by Brown, Honey
Zach reloads.
He sees the charred and broken stumps as the people they should be. He buries bullets into them, thinks how hitting them makes things better. It’s while reloading that he hears the dogs. He stops, turns and listens.
Free from the yard the dogs yelp excitedly. Up along the ridge they run in a pack, flashing in and out between the trees, wolf-like creatures cutting through the shadows into sunlight and then into shade again, up over rocks and down into washouts. They’re wild for a day. They’re acting instinctively: the thrill of the chase and the frenzy of the kill. Zach can almost feel their excitement. He can certainly envy their freedom.
He lowers the rifle.
He follows a well-worn sheep track through the trees. The track peters out and the bush stops as suddenly as it started. He walks on through open pasture for a while. The Kincaid property is big, but the original title had been massive. It went right up to the edges of town, as far east as the river, the town oval, the restaurant – the entire east suburb was once a part of it. To the west, the boundary skirted the next town. Kincaid ownership sunk deep into the valley and stretched to the base of the ranges. It was only after Zach’s grandfather died that the place was sliced up, subdivided, neatened to a more modest land holding. Zach’s father hadn’t been cashing in – he’d been adjusting, fitting in to modern-day thinking. One man alone should not control so much. A millionaire in the dollars and cents sense is more forgivable than one man sitting on a proverbial goldmine, with the chance of getting exponentially richer. But Zach’s father is right – never forgiving or forgetting is a small-town phenomenon; no-one moves on, no-one re-categorises or re-evaluates. It’s as though the Kincaids still own all the land. Zach stops a moment. To the left lies the shadier side of the property – the gently undulating hectares the sheep prefer to graze in the daytime. He makes his way down through the tussocks and into that.
Zach winds his way up a rocky hillside. Sheep startle and scatter in front of him. He reaches the highest piece of Kincaid land. Up here, once the terrain properly levels out, the first things to draw your attention are the blackberries. Zach’s father keeps on top of his weeds, but up here they’ve been left to grow wild – huge domed clumps, green, lush and thriving. They’ve run rampant. They form a fortress-like barrier on top of the small plateau. There’s a view right down to the homestead and river. Zach stands a moment staring down at the house and land.
There’s a small opening in the blackberries, a track into the heart of the weeds. Zach stops by the narrow passage through the canes. By trying to hide this place, his father has only made it more obvious. Zach crabs sideways through the gap. The long canes catch on his jumper. He stops to peel the branches off. The thorns scratch his face and the backs of his hands.
Inside the thick border of blackberry is a cluster of graves. It’s one of those traditional family plots, from a time when it was a person’s right to be buried on your own land, if you had the space, and the Kincaids had that. Room enough to do whatever they wanted. The graves are from another era, hidden under a carpet of weeds. The headstones are falling over and half sunken into the ground. The ornate iron fences are rusted. Trees creak overhead, although there’s not a breath of wind where Zach stands. He spends a moment looking around for any evidence of freshly turned earth. He eyes each thicket of weeds with suspicion. He picks his way across to the bigger headstone, and pushes away the tall grass to look at the name engraved: Margareta Lucinda Kincaid. Zach puts the sole of his boot flat against the gravestone and pushes. It might look as though it could be easily unearthed, but even with all Zach’s weight and might behind it the headstone doesn’t budge.
He steps back. He reads the dates: forty-four when she died.
Margareta Lucinda Kincaid was not cut out for life on the land – she had a weak constitution. She was not a good mother, not a good breeder – she only managed to give birth to the one son. The lifestyle killed her. Zach has his own thoughts on why his grandmother’s life ended early, and it has little to do with the style in which she lived and more to do with the style of man she lived with.
Zach walks to a small stone cross – a baby, stillborn. Ten years before his grandmother died. He walks to another small stone cross – a baby, stillborn, five years before his grandmother died. He stops in front of the last small stone cross. He has to clear the weeds to read it – another baby, stillborn, three years before his grandmother died. What is not mentioned on the gravestones, yet what is known within the family, is that all these dead babies were girls. Ben Kincaid, a boy, the last to be born of the eight children, survived and thrived. Funny that.
