The Windy Season (29 page)

Jake pulled them up closer, within fifty metres of the strange figure. Cut the engines.

Paul heard the call of the wind. High-toned and constant. An alarm. Or was it just the wind? Was there any sound at all? Next to him Michael might have said something. Cursed maybe, or
sighed. Paul stared at the marker. Felt himself drawn toward it as if it were a black hole, crushing all feeling, every thought.

He saw ribs, a darkened abdomen. Tied to the metal upright with rope. The corpse hung forward. A yellowed face, exposed jaw hung in a scream.

Paul stumbled into the cabin, sat on the seats, sucked in breath. Jake came down from the bridge, straight to the radio on the cabin wall. Made the call to shore.

Marine Rescue, Geraldton. Marine Rescue, Geraldton. Marine Rescue, Geraldton. This is
Arcadia
.
Arcadia
.
Arcadia
. Over.

Arcadia
,
Arcadia
,
Arcadia
. This is Marine Rescue, Geraldton. Marine Rescue, Geraldton. Marine Rescue, Geraldton. Please go to eight four. Over.

Jake changed the radio to the working channel.

We found a body, Jake told the shore station. We have found a body. Tied to an isolated danger mark. Above the
Delft
wreck. Over.

He looked reluctant as he gave the coordinates, even afraid. Michael stood in the doorway, didn't say a word. They both had the look of men who had been trapped.

And Paul struggled for air, hands on his knees. Wondered if it was Elliot on the marker, unfamiliar as the body was, spoiled by the elements. And if it was, had he been tied there alive? How long had he been there? Had it been days? Wings beating above him, shadows underneath, an ecosystem of scavengers waiting for death to come, for Elliot to leak into the water.

Tornado

AT THE INLET FRED STOOD WHERE THE
wooden jetty met bitumen.

She nodded to Michael then turned to Paul.

We can talk later, she said. Your aunt is back there. Go to her.

Ruth was waiting in the car park, sitting in her four-wheel drive. A few of the deckhands milled at the driver's window. Noddy. Elmo. They moved away when they saw him and Michael.

Paul, Ruth called out, her voice hoarse. She leant her head towards the open passenger window. Jump in. You've got to call your mum.

Ruth's face quivered oddly at them. Michael scratched the gravel with his boot.

I'll see you at home, Michael said.

Paul sat in the passenger seat, holding his backpack between his knees. The bag reeked of bait. He looked at his aunt, waiting for her to speak. She drove out of the car park without a word.

Ruth, he said. We don't know for sure it was him.

Her jaw tightened at the sound of his voice. Paul could see the tears gathered in her eyes. She looked away from him and to the road, gripping the steering wheel hard as if it might slip out of her fingers. She drove to the end of the street, a few hundred metres, and pulled into a small car park at the back of the dunes.

Why we stopping here?

I can't fucking drive, alright? she said, shakily.

Ruth.

You've got to call your mum, she repeated.

Paul stared at her hand trembling on the gearstick. He took his phone from his jumper pocket. The ringing tone echoed across a bad line. Paul shut his eyes and listened to it. He imagined a bird in a cave, calling out in darkness. Then he heard his mother's breath on the phone.

Mum, Paul said. We found a body.

A rush of air filled the line and then he heard his mother's sobs. Ruth stiffened in her seat and began to shake, her tears beginning as a series of pulses from somewhere deep within her. Paul listened to the diesel engine rattling the windows. He could feel its vibrations in everything, in his fingers, in the plastic of the phone against his ear, as though the whole world shook. It had ended, their search for Elliot was over, and he couldn't believe how.

Ruth let out a snort. She clasped a hand behind his neck. He looked into her face. It was all wet and patchy red and her eyes were swollen. She grabbed Paul and hugged him, pressing him hard against her chest, her face soggy against his cheek.

That night Paul found himself hovering over the night ocean, straining his eyes into the murk, calling for Elliot, swearing,
curses muffled by the sea. The horizon was a flat darkness and there was no light in the water except for the gold slick of the moon against the black water.

The President parks on the roadside in the shadow of the white gums. A clear line of sight between the trees. I mount the .308 on the car bonnet.

From three hundred metres I watch the boy from the city carry shopping from his Pajero to the cottage. Glass over his torso with the rifle scope.

The President leans on the bonnet beside me. Talks me through it all. And with the President there I find those half-seconds where my mind is as clear as the mind of a dead fella. When I'm empty of breath and my heart is still. And I know then I'm ready.

The next morning it will be done with.

The Professor

IT WAS EARLY AFTERNOON WHEN PAUL'S
phone rang on the carpet beside his bed.

Paul. It's Fred.

Yeah.

Your father has just landed. I'm bringing him back to the health centre, opposite the station. We'll be there in twenty minutes.

