Next Year in Jerusalem
We’re rubbing up against the peeling weather
walls and now next year in Jerusalem
two awkward conquerors in black leather
will make their epidemic honeymoon.
Even fully booked the Dead Sea is free
of things likely to kill you she said.
Busy breeding angels in the arsehole
of the happy world he was short with his mother.
Never again will son be your Ireland.
I cc’d what you did there she howl
beneath the innocent salt we found another.
We’re rubbing up against the soil.
Salt
The courtroom was stuffy. This was partly due to the synthetic warmth of the building’s central heating system that hummed softly in the ceiling but far more suffocating was the silence of the crowd that sat stiffly on the padded benches exactly as they had done every day for the past few weeks. Cunningham stood for a moment and let his eyes slide across the wall of sombre faces still flushed from the morning cold then settle on the small space left empty just behind him. He shook his head and focused on straightening some papers on his desk. Of all the days for them to be late. He tried to loosen his tie a little but his fingers were sweaty and he fumbled at the knot, his face growing hot with frustration, until he finally gave up and left it looking like a small prune. He looked out the window and watched a lone raptor slowly make its way across the brittle blue Salt Lake sky. The bird rode on the crisp air with seemingly no effort and after describing a few lazy circles above the salt flats and apparently seeing nothing of interest it passed from view.
Cunningham stood there motionless until a gurgled laugh from the seat next to him broke the silence of the courtroom. He looked down at a pair of eyes set too far apart that were crinkled up like little raisins. The boy was laughing at something and his lopsided grin revealed a fat tongue sitting squashed up against the few small teeth placed haphazardly about his mouth. Cunningham always thought of him as a boy, despite the fact that he was nearing twenty-seven and was possibly close to as old as he would ever be allowed to be. The boy’s laughing eyes were fixed on him and Cunningham wondered what joke he was missing but before he could consider it further the Judge cleared his throat and looked up from his papers. He had a kind but surprisingly young face.
Mr. Cunningham, he said. Call your witness if you please.
Cunningham nodded and stood up a little straighter.
Yes Your Honour, he said. If it please the court, the defence calls Wilbur Young.
The Judge nodded and picked up a pen to note something down. Cunningham looked back at the boy but he had stopped laughing now and was tugging at the sleeves of his suit which was several sizes too small for his pudgy frame. The rest of the courtroom was still and quiet and Cunningham quickly looked over his shoulder at the crowd. None of them gave him so much as a glance and the hollowness in the pit of his stomach returned. It had started during the first few days of the trial and had never really stopped. He was used to hostile words and even physical threats from the friends and families of victims and he’d always been able to shut himself up behind his lessons from law school about the ethics of his profession and the vital role he was playing in the machinery of justice. Even when he knew his client was guilty of some despicable act and he wanted more than anybody for the degenerate piece of filth to fry he buried those thoughts in the details of his work, but these few weeks, as he’d argued and questioned and lectured before the Judge, the calm silence of the crowd had unnerved him. It was as though the outcome of the trial was a matter of little importance to them and they were simply waiting for it to be over. Their clothes were clean and neat and new, even though the women’s dresses looked as though they’d been salvaged from an earlier century, and all the men wore their hair parted neatly on the right.
The Judge looked up from making his notes and frowned.
Well, Mr. Young? he said looking at the boy.
Cunningham leant down to whisper in the boy’s ear. The boy just grinned back at him until Cunningham grabbed his elbow and steered him out of his chair. He lumbered out from behind the desk and after a final nudge began to make his way towards the witness stand. As he was seating himself, the large courtroom door creaked open and Cunningham turned to see three figures slip in quietly, two men and a woman. They made their way down the aisle to the empty space behind where he stood and took their seats. The two men wore patterned shirts without ties and both had arms too long for their bodies. They nodded at Cunningham, peering out from beneath heavily lidded eyes, then sat down either side of the young woman, who was chewing her bottom lip and trying not to meet his gaze.
Cunningham sighed with relief and turned back towards the Judge. He leaned forward and braced himself on the desk in front of him. The boy was seated in the dock now, opening and closing his mouth slowly as he studied the jury. Suddenly he caught sight of the newcomers and his face split apart in its lopsided grin and he started bouncing up and down in his chair a little. Cunningham cleared his throat but the boy didn’t pay him any attention. He walked around the desk and approached the dock and as he got closer the boy squirmed in his seat, trying to see around him. After a while the boy gave up and their eyes met. Cunningham nodded slightly and took a deep breath.
Mr. Young, do you recall—
There was a gooey something in the ashtray. Warm like the leather on the door but softer and sort of pink and sticky like His legs were sticky on the seat and it got stuck under His nails as He picked at it and made long stretchy bits that blew apart in the wind coming in through the open window. He leaned His face into the buffeting gusts and opened His mouth and started chewing the dry air happily as He watched Wendover Will get bigger and bigger where he stood by the side of the road. He squinted through the breeze and the brightness trying to see home but beyond the giant cowboy’s boots the sky went less blue and the sand went less brown and there was nothing but white glare. A girl was singing a song He’d heard before and He looked over at Barbie to see if she’d sing along with Him but she was staring at something out the window so He sang along by Himself.
—see ‘Barbie’ in the courtroom today? he asked.
The boy grinned and nodded excitedly. Cunningham waited but the boy made no movement and he realised he’d forgotten this part.
Could you point her out to me please? he prompted.
She right there! the boy said and pointed a single chubby finger at the woman sitting between the two men and occasionally brushing away the loose wisps of mousy hair that fell to try and frame her face. She gave him a timid smile.
Let the record—
Hush it Will barked Awesome from behind the wheel. A body can’t hear theyself think over that goddam catterwaulin’! There was a click and the girl stopped singing so He stopped singing and everything was quiet except for the rumbling wind.
—has identified Barbara Goodyear. And tell me Mr. Young, do you also see ‘Awesome’ in the courtroom today?
The boy nodded and without prompting pointed to the taller of the two men. The man sat with his head bowed as if furiously trying to determine the structural integrity of the floor and didn’t give any indication he had noticed the weight of the court’s attention shift and come to rest on him. Cunningham nodded and turned to the Judge.
Let the record show that Mr. Young has identified Orson Young.
Cunningham took a deep breath. He could see the twelve jurors all watching him out of the corner of his eye. It could have been lack of sleep or his frayed nerves playing tricks on his mind but for a moment he thought he saw a flash of eager anticipation on their faces and he began to fidget with his tie again. He’d known all along that this was going to be his only shot and as far as he could tell he was doing the best he could for the boy but even so sometimes he couldn’t help but feel as though he was the one on trial and his guilt was already written in the eyes of everybody in the courtroom.
Somebody towards the back coughed delicately. Cunningham blinked and realised they were all waiting for him to go on. Even the boy seemed puzzled. A small frown was crinkling up his pudgy face as he waited for the words that had been painstakingly drilled into him. Cunningham hurriedly cleared his throat and continued.
Mr. Young, he said. What were the circumstances of your first—
Mama always told Him not to look at the sun because when it didn’t have no clouds to nibble on it got hungry and might just steal the eyes right out of your head and eat them. So on days like this when the sky was specially empty and blue and the sun on the back of His neck felt like it was close enough to just reach out and grab Him He always got a little bit nervous and kept His eyes to the ground. He got out and went into the front yard leaving Awesome and Barbie by the car where they started saying something loudly about a book or a look or maybe a bike. His favourite yellow rubber boots left footprints in the dust and each had a little smiley face in the middle. The ones on the left like they were winking at Him because half the smile and one of the eyes had been worn off. All the little yards in front of the matching trailers were prettied up with a plastic red tricycle lying on its side or broken bottles planted in the dirt or a pair of old folks with crumpled faces sitting in canvas chairs and gumming their lips like they were chewing a lemon as they watched the people go past. He looked around and Barbie was gone and Awesome was walking towards Him muttering something. He spat into the dust as he went past and up the trailer’s rickety stairs with his big brown boots making the whole thing shake. Hurry your ass up Will he said then he disappeared into the dark inside letting the screen door clack shut behind him. Whenever people like Grandma or old Mrs Wycombe went away Mama always told Him they were on their way to the moon and that one day everyone in the world would live there together and it would be soon because the guv’ment had already gone and put a man up there and as He stared at the perfectly round dome of spittle sitting neat and shiny on the soft little dust dunes He thought it looked like the home of that lonely settler waiting for the rest of the world to come up and join him. Two strangers in clean white shirts and shiny black shoes walked past and He looked up and they waved to Him and He waved back and then they went to Barbie’s trailer on the other side of the dirt road and knocked on the door. He watched them for a moment and then He turned around and followed Awesome inside leaving the hungry sun behind Him.
—the border from West Wendover at approximately 3 pm on the afternoon of August 23rd, as we have already heard from the testimony of the prosecution’s witnesses. They then proceeded to the residence of Miss Goodyear where they stayed until approximately—
Awesome lay on the couch with his hat over his face and his boots up on the armrest and there was a big brown footprint on the cushion. There was a yellow square of sun on the kitchen floor but the rest of the trailer was dark and cool like a cave. He went and stood in front of the humming box on the wall and closed His eyes and felt the cold dry wind on His face and it smelled like the place where He went when He was sick. Outside there was a banging sound. He was getting hungry and Awesome didn’t move and didn’t say anything so He went out the back door to see if Jo-Jo would get Him some food. It was still hot but the sun was sitting on the other side of the trailer and there was a long shadow over the ground where the scraps of engines lay about like injured soldiers blown apart and left for the birds. The sharp sound of metal on metal was coming from somewhere in the shade but on the other side of the little fence at the back of the yard was the salt flat shining pale and bright and He had to squint to see anything in the darkness. Jo-Jo? He called and the sound stopped. Yeah? He heard the voice come from near the fence but He still couldn’t see him. It’s dinner time. There was silence for a moment. Ok, I’ll be in in a minute. The metal sound started back up again. He went back inside and Awesome was gone and there was a big brown footprint on the couch cushion and the sheets that Jo-Jo had left folded up were crumpled on the floor.
—and Joseph Young have both stated they were attending the unauthorised drag racing event known locally as the Wendover Derby until the early hours of—
He woke and the night was bright in his window. There were crickets and there were owls and there were voices a long way off then there were engines tearing strips off the silence of the flats. He sat up in bed and looked out the window and there was a little city burning out on the desert. He lay back down and yawned once then twice. His eyes banged open. It was still dark. There were heavy steps in the trailer and loud breathing. The bedroom door opened and a big shape stood in the doorway. The light was on in the big room and the shape was big and black and it moved towards Him. The light went out again and somebody was bumping around and swearing. He stayed quiet and eventually the shape fell onto Awesome’s bed and didn’t move.
—Young, on the morning of Sunday the—
He went on down the empty street whistling a lullaby with clouds of dust puffing about His favourite yellow rubber boots. The trailers were quiet and still. He was almost always the first one to wake up and He wished people wouldn’t snore so long because there wasn’t nothing to do til they got theyselves up out of bed except sail His boats in the creek or throw rocks at any cats out looking for breakfast. In his hand He carried his red and blue tugboat that had real bumpers made of rubber. He was passing the last trailer where old Mr. Calahand lived with nobody but his fat cat Ronald when He saw a man standing in the middle of the street with his head titled back and his mouth hanging open like he was shocked by the empty sky so that he looked sorta like a scarecrow. The man was wearing a woolly blue jumper that was too big for him and fell down over his legs almost to his knees so you couldn’t tell if he was wearing shorts underneath or not and in his hand that was long and thin like a bird’s foot he was holding a dark brown bottle. He heard a sound behind Him and then a red truck came past down the street. The man didn’t move or seem to notice as the truck came up then without slowing down moved to the right to go around him and drove on. He kept walking past the scarecrow man and after a while He came to where the ground fell away towards the flats and scrabbled down the rocky slope. The creek dribbled out the mouth of a big pipe that peeked from under the dirt hill The Park was built on and the smelly water trickled along in the middle of a dark stain that got smaller and smaller and then disappeared into the salt flat which lay white and empty as far as He could see and even further. The big empty desert scared Him a bit but He liked playing with His boat and there was no other water near home. The sun was still only peering sleepily over the edge of the world and as it slowly warmed itself up it turned the salt flat to rusty red. For a moment He just stared at the big fiery sea all still and angry and then He noticed a lonely shape to His left sitting next to the pipe with its arms wrapped round its legs and its knees up under its chin. Hiya Barbie! He shouted and stumbled over the slope to where she sat. She looked up and smiled a little smile. Hiya Will she said. He sat down next to her in the dust and went to brush His hands off against His old jeans then remembered Mama always scolded Him for getting filth on His clothes so He scuffed them together instead. Barbie was quiet for a minute then she leaned her little brown head on His shoulder and wrapped her skinny arms around His pudgy one in a warm cuddle. He held His tugboat with rubber bumpers tightly in His other hand. She watched the sun climb up the sky and He watched its light pulsing through the tiny hairs on her arms and the smooth brown skin of her legs shining below her shorty-shorts. He could feel her breathing against Him and they were quiet like that for a long time. It’s pretty He said finally. Barbie didn’t answer and her breathing was long and slow and He thought maybe she fell asleep. Her shirt was too big and it had slipped down onto her arm and He moved His head a little so He could see where her naked shoulder bended up and became her neck. A few loose hairs floated across her skin in the shadows there. In His bottom drawer at home He had a picture of a big white bird Mama told Him was called a swan and He thought about it now and how it sat with its head bent down like it was looking for something under the water. He leaned a little closer and He could smell her and she smelled like Walmart dry hair shampoo and Fruit Loops and He could see the warm curves just under her shirt. She took a deep breath. Pam sent me a letter she said. Do you remember Pam Will? He opened His mouth to say something but she kept going so He closed it again then had a funny idea and went on opening and closing it and pretending He was a big fish. You always liked her. Remember she taught you how to whistle? It must have took her a month but she was stubborn as a damn mule and I don’t think I ever saw her as happy as when you finally got a noise outta all that huffing and puffing. It was starting to get hot but she shivered and hugged him closer. She sniffed and rubbed her cheek against His arm and it was soft and a little bit wet. She’s getting married Will. My baby sister’s gone and got herself a husband. She says he’s a banking man and she met him out in California last June and he’s gonna take her to Hawaii for a honeymoon. She told me in the letter. The wedding’s in February and she wants me to go out and be her Bridesmaid. She said her banking man will pay for me to go out and stay in a big hotel and everything. She was quiet again and He stopped pretending to be a big fish and tried to think of something to say. The sky was empty of clouds again today and the sun was getting hot. You know that trailer’s mine now? she said. Ever since Ma died it’s been mine but you know I never even bought any new knives or forks or bowls or sheets or nothing. I just used the same ones we always had since I was born. He thought about this for a moment frowning. We got lotsa knives and forks at our place He said. You can have some if you want. And a bowl with all little bunnies running round inside. They was Mama’s too. A little ant was struggling and stumbling towards His tugboat with the rubber bumpers. It only had little legs and the dirt was soft and deep and it was scrabbling about trying to get to the safety of the boat. He watched it reach the rubber bumpers and then stop for a moment. It was still except for its antennas waving slowly about its head and then it found its way and rushed off into the empty dirt again heading for food or home or just another little ant somewhere. He watched it struggle on its way and then Barbie was saying something and so He looked at her and her shirt had slipped further down her arm. You ever read the Bible Will? she asked. He nodded slowly and looked for the ant again but He couldn’t find it. Mama read me some bits He said. I liked the bit with the man in the whale. It done ate him up and he sat there all by hisself and I told Mama I didn’t like it but she said to keep listening and I did and then the whale spit him out again and he was OK. He looked over at the creek squirming its way onto the flat. It must be awful smelly in a whale. Barbie was quiet again for a long while. The colour was mostly gone from the flat now and it was burning hot and pale like a ghost. He looked at the top of her head and thought about her eyes that were brown and sad and hid behind her falling hair and her little nose that wrinkled up when she laughed. A dry breeze was coming off the flat and sending the loose strands of her hair waving and flapping about angrily. Nothing else moved. The sun was getting hot in the sky and He started to feel sweat tickling down His back and down His sides. After a while Barbie silently unwrapped herself from around His arm and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She turned and smiled at Him. C’mon Will, let’s go get you some breakfast. He grinned and nodded. They went back up the slope and then past the sleeping trailers and then up the rickety steps to home. The curtains were all closed so inside it was dark and orange. Barbie went to the fridge and started taking things out and piling them up on the bench. She got the fire starter and poked it at the stove. There were a few clicks then there was butter hissing in the skillet. He went over to the kitchen window that looked out on the street and took a tight hold of the curtains then leaning His face up close and putting on an ugly look He yanked them back hard. There was nobody there but He gurgled a little laugh at how they would of got a bit of a fright if they had been.
—again some time after 9 o’clock.
Cunningham paused and glanced nervously over at the table where the prosecutor was jotting down some notes. The man looked up and gave him an unreadable smile then turned his eyes towards the jury. Cunningham followed his gaze and quickly scanned the men and women sitting there in judgement. A few were watching him with vague interest but most were staring into space or doodling on their notepads. He took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and dabbed at his neck. Sweat was starting to dampen the collar of his shirt and make it itchy. He said a quick prayer under his breath, thanking Christ that it had all gone smoothly so far.
It had taken over fifty man-hours to get the boy to be able to pick up all his cues and stick to telling his story without babbling. He could only handle an hour or so of coaching at a stretch before his eyes began to glaze over and the saliva pooling behind his bottom lip threatened to spill over so Cunningham would have him come into the office once in the morning and once in the afternoon and each time they started again most of what Cunningham had patiently drilled into his mind was long gone, evaporated and carried away by the dry winds blowing outside. For the first couple of days the boy kept getting distracted by things; the hackneyed motivational poster on the wall, a paper weight shaped like a cannon, the sickly pot plant in the corner, so in the end Cunningham cleaned out the place until there was nothing in the room but the two of them staring at one another across the table. Only then could he start to make a little progress.
He glanced down at his hand-written notes. A couple of lines were smudged where his sweaty fingers had rested on the page and he leaned forward, squinting to try and make them out but most of the words were illegible. He frowned, straightened up and wiped his hands on his trouser leg to try to get rid of the ink stains.
Mr Young, he continued. At around ten-thirty that morning, two men—
He did the same at the other windows til the trailer was bright and sunny and smelled like bacon. Barbie stood by the stove in her shorty-shorts with her hip tipped to one side and the other leg bent and lazy and slipping its flip-flop on and off. The sound of metal on metal suddenly started up from outside and He looked out the little living room window but He couldn’t spot Jo-Jo anywhere. There was a groan and the sound of sheets moving from the bedroom and then feet shuffling about. The bedroom door opened and Awesome stood there rubbing his eyes and scratching hisself. Barbie smiled up at him. Morning ya big lump! she said. Awesome grunted and went over and grabbed the orange juice off the bench and took a long gulp. Barbie watched him. There was a tap tap at the trailer door and Awesome put the juice down and went over and opened it. A happy voice started talking while Awesome stood leaning on the plastic frame with no shirt on and his arms crossed. The bacon was hissing and He went over to Barbie and picked up some eggs and He handed them to her one at a time while she cracked them in the skillet. He turned a bit and looked past Awesome and He could see the strangers standing in the dust in their clean white shirts and shiny black shoes. Barbie looked over her shoulder then quickly back at the eggs. She aint here said Awesome. If she aint at her place then I don’t know where she is. There was some more talking and He could smell the bacon starting to burn and He could see it bouncing about in the butter. Barbie was staring hard at the skillet but she didn’t turn it over. Yeah, I’ll tell her. But I’ll tell you right now she ain’t no goddamn Mormon so I don’t know why she needs to know nothing about that. The door clacked shut and Barbie quickly grabbed a fork and started scooping up eggs and bacon onto the plates. He grabbed one and took it over to Awesome but he was staring at Barbie and didn’t see it. It’s breakfast Awesome He said and Awesome looked down at the plate then up at Him. Yeah thanks Will he said slowly taking the plate. Barbie made it He said. Awesome looked over at her then back at Him then without a word sat down on a stool behind the kitchen bench and started eating.
