The crying sound sharpened, but became no louder, remained an aural mirage at the edge of hearing. Eventually, he flung back the blankets and sat on the corner of the couch. He raised his grizzled head to listen and stared into the gloom, completely still, listening with his entire body as if the sound might be detected by senses other than hearing. He passed a hand through his hair and ran his tongue about his muggy mouth. What time could it be? Early morning, before dawn. He couldn’t be dreaming; he had long ago annihilated any capacity for dreaming. Again the small, despairing siren. It was, he realised, the raw, desperate sound of a baby. What kind of darkness was this?
He waited until he was able to make out the shapes of the surrounding furniture: the other couch, a side table, the gleam from an oil painting high on the wall, the imposing sideboard with its assortment of glassware and dried flowers. He stood unsteadily and pulled on his shirt and trousers. Like a ghost he moved through the house, along the narrow hall with its carpets underfoot. Things rattled as he passed. The crying was coming from the garden. He made his way to the kitchen and stood at the back door.
The air outside was fresh and cool. He peered into the garden gloom. When he was last here it was well maintained, with benches and chairs placed conveniently beneath luxuriant overhangs. Now, it resembled an abandoned city trapped beneath the fierce clutch of vines and weeds, with the smell peculiar to buildings reclaimed by nature. He could sense its chaos through the darkness, the constant rustling and creaking, the twitter of tiny things moving about.
Leaving the door open, Wild hugged himself and stepped out onto the slippery patio. His bare toes gripped the moist bricks; moss squelched beneath his feet. There was a smell of geraniums and the tang of ivy. His lungs filled with moist air. Again he listened, but there was nothing. The night had become still and quiet, the way the night is supposed to be. He was about to go back inside when he heard it again. There, that sharp bleat.
He scratched his nose and wondered if he should fetch Lee. He waited, not breathing. Just the whirr of his heart and the murmur of his blood. He angled his head to better determine from where the baby’s cries were emanating. The garden sprawled drunkenly at the front of the old weatherboard house and along the entire eastern side. He followed the path down that side, grimly aware of the bugs being crushed beneath his feet and the occasional sticky drag of spider web across his face. An entire garden world, going about its business.
The baby’s cries were still sporadic, devoid of any apparent human rhythm. He moved through the front garden, ducking beneath the low tree limbs he sensed rather than saw. Dry leaves snagged in his hair. He stood finally on a small patch of dew-soaked lawn but the sound had vanished. There was nothing here. The child—or whatever it was—was elsewhere.
After a minute or two, perhaps even longer, Wild made his way back along the side path to the rear of the house. The sound was clearer here, definitely coming from the back somewhere. He rubbed his palms together for warmth as he walked. The garden seemed aware of him. Thousands of small eyes blinked from cocoons and knotholes, from vantage points along the gutters and eaves. By now his feet were wet and unwieldy, growing numb with cold. He stopped breathing to listen. There it was, a small sound, a whimpering.
He edged towards the back of the property, where the garden was most overgrown. Sherman would be turning in his grave at the sight of this. He had loved nothing more than to potter about in what he called his kingdom on a Sunday afternoon, pulling at weeds and tying things back, murmuring softly to his more-favoured subjects. Leaves crunched like soggy toast beneath Wild’s feet. The ground rose here at the back, became more even. There was a small mossy patio. When all this was finished, he thought, when things panned out whatever way they were going to, he would find and visit Sherman’s grave. God knows what he could say to the old man, but he would go there and do whatever people do at gravesides, weep or pray or sit with him, perhaps forever, as Sherman had done for him on so many nights.
The sound was clear now, a sort of unbearable, plangent keening. Some teenager has abandoned her newborn baby in the back shed, he thought, and as this idea took root within him he moved quicker, pushing leaves and webs aside with his outstretched hands. Cold, flat leaves slapped against his face. His shirt snagged on a branch. He remembered reading of a schoolgirl who secretly gave birth over a sheet of newspaper in her parents’ garden, one hand clutching a sapling for balance and the other cupped beneath her to gather her blood and offspring. It was not out of the question; the local teenagers probably knew Sherman’s place was abandoned. Appallingly, the child was probably conceived here.
