Yesterday's Dust (23 page)

‘That will be Maxine,' May said. She spoke for only a minute but when
she walked to the kitchen, tears were trickling. ‘Ann,' she said.

‘What the bloody hell does she want now?'

May shook her head, wiped at her tears. ‘She's in hospital. She's had another baby. Oh Jack, she said to me that she was sorry. That poor little girl said to me that she was sorry. Sorry for what?' He dropped his bread into the fat, listened to it sizzle. ‘God, Jack, after what we have
done to her, she says she's sorry?'

‘Don't start on that again.'

‘We're going up there. Today. You're going to Daree, to do whatever the police want you to do.'

She stood there, her eyes leaking while he flipped his bread over, got the jam from the fridge and sat down to eat.

She sat by him, her head on the table, and he placed an arm
around her. ‘Come on. Stop your bawling. I'm a bastard
and you always knew it. She's all right if she can make a phone call. The kid is all right?'

‘It's very small, and it's another girl, Jack, and she named it . . . that's what's killing me. It's killing me, Jack. She named her Bethany May.'

Friday 15 August

Jack had spent the morning in Daree, kowtowing to the Sydney detectives, then he and May had driven up to Warran, booked into a motel and had a decent lunch there. He would have preferred to eat at a pub, but he didn't feel too confident about walking into a Warran hotel. He'd spent a fair amount of his time in most of them,
and been tossed out of a few.

It was two o'clock before they drove to the Warran hospital. May wanted him to go in with her, to look at the granddaughter – or great niece, depending on which one he was supposed to be. And he'd been planning to do just that. As May had said fifty times or more, Ann had called them; she'd opened the lines of communication, so now it was up to them to keep those
lines open.

So he'd breeze in and front her. He'd planned it all morning, practising Sam's fake expression of concern. ‘Lovely to see you again, Ann Elizabeth,' he was going to say. ‘Sad news about your father.' That's what he'd planned to do on the eight-hour drive last night, what he'd planned when he'd woken before dawn in a strange bed, what he'd planned while driving to Warran, and to the
hospital. But ten metres from the hospital entrance, he'd stilled his feet. Backed off. Chickened out.

His lack of fear had served him well in his youth, but fear was like a nest of lice in his guts. He couldn't face those eyes. They'd kill him. She had Ellie's big round eyes, but hers were black as coal. She'd always shielded them from him behind a film of accusation,
and they'd accuse him again
today.

Bastard, they'd say. Murdering bastard.

He looked at his hands. They were clean. He'd scrubbed them clean last night at the motel, scrubbed them with Solvol, bought at the Daree supermarket. Scrubbed them before they went to the cops this morning too, and made a bloody mess of the motel's hand basin.

They'd taken a sample of his blood and a bit of his hair, they'd X-rayed his skull,
his teeth, his jaws. He was probably ticking today, probably giving off radium fumes. Then, when the technical mob had done with him, the cops had started in. Hours he'd been with them, and he'd played Sam, played him to perfection until every vessel in his brain had gone into atomic mode, threatening the big bang.

Fear was a killer. So were X-rays. His head was aching like a bastard. Maybe if
he had a heart, then his heart was aching too. Maybe he wanted to see that kid, born early like its mother, with black hair an inch long – like its mother. All Burton, the husband had said when May had called him last night from the motel.

Another one of the long-limbed, black-headed little buggers, that old Celtic strain that refused to breed out, Jack thought as he drove slowly down the main
street, massaging his neck, turning his head from side to side, striving to ease the ache. His heart had been thumping like a dying motor since he'd driven away from the hospital. Maybe he should have gone in. If you're going to have a heart attack, the best place to have one is at a hospital.

Too familiar, this town. Back on his old turf, his old stomping ground, it was becoming increasingly
difficult to deny Jack. He'd known Warran well, known a few Warran women in his time too.

A beer and a couple of aspros, he thought. There were aspros in the glove-box. He reached across, and his heart lurched, choking him.

‘Bloody world attacking from without and cholesterol attacking a man from within,' he said, doing a left-hand turn. ‘Ah, you're already dead, you poor godforsaken bastard,
so you can't die of a
heart attack, can you? You're one of the undead; a bloody zombie.' He snatched the packet of aspros, peeled three from the foil and tossed them into his mouth as he turned out of the street and onto the road that led to Mallawindy.

