Goodwood (20 page)

Vinnie closed the door behind him softly. He got Derek by the neck and pulled him up so he was standing. Derek was an older boy, but not a bigger one. Vinnie punched him in the stomach, hard. Derek went
whoosh
as the wind came out. Vinnie held him by the neck as he wheezed and spluttered. Spittle went down his chin. He was plainly winded. Vinnie stared him in the eyes, very close. He squeezed his neck, tighter and tighter with his giant freckled hand, and Derek coughed and choked and tears came out.

Then Vinnie let go, and Derek fell back on the bed in his briefs. Vinnie stood tall and looked at him, disgusted. Satisfaction was his, but he didn't feel satisfied. He just saw the stains on the carpet, and the dropped joystick, and Derek's wretched pile of pornography.

Then Vinnie let himself out of Derek's room and said a nice goodbye to Doe Murray. She closed the front door behind him and that was that. Vinnie didn't know if anyone in town knew he'd done it. That he'd gone in and winded Derek Murray, choked him in his own house, and left him rasping in his awful bedroom. He had never told a soul.

We looked up at Vinnie like he was the sun.

George beamed and shone in reflected glory.

Toby had stopped playing with his ball and was leaning up by the Hills Hoist listening, visibly impressed. Backflip panted. Vinnie leant back in his chair and rested his empty bottle on the concrete. His hands were freckled and rough with woodwork and big enough to go all the way around a person's neck.

•

I left the Sharkey house with my head full of Vinnie's story. George's street was wide and had overgrown grass in all the cracks in the pavement. Backflip wanted to sniff every one of them. Edna Field was standing in her carport, waiting for an outrage. Emily and Trent Ross's alcoholic father was slumped on a deck chair, asleep on his own shoulder.

As I went past the Carlstroms' front yard, Dennis was walking inside, the screen door shutting behind him. The Torana had its bonnet open. Lafe was leaning up against the crap caravan. His row of empty beer cans had been removed from the fence. There were just a few in the grass now, resting on their sides among the dandelions.

Backflip stopped to sniff and I yanked her lead. She was strong, though, and I was stuck for a moment, right near the Carlstroms' fence. I tried to ignore Lafe, who was leaning just a few metres away. Music was blaring out of their kitchen window. There was no sign of Davo. Lafe's khaki coveralls
were unbuttoned just under his navel. There was a gaping hole there, full of darkness. He leant, standing, with his hands behind his head and smiled at me, vacant. He pushed his tongue out of his mouth a fraction. I looked right at him, just for a second. His eyes were like corpses. They had no life in them at all, just blankness, like Carl White feeding money into the pokies and drinking. Lafe leered at me and grinned, his vile tongue moving in and out of his mouth while he thrust his hips forward real easy in one foul motion.

I yanked Backflip's lead hard and walked fast towards the train tracks. My face burnt with humiliation all the way home.

25

The tireless members of the New South Wales Country Women's Association were a unified and resourceful group, and the Goodwood branch was no exception. Due to the unexpected and tragic events that had befallen Mrs Bart, Mary Bell had convened an urgent meeting of branch participants. Good old Mary Bell. First she had been toppled by Mrs Bart in the vote for Secretary; now she had risen—a phoenix in a pleated skirt—and put aside her petty grievances, organising a fundraising dinner in honour of Goodwood's own much-admired Flora McDonald, as well as Goodwood's other, far-less-celebrated woman in mourning, Judy White. Mum and Nan and Fitzy were to attend the dinner together at the Goodwood Community Hall; George and I were to watch videos at my house while they were gone.

Judy White was having a terrible time of it. She had no husband and no daughter and, for the moment, while Terry
was still in Ballina, not even a son. Her ribs and thighs and eyes were dented. She had refused to leave the house and didn't like a fuss, but Opal Jones, who Judy had finally let in for a quivering cup of tea, said Jude would gratefully accept anything to help with the bills while she convalesced. Jude was a wreck, said Opal. A remnant of a person. And she was back in that same old dressing-gown, wandering from room to room. Gazing out a window. Hovering near a curtain. How a woman could spend all spring in nothing but terry towelling was beyond anything that Opal Jones could bear to imagine.