Panting with anxiety and exertion, he stopped at the shed’s flimsy wooden door. He wondered what he would do if this were the case. What would he do with a girl in the dirt? Would that be the worst thing, the most horrifying scene? Should he return quickly to the house to fetch some medical equipment? That damn bag of his, probably in police hands by now. He imagined its crouching shape, the lustre of its black leather like that of a beetle’s shell. Forget it.
The shed door was secured by a narrow bolt. He wriggled it back and forth. He yanked the door open to the smells of fertiliser and grass clippings, of rust and machine oil, the endlessly perpetuated perfume of country sheds. It was dark. Something scurried in a corner and slapped against the wooden wall before falling still or escaping into the garden. Then it was quiet.
Wild held his breath and listened. There was movement on the ground nearby, the blind and voiceless curling of something newborn. He lowered into a crouch with one hand crabbed on the dirt floor for balance. His eyes adjusted to the gloom and he could make out vague shapes. A bicycle. A trestle table. A sack of earth or manure. Blood roared through him.
He opened his mouth to whisper into the darkness but his voice turned to dust somewhere in his throat. What could he say? He closed his eyes and allowed his head to droop until his chin rested on his chest. His breathing was loud and deep. He stayed like that for some time.
Finally he stood, swaying a little, his body unstable as if preparing to buckle. His head felt vast and heavy, a labyrinth atop his shoulders. Water dripped somewhere nearby and there was a sigh of wind through the trees outside. Suddenly aware of the cold, the hairs on his body rose in pitiful defence. Of course there was no child. There never was.
23
The following morning, or the day after, or perhaps it was a different day altogether, Lee wandered into the lounge room expecting to find Wild still asleep but there was no sign of him apart from the crumpled dent in the couch where he’d slept. Logs smouldered in the fireplace and grey sunlight spilled through the windows and coated the furniture like ash.
The dining table had not been cleared of the debris from the operation. Scattered over its surface were scraps of bandages, empty glass ampoules, a strangely hooked needle and a tray of scalpels and long-beaked implements patterned with thumbprints of blood. On the floor a circle of blood, its wrinkled skin like that of cold gravy.
The lamp Wild had slung from the chandelier had leaked a small puddle of kerosene onto the table where Lee had lain. The stain of oil was a continent upon the polished surface, the smell of it layered and dark. Lee shuddered as he recalled the table’s wooden surface pressed against his shoulder blades, Wild’s whiskery voice circling like a crow far above him and the sensation of fingers digging beneath the layers of his skin.
In a kidney dish were bloodied wads of cotton and the bullet shard Wild had removed from him. The scrap of metal rattled around the dish when Lee shook it. He tipped the bullet into the centre of his palm and held it to his face, but it revealed nothing. Just a bloody blob, the size and shape of a rotten, snaggly tooth.
He heard footsteps and turned to see Wild standing on the far side of the room with a metal bucket in one hand and a length of chain in the other.
Lee dropped the bullet into his jacket pocket. What are you doing with those?
Wild’s entire body tilted and his eyes were barely
open. He resembled an abandoned building, flickeringly lit, perhaps someone moving around inside. Even from across the room, Lee could see the polish of sweat upon his forehead. Obviously, he’d been awake shooting morphine all night. He was crazy with it.
Is the offer still open?
What offer?
Again the thick silence. To come with you. To your sister’s. I can’t stay here by myself. I just can’t.
Lee looped a length of chain several times around the metal frame of the bed and then around Wild’s wrists, securing each end with a padlock. The loop wasn’t large enough to slip over Wild’s large hands but would have some play along the length of his forearm. He was unsure of this whole idea, but Wild seemed certain it was the only way.
Chain me up, he’d said. Chain me up.
At the moment, though, he seemed uninterested in what was happening until he looked up and said: God, I’m frightened.
Lee paused. Secretly, he hoped Wild would reconsider. Of what?