—see them again at any stage during that—
The wind was blowing hard off the salt flat and little bits of dust and sand were nibbling His legs where they poked out above His favourite yellow rubber boots. Jo-Jo was behind Him working and Awesome was still inside with Barbie. He bent down and picked up a piston that was lying half buried in the dirt. The top had a big hole blown in it and as He held it a long thin bug crawled out and buzzed its wings a couple of times then jumped up and went away on the wind. He looked in the hole and there was a little nest made of dried mud tucked inside and so He put the piston back down carefully and covered it with some dirt just like it was before. The yard was quiet. There was a bang from the trailer and then a shout and then it was quiet just like the yard. The clouds had come back and so shadows were speeding across the flat and rolling over the roof without a sound. Not like the rain. When the rain came the roof hummed and shouted and banged about. Mama always said it was a Unholy racket but He liked it because it sounded like the bowling alley and He liked the bowling alley. Jo-Jo had taken his shirt off and his back was all shiny and pink in the sun. He was bent over the giant body of Big Red that was all opened up with its insides spread across the ground all black and silver and smelling like oily death. The back door of the trailer opened and Awesome came into the yard. He had a shirt on now. How’s she coming Einstein? he said. Jo-Jo stood up and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. Ok. Awesome wandered over to the carcass and poked around inside. Jo-Jo watched him. Seen Jim last night Awesome said without looking up. Said there might gonna be another meet in three months. Jo-Jo picked up a rag and started wiping a bit of pipe but didn’t reply. There’s a cash prize. Two grand. He leaned forward and peered into the bright red shell and his elbow knocked over a spare piston that fell clanging through the belly of the beast and disappeared. He swore and looked up squinting. You finally going to let me put this goddamn heap to some use? Jo-Jo studied the bit of pipe then put it down. There’s still a fair bit of work to do yet he said slowly. Awesome sucked his teeth and spat into the dirt. The wind was blowing and Jo-Jo leaned in to retrieve his piston. Awesome looked over at Him. Get inside Will. Them dishes need doin’. Awesome stared at Jo-Jo for a minute then turned and went back inside. He went in and Awesome was leaning on the sink and staring out at the street. A truck was rolling past slowly and the man driving was dangling his arm out the open window and tapping on the door and the door was white with long rusty tears running down it. The trailer was starting to warm up but it was still cooler than outside. He went up behind Awesome and gave him a hug with His cheek resting against his back. They stood still like that while the truck disappeared down the street. He looked out the window again and the people in clean white shirts and shiny black shoes were waiting outside Barbie’s. They looked almost the same from behind except one was a little bit shorter and fatter and his shoes had picked up some dust from the street and he was wiping them on the back of his black pants while he waited and so now there was a light brown smudge on them. The door opened and the strangers went in. Goddamn piece of shit sons of bitches said Awesome softly. His back was hard and shaking under his shirt and his shirt was warm and a bit wet and the dust was rippling down the street like little waves in the wind. Jo-Jo started up a drill. It screamed and then stopped for a moment they gonna poison her and then went on screaming only pausing goddamn Mormon every now and then horse shit to catch its breath. Awesome was muttering. The drill whirred to a stop. They gonna fucking poison her Will. The white truck from before came rolling back down the street and there was a dog in the passenger seat. A new drill started up louder than the other one and He sneezed and it went all over the back of Awesome’s shirt. There was a big gob clinging to his shoulder but before He could wipe it away Awesome gently pried apart His hug and went into the bedroom. There was water in the sink and He put a dirty plate on top and let it float there. It bobbed around like His boat with the real rubber bumpers and then He gently poked one side with His finger and the water flooded over it and it slowly sank to sit and hide on the bottom of the sink. Out the window He could see the metal fence at the front of the yard that was all pushed over and He could see the spidowebs shining in the sun. He scrubbed and there were snores coming from the bedroom and banging coming from the yard and His fingers were prunin up. Mama always said that fingers pruned up in the washing water because they was working and work makes you growed up. There was a tap tap tap at the door and He looked over His shoulder but there was nothing but snores coming from the bedroom and nothing but banging coming from out the back so He went and opened it. Outside was bright and His eyes hurt and He squinted and put His hand up and looked through His fingers to try and see who was there but the sun got broken into little shiny pieces in the soapy bubbles still on His hands. A big shape moved slowly towards Him and He stepped back a bit until He was inside and the shape was standing on the steps. Warm air followed the shape inside and light brown dust snuck in on the breeze and settled on the floor and He could smell a heavy smell that was sorta like a bad dream where there are friendly faces but they switch and change and He blinked a couple of times and then He saw the legs like knobbly twigs come slowly in out of the light and the big hanging belly and the shiny bald head and He grinned and said Hiya Mr. Calahand! There was a scratching sound behind the knobbly legs and then the fat cat Ronald slid past and sat with its ginger tail twitching. The old man grinned and dug something out his ear and flicked it away. Mornin’ mah boy! he said. He had a scar on his left cheek that stopped at his eye and the eye drooped and didn’t move and so he had to turn his head a bit to see whatever he was looking at and sometimes that made him lean a bit to the side and stumble. His blue singlet shirt was stretched but it still didn’t cover all of the hairy belly that sagged and hid the top of his old army shorts and his feet were bare and dusty. Where are them brothers of yours? he asked. Sleepin’ and workin’ He said and the old man scratched his belly and sniffed and looked around the trailer slowly with his turned a little to the side. The box on the wall coughed and started to hum and He saw a dog going past outside the window. Mr Calahand was digging around in his shorts pocket. He frowned and swore and dug deeper and then he grinned. Gotcha! he said and he pulled something out and unfolded it. He waved the crumpled dollar bill like a tiny flag. You want to see a trick mah boy? he asked. Before He could say anything the old man made a fist with one hand and started poking the dollar into his fist with his finger. When it was all inside he looked at Him and winked with his good eye and then he clapped his hands together and opened them and they were empty. They both stared at his empty hands and then the old man looked at Him sort of strange and came closer. He peered at His ear then slowly reached out a hand and pulled the dollar bill out and gave it to Him. You go ahead and keep that he said and winked with his good eye and scratched his belly again. The cat was staring at Him with its yellow eyes that didn’t blink and its ginger tail was twitching. He looked down at the dollar in His hand and the picture of the funny old man on it who had hair sorta like Mama’s and then He folded it up and put it in His pocket beside the little wooden statue of a dolphin He always kept there and a bottle top He’d found near the front gate the day before. The trailer was sorta quiet and He looked up and Mr. Calahand was watching Him. The old man coughed and looked away. Well it looks like you’re getting plenty to eat anyway he said and leaned down to give the fat cat Ronald a scratch behind the ears. There were footsteps on the carpet and He turned around and Awesome was standing outside the bedroom. Hiya Awesome He said. Mr. Calahand given me a dollar. Awesome frowned at Him for a moment then looked at Mr. Calahand. What you think you’re doing here old man? he said. Mr. Calahand grinned and spread his arms wide so they stuck out from his body like knobbly winter branches. I’m just visiting with my young friend here he said. Awesome’s eyes narrowed. He don’t need your fucking money. Mr. Calahand sniffed and his arms fell back to his sides. The sunlight was still carrying dust in through the door and hiding it in the folds of the carpet. Well of course he doesn’t he said. He’s got his superstar racing driver brother is taking good care of him. Mr. Calahand looked over and winked at Him. How’s that tasty little thing you were sticking it to? She got a ring on you yet? He chuckled through his teeth and it made a rattling sound. None of your fucking business said Awesome. Mr. Calahand shrugged and picked at his teeth with his fingernail. He looked at a piece of something he’d found and then put it back in his mouth to chew on. Well she looks like she’d go off like a firecracker he said. She got those sad eyes that look up at you just begging for it like a little puppy dog. He paused and licked his lips to hide a little smile. Your old Ma had ‘em too. Awesome’s face went all still and hard. Get out he said and his voice was like the sound of Jo-Jo cutting a bit of pipe with his special saw with the tiny teeth. Mr. Calahand spread his arms wide again and raised up his eyebrows. What? You think your Ma never got the boat a-rockin’? Where’d you think you came from then? Shit out from a low flying snow goose? Mr. Calahand chuckled through his teeth again and his belly shook and He could see pale skin and a trail of curly hairs peeking out under the blue singlet shirt.
—the argument a weapon, which has been confirmed as the firearm appearing as Exhibit 3, was produced, though not discharged. Following the altercation, Arthur Calahand left the premises, followed by Orson Young. Mr. Young…
Cunningham paused as he became aware of a whispered argument behind him. He turned around and the two Young brothers were leaning across the young woman, Barbara, who sat between them, their faces intent but their lips barely moving. The girl had slid lower in her seat and was chewing her bottom lip while glancing between the floor and the two men simmering before her.
After a while Orson seemed to make a decisive point as Joseph fell silent, stared at him for a moment, then leaned back in his seat. Cunningham glanced at the crowd on the other side of the room but none of them seemed to have noticed the disturbance; they just sat watching him, patiently waiting for him to continue. He shook his head and was about to turn back towards the witness dock when out of the corner of his eye he noticed Orson’s lidded gaze fixed on him. Cunningham met his stare and gave him a quick nod but it wasn’t returned. Neither of them was quick to look away and as the moment stretched on and the rest of the court waited in silence Cunningham began to feel exposed beneath the other man’s glare. Orson’s face was expressionless but something smouldered behind his half-open eyes. Cunningham cleared his throat and turned back towards his client, feeling his face grow hot. The boy was busy trying to lick the end of his nose. Cunningham cleared his throat again and the boy looked up. His tongue was curled upwards towards his nose and it put Cunningham in mind of some kind of lizard; a gecko perhaps.
Mr. Young, he said. After the altercation you just described—
He’d taken his yellow rubber boots off and He could feel crumbs of something on the kitchen floor. He lifted His feet one at a time but the crumbs stuck to His skin like they were hungry or something so He didn’t brush them off. The sun had climbed up above the trailer now and everything outside had lost its shadow and the colours were brighter and He thought the window looked just like a painting. He put the last fork in the wooden rack and dried His hands on His green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt. Outside a little boy appeared running down the street with his bare feet slapping on the ground and his shorts that were too big flapping around his knees and his face hard like a little pebble. Barbie’s trailer sat on the other side of the street with its front door shut tight and the curtains with pictures of yellow cats on them covering the windows and He figured the people with clean white shirts and shiny black shoes were still inside. Something started banging and He went and looked out the back door and Jo-Jo was kneeling over a blanket hammering at a piece of metal. Behind him the salt flats were white and empty and moving like water. Hiya Jo-Jo He said and came down the back steps. He started across backyard with His toes sinking into the dust but then He trod on something sharp and stopped. Jo-Jo put his hammer down and squinted up at Him. Hi Will he said and his voice was sorta soft like he was sick or sad or really tired. The wind started to blow a bit and the trailer door shut with a loud clack. Can we go to the bowling alley? He asked. Mr. Calahand given me a dollar. Jo-Jo picked up his hammer again and started tapping at the piece of metal real carefully. Maybe later. He put His hand in His pocket to feel His new dollar and wiggled His toes in the dust. Later when? Jo-Jo put the hammer down again and He could see him take a big breath. Why don’t you go and see if Barbie wants to take you down to see a movie? The backyard was quiet and the only noise came from a truck a long way away and He watched Jo-Jo stand up slowly and walk over the body of Big Red with the piece of metal in his hand and then He turned and went back inside. The box in the wall was humming and His Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt was sweaty and it started to get cold. He stood on the carpet and looked down at His feet and they were brown up to His ankles and it looked like He was wearing socks even though He wasn’t. Mama always said a boy didn’t need much else if he got a plate of food and a clean pair of socks. He went and looked in the fridge but there was nothing there but some jars of red stuff and some jars of yellow stuff and a tomato that was getting wrinkled. The bedroom was dark because the curtains were closed but He could see the wardrobe open and a shoebox sitting on Awesome’s bed. He was starting to get cold in the trailer and He didn’t know how to stop the box in the wall blowing the cold air and He thought about what Jo-Jo said about asking Barbie to take Him to a movie. He’d already opened the front door when He saw it on the kitchen counter. He picked it up and it was heavier than His red and blue tugboat that had real bumpers made of rubber and even heavier than His model car that was as big as a shoe and had doors that opened and shut but it sat comfy in His hand. He put it down again and went outside. Awesome’s car was sitting in the front yard and He could see the scratch near the front where one time out in Nevada somewhere Awesome swerved to miss a cat and ran into a wooden fence on the side of the road and He and Jo-Jo were in the car with him and when they’d gotten clear of the fence and were back on the road nobody said anything for a long while. The sun was shining off the driver’s window and someone had left it wound down a little bit so the car didn’t get too hot. He squinted over at Barbie’s trailer but the front door was still shut tight and the curtains with pictures of yellow cats on them were still closed. The wind was blowing hard and as He stepped down into the dust He remembered He’d forgotten to put His yellow rubber boots on.
—you, Mr. Young.
Cunningham closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The air smelled of leather and photocopied paper and clothes fresh from the dry cleaners. He tried to take himself away from the courtroom for a moment; away from the awful silence of the patient eyes behind him; away from the judge’s kindly disinterest; away from the boy whose crooked grin seemed all too eager to see their last card face up on the table. His palms were sweaty and he resisted the urge to fiddle with his tie again. The moments ticked by as he waited for some clap of thunder or some riot of voices to usher in the climax of his months of work and worry but the only sound that he could hear was the electric hum of the air conditioning. When he opened his eyes again the courtroom was the same as it had been. He blinked a couple of times to adjust his eyes and then focused on the boy, who was watching him carefully now.
Mr. Young, he said and he was relieved to hear that his voice was steady. Can you please tell us your memory of the events that—
His green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle t-shirt got caught on a piece of wire sticking out of the front fence and He had to stop and walk backwards to unhook it and when He did He saw there was a hole in it big enough to stick His thumb through. He gave the fence a little kick and it made a rattling sound and shook all the way to the end and then He watched it as it slowed until it was just swaying back and forth like an old man in a rocking chair. He was about to head across the road when He saw a brown lump at the end of the fence and as He walked towards it He saw the lump had fur and He grinned and trotted over to it. The dog was lying on its side with its legs straight out and its head at a funny angle and the wind was lifting its light brown fur in little waves across its body. He stopped a little way from it and waited but it didn’t move and then He saw a dark brown patch on the side of its head where the fur was all stuck together and He turned away and didn’t look at it any more. The sky was blue and empty but the wind was blowing hard and His green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt was sticking to Him on the front and blowing out like a sail behind. He left the dog and went across the street to Barbie’s trailer and while He walked He tried to whistle but the wind carried the tune away. Barbie didn’t have a fence out the front of her trailer and the front yard was empty except for a short fat cactus in a pot next to the front steps. The front door was shut and He tapped on it but there was no answer and the curtains with the pictures of yellow cats on them didn’t move. He waited for a while and then He went around to the back of the trailer where there were clothes flapping about on lines hung between the trailer and the wooden fence at the back of the yard. The sun was getting low and the fence cast a long shadow almost up to the trailer. His yellow rubber boots made footprints with little smiley faces in the dust but the wind was blowing the dust about and the footprints got covered up quickly. He fumbled through the flapping clothes with the silk and cotton tickling His neck until he got close to the trailer’s back window. The curtains were open and He stood up on His tippy toes to try and see inside but it was too high and all He could see was a bit of the trailer’s ceiling and the arms of the fan sliding past again and again. He was about to tap on the window when He heard a noise inside and so He stopped and stood there on His tippy toes and listened while pink and white underwear flapped about His head. First there were voices but He couldn’t hear whose they were because they were talking really quiet and then He heard something hit the floor hard. The voices got a bit louder and He could hear there was a man’s voice and a woman’s voice and the woman sounded like Barbie and she was saying something about the sky or the lie or going high and she was talking sorta fast. His feet were getting sore from standing on His tippy toes but He didn’t move and then He heard a different noise and it sounded like a squeaky toy like the pink elephant He had one time that had lost an eye but squeaked when you pushed its belly. The man started speaking and his voice sounded sorta angry and there was some banging about and then the squeaking noise again and then Barbie was talking and she sounded scared and He stood as tall as He could to try and see inside but He still couldn’t reach and His legs were getting sore and the squeaking noise got louder and there was more banging and He grabbed hold of the washing line to pull Himself up and Barbie was whimpering like a puppy dog and then she was crying out and then she was screaming like she was hurting really bad and He could hear the man’s voice too but there weren’t any words and then the wooden bar the washing line was tied to broke and fell to the ground and He fell down with it and there was a loud voice coming from inside and some banging about and He stumbled out of the pile of clothes and started running as fast as He could to get home with a pair of pink underwear caught in His yellow rubber boots and then it was in His hand and then He came around the side of Barbie’s trailer and in the shadows there was a face in front of Him and another shape and then there was a really loud bang and then another one and they echoed for a long time.
The courtroom was quiet. Cunningham counted up to ten in his head, letting the silence stretch on for effect. He glanced quickly at the jury and saw they were all studying the boy carefully and he allowed himself a little satisfied smile. He gave it another moment then cleared his throat.
Thank you Mr. Young, he said.
The boy was sitting quietly, opening and closing his mouth while staring at the floor, and didn’t bother to look up when his name was mentioned. Cunningham turned his head and peered at the three behind him out of the corner of his eye. They were all watching the boy and Barbara was wearing a strange expression, as though she had just been given a gift that she didn’t really have any use for. The faces of the other two were unreadable. Cunningham turned back towards the judge.
No more questions Your Honour, he said.
The judge was busy writing something and didn’t reply straight away and so Cunningham eased himself back down into his chair. Eventually, the judge looked up and nodded to him.
Right you are, Mr. Cunningham, he said.
He looked at his watch and pursed his lips.
The witness may step down, he said. The court will recess for lunch and recommence at 2 o’clock this afternoon. He rapped his gavel.
Everyone rose as the judge stood up to leave and Cunningham gathered up his papers while the crowd behind him filed slowly and quietly out the doors at the back. He looked up and the boy was still sitting in the witness dock, opening and closing his mouth. The judge exited via a door behind the bench and it was left to the bailiff to coax the boy out of the witness box. Cunningham stood unmoving behind his desk while the boy was led, shackled hand and foot, towards a side door that would take him back to the court’s cells. He watched him cross the floor with his shuffling gait but the boy didn’t look back. The last of the crowd left silently and the large wooden doors swung shut behind them with a dull thud. Cunningham tucked his papers under his arm and with a quick look out the window to see if the clouds had closed in yet he walked up the aisle between the rows of leather benches and out through the door.
When Cunningham returned the last few people in the crowd were just seating themselves. He’d spent the lunch recess in a park a couple of blocks from the courthouse eating the lunch he’d packed for himself that morning and his hands and face were pink from the cold. He shucked off his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair as the bailiff walked to the front of the room.
All rise for the Honourable Judge Triplehorn, he announced in a deep African voice and the crowd stood as one.
After a short wait the judge came in, straightening his robes. He sat down and there was a sigh from the leather benches as the crowd settled themselves. Cunningham took out his pen in readiness. During the recess, while he was biting into his apple and watching cars crawl trailing clouds of steam, he’d mulled over what the boy had said and he’d begun to grow a little nervous. They’d rehearsed the broad outlines of the testimony but the boy’s mind wandered when it came to details and so he’d largely left these up to chance. The boy was led in, still shackled, and directed to the witness stand. The judge looked up and nodded towards the prosecutor.
Your witness, Mr. Harrison.
The prosecutor stood up, smiling.
Thank you Your Honour, he said. He stood peering down at his notes for a moment and then looked up at the boy.
Mr. Young, he said. I would like to start by noting an apparent discrepancy in your testimony if you don’t mind.
