One Sunday (34 page)

Joseph Reichenberg had no use for lamp light; he went to bed when the sun went down and rose again when it rose. Not so many years ago he'd forced his sons to their beds at nightfall. Not so Elsa. She shared his bed but spent little time in it. Night-time was her freedom time.

‘Your brother is still digging his holes,' Elsa said, peering out of the kitchen window. All afternoon she had watched her youngest son digging holes. He had found old bottles, even a black man's stone axe, but not Joseph's money. Soon it would not be light enough for him to dig.

On her work table, peaches prepared for bottling waited to be packed into her preserving jars. She'd stripped the peach tree today, and tonight she'd boil many jars of peaches in the washhouse copper – like a squirrel storing summer food for winter.

The kitchen lamp lit, she crept up to the parlour, which was directly opposite her bedroom. The old man was already sleeping, so it was safe to waste a little more of his kerosene and light the parlour lamp. Mrs Buehler had given her that lamp the day she and her husband left Molliston. ‘A house without eyes is a blind house,' she'd said. ‘When you light it each night, you will think of me.'

A good woman, a good friend and neighbour, she'd taught Elsa how to bottle the fruit and vegetables, how to cut fabric and stitch garments. Tonight, as on no other night, Elsa missed her friend. She had a bad feeling and wanted a lot of light around her.

Back in the kitchen, she chose her large saucepan and into it measured sugar then water, placed it on the stove and stood stirring until the sugar dissolved. Plenty of work for her hands tonight.

Kurt sat at the kitchen table reading. He'd bought a new book with his dairy money and tonight he studied it closely and, at the same time, studied an old book she had brought to the house. She knew each picture in that one, as she knew the lines on her own palm, and though she couldn't read the German words, she'd read its stories to her sons, a hundred stories of her own making. Tonight she wanted those boys at her side, wanted to shelter them with her arms and keep them safe, read them a picture story then tuck them into bed.

Too big for bedtime stories.

‘They say in town that the pears from those hotel trees are good for bottling. What a crop she has,' Elsa said, needing to kill the silence. ‘She is out there, carrying buckets of water to her garden, bringing it from her house. Perhaps she empties her bathing water to her garden as we empty ours, eh?'

‘Probably,' Kurt replied, glancing at her, then returning to his book.

‘Is the story in your new book a good one?'

‘It's just a dictionary, Mutti. It has the German and the English words side by side.'

She shrugged, packed four more jars with peaches, packed them in tight, in silence, and the silence was not good. Better to speak of Rachael, let the pain come out, not hold it inside to grow hard as a stone. Only five large jars left, then she must start on the small ones, and no matter how firmly she packed those peaches, she wouldn't fit all of them in.

She ate two halves while watching Mrs Dolan emerge from her front door with her bucket. Growing dark out there – or perhaps it seemed darker because of the light in her kitchen.

‘I have the Buehler money. I would have given it gladly –'

‘It's not about the money, Mutti.'

‘Is he leaving?'

‘He says he is, but he knows he can't. Those city police will be here tonight or tomorrow, and if he leaves, they'll think he's guilty and chase him.'

‘He is too much like his father, that one.'

She had been a child in this house, an orphan, given shelter by Joseph when her father, Joseph's labourer, died on this land. She'd worked hard while the other children played, and she committed the unforgivable sin of surviving the diphtheria epidemic that stole Joseph's beautiful wife and his three children.

Such a cold, dark house it had been then, a house of wine and anger, but she'd grown to womanhood in it, grown without love, thickset and plain. And when, at twenty-seven, no offer had been made for her hand, Mrs Buehler spoke to Joseph of a marriage between Elsa and the Buehlers' slow-witted eighteen year old boy: ‘My son is of an age to need a woman in his bed. Marriage is for the betterment of the woman's position, and for the children it brings. When we are gone, our land will be Elsa's land and her children's,' she'd said.