Jack had grown accustomed to seeing green paddocks at Narrawee; the land here was brown with last year's grass, but already there was a haze
of green showing through. Give it a week of warm days and these paddocks would be green again, green for a while. The only time this country was fit to live in was in spring.

He passed a truck. It looked like Jim Watson's. Driving on automatic now, he raised a hand, an old habit, then quickly withdrew it to scratch at his scalp. May had checked his head again last night and she'd laughed at him,
laughed at his bottle of louse shampoo, bought when he'd gone out for Solvol and cigarettes, a twenty-dollar note in his pocket. He'd used his shampoo before he'd showered this morning but it hadn't done much good.

One day he'd get the lot of it cut off. Couldn't yet, not while the coppers were hanging around asking questions. He had to be unquestionably Sam, the long-haired S-hissing bastard
with the pigtail.

Sam had never worn a pigtail, but he did now. Jack's hair was worn longer than the old wigs; it had to be longer so he could tie it back, get it out of the bloody way. Without his rubber band he looked like Big Chief Running Bear with a beard. But he didn't look like Jack. Jack had kept his hair black with the help of a bottle; he'd worn it short, brushed straight back from
his brow. Jack had been clean-shaven.

‘Poor bloody Jack.'

When he'd heard the voice on the answering machine, mummy's boy Benjie, telling Aunt May that they'd found the body, he'd wanted it buried wearing his name. Couldn't have it. The teeth and jawbone of the corpse had been found intact. It wouldn't match his – unless his old man had bred a third son on the wrong side of the blanket. ‘What
a bloody lark,' he said. ‘The old bastard would
roll over in his grave if he found out he'd given me an out.'

Laughter kept him going for a few kilometres. Maybe it eased the tension in his neck. It or the aspros he'd swallowed were making inroads into his headache.

The car he drove was near new, a big silver grey Ford. It ate the few short kilometres to Mallawindy, and when he saw the town
seeping out of the landscape, he felt nauseated, hating what he saw and knowing he shouldn't be there.

‘Suppurating sore on the backside of buggery,' he said.

He should have stayed in Warran or better still, stayed at the motel in Daree, let May drive to the hospital alone. He glanced at the old scar on his wrist, then pulled down the sleeve of his sweater. Should have put a bandaid over it
before he'd gone to the cops, but if they'd questioned the injury, all he'd have to show them was Jack's twenty-four-year-old scar, legacy of the night he and old Rella Eva had played chicken with a train at a level crossing, and lost the game.

‘Poor old Rell. It's a bastard of a world, Rell. You're better off out of it.'

He glanced to the left as he drove through town. He glanced to the right.

BURTON AND DOOLEY'S EMPORIUM
.

Forced to stop at a pedestrian crossing, he squinted his eyes, trying to see through the newsagency door, but King Billy was hobbling across the road, three dogs limping behind him; he and his dogs had known Jack well. His face shielded with a hand he watched the dogs stop, sniff the air. Perhaps they smelt him. He'd kicked a couple in his day. King Billy stilled
his feet to eye Jack's luxury car and to swear at its driver.

‘Piss off,' Jack mouthed, driving around him, then around the block and through town again.

‘A bloody man is stark raving crazy,' he said, but he needed to see someone he knew. Bill Dooley, old Robbie West. Anyone. The town looked dead. The plague had been through and killed every
bastard in it. King Billy excluded.

Jack saluted
him – or his dogs, then drove on, looking at his peppercorn tree in front of the Central Hotel, wanting to pull into the gutter and push the old door wide, be himself again. But he wasn't himself. Couldn't be himself.

‘You're no one,' he said. ‘You're nothing but a nothing, you're not a thing at all.'

His watch checked, he made the turn into Dead Man's Lane, a fitting place for the undead to
go, and for half an hour he toured the tracks through the sand dunes, looking left at the rough bark of the gums, looking right at the river, choked with fallen trees. He parked the car and walked the dunes, and he cursed, and he remembered while the sun slowly crept across the sky.

