Yesterday's Dust (14 page)

‘It's just questions. They've got to ask their questions.'

‘Annie nearly shot him once. And she took his briefcase. Why did she take his briefcase? They asked me if your dad had a handgun in his briefcase.'

‘You know he didn't.'

‘I don't know what he had in it,' she wailed, and
the phone hit the floor.

‘Mum. Mum. Pick up the phone. Mum! Can you bring up my keys?'

The only reply was Ellie's wail, but from a distance.

He hung up and tried to call Bessy. She was engaged, probably passing on the news to the rest of the town. He dialled Ann's number and the call went to her answering machine. He was starting to wonder what he'd done to deserve the lot of them when her
voice cut in.

‘I'm here. In the flesh. Taylor's asylum. Head loony speaking.'

‘All hell has broken loose down here, Annie.'

‘Tell me about it.'

‘Johnny has gone to the cops and Mum's cracked up. She's been heading for this since Friday and I can't leave the shop. It's Dooley's day off and I can't lock up here until I track him down or get someone to go down to the house and get my spare keys.
I can't raise Bessy and Mum won't let anyone else in.'

‘I'll toss the boys in the car. Give me forty-five minutes.'

‘No. It's too far and too wet. What I'm calling about is the old man's briefcase. Do you know anything about it? Mum keeps going
on about it. Did you take it that night?' Ben heard bellowing in the background, he heard Ann's footsteps, then her voice.

‘Share the toys, Matthew.'

‘I did share wiff him and he wouldn't share wiff me.'

‘That's because he's smaller than you. We have to teach him how to share.' Footsteps returning. ‘Sorry, Ben. They're on the rampage. I need to get out of the house, and I can tie them down in the wagon. See you soon.'

‘No. It's late. I'll get hold of someone up here. Have you got his briefcase?' She made no reply. ‘Annie? Are you there?'

‘I hear you, Ben. Just. Every time I pick up the phone they start a war, and everyone I know has called me today; I'm just about ready to confess to his murder for a quiet life. Maybe that's what Johnny is doing.'

‘I don't know what's going on with him. And I don't know what's going on between you two either, but it's as plain as mud on your face that something is going on. What do you know about
that night?' Seconds passed and she made no reply. ‘The night the old man disappeared. Do you and Johnny know something?'

‘I know you should have rowed your boat to China, Ben, and I should have gone with you. If you feel like taking off I'll go you halves in a speedboat. Tristan! Puppy dogs bite. Are you a puppy dog?'

‘I Darp Bada.'

‘Well Darth Vadar doesn't bite his brothers. Go to your room,
please.'

Ben leant against the wall, listening to the distant voices, smiling when there was nothing in the world to smile about. But there he was listening to Annie, and for some reason it didn't seem real. Annie, whose only voice had been her hands when they were kids. Hard to believe it was the same Annie, laying down the law to her boys.

‘Go to your room. Now. Do you want Mummy to put you
in your cot and close the door?'

‘I det you wiff my lipe sayba.'

‘Go. Run. I don't want to see that naughty face. Bedroom! Now!' Footsteps on tiles, a door closing. Footsteps returning.

Ben waited and looked out at the rain, his mind away in yesterday, at that serene white house in Mahoneys Lane that was once a place of peace, and the little girl who'd called him Unka Benny, who had kissed
him all better, had held his hand and taken him to see her kitty. Not so serene these days.

Life and death. Who deserved what life dished out?

‘Sorry, Ben. It's like living in a madhouse at times.'

‘I can relate to that. Johnny is half as mad as Dad ever was, Mum is heading for a nervous breakdown, and I'm stuck with them – and I'm sick and tired of being stuck with them, and that's a fact
and I don't care who knows it, Annie. I had Johnny singing drunk all the way home on Saturday night and Mum howling because he was singing drunk, and Kerrie Fogarty wondering what the hell she'd let herself in for. I spend my life pussyfooting around the two of them lately and I'm fed up with it.'

‘I know. I know you are. I'll try to call Mum.'

‘You won't get anywhere. She's left her phone off
the hook. Those Sydney cops have been down here today. They asked me about his briefcase. I'm only telling you because you'll probably get a call from them tomorrow. I've got to get down to Daree and give them a blood sample – to check his DNA, which apparently takes weeks.'

‘They called me but I had the answering machine on. Living in Bedlam has its advantages. Oh God. I think he's taken off
in his spaceship. Got to go.' The phone disconnected, Ben hung up and dialled around until he found Dooley and his keys. He left him to lock up and he walked home in the rain. Ellie sat at the kitchen table, her head on her arms, sobbing for Johnny or Jack. He didn't know which one and he didn't care either. The cows hadn't been milked.