Was it better to have children by a drooling boy than no children? Elsa looked to Joseph for advice. He said nothing, but that night he emptied two wine bottles then gave his brutal reply in her bed. Elsa did not go to the Buehlers'.

Like the cows in the paddock, Elsa was born to breed; a few visits from the old bull had been enough, and what could no longer be disguised at church must be confessed to the elders. They came to the house one Sunday afternoon and put an end to Joseph's wine, cut his vines to the ground, broke his bottles, poured his wine upon the earth.

‘Lick it from the dirt, you dog, and what you get on your tongue you can take with you to hell.'

‘The girl is like one of your own blood. You have raised her from childhood. She calls you uncle, and you defile a family trust.'

‘Filthy swine in man's clothing.'

How they'd cursed him. And later, while Joseph stood with the shame glowing red on his face, Mrs Buehler packed Elsa's clothing. ‘We will do what is best for the girl now. My son will give your child a name.' So Elsa was taken from Joseph's house.

But who would feed her chickens if she did not creep home at dusk? And who would milk her house cow at dawn, and could she lie with that slow-witted boy, and how many slow-witted grandsons would she make for the Buehler land? And what of the one who already tumbled and played beneath her heart, who made her heart sing with love?

One night when she crept home to feed her chickens, Joseph came out of his cold, dark house.

‘Uncle?' She was not afraid of him. She'd been more afraid of the Buehler son.

‘You are to wed on Sunday, eh?' he said.

‘They have made the arrangement.'

‘I will give your child a name.'

‘You cannot give to him what rightfully is his, Uncle. I know his name and he will know his name.' The bucket placed down, she stood there, her hands sheltering her unborn while measuring the old man with her calm eyes.

‘My land needs sons. It is better that the child wear his rightful name,' he said.

‘Is it better for the mother of the child when the offer comes from one who cannot look upon her face in daylight, but treats her like a whore in the dark, Uncle?'

He grunted, walked away, only turning back when he could no longer see her face. ‘You have the calmness of a slow-moving stream about you, girl. I have need of your calmness in my life. The offer has been made.'

‘Speak of this to Mrs Buehler. It has now become her concern,' she said, and she walked away.

Elsa and Joe wed only seven weeks before Kurt's birth. He was
her
son, born with her own calm eyes and her inner strength. Then, so soon, a second son wilfully thrust his head into life, even before she felt the first pain of birth. A wild one, Christian, already grasping for what he wanted with those tiny hands. He grasped at Joseph's heart with those hands. She saw this, saw it plain in her husband's eyes as he watched the tiny one's mouth sucking at her breast, fragile fingers claiming what was his.

‘To love is a good thing, my husband.'

‘I do not love,' he said. ‘Love is a weakness that can be used as a weapon against the heart.'

Then one afternoon, Christian brought Rachael to the kitchen and Joseph watched her, his eyes bewitched. She didn't fear him, mimicked his gruff German words – and he laughed at her mimicking. That little Silver one, he called her. Always that Silver – as he had called his first wife, his love.

Elsa had not sought love in her marriage, nor had she given more to Joseph than her labour, her loyalty, and often her pity. Tonight she felt great pity for the old man. When she'd gone to the bedroom to draw back the bedcover, she'd found him standing by the window, speaking English, wanting this land to hear and to understand his words.

‘You blooty land. How much more you want, eh?' he'd said. ‘How much more blood you take for your dirt before you take old Joe?'

She stood behind Kurt now, her hands on his shoulders, staring at the old book where words blurred and danced. Then she kissed his bruised eye. ‘Go find your brother. Be with him. It's not good that he is alone tonight.'

‘I've tried, Mutti.'

‘Try again, my good, fine, beautiful boy. For me, try again.'

He sighed, turned a page, then stood.

That is what you did with life – if a page was bad, you turned another, and maybe it was better. There were many pages yet to turn. They would find a good one.

Tom tried concealing the shotgun by holding the barrel down beside his leg. He tried carrying it under his arm, until he glanced at his sons' cricket bats carried proudly on Mike and Billy's shoulders. Perhaps he felt that old jab of pain in his gut, but like all other might-have-beens, it didn't change what was. He lifted his chin, lifted his gun to his shoulder, needing to walk proud beside those cricket bats one last time.