Cunningham leaned forward in his chair and his pen hovered over the page. The boy was watching the prosecutor curiously with his mouth open a little way and his tongue visible behind his teeth. His smile grew wider as the prosecutor continued.
When you were describing the events of the afternoon of August the 24th, there seems to be a significant amount of time missing.
Cunningham felt his face tighten. They boy had always given vague accounts of time during their preparation sessions. Hours would disappear and then resurface again as time spent picking burrs out of his socks or staring at a photograph and Cunningham had worried on occasion about this buried time. He listened carefully as the prosecutor continued.
According to your testimony, when you left your residence and proceeded to the residence of Barbara Goodyear it was early afternoon. However, you also stated, and this is consistent with the testimony we have heard from other witnesses, that just prior to the fatal events of that day it was getting late and heading towards evening. Can you account for this apparent inconsistency?
—He squinted over at Barbie’s trailer but the front door was still shut tight and the curtains with pictures of yellow cats on them were still closed. The wind was blowing hard and as He stepped down into the dust He remembered He’d forgotten to put His yellow rubber boots on. He went back inside and found them in the kitchen and He put them on. His feet were still wearing their dusty socks and they rubbed inside His yellow rubber boots and got sore and so he went into the bedroom and took a pair of Awesome’s socks from the drawer. He went out to the kitchen again and He saw it sitting on the bench. It was still light outside and Barbie’s trailer was shut tight so He picked it up and tucked it into His shorts underneath His green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt and opened the door. Outside He jumped down the steps and headed for Barbie’s trailer. His green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle t-shirt got caught on a piece of wire sticking out of the front fence and He had to stop and walk backwards to unhook it and when He did He saw there was a hole in it big enough to stick His thumb through. He gave the fence a little kick and it made a rattling sound and shook all the way to the end and then He watched it as it slowed until it was just swaying back and forth like an old man in a rocking chair. He was about to head across the road when He saw a brown lump at the end of the fence and as He walked towards it He saw the lump had fur and He grinned and trotted over to it. The dog was lying on its side with its legs straight out and its head at a funny angle and the wind was lifting its light brown fur in little waves across its body. He stopped a little way from it and waited but it didn’t move and then He saw a dark brown patch on the side of its head where the fur was all stuck together. He edged around to the other side to get a better look and He saw its eyes were open but not moving and He leaned in closer and He could smell something awful sweet. He sat looking at the dog for a long time and then He turned away and didn’t look at it any more. The sky was blue and empty but the wind was blowing hard and His green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt was sticking to Him on the front and blowing out like a sail—
I see. I might come back to this in a moment, Mr. Young. But first, if I may take you back a little way to when you were at your residence, what was it exactly that possessed you to take the firearm with you when you left?
—car was sitting in the front yard and He could see the scratch near the front where one time out in Nevada somewhere Awesome swerved to miss a cat and ran into a wooden fence on the side of the road and He and Jo-Jo were in the car with him and when they’d gotten clear of the fence and were back on the road nobody said anything for a long while. The sun was shining off the driver’s window and someone had left it wound down a little bit so the car didn’t get too hot. He squinted over at Barbie’s trailer but the front door was still shut tight and the curtains with pictures of yellow cats on them were still closed. The wind was blowing hard and as He stepped down into the dust He remembered He’d forgotten to put His yellow rubber boots on.
Thank you, Mr. Young, said the prosecutor. He was smiling and Cunningham grew wary. He couldn’t see where the questions were leading and his pen still hovered over the blank page. The boy was sitting up straighter now and watching the prosecutor carefully. Somebody in the crowd sneezed. The prosecutor peered down at his notes again before continuing.
Now, if we can return to your journey to the residence of Barbara Goodyear. According to the statement you submitted to police, you didn’t encounter anybody between the time you left your residence and the incidents of later that afternoon. If you could, I’d like to ask you to think back and try to recall if you saw anybody at all during this time who might be able to verify your whereabouts.
The prosecutor paused and gave him a reassuring smile.
I’m only asking because this might help to clear up the remaining discrepancies about the time.
—He stopped a little way from it and waited but it didn’t move and then He saw a dark brown patch on the side of its head where the fur was all stuck together. He edged around to the other side to get a better look and He saw its eyes were open but not moving and He leaned in closer and He could smell something awful sweet. He sat looking at the dog for a long time and He thought about the time when He was little and Jo-Jo had a pet bird called Jessie and one day she was lying in the bottom of her cage and not moving and so Mama put her in a shoebox and tied it up with a red ribbon and they buried it in the backyard and while they were filling up the hole He asked Mama if birds went up to live on the moon as well and she told Him not to be silly. He reached out a hand towards the dog and a shadow moved over Him and He looked up into the sun and there were two shapes standing over Him. I think that one’s a gonner friend said one of the shapes and He stood up and the shapes turned into two men with clean white shirts and shiny black shoes. They both had short hair and no beard and the one on the left was a little bit shorter and fatter and he held out his hand. My name’s Bill and this is George he said. He shook’s Bill’s hand and it was warm and damp. I’m Will He said and the men smiled. He looked down at the dog and watched the way the fur stood up in the wind while the body didn’t move. It smells sorta funny He said. George looked at Him for a moment then turned around at looked at the sun. Say that’s rude of us he said. We got you staring into the sun. The three of them did a little dance until He had the sun at His back and the two men were squinting at Him. Bill pointed over to Barbie’s trailer. You wouldn’t happen to know the young woman that lives over there would you? he asked. He followed his finger and nodded. Yeah that’s Barbie’s place He said. Bill smiled and his teeth were straight and white. Wonderful he said. We’ve just been sharing the Good Word with her. She’s a mighty fine young woman. I can definitely see her going places in the Church. Do you know if she’s home? He shrugged. Maybe. Her curtains are all closed up. Bill frowned and nodded slowly then looked at Him for a moment. Tell me have you heard the Good Word? I heard lots of words He said. Which word’s the Good Word? Bill’s eyebrows went up so fast they looked like they were about to fly off his face and he stepped a little closer and patted a little black book that was sitting in his shirt pocket. There’s only one Good Word he said. The Word of Jesus Christ our saviour. Have you ever read the Bible Will? Mama read it to me sometimes He said. I liked the bit about the man in the whale. It was scary when the whale ate him but mama kept reading and then the whale spit him out again. Bill nodded. The story of Jonah. That’s a great part of the Bible but to really understand the message of Jesus Christ our saviour you need to Ahoy mah boy! said a voice and Bill stopped talking and his face looked sorta sad. Mr. Calahand was coming down the street with a bouncy walk and his belly poking out beneath his blue singlet shirt every time he took a step. Hiya Mr. Calahand He said and Bill and George took a step back and looked up the street and the figure coming toward them. Mr. Calahand was puffing on a crooked little cigarette and the fat cat Ronald was trotting along just behind his bare feet and the sun was shining off his bald head. I see you’ve made yourself a couple of new friends here he said and squinted at the two men in clean white shirts and shiny black shoes. He nodded. This is Bill and George He said. Bill took a deep breath and held out his hand to Mr. Calahand. Hi there he said. I’m Bill. We were just talking to young Will here about the Good Word. Mr. Calahand tilted his head and studied Bill’s hand for a moment with his good eye and then a big grin spread across his face and he looked up. Were you just he said and took the crooked little cigarette out of his mouth long enough to spit into the dust. The fat cat Ronald sat in the dust licking himself. Bill let his hand fall and smiled at Mr. Calahand. Yes sir he said. If you ever want to hear the Good Word yourself just give us a holla. George turned to Him and shook His hand. Nice to meet you Will he said. We’ll be around for a few days yet but if you see your friend Barbie around let her know we’re leaving on Saturday so she’ll have to make her mind up soon. Walk with Christ. Bill and George went off down the street and He stood there next to Mr. Calahand and watched them go. Bible bashing freaks muttered Mr. Calahand and he threw his crooked little cigarette away. They stood there for a little while and the wind was blowing the dust across the street so it looked like all the ground was moving and then Mr Calahand coughed and spat into the dust again. Listen he said. I hope me and your brother didn’t scare you before. I just like to stir him up a bit and sometimes my old mouth gets the best of me you know. They were quiet again and then Mr. Calahand gave Him a slap on the shoulder. C’mon he said. Give me a walk home. It ain’t safe for an old man to be walking the streets alone. He gave Him a wink with his good eye and then they walked back up the street towards Mr. Calahand’s trailer with the fat cat Ronald slinking along behind them. The sky was blue and empty but the wind was blowing hard and His green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt was sticking to Him on the front—
I see, said the prosecutor and nodded then glanced down at his notes again.
Cunningham chewed his pen absently. He wondered whether the boy had been trying to hide these events or if they’d just been forgotten and only resurfaced thanks to the prosecutor’s probing. He decided the boy wasn’t built for that sort of deception and that worried him even more. He’d tried to be as thorough as he could in the preparation, questioning the boy for hours, but he started to wonder if he’d dug as hard as he should have. The boy was looking up at the ceiling now and humming softly to himself. The prosecutor looked up from his notes and strolled around to the front of his table. He gave the jury a winning smile and his teeth flashed for a moment.
Mr. Young, he said. A couple more minor points I would like to clarify with you if I may. When you were giving your account of the night of August 23rd you mentioned that somebody returned to your residence at some stage during the night, presumably Orson Young since the individual proceeded to sleep in his bed. Do you have any recollection of Joseph Young returning at any point?
—His eyes banged open. It was still dark. There were heavy steps in the trailer and loud breathing and He could hear someone’s voice in the kitchen talking softly. The bedroom door opened and a big shape stood in the doorway. The light was on in the big room and the shape was big and black and it moved towards Him—
So if there was somebody speaking in the trailer, presumably there was more than one person present.
The prosecutor stood watching the boy with his eyebrows raised. He didn’t wait for a reply before continuing.
If you please, Mr. Young, can you recall at all what might have been said or who might have been doing the speaking?
—were heavy steps in the trailer and loud breathing and He could hear Barbie’s voice in the kitchen talking softly. The bedroom door opened and a big shape stood in the doorway. The light was on in the big room and the shape was big and black and it moved towards Him and then the shape came apart and it was two shapes and there were voices in the room with Him—
Again, Mr. Young, I must ask, the prosecutor persisted and a small smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. Do you have any recollection of Joseph Young returning at any point?
—the shape came apart and it was two shapes and there were voices in the room with Him and then the light went out and somebody was bumping about and swearing and then there was a sound like a squeaky toy like the pink elephant He had one time that had lost an eye but squeaked when you pushed its belly. There was a little bit of light coming in the window and He could see the shapes on Awesome’s bed and He could hear someone saying something and He could hear Barbie arguing with him softly and then there was heavy breathing and the sounds of shoes hitting the floor and He closed His eyes and He could hear the squeaking noise and the heavy breathing and it went for a long time—
The court was distracted for a moment by a ruckus in the crowd. Cunningham turned to see Orson Young storming down the aisle towards the doors at the back of the room. Barbara was chewing her bottom lip and glancing between the boy and the retreating back of Orson and after a few moments of indecision she stood up and hurried down the aisle behind him, leaving one side of the courtroom empty but for the lone figure of Joseph Young sitting with his shoulders hunched and eyes downcast. There was a sound like a small dog yelping after being trodden on and Cunningham turned to see the boy standing up behind the witness dock and bouncing up and down on his toes. He stayed that way while the large wooden doors thudded closed and then had to be coaxed back into his seat by the bailiff, still clearly agitated. The prosecutor watched the going on with a bland expression and as soon as the boy was seated he launched back into his questions.
Mr. Young” he said, and his voice was loud and sharp. After the shooting, what were—
He opened the driver’s door and the keys were in the keyhole. The street was still empty and the echoes had gone and He climbed in behind the wheel and tried to turn the key but His hands were slippery and wouldn’t do what He wanted them to do and so He wiped them on his green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt and tried again and this time the key turned and the engine started and He roared over the fence and out of the front yard. He had to turn hard to stop from running into Barbie’s trailer and He looked out the window and the door had opened and Awesome was standing there with no shirt on and staring at the car as it went past up the—
—Young, are you sure that you had no assistance in—
—couldn’t find how to turn the lights on and a hand kept falling on the handbrake and He tried to move it back behind His seat but it kept dropping right back like it was trying to stop the car and get out and it was all red and slippery and He didn’t want to touch it anymore and so He kept His hands on the steering wheel. He drove out of the park and onto the big road and there were cars coming both ways and some of them had their lights on and He pressed the pedal hard and the car squealed and then it was out on the big road and heading towards—
—we could go back for a moment, can you remember if there was anybody else present at the moment—
—was sore all the way from His hand up to His shoulder and there was a funny smell in the air. He blinked and there was a noise like tiny bells in His ears and the street was empty except for the two people lying on the ground with clean white shirt and shiny black shoes except the clean white shirts weren’t—
—difficult to believe, Mr. Young, that in a close-knit residential area, nobody appeared after hearing gun shots.
The prosecutor was standing with his hands clasped behind his back and was leaning towards the boy intently. Cunningham shifted uncomfortably in his seat. There were too many things surfacing that he hadn’t known and he couldn’t quite work out what they might all mean. The boy was bouncing up and down in his seat and his eyes, set too far apart in his head, were wide and wild and frightened and Cunningham felt the patient eyes of the crowd behind him pressing down on him. The prosecutor kept peppering the boy with questions as he became more and more agitated.
Where did you take the car once—
—the road for a while and then He saw the salt flats stretching off to the right and He turned off the road and went gliding along the smooth white ground. He pressed the pedal as hard as He could and soon the car was flying over the flat and the sun was going down behind Him and up ahead He could see blue and white and orange and pink and purple and black in layers like a cake in the sky. He kept the car going straight and He didn’t know exactly where He was going but He knew it was over this way somewhere and if He kept going with the sun behind Him He’d get there and then He wouldn’t have them bumping around in the back seat anymore and His hands wouldn’t be all red and slippery and He could take Awesome’s car back and maybe he wouldn’t be mad—
The courtroom doors creaked open and a lone figure slipped in quietly. He didn’t come down the aisle but remained standing at the back of the room. A few of the crowd who were closest to him turned their heads and gave him a disapproving look but none of them said anything and they soon turned their attention back to the court proceedings. Cunningham studied the old man’s strangely lopsided face and his tattered jacket, which was obviously borrowed since it failed miserably to cover his heavy gut, and thought he looked somehow familiar. The old man didn’t seem to have noticed that he had wandered into a courtroom but just stood gazing up at the ceiling. The prosecutor was still persisting with his questions and Cunningham turned his attention back to the boy, who had stopped bouncing up and down and was staring straight ahead.
Mr. Young—
—door opened at the end of the street and Mr. Calahand came out of his trailer. He stopped at his front fence and looked down the street at Him and He looked back at Mr. Calahand and neither of them moved and for a while everything was still and the wind kept on blowing. Then Mr. Calahand started running towards Him down the street and it looked like he was shouting something but the wind took the words away and He couldn’t see the old man’s face very well because it was a long way off but as he got closer it made Him scared and not like the scared He got when He walked under a tree with birds in it but more like the scared He got when Mama wouldn’t wake up and so He grabbed hold of a clean white shirt that wasn’t clean anymore and pulled as hard as He could—
—where exactly did you—
—found the little knob for the lights and turned them on and He could see the salt in front of the car and even though He could feel the car shaking and bumping and He could hear the wind rumbling through the open window the patch of salt in the headlights didn’t change for a long time. Up in the sky He could see a few stars starting to come out but there were grey and sick looking clouds up there as well and they covered up some of the stars and He thought the sky looked like it was getting awful crowded. Soon He could see a road up ahead and He joined it and the car squealed as it came off the salt and the steering wheel jumped in His hands. He followed the road and it went up and down for a while and then it came down one last time and up ahead there was a wide blackness covering the ground and up in the sky the moon was full and it leaked all over the clouds and He could see the clouds and the moon reflected in the lake. He stopped the car near the water and it made a crunching sound and He turned off the lights and lots of new stars appeared in the sky. Mama always said you could make a wish on the first star every night and He looked up but there were lots there now and He couldn’t tell which one had been the first one and so He got out of the car and His yellow rubber boots made footprints in the white ground and each had a little smiley face in the middle. The ones on the left looked sort of mean though because half the smile and one of the eyes had been worn off. He opened the back door and grabbed hold of a clean white shirt and pulled as hard as He could and it landed with a thump on the ground—
—you were found—
—hold of both and pulled as hard as He could towards the water. He stood out on a rock and pushed and there was a big splash and then another one and the clouds and the moon in the black water went all quivery like the sky was being shook and He watched the shapes on the water and he waited for them to go down underneath but they didn’t and then He heard a sound behind Him and He turned around and there were footsteps and a light was coming towards Him and so He jumped into the water and it was cold and His arms and legs were aching and He got some of the water in His mouth and it tasted funny and made His nose sting and His eyes water and He swam until His arm bumped against something floating there and He grabbed hold of the clean white shirt and climbed on top of it to try to make it go under but it wouldn’t and His hands were getting numb but He could feel arms and a chest under the clean white shirt and they felt like cold uncooked cookie dough and they kept bobbing up from the water like His red and blue tugboat with real rubber bumpers did. The grey clouds were sliding over the moon and He could hear the footsteps over His splashing now and then the light appeared on the rock where He had been standing before and the water all around Him lit up and there was a voice shouting and He stopped splashing about and squinted up at the light.
Perchance to Dream
He hung up the phone and closed his eyes, shrugging himself free of the conversation like a snake shedding its skin. He gently gathered up the mottled membrane, folded it neatly and placed it on the crowded shelf labelled unrecoverable. Once it was properly stored he rinsed the mug from yesterday’s morning coffee and set it in the drying rack then went over to his desk to write the necessary note. He opened his pad, flipping past embarrassment and previous letters until he found an empty page.
Dear… he wrote, then paused. As the early fog burned off the room became warm and close and the note waited impatiently for an appropriate addressee to whom it could discharge its release but though he searched thoroughly he could find no fresh ones. They were all either worn through from overuse or so old and stale they turned to dust in his fingers. A bemused fly butting against the window made an electric racket hard to ignore. He stood up from the table and with unhurried motions picked up his chair and moved it to the centre of the room.
The Late Lepidopterist and the Killing Jar
It was the second day of summer and the second to last day of the school term and and as the ten or so tons of bus gingered itself into the small dirt patch of car park the grumbling thunderheads overhead gave up under their weight and finally cracked open. This was rain of the sort that seemed not to fall but rather bloom in the air all around and at once. Thirsty as it was the ground had soon had its fill and more and with a lurching forwards and an inching backwards and a sinking and grinding left then right of its tires the bus guttered to a halt with its backside still half hanging out into the country road. They were some twenty minutes early. Even so, the face peering through the pluvial curtains had been sat as a fixture at the window for some time already.
Clarence had driven up just as the sun started glaring between the paperbark trunks on the hill to the west and showing up bright and cheerful the smeared insect remains on the windscreen. Since Val was killed he couldn’t stay in bed past when he woke up. Squinting, he almost missed the turnoff and swung in hard and at quite a clip, getting a bit sideways as he hit the dirt. He jumped on the breaks, switched off the ignition and sat for a moment to listen to the engine clicking as it cooled and roll his second cigarette of the morning. One before breakfast and one before work. After that it worked out at whenever the urge took him and circumstance allowed. He blew the smoke out the window and watched it eddy in the still air, showing up here and there the sunbeams slipping through the trees. Despite the light at its back he could make out the pale face of the Butterfly Farm from across the tiny car park. The only thing to mark it out as a place of business rather than the home of an impoverished retiree or maybe some reticent naturalist was a modest wooden sign beside the front steps that read Welcome to The Butterfly Farm. He’d stencilled the letters in chalkboard font and dark green paint.
