B
illy’s mum had got free. She was on the bed, cowering up near the pillows. Billy had taken her place. He was under his father down near the couch. He was pinned beneath him, in pain because his father was kneeling on his bad arm. The cut was bleeding again. Billy’s father didn’t look up, didn’t hear Adam come in or see him standing there behind him.
Adam watched for a moment – the struggle. Billy being controlled, so he could be hurt. Hurt, so he could learn who was in control. It was a circle. No one screamed. Taught not to. An unspoken thing. There were lots of unspoken rules; they played out during the hurt as much as they did during the lulls in between the hurt. Surprised people screamed, shocked people screamed, outraged people screamed. Billy wasn’t surprised, shocked or outraged. This had happened plenty of times before. Billy’s mother wasn’t shocked. She was shaking her head in fear because Adam had a gun. A gun wasn’t in the rules. If anything would make her scream it was that – the shock of the rules being broken.
Billy’s father began to talk. His voice had a touch of Billy’s street tone and some of Hayden’s polish. It was deep, precise. It contained a lot of hate.
‘Do you want it to be her?’
Billy had to take the hurt without complaining. He had to let his father do it. It had to be like that. Complete control. Billy wasn’t fighting. He squirmed at most. He couldn’t lie too still. It had to go the way his father liked it. From start to finish, over the years, each time, always the way he liked. That way he made Billy a part of it. Made Billy agree. That way Billy would look back over it and think he’d let it happen, every time he’d let it happen; he hadn’t fought enough and it was his fault for not fighting harder. He’d think about how shameful it was – not to always be a fighter, sometimes just scared and powerless. On the floor was the bottle opener. Billy’s father picked it up. One-handed, he prised out the corkscrew. Rarely used, the corkscrew locked firmly into place. Billy’s father closed his fist around the handle, raised his hand, corkscrew facing down, above Billy’s legs.
Thank goodness someone screamed. Whoever it was didn’t see it as a struggle. Not once. Not ever. Controlled from the start. Never fair. The scream had outrage in it. It had shock and disbelief. It was strong and loud and terrified. Uncontrolled. It was piercing. It went outside the walls into the park. Anyone who heard it would know what was going on. A scream like that stopped people. It made them listen. Billy and his father stopped. They looked at Adam.
Adam’s mouth was open. His throat burned. The scream filled his mind, drilled into his ears, blinded him, shook the air. Billy’s father got to his feet. He came for Adam. One of his hands was reaching; the other hand dropped the corkscrew and closed into a fist. When it seemed like nothing could be louder than that scream, nothing could be any bigger in the van, the gunshot came and soared above it.
BANG.
A bang that made every other bang before it seem tiny and ridiculous. Not a boom. Not a crack.
BANG.
A firecracker going off. The screaming stopped. Adam staggered back with the recoil of the weapon. His arms had flown above his head. The gun was loose in his hands, now pointing up. Billy’s father spun sideways. It was as though the bullet turned him, caused a neat swivel at the hips. His arms jerked up, flapped once, like bird wings, and he buckled. His legs tried to follow his torso around but they didn’t make the turn. He collapsed, an awkward cross-legged sit in the small space between the coffee table and built-in cupboards. He stayed sitting. Alive. Stunned. Billy scrambled up onto the couch. His lips were saying no, but the bang had deafened Adam. Adam used the last bullet to shoot Billy’s father in the head.
BANG
. No two ways about it. No confusion. Line crossed. Blood splattered everywhere behind Billy’s dad. He fell that same way, the way the blood went.
He couldn’t hurt anyone anymore.
B
illy snatched the gun from Adam. He put it on the bench. His mother crawled over the mattress and stood at the foot of the bed. She limped further forward. To see the body she had to look around Adam. Her top lip was puffed up. She had a red welt on her cheek and fingermarks around her arm. Her knee was bruised. Her eyes moved in a slow arc from each thing to the next – from the body to the gun, to the blood, to Adam, to Billy. Smoke hazed the air. There was a smoky smell. Adam’s teeth and jaw felt like they’d suffered a sonic boom. The van had contained the sound, increased it. Adam pressed his ringing ears. When he took his fingers away, Billy was saying to his mother, ‘Careful, it’s loaded.’
