells me my wife entered me in their “Flab to Fab” competition and took out the top prize … twenty thousand bucks. I guess I’d been too obsessed with the tree mystery to even notice what the daily bushland routine had done to my rig.

We now had 20 grand to spend whatever way we wanted. I knew exactly what I wanted to spend mine on.