Goodwood (8 page)

So, Mack wondered, why didn't Bart float?

Pop said sensibly, well, Bart might've
been
floating. There were many marshy banks where no roads neared for many kilometres. The police boats travelled the perimeter as best they could, but in some areas the marshes prohibited access for a good ten metres out from shore. They were matted like brambles and hooked plastic bags and other passing jetsam. The police hadn't sighted Bart in any of the bends, in any of the marshes, above or under the water. But it was a big lake.

When the Clarke police had finished their search and directed their investigations towards other avenues, many people in town continued looking. Mack did, as did Big Jim and Merv, bald Bob Elver, Irene Oakman, Smithy, and Carmel Carmichael who owned the Bowlo and bore the unfortunate burden of a name that few people could easily say. It was nice—the community spirit. All of them out there all week, taking time off work, utilising boats they didn't often utilise, and meeting at the Wicko for steaks after—sombre and, increasingly, drunk.

‘He'd've been out there for us,' said Smithy. ‘He'd've looked till he found any of us. Otherwise—what? We'll all sit around and say, “Oh, we should've looked.” None of that. You either shit or get off the pot. So we look.' And they all agreed.

The Clarke police didn't have an opinion on that, but they did seem to have an opinion on Bart, in that Mack said
that Sergeant Simmons said that there's no such thing as a coincidence.

First Rosie vanished. And then Bart. ‘And now, Mack,' said Sergeant Simmons, ‘you can believe in people's good nature all you want, but this is a small town. What are the odds of two people going missing, exactly one week apart, in a town this small?'

Mack did not know the odds.

‘There's gotta be a connection,' said the sergeant.

And, bless his heart, that was the first time the possibility of a connection had occurred to Mack.

‘What, like a serial killer?' asked Mack.

‘Nah, not a fucken serial killer,' said Sergeant Simmons, half laughing. ‘But, mate, a connection.'

11

‘Do you think they're connected?' I asked George.

‘What is?'

‘Rosie and Bart,' I said. ‘Them disappearing.'

‘Oh,' said George, eating her sandwich, ‘I don't know. Do you?'

‘I don't know,' I said, eating my sandwich.

I wanted to tell George about the money—and the absence of the money, and the plastic horse—but something made me continue to keep it all to myself. It had occurred to me that morning on the way to school that I'd forgotten all about it. So much had happened, and there was so much else to think about. What with Rosie, and then Bart.

On its own, money in a tree didn't necessarily mean anything. But the more I thought about what Mum said Mack said Sergeant Simmons said—that there is no such thing as a coincidence—the more I worried.

‘Do you mean like a serial killer?' asked George.

‘No, God. I don't know. I don't think so.'

‘Because they're totally different. Rosie is so young and cool and all in her room. And Bart was old and on his boat.'

‘Yeah,' I said.

‘And, I don't know . . . Bart drowned, didn't he? Or he had a heart attack and fell in or whatever.'

George put the rest of her sandwich down, like she was no longer hungry. She frowned. I didn't know what to think. Except that I should go to the clearing later and check if the horse was still in the bag.

‘He did seem to drown,' I said.

•

Ethan West was my age, a good foot taller than me, and blond and tanned. His nose went a bit red in the sun and he often smeared zinc across it when he swam at the river, his body lean and well-proportioned and admired. When he swung off the big branch that hung over the water, his arms were as long as spears. I admired them, and so did George. Ethan would lope on down with Lucas Karras and we would all drink pilfered beer and swim at the twilight of summer, when it was too cold for the cooler kids to hog the clearing.

In March that year, Ethan had begun his practice of looking at me for longer than was necessary—and then George would elbow me or cough. George never missed a long look, and
George never missed an opportunity to make it clear that she never missed a long look. ‘He
looks
at you,' she would say. And I would say, ‘Not as much as Lucas looks at you.'

Ethan's parents had moved themselves and their two sons from a town in Queensland even smaller than Goodwood. Ethan's little brother Petey was mostly barefoot, even in winter. Ethan's mum was an avid member of the CWA and presumably didn't have time to shop for kids' shoes. And then there was Ethan's dad, who used to be a dairy farmer before he shattered all the bones in his left leg in a horrific accident involving his herd and a metal fence. Unfortunately, Ethan's dad had been in the middle, and there's nothing like the weight of cows to break a set of bones.