She’d gone across to the bench and picked up the gun.
‘It’s empty,’ Adam corrected.
She rubbed the handle and barrel with her dress. ‘You shouldn’t have touched it,’ she said to Billy.
‘You’re touching it.’
She put it down, stepped away, looked at her hands and rubbed her fingers on her dress.
The broken van door buffeted in the wind. The right sort of gust would fling it wide open. Billy and his mum looked at one another. She pulled a tissue from the box and went over to pass it to him.
‘Is everyone coming?’
Billy turned to the window and looked through the lace. ‘They’re all too scared to come.’ He wiped his tears.
Tenderly, his mother touched her belly. She pressed the top and bottom.
‘Is it all right? Did he hit you there?’
‘It’s moving.’
Billy checked again for people coming. Adam turned his back on the body. It didn’t seem human, like a
thing
was in the van with them. It wasn’t even dead, not like a bird could be dead, or a mouse in a trap, or a headless chicken in the grass, it was its own thing, disturbing, dropped in from another world, slumped in a van, bleeding everywhere.
‘We didn’t shoot him.’
‘Mum.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s wasn’t us. We didn’t know he was going to do that. We’re not going to get in any trouble. Whose gun is it?’
‘We did know,’ Billy said. ‘It’s not going to be okay. It’s all going to come out. Everyone is going to know we knew. Everyone is going to blame me.’
She turned her back on the body too. Billy was the only one comfortable looking at it. Adam watched his friend’s gaze take in the blood and bent limbs and partly missing skull. Billy rubbed the corner of his eye, sighed and swallowed. His mother looked at Adam, lingering over his arms and wrists, the skinniness. She looked slowly over his collarbones, his hair, his eyes, nose and mouth.
‘What happened? Why are you with him?’
‘He was at a house I went to.’
‘The house on the news?’
Billy’s chin creased and his eyes filled with tears. His mouth grew full; he covered it. He nodded.
‘Did you know he was being kept there?’
Billy shook his head, his hand clamped to his lips.
‘Did you know he was alive?’
He shook his head.
‘Why were you there?’
‘Kovac,’ Billy cried behind his hand, ‘he would take me there when I was little.’
‘To the same man who had him?’
‘But I didn’t know that.’
His mother came to Adam. She touched his arm. ‘Do you need to sit down? Are you okay? Here.’
She led him to the sink. She wet a tissue and wiped his face. There must have been blood splattered on him. The soggy tissue turned red. She wet another one and cleaned the side of his nose, under his chin, down his neck. It took a couple of tissues to get it all off. She cleaned his forehead and pulled a dry tissue through clumped strands of his hair.
‘Quite a set of lungs you’ve got.’
Adam had never been touched that way before. He’d never been so near to a woman. Her fingers were slim. The pressure was light. Her ears were small and her nose was fine-boned. The freckles were delicate and pretty across her brow. Blood spray was on his T-shirt too. She dabbed at it. The dark fabric hid it.
‘Will we turn your cap back around?’
She did it for him, rested her hand on his shoulder when it was done and looked into his eyes, right into them.
‘That looks better to go home.’
Adam wasn’t stupid. Never had been. Granted, a week ago, fresh from the backroom, he wouldn’t have been as quick to catch on. Colour and movement alone would have bogged him down, made him retreat. Time away from the backroom had changed him, though. He could keep up. Billy had taught him to keep up. Away from Joe, Adam didn’t have to hide anymore. He was free to think. He was free to look and wonder what other people were thinking. Adam could see the hurt in Billy’s mother. Years of pain. Years of being controlled. It had hardened her in all the wrong places. Her heart wasn’t dark, though. Just brittle. A shell had formed around it. Adam also saw how connecting this way to her sharpened her interest in him, made her expression lighten.