The door of the Hilux slammed shut with a weary creak and an unconvincing clunk and he gave it a thump with his hip to make sure it was closed then turned his eyes to the ground. Whenever he walked about anywhere outdoors, and particularly in the vicinity of the Butterfly Farm, he almost always watched the ground for spiders. The funnel-webs were often out at this time of year and he’d once sent one scurrying into the leaf litter on the edge of the car park. His caution was part rational self-preservation and part violent dislike for the Araneae order in general. He had a healthy respect, verging on awe, for the remarkable success of their particularly extraordinary evolutionary odyssey and the uniquely lethal anatomy it had provided them with, but he found the way they moved distasteful. His bi-weekly excursions into National Parks to collect new specimens for the farm often brought him into much closer contact with those undergrowth assassins than he would have liked.
He escaped any unwanted encounter this morning and let himself into the front room that was notable in the almost pitch dark only for the faint scents of leather, dust and Mortein. The thick trees to the west and north let little light inside til late afternoon and so without electrical assistance the building housed only darkness in the morning and nothing but vague silhouettes til evening. He felt along the wall until he found the switch and the Butterfly Farm burst into colour. Every wall of the front room, the only part of the building open to visitors, was covered by large glass display cases containing a fair, if not entirely comprehensive in regards to the 14 000 species of moths, cross-section of Australia’s native Lepidoptera, along with a sizeable smattering of introduced and overseas specimens. They were arranged by family and genus, with spaces left for the native species still missing. He’d experimented with prettier arrangements based on size and colour but this had often left him at a loss to find a particular specimen while discussing its morphology and habits with a rare inquisitive visitor and so he’d returned to the scientific pattern that he could trace like the veins on the back of his hand. Beside some of the display cases were brief information boards and in one corner hung a television. Clarence switched it on and an ancient Englishman with a tweed jacket and a lisp began explaining the basics of a butterfly’s life cycle. The same documentary played on a loop constantly. It was the first video they’d found that had anything to do with butterflies and there had never seemed to be time to go searching for another one. In the opposite corner, closest to the front door, a cash register sat on a counter guarding the few overpriced plastic butterflies that served as the gift shop and alone in the middle of the room stood a long wooden table, covered as far as physics would allow with a cluttered display of any serious Lepidopterist’s stock paraphernalia. While the English lisp narrated the emergence of a moth from its chrysalis, he unlocked and exited through a door in the back corner of the room.
The hallway led from the front room along the back of the building, with two doors on the right and one at the end. It was windowless and lit sort of charity like by a single energy saving bulb. When he and Val had bought the place the first room on the right had been a combined kitchen and dining room with a split bench separating the two areas and large windows overlooking the bush. Val’s idea had been to convert the space into some sort of interactive activity centre with hands-on displays and butterfly themed games and a whole host of other excitements of that sort, all of which she’d conceived herself and designed down to the smallest detail. The second room on the right was the only indoor bathroom on the property, closed to visitors. Both doors were shut and he passed them by and unlocked the last door at the end of the hallway and slipped inside. So familiar were the resident odours here that they no longer registered save from in the form of a warm sort of sensation. He’d accidentally left his desk lamp on and the low light through its moss green hood lent an aqueous aspect to the precarious architecture of his labours. Stepping carefully between the waist high stacks of papers, books, boxed remains and specimen cases, he reached the cleared space at the centre and eased himself into his chair. There was nothing on his desk but a single book sitting open in the middle. His work of late, such as it had been, had been stuck in a tight slow orbit around a singularly rare and subtly beautiful American specimen. The St. Francis’ Satyr was the gravitational force that had drawn he and Val towards one another by consequence of its pull on each of them towards itself. They collided one night almost a quarter century ago, huddled beneath a cheap tent and three inches of rare North Carolina snow. They were nearing the sadly anticlimactic culmination of some six years of dedication to a certain professor’s obsession and they were cold. Not that there hadn’t been an attraction between them before that time. When they met at university they had quickly become close and on more than one occasion spent a drunken night together. But in the years since her death Clarence had begun more and more to try to dissect what they’d had to find out how much of it was love and how much was simply an intimately shared sense of vacant nostalgia. The book lying open in front of him now was written by their professor and published not long after their expedition concluded unsuccessfully. It described hopes of finding evidence of some interbreeding between the scattered populations of the Mitchell’s Satyr and its fellow subspecies of Neonympha mitchellii the St. Francis’ Satyr and the inconclusiveness of what little evidence was found. Until he’d discovered the book at the bottom of a box in the back of a cupboard in the spare room a week ago Clarence hadn’t even been able to recall the purpose of the study. In the years following their expedition the St. Francis’ Satyr had been pronounced extinct due to over collecting. Though a tiny isolated population was later found, Clarence still kept the three specimens he and Val had collected and preserved hidden deep in the refuse of his office and out of the public displays.
There was still a good six hours til the school group was due to arrive. He’d forgotten which one it was today, but he was sure it was one of the regular four. Most schools in the area booked a tour of the bird sanctuary for their syllabus-mandated native natural science excursion, but it was over thirty dollars a head and so the poorer schools generally came to him instead. Sometimes a teacher from one of the more well off institutions would leave it too late to book the bird sanctuary but they rarely returned. He decided to put aside the book for today. The day before he’d collected a few new specimens and although they weren’t new species, they were good specimens and he needed to pin them sooner rather than later if they were to remain as such. This part of the process always required a supreme act of will on his part in order to overcome is apathy towards it. Once a specimen had been captured in the field his enthusiasm evaporated. Something about a butterfly in flight moved him. The frenetically fluttering pair of wings only just held together by a tiny body describing seemingly desperate but somehow precise trajectories through the foliage was, to his mind, the most eloquent convergence of chaos and grace to be found in all creation. But simply sitting and watching such a spectacle was no form of work. With minimal effort he’d dug himself out a credible space in the academic niche of taxonomy. The couple of published articles bearing his name had hardly shaken the foundations of the discipline but he could say with modesty well intact that his voice was a respected one in the field. Recently, however, he’d had little to say. With a small sigh he reached for the esky beside his desk.
Three hours and six cigarettes later he set the last pinned specimen inside the Tupperware container and closed the lid, taking care that it was airtight. He marked the date on the lid and found a place for it atop a stack of empty display cases. As he sat back down at his desk he noticed for the first time the dry metallic din of cicadas that was coming through the room’s single window and filling the air. Often he hated the bush and the way it crowded up against the building. Val had planned to clear an area to the west and build a fully naturalised butterfly enclosure that would have become their main attraction. The building itself was to be extended to house a nocturama for moths. The plans were still there but he’d never been good with finance and couldn’t get the numbers to work well enough for the bank. He couldn’t say when the cicadas had started up but now that he’d become aware of the sound it nagged incessantly, pulsing steadily without rhythm. He thought about going outside for a smoke to clear his head but his mouth was still dry from the last one so instead he reached again for the professor’s book.
Before the driver had cut the engine, and with little regard for her shoes, a woman jumped down from the bus into the mud carrying a small backpack and a golf umbrella. Within a few moments the deluge had her light yellow spaghetti-strapped summer dress turning almost see-through and clinging about her hips. She struggled to open her umbrella while at the same time keeping an eye on the feet edging slowly down the steps behind her. Clarence watched her movements with no little interest. She looked to be in her early thirties and though her hair was dark with moisture it hung full and loose in the rain. Her sodden dress showed a dancer’s body and a large tattoo across her left shoulder blade. She was apparently the only teacher assigned to the excursion and the stresses of keeping some fifty little balls of energy in line were eventually unleashed upon the uncooperative umbrella. She flung it away, bent all out of shape and the crowd on the bus grew still and then slowly filed down the steps. Clarence took himself away from the window as the class spilled out into the wet, moving to stand by the open door. He checked his watch. It was eleven minutes to two. When he glanced back outside the rain had eased, and then it stopped, like a child who’s grown bored with tormenting some insect and wanders off to find more rewarding entertainment. The children themselves looked up in surprise, and then all of a sudden the car park erupted with shrieks and splashes as almost as one they discovered the mud puddles they were standing in. While the teacher moved quickly to restore order with a few sharp words, Clarence watched one young boy with dark curly hair bending down near a far corner of the veranda. The boy was squatting on his haunches and peering intensely at something on or very near the ground. He looked around for a stick and when he’d found one he picked it up and began poking at the thing gently at first but with a persistent savagery that gathered momentum and lit up his face. The teacher was busy coaxing a group out from under the bus and hadn’t noticed the ensuing mischief. Clarence hesitated for just a moment, then strode out onto the veranda.
Oi! he bellowed. Don’t even think about it son!
The boy looked up, startled. Clarence shouted again and started towards him but in his haste he missed the veranda steps, stumbled and nearly fell. In the second it took him to regain his balance the boy had slipped away from his victim and disappeared. All the children had fallen silent at the sound of an unfamiliar voice raised in anger and were watching him wide-eyed and curious. Their teacher too had turned with raised eyebrows and a little smile. The silence stretched on while Clarence scanned the crowd for the boy. Finally, having no luck, he cleared his throat.
Welcome to the Butterfly Farm, he said as though it was all he’d ever meant to say. Please remember to wipe your feet when you come in.
Without waiting to see if they were following, he turned and went back inside.
He stood under the television as the class filed in, damp and dishevelled. A few scuffed their shoes on the thin mat by the door that had once upon a time offered up an ironic greeting but it made little difference and the carpet was soon tracked all over with muddy little footprints. The teacher was the last through the door and she came leading by the hand a little blonde girl. The child’s eyes were red and her lower lip quivered ominously. Clarence tried to catch the teacher’s eye as she bent down to whisper a word in the girl’s ear but she didn’t seem to notice. He couldn’t hear what was said but as the teacher stood up the child giggled, sniffed and wiped her eyes. With the full complement of the school group now indoors there was little spare space to be had and muffled arguments over who should be standing where could be heard. Despite some having to stand on one another’s toes and keep their hands deep in their pockets in order to keep them to themselves all the children kept a respectable distance from the cluttered table in the middle of the room and from Clarence himself. They looked younger than the groups that normally came through. They may have been only seven or eight. The teacher closed the door gently behind her and stood with her hair dripping onto her shoulders and breasts. It was unlikely to dry any time soon in the close humidity.
Good afternoon, he began. I’m Mr. Reddan and I take care of the Butterfly Farm. It’s good to have you all here today and I hope you’ll learn a thing or two and have a bit of fun at the same time. Excuse me. Please don’t touch that.
A girl standing near the table had grown curious about some of the equipment piled up on it and her fingers were about to brush against a large glass jar but she quickly withdrew them at Clarence’s words.
That big jar right there’s got poison in it, he explained. It’s a Killing Jar. You don’t want to break it or even open it for that matter unless you know what you’re doing. Now, as you can see on the walls all around you there are a lot of different types of butterflies and moths.
Several hands had been raised but he asked them to save their questions for the end. Their natural reticence in new surroundings was beginning to wear off and many were becoming restless, tapping on the display cases and chatting amongst themselves. Somewhere in the crowd was a smack followed by a cry, which drew a sharp look from the teacher. Clarence hurried on with his spiel. He began by setting out the basic life cycle of moths and butterflies, explaining the unique part each stage has to play from the perpetually gorging larvae in the form of caterpillars to the amorous winged imago. He described the process of metamorphosis as best he could without becoming too technical. He then told them about the differences between butterflies and moths; how one’s brightly coloured and the other’s not, how one has a small, delicate body and the other has a solid, furry body, how one rests with it’s wings held together above its back and the other rests with them held straight out to the side, how one comes out during the day and the other comes out at night, how one has straight antennae with lumps on the end and the other has feathery antennae, how one forms a chrysalis and the other forms a cocoon and then he told them about all the exceptions to these rules. He told them how in Australia there were more than thirty times more species of moth than species of butterfly, despite the latter seeming more prominent since they come out mostly during the day. He referred to the habit moths have of flying towards artificial sources of light, even to their deaths, and mentioned that most people considered this a result of them using the moon and stars for navigation though nobody could prove it for certain. He pointed out some of the more common species in the display cases that they might have seen in their own backyards and told them about their feeding habits and what sort of flowers they should grow if they wanted to attract them. He touched on why butterflies display such brilliant colouring patterns and how the effects are produced and finally detailed the many ways butterflies and moths interact with their ecosystems, from symbiotic relationships between some caterpillars and ants to the pollinating role of adult butterflies. When he was finished he asked if they had any questions and four or five hands shot straight up. He nodded at the closest one, which belonged to a pale girl with carrot hair and a receding chin.
What’s a Killing Jar? she asked and the other raised hands all disappeared.
Well, a Killing Jar is what we use to kill a butterfly or moth after we catch it. It prevents the specimen from becoming damaged in the process. Any other questions?
The children were quiet for a moment and Clarence was about to unmute the television when a boy’s voice piped up from the back of the class.
Why do you have to kill the butterflies? Are they all dead?
We need to kill them so that we can study them. If you try and get up close to a butterfly while its still alive then it mostly just flies away. If you restrain it then it hurts itself trying to escape and you end up with a damaged specimen. Butterflies are beautiful to look at in the wild but if you want to study them in detail you need to kill some. Not many, just a few. They don’t suffer. They just go to sleep. And yes, I’m afraid the only butterflies we have here are the ones you see on the walls. There are a few in my office but they’re dead too.
But why do you have to kill the butterflies? This time it was the little blonde girl from outside who spoke. Her tiny fists were clenched full of the teacher’s dress and her voice was small and close to tears again. Why do you have to study them?
Because, Clarence began and he was ready to launch into his rehearsed explanation of the important role of research in the conservation effort when the unbidden image of three St. Francis’ Satyrs sitting in desiccated stasis in a box deep in his office took the words away from him.
Because that’s what I do, he said eventually.
But why don’t you have any alive butterflies?
Well, it’s very
I want to see the alive ones.
expensive…
They don’t move or anything.
I need to go to the toilet.
They’re boring all dead.
We get little yellow butterflies in
This is a big one.
my backyard that look like the little yellow flowers.
Jacob poked his tongue out
Miss, I really need
at me.
to go.
The chatter welled up until Clarence stopped trying to follow it and instead busied himself adjusting the volume on the television while he waited for the teacher to restore order so he could get them all watching the documentary and then step out for a cigarette. But the seconds passed and the chatter got louder and no sharp clapping of hands or barked commands broke the rising racket and when he turned back around the door was open and he could see the teacher standing outside with her back to him talking on her mobile phone. With his heart beginning to thump hard in his chest he turned the volume right up on the television and threaded his way through the crush of children. He was almost to the door when he caught side of the young boy with the curls again. He was standing next to the little blonde girl and whispering something hard into her her and Clarence watched the girl’s eyes grow wide and her mouth form a little ‘o’ of fear. He changed course and the boy saw his approach and his lips snapped shut.
Here, Clarence said to the girl took her gently by the shoulder and steered her outside. He sidled up behind the teacher with the girl close by him but she was speaking quietly and with some heat into her phone and didn’t notice. Her hair had dried a little and hinted at a natural hue towards dirty blonde. He hesitated a moment unsure of whether, or how, to interrupt. He was still undecided when she suddenly pressed the phone against her chest and turned on him with eyebrows raised and lips pursed a little. Even out here the commotion of her charges ruffled up the air and the seconds ticked by without a word between them as Clarence waited with what he hoped was a beseeching look for some sort of reaction on her part to the hubbub inside but all that came was a slight raising of her eyebrows.
Well? What?
Clarence never answered. Before he could get a single word out there came from inside the sound of shattering glass. He and the teacher both turned in time to see the boy with dark curly hair sway and then stumble to the ground beside the remains of a lidless jar. For what seemed like a very long time there was no sound but the drilling of cicadas and it was this stretch of seconds that Clarence cradled carefully with an unfamiliar thrill that he imagined was much like a person would feel at the discovery of a new species.
The Eighth Green
The Cormorant’s Bluff Golf Course isn’t widely known. It lies on the outskirts of a minor coastal town once made prosperous by a long since departed whaling industry. A small museum inhabits what used to be the whaling station. Its collection of grainy photographs featuring bearded men astride the shapeless forms that whale carcasses assume when hauled from the water attracts few visitors. The dank ruins of a colonial prison attract even fewer and the seismography centre none at all. The town hugs a glacier-carved bay between two wide headlands. When the wind blows from the south it comes funnelled through the heads with an unspellable howl and brings word of the ice-locked continent across the water. Cormorant’s Bluff is the name given to the eastern-most headland and to the golf course that adorns its back.
The course was originally built by a wealthy local resident motivated more by the desire to have one nearby than any hope that it might ever turn a profit. His name was Donald Arthur and he was considered eccentric even before he decided to put an eighteen-hole golf course on top of a windy hill beside a town of barely two thousand people. He financed and designed it himself and though many at the time expected the result to be a disaster of idiosyncrasy made manifest it is largely unremarkable in playing style. There is no par above a five or below a three and most hazards adhere fairly strictly to links conventions. It does, however, have two noteworthy features. The first is the stark beauty of its views. The eastern headland is higher than the western one and extends further out into the ocean so that on days when the fog keeps away a player on the back nine can look out and see endless rocky projections stirring the grey sea to lather all the way down the tapering coastline.
The other is the eighth green. Among the locals its known as Don’s Deadfall and is spoken of with some pride by those who have played it. The eighth and ninth holes both extend onto a geological anomaly in the form of a wide overhang that juts out over a rock pool formation. Over the years this overhang has been worn on the under side by waves at high tide leaping up off the rocks below to the point where a small section has fallen through. For reasons unknown Mr. Arthur drew his designs such that the resulting two metre wide hole sits in the very centre of the eighth green. The rock pools beneath it are thus littered with lost golf balls and the children who come at low tide to look for crabs and the clinging molluscs that spit water when disturbed like to collect these strange additions to the biome and bounce them hard against the rocks so they sail high out to sea.
Andrew had never been much of a golfer but it was he who suggested they play a round. He’d seen the oversized sign at the driveway to the clubhouse and gotten an urge he couldn’t account for. Dylan wanted to visit the seismography centre.
It’s one of only two in the whole state, he said.
That’s because the last earthquake in this state was in about 1865, Andrew countered.
The last big one maybe but there are still all sorts of little tremors going on all the time that you can’t even feel but these machines manage to pick up. They let you actually see all the shifting of the earth as it moves under your feet. If volcanos are the tantrums of a volatile planet then these tremors are like its personal diary. It won’t take long and then we’d still have time to check out the whaling museum and the prison as well.
They both looked to Sean for the deciding vote and he rubbed his chin and squinted at nothing in particular while he deliberated.
Well, he said slowly. It has been a while since I hit the links.
The three of them were standing in the narrow street behind The Railway Hotel. Their bikes were parked around the corner in an alley than ran steeply down towards the docks.
Sean glanced at the sky. It was clear and the hotel sheltered them from the cold wind that had buffeted their bikes about as they rode across the ridges and into town the evening before and which was still blowing hard off the water. He turned to Dylan and raised his eyebrows in a kind of appeal.
There could be some pretty spectacular views up there, he said.
Dylan shrugged and rubbed his gloved hands together.
Golf it is then, he said. I might just use the facilities first though.
He headed back inside and Sean and Andrew hugged themselves and studied the ground at their feet as they waited. Neither spoke. Their itinerary had never included any sightseeing here but yesterday Sean had broken his clutch lever on the cliff-hewn road above town. A strong gust of wind caught his bike mid-corner and caused him to clip a small outcrop as he fought to avoid the sheer wall of rock rising up on his left. It was a simple job to fix but it was Sunday and the town’s only garage wasn’t open. Just twenty-four hours into a three-week trip they were set to lose a full day. It couldn’t be helped and from the beginning the trip had been planned more as an escape than an expedition but there was a schedule nonetheless and Andrew bridled at the delay. Sean sucked his teeth and studied the rear of the hotel. Like many buildings in the town its walls were of a roughly cut dark stone that held the sheen of damp even when there had been no rain.
