by Ben Hobson
Brendan was a slobbering, crying mess. Caleb grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him away, aiming for the shore.
The sound of crashing through the bush behind them. The man was grunting. Caleb pulled harder at Brendan, urged him on.
Soon Caleb had to stop. They hadn’t gone far, not far enough, but Brendan was too big to carry, kept tripping on his leg. He motioned for Brendan to keep quiet but he kept on crying, mumbling something about his brother, perhaps—it was hard to tell. ‘Shut up, would you?’ Caleb whispered.
He keened his ears for sound of the big man but heard nothing. All was silent for a moment, beyond the night noises of the bush.
Between moans, Brendan said, ‘What’re you doing here?’
‘Trying to help my dad.’
Brendan winced, sucked in air through his teeth. ‘I buggered it all up.’
‘Ssh.’
‘My brother …’
‘Yeah?’
‘Did you see what happened to him?’
Caleb looked down at Brendan, so small beneath the bushes now, a wounded animal on its back. His leg was sticking out in a funny manner. Caleb peered down and saw blood on the thigh, thick like ink in the low light.
‘He’s dead,’ Caleb said.
This made Brendan wail. Head back, despair he’d never seen. Caleb grabbed his hand and placed it over his leg. ‘Put pressure on it here. And shut up, will you?’
Beneath his hand Caleb felt the man’s hand constrict.
And then the sound of a shotgun being fired again. Punctuating the air like an army jet flying low. Both men winced at the sound of it.
Caleb said, ‘Dad?’ and prayed he would get a response. Knew it was stupid as he said it, no way his old man could hear him. Kept on praying. Found nothing but the breeze, the slurp of the mud at his heels.
THIRTY-FOUR
VERNON MOORE
At the sound of a muffled shotgun blast he crept forward. He could see two figures through the undergrowth. They were wrapped in each other’s arms, grunting. One of them was Brendan. When he was sent sprawling into the grass Vernon’s attention was drawn to a third figure, the younger kid, Sidney. He was turned in Vernon’s direction and there was panic on his face.
Vernon saw the kid could see him, could see his old white features in the dark. They locked eyes for a moment and Vernon tried to convey some sense of his thanks for shouting his name, knew it had been done despite the kid’s family, the immediate danger. He knew Sidney had risked everything to save his life. Sidney’s eyes looked terrified. Vernon couldn’t comprehend the selflessness of the choice. That such a thing could exist.
Sidney sprinted towards him, across the clearing. Then the sound of chaos, a shotgun erupting from behind. He watched Sidney’s eyes and knew what he was seeing. He had seen it all before. They did not roll back like in the movies, nor did they grow dim. They just kept on looking but now they were dead. His body collapsed. The eyes just a physical feature in the skull. There had been life behind them and now there was none. There once had been a father, his saviour, now just a sack of flesh.
The kid smacked into the earth like a palm-down hand onto water. His body sent muck flinging in Vernon’s direction. The other man, big and ungainly, scrambled over the mud towards him. The older Cahill nowhere to be seen. Vernon stood up a bit and wiped the muck from his eyes. The kid’s arm upturned like he’d broken the bones as he’d fallen, as his body had struck the mud.
The other man was now on his feet. He first went into the bushes nearby, pushing his way through, grunting and carrying on. Yelling incoherently, an animal in darkness. He soon gave up his struggle, though, and breathed. Walked into the middle of the clearing and looked skyward. Then he crept forward with the shotgun aimed at the kid’s body, looking every way as he stepped. Vernon watched him and kept silent. For all the world he was fifty years younger in the jungles of New Guinea watching the Japanese approach, handling his weapon. As though all his life had simply never been. The still-birth, his work, his son, the garden. He watched this man approach, the shadows beneath him coalescing with the grime. Then he stood.
