by Ben Hobson
‘But Mel––’
‘I told you, I didn’t ask you to do that!’
She shut the door. The sound of it like a smack to his jaw. Worse than having his head in the pig.
From inside she shouted, ‘If you wanted to do something for me you should’ve come round and mown the damn lawn!’
He walked back to his car, avoiding the grass. He collapsed inside and gripped the wheel so hard his fingers whitened. Then he struck it. Again and again. Thumped the roof, the dull sound of carpeted metal. He struck his own face. You are an idiot, he thought. That bastard Moore had him pegged. No brain cells.
He put the car in gear and drove to Boodyarn Prison.
TWENTY-TWO
PENELOPE MOORE
They travelled to the prison together, Penelope driving. On either side of the road, large paddocks filled with little besides grass. There were a few sheep, actually, in this one on the left. And just here, near this tree, was the spot she and Vernon had crashed years before. She remembered little of it, little of the person she’d been before the crash, and knew little, if she were honest, about the person who materialised afterwards. She remembered waking up and she remembered, too, the young policeman. And of course she remembered losing her baby. Mark. Of course. But that was all.
She glanced at her overweight friend in the passenger seat. This would be the first time she had seen her son in two years and she was bringing Margie. The sun was nearly bordering the horizon, late afternoon. She hoped they would still be able to see him.
Vernon had already felt like an old man when Penelope had first fallen pregnant. Only in his thirties, but back then people had kids young. Married young. There hadn’t been a chance for them really, on account of the war. It took Vernon a long time to feel things again. A lot of tentative steps, a little bird learning to fly. And she’d been patient, waiting for that man. And after Mark was killed it took them—both of them—a long time to want to try again. Burying him one of the worst memories she had. She never returned to it. Never went and visited his grave. The son she’d never met. It was too sad to think about.
When Caleb was born it had been her, alone, in the delivery room. So afraid had she been to fall pregnant, and so scared during the pregnancy that she’d lose this child too, that Vernon had taken a leave of absence a few weeks before she was due. He hadn’t been helpful, though. Not really. But he’d been there. She’d started to depend on him again as she’d grown larger, found it harder to move, to rest. He’d been ready with pillows, with kindness.
She knew now that fathers were invited to be with their wives in that cold, sterile room, and hold their hands and bring them cups of water. But when Caleb had been born it had been her, just her, surrounded by near strangers. Vernon somewhere else, asked to wait outside by the nurses. She had wanted Vernon there. Had felt his absence almost like the room had been sucked out, all wind and moisture from it, nothing at all left. The people in the room, the nurses and doctors, busy with just another task. None would really look at her, not like her husband did. Not that he did so now.
They had changed so much since then, the two of them. Instead of love there was only dependency. How stupid, and childish, to think such things. To think that love was a feeling so fleeting as to be stolen by the years. Love was sacrifice and daily decision and she had made that decision willingly for most of their marriage. It was only recently that she had started, selfishly, to put herself first. And why shouldn’t she? She knew she was as much to blame for all of this as him. Yet this thought arose: and why shouldn’t she?
And what else of it was her fault? What the boy had done? The image of Melissa’s broken face. The shattered bone in the nose. Anger in her guts, welling up. Let him bloody rot in there.
She turned down the driveway to Boodyarn, Margie all the while nattering on about her own kid. Penelope pulled up outside the prison, in front of the administration building. She walked inside, Margie trailing.
It looked as though the building had been intended for some other use, and the prison had just appropriated it. Like they were in the church hall eating biscuits after a sermon. Wooden floors, cobwebs. There was a foldout table and seated behind that was a young woman Penelope didn’t recognise. She smiled at them as they approached.
‘Can I help you?’
‘I’m here to see my son, Caleb Moore.’
‘You’re Mr Moore’s wife?’
‘He taught you, did he?’
‘No. I’m a girl, not allowed to do woodwork.’
