The Legend of Winstone Blackhat (14 page)

But maybe that wasn’t it either. Maybe the problem wasn’t Bic or Marlene. Maybe it was Winstone. If he’d been nicer to Zane, maybe Zane would still be around. His arm over Winstone’s shoulder so all those church-stares just ran off his back and didn’t even touch him. Texting back when Winstone woke up scared in the dark. Except that Winstone wouldn’t be scared because he’d be at Zane’s and Zane would wrap him up in the cloud-duvet and there’d be no questions no talk no remembering just sitting close and watching John Wayne or Hoss and Adam and Little Joe and the dreams wouldn’t get him because Zane was right there and he wouldn’t let them.

Maybe Zane had just stopped liking him. Maybe he had a new mate, a better mate, cleaner cleverer less of a waste of space. One who didn’t have to be told what a man had to do, who’d always have his mate’s back, who’d protect the weak, the women and little girls. One who’d yell stop, who’d kick and punch, who’d say it wasn’t her I did it hit me. One who was braver and less selfish and more grateful.

Can we drive down that street? he said when they got to Addison Road.

Why? Ros-your-social-worker wanted to know.

I just want to.

Okay. Winstone could feel her looking at him. What’s there?

Nothing. Just a friend’s house.

A friend?

Yes.

Was your friend at the church?

No.

What’s your friend’s name?

Zane. Winstone watched the driveways and garage doors go by, the To Rent sign sticking out of Zane’s uncut lawn in front of the empty windows. I don’t think he lives here any more.

Ros told me your friend Zane didn’t come to the funeral, Dr Mike said when Winstone went to visit him the next week.

He’s moved.

Have you spoken to him?

Winstone shrugged. There was a long silence then but he wasn’t about to say anything in it. In those days a lot of people wanted to hear him talk, but it was a paid kind of listening, not like Zane’s. There was something hungry about it. Like being listened to by eagles. Or maybe they were government agents and he was there to deliver a message in code and he was the only one who didn’t understand it. It made him nervous. One day he’d say the wrong word and alarms would go off, there’d be bombs and lockdown, electrocution exploding chairs trap doors opening up a chute into the shark tank. Like when he said Bic had been a slaughterer once before meaning the season he’d done at the meat works.

Sometimes, Dr Mike said, when something like this happens, people get scared. It’s overwhelming. They feel guilty. They don’t know how to help. They think they might do or say the wrong thing. It doesn’t mean they’ve stopped caring about us.

You think Zane still cares about me?

I’m sure he does. Dr Mike sat forward. He had a nice smile. You were good mates, yeah, you and Zane?

Best mates.

Maybe Ros and I can talk to Zane’s parents.

Winstone didn’t think that would help.

How about you write Zane a letter, then? We can do it together if you like. That way you can let him know how you feel.

Dear Zane don’t be scared it is safe Bic is in prison now please come
back and be my friend again I don’t mean just on Facebook.

I don’t know where he’s gone, Winstone said. I don’t think he wants me to find him.

Winstone recognised Zane’s voice right away. It made him choke up, like Zane’s voice was a line going into him and hooking up the sadness. He sniffed it back and wiped at the drips with his hand because it didn’t seem right to cry in front of eagles and government agents. He looked at the cop’s iPhone lying there on the desk with Zane’s voice coming out and he wished it was a Tardis that would open up and let him inside and he’d push a few buttons and get taken back to before when everything was normal and on the way there he’d pick up Marlene too.

What Zane was saying wasn’t normal. But it still came from before, and it made it seem like before maybe still existed.

Rahui Bridge, Zane said. Two-seven-five Council Road. A little girl’s been hurt. There’s another child there. I don’t know if he’s okay. You need to hurry.

We’re on our way, sir, a woman said. Can you tell me what the little girl’s injuries are?

I don’t know, Zane said. She’s been beaten. I don’t know.

She’s been beaten?

Zane’s breath coming fast like he’d been running.

Sir, can you tell me your name and where you’re calling from please?

She’s at two-seven-five Council Road, Zane said. You need to hurry.

What’s your name, sir? Sir, I need you to stay on the line. Sir.