Down they walked, past the sports oval, a few kids chiacking, a few more wanting to follow. Tom sent them back and the trio marched on until there were no more houses, only forest on the left and Dawson's farm on the right, at which point Tom called a halt.

The railway lines were close to the road, but on the other side of those lines was heavily timbered bush – which didn't look inviting at this time of day and was probably crawling with snakes. He glanced at his boots, decided to tuck the cuffs of his trousers into his socks, which might offer his ankles some protection from venomous fangs.

‘I'm going over those lines here. I'll work my way down to the river, along it a bit, then come back up behind that big hollow log. If I can't sight them there, I'll cut out though to the crossing and back onto Kennedy's Road. Now, you know what you've got to do?'

A sky of blood formed in the west was bruising, marbling with purple, the world growing darker, and those trees on the far side of the line looking gloomy. What if those two big buggers
were
still hanging around? What if there were more than two?

‘We're not going to be much use to you here, Mr Thompson.'

They weren't far from wrong there, but he didn't tell them so. ‘You'll hear me yelling if I need help, or you'll hear my gunshot. If you do, run for Dawson. Get him to phone the Willama police, then you stay inside that house until you're told to come out. You do as I say now, or the deal is off and we all go home.'

‘Can we stand on the lines and brain them if they make a break out to the road?'

‘You can stand on this road and test out your cricket bats, that's what you can do. And don't lose that ball. And you can keep an eye out in case those city blokes come down here looking for me. You understand now, lads – I want no foolhardiness out of you.' And he left them.

The railway company liked dodging hills where it could. Kennedy's land was flat. They'd gone straight though his river paddock then followed the river to town. They liked drawing straight lines too, where they could, and that river didn't, so the land between line and river chopped and changed. At this point, the water cut deep into Squire land, thus the bush between the railway lines and the river was wide. Red gums grew thick here, and big. There wasn't much of a rise up to the station, but the train took its time through Kennedy's and over that crossing, making it easy for a freeloader to run out from behind a tree and scramble aboard one of the goods trucks – or for a foolish young girl to jump off. At night, not a soul would see them.

With no path to follow, Tom's progress was slow once he climbed over those lines. His eyes scanning the terrain for snakes – of the legless and two-legged variety – his ears alert for voices and movement, he was at the halfway mark to the river when he heard something behind him, and swung around, his gun pointing.

Those flamin' kids were creeping in after him. He hid behind a broad tree trunk, making a grab at Mike's shirt as he stole by – and was lucky not to be brained by his bat-wielding mate.

‘I told you little buggers to wait on the road,' he hissed.

‘What if they sneak up on you and knock you cold? We thought we'd come in a bit so we can watch your back, Mr Thompson.'

‘Yeah, well, I could have shot you just now, one barrel each, and I can't concentrate on what I'm doing if I have to watch your backs as well as my own. Your mothers will have my guts for garters if I get one of you hurt; now, go back to that road or no money in the morning.'

‘We'll stay here, Mr Thompson. We won't move from here. Promise.'

Tom eyed those eager faces, and maybe it was only those bats, but for a split second or two they reminded him of two other kids. ‘You did a bonzer job for me today, so don't you go undoing it now, deputies. If those coots are still hanging around here, they could be anywhere. They've killed once, so they'll do it again. This is no cops and robbers game, lads. This is the real thing.'

‘We know that, but we're both good bushmen and fast on our feet, and if we see anyone, we'll just say we're looking for our lost cricket ball.'

Tom gave up and headed for the river bank. No sign of them down there. No sign of anyone. Those mongrels were long gone. He turned, circling back towards a hollow log that might have been some ancient relative of the town tree. Only its shell remained, but a shell large enough to house a family of midgets, and a popular camp for the swaggies, being within a stone's throw of the railway lines.

