Fall on Your Knees (47 page)

“I already got hurt.”

“What happened?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Yes you can. But Frances, you can’t stay here, come into the house.”

“No-o-o.” Fresh terror, fresh tears.

“How can I help you if you won’t come inside?”

“Take me to a safe place.”

“Where?”

“A place I know where he can’t get me.”

“Who?”

“My father.”

“Frances. Did your father hurt you?”

No answer. Sound of a hand wiping a wet nose.

“What did he do?”

She sounds more grown-up now. Brave. “I made him mad.”

“Tell me what he did to you.”

Her voice goes cold. “It’s my own fault” — sniff — “I’m no good, he’s right. Why should anyone care about me, why should you, I’m bad for everyone.”

Ginger has found a match in his pocket. As he lights it, she recoils and covers her face with her hands, “No!”

He looks at her, curled up in the corner, so fragile. He reaches out, gently pries a hand away from her face and, just before the flame dies, “Oh my Lord.” He’s shocked. Who could do such a thing?

“Don’t look at me, I’m ugly.”

“You’re not ugly.”

“Yes I am, go away.”

“You’re hurt. I’m going to help you, I’m going to get my wife.”

“No!” she hisses.

Her life depends on this. “No one can know. I came here tonight ’cause you’re the only one I can trust. If anyone knows, if he finds out where I am, he’ll come and kill me.” She takes a deep breath. “I can understand if you’re not willing to help me, you have enough troubles, thank you anyway.” The passenger door clunks open in the dark.

“Wait, wait —”

She pauses, her feet dangling.

“— where do you need to go?”

“It’s about five miles out of New Waterford. No one knows about it, it’s an old mine. I’ve got food and money. If I can stay there a couple of days, he’ll think I’m already off the island. Then it’ll be safe to hitch a ride to the ferry and go.”

“Go where?”

“Just go.”

He hesitates.

“Forget it,” she says. “Sorry to bother you, Mr Taylor.”

“I’ll take you.”

Silence.

“I said I’ll take you there, Frances.”

“… God bless you.”

“Just wait here a minute.”

Boutros is serene behind the wheel. They’re heading back to Sydney, it’s the last run of the night, the sun’s long gone, it was a too-hot day. If Frances agrees, they’ll drive to British Columbia. He wants to grow things. Cherries. And grapes, for wine. The thought of his own orchard, and Frances free and flourishing among rows of gnarly trees in bloom, full fruit, heavy vines — he pictures stuffing their own grape leaves with rice and lamb, he loves to cook, anything that consists of something wrapped around something else. Driving is a wonderful place for dreaming.

Boutros doesn’t enjoy violence. It’s just the job he’s always done for his father. Mostly it consists of walking into other men’s violence and turning it off for them, like groping for a switch in a dark cluttered basement. To do this he often has to hurt them. He rarely gets angry. Though he got angry last night with Taylor on the rail tracks. Boutros spared him for Mrs Taylor’s sake. She’s a hard-working woman and doesn’t deserve to be a widow. And Taylor seems to have learned his lesson and backed off.

“Slow the Jesus down, ya moron!” Jameel’s nerves are shot.

Up ahead comes Leo Taylor’s truck. It whizzes past them on the land side of the Shore Road. The one-second aperture of his headlights has taken a picture for Boutros which is just now coming up in black and white through the film on his eyes: Frances in the cab, looking straight at him, her face a battered mess. Taylor at the wheel, laughing at her.

“What the fuck are you doing!” Jameel grabs the dashboard and goes slamming into the passenger door as glass collides in the back — “Shit!” — and the Kissel fishtails out of the U-turn, speeding after the truck in a wake of rye whiskey.

“Leo Taylor’s got Frances.”

Jameel screams, “So what the fuck what?” and begins slapping Boutros.

Boutros puts up a hand to keep his line of vision clear, they’re gaining on the truck.

“She’s my cousin.”

“She’s a whore!”

“Don’t talk about her like that.”

Jameel starts laughing. Boutros trembles.

“You sweet on her, b’y? Eh? You sweet on the whore? You smelt her? Ha ha.”

Boutros blinks hard.

“You gonna cry now, crybaby?” Boutros does have tears in his eyes. “Eh little sissy-boy, sooky-baby, eh, little mama’s boy gonna cry now, eh? Go ahead, go on —”

The windshield explodes with Jameel’s head, shattering Boutros’s view of the road. He sticks his face out the window just in time to swerve out of the way of an oncoming carload of nuns. His hand is still around the back of his father’s neck as the Kissel hurtles off the road, over the ruts and along the cliff at eighty till the terrain changes abruptly to silent air. Jameel is dead before they hit the rocks below.