The cop stopped the recording.

Do you know that voice? the cop said. He was ratcheted up like a shiny new wire. Here, listen to it again.

Ros-your-social-worker glared at the cop. Winstone didn’t mind though. He let the cop play the phone call a lot of times while he gave it some thought and he wasn’t pretending, he was listening hard, because every time Zane’s voice went through he heard it say a little more. Zane hadn’t left him. Zane had gone to get help. He’d run fast. He was worried and scared.
There’s another child there
that was him
I don’t know
and Zane’s voice got all broken up just like Winstone felt now
if he’s okay.
Zane had tried. He’d done the right thing.

And it was as clear the last time Winstone listened to him as it had been the first that Zane didn’t want the cops to know his name.

He wasn’t hiding from Winstone, he was hiding from them. Winstone hadn’t done anything wrong. Zane had. The thought made Winstone very happy.

He shook his head at the cop.

Think hard, the cop said. Are you sure it isn’t somebody you know? Winstone you need to tell us the truth. Was there someone else there the night that Marlene got hurt? Was there somebody with your father?

No.

Then who made that call?

Can’t you just trace it? Ros-your-social-worker said. She sounded pissed off.

The cop narrowed his eyes at her. It came from a payphone in Clintoch.

Look does it really matter, Ros said. You’ve got the – well you know what happened and who did it.

The caller could be another witness, said the cop. He wasn’t giving up. Winstone, could there have been somebody in the house you didn’t know about?

How’s he supposed to answer that? Ros said.

Winstone shrugged. He stared at the cop’s iPhone some more. I guess so.

Somebody out in the car, maybe. Somebody outside the window.

Maybe. Winstone thought hard. Maybe Bodun knows, he said. I didn’t think he was home. Maybe he and a mate came in and I didn’t see them.

You think the caller could be one of your brother’s friends?

Winstone shrugged again.

Can you give us their names?

Bodun had a lot of mates, he said. They came from all over the place. I don’t remember their names.

Winstone lay on his back on the sand beside the creek and waited for his legs to dry. It was taking longer than it used to. He sat up and pressed his finger into the centre of a new bruise above his jug-cord scar to see if the bruise hurt and he wondered how he’d got it. Then he lay back down with his head in the shade of the undercut bank and the grass-fringed earth hanging over his face like the brim of a sombrero.

He had ten crawlies in his bucket. He would have had more but the kitten kept tipping the bucket over and getting nipped and letting the crawlies escape until it got distracted by a moth and ran off hunting that instead.

After a while it was more cold than cool in the shade and he got up and dusted the sand off his legs and set the bucket of crawlies on the grass at the top of the bank and pulled himself up beside it. There was a breeze blowing down the gully and cutting the sun and he could have cooked the crawlies back on the beach but it seemed wrong to do it where the other crawlies could see so he took them up to the cave and found a spot out of the wind and cooked them there and the kitten was back and weaving in and out of his legs before he’d pulled the shell off the first tail.

As soon as the crawlies were gone the kitten went too and Winstone followed it up to the top of the ridge to see what it
would do, which turned out to be not very much, and after he lost the kitten in the long grass he climbed a tor and sat in the sun and looked out over the range. The wind was behind the tor and the rocks around him were soaking up the sun and sweating it back into the day in a little oily haze. There were frazzled white clouds above the line of snow to the west but over the range the sky was clear and empty of everything but the sound of the wind and some reedy birds that he never saw but that always seemed very cheerful.

Winstone pushed up his sleeves and picked off a bit of the scab that ran like a line of stitches across his forearm where the kitten had scratched and then he picked some rust-coloured lichen off the rock and after that he felt mean and wet his finger and tried to stick the lichen back on. He’d forgotten to mark off the days while Alicia was there and then the marking stick had got lost but he thought it was probably Wednesday.

He waited for something to move. He could see one white coil of the road but he wasn’t expecting anything to come up it today. The trapper had got sick of finding nothing in his sprung traps and taken his cages away. Off to the north sheep filed along the horizon like they had some place to go and Winstone watched them cross with the sky and the far cloud all around and between their legs and the dusty earth and their bellies.