After a few minutes the back door swung open and Dylan emerged and jogged up the set of concrete steps to the street. He nodded and the three of them headed around the corner to where the bikes stood close up against the side of the hotel. Sean walked around his familiar old machine and inspected the broken lever in the fresh light of day. The break had occurred halfway down its length and the stub that remained was bent sharply downwards. He’d managed to use it well enough to get into town and find the hotel but they’d all agreed it was too dangerous to ride with on the open road. He tested it now and could only grip it effectively with two fingers. Andrew and Dylan had both retrieved their helmets and Sean moved to unlock the large top box pannier fitted to the tail of his bike. As on Andrew and Dylan’s bikes there was also one attached to either side and on ride days the three panniers carried all they’d calculated they would need for three weeks. With a few clothes and toiletries removed to their rooms for the night their helmets just fitted into the top boxes. Andrew gave a strong kick and his sleek black BMW roared into life. Sean carefully squeezed onto the tiny seat between Andrew’s stocky frame and the top box while he was still buckling his helmet. It was a tight fit but Dylan’s bike had no pillion and was smaller anyway. Sean glanced over and saw Dylan kneeling down and performing a complicated ritual involving the fuel pump. He’d owned his antique machine for longer than either Sean or Andrew had known him and it had suffered repairs so often that most of the engine could claim to have been built in his garage. When he was satisfied he rose and climbed astride the bike. His second attempt at a kick-start brought the motor to a spluttering idle.
They pulled out onto the empty street and Sean was pitched backwards as Andrew opened the throttle. Dylan responded in kind and as his little machine fought bravely to match the pace set by Andrew’s factory-tuned BMW the Sunday morning silence was rent by the roar and whine of duelling engines.
The clubhouse was open but seemingly empty when they arrived. They passed through the front doors and into a single vast room with plush blue carpeting and a high ceiling. At the far end was a counter guarding a small display of golfing equipment. The rest of the room was completely bare. Andrew headed straight for the counter while the others wandered towards the tall windows that lined the entire left side of the room. Outside was a tiled veranda bearing several large tables but no chairs. Beyond the veranda a gentle hill rose up to meet the sky and on its crest a copse of pines were offering deep bows against their will.
Andrew reached the counter and looked around for a bell. He found one and rang it twice. There was a glass door in the wall behind the counter but the room on the other side was dark and Andrew could see no movement there. He rang the bell again. From the next room came a noise like something falling to the floor from a great height and then the door opened to reveal a fat man sweating heavily in a shirt and tie. He beamed at Andrew and closed the door behind him.
Morning, he said. What can I do for you?
Party of three for eighteen holes, said Andrew.
The fat man nodded and started punching numbers into the cash register. He was balding and what strands of hair remained were plastered across his shining scalp.
You gents should have the course to yourselves this morning I reckon, he said. Good day for it too. Do you have your own clubs or were you looking to hire?
Hire, said Andrew.
Dylan and Sean had left the window to come and stand behind him.
The fat man read off a list of the various sets of clubs they had on offer and their prices. Andrew asked for three sets of the most expensive and felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and saw Dylan wearing a slightly worried expression.
I don’t need anything that fancy, he said. I only ever use five or six clubs in a whole round.
Don’t worry, said Andrew. It’s my shout.
Dylan knotted his brow and shook his head.
No, he said. I can’t let you do that.
It’s done. If it wasn’t for me you’d be waist deep in beeping machines right now and happy as a clam I’m sure. I gotta spend my money while I still can anyway.
He grinned and Dylan responded with a weak smile.
Well if you insist, he said.
The fat man had been watching this exchange carefully but as soon as Andrew turned back to face him he quickly resumed his business with the cash register.
Ok then, he said after punching in a few more numbers. Will that be cash or credit?
Credit, said Andrew as he struggled to tug his wallet free from his back pocket.
Sean had meanwhile wandered back to the window and he turned now with a puzzled look.
It doesn’t look like you get a whole lot of people through here, he said. No offence or anything.
The fat man looked over and gave a cheerful shrug.
None taken, he said. You’re right. You lot are the first we’ve had through since Friday. Suits me right down to the bone.
Then how do you stay afloat? This place must cost a fortune to maintain.
The bloke who built it died a very rich man and left it all to a trust that administers the club. Through investments and whatnot the trust makes more money than it can spend so this place will probably still be going strong long after we’re all dead and buried even if it never sees another player.
Sean nodded slowly and turned back to the window.
Huh, he said to the scene outside.
The fat man handed Andrew back his credit card.
All sorted, he said. Let me just get your clubs and you’re ready to go.
He disappeared back into the dark room beyond the glass door. A minute later he returned carrying a golf bag full of clubs.
Here’s one, he said and heaved the bag up onto the counter. He was panting heavily and stood bent at the waist with his hands on his knees to catch his breath.
You gents from the city? he asked between wheezes.
We are, said Andrew.
Where you headed?
North.
Business or pleasure?
Andrew shrugged.
Pleasure I guess, he said.
The fat man nodded absently as though he hadn’t heard any of Andrew’s answers and straightened up with a sigh. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt then went to retrieve the next set of clubs.
From the moment they crested the hill that hid the first tee the day proved unpleasant. The sun shone bright in an empty sky but atop the exposed headland the wind bit bitter and carried shots well away from their intended target. Nobody mentioned the miserable conditions. Andrew’s few attempts to keep up a conversation were snatched away and lost in the gale and so they soon lapsed into a grim silence. They neither cursed at mistakes nor celebrated good shots but merely went about the business of completing the round with a stoic resolve.
Dylan was far and away the strongest player of the three. Sean had a longer drive but he sliced it more often than not and his short game was a mess while Andrew was limited to endless hooks and overhits and mullygrubbers only occasionally interspersed with unaccountable moments of brilliance. The fat man at the clubhouse had given them each a scorecard before they set out and they filled these in dutifully after each hole with fingers made numb by the cold. By the time they finished the seventh hole Dylan had an eight-stroke lead. Andrew was next with Sean a further three strokes back.
The eighth was a right dogleg par 4. There was only a narrow rough along the left between the fairway and where the land fell away some six sheer metres to the water. A deep bunker and a thin copse of pines that obscured the green from view guarded the inside of the dogleg. From the tee they were driving straight into the wind. Sean was up first and he broke his pre-shot routine to sniff and wipe away the water streaming from his eyes then steadied himself and brought the club back with his distinctive long slow motion. He swung down hard and the ball flew off high and to the right. They watched it sail towards the pines and just skim the canopy before it dropped from view. Sean sniffed again and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Dylan was next and he executed a solid drive down the middle of the fairway while Sean and Andrew stood off to the side blowing into their hands. Andrew stepped up quickly and struck his drive low. It was a mishit but he got a lucky run on and ended up just a few metres short of Dylan’s lie. They hoisted their bags without a word and set off down the fairway. They had to lean hard into the wind to make any headway at all.
Once Andrew and Dylan had made their approach shots they all moved towards the green and scoured the ground for Sean’s ball as they went. Their eyes were fixed on the grass at their feet and so it wasn’t until they reached the very edge of the green where Sean’s ball had finally come to rest in the froghair that they looked up and saw the orifice sitting absurdly between themselves and the pin. The wind was blowing across the hole and drawing forth a low moan. They stared at one another for a moment then dropped their bags as one and moved forward with cautious steps. The hole dragged in the manicured ground around it like a blue star and by some marvel of engineering the groundskeepers had managed to maintain a putting surface all the way down to the almost vertical point where soil gave way to rock. With Andrew a step ahead of the other two they edged closer and stopped just where the earth began to slope away. It was high tide and by craning their necks they could peer down through the opening into the churning waters below.
What the actual fuck, said Andrew under his breath.
The others didn’t hear but Sean stood slowly shaking his head in apparent concurrence. Dylan caught Andrew’s eye and they shared a long look of disbelief before the latter broke into a grin that was lent a manic aspect by the shock of storm-tossed hair framing the face above it. It proved infectious and Dylan was soon grinning back at him in spite of the gale that flecked his cheek with sea foam.
Both Andrew and Dylan had landed their approach shots on the green. Dylan’s ball sat on a small raised ledge near the cliff edge while Andrew had landed midway between Sean’s lie and the hole and so as they eventually made their way back from the strange abyss Sean pulled out his putter and made ready to take his second stroke. His direct line to the cup was blocked by the hole so he aimed for a spot a little to the right to set up a second putt. He struck it cleanly but he’d miscalculated the extent of the gradient and the ball soon began to curve towards the hole. It slowly gathered pace as the ground became steeper until it was racing straight for oblivion. Sean leapt forward as though to catch it before it disappeared but it was already gone. He turned to his companions and such was his look of profound indignation that they both burst into laughter. He struggled with himself for a moment then grinned sheepishly and went to retrieve another ball from his bag.
By the time Andrew’s turn came round Sean had lost three balls to the hole and Dylan had lost two. Each was met with a pantomime of mock despair from whoever had taken the shot and enthusiastic cheers and applause from the other two. Once Sean and Dylan had both finally found the cup Andrew took his putter and made a careful survey of the lie. His position was much the same as Sean’s had been. It was a good forty feet from his ball to the cup and the hole sat squarely across the direct line. After studying the gradient from several angles he rose from his haunches and solemnly held up a single finger towards his spectators who were watching closely and grinning in anticipation. He took up his stance with careful precision and executed a few practice strokes then shuffled forward into position.
As soon as he made contact he knew it was good. The ball’s trajectory was slightly to the right of the hole and soon began to succumb to the gravitational pull and curve in to the left. Dylan and Sean started to cheer but quickly fell silent. Andrew had put plenty of pace into his shot and the ball slid past the hole and broke its orbit to keep travelling on a new trajectory straight for the cup. Andrew ran around the hole and followed his shot as his companions moved in closer. The ball seemed to be holding its line but at the last second took a slight deviation and rolled by on the lip of the cup. Dylan and Sean both groaned but Andrew held up the same solemn finger and kept his eyes fixed on the ball. It rolled a little way on past the cup and then stopped and after a second’s pause began to trickle slowly back down the most gradual of slopes. Dylan and Sean hurried forward and crowded in close to watch as it rolled steadily towards the cup. With barely two centimetres to go it began to slow down. Its line was taking it towards the centre of the cup but the closer it got the more it slowed until it perched on the very lip and stayed there. The three men all watched and waited for it to drop but as the seconds dragged by and it still refused to move Dylan and Sean began to sigh and mutter. Andrew remained stone still. Dylan gave him a pat on the back but he didn’t seem to notice. Sean sniffed and shook his head.
It’s a shit of a game sometimes, he said loud enough to be heard over the wind.
Andrew’s only response was to sit down where he was and cross his arms over his knees. His eyes never left the ball. The other two stood by on either side and exchanged gestures of bewilderment across the top of his head. After several minutes of this Dylan crouched down beside his friend. Andrew frowned but didn’t shift his gaze.
You two go on, he said. I’ll catch up.
Dylan nodded slowly.
How long are you going to wait? he asked.
Til it drops.
What if it doesn’t?
It will.
Dylan stood up again and he and Sean shared a worried look. Far out to sea a heavy bank of clouds was gathering. Sean scratched his chin as he figured the wind and the distance then bent towards Andrew’s ear.
Listen mate, he said. She’ll be raining in an hour or so and we don’t want to be riding back in that. All the wet weather gear’s back at the hotel.
Andrew gave a tiny shake of his head as though flicking away a fly or some errant strand of hair.
I don’t mind, he said. If I’m not back in time just go and I’ll meet you at the hotel.
I won’t fit on Dylan’s bike.
Take mine. The keys are in my golf bag. I’ll ride Dylan’s back.
Sean took a deep breath and straightened up then he and Dylan moved a little way apart to speak amongst themselves. After much discussion and many concerned glances at the unmoving figure behind them they eventually came to some consensus and Dylan returned to crouch beside Andrew again.
Alright, he said. We’re going to head off. Just make sure you get back to the clubhouse before dark. We’ll tell the bloke to drive out and pick you up if you’re not back by dusk. You don’t want to be stumbling blind around these cliffs. I’ll put the keys to my bike in your golf bag.
Andrew gave a small nod and then hesitated for a moment before speaking.
You don’t need to worry, he said. It’ll drop. I just need to see it.
Dylan looked towards the ball poised on the brink of the cup and then back at Andrew.
Fair enough I guess, he said.
He stood up and he and Sean walked off towards the golf bags. At the edge of the green they had one last look back and saw framed against the sky a figure sitting like some Buddha of the occident, utterly still but for the mane of dark hair that scrabbled about his head in the wind.
As soon as he sat down Andrew was no longer troubled by the gale coming up off the water. He found a sort of comfort in the way it drowned all other sounds in a howling silence. Once Sean and Dylan had left he refocused on the ball still hovering on the lip of the cup. The longer he stared at it the more he became convinced that it hadn’t stopped at all but was still rolling towards the hole at an exponentially decreasing rate like a curve approaching its asymptote. He thought he might detect evidence of its glacial progress if he could only stop his eyes watering for long enough. This proved impossible and he eventually relaxed and sat back with a small sigh to wait.
Time went by with only the slow shrinking of the sun before the gathering storm for a measure of its passage. The cloudbank moved steadily towards the land and the air grew chill and Andrew hugged his knees to his chest to keep warm. He kept one eye on the ball while the other kept drifting towards the hole away to his left. From where he sat he could see only the ground sloping away and then rising again on the other side such that it just looked like a deep depression but in his mind he saw straight down to the sea roiling on the rocks below. His backside became numb and he began rocking backwards and forwards in time to a song in his head to get the blood flowing.
The ball still hadn’t dropped and the clouds were almost overhead when he heard a faint cry come over the wind. He glanced up and saw a lone bird hovering above the cliff not far away. It faced into the gale and its pinions thrummed wildly though it achieved no forward movement. Andrew was no bird watcher but he knew by its black plumage and long neck that it wasn’t a gull and he figured it must be a cormorant since the golf course was named for them. It hung in the air a moment longer then cocked its head to one side and suddenly tucked its wings in close to its body and dived out of sight. When he turned back to resume his vigil the ball was gone. For almost a minute he sat blinking at the spot where it had been and then slowly crawled forwards on hands and knees to peer into the cup. Though it was growing dark under the storm he could clearly see his ball sitting there at the bottom.
He stood up and stretched and then began the long walk back to the clubhouse. As he picked up his golf bag there was a clap of thunder and he gave the leaden sky an ironic look. He whistled a little tune to himself as it started to rain.
Andrew was the last person ever to play the eighth green. They had Sean’s bike repaired early the next morning and were winding through rainforest on their way to a campsite high in the mountains when the overhang collapsed. Seven children playing in the rock pools below were crushed to death. It took them several days to retrieve all the bodies and in that time the local authorities launched an investigation. They soon discovered that the seismography centre had recorded a tremor of 3.2 on the Richter scale the afternoon before. At the subsequent coroner’s enquiry several geologists testified that the tremor likely caused a small fissure and the overhang then collapsed under the weight of the rain that soaked the town all that night and well into the following day. After several weeks the coroner found that nobody was to blame and no charges were ever laid.
The tragedy made the evening news but neither Sean nor Dylan nor Andrew heard about it as they spent the next few nights camping in the wilderness. It wasn’t until well after they’d returned home and Andrew’s divorce had been finalised that they heard the story of the disaster but it was only mentioned by way of the name of the town and none of them had noted this detail when they passed through. The three of them were at a barbeque to celebrate Sean’s recent promotion and they were watching Sean’s youngest going about with a lighter and reaching up with great difficulty to light the Tiki torches spaced around the yard against the descending night. A friend of Dylan’s from Chile had taken up a guitar and was sitting over by the swimming pool picking a few notes. The group at the table included Andrew, Dylan, Sean, Sean’s wife Helen and a friend of hers she’d met in Croatia while they were both traveling whose name was Sarah. When Helen had told them the story she’d seen on the news and couldn’t get out of her head there’d been a short and deeply respectful silence from all.
What were they doing out there anyway? asked Andrew.
They didn’t say, said Helen. Does it matter?
No, not really.
Sarah opened a fresh bottle of wine and topped off their glasses then set it next to the five empties occupying the middle of the table. She raised her glass.
To what never was and what never will be, she said.
Here, here, they all said softly and drank.
Speaking of what never was, said Dylan. Did Helen ever tell you about Andrew’s putt of legend?
Sarah glanced at Andrew and smiled and shook her head.
Well, said Dylan and he sat back in his chair with his glass resting against his cheek and turned to Andrew. Shall I?
Andrew shrugged and looked out over the toxic sunset as Dylan began to tell the tale in indulgent detail while Sean and Helen shared a few private words. When he was done Helen clucked her tongue at Andrew.
So not a single witness, she said.
Well, said Andrew. There was this bird you see. Now, if I ever met the bird again I don’t quite know how I’d go getting it to tell anyone anything so I don’t go down there looking for it more than once a year or so but it saw the whole business right enough.
Helen threw her head back and laughed and even the man from Chile stopped his aimless plucking to listen at the richness of it. She was still laughing when she stood up from the table.
Give me a shout next time you go hunting for it, she said. I have a bit of a way with birds. Now, if you’ll excuse me I have a date with the salad bar.
She walked off still smiling and shaking her head.
Andrew turned to Helen.
What’d she mean? he asked. Does she keep parrots or something?
Not that I know of, said Helen. I know her girlfriend works at the zoo though.
Oh, said Dylan. Didn’t you say she used to be married?
She was once but it didn’t last that long apparently.
Andrew was listening with half an ear while he watched the skin above Sarah’s skirt disappear and reappear as she bent over the various bowls and plates spread out on the buffet table.
You don’t suppose I could get her number do you? he asked.
Sean paused in the act of raising his glass to his lips and gave him a suspicious look.
You can’t be serious, he said.
Where there’s a will there’s a way, said Andrew and winked
Crocodile Tears
I have seen a few unspeakable things in my life. Years and years ago when I was going to school and before they had automatic doors on trains my friends and I used to lean out of the moving carriages to impress the girls. One day a boy called Kieran Smith was leaning out and looking the wrong way back down the train when we entered a tunnel. All of a sudden his body was headless and then it was gone. We never heard if they found the head or the body or if they got chewed up on the tracks.
So that was one and there have been plenty of others, like sheep all shredded up from being caught in barbed wire fences overnight or a calf bleeding out after a badly botched castration but no, nothing’s come close to the sight of Erin’s leg, still wearing her work boot, surfacing in the mouth of a crocodile.
It’s strange. As I’m looking down, shivering and still numb with shock, I know for an incontrovertible fact that the creature below in the water acts on little more than raw animal instinct and that its brain lacks anything like the complexity necessary for thoughts of malice or spite or any sort of sadistic thrill at torments inflicted on another living thing. Yet this leaves me at a loss to explain why it followed me to my brittle perch and fought the current to flaunt before me the pieces of my dead wife. It had its meal. There was nothing more for it here. So it’s hard not to attribute its behaviour to some malevolent impulse encoded into its predator’s DNA. I’ve read that crocodiles are the only animals that instinctively view humans as food. There are plenty of stories about lions and other big cats hunting humans but those cases are the exception and the result of learned behaviour. A shark will leave a person to bleed to death once they’ve taken an exploratory bite and discovered they’re not a seal. But any croc that’s big enough will stalk and eat a human. Forget the snake. In the natural world this thing is nothing if not our nemesis; the perfect hunter of mammals, perfected before the first mammal was ever born, hiding death within life-giving water. People talk about crocodile tears and I don’t know if that’s a myth or not but it makes you think. If they can cry, surely it means they can understand pain. And if they can understand pain then it stands to reason some could enjoy it. It’s strange what goes through your head in these sorts of moments.