Mrs Bart wasn't as much in need of funding, but she was deep as a dell in grieving and had no idea what to do with the business. Her son Joe continued to provide friendly service to the people of Goodwood as the new face of Bart's Meats, but there were murmurs that Joe's wife in Sydney was growing tired of his generosity, mainly since it was taking place somewhere other than their marital home. Nan said Joe would have to go back soon, at which point the future of Bart's Meats was in doubt. Mrs Bart seemed altogether unequipped to take it on by herself—she was no butcher—and her sister Jan, who some suggested might have been a good candidate to move to Goodwood permanently and help out with the chopping and carving, was both squeamish and vegetarian.

Nan dressed up for the dinner and looked a picture in peach when she arrived at our house an hour early on the Saturday evening, so she and Mum could have a glass of wine
and a catch-up. Fitzy wasn't invited to the prelude, given her propensity for being annoying, and was picked up after. The three of them went off on foot to the hall.

George and I had long been deemed responsible enough to be left alone. The official plan, as we told Mum, was videos and a sleepover. The actual plan, as organised by George, was that Lucas and Ethan were coming over to drink whisky and Coke in the yard.

Lucas and Ethan arrived at dusk—the same time Kevin Fairley would've been moving his cows from one paddock to the other. Lucas had a bottle of Jim Beam secreted in his backpack. George had bought a two-litre bottle of Coke from the Goodwood Grocer and four bags of salt and vinegar chips. We mixed the Coke and Jim Beam together in Mum's glass tumblers and sat at the outdoor setting drinking.

Lucas was in a particularly confident mood, on account of twenty-five dollars' worth of weed that he'd purchased from Trent Ross earlier that afternoon. Trent and wayward Gary Elver were jamming in the shed behind Elver's Auto and Lucas felt very good about himself for having been with them for fifteen whole minutes; and for smoking a cone there on the shed couch while Lady lay on a dirty bed against his feet. Gary, stoned as a boulder, had demonstrated various types of drum rolls. Trent had sat silently on the concrete floor with a small bowl and a pair of scissors.

George did her best to be unimpressed by Lucas's story, and all she said was, ‘Well I hope you brought it with you,' and, right on cue, Lucas triumphantly produced a fat and badly fashioned joint, which was smoked over the course of the evening, compelling George at one point to emit a small vomit under the grevillea.

‘I'm fine, it's just like sneezing,', she slurred, returning to the table looking pale and unfazed. Lucas laughed with his head all the way back.

We were all drunk by then. George kept topping up our tumblers with whisky, forgetting to add the Coke. By nine, the outdoor setting was like a ship on a rough sea. We clung to it and it spun and at one point Lucas fell out onto the grass. Backflip was up immediately, licking his face. I shushed everyone in case we woke the magpies, who had taken to viciously swooping the garden during daylight hours and making Backflip's life a misery.

‘Magpies don't swoop at night,' said Ethan, with a reassuring tone and a tender look, and George elbowed me under the table.

I was surprised, especially in the rowdiness of our conversation that we managed most of the night without much mention of Rosie or Bart. George talked mostly, and Lucas Karras. Ethan was quieter than usual and appeared to be distant. He was like a cow in a paddock, privately ruminating. He seemed sad somehow, in a way I could not determine; and
he sat upright in his chair the whole night, not once reclining back against the frame. He looked poised to fall forward, hunched over like a much older man.

I drank and my eyes became warm in their sockets. The night breeze drew tears from them every so often. I could feel my cheeks were shining. At one point I lay on my back on the grass next to Lucas and Backflip lay her whole furry body across us like we were a raft and I laughed and laughed.

A little later, George and Lucas disappeared inside. Ethan and I heard them giggling. Then we saw the door to the spare room close behind them and I didn't care.

‘What's in there?' asked Ethan.

‘A daybed. Mum's quilt squares,' I said.