Margie, a big presence behind her, spoke up with, ‘Surprised you lot are open Good Friday.’
‘They’re doing the Prisoners on the Run tomorrow, so there’s a bit to organise. Which is what I’m doing,’ she said. ‘Did Mr Moore tell you about what happened to Caleb?’
Penelope swallowed. ‘Yes, he spoke about it.’
‘Well, he’s still in recovery. We’ve left him in there rather than put him back in population before the run tomorrow. He’ll go back after that.’
Penelope nodded. ‘So we can just go in?’
‘I’ll go let the governor know, then I’ll take you down.’
She stood up and walked through a swinging door at the rear of the room. Penelope and Margie sat down on plastic chairs lining the wall, the faint smell of a hospital finding them.
Penelope tapped her leg. ‘Bit strange,’ she said.
‘I bet,’ Margie said, speaking in a whisper.
‘I don’t know what I’ll do when I see him.’
‘Just tell him you love him.’
Penelope was about to say something rude to this—something akin to tell me what else is new—but stopped herself, instead reminding herself of her friend’s own pain, and that she was here, she was here. She was trying to help.
The young lady soon returned and held the door open, beckoning the two of them in. Penelope stood. Margie offered her hand. Penelope didn’t take it.
They walked down the hall. With every step she grew strangely faint. Her legs were wobbly. She wasn’t even thinking about what would happen. The woman stopped before a door and opened it. She did not go inside. Penelope hesitated, then found herself walking in.
There was her boy. A sheet over him, on the bed. He was fully clothed, apparently, his arms over the sheet in his prison clothes, some steel-capped workmen’s boots at the foot of his bed. He was skinnier. One forearm in a cast. It seemed he hadn’t been informed he’d be receiving a visitor, because a television in the corner of the room was on and when she entered he did not look up for a moment. And when he did it was with a look of annoyance, one she remembered him wearing when he was a three-year-old and had been told he couldn’t play with the potato peeler. And then Vernon had smacked him, and the frown had turned into a scowl. He hadn’t cried, though, normally when Vernon’s hand had struck his bottom. Vernon’s palms weren’t intending real hurt. Just reminders. So he’d said.
The annoyance on his face now morphed into one of despair.
‘Mum?’
She strode forward, put one hand on his, wrapped him in an awkward smile. He sat up, draped his good arm around her and started shaking with sobs. She returned the hug, glad for it, feeling strange all the same. She spared a look for Margie, who stood in the doorway. Her face looked like she’d heard a sad story on television—the same connection, happiness, tears, taking somebody else’s drama and living it at a safe remove. Penelope put her hands on her son’s back and stroked him like she was burping him.
‘There, there, my boy. You’re alright,’ she said, in the same cooing tone she’d used back then.
Melissa’s broken face in her mind. She wanted to slap him.
He sat back. ‘Dad said you’d visit.’
‘You alright, then?’
He nodded at his plastered forearm. ‘Did Dad talk to you?’
There came a shouting from the administration area.
‘What was that?’ Margie said. Her face grew fearful and she stepped further in
side. ‘Should we shut the door?’
Penelope went over to shut it, after first looking down the hall. There was nothing to see, but the voices carried to her. Behind the door she put her hands on it. There was no lock on the door.
‘No lock?’ she said.
Caleb said, ‘They don’t need to lock it from the inside, normally.’
‘Does that sort of thing happen often?’
‘What sort of thing?’
She looked at him. ‘The shouting.’
He shrugged. ‘Sometimes.’
It came again, wafting into their room like thin streamers, the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.
‘You heard that?’ Margie said.
He nodded, his face like she’d caught him stealing coins from her purse. ‘That’s Brendan.’
Then the sound of a door opening and being slammed shut. And footsteps down the hallway, hurried, clomping like cattle. Penelope grabbed at the handle as it started to turn, put all her strength into not allowing him entry. A pounding on the door threatened to knock it off its hinges.
‘Who’s in there?’ came a large voice from outside.
