As I get close to Stony Creek, I realise that catching the mailman near the village won’t be as helpful as I’d thought. If I really think Elaine or someone to do with her is involved, I should meet the mailman halfway between my place and the village, and work towards home. But if I do this, it means I’m certain no one in the village is sending the boxes — and I’m not sure that’s true.
As I drive past crop stubble and fresh green wheat, I try to calculate the best approach to take, but I give up and go with my gut. There is too much odd stuff going on at Elaine’s for her not to be the most likely suspect.
When I reach the Burger family’s mailbox (a small mailbox made of an oil drum, in contrast to the ones I have talked about), which is about halfway between Stony Creek and my place, I turn and drive my ute into the long grass. It takes about ten minutes for Grant’s vehicle to appear, cruising along the road as though he has nowhere he needs to be. I get out and stand at the mailbox so he knows he’ll have to hand out two lots of mail, and not just drop the Burgers’ and leave. As he gets a bit closer he speeds up, and I guess he feels like he’s been caught daydreaming and not focusing on the important job at hand. He keeps the pace up until he’s within about twenty metres of the mailbox, when he suddenly slows. I’m relieved, because it looked like he was going to go right past me.
He freewheels the ute in close to the mailbox, winds his window down, lifts the flap on the box, and drops the mail in. I step up close, ready to explain myself, but he accelerates right past me, his middle finger in the air, his tyres as close to my toes as they can be without crushing them. I watch him head off, ridiculing myself for believing that any plan will go as I expect. Should I chase him? Run him off the road, or stop with him at every mailbox between here and home? But I cool down, and I know a better plan is to follow a hunch I’ve developed.
I drive out onto the road and go back the way Grant came. At the next intersection, I turn left and take the slightly longer way home. Because he has to stop at every mailbox, I can be much quicker than him, but I’m not going to be waiting for him at my mailbox. I’m going to watch him.
The only people I see on the road are old Glen Pye in his Dodge truck moving hay, and a couple of guys on motorbikes on their way through. I approach the Wilson Road turn-off from the opposite direction to Grant. I drive down into an extended hollow in the table drain, and get out. From here, using binoculars that I always keep in my ute, I can see Elaine’s mailbox without her seeing me. I wait.
Nobody passes. Nothing happens. I begin to get impatient, and I start to worry that he has decided to give up and go home before he’s finished the job. But when he does come down the road, I’m not surprised by his appearance, but by the speed he is doing. He is really motoring. He takes the corner at Wilson Road in a four-wheel drift, and keeps pushing it until he reaches Elaine’s mailbox, where he slides to a stop in spray of dust and gravel.
There is a car already there, waiting. A man in an old hat gets out of the car, walks to the back of Grant’s ute, and starts looking through the packages of mail — everyone’s mail. Grant does not get out of his machine or even acknowledge what is going on. When the man in the hat is finished, he passes something from his pocket through the window to Grant, then goes back to his car empty-handed, gets in, and drives away, up Wilson Road. When he is gone, Grant gets out of his vehicle, drops mail in Elaine’s mailbox, gets back in his ute, and casually makes his way up Wilson Road.
I trip trying to get into the driver’s seat too quickly. When I gather myself, I start my vehicle, pull out of the table drain, and flatten it. The ute leaps over the incline on the edge of the road, and I fang it down the gravel, the tyres only just holding. I reach my mailbox, but Grant has come and gone. He must be up the end of the road. I park my ute perpendicular, across the width of the road, blocking anyone who might try to pass. I check the mail: letters, brochures, but no boxes. What can this mean? Have I got it completely wrong again? Grant reappears, coming back from Ben’s and Ian’s. I stand and wait, expecting he will veer out into the paddock to go round me. He doesn’t. He slows, stops just short of the door of my ute, and then puts his head out of his window.
‘What the fuck are you doing now, you loony?’
Since he hasn’t delivered any boxes, I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing.