She squeezed his shoulder. ‘I was frightened. It’s no excuse.’
If you asked Adam, it was an excuse. At least he hoped it was, because fear had locked him in and stopped him for a long time.
Billy had gone to the door and was looking out as it blew open and shut. He let the wind dictate what he got to see and what he didn’t.
The change in the van was acute. Before and after were not comparable. The violence hadn’t gone for a while; it had gone forever. Billy’s father wasn’t going to get back up and start again. Not ever. And Billy’s mother felt it. She was seeing things differently. She was experiencing what Adam had, when he’d escaped the backroom. Everything looked altered, even down to the colour of things, the size, the texture, feel; fear skewed everything. Once it was gone things were closer, thoughts were sharper, movements quicker. It wasn’t just the haze of drugs or alcohol lifting; it was as much the fear leaving.
‘Are they coming yet?’ Billy’s mother asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘Who knows you’re here?’
‘I don’t know . . .’
‘Did you tell anyone you were coming?’
‘No.’
‘Did anyone see you come in?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t think so.’
‘Well, did anyone see you or didn’t they?’ she said.
She looked and sounded so much like Billy then it was interesting to watch her.
‘Why?’
‘Brother Hayden?’
‘No.’
‘Go then.’
‘What?’
‘Just go.’
‘What are you talking about? The police will be coming. Everyone heard the shots.’
‘Just go. Take him to his parents. He doesn’t need this. His parents don’t need this. Everyone coming here? No. Just go.’
‘The police will think you shot him, Mum.’
‘Is the gun someone’s?’
‘I don’t know. We can’t just go.’
‘Yes, you can. Let’s try it. It’s worth a try. Go.’
‘If you say you shot him, they’ll believe you.’
‘I think they will.’
‘You can’t do this.’
‘Why can’t I?’
‘You could go to jail.’
‘Billy,’ she said and frowned, ‘I should go to jail. I knew. I knew what Kovac was doing to you. I let you go next door to him. I let him take you. How could I have done that? Any mother, any good person, would have stopped that. I belong in jail.’
‘You did try.’ Tears began to fall again down Billy’s cheeks. ‘You left Dad.’
‘I let him back.’
‘He would have killed you.’
‘I should have risked that for you. A good mother would risk that.’
‘You did risk it,’ Billy cried.
‘What you said was right. I hurt you more than they did. What I did was worse.’
‘No,’ Billy sobbed. ‘I didn’t mean it. I don’t blame you, Mum, I don’t.’
‘You should.’ She raised her hand to stop him as he went to go to her. ‘I should have got you away from your father. I should have got you away from Kovac. I should have believed you and listened to you. I don’t expect you to ever forgive me. I don’t expect this boy or his family to ever forgive me. I knew and I said nothing. It was never your fault, Billy; it was mine.’
The money was on the bench. She picked up the bundle and gave it to him.
‘Take him home.’
S
cotty was jogging up the track, in his thongs, calling for everyone to stay inside, yelling that the police were on their way. Billy and Adam went out through the van door. Scotty saw them and stopped. Billy motioned to his watch, tapped the face. They were within their hour. They still had time. Scotty put his hands on his hips. His face said it all. Dumbfounded. Adam could only imagine his reaction when he saw inside the van.
During the drive in they turned the car radio on for news.
‘. . . Barbary Street Rest and Recuperation Home for Returned Servicemen,’ a report was saying, ‘privately run by the Vander family, left to Joe Vander by his mother. Neighbours described Joe Vander as a recluse. Locals knew him as the Chicken Man. Behind the locked gates and high fence, the squalid state of the property has now been revealed. Joe Vander’s only involvement in community activities was his association with the Save Wade Park committee and his annual contribution to the Skyline Fireworks, held on the Water Tower Rec reserve —’
‘Here we go,’ the radio announcer interrupted, ‘listeners, I can tell you that the Fishers are now arriving at the house. The police escort has pulled into the street . . . they’re travelling up to the gates . . . the Fisher parents are about to go inside . . . police are referring to a visit as necessary in the investigation and to assist in their search, but information leaked to the media suggests the Fishers are in no doubt that this was where their son was held . . .’