He had barely spoken words, holding his shotgun up and steady, when this larger bloke turned to him, raising his own instinctually at the sound. He knew the intent to fire in this big man’s stance and so fired himself. Hit him in the neck. He was thrown back immediately and fell onto his arse into the mud near the kid, splattering all nearby. Seated with his legs out like a child. Vernon dropped his shotgun. Big man was holding his throat and staring hard at his boots, his face puffing up red with concentration, as though concentrating on his wound would stop it from being. Vernon stepped forwards and let the man see him. His face all angry, like his neck was on fire. Vernon watched as he coughed and spluttered. It wasn’t long before the life left his limbs completely and they fell from his neck, the wound pumping dark ink in the night. His head went sagging onto his stomach, the big gorilla, his two hands now palm up in the muck. His head down like he was praying. What was left of his neck. Vernon took another step. The kid with his arm still up. This body now joining him in death. The maker of his death beside him in it. A grave the same colour as excrement, darker in the moonlight.
He heard a shout from the bush a distance from him. ‘Dad?’ He thought at first it was Brendan, but it didn’t sound like him. Vernon stayed quite still, relishing the breeze after the din of the shotguns. He stood studying what he had done. When the voice came again he stepped out, sure now of the owner.
‘Caleb?’
He had to yell it. There was no response for a moment and then his son’s voice once more. ‘Dad?’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m here,’ he shouted. ‘With Brendan. You alright?’
‘Yeah. I’m alright. Stay where you are. I’ll come to you.’
‘What happened?’
‘The big fella is down. And Sidney.’
He heard the sound of a wounded animal, a grunting through the trees. Must have been Brendan. He stepped over Sidney’s body and saw that the back of the head was black, merged with the muck surrounding it. Like he had been born without a skull. He clambered through the bush in the direction of his son. His wife’s voice shouted something from their tent.
‘Brendan’s hit,’ Caleb said. ‘In the leg.’
‘Alright. Hang on,’ he yelled. Vernon prowled his way through bush, his old bones struggling, his ribs stinging where Wornkin had kicked him. He pushed on.
He passed some trees and kept going and then there kneeling besides a breathing lump in the mud was his son. Caleb looked up at him and then back down at Brendan. Vernon walked up and clapped his son on the shoulder.
‘You run off, did you?’
Caleb nodded. ‘Not sure how his leg is. He’s upset about his brother.’
Vernon watched Brendan’s chest moving up and down. This man’s loss had been his salvation. Sidney. Gave his whole life to save a man he barely knew. Gave up on the time he could have spent being a father to his little girl, all the joy he would have taken in her. Her going to school, him tending to her scraped knees. He had given up all of it. To save him. Vernon looked at his son. Understood deeply now what he had given up. Knew, too, he wasn’t willing to give up any more. He watched Brendan’s body, the way the flannelette shirt stretched as the chest rose and fell.
He said, ‘Guess we better get him to the hospital then.’
They parked in the emergency bay. Vernon realised as he stared at the newly risen sun that today was Easter Sunday. Caleb turned to him from the passenger seat and said, ‘Should I come in?’
‘Do you mean, should you turn yourself in?’
‘Yeah, I guess so.’
Penelope was sitting in the back with Brendan’s head on her lap. Vernon turned and saw that she was absently stroking his face while staring out the window.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
She looked down, became aware of what she was doing. ‘I don’t know, Vernie
. He’s in pain.’
Brendan’s face was strained, like clothing pulled taut. His teeth were bared.
‘Best get him inside.’
‘Am I coming in?’ Caleb asked, as his father opened the door.
Vernon stopped and stared back into the car. ‘Do you think you should?’
Caleb took a moment. Looked at his mother, who smiled sadly at him. He nodded.
‘Then come in.’
‘I’ll be going back to jail.’
‘Well,’ Vernon said, ‘I might be in there with you this time.’
Then, with his creaking joints, his back still stinging from yesterday’s burns, and the rest of his body aching in too many places to mention, he got out of the car and helped lever Brendan from the backseat. With great difficulty he and Caleb got him to the front of the hospital, leaving Penelope in the car. The automatic doors opened and they waddled inside and dumped him on the carpet with what strength they had left. The nurse behind the counter immediately came around and started calling out directions. Medical staff hurried up, looked into Brendan’s eyes, stretchered him down the corridor. Vernon stood there looking after him with his hands on his hips.