‘Got any boxes for me?’
‘No. Fuck off out of the way. It’s probably an offence to get in the road of a postman.’
‘Who gave you the boxes that were delivered to me?’
‘What? No one. The fucking mail service. Get out of the way, or I’ll call the cops. Dickwit.’
I can’t think of my next step, so I edge my ute forward enough for him to get around me. He over-revs the motor as he goes past.
I take my mail, and go home. I stand in the garage, as lost as I’ve ever been, feeling like the one thing that’s been keeping me going has evaporated. I almost wish someone would come in and rob and hit me. Anything as a distraction. Even the thought of a beer is no comfort. I slump to the concrete floor. I cannot unravel the boxes mystery — it’s like a puzzle that is just too complex, wearing away my desire to solve it.
I want it to end. My living just makes things worse. My death would be the solution — it would be much better for Sarah. She could put a manager on this place, and he might even get some things done. A manager with a family would be good for the local school and the district, and contribute more to the community than me. Everybody would be better off if I just moved on. A simple equation.
In the country, men kill themselves. It’s what we do. No one ever suspects it. Suicidal farmers are far too practical to ever let on that they might be about to do away with themselves. Like me, they see it as the ultimate solution. Their families never do. But I’m not depressed, not clinically, like they are. I’m just crazy, but the solution is the same, and I love the idea of putting a stop to everything forever. Like a line drawn on a page that says, After this, nothing.
I do not hear James’s voice telling me to get up and dust myself off, because his voice doesn’t exist anymore. He does not exist anywhere except in my head. This is the fact that I have been avoiding ever since I saw his blank eyes in his broken body. I have him in my heart. I have his bedroom, and I have his things, but they are just artefacts and remnants, and nothing more. I cannot conjure a lonelier thought, and it brings a bleakness I do not want to live with.
I think about how I should kill myself. Shooting would involve the least amount of organising, but I know it would be easy to stuff up: any loss of conviction for the smallest moment, and the rifle moves, leaving you disfigured and disabled, but alive. You remain in a worse state than you ever were. Pills work, but if someone finds you before the job is done, there is a good chance they will revive you. The best way for me to die would be to have someone do it for me — someone like Buzzcut.
I can leave the money to Sarah in my will, but to do that I have to hang on to it. It will need to be put in a safe place, a place where she can find it. And I know where. This thought at least gets me off the ground. I get the boxes from the house and put them in the ute. I’m not thinking about anything more than boxes, ute, hiding tree. The hiding tree is a massive river gum in the centre of a thick copse of trees in the middle of our farm. The tree is hollowed out at the base, with a large-enough area for an adult to crawl in. My father played here as a child, as I did, and as James did. You have to know where it is to see it, and it is the perfect place to hide from cranky or demanding adults.
I drive, thinking practically about the end of days. My will needs updating. I’ll have to find someone who can manage the farm or get it in shape for sale. There needs to be a note for Sarah, and maybe even Elaine.
I park alongside the tree, and begin to carry the boxes in. There are seven of them, and I remember I never checked the contents of the final four. I reluctantly cut the tape, and lift the flaps
on all three. No bricks of money. More bags of ash. None have rings, but two have tags. One reads ‘SvenGzhel’; the other, ‘BryanLomonsov’. I repack them, and take them to their place in the hiding tree. I hate to think what this all means. I have to look up those names to see if their deaths were recorded in the media.
I drive home in the dark, ignoring the beauty of the moon and the Milky Way, not bothering to stick my head out the window to luxuriate in the fresh, clean air. There is the faint sound of a motor in the distance. I walk into my house brain-dead and tired out, but still I pick up a different smell in the kitchen. I don’t have time to place it, because, as I open the back door and step through it, I feel a sudden brutal pain, and the day is finished.
11
‘My husband was being blackmailed.’
It is Elaine’s voice, but all I hear is, ‘Something, something was being hobnailed.’