Wild lifted a handful of chain. It made a medieval clank. I’m afraid of everything. Of what might happen to me.
Lee looked at him but was silent.
The trouble is, Wild went on in his slurry voice, it never seems easier to give up drugs than when you’re stoned out of your mind. Like now. Anything seems possible then. That’s why you’ve got to strike while the iron’s hot, so to speak. You sure you don’t mind me coming with you?
Lee hesitated. No. It will be fine. They have a big house. Bigger than this one, even. Besides, we should stick together after all this.
And your sister won’t mind? I am sort of, you know, on the run after all. I’m not exactly—
Don’t worry about that. I’ll sort that out with her. It’s my house, too. Our parents left it to both of us.
I need a break, that’s all. I need a fresh start so I can face everything.
Wild scratched his neck and Lee saw the marks of many other such scratchings.
I destroyed the rest of my dope, Wild said. Cracked the little bastards open and poured them down the drain. Nearly broke my heart. Cut my hands. Sometimes those ampoules are buggers to snap off. I should have quite a few hours though, before it all begins. Gorged myself. Probably won’t feel the pinch until this evening or so. And he displayed the backs of his hands and the crooks of his arms smeared with bruising and blood from recent hits before he sagged and appeared to fall asleep, only to jerk upright again a moment later. What happened to your friend?
What friend?
The one in jail. The one you tied to the bed? Lee? Your friend.
Lee shook his head to give the impression that either he didn’t know or it was so inconsequential it wasn’t even worth discussing. He crouched down and laid wood in the fireplace, assembling it in a teepee shape like his father had taught him. You’ll be OK. It’s just a few days. Then we’ll get out of here.
Was he OK? Your friend? Was he alright afterwards? After you helped him detox?
Lee stood and jammed a cigarette into his mouth. His fingers carried the smell of oil and rust from handling the chain. Wild was looking up at him expectantly, nodding as if trying to generate a positive answer by enthusiasm alone. When he was a boy, Lee had been taken to a circus that had been set up in a local park. There was a crowd of lights, an elephant and the damp smell of hay. He had been inexplicably depressed at the sight of a bear galloping around the ring with a fez jammed upon its great brown head. The bear had appalled him and he focused on the other happenings around the ring—the trapeze artists and clowns—unwilling to look at the bear in the same way he was now reluctant to look at Wild.
He lit his cigarette and stooped to toss the still-burning match into the fireplace. The paper caught fire immediately and soon the kindling began to burn. He watched the flames curling and stretching. He nodded. Yeah. He was fine afterwards.
What was his name?
It doesn’t matter what his name was, does it?
Curious, that’s all.
Well, I can’t remember.
I thought he was your friend?
He wasn’t really a friend, I hardly knew the guy.
You said he was.
I just shared a cell with him.
What was his name?
Fuck. Simon, OK? Simon was his name.
Wild appeared satisfied with this scrap of information.
Lee smoked and the cigarette fizzled in the air. Outside it was raining again. He was fine. He was fine afterwards.
Wild nodded and stared into the fireplace where the fire had grown.
Lee doubted he had even heard what he said.
Lee retreated to the lounge room, which, with the fire blazing, was at least warm. He lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling or flicked through old copies of National Geographic. He was disturbed by the thought of Wild shackled to the bed and occasionally heard a low groan or sneeze, even snatches of conversations.
He wandered through the hallways and rooms of the house, ran his hands over the red wallpaper decorated with pale flowers. The entire place was damp, as if underground, an impression compounded by the murky light. Not only was the arrangement of the rooms idiosyncratic, but the items within them as well. Atop a cabinet in the ancient laundry was a glass jar containing the curled, restful shape of a baby possum in fluid with its tiny paws folded beneath its chin; romance novels were scattered over the examination room’s vinyl couch; in one of the two bathrooms half-a-dozen plastic dolls sat in a puddle on the tiled floor, their smiles fixed as if hoping to avert some dreadful fate; a small, potted forest of withered ferns in the rear sunroom.