‘Bugger,’ Billy said, ‘they’ve gone to the house. That’s back the other way.’
‘Can we still go to the hospital?’
‘You wanna?’
‘I don’t want to go to the house.’
‘You sure?’
Adam nodded. ‘I don’t want to go there ever again.’
A parking spot in the city was hard to find. They drove around the busy streets, parked a fair way out. Billy left the money in the car; he locked the doors, put the car key in his pocket. He looked at his watch.
‘Is the hour gone?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Buildings funnelled the wind into a blast. Sun came in and out from behind the clouds. Billy’s arm was hurting; as they walked he patched it up as best he could, put his hand inside his sleeve, feeling for the strips that had come unstuck, re-sticking them. Leaves skittered along the sidewalk. Rubbish collected and swirled in doorways. Shoppers and office workers pushed against the hot wind or trotted along with it at their back. Those in pairs or groups were talking about the search. Their words got whisked away. It felt like at any moment someone would wise up and look twice at Billy and Adam.
Across from the hospital was a diner. Thirsty, they went in for a drink. Billy paid. Adam slid into the end booth. He sat by the window. The diner had a pressed-tin ceiling. Figures of rock’n’roll dancers were painted on the walls. Ice-cream advertisements hung on the large panes of window glass. In a taped-off area out the front of the hospital was the police caravan Adam had seen on the news. Set up on the sidewalk was a mannequin dressed to look like Adam. They’d put it in trackpants and a T-shirt. It had sneakers on, a light-brown, messy wig.
‘What did I tell you? David Bowie.’
Billy slid into the booth with the drinks. He sat across from Adam. Billy had a can of Solo. Adam had a Fruit Box. He poked the bendy straw into the foil circle. Billy cracked his can. On the diner counter a TV had been set up. It sat precariously on the counter, the cord snaked across the floor. The sound had been turned down. On the screen were pictures of Joe’s house, police cars out the front. The report cut to different footage. Adam watched his parents get out of a police car – only glimpses of them, a tall man with light-brown hair and a short beard, a woman in a dark blue cardigan and sunglasses, both of them shielded by police. The police tape was lifted for them. They went into Joe’s yard.
‘Mum probably won’t go through with it,’ Billy said. He took a long drink of Solo. ‘She’s not good at doing things she says she’s gonna do.’
Adam drank his juice. ‘She might now.’
‘Hey?’
‘She might do the things she says she’s going to do now.’
‘. . . Yeah, I guess.’
Adam tipped his drink and moved the straw. It was a fruit mix, Tropicana, a pineapple taste mostly. Billy downed another long swig of soda. He took out his smokes. Lit one. The ashtray was made of tinfoil. He tapped his smoke before there was any ash formed.
‘They’re not gonna charge you with anything if she does tell. You don’t have to worry about that. No one is going to care that you shot him. You’d be the one person in the whole city who could get away with it.’
Billy rolled his smoke in the ashtray. He probably didn’t realise, because the counter and the door were behind him, and the booth backrest was high, and because he was deep in thought, but three police officers from across the road walked in. They went up to the counter.
‘Are you sad?’ Adam said. ‘Are you upset at me?’
‘At you?’ Billy scoffed. ‘That would be pretty fucking rich, wouldn’t it? I should have done it, I suppose, years ago. I guess you think that one day they might change, they might one day love you. But he was never gonna.’
At the counter, one of the policemen opened a packet of smokes and put a cigarette between his lips. He took a lighter from his pocket and began flicking it. It wouldn’t ignite.
Billy put his hand under the table and slapped his leg. ‘The thing he did, it was all about him. He’s got scars like that on his legs too. Did it to himself, though, Mum thinks. He grew up in a church-run thing. Gets to everyone differently. It got to him.’
