Jasper Jones (19 page)

I guess, over time, you’d want to protect that fool’s-gold glimmer,
like you’d clutch a candle in a jar down in a cave. And eventually that hope, that faith, would become a kind of truth.
She’ll turn up. She’ll turn up
. They would be more than bittersweet words.

But you could never move on from it, could you? You could never set things right in your heart. You’d spend your life wavering between the flickering spark and the dark tunnel you’re in, and you’d seek solace in your little bottled lie each time, instead of heading for the real light at the end.

I think the comfort would be thin and hollow. I think the knot of not knowing would be the worst. You’d be at the behest of your howling imagination, beset by it. It would never let up. The possibilities, the frayed ends, the fragments and scenarios. Forever out of your reach. You’d crave the truth most of all, wouldn’t you? No matter what it meant. Even coming to know that your daughter, your sister, is anchored at the bottom of a water hole. That she was assailed and beaten and hanged. That she was taken from you. Stolen. And buried without you bearing witness, without you tossing dirt or murmuring goodbye.

I put my pen down. I fold my arms and lay my head on them. And I think of Eliza. Her cheeks and her smell. I have to. It’s the only way I can distract this hungry dog, the only way I can ward off the insects itching my eyes, the only way I can still the hurricane in my snow dome.
What a world!
said the green witch in my
Wizard of Oz
dream. I bet she was happy to go. I bet a part of her was relieved to melt into nothing. For some people, it must be nice to know about dying. It must be a relief. What a world. And I fall asleep like that, my suitcase yawned open by my feet, a spread of pages under my arms.

And Jasper Jones doesn’t come.

e doesn’t come, he doesn’t come, and then he does.

Jasper Jones has come to my window.

It is a week since Laura was killed. It’s been a week since I’ve seen Jasper. It feels like my whole life.

***

Nothing much had happened since everything happened. The Ashes Test was a draw; not even Doug Walters could swashbuckle a result. Jeffrey failed to make the Country Week cricket team, which came as no surprise. My mother was irritable, my father quietly concerned and serene. I had been getting less and less sleep. I finished
Pudd’nhead Wilson
. I started
Innocents Abroad
. I didn’t have to dig any more holes.

The black dragonflies left and the search teams began to disperse. There were only a few locals and some people from neighboring towns still left to scour the bush. The water crews dived and surfaced with empty hands.

The latest round of draft letters was delivered. I heard that three young men from Corrigan had been called up for National Service. My father shook his head when he told me.

It was a whole week since we drowned her body. And Laura Wishart was still where we left her.

Corrigan was slowly lifting the curfew on its children, but the panic remained. Kids were allowed outside again, and there were color and noise back in the street. But doors were being snapped shut and locked come dusk, and parents remained taut and watchful.

Tonight there was a twilight meeting at the Miners’ Hall. It was standing room only. The Wisharts weren’t there. I was hoping to see
Eliza. Jeffrey was there with his mother, but they arrived late and were toward the back, so I couldn’t talk to him. The local chaplain and a few senior members of the local council took the floor. None of them could answer any questions with any certainty. They blustered and touched their collars and said the same things over and again.
It’s a complete mystery
, they said.
There is no evidence to suggest anything untoward. It’s as though she simply disappeared
. They said the likelihood is that she hitchhiked out of town. Therefore, the search had broadened to other states, and they have issued bulletins nationwide calling for information. I took a long, deep breath. The chaplain, who everybody calls Reverend Gooseberry because he only has one testicle, took to the lectern with theatrical gravity and self-importance. He led the gathering through a prayer, and assured us that God would see her back to us safely. I looked up and saw my father narrow his eyes and thumb his jaw. Before people began to file out, they were reminded to stay vigilant, to keep their eyes peeled. And if anyone had any information that might be of use, they were urged to come forward immediately.

I slowly allowed myself to exhale.

I’d never felt so utterly alone as then, hemmed in and trapped by every person in this town. It felt as though I was made of different stuff. As though I was from a different place. Like I spoke a different language.

There, among the local police and the firm-lipped city coppers, among the volunteers and the hysterical mothers and the breast-beating fathers, I’d been right in the hornet’s nest. And it struck me afresh, the deed that I’d done, my collusion with Jasper Jones. The heft of it. If any of these people knew what I’d done, I would’ve been spat on and screamed at.

But they didn’t know anything. They had no idea. And nobody in Melbourne or Sydney or Adelaide could possibly come forward to lend assistance. Nobody outside of this town could know what I had seen.

Jasper and I were in the clear for now. Laura had not been discovered, and nobody had seen us in the streets that night. For this
I felt grateful, of course, but I still despaired. If these folks couldn’t get anywhere with their search teams and sniffer dogs and planes and dive crews and interviews, if they couldn’t unearth any clues, then what hope had we?

After the meeting, in the open vestibule of the hall, there were trestle tables stacked with urns and plates of baked goods. The parents milled about and spilled out of the entrance, slapping the hands of their children. It was a chance for Corrigan to gossip en masse, for rumors to flap and slip from the lips of high-eyebrowed wives, to be refuted and scorned by their husbands.

Out the front, children played chase among the lanes and parked cars. Kids closer to my age mingled and loitered, daring each other to pilfer from the feast inside. Summer couplings stole a chance to spend some time together, looking conspicuously around before sneaking behind the hall or across the road to the back of the hardware store to kiss and grope.