Anyway, she was gone under the flood before I even knew we were being hunted. I couldn’t see or hear a thing over the rain on the river and I knew she was a strong swimmer anyway. When I reached the tree and was able to pull myself up by a low-hanging branch I looked back and she wasn’t there. Since the water had started to rise yesterday morning I’d thought of little else but swollen tributaries and drowning stock and so when I couldn’t see her I thought the water had taken her. I was about to dive back in to search when the croc surfaced just a meter away. I froze in fear for my life and then I saw what it had in its jaws. For a moment I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing but then I did and despair opened a hole in my chest through which everything I was drained out. My will went with it and I would have given up my grip on the branch and slid uncaring into the water if I hadn’t remembered Becca, asleep back at the house and less a mother already. Instead, I cling to the thin branches of the drowning tree and after watching me for a minute or so the animal sinks back under, taking with it the last of my wife.
So now I’m waiting and hoping for some kind of rescue while the water gets steadily higher. I study the surface but any ripples signalling the hidden presence of a crocodile are lost in the roiling current. It’s flowing strongly but not so hard or so fast that I couldn’t swim it if I had to. I look out to the far bank and figure it’s about a hundred meters to where the land rises up in a low hill but the more minutes creep by the higher the water rises and the further the bank recedes. Behind me the river stretches off into the distance unbroken except for the crowns of a few trees that the cattle use for shade and which are now struggling to stay above the floodwaters. I hesitate for one last second, looking to the sky for a rescue chopper or any other form of deliverance, but nothing comes and so I close my eyes and slip into the water as gently as I can. My body’s tense and shivering and with a deep breath I strike out for the bank.
I haven’t gone far when I see it out of the corner of my eye. There’s the long low profile with the knotted ridges over the eyes and nostrils and my heart hammers hard in my chest and I panic I’m trying to swim as fast as I can but I don’t seem to be moving despite all my thrashing while my pursuer cuts effortlessly through the water and glides steadily closer and closer until it’s upon me and I can see it’s just a branch being carried along on the current. From that point on every piece of debris I see drifting close on the tide looks reptilian and I’m a shattered creature when I finally crawl up onto the bank and collapse.
Thank you Mr. Cooper. I know that can’t have been easy for you but we just needed to clarify a couple of things. We appreciate your help.
That’s fine. I’m just glad it’s all done with. Can I see my daughter now?
Sure, sure. There’s just one thing though. Now, this crocodile that you saw with a leg in its mouth. I need you to think very carefully now. Is there any chance at all, and I mean any possible chance, that the leg you saw wasn’t Erin’s?
Well, I suppose…
Because we found your wife’s body a few kilometres down river. Finding her was pure chance. We got a call from a Mr. Frank Bruce saying that he’d been trying to rescue a calf from the floodwaters and had found a woman’s body but there was no leg missing. In fact, she was almost completely intact except that some fish had gotten at her eyes and tongue. They haven’t done the autopsy yet but the forensic team did note what looks very much like a brown snake bite on her right ankle. We’re fairly confident that was the cause of death but the real mystery is how she came to be in the river weighted down with cinder blocks and secured with rope. Mr. Cooper?
The Gentleman Caller
David had just woken from a series of confused but not unpleasant dreams when his phone rang. It lay on the bedside table and the wan luminescence of its screen stirred up all the nearby shadows as it came to life. The ringtoned strains of Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum featuring additional syncopated percussion from the vibration against the table soon followed. He grabbed at the phone and muted it against his chest as Lucy rolled over beside him. She muttered something about cats in the attic then sighed and slipped back into sleeping breaths. David lifted the phone a little to check the caller ID and saw it was a private number then glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to five. He swore under his breath then slid out from under the covers and sat naked on the edge of the bed to answer the call.
Hello? he whispered.
There was a rustling sound at the other end of the line then silence.
Hello? he tried again a little louder.
Still there was no reply and his whole upper body sank a little. He went to hang up but then paused. After a moment’s reflection he stood up and opened the door as quietly as he could. A thin shaft of light came in and fell across Lucy lying coiled in her dark hair with a single strand strung across her mouth. He went out into the living room and closed the door gently behind him.
This is getting beyond a joke, he said to the silent caller.
It was dark outside and the only light came from a table lamp that had been carelessly left on. He watched his naked reflection in the sliding glass door that lead onto the balcony as he stooped to grab his cigarettes from the coffee table then sat down on the couch with a deep sigh.
Do you really have nothing better to do at five o’clock in the morning? he asked.
There was no reply and he put the phone down on the coffee table while he lit a cigarette. He blew the smoke towards the ceiling then turned the TV on and hit the mute button. He flicked through the channels til he found the twenty-four hour news then picked up the phone again.
I mean I have to head to work in a couple of hours so I don’t really give a shit. You nearly woke my girlfriend up though so I guess I have to make some sort of a stand. Not that I think it’ll do any good. I know a lost cause when I see one. Or get a series of inappropriate phone calls from one.
He took the phone away from his ear to check if the call was still active. It was.
You know this is just costing you money mate. Isn’t there something else you’d rather be spending it on? If you’d just saved up instead of calling me every other night I reckon you could’ve bought yourself an hour with an only slightly overweight call girl by now. It’s a much more effective way of relieving feelings of desperate inadequacy and crushing loneliness than breathing down a phone line I’m sure. But then again maybe not. I guess you’re the expert on such things. At this point I’m not even that pissed off any more. I’m genuinely curious about what sort of pathetic existence a person would have to be leading to resort to this sort of shit for their entertainment or whatever it is this does for you. You can think you’re getting to me if you want but you’re not. I was awake when you called. Believe me or don’t, I really don’t care.
David paused to stub out his cigarette and light another one. The television was showing images of a conflict somewhere in the Middle East. Black-veiled women wailed on their knees amidst indecipherable piles of rubble and moustached men gesticulated furiously at the carnage and at then the camera and then at the carnage once more. David kept his eyes on the newsreel at the bottom of the screen as the overnight sports results began to roll past.
There is one question that’s been plaguing me, he said after a while. You see, something tells me that you don’t currently have a job that requires you to be up and about at such an ungodly hour. It’s just a hunch so tell me if I’m wrong.
He waited for a moment then went on.
I’ll go ahead and take your silence to mean I’m right. So the question that’s bothering me is whether you planned ahead and set your alarm just so you could wake up and call me when you figured it would be most inconvenient or whether you’ve been up all night drinking cheap vodka and picking your nose and whacking off to granny porn and the bright idea of giving me a call just swam up into your head. It’s a split decision for me and either way when I try to form some sort of a picture of you in my mind as you are right now I see a toad-like creature sitting in the dark surrounded by biscuit crumbs and boxes of old magazines and balled up tissues with one hand down the front of your stained tracksuit pants. It’s not a pretty sight. Now I don’t reckon you’re going to tell me which it is and I don’t reckon I’d believe you even if you did so I’m in a real pickle here. It’s driving me nuts.
He lay back and put his feet up on the coffee table. A few of the larger toes were bearing dirt under the nails and he frowned and searched around for the nail clippers until he found them on the floor under a pair of Lucy’s jeans. As he pruned he ruminated further.
I bet you haven’t had a girl in a good year or two or maybe more. I’m sure there are plenty of factors at work there but they can smell desperation you know. Apparently it has an odour a bit like rotting meat, sweet to the point of sickness and we’ve all evolved to associate it with death. Showering every now and then does help though I’m told, so maybe give that a crack. I would suggest trying to preserve a certain level of self-respect but all evidence points to that ship having sailed and sunk off the coast of somewhere or other with the captain drunk at the wheel so that’s about as much advice as I can give I’m afraid. I do hope you appreciate it though. I don’t just hand out pearls of wisdom to any old prank caller.
He stopped talking for a moment and listened to the breath without voice at the other end of the line. He was waiting for some reaction but the breathing didn’t even change pace.
I’m gonna tell you a story, he said eventually. A mate of mine once told me about an old boyfriend of his sister’s. She dated him for a few months and my mate said he seemed like a pretty decent guy on the few occasions he met him. A bit quiet maybe but alright to have a beer with and whatnot. He was an Irish bloke I think he said. Anyway, my mate’s sister seemed to like him well enough and everything was going ok but after like three months she’d still never been to his place. He was flatting with a couple of people in an apartment in the city but every time she suggested they go there he made some excuse like the floors were getting redone or they were having the place fumigated or something like that and so they just ended up going back to hers. Still, she thought nothing of it. She was a sweet girl. I met her a few times. She grew up way out in the country and was one of those what you see is what you get kind of people. Not in a tomboy sort of way but she just didn’t have a suspicious bone in her body. So they were getting pretty close and he introduced her to his three flatmates and she became friends with them. One in particular was a girl around her age and they started hanging out quite a bit, just the two of them. They were out drinking together one night when the boyfriend, and I can’t remember his name for the life of me, was away with work. They got pretty drunk and the flatmate suggested my mate’s sister come back and crash at theirs for the night so they made their way back to the apartment some time in the early hours. At this point the flatmate mentioned that the boyfriend was pretty private and never usually let anybody else into his room. My mate’s sister was pretty drunk and just wanted to sleep and she figured that since they’d been dating for a while now he wouldn’t mind if she just crashed in there for the night. So the two of them went into his room and turned on the light. Now I only heard this through my mate but he swears that every detail is exactly as his sister told him and she was never one to lie. What they saw when they turned on the light was a room stacked full on every surface and every which way with hundreds and hundreds of glass jars. Jam jars and peanut butter jars and coffee jars and all sorts. Each jar was carefully labelled with a date and a location and as they moved into the room a little further they saw that each one held a single turd. I shit you not. This bloke had his own personal turd museum in his bedroom. Fuck knows how long he’d been collecting them. I assume they were all his but you never know. The girls didn’t stay long enough to do a thorough examination. One look and they both ran screaming out of the apartment and I can’t say I blame them. So that was that basically. My mate’s sister never spoke to the guy again. She just avoided all his calls. A week or so later the flatmate who had been there that night moved out to come and live with her and apparently told the bloke what had happened as she was leaving. He stopped calling after that. Last I heard the bloke got done for something or other on the Gold Coast. That’s a true story. Every word. I don’t quite know why it popped into my head just now but it did and I felt an urge to share it with you. Hope you enjoyed it. Maybe there’s something—
David stopped talking as the bedroom door clicked open. He looked up and saw Lucy standing all bleary eyed and mussy haired in the doorway in just her black tank top and panties.
Who you talking to babe? she murmured.
David put the phone on speaker and set it on the coffee table. The caller’s rhythmic breaths were just audible through the static.
Same old, same old, he said. I hope so anyway. I couldn’t cope if there was another one. Sorry if I woke you up. Anything you want to say? I’ve been trying to get him to speak but I can’t get a word. You just might though I reckon.
Lucy sniffed and rubbed her eyes.
Just hang up and come back to bed, she said.
No, I’m up now. I won’t get back to sleep before I have to leave anyway.
Lucy looked at him from under sleep-lidded eyes for a long moment. David shifted uncomfortably under her gaze and glanced towards the glass doors that led onto the balcony. Dawn was still a fair way off but the light outside was growing greyer. Eucalyptus canopies were visible now as silhouettes against the paling sky and they appeared as dark clouds that shook but wouldn’t shift with the wind. He eventually met Lucy’s eyes again and saw that her look was full of confusion and disappointment.
The moment was broken by a baby’s cry. The sound struck Lucy out of her slumber and her whole body tensed as though charged with a sudden surge of current but then just as quickly she sagged against the doorframe and implored him with weary eyes. David glanced at the phone still counting up the chargeable minutes then gestured helplessly at his nakedness. Lucy sighed and eased herself up onto heavy feet and began to make her way towards the child’s bedroom. Out of the corner of his eye David watched her half-clad body closely as it passed. She disappeared down the hall and a moment later he could hear her murmuring words of comfort and humming a tune he recognised from his own childhood but couldn’t name. He frowned and studied the carpet. After a while the sounds of mother and child grew softer as Lucy’s soothing tones took effect. It was then that David realised the phone was still on speaker and the breathing at the other end of the line had all but stopped. He glanced over his shoulder then picked up the phone and held it close to his lips.
You know, he whispered. Once or twice in the middle of the night I’ve actually wished she really wasn’t mine. I guess me telling you this is pretty fucking sick when I think about it but I can’t help it. The feelings only last a second but afterwards when I remember having had those thoughts the memories come back so laden with guilt that I can barely breathe. And I can’t tell Luce. She wouldn’t understand. I don’t expect you to either but at least I don’t have to look you in the eye.
Lucy’s footsteps started back down the hall and David cleared his throat then went on more loudly.
So there were these two daddy long legs in our bathroom, he said.
Lucy came past him and took his cigarettes from the coffee table. She lit one and went to stand by the window.
They lived in opposite corners up by the ceiling, David continued. One night I came in and one had wandered over to his neighbour’s web and the two of them were locked together in an embrace. I was a little drunk so it took me a while to actually work out that there were two spiders together there and not just one. I blew at them a few times so they’d scuttle about and after like ten minutes or so I could say with absolute certainty that there were more than eight legs operating. You know how those things have such tiny bodies. They were all curled into one another as well so it could have just been the one. But no, there were plenty more than eight legs operating there. I watched them for quite a while trying to work out what they were doing. I figured they must be either fucking or fighting or some combination of the two. You know how when some spiders mate the female eats the male straight after? Black widows I think they’re called but I didn’t know if maybe daddy long legs did the same thing because sometimes their webs have corpses of other daddy long legs in them. Anyway, I eventually got bored and went to bed with them still in their strange embrace but over the next few weeks I kept an eye on those two. And you know what happened? Nothing. Neither of them became a windblown husk hanging sadly in the web and no clutch of eggs or babies appeared. They just went on sharing a web. Is that not bizarre? Because from what I’ve read spiders don’t like to live in close proximity to one another, especially when there’s a lack of food. And our bathroom is hardly crawling with bugs. We keep it pretty clean. So how do you explain that? What the fuck were they up to?
As David had started getting into the swing of his little story Lucy had turned slowly from the window to watch him with mounting bewilderment. Towards the end her eyes began to narrow slightly. When he was finished with his tale David threw her a broad wink and after a brief internal struggle she failed to suppress the grin that fought to break free across her face. Their eyes met and David grinned back. He held her gaze for a long while until a slight flush crept up her neck and she looked down at the carpet as though the pale stain by her foot was suddenly very interesting. A small smile was still playing about her lips.
Mysteries abound, David said into the phone. But what’s life without a little mystery?
Lucy shivered slightly and came over to deposit the remains of her cigarette in an empty beer bottle from the night before that was sitting on the coffee table.
Don’t get yourself too worked up, she said softly. I’m going back to bed.
She turned and walked away but at the door she glanced back over her shoulder.
And would you put some fucking pants on? she said. It’ll be light soon and we don’t have curtains, remember? You’ll give Mrs. Harrison a heart attack if she looks out her kitchen window first thing in the morning and gets an eyeful of your tackle.
It’d probably make her month, David chuckled. I don’t reckon the poor thing’s seen one in years.
And imagine her disappointment when she finally gets the chance for a perv and all she finds is that sad little thing, Lucy said without missing a beat.
David’s mouth goldfished as he fumbled briefly for a reply and in that moment of hesitation Lucy blew him a kiss and disappeared back into the bedroom. The door closed with a soft click and David was left staring at the space where she’d been.
God I love that girl, he said. Despite what I said before I would have raised the kid no matter what the test said if she wanted me to. I don’t expect you to understand that.
He sighed and collapsed back onto the couch. The leather was cold and clung a little to his neck and shoulders. He chewed his bottom lip and gazed vaguely at the television. They were showing a press conference with some politician he didn’t recognise and for almost a minute he lost himself in the series of measured gestures and ambiguous facial expressions that gave no hint as to whether the silently moving mouth might be outlining the new budget or confronting questions on a sex scandal. Eventually he began to speak again and though the phone was some distance away on the coffee table he didn’t bother shift from his supine position.
Here’s something I haven’t told you, he said. This is going back a fair way now. I would have been about fourteen or fifteen I reckon. It must have been during the mid-year school holidays. It was definitely winter and it was during that cold snap because we weren’t anywhere near the mountains and yet that week was the first time I ever saw snow. We’d driven out into the country to visit our cousins on Mum’s side. They had a farm outside some town out west. It was a fair way south as well I think. What was it called again? The name’s on the tip of my tongue. I think it maybe started with an ‘M’. Fuck it. Anyway, it was on the way back that we ran into snow. We all flipped out when we saw it but that strange thing is that more than anything else I remember the smell. Well before we caught sight of it we were at a truck stop getting petrol and I’d stepped out of the car to stretch my legs and the air was somehow different. It was heavy but not like the smell of rain. It was less sweet and more like all the life had been sucked out of it. Like this was the smell of air itself and nothing else. I remember thinking that at the time anyway. We got back in the car and five minutes down the road the clouds grew darker and then all of a sudden there were these thick flakes drifting down all around us. Where it hit the road it melted and the bitumen became deep black but the fields on either side were soon dusted white with the stuff as far as you could see. It was surreal. The images are a little hazy now but to this day when I catch a whiff of that scent on the air I know it’s snowing somewhere maybe miles away upwind. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. While we were at the farm I overheard Mum and Auntie Cat talking in the kitchen. They didn’t know I was there. All the rest of the young people were out messing around with the pet goat if I remember right and I’d come inside to use the toilet. I don’t know why I hung around to listen but I did. For a while they were just chatting about this and that and gossiping a bit I suppose as sisters will but then Auntie Cat mentioned something about one of her kids getting into some trouble at school. I can’t remember which one it was. Actually, yes I can. It was Gavin. Christ, he really was a bit of a shit. He would have been two years younger? That sounds about right. I don’t remember him ever causing any trouble normally. He was actually quiet to the point of being seriously awkward. I used to feel sorry for him in some ways but then he’d do or say something that just made you want to punch those bug-eye glasses right off his face. He had such a thin little beak of a nose that he was constantly sliding them back up into place with his middle finger right before launching into an explanation of how what you’d just said wasn’t technically correct. I remember he used to throw tantrums and cry a lot when things didn’t go his way as well. None of us really liked him. Anyway, Auntie Cat was saying that he’d been caught trying to set an older kid’s car on fire with matches and a pair of boxer shorts soaked in lighter fluid. The other kid had been giving him a hard time or something. So Auntie Cat was telling Mum this story and saying she was really worried because with his dad being dead she was struggling to give that guidance about how to act as a man. Mum was saying all the right things about this just being a phase and he’ll grow out of it and she’s a wonderful mother and all that bullshit but then she paused. Even though I was out in the hall I could feel the silence weighing down the room. When she spoke again her voice was softer and I can remember what she said word for word. I really can sympathise though, she said. Even with his father overseas all the time I know I never really have to worry about David. He’s been in one or two fights at school but each time he’s been honest with me about what happened and he had his reasons. It’s Archie that I worry about. He rarely gets into trouble but I get a feeling of this terrible hidden fear in him that I don’t understand and it frightens me.
They kept talking but I left after that. I didn’t think too much of it at the time and it wasn’t til much later that I really understood what she meant but her words have come back to me a lot since then. The first time was probably that night you got really drunk at Huxley’s party and threw a brick through his kitchen window after Roach made some stupid joke about your haircut. I’d never seen anything like that before and when I went over it in my head the next morning I suddenly recalled that conversation as clear as if I’d just heard it. In all the years between it had never crossed my mind. From then on I never really felt like I understood you. It didn’t frighten me like it did Mum though. In the end I guess maybe it should have. Maybe I would’ve tried harder to understand and maybe all this shit wouldn’t have gotten so out of hand. Not that I blame myself. I still blame you. I don’t reckon you’ll ever understand what damage you could have done and almost did. I don’t reckon you have the ingredients for that sort of pain.