The policeman was shaking his lighter. He tried again to ignite it. Billy’s cigarette pack was on the table. His lighter was on top of it. He tipped the Solo and drained it, sat the empty can down with a
chink
. The policeman reached the front of the queue. He took his unlit smoke from between his lips, looked up at the board.
‘You never knew what was gonna make him mad,’ Billy said. ‘What he was gonna fly off the handle about. But once he lost it over something, well, that was it, he was off the chart. I mean
as if
Mum would ever cheat on him. The postie once waved at her and dad tied her to a kitchen chair for half a day because of it. That was him. You couldn’t work him out. The moment Kovac asked if I might want some pocket money, it was on. He reckoned Mum and Kovac had something between them. Nothing done to Kovac, of course; Dad didn’t work like that. Kovac knew it too. He read the whole thing in a snap.’ Billy clicked his fingers. The sound was sharp. The police all glanced over. The one with the unlit smoke had his wallet open. He eyed Billy’s lighter at the end of the table, put the dry smoke back in his mouth and finished paying.
‘I couldn’t not go work for Kovac because Dad woulda thought that meant something was up, but also, by working for him, Dad thought
that
meant something was up. You couldn’t win. You don’t know until you’ve lived with someone like that, it’s buzzin’, nonstop on the edge . . . like there’s no time to think . . .’
‘G’day there.’
The policeman had come across in three long strides, too quickly for Adam to warn Billy. He was right there, pointing at the lighter.
‘Sorry to interrupt, you don’t mind, do you?’
Billy looked up, blinked a couple of times. ‘No, you’re right.’
The policeman smiled, picked up the lighter, nodded to Adam. Adam nodded back.
‘Yeah so . . .’ Billy said, because it would seem strange if he didn’t continue with the story he’d been midway through. He looked out the window, licked his teeth. ‘Yeah, it was like that . . .’
‘Thanks,’ the policeman said, his cigarette lit.
The man’s eyes narrowed at Billy as he placed the lighter down. He had white-blond hair, a sweeping side fringe and a small moustache, white-blond too. A pair of sunglasses was hooked in his pocket. He had a gold ring on his finger. His belt was overloaded – radio, pistol, baton, other things in leather cases. He drew in on the smoke and frowned at Billy. Billy peered out from between his lashes, his head down, his mouth small. His hand was at the ashtray, fingers frozen mid tap. Adam had a cold moment thinking he’d realised who they were . . . but the policeman then said, ‘You’re not that fella, are you?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You look like him – the Silver Wave fella.’
Billy tapped his smoke. ‘Oh. Yeah. I am.’
‘Thought so. Got that picture on my wall. Great painting.’ The policeman looked over to see if his order was ready. It wasn’t. He settled into his hip. His legs were long. His forearms sinewy and tanned. ‘Looks real, like a photograph. But I suppose everyone says that. Bloody detailed. So where do you surf?’
‘Better not say. Might ruin the picture for you.’
‘Ahh . . . I did wonder that. I surf a bit.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘But if you don’t, I suppose telling you where isn’t gonna mean much to you.’ He gave a short laugh.
Billy laughed back stiffly. ‘Nah.’
The policeman touched the table near the lighter. ‘Anyway, thanks for that. Nice meeting you.’
‘Yep.’
He left.
They kept their heads down while he collected his food, didn’t look up to see if he glanced over again.
‘Dad didn’t like her too sober,’ Billy began again quietly, looking at his hands as he spoke. ‘He also didn’t like her too drunk. The thought of people knowing about her drinking, looking down on us, was just another thing he was paranoid about. He’d always kept up the grog steady to her, only as much as it took to stop her from getting it together and leaving.’
Billy was focused on telling, and Adam didn’t want to interrupt. His friend needed it off his chest. Trouble was, no sooner had the blond policeman disappeared inside the police van, than he came back out again. He stood on the footpath, in front of the hospital, eating his lunch, looking across the road at them in the diner window. His hand dipped into the greasy brown paper bag and drew out another potato cake.
