The Stone Dog
ROBERT MITCHELL
Published by ROBERT MITCHELL, 2019.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE STONE DOG
First edition. February 18, 2019.
Copyright © 2019 ROBERT MITCHELL.
ISBN: 978-1386800286
Written by ROBERT MITCHELL.
Also by ROBERT MITCHELL
Dark Eye of the Jaguar
Golden Eagles
Beneath Yellow Clay
The Crying Stones
Thursday's Orchid
Dark Ruby - Black River
The Emperor's Jade
The Katerina Icon
Gold for the Rising Sun
The Khilioi
The Stone Dog
Hijack the Pearl
Whither Now?
Emails From China
The Axe, Alfredo & Other Stories
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By ROBERT MITCHELL
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Author’s Note
REVIEW
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Also By ROBERT MITCHELL
One
Suva, Fiji – October 1972.
The low hissing laugh was even more terrifying than the vicious gleam which had flicked from his eyes as they had swung back after their quick upward glance. He had seen the pulleys shackled to the top of the steeply-raked boom pole. They would hold my weight. It wouldn’t take him and his unspeaking friend more than a minute to find a longer length of rope and attach it to the one already looped around my neck. The pair of them could easily haul me off my feet, the thin cord biting into my neck, cutting off the air supply, strangling, hurting. My throat was already tightening, feeling the terrible pressure.
His words came back to me, mocking words, said with a twisted smile as I had stumbled over the lip of the storage hold only seconds before.
“Steady, my brother,” he had said, and they had both grinned at his words. “It would be a great pity if you accidentally strangled yourself. It would be very tragic if your two friends returned and found that you had committed suicide.”
My throat was dry, parched.
Would I scream as my toes left the deck, feet swinging as I fought to regain my balance for those few final seconds? How long would it take before I took that last look at life, before I faced the final eternity? Would there be a dream that would last forever?
Would I disgrace myself, my bowels unable to stop their spasm? Would they both hold their noses as they stepped past my swinging body? Or would they laugh?
“No!” I said, my voice twisted and deformed as though the rope had already tightened.
There was another laugh as he pushed me in the back. “Move!” he snapped, and I stumbled forward.
I could feel the sweat trickling down my spine, running beneath the band of my underpants, down between my buttocks, tempting my bowels to turn to liquid again. I knew that I had turned pale, my deep tan now faded into a whiteness of fear.
He looked up at the pulley once more and chuckled to himself.
“Move!” he snapped again, and prodded me with the knife blade.
*******
Not like this! Please! The words screamed in my mind. Death shouldn’t be forced, not like this! It must come naturally, when you’re ready, when you’re prepared.
Uncle Max hadn’t died like this. Uncle Max had died with a look of calmness spread across his face as though he knew where he was going, and welcomed the release of his soul. That’s how I had always expected to go. Not like this, not screaming, struggling; not hurting.
We knew why Uncle Max had died. It was his time. He had lived through his life; but nobody would know why I had died. Nobody would know why I had taken my life. They wouldn’t know that I hadn’t jumped off the wheelhouse with the rope around my neck. They wouldn’t know that these two had grinned as they had dragged my heels off the steel deck, high into the air.
When Uncle Max had died I hadn’t been scared. I wasn’t scared now. I was terrified.
******
I stumbled forward again, falling to my knees, but facing towards the bow, not back at my killers, not begging for mercy; but wondering at the madness of it, the sheer stupidity, the waste, the senselessness. There was no reason, no purpose. I shouldn’t even have been on the trawler. It was only coincidence that had put me back on board the Sally May, leaving me drained and weak as these two had slipped quietly over the gunwale, believing her to be silent and deserted.
I staggered to my feet once more, the knife-blade pricking my bare skin; and hoped that it would draw blood, for blood might give Rick and Henry something to prove that my death had not been by choice.
Henry and Rick. They would still be drinking and laughing with the girls, enjoying themselves as though already participating in the wake at my death.
Rick and Henry; and Rod; and Judy. One sentence had put me here; one sentence I was meant by the fates to overhear. We had all been there at the start. All five of us.
******
Coincidence.
I have met people who swear that everything is just a matter of coincidence, a case of being in the right place at the right time. Or is it the wrong place at the wrong time? I have always ridiculed them. I believed them now.
The first link had always been with me, but the rest of the chain was forged in Cairns, on the far north coast of Queensland, almost ten months earlier, December, 1971. Cairns: the mountains of the Atherton Tableland inland from the white sandy beaches; palms, frangipani, hibiscus; the greenness of tropical rain and a high humidity.
******
Cairns, Queensland, Australia – December 1971.