There were several police vehicles in front of the station. A small crowd standing on the brown lawn. Grey suit jackets. Duty belts. Shielding their eyes from the sun. Scanning the town around them. He saw a news reporter in front of a lone camera, trying to secure his tie in the sea breeze. Paul stood beside Fred's boat and watched it all, barefoot in the sandy grass.

Fred pulled up alongside the throng. When his father got out of the car he stood tall, as if he were approaching an audience.
He fixed his collar, combed his hand through silvery hair. His father nodded when he saw him. Paul walked over.

What are you doing here?

I called the police yesterday, said his father, turning to Fred. I said I could assist.

How, Dad?

This is something I can do.

Paul turned to Fred. What's the point?

Enough, his father said.

A woman walked up to the three of them, crisp white shirt tucked into pants.

Professor Darling?

Yes.

Deb Costello. Coroner. The office spoke to you?

They did.

And they explained the condition of the body.

He nodded.

Okay, she said. Would you come with me?

The coroner led Paul's father across the road towards the health centre.

I'll come then, too, Paul said after them.

The coroner stopped in the middle of the road, turned. His father looked at him, blank.

Paul, Fred said, held his arm. Don't.

Paul shrugged off the sergeant's arm but stayed where he was, beside her. He watched his father turn and go through the opened doors of the clinic, ambling behind the coroner, hands at his back.

After dark, Paul and his father ate at the Sri Lankan Cafe next to the deli, the small restaurant run by Shivani's parents. They sat
at the wooden table outside. Paul couldn't eat. Couldn't look on while his father did. He looked at his hands, nicked calluses off his palms with a fingernail.

When you going back?

Fly tomorrow, his father said. Thinking I could stay with you?

Paul nodded.

Good curry, his father said. I hadn't expected much from Stark but there you go.

He winked at Paul. Wiped his mouth with a napkin.

You going to tell me what you saw?

His father scrunched the napkin, placed it down. Breathed in.

I couldn't say, his father replied. I didn't know if it was him.

But what did you see?

Paul. I couldn't tell if it was him.

Did you know you wouldn't be able to tell?

What are you talking about?

Did you just want to see a corpse?

I'm Elliot's father, he said forcefully. The Professor's face shook for the briefest moment. He combed his hair with his fingers. Straightened his back.

When they got back to the house, Shivani pulled a sleeping bag and pillow from the linen cabinet and put it in Paul's room, alongside his mattress. Paul offered his father the couch or his mattress but the Professor insisted that the carpeted floor and the sleeping bag would be fine.

So what now? Paul said after the lights were off, the room dark and hot.

The body will go back to the city, his father said. They'll do tests.

Paul rolled on his side. Listened to the wind outside. Closed his eyes.

Paul? his father said. Can I tell you something?

Yeah.

This afternoon, when I left the morgue, they asked me to fill out a form. Another bloody form. And I know your mother had filled something like this before. More than once. These nuisance bloody forms.

Okay.

Elliot's height. Elliot's weight. All of that. And a person can't just know this always, his father said, sounding amused. Not off the top of his head. Can they?

Paul didn't answer. The wind buffeted the thin walls.

Then they wanted to know if he had tattoos. What colour his eyes were. His hair colour.

There was a long silence. For a moment Paul thought his father had fallen asleep. But he heard the Professor inhale, as if he was trying to find the breath necessary to speak.

But I should have known those things, he said eventually. Surely I should have known that. I could see it in their faces. They couldn't believe I didn't know that.

Paul heard the staggered rhythm of his father's breathing.

I don't know why I don't know that, his father said. Then the man cried.

Paul lay with eyes open, unmoving, wondering why it was so hard to listen to his father's crying. But the sound angered him. How hopeless it was, now that it was all done, that it was all too late. And it angered him that even now, in the act of confession, there were things his father wouldn't admit to.

In the morning, on the front verge, his father hugged him, his cheek hot against Paul's. He pulled away and looked his son
in the face, as if hoping for some response. But Paul didn't say a word.

He watched his father go towards Fred's waiting vehicle; shoulders hunched forward, hair blown in the sea wind.

Mirage

JAKE SUGGESTED THAT PAUL STAY ON SHORE
. But he didn't want to. Didn't want the opportunity to think about what they had seen above the
Delft
shipwreck. Didn't want to dwell on what his father had said to him or how broken he had looked as they stood on the verge; the forgiveness he needed that Paul wouldn't give him.

And then there was Kasia, too.

And he recognised it in Jake's face that morning as they rode the skiff from the beach, saw in him the same guilt he felt. It was a feeling that didn't settle. As if his blood flicked and turned over on itself, like a windy sea. Thoughts rushed in at a pace that he could not slow down or even truly understand.

They picked and dropped pots on the inshore reefs, tracking south of town. They were targeting the crays the fishermen called ‘residentials', the ones that had never run out to sea. Paul
worked hard through the morning, emptied and stacked pots with a strange energy, something near a rage. The whole time he sensed Michael watching him warily, the German unsure what to say. But there was a mercy in punishing yourself, shelter in the regime of a day's work.