On a farm you have to come to terms with the harshness of life. The bare bones of living and dying are made real every day. Good and bad, right and wrong; it’s a farmer’s job to make tough decisions – which animal is best to keep, which animal is dog meat. Often the most humane thing to do is destroy a weak lamb. Or if it’s a strong, long-awaited young ram … then it gets to live.
Zach can well imagine his grandfather’s excitement when Ben Kincaid was born. A boy after all those girls. Relief barely tempered by the resulting death of his wife. She was laid to rest respectfully though, buried beside her babies who hadn’t made the cut; the benefit of being lord and master of your land, dishing out death, is that it creates the opportunity to be magnanimous.
Zach doesn’t find it surprising his grandfather’s grave is in the town cemetery. As much as it must have pained the old guy not to be buried on Kincaid land, he would have baulked at the thought of being put into the earth with this lot. So much for his strong constitution.
Zach steps out from the thick carpet of weeds. Burrs and grass seeds have stuck to his jumper. He picks at them. By touching his collar he’s put some burrs across his chest. He brushes at them. There’s a whole mess of them on the underside of his sleeve. He steps into the centre of a small clearing, and sees a pile of old shotgun cartridges beside a boulder. Zach goes across and nudges the casings with the toe of his boot. The coloured sides are faded by the sun and rain, but the brass, on the end, is not yet fully tarnished. Zach looks around. In the tall grass are the rusted handle of a billy and the burnt remains of a log. Zach sits on the boulder. Beneath his fingers, on the pale rock, are the brown stains of smeared blood, where someone has wiped their fingers on the porous surface, or maybe laid the carcass of a rabbit down, or accidently brushed the entrails across it. Zach reaches into the undergrowth and pulls up a torn and brittle Twisties packet from the roots of a young gum.
27
Rebecca visits the grave of her half-sister first. It might be the anniversary of her mother’s death, but children should always steal the limelight. Rebecca crouches down beside the small grave. It’s a full monument, but the child-size dimensions are easily seen. The thick slab is made of pink-flecked polished granite with white angels on every corner, the headstone is low and square. Etched into the headstone is the outline of an open book, and on the pages Cindy’s name is embossed in gold, with the relevant dates, five years apart. Not much else is written. No words can quite explain.
Rebecca puts a single rose in the grated space provided at the base of the headstone. The same niggling thought she always has returns to her – if only it wasn’t such a solid grave, Cindy Toyer might get to stretch her legs, wriggle her toes, grow a little, a few centimetres maybe … enough to fit a school dress. Rebecca can’t say exactly why she thinks this way – the dead don’t stretch and wriggle, they don’t grow, and they don’t get to do the things that they missed out on. It would be mighty creepy if they did. But the thought plays out each time she comes here. It’s unsettling to think of her sister as stuck. She has to remind herself that below the hard lines and strict edges of the granite is a plain wooden coffin. She soothes her mind with this, applies it like a balm over what must be a mild case of claustrophobia. She takes a breath and believes Cindy is free once the sides of her coffin begin to decompose.
There’s the so
und of Aden walking up behind her. He stands one step back. He’s in his cricket whites, ready for the match. Rebecca walks with him to her mother’s grave.
‘It’s her ashes that are buried,’ she says as they draw nearer. She stands at the foot of the grave. ‘But she didn’t want to be scattered anywhere, or to be sat on a mantelpiece or put away in a cupboard. She wanted a headstone. She wanted people to read the dates and say, How tragic – only thirty-four. It’s so stupid. The whole funeral was meant to be exaggerated. She had these over-the-top quotes picked out, these crazy songs. She had time to plan it. She wanted her friend, Sharon Lambert, to get up and go on like her death was the biggest tragedy ever to the whole of mankind. So people would be sitting there thinking, She wasn’t that great, was she? She didn’t do that? Are you kidding me? You know – Joni Toyer had a dream … Joni Toyer worked tirelessly for world peace … The thing she wanted most, she said, was for someone to get up and walk out.’