‘Kovac started taking me to the market. My job was to carry a pair of puppies around so people could see them, and then bring people back to the litter. I can’t remember it exactly, just that I was walking back to where Kovac was set up near the car park – I turned around and you were there behind me.’ Billy was frowning, thinking back, trying to remember. ‘You must have followed me through the crowd. I know no one will believe me, but it wasn’t planned, I didn’t mean for it to happen. I’m sure Kovac and Joe
talked
about that sort of thing, taking a kid, I’m reckoning they did for sure just for the fact that they did take you in the end, but that day it just happened. Kovac actually cracked the shits when he saw you – he told me to leave the puppies and go and take you back to your parents.’ Billy swiped a hand in front of his face. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t do that. I just . . . went into the reserve. I knew you were following. I suppose I wanted to get in trouble. It was my dumb kid way of trying to get everyone’s attention, trying to have someone see what Kovac was doing to me. Next thing I remember the market was going crazy. It was like every single person there was looking for you. I panicked. A group was starting into the reserve. They were calling your name. We’d gone as far as the river. You were playing with rocks on the bank. I remember that.’ Billy put his elbows on the table and cupped his face. He looked down and wouldn’t look up. He gave a shake of his head. His voice caught in his throat. ‘I told you that you had to stay there. You were getting upset. I gave you the tiger to play with, to stop you crying. I told you to wait and your parents would come. I thought they would. I thought if you just waited there they’d find you.’ He pressed the corners of his eyes and wiped away tears before they could fall. ‘I don’t know what was going on in my head. You were just a little kid. I knew it was wrong to take you down there. I knew it was wrong to leave you. When I got closer to the market I saw that woman, Joe’s sister, she was waiting for me, she said Kovac had gone. His car was gone. She took me home. That was it. I figured all those people searching must have found you.’
He dragged his smokes and lighter closer. He didn’t take out a smoke, just spun the pack on the table. Over in front of the hospital, the policeman had screwed up the paper bag, thrown it in the bin. He was rubbing the salt and oil from his hands.
‘The first time I heard it was on the radio at Kovac’s. We were in the kennels. They were talking about the Market Boy. They were talking about tyre marks on the other side of the creek. Kovac was watching me as I listened. He said, “What did you do to that boy?”’ Billy looked up. ‘I knew then. He’d taken you. One time I’d hidden down the creek after a market and he’d come and found me. When I didn’t come back, he must have gone down there looking for me, must have seen you, seen a chance. I told my mum.’ He shrugged. ‘Even if she’d rung the police and didn’t tell her name, that wasn’t gonna stop Dad, not when it came out I was there, what I’d done. He wouldn’t have handled something like that, everyone thinking we were a part of something like that.’ Billy stopped spinning the smokes. He rubbed his forehead. ‘If I’d taken you back to the market none of it would have happened. If you hadn’t been by the river Kovac wouldn’t have seen you. I’ve told myself a thousand different things – like what would the point be in telling the cops. I thought you were dead for sure. It wasn’t like your parents were gonna be getting good news. Why would they want to know that Kovac had taken you and killed you? Right up until the moment I saw you, saw that tiger, I thought that’s what he’d done. It never crossed my mind that he might have sold you to Joe. I never thought you’d still be alive.’
The white-blond policeman had stepped off the pavement and onto the road. He’d walked through the taped-off area and was waiting for a break in the one lane of banked-up traffic. He held up his hand to stop the cars.
‘I suppose there were a couple of times it crossed my mind, that it could be you. When I first saw you, and you kept saying you didn’t know who you were. But I kept saying to myself –
it can’t be.
I don’t suppose I wanted to believe it. When you had the tiger . . . of course it was you, of course they’d done it. The whole thing was a game to them. They made me pose for that photo. They wanted to remember that day. They must have thought it was so fucking perfect for them, so easy. I didn’t know how to tell you I’d worked it out. I didn’t know how to tell you it was my fault.’