The nuns turn around and drive back, dropping off three of their number to investigate while the other three drive back to New Waterford to get an ambulance. By the time the rugger-playing one picks her way down to the water’s edge, there is only one man, his neck all but severed. The other man is found the next day. The engineer didn’t quite manage to stop the coal-train in time, but the big man lying on the tracks was already dead.

“I’ll just talk to Piper and turn right round and come home,” Ginger had told Adelaide just after nine.

“I love you….”

It gave him a twinge when she said his private name, but he wasn’t lying for his own sake, and this time there was a reason — to protect that poor beat-up girl waiting for him in the truck. In a couple of days she’d be gone right off this rock, and that gave him a light feeling even as he told the lie.

It’s a cloudy night but Ginger gets a good look at Frances as they pass the fires of the steel plant. There’s blood crusting her nose and filling the gully that meets her upper lip. The lip is split and fat on the left side. Her left eye is likewise puffy and blacked. That Piper is more than just a negligent father. This explains everything.

“What happened to you?” she asks, and for a second he isn’t sure what she means because he’s been concentrating on her injuries.

“Last night,” he says, “fella got me.” He feels himself blushing. “I was following you home, along the tracks. I wanted to ask you something.”

“What?”

“Well I know the answer now, I was just going to ask you why you kept coming around me.”

“Because you’re the only good man I know.”

Ginger feels ashamed. Sydney is behind them now. He picks up speed on the Shore Road.

“I’m sorry I ignored you at the picture-house,” she says. “It’s better for Lily’s sake if she doesn’t know anything.”

“That’s your little sister?”

He turns. There’s just enough dark to swallow her wounds and light her eyes. She gives him a calm, knowing look. It’s like an invitation to rest — it says, don’t try any more, stop fighting, I know. I understand something that’s so deep you think it’s behind you. But it isn’t. It’s inside you. Let me touch it.

“Lily,” he says. “That’s a pretty name.” He sounds foolish to himself. Something has hit his stomach like a fiery drink and it’s spreading out through his limbs. He shakes it off. “You and me make a fine team, eh?” he chuckles.

“What do you mean?”

Her voice is so grown-up he feels callow but he presses on. “I mean the two of us with our wracked-up faces, what a sight.” He turns to her and laughs, and she smiles slightly, as he’s glad to see by the light of an oncoming car. Frances keeps one eye on the road as the headlights of the Kissel slice by the truck.

“Can this thing go any faster?” she wants to know.

At Teresa’s house, Hector rocks quietly by the kitchen stove and follows the conversation with his eyes. Adelaide is sick with worry.

“I have to go out there, Teresa, she’s got him, oh my God,” she leans over and holds her stomach.

“Settle down now, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, Addy. First we’re going to find out if she’s home, ’cause if she is there’s nothing to be worried about — we’ll get Wilf Beel to drive us out and, okay, here’s what we’re going to do, listen now: I’ll go up to the door and say old Mahmoud is dying and wants to see his granddaughters at the last minute, and if Piper says forget it, I let him know there could be money in the will, you know? And then I say Mahmoud also says for them all to come or none, so we’ll know if Frances isn’t there — what’re you doing, girl, sit down.”

“Where’s Hector’s gun?”

“What do you want with it?”

“Don’t ask foolish questions and shutup with your foolish ideas.”

Hector stares wide-eyed at Adelaide and points a finger at the top cupboard. Adelaide climbs onto the kitchen counter and Teresa seizes her ’round the knees.

“I’m warning you, Trese.”

“Addy, come on now —”

Woomph
, a back-foot to the stomach. “I’m sorry, dear.” Adelaide fishes the rifle from on top of the cabinet. “Thank you, Hector.”

“That thing doesn’t even work any more,” says Teresa, still on the floor.

Adelaide fires it into the ceiling, Teresa screams.

“It works.” Adelaide hops down from the counter, calm the way people are when they’ve gone over the edge.

Teresa talks fast. “All right, Addy, we’ll get Wilf and we’ll drive till we find them, no point going out to their house, you’re right, she’s not there, she’s with him, so let’s calm down and go get a ride.”

By the time the Jameels left with their last load, James was stone-cold drunk. He climbed into his immaculate 1932 close-coupled Buick sedan and started it up. It’s a tan colour. Gangsters have black cars. He drove at a moderate speed back to New Waterford. He had decided not to bother finding a rifle. The best close-up killing is done with a bayonet. A rifle is really just an appendage, useful if the blade gets stuck in the ribs and you have to shoot free. But once you’ve been around for a while you know how to avoid making noise. Under and up.