He fell silent and shifted his attention to the television once more. The sports report had started but he’d already seen all the headlines scroll past and after a moment’s reflection he struggled into a sitting position and picked up the phone. The call had been active for an hour and thirty-seven minutes. He stood up with a slight groan and raised his arms into a long luxuriant stretch. The glass doors onto the balcony faced north and so the sun still wasn’t visible but the light outside suggested it was now sitting just above the horizon. He cracked his back one way and then the other and then made his way towards the kitchen still holding the phone. He opened the fridge and reached for a carton of eggs but as his eyes went past a little plastic bottle half-full of milk he checked himself. He grabbed the bottle and set it on the counter then added a spoonful of formula and some water and put it in the microwave on medium-high for a minute and fifteen seconds. He watched as the bottle rotated slowly to reveal a cartoon scene of two puppies of some indeterminate breed blissfully chasing one another’s tails.
I have to head to work pretty soon now, he said. So speak now or forever hold your peace.
He waited in silence for a response until the light inside the microwave went out and it issued three slow beeps and then he retrieved the bottle and dribbled a couple of drops on his wrist. He nodded to himself and set the bottle down on top of the microwave.
I’m going to hold you to that, he said as he went back to the fridge.
Because you’ve had your chance to say if you think you’ve been wronged. To demand apologies. Or offer them and I’m open to that by the way. Whether or not what you say happened actually happened it didn’t matter in the end because I had to stop hating you so I could trust her. And it wasn’t even a matter of believing her or believing you. While ever I kept hating you I couldn’t let myself believe her just in case and a part of me hated her too for letting you do that to me. But one day I woke up and realised just what she might have been going through if she had been telling the truth and I felt like such a cunt. Because she was still here. She’d chosen me regardless. I had to let it go.
He set the bacon and the eggs on the counter and moved over to the stove.
So you see you can’t hurt us anymore. No matter where you’re trying to go with this shit, it won’t get you anywhere. I know there will always be the possibility that you were telling the truth the whole time and only wanted your sins to be acknowledged but you can forget about that now. I’ve forgiven you. It doesn’t matter what for.
The kitchen began to fill with the hissing and spitting of breakfast cooking and David left the phone where it was on top of the microwave to fuss over the stove and the toaster and the kettle. He could hear Lucy beginning to stir in the bedroom. She would be another half hour or so in emerging as she mused over her hair and assembled the day’s outfit, which would inevitably articulate her mood better than she ever could with words. When his breakfast was ready on the plate David took up the bottle of milk and went to feed the child. He returned several minutes later with the empty bottle and put it back in the fridge. He took his breakfast and his tea into the living room and set them on the coffee table then went back to the kitchen to get the phone. It was still sitting on top of the microwave but when he reached it he saw that the call had been terminated. He stared at it for a long while and almost reached to pick it up but then he shook his head and left it where it was.
A Marvel of Engineering
The trains had stopped running over an hour ago but a small crowd was gathered under the entryway to the station to shelter from the downpour that had opened up upon the city with little warning. Most were in various states of damp bedragglement and periodically peered out into the night for the approaching orange beacon of a taxi. There was little conversation. The crowd was split into small groups that kept their words quiet and amongst themselves. A girl in a black cocktail dress sat slumped against a wall on the station side with her head between her knees and the tangled veil of her auburn hair brushing the ground around her bare feet. A young guy in a bicep-hugging t-shirt printed with an allegedly oriental design was stroking her head and slowly studying each group in turn while her stilettos dangled from his free hand. Standing not far from these two was a young family. The father held his little girl asleep in his arms with her head on his shoulder. They seemed incongruous to the scene and both parents kept close together, offering up few clues as to where they had been and why they were still out at such an hour.
It was that time of night when desire itself becomes terminally myopic and all but those few brave souls now utterly lost to despair or euphoria or some heady mixture of the two start seeking a way to their beds. For longer than we might calculate man has used the geometry of the night sky to find his way both upon the open sea and in lands unfamiliar but the lack of stars this night would deprive few wanderers of guidance. The celestial map is a vague and fragmented thing above the city’s lights and its directions are too grand to be of any use for navigation amongst this architecture anyway.
The exceptions were two homeless men sitting each alone in a semi-permanent cocoon of accumulated small comforts, shame and security with their backs against the same sandstone wall. Their common space was given a wide enough berth by the rest of us so as to make the two seem like a pair. The one closer to the entryway and the weather that threatened with every change in the wind to sweep in and drench his neatly stacked belongings was the elder. He wore a black garbage bag poncho and an untamed beard but his eyes were bright and alert as they watched the curtains of rain billow across the pavement. The other looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties but it was difficult to gauge the features gaunt in shadow beneath the drooping hood of his jumper. The heavily laden shopping trolley parked beside him was covered by a tartan blanket that made a mystery of its contents.
Through the rain came shouts and the slap of expensive shoes on wet pavement. Several heads turned at the sound just as a group of six or seven men staggered into the almost silence of our shelter wearing grins and sopping wet suits. They milled about the entrance for a while just talking and laughing and working out who was there and who was still labouring up the hill behind them. One produced a bottle of champagne from under his jacket. He swayed a little as he fumbled with the wrapping around the top but after a few curses and more than a few taunts from his friends he finally got the wrapper free and sent the cork flying out into the night to cheers that echoed around the walls. He sucked at the foam spilling from the bottle then seemed to remember himself and quickly held it out to another of their number who was standing a little apart wearing a debuttoned suit and a wide and slightly glazed grin as though he were watching some other unseen scene unfold and found it rather beautiful. He eventually noticed the proffered bottle and there were more cheers as he put it to his lips then tipped his whole body back to drink. He came up coughing and laughing and passed the bottle off to someone else and so it went for a while. The new arrivals paid little attention to the rest of us and we for the most part feigned disinterest towards their obtrusive merriment, though I noticed the couple with the sleeping child watching them and exchanging whispers.
In the end they all left with a little less exuberance than they had arrived with but just as abruptly. I watched as one fell silent and frowned at the air in front of him for a moment then dug around in his suit pocket and tugged free his phone. After a few words he was soon busy corralling the others back out into the night. One or two took their jackets off and slung them over their heads as makeshift cover but most didn’t bother and strolled uncaring out into the downpour. Several were singing a strange new arrangement of an old song featuring the chorus and three-fifths of a verse looped together over and over almost seamlessly. Their celebration faded quickly into the dark and the drumming rain but one of their number lingered. He seemed a little younger than most of the rest and he had no tie or jacket but his clothes were neater than those worn by his companions. He’d been about to leave when he paused in front of the older homeless man sitting by the entryway. I had a good friend once who hung his work along the length of the long line between legal and otherwise and reaped the benefits in a miner’s dump truck and among other things he told me that you can tell a man from the way he walks his drunk walk. The walks themselves are many and varied and though all attempted interpretations of them is as fraught as the interpretation of dreams they are just as unaccountably reliable. Among the more common archetypes are those whose bodies sway like a ship but who put each foot deliberately forward like a fist into the face of the last person they spoke to and these are the men who sense of themselves something indefinable missing and come to believe they’ve somehow been robbed and that the world in its infinite injustice must be shielding the thief. The man who simply tilts his body forward and leaves his legs to catch up however they can is generally one whose fears and desires rarely coalesce into recognisable shapes but quietly harry him onward like a cloud of bats. The case of the young man now tottering slightly beneath the restrained attention of the homeless man at his feet was a difficult one. He had taken up a wide stance and was forced to shift his feet about from time to time to keep his balance but his upper body remained steady. He searched his pockets methodically and without fumbling.
I stood alone nearby with my back to the wall. From time to time I shifted my weight and let my spare foot rest against the sandstone behind me to ease the strain of having been standing for most of the last twelve hours. Sweat, smoke and the sweet smell of spilled alcohol all lingered in my shirt and my fingers were heavily pruned. The damp squelch my shoes made with each step suggested my toes would be too when finally unpeeled. Early in the evening I’d slipped while shifting a keg and opened up a gash on my shin that was now ridged with heavy bruising and throbbed in constant protest at the slew of inadvertent knocks that had only increased in frequency as the night wore on and coordination and inhibition both deteriorated. My head had started to unfog a little since I’d been standing and waiting and thoughts were moving slower but with more purpose. They no longer slid easily about on cerebral surfaces slick with lubrication but became caught and snagged in strange places. I braced for re-entry.
The young man had managed to produce from his pocket a ten dollar note and he handed it now to the older homeless man with a small nod that was returned in kind. He then took a couple of unsteady steps backward until he was level with the younger man sitting as yet unmoved beside his trolley. His hands were searching his pockets again and he seemed to become distressed as he dug deeper but came up with only a few silver coins. The seated figure gave no indication that he’d noticed the potential benefactor standing before him. Finally the increasingly desperate young man dragged forth a cigar still in its wrapping. He held it at arm’s length and studied it doubtfully for a moment then offered it with an apologetic shrug.
Sorry mate, he said. Looks like I’m broke.
The young man at his feet took the cigar with a muttered word that could have been thanks.
Enjoy, said the unsteady philanthropist. It’s a boy.
With that he gave a half wave and ran off after his companions.
Though there had been little conversation for as long as I’d been standing there the silence left by the young man’s departure was noticeable over the rain. The isolate groups weren’t speaking even amongst themselves. For a long time the figure beside me seemed to study the wrapped cigar in his hand from out the folds of his oversized hood. Eventually his upper body jerked as though from a sudden shrug or short burst of silent laughter and he turned to the older man sitting beside him.
I don’t suppose you might want to buy this off us, he said. I’d take a tenner for it.
The older man sat up a little straighter and dug deep into his beard to scratch his chin.
Sorry, he said eventually. I never got much of a taste for those things.
His voice was clear and of a higher register than should have been allowed by the weight of memory that invested his face.
The other nodded slowly and then began to peel the plastic wrap from the cigar. He scrunched it tightly into a ball and stuffed it into the front pocket of his jumper. After running his fingers over the length of the outer leaf he suddenly looked up and around at the people sharing the alcove and when he turned to me I saw his face in full light for the first time. His dark eyes were framed by girlish lashes and his chin thrust forward like a bulbous bow. He looked me up and down and then asked if I had a lighter. I nodded that I did and handed it over. He thanked me and brought a flame to the tip of the cigar that he held gently in his teeth while turning with a practiced hand. When he was satisfied he handed me back my lighter and rested his head against the sandstone wall to exhale a lazy cloud of pungent smoke that was soon suffused sharply through the still and waterlogged air. The stiletto-bearing young man watched on from across alcove with an expression of undisguised disapproval but the others sharing the shelter ignored the intrusion. As he smoked the hooded figure’s bearing relaxed from that of a plover nesting in a park overrun by unsupervised children to the point where he seemed almost at ease. As he took a second longer pull on the cigar the older man beside him squinted and dug into his beard again and finally spoke.
How is it? he asked.
Not bad, came the slow reply on a fresh cloud of smoke. It’s a bold leaf with hints of cherry, saffron and obscene indulgence.
At this the older man paused from scratching his chin.
How obscene? he asked.
The sort of obscene that shouldn’t be discussed in polite company. It’s that good.
Neither spoke for a moment as they both watched the smoke curl and eddy and very slowly disperse.
What say we split it and I buy you a Big Mac meal? asked the older man suddenly.
A large meal?
Medium.
With a McFlurry.
Soft serve.
Sundae.
Done.
When the lights came back on a communal but almost silent sigh of relief was released throughout the carriage. A few seconds later the motors started up again and the train moved off with a small jolt. In the nearly fifteen minutes that had passed since the fluorescent bulbs flickered out without warning or word of explanation and the whole marvel of engineering drifted silently to a stop Beth hadn’t once shifted her head from where it lay in my lap. She was stretched across the seat with each of her feet dangling a sandal in the aisle. A white noise of whispered conversations had persisted through the darkness and in the fresh light those voices emerged into audible banality and left their private truths behind.
I reckon somebody’s probably said it before, I said, speaking a little louder now. But I’ve never read it and there has to be some sort of solid link between the two. In a way maybe they’re really the same thing.
The same thing? Beth echoed. Why would somebody say that? It doesn’t make any sense.
With the lights back on she returned with a small frown to her mission of carefully threading the seven cicada shells she’d found at the station onto her necklace. Several were already broken in places and it required a delicate skill to coerce their desiccated forms onto the necklace intact.
That’s probably true, I said. But I had this thought and I haven’t been able to shake it for a while now so bear with me and I’ll just put the whole mess out there and see if it doesn’t fall to pieces.
Go nuts, she said as she fed an end of the leather cord into the hole where a cicadas mouthparts once were.
Well, I guess it’s all about dimensions. People talk about the three dimensions of space and time being the fourth dimension and when you put them all together you get space-time, which is basically the universe. Right? But then why three dimensions of space and only one of time? Well, what if time isn’t the fourth dimension at all but is actually the first? Like, time is the universe and it’s expanding into space.
How so?
Well, OK. So, the big question always seems to be how to get something out of nothing. But I don’t really see that because the opposite of something isn’t nothing. The opposite of something is its opposite, which is also a thing. Nothing is just a perfect balance between something and its opposite. So, the universe as it is would have come about when that perfect balance was disturbed in some way and the whole conservation of energy thing suggests the universe started with just as much energy as it has right now and that its expansion is its own way of returning to balance.
If you say so.
So, in the beginning the choice is between two opposite forces and whichever wins out begins expanding into the first dimension of space.
Wait, what choice? Who’s making the choice?
God, chance, whatever I guess. Anyway, one of the two opposites is chosen or wins out on its own. In our universe, we call that force or energy time and it’s what drives the universe. But its opposite is at work too. While time is expanding into space, wherever it encounters its opposite space is inhabited for a period of time and there you have a one dimensional form of matter. As the energy moves further from its origin while continuing at its inevitable pace it becomes less and less dense and the opportunities for the two forces to interact in space become fewer and fewer. Eventually, those opportunities disappear altogether and at that moment of nothingness another choice is forced. If the opposite force wins out this time the universe would begin retracting backwards into itself as anti-time takes over. If the original force wins out, then it has to continue expanding but can expand no longer in that dimension of space and so moves into the second dimension of space. Entering a new dimension of space the whole universe begins again at a singularity in the new dimension and the whole business repeats with two dimensional matter and whatnot. The cycle is repeated and thus the third dimension begins with the Big Bang. The battle between matter and anti-matter would therefore represent the choice between the two forces and dark matter and dark energy would be energy and matter that operate in only the first and second dimensions. They still act on the universe as a whole but they have only a background effect on three dimensional energy or matter because they don’t exist in the third dimension. So, coming full circle, given that the speed of light is a universal constant that can’t be exceeded it stands to reason that the speed of light is the speed at which the energy of the universe, or time, moves in whatever dimension its operating in and that light is the most elemental form of this energy. If the universe is basically energy moving in space and takes the form of space-time then energy, of which light is the most basic manifestation, and time must be two sides of the same coin. Or something like that.
I waited in almost patience silence while she carefully slid the last shell along the cord and into place and then settled the chain of remains against her breast before speaking.
So the universe might never end, she mused. Before it all falls apart it will just burst into the fourth dimension of space.
I figure it’s a fifty-fifty shot whether the universe ends or keeps going if it’s up to chance.
And if it’s not up to chance the universe will take a long hard look at itself and decide if it’s worthwhile to keep going or not?
Something like that, yeah.
Well, she said as she looked up at me with one eye closed against an errant strand of bleached hair. I can’t pick any obvious holes in it but most of the time when my dad talks it’s just background noise to me. He’ll like you though. I haven’t made up my mind yet if I like that idea or not.
I smiled and the rest of the trip passed quietly. We were soon shat back out of the city’s unmappable bowels and into a warm winter morning and the shadows of trees and shining towers slid swift and silent across Beth’s body. Under fluorescence the skin between her t-shirt and the top of her skirt had shone pale but daylight revealed in it the elusive native hue that smouldered always in her eyes and lent her lips their fatal curve. I’d never been to her house before but still I had to rouse her when we reached the station.
The walk took us back along the tracks the way we’d come. On our right was a high chain fence and then the train tracks and beyond those the highly decorated brick walls of large abandoned buildings that once churned out steel girders or light bulbs or biscuits or some other equally essential commodity. On our left stretched the cagey facades of terrace houses. The street was narrow and choked with parked cars. As we walked we talked a little and for only the second time since we’d met almost a month ago she told me of her family. She was the eldest of five children and her mother had left when she was thirteen. There’d been some vague hints concerning drugs and threats but she had never managed to extract the full story from her father. When she spoke of the younger siblings she’d effectively raised herself her voice grew from its normal duet of whisper and contralto to a full and throaty soprano and developed a curious tick whereby she almost rolled her R’s. She was halfway through telling me about her youngest brother’s growing obsession with other people’s pimples when she suddenly stopped short. I turned and was about to ask if we’d reached her house when I saw her features welded into a look of such abject horror that my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. I looked wildly about for some advancing catastrophe but the sun-dappled street was empty and held no clues as to the source of her terror and when I turned again to seek an answer in her face I saw her mouth was open in a tiny ‘o’ shape.
What if one of them asks how we met? she whispered wide eyed.
The question puzzled me for a moment and then I began to grin and then chortle gleefully while she watched on with an expression caught between genuine fear and irritated tolerance.
Why not just tell them the truth? I suggested.
Don’t be lewd, she said and the tolerance evaporated.
If you say so, I shrugged. What are you going to say then?
I don’t know yet. Shut up and let me think.
We walked on in silence while Beth frowned and studied the pavement that rolled and cracked over the blooming roots of nature-strip banksias. Neither of us had spoken by the time she finally stopped and put one hand on the peeling gate of a neat brick terrace.
Listen, she said as she turned and met my gaze. Rachel’s almost fourteen and she’s still never seen anything like a good love story. I’m not subjecting her to one that starts with her sister walking in on you having sex with her girlfriend.
She didn’t blink and I lowered my eyes under her lack of accusation.
Sorry, I said. So what’s the plan?
Her fingers toyed with the latch on the gate as she looked towards the house and chewed her bottom lip.
I don’t have one, she said.
Ok, I pondered aloud. No worries. So. We met through a mutual friend. At an intervention. For her gambling addiction. And she hasn’t been near the pokies since.
Beth’s eyes narrowed slightly.
It’s simple and it’ll make it easy to remember.
She chewed her lip a little longer then sighed and nodded and pushed open the gate.
Hey, I said and as she turned I moved quickly to plant a kiss beside her ear.
She leant into me almost imperceptibly as my lips drew back and then she was away again.
Alright, she said. Come on.
The front door had four separate locks and by the time she’d found the key for each and performed the necessary jiggling and wrenching on the last one a small crowd had been drawn by the sound and the door swung open to a wall of waiting faces.
Nice of you all to help, said Beth and one or two of the faces turned a little sheepishly before a young girl about eight or nine who had half her hair braided with bright beads spoke up.
Monty might have got a girl pregnant, she said.
We were all stood in a narrow hallway with balding carpet that smelled faintly of asparagus and mould.
What girl? Beth demanded.
Dan Parker’s little sister, said a rake-thin teenager with a shaved head who stood a good half a foot taller than anyone else there. You don’t know her. She’s finding out for sure tomorrow.
Then tell me again tomorrow. Could we, you think?
The wall of faces quietly disintegrated and dispersed through several different doorways and we headed down the hall with only the young girl and an even younger boy wearing a Broncos jersey over bare legs for an entourage. Muted arguments and laughter soon began to tumble all around and above us as though the house itself was speaking in tongues. At the end of the hall was a huge room that included the kitchen and which had been enlarged by knocking out two walls such that it now took up the whole back third of the house. Its windows commanded an uninterrupted view of the tightly enclosed concrete backyard. Despite its size the room had little surplus space but it was unobtrusively clean and the patchwork furnishings had been scavenged together with great care being paid to their aesthetic harmony. Beth slung her bag on the counter then turned and nearly tripped over the two small children who had been following almost in her skirt.
Jesus Fuck, she sighed. Where’s Rachel?
The little girl shrugged.
How long has Aiden been here for?
The little girl shrugged again.
Since today or since yesterday?
Yesterday.
Shit.
Shit’s right, came a voice like rusted hinges from the other side of the room.
