The Burial (14 page)

In the morning the stench of the pelt was made real by the sun and she unrolled herself from it and peeled off her bloodied clothes. She walked silent and naked, leading Houdini, afraid of how much death was in her.

JACK BROWN AND Barlow travelled steadily north through the valley. When they sighted a hut they slowed their approach so the occupant would have notice of their coming. Even then, some men were waiting with their guns propped and loaded. Barlow held his badge high above his head and it had the effect, at least, of making the men lower their guns. Then they would ride evenly and slowly towards the huts with their occupants watching keenly.

One of the men had his trousers pinned up over a stump of leg and his hut smelt worse than anything Barlow had ever smelt before. The man claimed to have seen Jessie. As he told it:
She moved through the bush like some bitch or beast clawing at the ground and her hair covered her wild face and if I could have loaded this gun faster I would o'gladly shot 'er.

They rode for three days with few words between them, visiting and marking off each hut on the northern stretch, both the huts that were shaded on the postmaster's map and those that were not. Barlow was grateful not to find any dead thing.

By the end of the third day, there was one more north-lying hut, according to the map, and it was the one closest to the mountain. It was growing dark quickly and they could hardly see, but Barlow was determined to get to it so they pushed on until Jack Brown warned Barlow that their horses could stumble in a rabbit hole and break a leg, so the sergeant finally agreed to stop.

Jack Brown lit a fire and Barlow used the firelight to write police notes in his book. Jack Brown did not ask what he wrote. For dinner, they watched the horses grazing near the fire while they themselves chewed on the leftover damper Jack Brown had made for their lunch. In the distance, Barlow thought he could hear the barking of a dog.

Jack Brown lay down on his swag and soon he was snoring. Barlow felt wide awake. Together the trees and the fire made strange configurations and Barlow looked out into them until some of the configurations seemed to be stepping towards him. He strained his eyes to see them, and then he recognised them. They were all the men he had memorised, all the men in his files. They were moving in on him, and circling.

Jessie was not among them.

When the sun finally rose, Barlow was relieved. He could see the base of the mountain and close by was smoke rising above the trees. They saddled up the horses and soon they were riding towards it.

The dwelling they approached looked more like a cottage than the huts they had previously visited. Hedged by roses, a stable on one side, sheds on its perimeter. As they rode up a dog started barking, and when they saw an old woman emerge from the cottage to tie it up, they pushed their horses into a gallop.

The old woman was friendly enough and she nodded as Barlow gave a description of Jessie and Fitz. She said she would be glad to see any woman around here, but she had not, not for some years, and as for Fitz, she said she was not one to remember names, only faces, and a ruddy-faced man could have been any one of the men she had seen around the valley for the last forty years.

The dog kept barking, which unsettled the horses, and the old woman could not quieten it.

We would appreciate some breakfast if you have any to spare
, said Barlow.
We've been riding for days.

I am happy enough to offer you food
, said the old woman,
but I'd prefer if you eat it outside as my husband is not well. He has grown used to the racket of the dog, but I know other men's voices will wake him.

The old woman moved towards the house and Barlow and Jack Brown sat on ledges of rock near the stable.

Jack Brown said,
We needn't eat the old woman's food
, but Barlow said,
It's a long ride back, Jack Brown, and I don't have the stomach for more of your damper.

Soon the old woman reappeared with two bowls of warm oats and she sat down near Barlow and Jack Brown. But the dog got loose and took off down to the house and they all watched it jumping up and down and scratching at the door until an old man opened it.

The woman yelled out,
Go back to bed. You are not fit to be out.

But the old man moved towards them, ignoring her. He had a bandage around his head.
What's your business here?

Barlow stood up.
I'm Sergeant Barlow and this is my tracker Jack Brown and we've come by to ask if you have seen a man or a woman who have gone missing
.
The man is large and thick around the neck, his face is red and so is his hair, and his eyebrows knot together. The woman is tall with long brown hair and brown eyes and she is known for her horse-breaking and her riding
.

The old woman scuttled around them nervously.
Can I get you more oats?
And, whispering:
Don't mind him, he's not the full quid.

She was here
, said the old man.
Come down to the house, I have something to show you.

What are you doing, old man?
said the old woman
. Stop making trouble.

It is no trouble
, he said.

Barlow followed him down to the house and into the bedroom. The old man reached under the bed and pulled out an enamel cup. He was careful to only pick it up with two fingers by its handle.

This here is the cup that she drank from. It will be covered with her fingerprints.

This is most useful
, said Barlow.
Which way did she head when she left here?

Like any desperate creature, to higher ground. I expect you'll find her somewhere up there on that mountain.

Jack Brown stayed outside with the old woman, who paced around the stables.

Do you smoke?
she asked.
Could you roll me one? A thin one. I'm not a smoker.

Jack Brown took out his tobacco pouch. His palms were sweating and the papers stuck to his fingers.

The old woman sat down on a hay bale and stared at the ground.