I could be dead. I may have succeeded in killing myself. It is comforting to know that Elaine, or at least Elaine’s voice, has come with me. I attempt to open my eyes, but they are already open. I’m pretty sure I’m in a blurry hospital ward; the whites and greys in the simple room look the same, blurry or not. This suggests I’m alive, unless the afterlife is some sort of bargain-basement existence.
The voice says it again, and this time I get it.
‘Hi,’ I say, as best I can, without moving my lips.
Elaine gets a surprise. She was obviously talking to herself.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asks, sitting up, or making a movement something like that.
‘Crabpp.’ My lips are like blubber. ‘Did I try to kill myself?’ I am not embarrassed about this likelihood. Unlike suicide failures I’ve read about, I don’t seem to be disappointed that I am alive. Despite the pain and the general blur, I am glad to still exist. Who knew?
‘No. Someone hit you over the head. I found you. Ian and Mandy helped me.’
Maybe I remember that — being hit — but maybe not. I look around the room. There are other beds and other people. We have a curtain that is pulled part of the way around us. There is a small table sort of thing next to me, and not much else. Hospital. Then I think about the ash and the hiding tree. I remember having returned from the hiding tree, so my attacker probably didn’t find the boxes. I fall back asleep.
When I wake again, Elaine is still there, head bowed, her phone taking her attention.
‘Hi,’ I say again, and she looks up and smiles.
Elaine is examining me closely, so I must look pretty odd. Nothing new there. I feel a bit like I did when we were kissing: out of body. The pain brings me back. I could throw up, but I don’t. At least the blurriness is lifting. I can see Elaine’s beautiful face lined by concern. Hopefully, the concern is for me. A random question presents itself, and, as is my current habit, I ask it.
‘You said Tito had a contract. What was the contract?’ This obviously comes out jumbled, because Elaine just says, ‘Ah, sorry?’
I say it again, and this time it is her turn to get it on the second round. ‘My husband was being blackmailed.’
‘I know. You said that.’
‘He had a gambling problem. It got out of hand. I paid his debt with my own money, and we moved. I thought we had beaten it, and I think for a while we had. Then I found out Tito had been punting on the side and he’d racked up a debt with the same criminals. They said he could pay it off by making pottery for them.’
My head is suddenly fuzzy again. Underworld crime bosses demanding clay coil pots? I guess she sees my confusion, because she shrugs and says, ‘He was just really good at what he did.’
And then there are more people in the room: Marko and Helen, Ian and Mandy, Ralph and his wife, Reedy. All of them seem slightly embarrassed by arriving at the same time in a place where they clearly don’t feel comfortable. Are they surprised to see Elaine here? I can’t tell. Marko comes in close to the bed, grips my hand tightly, and shakes it. He looks worried and confused. I’m sure he doesn’t believe that someone hit me. I point to the back of my head where the pain is centred and I can feel a dressing. He gets the message, and gives me a relieved laugh.
Ian says, ‘You look a lot better than when I last saw you.’
I thank him and Mandy, and they shake their heads at me to refuse my thanks.
‘We think we scared him off. Don’t know what he could have been looking for.’ His eyes crinkle a little bit, I guess because he realises he’s suggested there’s nothing worth stealing in my house.
‘I had a big win at the races a while ago.’ I nod in Helen’s direction, and she gives a little nod of confirmation that at least the attending-the-races bit is true. ‘Maybe they saw that.’
‘You went to the races? I didn’t know you went to the races,’ Ralph says. ‘You could have taken me.’
I realise that only Ian and Mandy know Elaine. ‘Everyone, this is Elaine Slade. Lives down the road from me.’ Elaine gets out of her chair, and shakes hands.
‘Have you put the money somewhere safe?’ Helen is more worried than I’ve seen her.
I tell her yes, and then Marko says, in a kind of committee-member voice, ‘We think you should come and stay with us, just for a while. You don’t seem to be looking after yourself, Sarah’s worried about you, and now this.’ He indicates my bed. ‘But if you didn’t want to stay with us, you could stay with someone else.’