Using a clump of saplings to screen himself and keeping his finger on the trigger and that gun barrel pointed towards the sky, Tom crept up on the log. It was too dark to see much; colour had a way of dying in the dark, and with colour went form. He checked the ground at his feet, checked over his shoulder, feeling knives in his back and fangs in his ankles. A man had to be mad for doing this. Those mongrels could have been creeping up behind him while he was creeping up on them, half a dozen of the buggers, armed with knives and broken bottles.

No one behind him. No sign of those kids either, but before him there was a hump on the town side of that log that could have been a body with light hair. He stood for a minute, waiting for that head to move. It didn't, so it probably wasn't a head. Two more halting steps forward and again he checked behind him, checked both sides, checked the ground. Then, taking a better grip on his gun, he moved forward, his eyes never leaving the hump that could have been a body.

And it was a body – or a definite head resting on a bedroll, the body hidden by the bedroll. There was a second one too, lying right alongside that log, sprawled out flat on his back, closer to Tom than the head on the bedroll but blending in better – except for his pig-grunting snore.

It was a bit of an anticlimax, really. Not that Tom felt like arguing about that, but those murdering mongrels were both sleeping – or dead drunk. He stepped in fast, damn near shoving the gun barrel up the big Pommy's nose.

‘Don't move,' he warned.

They didn't move, barely flinched. And no bloody wonder. There was an empty whisky bottle between them and a couple more not far away. They hadn't gone thirsty today.

‘Morris Mo Riley and Lefty Logan, you're under arrest for the murder of Rachael Squire. Anything you say may be used in evidence against you.' They still weren't hearing much; he wouldn't have bothered repeating it, if not for the benefit of the lads, who might have sighted those murdering mongrels before he'd sighted them. As soon as he shoved his gun in Mo's face, they'd come belting out of the timber like a pair of scalp-hungry, yahooing red Indians. That woke his prisoners.

He got Mike to point the gun while he cuffed the pair, hand to hand and ankle to ankle, then he searched them. Not much on them. He searched their bedrolls. Nothing worthwhile there, either. All he ended up with was a ten bob note and seven and six in coins.

‘Where's the money?'

They did a bit of snarling, which didn't include the whereabouts of their share of Dave Kennedy's stash, so Tom took their boots. Hard to deny him anything with a gun barrel waving around close to their noses and a kid's itchy finger on the trigger. No bankrolls in their boots. The buggers had hidden that money somewhere.

A third bedroll that Billy pulled out of the hollow log was more productive. Tom found a filthy shirt, small enough to fit Vern Lowe, and stinking of him too. What fell out of that shirt when he unrolled it was something better than money, something that would tie these bastards up tighter than a few five pound notes. It was a hairbrush, its highly polished wooden back and handle inlaid with silver. It looked old, and as sure as God had made little green apples, it was the one Joe Reichenberg had given to Rachael.

His barrel prodding his prisoners in turn, just to help them keep in step, the lads walking behind, carrying the bedrolls and cricket bats, up the middle of Railway Road they went. The city tenderfoots, like Siamese twins with three legs between them, weren't managing well, but the law enforcer and his deputies marched triumphant, their heads held high, just as the lamp outside the railway station was lit and day gave up the sky to the stars.

 

‘You got another telephone call from those lost policemen, Mr Thompson.' Jeanne and Miss Lizzie occupied his cane chairs. ‘They're still miles away. Their car won't keep going so they had to leave it out in the middle of nowhere and walk to . . . where did they say they'd walked to, Aunt Lizzie?'

‘I wouldn't know, dear.'

Jeanne's expression, like Tom's, suggested she doubted her aunt's words. ‘Oh well, it wasn't too far from the train line anyway, because they had to walk to some station, and he said they'd be coming in on tonight's train.'

‘Thanks, lass. What have you done with Mrs Thompson?'

‘She ate her eggs then got mad about something so she ripped her dress off. I got her into that nighty she likes and she put herself to bed.'

‘She's been asleep half the afternoon.'