Was she here?
asked Jack Brown.

The woman was silent. Jack Brown waited. The cigarette paper came apart between his fingers and trails of tobacco threaded across his hand. He brushed it off on his trousers.

She was here
, said the old woman finally.
We found her in a bad way by the river.

Six months pregnant
, said Jack Brown.

Seven by her count.

Seven?

It doesn't matter
, said the old woman
. The baby did not survive it
.

Did you see it born?

No
, said the old woman.
The babe was already dead and gone when we found her.

There was no child inside of her?
said Jack Brown.

No
, said the old woman.
She was empty as a bottle.

Jack Brown crouched low to the ground. He pulled his hat down over his eyes and lit the cigarette he had rolled for the old woman. He smoked it and smoke streamed out his nose as he clenched his jaw and tried to push down all the mournful sounds that were rising in him.

BY THE TIME Barlow and Jack Brown were heading back to the station, Barlow's body ached and a whole day of sun had not warmed him. Arriving at the station hut it was dark again and Barlow was glad of it. It was a veil for his mood. Jack Brown put the horses in the holding yard and, inside, Barlow lit two lanterns and found a blanket for Jack Brown.

When Jack Brown came in from the holding yard, Barlow threw him the blanket and said,
There's an empty cell. Make yourself at home.

Jack Brown acknowledged him with a nod and disappeared into the cell.

Barlow sat down at his desk, between the lanterns, and opened my mother's file again. The photo of her was no bigger than the palm of his hand, but it was enough to reveal her. He could see her eyes like smudges of coal, her jaw jutting out, the look of defiance. The more he looked, the more he felt that there was something live in it.

He lined up all of his props—a sable brush, a pot of lampblack, glass slides, gummed paper, his magnifying glass. He put on his white gloves. Then he unwrapped the enamel cup the old man had given him. Dipping the sable brush into the pot of lampblack, he hooked his finger around the handle of the cup and began to dust it. The dust collected around the smudges of her fingerprints.

Suddenly he felt full of life and charged with adrenaline. He rolled out the gummed paper and pressed it over each print, collecting four perfect samples—three of her fingerprints and one on the rim of the cup of her lips.

From her file he took out the record of her fingerprints. He lined up the gummed paper samples next to it and, using his magnifying glass, he compared them.

He had her. There was no doubt that each print was one and the same.

BY MID-MORNING THE sun was high in the sky and the bush was radiant, inexhaustible in the heat.

Within the mountains were streams that gathered up in gorges, following a predestined course, crossing narrow ridges of rock. Jessie dropped to her knees next to Houdini and drank from the stream. She did not cup water with her hands but put her face into it and drank, like any other creature.

She unwound the bloodied tangle of her clothes, dressed in them again and then she lay down in the shallows and let the water wash over her and wash her clothes clean. The rushing stream collected her hair and she felt it against her scalp like fingers stroking her and then those same fingers twisted her hair and pulled at it and she knew then it was not water that had a hold of her, it was ghosts. They had scraped up the mountain beside her and, despite her pleading, they would not leave her.

Drenched as she was, she pulled herself from the stream and led Houdini towards the ridgeline. She viewed the mountain range, and the highest, steepest slope within it. And although it looked thick with scrub, impassable, she mounted Houdini and rode in the mountain's direction anyway, determined to escape all the ghosts that trailed her.

IV

YOU MUST HAVE seen the tracks all over the country. The imprint of birds and cows and horses and humans, crisscrossing each other. And that's just the top layer of dirt. Beneath it are layers upon layers of fossilised things and rotting matter that tell something different again. Because down here stories overlap, like bodies underground, and they become intimate in the strangest way.

When I first heard his voice it was like stones rattling in a pot.
You b-a-a-a-a-s-t-a-r-d
, he said.
I am not dead!

It was not my voice in echo. It was something else.

He said,
Thank Christ you've quit ya screaming and carrying on. Between you and them fucken birds, a man gets no peace.

The earth was moving around me like something was burrowing up. He pushed a small button through. He said,
Here, suck on this, kid.

If I was at two feet, he was at three, and if my mother had kept on digging she would have dug his bones right up. I took him at his word that it would have been a terrible sight to see. He said his jaw was blown clean off and that, over time, the worms had eaten him out completely. Of course, that's when he was still alive enough to be eaten. So physically, you would say, my companion was not much to speak of. It did not matter to me. I grew fond of him, my neighbour at my elbow.

He became my measure of time. Every day, at the same hour that he was rolled into his grave forty years before, he yelled,
You bastard, I am not dead!
Every day it came out of him like an explosion and he said it was just his way of clearing the air. Apart from that, he did not say much. He said,
A lot o'fucken good words did me in life, so what good are they here?
But that did not stop sounds rolling out of him—rumbling and farting and moaning. He was never truly quiet.

And over time, he gave me more gifts. There was the button first, then came the spent bullet and a shell. I treasured each one. He also gave me an expression:
Bad to worse.