Ethan told us that Mal West could no longer do physical work, with a cane and a bung leg, so they'd moved to Goodwood to be near family, and Mal had become terribly depressed. He drank enough beer to fill the river and he got mean when he was drunk. He was angry at cows. He was angry at fences. In fact, the Wests were the only family I'd ever known to knock down their own fence when they moved in. Ethan's mum planted English Box where the fence had been, and shaped it into squared solid blocks with a shiny pair of topiary shears.

Ethan missed the cows, and during the times we'd all spent at the clearing, he would walk up to the fence and put both his spear-arms out until a docile cow approached. The
herd was unsure at first. With other people they would snort, or hoof the ground, or toss their big heads. But Ethan was like a magnet for them. He was a beacon. He stood at the fence, offering nothing but himself, and the cows gathered near in a huddle and stared forth, as if his very presence calmed them into a bovine trance.

‘Hi, Jean,' said Ethan West, appearing beside me as I walked out of the school gate that day, his nose red in the winter sun.

‘Oh, hi,' I said, and we walked together as the rest of the school wandered in various clusters up the hill towards Cedar Street.

‘You wanna go see the cows with me?'

Ethan's boots made a clopping sound. He scuffed them along the ground like it was too much of an effort to lift his long legs up enough in order to get his big feet off the ground.

‘When, now?'

‘Yeah,' he said, with his hands in his pockets. He was being very casual about the whole thing, even though this was the first time he'd invited me to go anywhere just the two of us.

‘Is Lucas coming?'

‘Oh, nah,' he said.

All I could think of was that I wanted to check the tree-hole, and that the tree-hole was at the clearing where the cows often were.

‘I have to go home and get Backflip,' I said, wondering if I could check for the plastic horse while Ethan entranced the cows. He looked down at me and stared for a moment too long before his eyes found the ground again. He was no Big Jim, but he certainly was tall.

‘Can I come?' he asked. ‘To get Backflip?'

I wasn't sure what to say.

Liz Gordon and Kiralee Davis jostled by us with George's brother Toby, who punched my arm on his way past. I wasn't really in the mood for company, but I didn't know what to tell Ethan. He looked expectant. There was something about him that seemed almost fragile, or hidden away.

‘Okay,' I said.

And that was how Ethan West and I ended up spending the afternoon together.

When we got to my house, he waited outside with his hands in his pockets while I went to get Backflip. I told him he could come in, but he declined.

Mum gave me a bemused look and said, ‘Is that Ethan West waiting outside?'

I said, ‘Yes, that is very clearly Ethan West waiting outside.'

Mum was plainly entertained. I sensed that she had to restrain herself from winking.

We walked past Bart's Meats on the way to the river and I was quite interested to discuss the disappearances with Ethan and get his particular opinion on the whole thing.

‘Full on about that business, hey,' he said. ‘My mum's all upset about it.' And then he changed the subject to cows.

We stopped briefly at Woody's, so Ethan could get a chocolate Moove. Derek Murray took Ethan's money and said, ‘How's it going?' in a way that indicated he didn't give two shits about the answer.

‘Yeah, sweet,' said Ethan, oblivious, and Derek Murray had already turned back to the deep fryer.

We arrived at the paddock fence next to the clearing and Ethan offered me a sip of his Moove. I said: ‘It's so weird that Rosie just isn't there, don't you think?' and Ethan said of the cows, ‘I knew
they'd
be here, though. They get moved from the other paddock to this one on Saturday at dusk. And then they'll go on back to the other paddock this Saturday.'

‘At dusk?'

‘Yeah, at dusk,' he said, putting his arms out. ‘Kevin moves them back and forth every Saturday at dusk.'

I knew Kevin Fairley owned the Fairley Dairy. He was a friend of Pop's, kind of, in that they used to boat together on occasion. Also, I knew Nan had concerns for Kevin because farming's a chancy business, and Kevin was in it all alone. But, alone or not, Kevin Fairley was not much seen in town since his wife had passed, and I wondered how Ethan knew the specifics of his routine.

