by Stephen Orr
‘Wait.’ One of the cadets stopped, pulling at something. He lifted a large raffia bag out of the mud and held it up. Mum looked at Liz expectantly. Liz slowly bit her bottom lip. ‘It’s about the right size.’
‘Pass it along,’ Jim called through his cupped hands.
The bag was passed from cadet to cadet, via Dad and Bert, until it was in Jim’s hands. As everyone along and around the Pat watched he laid it on the ground. Then he looked at Liz. ‘Is this it?’
‘It was a bit like that.’
Jim opened it and pulled out a paper bag, and from this he emptied out some food that had rotted into a green-grey sludge. ‘I think it’s bread,’ he managed. Then he produced some knives and forks, a few broken plates and a jar of Vegemite.
‘It’s not ours,’ Liz whispered.
Jim looked at the instructor, shook his head and the parade recommenced. Liz knelt down and picked up the jar of Vegemite. She unscrewed the lid and put it to her nose. She could smell it – fresh, strong, yeasty. She could smell it on Gavin’s fingers, and she could see him holding it under her nose.
‘Go on, taste it,’ he was saying.
‘I hate Vegemite,’ she replied.
He took another scoop with his finger, this time removing almost half of the jar, holding it up in front of her and saying, ‘Dare me?’
‘You’ll make yourself sick.’
He just smiled and put it in his mouth, swallowing, smiling and running off across the grass.
Liz screwed the lid back on, stood up and walked over to a tap beside the reserve. As she washed her hands a woman came and stood beside her. ‘Liz,’ the pale-faced woman whispered.
Liz looked up. ‘Sonja.’
‘Rosa told me you were here. I didn’t know whether to come.’
Liz looked down and continued washing her hands. ‘When did you get out of hospital?’
‘This morning.’
‘And you’re better?’
Sonja turned off the tap, realising that Liz couldn’t get her hands any cleaner. ‘Liz, I feel like this is all my fault.’
Liz looked up. ‘Of course not.’ She bowed her head.
‘You blame me,’ Sonja whispered.
‘I don’t.’
‘I wouldn’t have asked you to come . . . I didn’t know.’
‘Sonja, enough. It was my choice. What’s done’s done. Now we just gotta find them.’
‘How’s it going?’
Liz turned to go. ‘I gotta get back.’
‘Can I help?’
Liz answered in a loud, angry whisper. ‘Bill would blow his top. It’s not the time, Sonja.’
‘Liz, I gotta live with it too.’
‘Go away.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘Go away!’
Sonja turned and walked across the grass. Liz watched her go and then wiped her hands on her apron. Then she returned to Mum, and the line that had only moved a few yards.
I imagine Doctor Gunn rested against the bike rack. His eyes were closed but he certainly wasn’t sleeping. People were stepping over his books and bones and looking at him, and he was saying, ‘Practical joke.’
The sign Dad had taped up was gone. Only a few minutes after we’d left an old Greek grandma had come along and the doctor had said, ‘Speaka da English?’
‘You the doctor?’ she asked, holding a string bag full of apples, oranges, leeks and stale bread that Joe Skurray gave away.
‘Yes, doctor. Could you do me a favour?’
‘Pardon?’
‘That piece of paper,’ as he pointed and wiggled his finger. ‘Could you give it to me please?’
It was nearly four o’clock. I stood beside Con outside his gatehouse. I’d just finished telling him the story of how Doctor Gunn had come to be handcuffed to a bike rack, of the morning’s dramas, of the book sorting and everything else that had happened in the clinic.
‘How long has he been in that place?’ Con asked himself, his arms crossed, staring over at the doctor. ‘Fifteen, sixteen years. Every day I’ve waved,’ and he demonstrated, ‘but never again.’
Doctor Gunn turned around and saw us, and quickly looked away. More people were passing him, staring, and more cars were slowing. All of these people would want an explanation. Shopkeepers would be asked and neighbours would mutter and lift an eyebrow over the back fence. Pretty soon everyone would know. Kids would be warned to stay away from him and people would go elsewhere to have their bones cracked.