We were on the bow of the Sally May, the five of us, quietly downing a few beers. Four guys and just the one girl, Judy: all of us tanned, and with the fitness that only hard work and sea air can achieve. I looked at the cool stubbie in my hand and thought how satisfying life had become. It had been a good season on the trawler. It had been a good season all round, and most of the prawnies had done fairly well. We had worked hard and the Sally May had behaved herself – no major breakdowns. My investment in the trawler had paid off, much to the surprise of some of my friends from much further down south. That first year had been touch and go and I had been beginning to believe those so-called friends, but the next two seasons were boom ones: masses of prawns and high export prices. Those two years paid off the bank and released the mortgage over my mother’s house, and let me sleep a little better at night.
It was the legacy that Uncle Max had left me in his Will that had purchased my share in the trawler, and the mortgage that went with it; and that was coincidence number one.
The steel-hulled boat was now one-third mine, all fifty-six feet of her; with my partners Richard Stevens and Rod Carter holding the other two shares. We ran the boat with the help of one other deckhand, usually female. She would give us something to think about on lonely nights. They usually stayed a month or two, depending on the length of time spent at sea; but this deckie was different. Judy had been with us for the last nine months.
I thought I was the lucky one on the first trip she made with us, until the fourth night out when I crept across in the darkness to her bunk and found Rick already there before me, his tousled head telling me to shove off. We compared notes the next day and found that we had both been busy from almost the first night. She swore us to secrecy then, not wanting to let Rod know that she was passing it around, probably not wanting to have to satisfy all three of us; and who could blame her. It was understandable as far as Rick and I were concerned, although perhaps a bit rough on Rod.
The casual ménage continued for six months or so, with Rick and I blissfully happy about the situation, but maybe just a little guilty about Rod missing out. Then, early one morning, as we were running out from the Portsmith trawler berths, commonly known as the pig-pens, the crunch came.
“Andy” Rod whispered into my ear. “Can I have a word with you and Dick about something personal?”
Rod was the only one who could call him that, the only one who could get away with calling him Dick. Anyone else only got to say it the once before the red flush rising up Rick’s throat would point out their error. I never knew why he hated the name and I had never asked.
I looked up at Rod. “Sure,” I replied. “What about?”
“Well ... er ..., wait until we’re under way.”
So I gave Rick the nod as soon as we cleared the wharf area, and we joined Rod in the wheelhouse.
“Where’s Judy?” I asked, sniffing the air for the familiar aroma of coffee grounds. At this time she was usually making a fresh pot in the saloon, a few steps down from the wheelhouse.
It was then that he told us, about the affair that had been building between the two of them; about how they had been spending their time whenever Rick and I were away from the boat; about how it had taken him weeks to get her to come around; about how much in love they were.
“But we haven’t done anything when we’ve been out at sea,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been fair on you two guys.”
Rick stared at the floor, and I did a rapid check of the radar, not noticing that it wasn’t even switched on.
“Well,” I said finally, trying to look him straight in the eye. “I don’t suppose I would have minded. What about you, Rick?”
“Me, er ... no.”
Rod’s face lit up, the relief clear in those deep blue eyes. “Hey, that’s great! Then you don’t mind if she bunks in with me?”
We gave him the green light and cursed the fun we would be missing.
We were two days out from Cairns. Rod and Rick were out on the back deck fixing the nets, while I caught up with some sleep. There was the sound of clothing dropping to the floor and then a hand with fingers stretched wide snagged through the hairs on my chest as she tried to slide into my bunk. There was electricity in the air for a long violent moment as I ranted at her in a low hoarse voice, finally taking her by the shoulder and pushing her up the ladder and out of the fo’c’sle, tossing her clothes up after her.
I told Rick what had happened, and a day later she tried it on him as well.
The Sally May wasn’t the same after that. Rod looked sideways at us from time to time, and I suspect that she had told him that we had put the hard word on her. I made a point of trying to be everywhere that Rod was, except when he was in her bunk down under the saloon overhang; behind the thick piece of tarpaulin that separated that bunk from the rest of the fo’c’sle.
The little blond-haired bitch went out of her way after that to tease Rick and me; shirt buttons always coming undone, and one or other of those firm young breasts shoved under our noses when Rod was somewhere else; but Rick and I stuck to cold showers and embarrassing moments of solitude in the toilet.
It only took her those last three months of the season to brainwash the unfortunate bastard; lovesick Rod; first convincing him to ask her to marry him, and then showing him that it was only the lower classes who worked on prawn trawlers, that he should be looking for bigger and better things, and down in the city, down in Brisbane, not up in the provinces.
Judy was tired of those eighteen-hour days out at sea, tired of living on a trawler, of the smell of diesel and prawns, of sleeping and making love knowing that either Rick or I were no more than five or six feet away behind a sheet of canvas. She wanted a shiny plastic apartment, television set, electric stove, tiles in the bathroom, and a two-door fridge that didn’t stink of fish. I couldn’t blame her; but she could have left Rod on the boat. She could have taken a flat in Cairns with all the trimmings; but not Judy. She had to have the bright lights. She had to flaunt her man to those city friends of hers.