‘I help him out a bit, every now and again,' said Ethan, which cleared that right up.

‘Why dusk?' I asked.

‘Oh, because it's better for them when it's dimmer light. They get less stressed out when you move them. Kev moves them at dusk and he talks all slow and quiet. Then they settle into the new paddock better.'

The cows moved slowly towards us—or towards Ethan, really—and Backflip started barking and carrying on. I shooed her off towards the water, where she thankfully found the ducks more interesting than the cows. I watched her wade in, panting, and the ducks disperse. I watched her stand still in the water and shake herself, and the ducks flap off in fright.

Then Ethan and I stood by the fence and looked at the gathered cows, as planned, while the slow, loping animals mooed and ruminated. Ethan told me that cows have four digestive compartments; they drink about a bathtub of water a day; and they sit down when it's going to rain. He also told me that some people milk reindeer.

We talked a good while by the fence while Backflip ate the best part of a fallen branch. I could feel Ethan move a bit closer to me every so often. His leg finally touched my leg about half an hour after we got there and then we sat down under the willow tree on the bank and then we lay on our backs next to each other and looked up at the canopy and let there be silence except for the birds.

Ethan had big lungs. The air went in and out much louder than mine and for a while it was all I heard. Just air and birds. I kept staring upwards and so did he. His spear-arm lay by his side, and then he shuffled himself around so his arm ended up touching my arm, as we lay there on the ground. Soon he had put his hand over my hand and held it. I wondered if perhaps he would turn his head towards me. I wondered if he was going to kiss me, and if he'd taste like chocolate milk and paddocks.

Backflip had sat down right next to me, having dragged her half-eaten branch up from the bank like a trophy. She stank and panted away with her eyes closed in joy.

A cow mooed.

Then Ethan sat up abruptly, looking at his watch.

‘Shit,' he said, getting up and dusting his jeans off with his big hands. ‘Jeannie, I gotta go.'

Not many people called me Jeannie. It was nice.

‘Okay,' I said, propping myself up on my elbows.

‘I gotta go get Petey from Lego Pat's house,' he said. ‘Mum's been all worried about him walking home by himself since Rosie got—you know.' He paused and looked over his shoulder. ‘Since she's been missing.'

It was as if that last word was very difficult for him to say.

Missing
.

He said it over his shoulder to the cows.

I looked up at him and he seemed to be in a whole different world all of a sudden. The world of the missing, maybe. Somewhere very far away—like even the thought of Rosie took him there and he couldn't easily come back. I wondered how well Ethan had known her. I wondered if he'd found her inscrutable or desirable or free.

‘Hey, can you not tell anyone I work for Kevin?' He was looking back at me now, full of concern.

‘Oh, okay,' I said. It seemed like a strange thing to be kept private. ‘Why, is it a secret?'

He laughed—a bit too loud. ‘Oh, nah, it's just between me and Kevin, you know?'

‘Oh. Sure,' I said. But I didn't know.

Then he picked up his bag and put it over one shoulder.

I watched him walk back along the bank towards town.

When he'd gone, I climbed the willow and stood on the branch as tall as I could muster, which was much less than Ethan West could've—he would've had no trouble popping whatever he wanted in a high tree-hole. I could see the white plastic bag poking out just a fraction, just as I had left it.

I looked around the clearing and saw no one. Just Backflip, panting on the ground near the willow. I pulled the bag out and felt the shape of the horse inside, running my fingers along the bumps of its hard mane and along its snout. I thought about Ethan. His breath went in and out as loud as Backflip's. I had thought no one came to the clearing
in winter, but maybe Ethan did? Maybe he came down here to visit the cows all year round and sat in this very tree. Or maybe he just helped out Kevin up in the paddocks on Saturdays at dusk.

I reached up and put the horse and bag back in the hole and climbed to the bottom of the willow where names and initials were carved into the trunk. I had carved mine with George's Swiss Army knife when I was thirteen. JEAN. George had carved her initials near mine: G.S. The newer carvings were paler, since they hadn't seen so much weather. The newest carving, in fact, looked brand new. It was right around the emptier side of the trunk, down low. RW 4 DC, it said, clean as a whistle, and as soon as I saw it my stomach fell.