Then he and Caleb seated themselves on the plastic chairs and waited for the police to come. They didn’t take long. The officers had the look of men who had been working all night. Caleb told them who he was.
‘You’re the one who escaped from prison then, yeah?’ the older of the pair said.
‘Yeah. That’s me.’
Soon a second police car arrived and took his son away from him once more. Before Caleb left, Vernon put a hand on his shoulder and tried to instil in him some sense of calm. Caleb wasn’t cuffed, and he walked to the waiting police car without fuss.
Outside, Vernon looked over at his wife, who was still sitting in their car, but she refused to watch as her son was led away.
The first two officers had followed him out. ‘We have more questions for you,’ one of them said.
‘I know.’
‘So don’t go anywhere.’
‘Why? Where are you going?’
The policemen looked at Vernon’s car. ‘We’re going to go and talk to your wife. Get her story first.’
‘Alright,’ Vernon said. He added, ‘Hey, where’s Wornkin?’
The policeman gave a grim smile. ‘She’s in there, in hospital. Your mate that you checked in, Brendan Cahill, did a number on her down at the station.’
Vernon said, ‘That’s why I don’t know you. You boys from Trenton?’
They both nodded and left, the younger one tapping him on the shoulder with his notepad, perhaps as a warning. But Vernon planned to tell what had happened simply and honestly. If he went to jail, so be it.
He went back into emergency, where a new nurse was seated at the administration desk.
‘You got Sharon Wornkin in here still?’ he asked.
‘We do. You know her?’
‘I’m an old friend.’
‘The police told me you were to wait here.’
He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘Just tell them I’m in her room when they get back.’
She sighed, looked down at her paperwork and gave him the room number. Vernon trudged down the corridor, brushing at his blood-soaked pants.
Sharon was sitting up in bed eating a tray of hospital food. When she saw him in her doorway her jaw dropped and she scooted her body a bit higher up in the bed, regarding Vernon with solemn eyes.
‘Moore?’
‘How are you, Sharon?’
She looked him up and down. ‘Where’d all the blood come from?’
‘That’d be Brendan’s.’
Sharon said slowly, ‘Figured something like that would happen.’
‘We just brought him in.’
‘He’s alive?’
‘Yeah, he’s alive.’ Vernon rapped his fingers on the doorframe. ‘Can I come in?’
She hesitated, then nodded. He sat in the chair beside her bed and leaned forwards. Sunlight through the lace curtain dappled the floor.
‘About what you did to me …’
‘Yeah …’ Sharon said.
‘You got nothing to say?’
‘I shouldn’t’ve done it.’ She rubbed her eyes with the balls of her palms. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about it. I really am. It’s been keeping me up.’
‘It kept me up, too. Scared me,’ Vernon said. ‘Didn’t think you were a person like that.’
‘I’ve decided I won’t be from now on.’
‘Good. That’s good to hear.’ He shifted in his chair. ‘What happened to you, anyway?’
‘Brendan Cahill. And Melbourne.’ Sharon looked away, and opened her mouth to say something else then shut it. Eventually she said, ‘Guess I got what was coming to me.’
Vernon said nothing to this. He looked out of the window and then stood up. ‘I better go.’
‘No, wait,’ Sharon said. ‘You and Bill Kelly are mates.’
Vernon said, ‘Yeah. We’re friends.’
She sighed. ‘I was afraid of that.’
THIRTY-FIVE
SHARON WORNKIN
She sat with Peter in his car, overlooking the brown expanse of Port Napier to Snake Island. That muddy tide so ineffective, lapping at the reeds and muck and rubbish. The coroner, Garry, was already out in the boat, waiting. He looked unsure of himself, that man, the way he sat with his hands in his lap, looking at the water over the side like he was about to be swallowed up.