At four o’ clock Don Eckert came out of his deli. A few other shopkeepers gathered around a post-box to watch. Con and I moved closer, within hearing distance, but still protected by an overgrown melaleuca hedge.
‘You oughta be ashamed,’ Don said, as he approached him.
The doctor shook his head. ‘You’ve only heard one side.’
Don smiled. ‘You reckon Bob’s wrong?’
‘You’re the one always complaining about him.’
‘That’s a different thing altogether.’
Don still wasn’t happy. ‘How many you touched?’
‘May I have the keys?’ the doctor asked, louder, with more authority.
‘How many?’
‘None.’
‘How many?’
‘The keys?’
‘Bob mighta let you go, but I got a phone, fella.’
‘I didn’t touch . . . do anything.’
Con stepped from behind the hedge. ‘Hey, you tell the truth!’
By now a small crowd had gathered on both sides of the road. Con started walking towards the clinic, carrying the two books the doctor had given me. ‘As far as I know,’ he continued, ‘you haven’t even said sorry.’
Doctor Gunn looked at the crowd and guessed it was better to cut his losses. ‘Sorry,’ he whispered.
‘To who?’
The doctor looked up. ‘You want me to tell all these people?’
Con stopped to think. He looked back at me, protected by the hedge. ‘Well, what about us?’
‘What about you?’
‘Say sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘For spending every day talking with us and asking about our families, for the coffee and buns and apples these people have given you.’
There was silence. Everyone was waiting for a word – a word that would explain everything, that would re-establish the order of things and make right whatever had happened in the back room of the chiropractic clinic.
‘I’m sorry to you all,’ the doctor said proudly, defiantly. ‘Nonetheless, I should be given a chance to explain.’
‘Quiet!’ Con shouted. ‘We don’t want to hear it! He’s a child, he trusted you. You’ve spoilt it for everyone.’ He threw my two books at the doctor’s feet. Then he held out his hand and Don gave him the keys. He threw them at the doctor. ‘How many times have I opened that gate for you?’ he asked.
But before the doctor could reply, Con heard a train approaching. He turned and walked off towards the gate. The doctor removed the handcuffs, and everyone watched as he walked across the road and handed them to me. ‘Could you give these to your dad?’ he asked.
I took them and there was a long pause. He looked into my eyes, but not in a threatening way. Anyway, I wasn’t scared of him. ‘One day you’ll understand,’ he said. ‘I thought we were alike. You reminded me of . . . But I go about things the wrong way. I always have.’ He bowed his head. ‘Give up the books,’ he said. ‘They don’t get you anywhere.’ Then he turned and went back to his clinic. As the crowd drifted off he gathered his books and took them back inside. He returned with a box for his bones, wondering, perhaps, if he’d ever work out how to put them back together.
I wandered along Day Terrace, pausing to stop and think in the shade of a giant plane tree, leaning against its trunk and allowing my body to slide slowly to the ground. A slight breeze amplified through a million leaves above my head. I closed my eyes and I could feel my heart beating. I heard a crow. I looked behind a tall
hedge that shielded homes from the train line and saw a few old tyres and a grass roller. Nothing else. No one. No voices, no shouting, no arguments. Just the absence of tin and flesh.
Andrew Arthurson came around the corner and skidded his bike on the fine gravel, lifting grey dust that settled on my face and shirt. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘I’m resting,’ I replied.
He just stood there, staring along the length of the cold, grey tracks. ‘They haven’t found them,’ he said, but I wasn’t sure if it was a statement or question.
‘No.’
‘What’s your dad reckon?’
I shrugged. ‘The longer it goes . . .’
‘If you want,’ he continued, turning his bike towards me, ‘you can come over my place.’
I stared at him, unsure what to make of it. ‘They’ll find them,’ I said.
‘Still . . .’
I almost smiled. ‘How’s your head?’
‘I’ve had worse. I fell down some stairs at school once. They had to call an ambulance. Dad says I’m accident-prone.’
‘He said I could come?’
‘He won’t care.’
‘What about your sister?’
‘She’s always off with Mariel, or someone else.’
I pushed against the tree and managed to stand up. ‘Maybe, in a while.’