He passed through a dingy anteroom beside the kitchen and reeled at the sudden appearance of a shambling figure beside him. He swore, spun awkwardly and stood, face-to-face, with a man of his own height and age bent slightly at the waist. The stranger’s eyes widened and he stepped back. He held a hand to his ribs and stared but even as Lee realised it was merely his own image reflected from a mirror, he was disbelieving. He laughed nervously. Himself. Of course.
The mirror was enormous, set within a thick, gold frame. It reached from floor to ceiling, like something you’d see in Europe. Lee considered himself and tried to stand straighter, but was restricted by the pain at his side. His borrowed and stolen clothes hung from his skinny frame and were stained with blood and dried mud. He looked a complete wreck.
Of course he’d inspected himself in mirrors before. He was aware of a small mole on his right cheek, that his left shoulder sloped slightly and that a hairline crack bisected a front tooth. He looked around. Shyly, in the quiet afternoon of a cold and derelict house, Lee allowed his hands to fall and rest at his sides. He stepped forward and brought his face so close that it frosted the glass when he breathed. So this was what people saw. He tried to imagine meeting this person for the first time. What would he think? A young man with a dark dusting of beard across his face and black, choppy hair perhaps more accustomed to being worn short. Dried and peeling lips. Dark eyes. And despite his leanness, the unmistakable doughy quality of youth. He’s just a kid, Marcel had hissed when Josef brought him in. No use to us. Just a fucking kid. Was it possible not to be disappointed at such a sight? He swallowed and his Adam’s apple lurched in his throat.
Did his father look like this at the same age? His grandfather? People used to say that he had his grandfather’s chin, but he never knew what that meant and anyone who might have known was now dead. He tried to recall photos of him, but nothing definite came to mind. Perhaps a man wearing overalls and a white hat leaning against a weatherboard house, a shy bride and groom on some church steps, snapped in black-and-white with their eyes closing at the moment a handful of confetti rained over them.
Lee’s father, Tom, worked in a printing workshop when he met Jean, the woman who would later be his wife and Lee’s mother; there was a story of Lee’s suspicious grandmother grabbing Tom’s finger and comparing it with an inky print found on her daughter’s skirt. Later, when the old woman was long d
ead, his father would mimic his mother-in-law, would dance around the kitchen squawking and hunching witchily: Is that Tom’s thumb? Lee never knew her, couldn’t even remember her name anymore. Already she had been consigned to history.
It seemed an act of forgiveness to imagine your ancestors at your own age, to think of them as painfully human as Lee felt right now. Could any of them ever have foreseen this moment, guessed that someday he, Lee, would stand before a mirror in a strange house and think of them, miss them, wish none that had happened had happened? He flinched inwardly. His father seemed too practical to have regrets, but what of his mother, frozen forever in his memory with arms crossed in front of her, a smile trembling at the side of her mouth?
When he was six or seven, Lee had been obsessed with the notion of becoming a sailor, of going to sea. His father had indulged him by buying several books with colourful drawings of ships pounding through waves as large as buildings and being menaced by a square-headed sperm whale. He dreamed of the Amazon River and the Suez Canal, and talked of clambering up masts to look for land. He would wear something stripy and have some sort of hat. There would be scaly monsters. They had visited an aquarium and seen roaming sharks, jellyfish and plankton floating in tanks like pollen.
What happened to all that? The thought of his childhood was so remote that Lee wondered if, in fact, he was trying to imagine a version of the future rather than recall a past. He inhaled and tried to stand taller but again was compelled to slouch. He placed a palm on the mirror, as if peering into some other place, and then his forehead on the glass. It was cold and smooth, entirely without smell.
24
Wild knew there were bombers flying somewhere over hairy, jungled continents and releasing their payloads into the sky. Could hear their low drone. Animals with fangs made of bamboo and steel, their snouts smeared with matter and blood. Machines that crunched chicken carcasses to pulp. Cancer with teeth and hair in an elderly man’s lower back, crouching like a snickering homunculus.
The Low Road Page 17