‘If he's dead, then he's dead, and he's been dead for six
years. Pull yourself together, Mum. I've got to do the cows.' He was
changing his clothes when he heard the knock at his door; he flung it wide, ready to take on the police in his singlet.

Only Kerrie Fogarty. ‘Is John at home, Ben?'

‘John? No. Want another serenade, do you?' Sarcasm had never been Ben's forte. He didn't do it well and he felt his face begin to burn. The cow yard sweater was
pulled quickly over his head, hiding his blush first and his singlet and freckled arms second. ‘I've got to do the cows,' he explained. ‘Nothing has been done around here today. They've all gone mad.'

‘Mad cow disease?'

‘Yeah.' He grinned and he wasn't sure why, because he sure as hell didn't feel like grinning. ‘Johnny has gone off somewhere in my ute and Mum's bawling. You might be able to
make her a cup of tea or something.'

‘Can I tag along with you, give you a hand? I've served my time in a cow yard.'

He looked at her rain gear and boots. ‘The mud will be up to your knees.'

‘It will wash off.'

‘Reckon you could fit into Mum's gumboots?' He didn't wait for a reply or invite her in, but collected his raincoat and two pairs of gumboots, then watched Kerrie undo her shoelaces
and slide her feet into Ellie's black boots. They fitted well.

‘We're off, Mum,' he called, closing the front door and leaving Ellie weeping at the kitchen table. Leaving her, her topknot tumbled, her thick plait hanging loose to the floor, sweeping the floor; a skein of fading silk shimmering with each heave of her shoulders.

For forty-five years Ellie Burton had absorbed the blows life and Jack had dealt out to her. Few had got close enough to see through the cold armour she wore, and wore proudly, armour forged from crumbs the world and Jack had tossed to her, but Ellie had swept each crumb up gladly, had buttered it lavishly.

Butter melted. Her armour was
crumbling, falling away, and Ellie Burton, hiding within, couldn't take life without her crumbs.

She didn't hear the ute return, nor the thunk of the crutches and the single footstep across the verandah. Johnny entered via the back door. He stood in the passage, watching her weep.

‘I've seen you like this since I was two years old. I've watched you cry for that bastard, wait for that bastard.'

Ellie lifted her head, her swollen eyes shaded against the light with her hand.

‘They let you go.' She attempted to uncross her leg, to stand, but the blood supply, too long restricted, had turned her legs to twin lumps of wood. She stumbled, fell to her knees.

He didn't move from the doorway to help her, but stood watching her try to pick herself up. She grasped the table, and a chair, she
heaved, then released her grip and sank slowly back to the floor.

John's eyes were empty of feeling. Cold. Cold anger, colder rain had chilled his blood, and her tears for that bastard had driven anger deep, seeding his eyes with cynicism.

‘Help me up, love.' Her arms reached out to him.

Still he would not move. Perhaps he feared he might hit her, as his father had hit her, that he might smash
her head against the table, keep smashing it until she woke up. His hands clenching the crutches grew white.

‘I thought you'd done it. I thought they were going to take you away from me too. I couldn't go on. I couldn't. I couldn't lose both of you.'

‘Don't mention that bastard in the same breath as you speak of me, Mum.'

She wiped at her mouth, her nose. ‘He's my husband.'

‘He was a diseased
dog and now he's dead.'

‘He was your father!'

‘It takes more than a high sperm count to make a father.'

She looked at him, her head shaking. ‘I can't stand to think of him as dead, as murdered. I can't do it, Johnny. I can't.'

He made no reply, but his right hand left the crutch. It clattered to the floor as his fist slammed into the wall. It hurt, and the pain was good.

She howled anew for
his pain and her mouth remained open as she shook her head, the plait swaying backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, like a charmed snake.

‘Did he . . . did he come back that night? Did you or Annie – ?'

‘Kill the bastard? Didn't we have reason enough, Mum? What did he ever do for you, for any one of us, but make our lives a purgatory on earth?'

She leaned against the leg of the table,
her own legs extended before her, and she rubbed at her calves, trying to force blood to circulate.

‘Answer me tonight, Mum. What did he ever do for you?' His voice was loud. ‘Answer me, Mum. I need answers tonight.'

‘It's . . . it's not what people do.' She wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. ‘It's . . . I married him in the chur – ' she began, then she looked up at her first-born, looked at
his eyes and knew she needed a better excuse for Johnny. ‘He loved me back then. You know he
did. He used to call me his Sleeping Beauty. He used to buy me such beautiful things. You know he loved me back then.'