So it had come to the day of coincidence, to the day that the five of us were sitting in the bow drinking beer and discussing money and partnerships: Rick and me, Rod and Judy – and Henry Johnson from the Mary II; four guys fast approaching their thirties, when life is supposed to become more serious; and our deckie, still in her early twenties.
Henry was one of the few who had expressed any real interest in the Sally May. There weren’t many people around with the cash needed to take over Rod’s share; and Henry was the only one Rick and I would accept as a partner; but every time the price was mentioned, Judy would try to slide it up a few more thousand.
For the past four years Henry had been crewing on the Mary II, normally tied up two along from us in the pig-pens. Henry was unusual for a prawnie: a light drinker and a non-smoker. The average prawnie drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney. The guys on Mary II wouldn’t sell him an interest in their boat, but they didn’t want to lose him either.
It was a pleasant Sunday afternoon, the third session of negotiations between Henry and Rod; everyone sitting cross-legged, the boys bare-chested, Judy almost wearing a string-laced bikini top and faded designer-shorts, her back up against the anchor windlass, big round sunglasses tilted to the sky; everybody bare-footed, casual.
Henry had got to his maximum price and Rod to his minimum. Judy had finally shut up when Rod told her that they couldn’t set the wedding date until the deal was settled. The prices weren’t too far apart. We all knew it was only a matter of time before the difference was split and they shook hands on the deal, and then went to see the solicitor.
My stubbie was empty and so was Rod’s. Rick had a mouthful or two left and Henry’s was still fairly full, but I wasn’t going to wait for him to finish before getting fresh ones. I had the three cold bottles out of the fridge and was tossing the two empties into the rubbish bin when I remembered that I hadn’t asked Judy whether she wanted another gin and tonic. I bounced back up to the bow just in time to hear the last few words of their conversation.
“What was that?” I asked.
“What was what?” Rick called back.
“Somebody mentioned somebody’s name. A German name.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Henry did.”
“Well?” I asked again.
“Well what?”
“What was the name, for Christ’s sake?” I snapped.
Henry turned around and said: “Lucker. His name was Lucker.”
“Oh,” I said, thinking for a moment.
“Andy!” Rod burst out, cutting into my thoughts. “Where’s the bloody beer? I’m dying of thirst up here!”
I wandered back along the port side, grabbed the stubbies from the table in the main cabin and climbed back up on to the bow, trying to think where I had heard the man’s name before. I sat down and noticed for the first time that Judy’s glass was empty. I hadn’t asked her whether she wanted another, and then I remembered what a bitch she was and decided that she could damn well get her own.
“Andy? Hey, Andy?” The words cut into my thoughts once again as I turned to face Rod’s prodding finger.
“I’ve heard of him somewhere,” I said. “The name means something, something important, but for the life of me I can’t think what it is.”
“What name?” he asked.
“Lucker,” I replied curtly. “The guy Henry
was talking about, only that wasn’t quite the way it was pronounced.”
“Oh him,” Henry said casually. “He was what you’d call a modern-day buccaneer.”
“Yeah,” I said, knowing that buccaneer didn’t ring any bells.
“Yeah,” he added. “He sailed around the South Pacific during the First World War, sinking every bloody Allied cargo ship he could lay his hands on.” His sun-browned hands traced movement through the air. “He’d drift up close in this innocent-looking old-time sailing ship and then swoop alongside using a concealed engine, and train his guns on the unsuspecting vessel. Lucker and the Sea Eagle sunk a hell of a tonnage before they finally caught him.”
“Seeadler,” I interrupted, as it all suddenly flowed back. “The ship was called the Seeadler, and the captain’s name wasn’t Lucker. It was von Luckner, Count Felix von Luckner, known then as the Sea Devil. And he didn’t just sail around the South Pacific. He was all over the place; off Brazil, down near Cape Horn. A real busy bugger.”
“How the hell do you know so much about it?” Rick asked.
“Uncle Max,” I replied, and my mind went back to the last time I had seen that sea-worn face.
******
Uncle Max had been related to my mother by marriage, the older brother of her dead sister’s husband. Aunt Esme and Uncle Franz had both been killed in a plane crash many years ago, way before I had been born, and Uncle Franz’s brother, Max, had gravitated to us. He had been born in Germany in 1892, which had always seemed like the dark ages to me. He had died in 1956, at the age of sixty-four, with me only twelve years old. I had been certain that he would live to a hundred or more.
He was more like a grandfather to me, and more like an uncle to my widowed mother. She liked having him around, grateful for the way that he fixed all the little things around the house that went wrong: dripping taps, blown fuses, washing machines that wouldn’t empty, and all the hundred other things that go wrong during the year and need a man’s touch.
He would spend one week out of every four at our house; the one week being enough to make him want his solitude again, and the three remaining weeks of boredom driving him back to us.
The Stone Dog Page 1