When he looked down again there was a rabbit under the tor and either his scent was blowing over its head or the rabbit just didn’t give a shit that Winstone was sitting there. He watched the rabbit go about its business which consisted mainly of hopping a bit and having a scratch and grazing a bit and hopping and scratching and grazing some more.

Further down the hill he could see the brown back of a hawk rise and angle and fall as it circled another rock tor and maybe it was hunting some varmint in there or maybe the
hawk was just riding the breeze and enjoying the sun.

A shadow moved over the rocks between the rabbit and him and Winstone looked up and there was another hawk overhead but it was high in the sky and showing no urge to descend and Winstone screwed up his eyes and shaded them with his hand and watched the hawk as it drifted back and forth and its wings and their shadows moved like the slow-motion snap of black coat-tails across the sun. The rabbit was a big rabbit and if it noticed the hawks or the shadows of hawks it wasn’t concerned. The sun was on Winstone’s face and he shut his eyes and rested his head against the rock and felt its warmth and the catch of the lichen in his hair and on the back of his eyelids the shape of the hawk remained floating black against the redness of the sun.

THE CITADEL OF
the Bandit King overlooked the range and the road and not a speck of dust was raised from them of which he did not have word. The Bandit King was wary and wise and fast and had outrun the guns and dogs and snares of the law more times than any could count and among themselves his men called him El Rabbitoh. The Rabbit. But on the road the Kid and Cooper looked up from their saddles and saw above them only buzzards and rocks and they came on unaware of the eyes upon them.

Old rock fall littered the road below the bluffs and shifted under the horses’ hooves and the palomino stepped sideways and blew as a lizard broke from the dust.

Horses don’t like it, the Kid said.

Rattlesnake country, Cooper said.

The hooves of the horses puffed the dust and the Kid and
Cooper rode on abreast in the wake of their own shadows. To the Bandit King looking down they were a smoke and a darkness moving over his land and they alone could tell him their purpose.

The Kid felt a cool breath of shade on his neck as the road entered a cleft in the rocks and he tipped up the brim of his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Beneath him the palomino stepped again and the Kid looked at the road ahead and squinted his eyes to make sense of the shape he saw in the glare at the mouth of the cleft.

There was a mule in the road. It stood looking at them through half-closed eyes with its neck bent under the weight of the sun and its thin tail flicking the flies from its flanks and the heat haze rising around it.

The Kid and Cooper reined in and the horses skittered below them and tossed their heads and the Kid and Cooper sat the horses and looked at the mule and the horses looked at it too. The mule looked back. Its brown muzzle moved as if it was chewing over something though what digestible matter it could have scratched from the road was hard to comprehend.

Cooper’s hand went to the butt of the rifle that hung beside his leg.

Watch your back, he said.

But even as they spun the horses a voice spoke and it came from the road behind them.

Buenas dias muchachos, it said.

The Kid turned the palomino again but in front of the mule stood more men with guns in their hands and bandoliers on their chests and even if he and Cooper had thought of outrunning the bullets behind they could not go that way.

The grey squatted and dug in his toes at the bristle of guns cutting off their retreat and Cooper spoke first to the horse and
quieted him before he addressed the men strung across the road.

Buenas dias, he said.

There were more than twenty weapons pointed at them and pointing the weapons were all manner of men and some wore sombreros and some wore American hats and some aimed from the shoulder and others the hip but each man had the Kid and Cooper clear to rights and his finger on the trigger. In their midst stood one whose guns were still in his belt and silver tooling shone on the grips of his guns and on his lapels and the brim of his sombrero. He smiled at Cooper and the Kid and his shoulders were loose and his hands were in his pockets.

I am Ramon, he said and his voice was the voice they had heard before. And you are?

Passin through, Cooper said. We don’t aim to trouble no one.

You will not, said Ramon. But why such a hurry? Stay a while. We insist.

The Kid heard a stone slide in the rocks to his left and he turned his head and looked up into the twin barrels of a shotgun.

You’re takin us prisoner, Cooper said.