Beth jumped as if she’d just been hit by a live light switch and we both swung around to see an obese old man haul himself out of an armchair where his heavily stained shirt that may once have been white but was now the colour of weak tea had camouflaged him well against the faded patterns of the upholstery.
I thought you were at a conference til Wednesday, said Beth.
I was but that syphilitic cunt Chisholm started in on me again and when I again shut his mouth for him a few people got their noses out of joint. So here I am. I guess this is the bartender? I thought you said he was tall.
Did they let you keep your fee?
The old man started across the room towards us with a sea-legged shuffle whilst ignoring the question. Despite his obvious age he had an almost full head of wiry white hair and the legs that poked out from his khaki shorts like walnut twigs were unaccountably steady under the bulk they supported.
I’ll take that as a no, said Beth. Brilliant. You know it’s Archie’s birthday next week?
Sure, sure, he said as he lurched closer. Good thing you’ve gone and got yourself a proper captain of industry type to navigate the treacherous straits of our cruel poverty. Never fear, the bartender’s here.
He stopped just out of handshake reach and cocked his head a little to the side as he studied me.
Well, I said. It’s about the most resilient industry there is. The worse things get the more people want to drink.
Is that right? So, what? Your careers advisor was a cockroach?
I grinned and raised my eyebrows.
He studied me in silence a moment longer then shuffled past us and down the hall. I turned to Beth but she was already on the phone trying to reach Aiden’s mother. The young girl had meanwhile begun to move slowly about the room with her eyes on the floor. Every now and then she would stop to pick some invisible thing from the carpet and deposit it in the cup of her left hand before straightening and moving on.
We can’t keep doing this Lea, said Beth into the phone. Til tomorrow’s OK this time but it’s not fair on him. Who’s got Karen?
The boy I took to be Aiden stood staring up at her with a finger parked immobile up one nostril. The young girl paused in her browsing to poke about in her hand as if counting her harvest and then went on as before. Eventually my curiosity got the better of me and I sidled up behind her and peered over her shoulder to try and see what she was collecting. She heard me and turned around and I saw her left hand held a dozen or so stiff black hairs.
Hi, I said. Who did your hair for you?
She stood looking up at me with a blank expression and said nothing.
It looks very pretty, I tried again. What are you picking those up for?
She held them up towards me so I could get a better look.
Dad let Napoleon inside before so I’m trying to get all the hair he left, she said.
As if on cue a hideous little snub-faced spaniel thing sprinted up from out of the shadows at the back of the yard and started barking at me like a dog possessed through the glass door.
Oh, I said. Are you the one that keeps this place all ship shape then?
No, she said with a look as though I’d said something truly queer. Dad likes it on his breakfast.
Oh.
She gave a little smile as she walked past me towards the kitchen and as I turned I saw Beth standing and watching our little chat but she quickly went back to wiping a bit of something from Aiden’s chin.
Here, the little girl said as she held up her hand.
Nice work, said Beth. Just leave them here. Can you take Aiden up to his room? Lea will be here in a couple of hours. Don’t let him near anything sharp.
Mhm, she said and took the boy’s tiny hand in hers and led him off down the hall.
I stood looking at the little pile of black hairs on the white countertop while Beth moved about the kitchen to no apparent purpose.
Bit of hair of the dog? I asked eventually.
What? she said. Oh, that. Mary heard him moaning about his hangover one morning and she thought we could sprinkle it on his cereal. It was really quite sweet and so I let her collect them. I only end up using them like half the time.
Somewhere in the house that same voice of rusted hinges started swearing loudly in an uninterrupted and impressively cornucopian stream that carried easily over the myriad other voices that the house seemed to breathe with. Beth and I looked at one another and I raised my eyebrows but she just shook her head slowly. The invectives were irregularly interrupted by brief semantic passages that seemed to imply somebody had stolen one of his shoes. Beth stood with her head tilted slightly back and her eyes all but closed as though pausing for a moment from some frantic work to listen to a favourite song on the radio and waiting without impatience for the chorus. I was about to ask where I could find the bathroom when the filthy spiel suddenly stopped mid-swear as if a tap had been turned off. Beth’s eyes snapped open and a small frown appeared. Without a word she headed off down the main hall.
I followed her as she made her way upstairs and through a maze tiny hallways. Snatches of unseen conversation and laughter persisted through the walls but the only person we saw was a boy of about twelve or thirteen who skipped quickly through a doorway as we approached until we almost collided with the tall youth with the shaved head who had spoken when we first entered and who could have been Beth’s brother. He rounded a corner ahead of us flanked by a pale owl-faced young man carrying a bottle of whiskey and wearing a sneer that might have passed for an unfortunately shaped smile if it wasn’t so etched onto his face from overuse. Beth danced nimbly to one side to avoid a collision and I almost tripped myself up in my attempted imitation. The pair burst into guffaws and the guest barked something that seemed to be directed at Beth but we didn’t stop.
We eventually reached a closed door that was tucked into a corner of a bizarre little alcove at the end of an otherwise dead end hall. Beth knocked but when there was no answer she pushed the door open and stepped inside. I followed her into a small room darkened by sunlight bleeding through the same heavy orange curtains that muted the shadows. Beth’s father was sitting on the single bed that dominated the middle of the room. He was holding a piece of paper barely an inch from his nose and his lips were moving rapidly but silently under the fringes of his beard.
Please don’t do that, said Beth.
Do what? asked the old man without looking up from the page.
Shut-up without being told. Every time you do I think you’ve had another heart attack. Don’t you know better than to get a girl’s hopes up like that?
Beth’s father read on silently for a few moments longer and when he finally put the paper to one side his deep-set black eyes fell on me.
How much do you know about tax law? he asked.
I know of it, I said.
He turned to Beth.
Could you please tell me what is the fucking point of letting a white fella fiddle with your girl parts if he can’t even help fix basic white fella bullshit?
Because nobody fiddles like the Devil himself, I offered.
His eyes bulged and he let out a long breath that made a very low whistle but before he could form words Beth was moving towards him.
If either you ever talk to me like that in front of the girls you’ll quickly wish you hadn’t, she said. What’s the problem?
Never you mind your pretty head about it, the old man grumbled as he finally looked from me to his daughter. I’ll take the cunts to court and before you say anything about money I’ll represent myself. See how long they keep fighting once I’ve had the floor for an hour or two.
Give it here.
She stepped forward and snatched the letter from the unmade bed. While her eyes skimmed the page I ventured a few steps further into the room and saw stood against the wall on my right a set of Ikea drawers over which was hung a strange picture. It looked like a satellite photo of Australia at night but the lights of the coastal capitals were dwarfed by some strange megalopolis burning across the continent’s dark heart.
How many letters did they send you before this one? Beth asked slowly and deliberately.
The old man muttered something unintelligible.
Don’t give me that, said Beth as her speech slowed further with soft menace. They’re after you for fourteen fucking thousand you…
They won’t get it because I don’t have it and they know it, he said as I leant in to get a closer look at the picture and the alien brightness in the desert. See something you like sunshine?
What about the house? whispered Beth more to herself than either of us.
What are all the lights in the middle of nowhere? I asked. They can’t all be from the miners.
Surely not, said the old man as he heaved himself to his feet and shouldered past Beth who was re-reading the letter again as if desperate for it to have changed. They’re bushfires.
Christ, I said. What a picture. There’s easily a thousand words there.
And the rest, he cried. The whole fucking story of this country is right there. Your people huddle together within spitting distance of where you stepped off the boat, spend all your time trying to swim back and then as soon as you can you piss off to swagger around overseas like you really did conquer a whole continent. You don’t know fuck about what this country is.
Sure, sure, I said. That’s good actually. But what about the ones that don’t huddle within spitting distance? We couldn’t have stayed here if we couldn’t farm here and there are millionaires that own properties about as deep into this place as you can go.
Oh, some of your folk can be stubborn as all fuck but even the ones who did beat something out of the land have been killing each other or themselves or heading off for the big smoke since they first started scratching around in the dirt. You’ll make a few more bucks from digging the place up for a while and then you’re stuck on a big lump of worthless rock with barely enough to feed yourselves.
Well then we’re just strangers in a strange land from birth and wherever we go I guess. Not as much as your people are these days though.
Is that a fact? he asked and shuffled closer til the forest of his beard filled my vision and I could feel his faint breath on my face. Do you know what Songlines are?
I’ve heard the word, but no.
Then fuck you you young fuck. There are songs that can carry a man alone across all those deserts.
Really? Shit. Well, that’s fine for the desert but do you have a song that can guide you through a white man’s court room? Because that’s the land you’re really living in now.
I’ll improvise. Or do you have a better idea?
Not a one, I shrugged. It seems to me a fair chunk of all our ills are the result of people trying to legislate for others who they don’t and can’t ever really understand. It’s no good looking to us. Me and my kind are just exiles driven off the plains into the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon or something. We adapted to the hills but by our mere presence we all but wiped out the ancient mountain people - that’s you – and poisoned their culture when they were the only ones that could really thrive above the snowline or live above the treeline. We’re a borderline nation of fucking hillfolk haunted by the shadow of the mountain. But at least we know the mountain a little better than they do down in all the cities of the plain. It’s a good thing to know because its shadow falls everywhere eventually. Shit, how’s that for a new anthem? Beth, you could put that to a tune couldn’t you?
What? Beth looked up at the mention of her name and our eyes met past the now grinning visage of her father but she quickly shifted her gaze to the old man.
Have you been listening to me at all? she asked. They’re coming hard and they’ll be coming for the house.
I told you I’d sort it didn’t I? he said over his shoulder. Christ, it’s like I’m talking to myself around here.
Listen here shackle-dragger, he said to me now. That’s a lovely thought but you’re much more like a cane toad. You eat anything you can fit in your mouth, if anything takes a bite of you it drops stone dead and every beautifully unique ecosystem you find you turn into nothing but cane toads.
You know I really can’t argue too hard with you there since I know of at least one town where we’ve put up a monument to the thing itself. We’re drowning in cane toads so we better build a statue of one. And why not? Here they evolved into Super Toads with stronger legs and an unstoppable migration instinct. Look it up. And we had a dog once that used to get high off licking them. I’ve heard there’s people pretty into it too. It’s some sort of trip apparently. You ever tried it?
No. And they’re killing your Super Toads by the hundreds of thousands in the Territory.
I bet they are, I said and grinned.
The old man frowned and for a moment looked like he was going to say something else but in the end he just sniffed.
Well, he said as he turned to Beth with a look as though he’d just killed a brown snake with his bare hands. If you had to pick a white fella at least you picked one who can listen when he’s told.
And I can ask my brother about the tax thing, I said to her. He’s studying law so he might know somebody who knows something.
Beth gave me a flicker of a smile but her brows still hung heavy with worry.
Law is it? her father asked as he turned back to me. Tell him to read Fitch’s recently commissioned study into the modes of survival for substratum cultures in colonial democracies.
What good is a study? I asked. All that’ll get you is facts and the facts won’t help you. The facts are fucking awful. And neither will the little gaggle of balding cunts looking at them. But right now pretty much anyone who’s having a proper thought about it is likely recording it in one way or another. Really the best thing we can do is listen to the internet. All of it. Jesus, if ever we needed a new Jesus we need a Jesus of the internet. Step up, Julian!
From downstairs we heard the front door slam and a girl’s scream mingled with several shouting male voices. Beth’s eyes widened and her lips parted and she rushed out without a backwards glance as her father and I looked at one another then followed doggedly behind. As we came to the top of the stairs we could see a similar crowd to the one that had greeted us gathered close around the front door in a state of some excitement but the crush of bodies obscured whatever it was that had drawn them there. Beth hovered for a moment on the landing with one foot poised over the top step and then stepped back slowly and took a deep breath.
Cops! she screamed at the top of her voice.
The heads at the door all whipped around at the cry and several bodies flew off through doorways or down the hall. I saw the owl-faced guest barging his way through the crowd. He knocked little Mary off her feet as he rushed towards the stairs and he was halfway up before he saw the three of us standing unmoved on the landing and paused.
What the fuck, Rachel? Beth said to a long bodied slip of a thing with wild hair who was still standing just inside the door wearing a sardonic grin and clutching a brown paper bag in her left hand.
I brought you a present, said Rachel and she tossed the bag in a wobbly arc towards Beth who caught it full on the chest.
What is it? she asked as she peered inside. She immediately recoiled with a gagging sound and dropped the bag and I quickly scooped it up. Inside was some sort of foul-smelling sludge.
It’s cane toads, said Rachel. Or it was. Me and Harry are catching them and breaking them down for fertiliser. It’s a piece of piss and there’s some decent coin in it.
You know there’s a pretty good market for their poison in Japan and China, I said. If you milk them before you mulch them you can sell that too.
She looked at me with her head cocked a little to one side.
Harry’s already made up a little machine to do it, she said. We’re just looking for an importer.
Waste of fucking time, grumbled the old man. I’m guessing you don’t have another bag hidden about your person with my Goddamn mouthwash in it do you?
You never asked me to get you any, Rachel said as her grin faltered a little.
It’s Sunday is it not? I’m pretty sure it still comes around about this time of a week. Unless of course the rotation of the planet has changed without my notice. Has it? Well?
The grin slid all the way from Rachel’s face and she looked down at the toes of her combat boots.
You never know, I said after a moment’s silence. You look like you could just about put a real wobble in the Earth’s orbit and if you did you yourself might never be able to tell. Relativity and all that.
The old man turned to me and his eyes were shining pools of ink. He spat a thick gob on the carpet at my feet.
When we need an opinion from whitey I’ll be sure to let you know, he said. This is family business and we wouldn’t want the nice barman to dirty himself now.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Beth’s brother reappear from the doorway opposite the stairs..
Aw, you’ve got me all wrong, I said to the old man. I might wear a white shirt to work most days but I am the man in motherfucking black and I am coming around.
Well, you sure as shit won’t coming around here no more, he said.
Or what?
Johnny, he barked and his upper lip curled back with savage glee.
Beth’s brother gave a curt nod and started for the stairs but the guest was halfway up already and at the implicit invitation he charged ahead with a short laugh and with the full bottle cocked back behind his shoulder. When he was three steps below me I concentrated on bracing my right foot and I knew I’d connected well when I felt a tooth burst through the skin of his lip and then snap against the knuckle of my ring finger. He crashed through the bannister and the bottle shattered as he crumpled in a heap in the hallway below. I heard several screams that seemed to blend together into a single animal howl and Beth’s brother was leaping up the stairs and taking them three at a time as her father lumbered in as fast as he could with his lips curled back into his beard to bare both rows of tombstone teeth. He was almost upon me when he stopped and his face fell slack with shock and he leant against the remains of the bannister for support. It gave way just as my right temple exploded with light.
When I checked my watch for the last time it was eleven minutes past two and the rain seemed to have settled into that particular rhythm of methodical drenching that echoes an endless two-chord ballad. I had no money for a taxi and my phone had run out of battery several hours ago and so I decided to light a last cigarette while still under cover before starting off on the long walk home. No sooner had I done so than the young Lancelot across the alcove gave a shout.
Oi! he said and pointed to the No Smoking sign just to the right of my head. Can’t you fucking read?
I turned and frowned hard at the sign for a moment then turned back to him and shrugged.
No, I said. Not since I got back from the war anyway.
His eyebrows came together and his mouth framed a few different shapes before he finally gave a slight shake of his head that was almost a twitch.
Put the fucking thing out, he said. The smell makes my girlfriend sick.
I glanced at the semi-comatose creature mumbling through her hair and had taken a breath to reply when I felt a tap on my left arm. It had come from the homeless man to whom I’d lent my lighter and he gestured for me to wait while he lifted a corner of the blanket that covered his shopping trolley and rummaged underneath it for a moment. He came out holding the remains of an old Sprite can that he’d fashioned into a cigarette holder complete with a narrow hood to keep the rain off. He offered it to me and when I tried to refuse he rolled his eyes and offered it again.
I’ve got six of them for fuck’s sake, he said. And this one’s a bit shit.
Alright, I said. Cheers.
I slid it over my cigarette and even though it was a loose fit I could keep it from slipping with just a little pressure from my fingers. I thanked him again and walked out into the rain.
Within seconds I was wet to the skin and my clothes clung like shrouds soaked in embalming fluid. The street leading down from the station was steep and empty and the streetlights showed up the myriad percussions of the rain on the slick tarmac. It was a good hour and a half walk to the apartment but the wind had dropped just enough for the chill to be kept at bay if I kept up a good pace. At the end of the street I turned left and walked for a while under the cover of closed shopfronts until I came to the main road where the buildings were set well back from the footpath. I took another left.
I’d been walking for perhaps fifteen minutes when I noticed a car parked on the opposite side of the road with its headlights on. As I got closer the car’s headlight’s flashed several times and since there were no other people or cars about I jogged across the road and approached the driver’s window as it was rolled down. Beth was sitting with her arms crossed over the steering wheel and her chin resting on her hands. The seat was titled right back as though she’d been sleeping.
How are you? she asked.
Oh, I’m cock of the fucking walk, I said over the rain. How are you?
Ok. I’ve been trying to call you for an hour. Phone dead?
Yeah. Sorry. What are you doing here?
I got a flat.
Oh. Whose car is this anyway?
A friend’s. You don’t know him but it turns out he doesn’t have a spare.
Shit.
It’s OK. Johnny has one and he said he’d drive me up tomorrow to put it on. Do you have money for a cab?
No.
Then I guess we’re walking.
She wound the window up and a few moments later the door opened and she stepped out in a low cut dress of dark purple with little fringes of lace that soon shone with clinging droplets.
Hang on, I said as she went to close the door. I took a last drag of my cigarette then stubbed it out and threw the piece of Sprite can onto the driver’s seat.
What’s that? Beth asked.
A present from a bum, I said.
She nodded slowly as she locked the door and took my arm in hers and we walked on.
How’s your Dad? I asked after a while.
It doesn’t look good, she said. The doctors say every time he pushes it his heart gets that much weaker. He just can’t help himself the silly old shit. At least if he carks it the insurance will cover the tax business.
And if he doesn’t I guess we’re all moonlighting as cane toad hunters. Should I go see him?
The melody of her laugh rippled out over the rain and back again.
He might quite like you in the end but that won’t stop him or Johnny killing you if you give them the chance.
She hesitated for a moment.
And if you do see Johnny about, just don’t look him in the eye, she said.
I won’t, I said. I’ve never been hit like that in my life. Does he box?
He did Muay Thai for a while but he had to give it up. You can’t play the violin with busted hands.
I grinned.
I still can’t see him sitting at first fiddle for an orchestra, I said.
She grinned back.
Me either. When I was twelve or so he was auditioning for a place at the Conservatorium of music. I think I called him a traitorous fuckstain of an Oreo or something like that. He got very serious and I still remember exactly what he said. He looked me in the eye and said, Elizabeth, you have to keep what you can and get what you can and keep going.
Well, I guess you can’t ask much better than that. Give him by best if you think it’s a good idea.
She looked up at me and held my arm a little tighter.
We’ll see, she said.
And tell him sorry about his mate.
She wrinkled her nose.
Fuck that, she said. He’s a leech. Johnny only keeps him around because he can talk anyone into just about anything. He’s sort of his manager I guess.
She giggled.
He won’t be talking for a while though. His jaw’s wired shut and will be for a good couple of months.
Looks like I got out alright then. Can you do dinner tomorrow night?
No, I have a psyche paper due. The night after should be fine.
What’s it on? Stats?
No, Freud.
Crazy fucking Kraut, I said and she made a sound in her throat that could have been anything.
You know, I said suddenly. You have a very curious way of completely disarming my ego, which is no mean feat because that motherfucker comes strapped and ready for war.
She didn’t reply for a long while. The rain seemed to have grown heavier and I watched it running in uneven rivulets all the gently sloping way from her hair down to her breast. We had an easy pace going and I was keeping an eye to the ground to watch for sly puddles in the dark.
Well, she said eventually. Good.