He smiled and shook his head. It was calm and still in the almost-darkness. Backflip wandered out from inside and settled down on her outdoor mat, letting out a tired sigh. And then Ethan got up from his chair and lay down on his side on the grass beside me, shooing away the mosquitoes, saying, ‘Oh Jeannie,' as he settled in close by my arm. I remember him putting his hand in my hand and tracing the inside of my palm with his rough fingers. I felt my heart quicken and I knew his intention. Then he looked right in my eyes and put his lips against my neck, and I turned towards him, too, and we lay kissing on the damp grass while he fumbled at my clothes. Before long he was above me, and his dull weight felt nice on my body. He put hot breath in my ear and I liked it when he
kissed me. He put his hands in my jeans and I shut my eyes tightly. ‘Jeannie,' he said again, all soupy, like he knew me very well; even though I felt more and more—as he moved above me—that I did not know him at all. Regardless, outside of myself, I felt for his long back under his shirt, finding his skin uneven there. I half noticed him wincing. He tasted like whisky and for a short time we moved together in the garden, under the stars and branches, and the cold ground felt damp below me in the warm evening.

But after a while of it, I abandoned the idea of pulling Ethan's shirt off over his head. I shuffled out from under him and sat up.

The night spun. I felt giddy.

Ethan seemed sheepish and quickly deflated. He lay on his side and stared up at me, expectant. I sat next to him and was still. All of a sudden I didn't want to be kissing Ethan West at all.

I wasn't sure what to do next. I didn't know how I was supposed to act in such a moment. Ethan propped himself up on his elbows, looking very disappointed. After a long and awkward silence he sat up and turned towards the back fence, away from me, and fumbled at his shirt, pulling it down where I had lifted it almost off. That was when I saw the dim impression of his welted back in the soft light that spilled out from the living room and onto our patch of grass. His lovely, well-proportioned back—which had thick weals
across it, surrounded by deep dark bruises, the colour of oil slicks and mud.

It was the whisky that made me reach out and touch them. I was loose of my inhibitions and my sense of propriety, and I put my fingers right against his injuries tenderly and Ethan flinched and jerked away.

‘Don't touch it,' he said.

I drew my hand back and was surprised to have felt it, and horrified at what had been done to him.

‘What happened? Who did that?'

He was crouching now. He looked at his knees, holding them with his spear-arms. Backflip, sensing unease, had hopped up and come over to nuzzle him. ‘Good dog,' said Ethan. ‘Good dog.'

Backflip went around in a circle and butted her head into Ethan's chest, wagging her tail. He held her around her ribs and dug his hands into her fur.

‘Who did that?' I asked again.

Ethan seemed full of sorrow. His eyes were so gentle. He wiped at them with the back of his hand, as if there were tears there, and looked ashamed. ‘Oh, you know,' he said. ‘My dad got heaps pissed off at me.'

The image of old Mal West with his bung leg came into my mind. Old Mal, leaning up against the bar at the Bowlo, looking indignant. Old Mal with his stupid cane, limping
along Cedar Street, growling at the concrete, spitting at the birds.

‘Constable Mackenzie came over asking about me working for Kevin,' said Ethan to his knees. ‘He asked my dad about it. And my dad hates dairies, since his accident, you know. He fucken hates them. Hates the cows and that. He said I was never allowed to do it again. So—I didn't tell him. I asked Kev not to tell, and he swore he wouldn't—but he must have told Constable Mackenzie.'

Ethan's handsome face was hollow. He turned back to look at me. ‘That's why I didn't tell anyone—you know—because my dad gets pretty pissed off.'

I felt my cheeks stinging and wondered if Ethan could see me blushing.

I thought about how the wounds had felt under my fingers. They were raised like ridges; the foothills of the mountain. My mind went to Judy White, convalescing in her terry towelling.

Ethan looked at me expectantly. I didn't say one thing. What could I say? I said nothing at all, and Ethan came over with a deep expression that only Lucas Karras could puncture as he came out into the garden looking very happy with himself and slightly dishevelled. George wandered out after, eating salt and vinegar chips. She offered the bag to me, smiling, and I took a handful; and the boys were over by the back fence by then, peeing into the bushes.

‘Off you go, Myrtle, do your business,' said Big Jim's gentle voice from over the fence, and the sound of Myrtle rustling in their yard made Backflip wander over and sniff for her under the wooden palings.

‘Yeah, do your business,' said Lucas to Ethan from the back of the garden, and the sound of Ethan West trying to laugh made me feel like I might cry.

•

The next day, I spent most of the morning lying on the couch in the living room feeling terrible while Mum fussed about, rearranging furniture, talking on the phone to Tracy, reading aloud particularly humorous sections from a Bill Bryson travel memoir, and complaining about the magpies.