“Stop.”

Pine branches bend and squeak against Ginger’s truck. This isn’t even a road. He cuts the engine.

“We have to walk from here,” Frances says. “Take my hand.”

He does. It’s necessary, after all she knows the way, he doesn’t and it’s such a dark night. Such a slim soft hand.

Mercedes is dusting the piano. She has taken all the figurines and doilies off it and she is about to apply the lemon oil when Daddy comes in, “Give me the keys to the hope chest, Mercedes.”

He reeks of liquor. Mercedes is scared.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” But she knows enough to have the keys in her outstretched hand while asking.

“Don’t worry, my dear, I won’t be long.”

He takes the stairs two at a time without hurrying. Mercedes screws the lid back on the lemon oil, wipes her hands and follows him up two flights to the attic. He’s on his knees with the contents of the hope chest scattered over the floor.

“What happened to The Old-Fashioned Girl?” he asks gently, holding it in his hand.

“I knocked her over while dusting, Daddy, I didn’t want to hurt you by saying so.”

“I’ll get you a new doll, Mercedes.” He goes back to rummaging. “I’m sorry about this mess.”

Trixie hops down from the window ledge and hugs the wall on her way out. Mercedes feels icy cold. He sounds so strange, just two inches off to the side of his normal self, how does it add up with how drunk he must be? The smell reminds her of how sick she always feels even when she’s feeling fine.

He finds what he’s looking for at the very bottom, “Ouch.” He was prepared to find it in need of a quick grinding, but it’s razor-sharp, though he remembers laying it in the chest dull with the war. Just as well, he thinks, as he sucks a bead or two from his fingertip.

“Where are you going, Daddy?”

He pats her heavily on the head, this man who never touches her. “You stay and look after your sister.”

“What are you fellas doing up there?” Lily from the bottom of the attic stairs.

“Go back to bed,” Mercedes orders.

James trots down the attic stairs, calling back to Mercedes, “I have to find Frances.”

“No!” Mercedes has shrieked it.

Lily is shocked — the sound is stranger than Daddy kissing the top of her head with a long knife in his hand. Mercedes leaps into the dark shaft of the attic stairway, catching and propelling herself by the palms of her hands against the walls. James seizes her by the wrists as she lands in the hallway, and nearly drops the bayonet, now at an angle. Lily doesn’t take her eyes off it.

“I’m not going to hurt Frances. I’m after the man who’s been at her, that’s all.” He’s starting to feel the liquor now. “My little girl….”

He wheels to face the top of the stairs leading down to the front hall and he puts his bayonet hand on the railing, “I’ll be right back.”

Mercedes puts a hand over Lily’s eyes. Then she pushes her father down the stairs.

The ground slopes sharply upward. They’ve reached the hill with the drift mine cut into it.

“There’s a bit of a climb,” says Frances.

“I’ll go in front.” He bends to the hill and they start up.

She gasps and her hand slips from his, he flings out an arm catching the sleeve of her uniform, “You okay?”

“Yes.” She gets up. “… Ow.”

“Wait now.” He lifts her into his arms. Light as a feather. She slips an arm around his neck of necessity and, with quiet dignity, “Thank you.” He carries her up the hill.

“There.” He places her gently on the ground before an arch of complete darkness.

“You can go now, Mr Taylor.”

He is nonplussed. He can’t just leave her here, in the dark, can he?

“Wait, Frances, don’t you have a flashlight, have you got a blanket or something in there?”

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. Goodbye.”

She turns, becomes pure shadow, then is swallowed by the mouth of the mine.

“Frances?”

But she doesn’t answer. He shifts his weight. He leans into the darkness, “Frances.”

He hesitates. He enters the pit.

Feeling his way with one hand along the damp wall, the other hand outstretched, walking slowly, slowly, listening for her steps, “Frances?” Why is he whispering, and why does she not answer? Step, step, step over the uneven floor. He lets go of the wall and lights a match — nothing but the dank shine to one side of him and below, his dusty boots looking up at him so trusting. The light goes out. Step. Step. Both hands outstretched now, he walks for two long minutes. He stubs his toe on a stone sending it scudding for an instant, then three counts of silence before a wet plonk. That sound is called cutting the Devil’s throat — no splash, deep water. His heart kicks, he claws for the wall but it’s farther away than he thought, which pitches him to the void in the opposite direction — he throws himself towards his feet, hurting his shoulder. The floor was closer than he thought. He lies curled on his side for a moment almost sick with relief. To fall into God knows how deep a flooded shaft in the dark — the first heavy sinking, then panicking, losing up from down, that’s how you drown even when you’re quite a good swimmer.