Prisoners, Ramon said. No my friends. You are our guests.

Ramon took his hands from his pockets and raised them and clicked his fingers twice and the Kid saw a flash of gold rings. Two men moved forward.

Of course, Ramon said, in these parts it is customary for guests to hand over their guns to their host. A small courtesy for the safety of all.

The Kid looked at Cooper. The armaments surrounding them clicked. Slowly Cooper drew his rifle from its scabbard. For a second he weighted it there in his hand and the grey pricked his ears and stepped in expectation. Then Coop let the weapon down real easy into the arms of Ramon’s man who stood waiting to receive it. Cooper laid his gun belt over the
top and Ramon’s man nodded and stepped away and Ramon smiled and in the silence all barrels turned to the Kid.

The Kid’s hand was inches above the grip of his gun and his fingers curved to its shape but instead they moved to his buckle. He unslung his gun belt and handed it down and all the while he was watching Ramon and Ramon met the Kid’s gaze and continued to smile and when the Kid was done and the guns were brought back Ramon patted his vest pocket and brought out a match and struck it on his silver lapel and lit a cheroot and exhaled.

Do you smoke?

The Kid and Cooper were silent.

Well then, Ramon said. There is no need to delay.

Two more of his men came forward. They were carrying rope and sacks and the last thing the Kid saw before they covered his head was an upside-down slice of the road ahead where a barefoot boy in a soiled and ragged shirt stood hugging the mule.

Winstone opened his eyes. Something was disturbing the sheep and he sat up to see what it was but as far as he could see the only thing chasing them was the wind. He shifted his arse which was going to sleep on the rock and scratched the back of his head where the lichen was making it itch and then he examined the scurf his fingernails had collected.

The rabbit was still there below the rocks and the hawks were still in the sky. Still nothing moved on the road and it came to him that being a bandit king could require a lot of patience. Like the spider whose front legs he could see in the crevice beside his toe and it came to Winstone too that he was sick of waiting. But maybe it was easier to wait for the things you didn’t want
to come than the things you did want because each empty day was a good day you’d had and not a waste and a disappointment. Maybe after a lot of those days you’d just take whatever skinny thing happened to come along and wrap it up tight and forget you’d once hoped for a blowfly.

He poked a stuck lake fly out of the web. It left a few legs behind but the spider didn’t come and get them.

Winstone watched the road some more. He watched the road and he turned a fresh page in his brain and he drew a line down its centre. On the left he tried to put the things he wished would come up the road and on the right the things he hoped would not but they refused to divide. So he crossed out Alicia in a blue dress on a pony and he crossed out Debbie and Tara and Lorne Greene and John Wayne and a pizza delivery van and pretty soon all he had left was A HORSE and he crossed that out too because someone would come looking for a lost horse. A WILD HORSE. But Winstone knew there was no point hoping for that because all the horses there were in the real world below had already been allocated.

Something moved. Not on the road but in the grass below the rocks and he watched the kitten creep through the tussock blades like syrup running from a spoon. He waited for the rabbit to run but the rabbit did not. It had its head down eating the grass and it didn’t look up as the kitten gathered itself and shifted and twitched and froze and thought and twitched again and Winstone looked down on them both from his tor and the hawk shadows slid. It was time to pick a side.

The kitten was hungry and it wanted the rabbit so bad it couldn’t hold the wanting inside. The kitten wanted the rabbit like it was a free mega-bucket of KFC just sitting there on the counter and the bucket was bigger than the kitten was and maybe it was more than a kitten could even eat but it wanted to try.

The rabbit wanted to itch its ear and clean its paws and eat the grass and maybe that didn’t amount to a lot but it was all the rabbit had.

Hey rabbit, he said. Watch out.

At the sound of his voice the rabbit vanished so fast he could barely tell which way it had gone and the kitten sat up and bashed its stripy tail side to side and looked at him with its narrow yellow eyes and Winstone had no doubt that if the kitten knew how it would have bashed him too. Then it turned its back on him and slunk off into the grass and he thought he might not see it again and he felt bad for a while but then he remembered it was a pretty sorry excuse for a cat and what it had done for him anyway?