I found Jeffrey pretty quickly. He was chewing a ginger snap that he’d boosted on the way out.

“Quick hands, Chuck,” he said. “Like the Artful Dodger. I could have taken a whole tray and they wouldn’t have even noticed.”

“Then you’d be the Fartful Podger.”

Jeffrey smiled with his mouth full.

“They don’t really know anything, do they?”

“What d’you mean?” I asked.

“I mean the police. It’s stupid. They called a big meeting just so they could tell everybody they know about as much as we do. I reckon they were just hungry.” And he stuffed the rest of the ginger snap in his mouth.

“You’re probably right,” I said.

“I’m always right,” he said after a lengthy time chewing. “I’m a genius. And I’m bored too. A sharp mind like mine needs stimulation. Go in there and tell them you did it so we can all go home.”

Then there was a commotion. It cut the air and made everything
still. From inside the lobby of the hall, I heard a single scream, a crockery crash, the gasp of a crowd, then a sustained barrage of sobbing and screeching. It was loud and unintelligible. Heads turned.

This is what had happened:

A woman called Sue Findlay, whom I’d never met, had walked from the hall’s belly to see Jeffrey’s mother quietly pouring water from one of the urns into her teacup. Sue Findlay was a boxy woman with a thick bob, and from what I was told later by my father, she just detonated. Her eyes had lit up like someone put a penny in her. She screamed until her face was red, then stomped over to Mrs. Lu. She slapped her cup up, right into her chest and her chin, staining her thin summer blouse and scalding her skin. The cup smashed. Mrs. Lu, stunned, had bowed slightly and backed away. But Sue Findlay hadn’t finished. Jabbing her finger, she screeched the most horrible words, the nastiest things imaginable, her voice uneven with tears, her eyes crazy. It happened so quickly. The surrounding folks just stared. I don’t know where her husband was. It was only when she reached out to snatch at Mrs. Lu’s hair that Reverend Gooseberry pushed through to grab her firmly by the shoulders and lead her away.

Mrs. Lu just quietly reached a trembling hand out to unsheathe a napkin. Nobody took her by the shoulders.

Then Jeffrey pushed through the milling cluster. I was right behind him. He walked straight up to his mother and touched her hip as she daubed at her chest.

“Ma, we should go now.”

It’s all he said. Plainly. As though nothing had happened. Mrs. Lu nodded. She must have been in a lot of pain. Jeffrey led her out with his chin up. Like it was all just an unfortunate accident. Mrs. Lu looked shaken and embarrassed. People slowly made way. I followed them outside silently.

Jeffrey opened the door for his mother and people looked on, watching like they were some kind of exhibit. As their car started, Jeffrey wound down his window and waved.

“Bye, Chuck,” he said.

Words deserted me. I held my hand up weakly.

Afterward, I orbited my parents. I listened to my father air the same platitudes to every concerned parent who wandered our way. And I watched my mother fawn and cluck in an overbearingly sympathetic way. I felt galled. Nobody talked about what had just happened. Not one word.

Then someone mentioned Jasper Jones. The same way they did when the post office burned to the ground. With tilted eyebrows and suspicion. And my father listened blankly, like he was barely tolerating them, like he knew better, but he said nothing in Jasper’s defense. None of the things I wanted to holler. So I sighed and turned and kicked a honky nut as hard as I could. It skittered across the road. I left them and sat in the backseat of our car. And there I scowled and sweated, watching this town through our grubby windows. I was so full of sadness and hate. I wondered how many of them had mentioned Jasper’s name over the past week. Probably all of them. I wondered how many of them might be talking about him right now.

And I understood then that maybe we really did do the wrong thing for the right reasons. If we’d left Laura Wishart where she was, they would find her. Someone, somehow, sometime, would stumble across that glade. And soon enough, they would link Jasper back to that spot. He was right. This town was looking for an excuse. And that coincidence would be more than enough for them.

He would have been cuffed and caged like Eric Cooke. He would have been beaten and lynched like Laura Wishart.

I stared into my lap. Suddenly the thought of being in New York City with Eliza seemed the most wonderful thing in the world. I rested my head against the window and thought on it. I imagined meeting her in Manhattan for high tea, whatever that was; all I cared about was that it was far away from here, from these people. I imagined holding her hand and buying her things. Kissing her cheek goodbye as we parted company. I could live with Jasper Jones. In Brooklyn. We’d be
safe there. No one could find us, no one would suspect a thing. Jasper Jones would make New York City his own, and I’d be walking alongside my girl, on the other side of town.

My reverie was interrupted by the Miners’ Hall’s front floodlights. The sun was bleeding out, and the thick yellow light filled the air abruptly. As though on cue, mothers started rounding up their children and men started wandering to the pub to drink their pay. I saw Sue Findlay treading the wooden steps of the hall, holding a white handkerchief to her face, being led by a tall man I didn’t recognize. I wanted to spit poison at her. I watched her with my lip curled.

My father approached and bade me into the front seat by pointing. My mother was staying on to help clean up.

On the short trip home, he explained to me the cause of Sue Findlay’s outburst.

Some months ago her husband, Ray, had been killed in the war. They’d had a rocky marriage, but she’d taken it very badly. And only yesterday her eldest son had announced he’d been balloted through to Vietnam. She’d taken that even worse.