Peter said, ‘You shouldn’t go, Mum, really. Should you?’
‘I’m alright.’
‘Your hand’s in a cast.’
‘Yeah, but I’m not rowing over there.’
He wouldn’t look at her. One hand on the wheel, the other fiddling with little bits of rubber flaking off the gearstick. She smiled. All men were alike. Couldn’t talk about something serious and just look you in the eye. Had to be doing something with their hands.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘There might be some questions about me soon. Some people asking about how I did things. What I did …’ She paused. ‘I did some bad things, bud.’
He nodded. ‘I know.’
‘So they’ll be asking. I might be fired. For sure I’ll be fired, really. Maybe even get arrested. We’ll see, though.’
Peter clenched his fist around the steering wheel. ‘Did it hurt?’
‘Getting beaten up in general? Or my wrist getting broken specifically?’
He winced at that. ‘The wrist.’
‘I felt it break. Like when you snap the spaghetti to make it fit in the saucepan.’
‘I don’t do that. That’s your job.’
‘Yeah. ’Bout time you learnt it now, though, right?’
Peter looked out the window. The back of his head so like his father’s. He spoke without turning. ‘You ever seen a dead person up close before?’
‘I’ve seen a few in car crashes, yeah.’
He breathed out. Turned back to her. ‘Alright.’
‘I’ll see you at home?’
He smiled at this. ‘Sure.’
She felt the urge to lean over and kiss him on his cheek. Instead of stifling it she gave into it. He batted her off but not before her lips touched his face.
‘Get off.’
‘Shut up. I nearly died—I get to kiss you all I want.’
Before he could respond she got out of the car. She smiled at him through the windshield as she walked to the boat. The coroner’s hands left his lap to help her on board. Garry, lowered the motor into the water and yanked the cord and off they went.
The two of them hauled the boat onto the muddy shore, Garry doing most of the heavy lifting on account of her arm. Garry was wearing a fishing shirt she was sure he’d bought especially for the journey. Lucky there was no tag dangling from the sleeve.
They walked along the shore. Sharon found the going difficult. She’d walk a small way and end up tangled in the scratchy, worthless branches. The plaste
r on the cast caught sometimes. Constantly having to tear it free. Good thing they soon came upon some shoreline that wasn’t as overgrown.
‘Where did they say they were?’ the coroner asked.
‘They said the side of the island facing Port Napier,’ she said. When he looked blank she added, ‘Near here, I think.’
‘We could’ve landed closer.’
‘Didn’t want to compromise the scene. Thought you’d like that.’
They waited a moment. Sharon longed for something to eat. The coroner handed her a bottle of water from his back pocket. She gulped some down. They ploughed on.
They came upon the remains of Vernon’s fire on the beach, like he’d said. Saw his tent through the trees. They walked in and from his tent, saw the clearing.
When they found the two fallen men the sun was in the middle of the sky. The big one looked like he was floating. There was muck, and red gunk, blood, around both their heads like halos.
‘Don’t touch them,’ the coroner said. ‘Let me take a look at them first.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
He went over to look at Sidney. Despite herself, Sharon crept forwards.
Judah lay flat on his back, arms out like a crucified Jesus. Vernon had said he’d been seated upright when he’d left him. He’d fallen back at some stage. His face empty of its eyes. Empty of its face. She bent lower, making sure not to touch anything. There should be more blood. Without a face, what is a man? Was there a moment when he was without a face but still alive when he was still himself? Or when the face was gone, did the man also go? There were little teeth marks lining the flesh of his neck. A fox’s, maybe. She felt bewilderment that the pain in her body was the doing of this faceless phantom before her.
Earlier, they’d found the body of Martin in the boot of the car out the front of Vernon Moore’s house. Where Brendan, through gritted teeth, had said he’d be. Both Melbourne men came to a similar end. And for what?’
‘Looks like everything lines up with Vernon’s story,’ she said to Garry, who had moved to stand beside her.