Caleb shouted, ‘I’ve got a gun this time, Cahill!’
‘Bullshit you do. They wouldn’t let you have a gun.’ Another yank on the handle. Margie was stepping back, her hands splayed behind her. When they found the wall opposite she kept right on walking, as though she meant to melt herself down and slither through the gaps in the floorboards.
The door was pulled free from Penelope and she stepped away, towards her son, her eye on the lout framed in the doorway. His shoulders and gut were heaving. There was a deep discolouration to his neck that made his head seem like a cauliflower grown out of dirt. In his hands he held a cricket bat, loosely, letting it swing near the wooden floorboards.
‘Who are you?’ he asked Penelope.
‘You leave my boy alone,’ she said, not a hint of certainty in her voice. It bounced like she was atop Caleb’s childhood trampoline.
‘So you’re the one married to that old bastard, are you?’ He didn’t step forward. ‘Don’t want to be hitting an old lady.’
‘Vernon sorted all this!’
‘Well, I’m changing it. Can’t let this mongrel get away with what he did just because his old man threatened my old man. Mel wants me here. I saw her.’
Penelope shook her head. ‘No, I don’t believe you. She doesn’t want you here.’
‘She does. Can’t be cowed by bullies like your son here. That’s just letting them win. Now’—he raised a hand and swiped it right—‘move to the side.’
She didn’t move.
‘I have a cricket bat and even if I didn’t I could mow you down like a sack of spuds.’
‘You can’t just come in here and beat people. The law took care of him and he’s suffering.’ She looked at Caleb. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you before.’
He nodded, clearly petrified. She looked back at Brendan and before she could question herself she charged at him, with her small frame, her bony wrists and weak knees. She had never before entered a fight. Only as a girl had she beaten her sister, once, and felt so bad afterwards, having overpowered her, held her down, spat in her eyes, that she never tried it again. She and Vernon had sparred verbally but he had never come close to hitting her.
What she now did surprised this leviathan before her and he back-pedalled a bit, into the hallway, and she was able to grab at his face before he kicked her off. He swung his arm and it was as though she was nothing and she bounced off the doorframe and fell to the floor. She felt something in her wrist tighten and cried out and held it to her chest. He stepped over her. She kept yelling at him.
Margie had not moved from the wall but he went to her anyway and swung the bat at her middle. Penelope could see his back muscles, taut against his T-shirt, and his shoulders hunched forward like he was playing rugby. As the bat hit her, Margie let out a terrific groan, a cow headed for slaughter. She toppled slowly and was crying before she struck the ground. Her arms went out as she crawled away from this monster, who towered over her, shouting something maniacal.
He turned to her son and smashed the bat into the machine near him. Glass flew. Penelope wobbled to her feet, tried to reach him. He swung at the television set and some of the glass shards struck Penelope in the leg and face. She cowered. The bat then came down on Caleb’s stomach. He was sitting up and began scrabbling to find purchase on the floor with his feet, but he slipped and fell and then the bat was up again and driving down into the base of his back. He cried out. The rage that powered this demon striking her son was nothing compared with that which had awoken in her own breast. Her screaming took on a growl like a dragon and was of such volume it caused the demon to stop and look at her. She struggled to her knees and knew that even with this fury her flesh was still old and her bones still weak. Still, she tried to stand.
‘Not smart, not smart,’ Brendan said as he stepped towards her.
The sound of a bullet striking the wall made him stop once more. Unaccustomed to gunfire, Penelope slumped back to the ground. She looked up to see the administrative lady pointing a gun at Brendan, her fingers trembling, her mouth slightly open. The bullet had gone right through the plaster and a beam of light streamed in through the hole and struck the floor, dust motes floating within.
The young woman said nothing, just stood there holding the gun out in front of her. Brendan hadn’t moved, was suspended with the bat upright, threatening the swing. He slowly lowered it.
‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ he said.