Aden laughs. It’s a real laugh. Rebecca looks over her shoulder at him. His eyes shine with amusement. ‘Would have been good,’ he says.
‘We couldn’t do it though. We didn’t have the guts. Sharon Lambert said all the usual stuff. I don’t even know what she said. Dad really lost it when we got home.’
‘Do you think he planned to be away for the anniversary?’
‘I think so.’
They fall silent. There’s the sound of organ music coming from inside the church nearby. Girls in dresses and patent-leather shoes balance along the top of the post-and-rail fence close to the front doors. A group of boys stand huddled together out in the car park. Aden goes off to read other headstones, to give Rebecca some space. And Rebecca asks, under her breath, looking down at the grave, ‘So, Mum, do you like him?’
On the way home from the cemetery they stop by Nigel’s house. Aden says he has to pick up something before the game. He cuts the bike engine, kicks out the stand. The street is unusually quiet after the noise of the bike. There’s a ginger cat sunning itself on the path leading up to the front door. It flicks and snakes its tail in what looks to be annoyance at their loud arrival. Aden carries his bike helmet inside. Rebecca follows.
For a bachelor pad it’s a big modern home. It’s brick, with floor-to-ceiling windows. Inside it’s not furnished though, and that’s the difference, that’s what makes it feel less than what it is. Without pictures or photographs the walls are cold and austere. The plaster arches seem wasted on a bunch of local boys. The floorboards have a fine coating of dust except in the high-traffic areas, where they have a dull shine, interspersed with the tread of shoes and the sticky prints of bare feet. It’s as though no-one lives there, people simply walk around inside, walk through, stand in the kitchen, cross its empty rooms, and sit on the long orange-coloured couch, or on one of the camp chairs by the gas heater. Aden takes her helmet and puts it beside his on top of the fridge.
Two likely lads are sitting on the green swing set out the back. Rebecca knows their faces but not their names. They’re recent Kiona High graduates, a couple of years younger than Aden and Nigel, and a couple of years older than her. They come from a sharp-eyed pack of boys. Some grades at school are like that – full of angry males, as though there was something in the water the year they were conceived. These boys always stand with their shoulders braced and ready, perhaps because they know they’re never going to shape up as true contenders in the town – they’re not a patch on their predecessors, they have none of the charm or presence of Aden and Nigel’s clan. The two boys are drinking beer and pushing back and forth on the swings. They see Rebecca, and eye her with a mixture of suspicion and appreciation. They probably only like girls at the house after dark.
Aden stops on the back step and lights a smoke. Out on the lawn are another two swing sets, and there’s a fourth swing set on the garage roof. Rebecca gets the joke – stealing kids’ play sets, the audacity of it, their actions meant to be irreverent and archly funny. They’re trying too hard.
One of the guys holds up his hand, and Aden tosses over his packet of smokes.
The cigarette pack is caught. A lighter from the guy on the other swing is offered. Aden squints up at the sun. No-one speaks. The cigarette pack is thrown back, caught one-handed by Aden. It’s all very blokey.
‘Where’s Nigel?’ Aden asks.
‘Dunno.’
‘He leave some gear out for me?’
‘Gear?’
‘Yep.’
‘Nup.’
‘I’ll check his room. You boys coming to the clubrooms later?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Catch you there.’
Nigel’s bedroom door is locked. It has a deadbolt fitted. ‘Stay here,’ Aden says, ‘I’ll go out and climb in through the window and let you in.’
He leaves. Rebecca stands alone in the wide hallway.
Nigel’s bedroom door has a poster stuck to it, a picture of Basil Brush – the fox puppet from the children’s TV program. Someone has drawn a double-barrelled shotgun in Basil Brush’s hands. The puppet is cocking its head and grinning in that cheeky way it does. The shotgun is large and imposing in its fluffy puppet paws. Boom Boom! the poster reads.