He thought of Ellie and of the one in hospital; he thought of May. She'd been on a high since they'd left Narrawee.
She'd got her Ann Elizabeth back. She'd got a kid named for her, and David had said he'd be taking the boys to the hospital to view their new sister, that he'd meet May there at two. She'd spent fifty dollars this morning on junk, determined to buy the little boys' hearts. She should have had her own kids. He should have moved to Narrawee back in the sixties. Should have done a lot of things.

May would be finished with her visiting, but she had the motel key. She'd be full up with the one in the hospital. Four kids in six years. Five kids in ten. The little one who had looked like Liza had been dead for around two weeks that night. That bloody night.

Run, Dad. Go out to Dead Man's Lane and I'll find you there. I promise you. I promise I'll get you home to Narrawee. Run, Dad. Run!

He'd thought the game was up and he hadn't been able to raise a run, but he'd walked, walked through the storm willing a bolt of lightning to strike him dead. It had tried to. He'd kept to the trees and the riverbank, just walking and thinking it was all over, and wanting it over; he'd walked the dunes knowing she wouldn't come, knowing that he'd fall down on the sand and dig himself in,
die of
pneumonia.

He'd been sitting on wet sand, scooping out his hole, when he'd seen the blink of old Satan's eyes against the black backdrop of Hell. In the distance though, too bloody far away. Twice he'd watched those blinking eyes before he'd raised energy enough to stand, to walk towards them.

Crazy little bitch; she had always kept her promises.

Sobered by the rain and the walk, an exhausted
and dripping wet rag, he'd tried to open the passenger side door.

‘In the back,' she'd said. ‘We'll go around the river.'

‘You'll get bogged.'

The old timber trucker's road had been a sea of mud – mud to the axles. He'd been right too. He'd pushed her out of a bog, ten miles out, almost given himself a bloody hernia doing it, then they'd ploughed on again, the Holden pushing through, damn near
bush-bashing its way out behind Daree. He'd had a new respect for Holdens since that night.

She'd stayed on the back roads, bypassing the towns when she could. Nothing he could say to her and no energy to say it. She'd been silent too, her concentration on the road, until they hit Albury, where she'd filled the tank. They'd stopped at a self-service place with one sleepy bloke in the office.

‘Stay down,' she'd said as he'd opened the car door.

‘I've got to take a – '

‘Self-control is good for the soul. Practise it.'

Capable little bitch. She drove like him. A stark raving mad woman behind the wheel, but she'd taken him to a public loo, driven around the block twice before stopping, opening the boot and tossing him his briefcase, hitting him in the gut with it, knocking the wind
out of him in more ways than one. He hadn't considered his case, hadn't been thinking further than the moment, the escape. She had. All Burton, that one. Burton smart, always had been. A Burton to her bloody bootlaces.

Locked in the toilet, he'd opened his briefcase and dragged out
Sam's lightweight slacks and his red knit shirt. He'd combed his grey wig and tugged it on, tugged it level, then
he'd glued on his mo.

Like Superman, Jack had made a few quick changes in his life – in the airport toilets, his car parked in the long-term car park. In the city. Always had to get rid of his car when he'd driven down by day. The nights had been better. He'd parked it in the Toorak garage.

He'd been trying to clip the heavy gold chain around his throat as he returned to the car that night.
Hated the thing. Had to wear it. Hadn't liked Sam's glasses either. Not then.

‘Where are your clothes?' she'd said.

‘In my case.'

She'd opened her purse and then taken Sam's onyx ring from it, handed it to him.

‘You've still got that bastard of a thing?'

‘Long live Uncle Sam.'

‘The perverted mongrel dog – '

‘That's your cross. Wear it.'

A tough little bitch. She wouldn't give an inch.
He'd wanted her to stop at a roadhouse out of Melbourne, buy a feed of chips.

‘Stop thinking with your stomach,' she said. ‘We've wasted too much time already. May is probably at Toorak. When we get to the outskirts, call her.'

He'd done as he was told for once in his life, he'd called Toorak. May was there. ‘It's Sam,' he'd said. ‘I'm coming home. We should be there in under an hour.'

Melbourne
traffic had been on the move when they arrived; May was waiting at her front door, but Ann refused to get out of the car.