‘Get out,’ the woman said. Without the gun in her shaking hands she would have seemed no bigger than a mouse.
‘Or what?’ he sneered.
For a moment the entire room felt electric. Even the dust motes seemed to have paused in the air. He took a step towards her, then another, then stopped again. He was grinning.
‘You won’t shoot me.’
The woman’s hands were still shaking and her eyes were moving over each of them in quick succession. She opened her mouth to speak, shut it again. Then, nervously, ‘You take another step forward and I will shoot you.’
His grin only widened. ‘I gotta step that way if you want me to leave. You’re blocking the door, sweetheart.’
If his hope had been to wrongfoot her he wound up disappointed. Her eyes became focused and clear.
‘Well, you going to let me pass, or not?’
‘You should feel horrible about yourself for hurting these people.’
Brendan surveyed the room. His eyes fell on Margie. ‘Her I feel sorry for,’ he said, motioning with the cricket bat. ‘The other two bloody deserved it. You alright, sweetheart?’ he called.
Margie moaned in response, shuffled on her side, holding her gut. Her eyes were shut fast and she kept shaking her head.
‘I’m sorry, you hear me?’ Then speaking to the woman again he said, ‘Shouldn’t have hit her. Old thing.’
‘You shouldn’t have hit any of them.’
He looked at Penelope, still huddled on the floor, still holding her wrist, and she stared up at him with as much defiance as she could muster. There was nothing in his eyes that made him seem human. ‘You know what he did?’ he said, gesturing at Caleb.
Her son lay on the floor, rolled onto his back. His face was a mirror of Margie’s.
‘You know what you’ve done?’ the woman said. Her adrenaline seemed to have ebbed a little, though her hands were just as shaky on the gun. ‘You’ve beaten two old women. How’s that any better than what he did?’
Brendan appeared to have nothing to say to this. He avoided their eyes. Then he looked at Penelope and said, ‘You know what he did. You know he deserves this.’
‘Only God gets to decide that,’ the woman said.
‘Bloody laugh, coming from you, holding the gun.’ He looked at the door. ‘I’m leaving. You want to shoot me, shoot me.’ He took a step towards the door and part of Penel
ope was praying that the woman would just shoot him. That he would provoke her. But he didn’t. She took a step to the side and kept the gun on him as he ambled out the door and down the corridor.
Penelope stood and went to her son. She helped him sit up, a struggle with her wrist. He held onto her like he was still a baby, the way he used to wrap his legs and arms about her as she carried him inside from the car, his little head on her shoulder. If he was crying she couldn’t tell.
She looked at her rescuer, this woman she had so quickly dismissed. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
The woman tried to smile. ‘No worries.’
‘You think he’ll come back?’
She faltered. ‘I’m sure he’ll be back. I’m sure the governor will be talking to me about what I did here today. I’ll be lucky if I’m not transferred some other place.’
Penelope said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah. Well, I’m not. I’m glad I did it. About time somebody stood up to those Cahills.’
The woman walked over to Margie and helped her sit up.
‘You alright, love?’
‘I think he broke something.’
‘Did he hit you with the bat?’
Margie nodded, a child herself.
‘Let’s get you up. Get you to the hospital,’ the woman said. ‘Can you drive her?’
‘Me?’ Penelope asked, still holding her son.
‘I can’t go,’ the woman said, and gestured in a way that took in the whole room. ‘This is a prison.’
‘Right, right,’ Penelope said. ‘Can you walk her to the car? I’ll be along in a second.’
The woman looked at Penelope, perhaps trying to gather her intent, and said, ‘Alright. You got the keys?’
Penelope kept one arm around her son and with the other found her bag and threw it in Margie’s direction. The woman, with a mighty struggle, hefted Margie to her feet. As she hobbled from the room she was crying again, moaning with every step.
They were alone then, the two of them. Her son’s breath on her neck. She tried to remember when last they had been so isolated, and couldn’t recall.