‘I didn't put her to bed, Mr Thompson. I tried to stop her, told her she'd mess up her pretty hair, but she got in anyway. I keep checking on her every few minutes. She's sound asleep.'

Tom prodded his prisoners through the side gate and down to the lock-up door. He handed the keys to young Billy and let him do the honours, seeing as Mike had got to hold the gun.

‘Where's my water and fags?' Vern yelled. Tom could smell him, though he couldn't see him in the gloom, could barely see where that cuffed pair landed when they tripped over their three feet on the way into his second cell.

‘I brought you some mates instead, Vern,' he said, locking the second cell door. ‘They've got tobacco on 'em.'

‘Shit,' Vern replied.

‘Use your bucket,' Mike said.

Not another word came out of any of them until Tom and his deputies were outside. A bit was said then, and it wasn't the sort of language Tom wanted lads to be hearing, so he dismissed them for the night, though he stood listening beneath the barred window.

‘You give us up, you breenlus fooken fool.'

‘I told him nothin'. I arst for a solicitor, and that's all I said to him. And I wasn't so
fooken breenlus
as to get
fooken breenlus
dead bloody drunk, was I?'

Tom left them to it. He wanted his pipe; it wasn't in his pocket and he couldn't remember where he'd last seen it. Not wishing to run into Miss Lizzie on his veranda, he entered his residence via the back door, lit his kitchen lamp, found his tobacco tin but couldn't find his pipe. Maybe he'd left it in his office. He checked on Rosie as he walked by her room. She was sleeping. With no lamp to light his office, he couldn't see much. He'd have to put some kerosene in the dining room lamp, bring it in here, but he didn't have the time or inclination to do it right now. He wanted his pipe. He had a quick feel around in the dark, struck a few matches and found Vern's tins of cigarettes, so he helped himself to two, one for his mouth and one over his ear for later, then he walked to his open front door where he listened a moment to the lads exaggerating the tale of the two drunks Tom had caught napping.

The mob now congregating on and around his veranda cleared a pathway to let him out. He didn't hang around for congratulations, but headed diagonally across the circle to the café, was halfway there when he heard his telephone jangling.

‘Get that for me, Jeanne,' he called, continuing on his way while Miss Lizzie hurried home.

The café sold pipes but he didn't much like their price tag. Needing to cash his fiver and pay off those lads, he bought a couple of boxes of matches and another ice cream and walked back across the road, licking it.

‘It's a Melbourne man from some newspaper asking a lot of questions, Mr Thompson. Do you want me to tell him you caught the murderers?'

‘No, lass. Don't tell him that. Just say that a few suspects have been rounded up, and that Sergeant Clarence Morgan is on his way up here now, but he can't keep his car going long enough to get here.'

‘Clarence Morgan?' she yelled.

Tom licked around the cone, allowing no drips to escape. ‘That's him. Clarence Cecil Morgan. They'll know who you mean.'

The newspapers would like that. They'd give him a line or two tomorrow morning. He'd hated being called Clarence as a kid. Tom smiled as he continued walking the circle until, like the moths, the post office light drew him to it. He stood licking ice cream and watching the flame, watching the crazed circling of those moths, fragile or sturdy, spotted or striped, big ones and small, they were all slaves to that flickering glow. A few bats were flying about too, the ugly little buggers swooping, feasting on moths and mozzies.

Funny how old Mother Nature had set things up. The bats ate the moths, the owls ate the bats, the feral cats ate the owls, the dogs ate the cats, and man, armed with his rifle, shot the dogs and left them to rot where they fell. Man, the only flamin' one of God's creatures who killed for gain, not food. Size was all important in the animal kingdom but it made no never-mind in the world of man. Money counted. Money bought the gun that killed the dog. Money bought power.
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,
old Lord Acton had said once, and truer words were never spoken, Tom thought, feeding the tail-end of his cone to old Blue. Then the post office door swung open behind him and one whom absolute power had corrupted abso-bloody-lutely stuck her head out.