Rebecca looks off down the hallway, glances up at the ceiling. The domed light fitting is filled with dead mosquitoes. She catches a whiff of cold fish and chips. She walks a couple of steps down the hall and looks into the laundry. There’s a tray filled with kitty litter and beside it a handful of dried-up chips and a shell of empty batter where the cat has eaten out the centre of a piece of deep-fried fish. She finds it sweet, as though the cat ordered its own serve of takeaway – all that’s missing is a pint-sized can of Coke. The laundry door has a heavy bolt and padlock fitted. There’s no washing machine, so it’s unlikely anyone would ever need a quick route out to the washing line.
‘Hey.’
Rebecca startles and looks up.
The guy from out on the swing, the one who had shared his lighter, is standing beneath the arch leading off into the living room. He’s holding a can of beer. He doesn’t come forward. He looks at her from there; he really looks. Rebecca folds her arms over her chest. She steps back into the hallway to stand in front of Nigel’s door.
‘Hit the big time, Beccy?’
He has a mullet haircut and wears a Metallica T-shirt.
‘Yeah,’ Rebecca says.
It occurs to her that everyone knows her name, but she can never remember theirs.
‘Mmm,’ he says.
She can feel his gaze all over her. ‘Piss off.’
‘Sassy.’
She shivers from head to toe. She’s happy to let him see how he creeps her out.
‘Don’t get too big for your boots,’ he says flatly.
He walks forward. His feet are bare. The cuffs of his jeans are frayed. Rebecca strains to hear something from inside Nigel’s room. The hallway is suddenly airless. She breathes in deeply through her nose.
‘Ever tried to break into Nigel’s room?’ he says.
‘Obviously not.’
‘It’s not obvious – not now you’re double-teaming. You might break in every night. You could be like a cat burglar in that black jacket – you should get black leather pants, and black boots.’ He stops at the laundry door and glances in, as though to get some idea of what she’d been looking at. ‘Dressed like that,’ he says, facing her again, ‘I wouldn’t mind you breaking into my room. Do you crawl up all sexy from the bottom of the bed?’ He leans against the wall and looks at her.
Rebecca sighs. She faces the door and stares at it and projects a picture into her head – an image of her and Aden riding out of town on the bike. The vision makes her relax. But where is Aden?
There are sounds down in the kitchen, voices, and the clink of bottles. Someone kicks a cardboard box and it tumbles and comes to a stop beneath the arch. Rebecca looks off down the hallway.
‘More of the boys arriving,’ the guy tells her. ‘We’re h
aving a few drinks before the game. Wanna come and have one?’
‘No thanks.’
‘You on a leash?’
‘What?’
‘Here, girl.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘You’re funny.’
‘I can be. I’ll get you a drink. What do you want?’
‘I’m fine. We’re not staying – Aden has to get to the match.’
‘He doesn’t need you there. He can play cricket on his own. We’ll have a couple of drinks here and catch him later.’
Rebecca puts her hand on the door handle and leans in to listen at the door. It’s quiet on the other side. She steps back and thinks a moment.
‘Nigel’s put a lock on his window,’ the guy says. ‘You have to go through his bathroom window. Or did you already know that?’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Might be a squeeze.’
‘Right.’
‘Aden might need you to climb in for him.’
‘I’ll go round then.’
Rebecca steps past him.
‘Use the laundry door,’ he says, ‘it’s quicker.’
He steps backwards up the hallway and she walks into the laundry. She stops. She knows before she’s looked up that she’s been duped. The door is padlocked.
‘Funny,’ she says, and turns back around.
‘I told you I could be.’
She goes to continue on down the hallway, heading for the front door.
‘He’s in Nigel’s room now,’ the guy says, ‘I heard him. He’s unlocked the door.’
Rebecca returns to Nigel’s door and tries the handle. Of course the door is still locked.
‘You’re good value,’ the guy laughs.
Music blares suddenly from the lounge room. A screaming heavy metal guitar riff fills the house. The volume is adjusted, but the music is still jarringly loud. The front door slams shut and more footsteps reverberate. There’s got to be at least four different male voices in there now; their conversation is muffled by the music.