‘There’s plenty of room at our place, and it’s close by.’ Mandy jumps in, maybe to show how worried she is.
‘Sarah’s been talking to you?’
Helen lets her head make a downward movement.
‘She thinks it would be a good idea if you stayed with one of us.’ Reedy has pushed forward a little, her frame long and scrawny, as her name suggests. I am suddenly very angry. Sarah doesn’t talk to me, but she talks to these people so they can all decide what is good for me. I don’t want to live in anyone else’s house, or share their table. Their team goodwill is going to take me away from James.
‘Actually, I think I’d like to you all to leave.’
They are stunned and upset. ‘Dave,’ Ian says, and Marko follows with, ‘Mate.’
‘It was just a knock on the head. I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself. I’d appreciate it if you all went.’
They look at each other, wring their hands, and do things with their eyebrows.
‘Nurse?’ I give it a little urgency. ‘Nurse?’
Jenny Bolling, the nurse who has been looking after me, comes to the ward, and the group accepts defeat, shaking their heads. I tell her I’m tired, and she looks apologetically at my visitors and suggests they be on their way. Elaine puts a hand on my blanket-covered knee. ‘When you want to go home, give me a call.’ The hand leaves my knee and gives a little wave, and she leaves, too. I realise I really am tired, and am almost asleep by the time the nurse pulls the curtain all the way around my bed.
The hospital lets me stay until the morning. Nobody is allowed to stay in hospital very long anymore. I call Marko and ask him if he can run me home. I don’t feel any embarrassment at asking him for a favour when I booted them all out of the hospital last night. He immediately offers to come straight in, even though I can hear he is on some sort of heavy machinery and I suspect is probably in the middle of something important. Then I ring Elaine, and tell her Marko has offered to take me home. I don’t know why I do this, except that some sort of instinct tells me I don’t need to be any closer to Elaine. She is noncommittal, and says she’ll see me soon. I have to acknowledge that it is possible Elaine is the one who knocked me out. That’s not fair, I know, but it is a possibility.
I am waiting for Marko on the kerb in front of casualty. His king cab ute swings in too fast for an emergency area. He almost leaps out of his machine, and takes a few large steps to stand next to me as if I were an invalid in need of help. I’m not keen on mov
ing my head rapidly, but otherwise I feel pretty good. Marko shakes my hand, looking like he has enough vitality for both of us. He is a big man with huge hands, a large head, and thick, brown, disorderly hair. He is nervously saying things like, ‘How ya going, mate?’ and ‘You’re looking better.’
When we get into his ute, he points a thumb towards the back seat. ‘The women cooked you a whole lot of meals. You’re not going to starve.’
I don’t look back. I know what casseroles and lasagnes look like. There are painkillers to pick up from the pharmacy, and then we are out of town, and I feel myself relax. Marko is only just sitting still in his seat. There are things on his mind.
‘I know you get cranky at us, but if someone’s hassling you, you’ve only got to call. I’ll have a mob of good men round there in a flash.’
‘Thanks. I’ll be okay.’
‘Geez, you’re a hard man to help. Bloody hell, there are people everywhere wanting to do something for you, and you just keep throwing things back in our faces.’
I look out the window, and sulk. The idea of people doing things for me, fussing around, getting in my space, telling me what to do, is a version of hell. So I ignore his frustration. He is driving so fast that the country is ripping past too quickly to study. The McPherson’s massive house, built only a hundred metres from the road, whizzes past, as do the Bruces’ skinny cows and the Hailstons’ poorly picked cotton crop. Marko goes on about me a bit more, and I think how he and the rest of them will never understand until it happens to them, and then they won’t want all the help being offered. I’m not being fair. I know that. They’re just searching for ways to do the best for me, and they can’t find one. It is not my problem.
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