Johnny leaned on the doorjamb, as his father used to lean, and he stared at her, as his father had stared, tired, bored. ‘Love? Was his brutality love, Mum? Did a roll in the dust turn
you on?'

‘Stop it,' she screamed. ‘You stop talking to me like that, Johnny.'

He turned away, aware he'd gone too far. ‘I'm leaving. There is nothing here for me. Where are the car keys?'

‘There's nothing here for any of us,' she said. Perhaps it was her tone, perhaps her words that brought him back to the door. ‘Nothing,' she said. ‘Not any more. Nothing matters to me any more. Not the cows
and the chooks. Nothing. It's like we're lost, love. It's like everything that should have been good got lost. All of my beautiful children, all of my beautiful hopes for my children just got lost.'

‘Tossed in the gutter by that bastard.'

‘I don't know what to say to you. To any of you. I tried to do the right things. I thought I was doing the right things, but I don't know if anything I've
ever done in my whole life was right or wrong any more. I don't know anything, love.'

‘Because he isn't around to tell you what's right and what's wrong, he's not around to belittle every move you make?'

‘I don't know. I . . . I . . . it's like Bessy says, like I didn't let myself grow up. It's like, suddenly all the years of not growing are pushing me down, Johnny. I don't know who I'm supposed
to be if he's dead. It's like . . . like I'm no one.' She wailed anew and he stood there, wanting out.

‘Where are his keys?'

‘Don't go, love. Don't leave me.'

‘I've got to go. I'm going mad here. I shouldn't have come home. This wouldn't have happened if I'd stayed away. Annie would have worked it out. She didn't need me.'

‘I need you, love.'

‘I'm just a convenient replacement for him. I'm
just the shape, the shadow of that bastard, when what you need is the real thing. If he were to walk in this door now, you'd get up, wouldn't you? One way or another you'd run to him – or crawl to him, kiss his muddy boots while they kicked you.'

‘He didn't have anyone but us.'

‘And he didn't want us. It was Liza. All for Liza. So little love in that bastard, he had none left for the rest of
us. He hated me from the day I was born.'

‘He didn't. He was proud of you. He took you home to show to his father. It was his father that . . . that spoiled everything. Going to Narrawee spoiled everything. I didn't fit in there, love, and his father was a terrible old man.'

‘So the father blames the son and the son blames the father, hate creating its vicious little circle that none can escape.'

‘He would have been all right if Liza hadn't died.'

‘He killed her, Mum.'

‘Don't you start that again, Johnny.'

‘He killed her.' She shook her head and he turned away. ‘I couldn't fight him then, and I can't fight him now. You'll defend him with your last breath.'

‘I just care about him. I don't want to think of him as dead, as dying in his underpants and one sock – dying with a gun to his
head. He was so proud of himself and his Narrawee and his great-grandfather. If I think of him dying like that, like some sort of a common criminal, then it all gets too hard for me to bear, love. I just want to give up. I just want to lie down somewhere and sleep and shut it all out of my head and never have to wake up again.'

Poor old rag doll, tossed to the floor, to be walked on, kicked around,
her stuffing knocked out of her, then tossed aside for a newer doll. Someone had to pick it up, prop it up, shake it back into shape.

He limped towards her on one crutch and she reached out a hand.

‘My legs have gone to sleep. Can you help me up to the chair?'

‘You've been asleep all your life.' He took her hand but one leg and a crutch could not support him. Somehow he was on his knees and
her arms were around him.

A little boy, lost too long, and a betrayed old rag doll. They clung together and they wept. But his tears were too hard. In time they dried her own.

‘Hush, love,' she whispered. ‘You'll break my poor old heart with your crying. We'll be okay, you see if we aren't. We'll get over this. Don't cry, my beautiful boy.' Rocking him, kissing his face, she soothed him as she
had soothed him forty years ago. ‘Hush now, my beautiful boy. It's going to be all right. Remember what you used to say to me when you were little and I used to cry? You used to say to me, “Don't cry any more, Mummy. All your tears will run down to the river and make the water salty, then all the fish will die”.'

‘They're all dead. They're dead, Mum, and I can't make them live because I'm dead
too. There's nothing left in me to give to you, to Annie, to anyone.'

‘Oh, yes there is so. You're my beautiful boy. My own precious boy. And those fish aren't dead. We just let that old river get a bit too muddy there for a while. But it's going to be all right soon, and you will be too. We will be, my beautiful boy. You hush now. Those eyes were made for smiling, not for tears. Shush now. Hush,
my boy.'