‘Whenever. I got firecrackers. You get the powder and put it in a plastic bus, then you light it up, bang!’ His voice echoed along Day Terrace. ‘All the little people are trying to smash windows and get out but it doesn’t do them any good. Then they’re just a puddle of ooze. That’s what happens in real life. People just melt, and the cops have to hose them off the road.’
‘Wouldn’t they burn?’
‘No, they melt. Doesn’t your dad tell you about that stuff?’ He got off his bike, let it fall to the ground and came over to me.
‘He tells me everything,’ I explained, sliding back down the tree as Andrew sat next to me. ‘Once, they had this baby . . .’
And that’s where we sat, for an hour or maybe longer, talking over the possibilities of play, and the world, full of good and bad – chocolate and Brussels sprouts, Guy Fawkes night and long division. ‘What’s your dad reckon?’ he asked, at one point. ‘I heard they sold them to a couple of rich Arabs.’
‘No.’
‘Did they get a ransom note?’
‘No.’
‘See, they had no intention of returning them. Probably in Persia, in a big palace. You’ll never see ’em again.’
Of all the options, I thought, a palace wouldn’t be so bad.
Andrew hadn’t overheard the conversations I had. But there was no point explaining. As the smell of roast meat and baked custard and the sound of crows and televisions started drifting over from the homes on Day Terrace, I said, ‘Should I come to your place?’
‘What toys have you got?’
‘Books, mainly.’
‘Yeah, come to my place.’
I left Andrew searching for bottles along the fence beside the railway line. I walked home under poplars and figs and gum trees that provided shade nearly all the way. Our house was empty. So I went to my hutch and found my diary and started to scribble.
One morning his step-dad opens the box.
The boy is dead.
‘Shit,’ the man says, and the boy’s mum says, ‘Look what you done now.’
The step-dad throws a few things in a bag and says to the mum, ‘You deal with it.’
‘Where are you going?’ she asks.
‘Fella offered me a job in Melborn.’
Later, the mum lays the boy out on the bed. He is free. She combs his hair and washes his face. Then she dresses him in a suit that is now to small for him. And she thinks, Where will you go now, Henry?
I heard voices from inside the Rileys’ house. The back door opened and Mum and Dad appeared, followed by Liz and a lady wearing gloves, a purple frock and a hat with Terylene netting across her face. Liz and the lady sat at the back table – the table with all our misspelt names carved into it, the table of a hundred barbecues, a thousand coffees and dozens of books read in strong sunlight as birds landed and searched for crumbs in the cracking and fractured wood. The lady in the purple dress took a notebook and pencil out of her purse and looked at Liz. ‘Tell me how you’re feeling,’ she said.
‘How do you reckon?’
‘Are you coping, physically, emotionally?’
‘What choice do I have? We’ve gotta keep looking.’
The journalist scribbled across her page. Then she looked up, attempted a smile and said, ‘Tell me about that morning, Australia Day.’
I put my diary back. I could see my parents through a couple of small holes in the wall. They were only a few inches away, and standing close together. They were talking calmly, quietly, listening to each other and replying with considered responses.
‘I don’t agree,’ Dad said.
‘It’s what she wants,’ Mum replied.
‘The Women’s bloody Weekly? So she can help them flog pantyhose?’
‘No. Talking about it helps.’
‘She can talk to us.’
‘That’s different.’
Bullshit, Dad thought, but didn’t say it. He was thrilled, I suppose, to have Mum back, even if it was only a temporary thing.
By now Liz was staring down at the table, at the names in the oak: GR, Janice . . . She was talking slowly, in individual words and parts of sentences. ‘I don’t think they’re alive,’ she said, looking up into the woman’s eyes, ‘but I haven’t lost hope, and all I want is that they come back. I’ve got to look at both sides, but it’s the time that’s getting me. It has been too long. I can’t be stupid and say that they’re going to come in with a skipping rope. I’ve got to feel that the little things are huddled up somewhere and nobody has found them.’
Mum looked at Dad. He turned his face to her, so Liz couldn’t see, and let his forehead and mouth and eyes turn cold, dark and grim.
‘What’s wrong?’ Mum asked.
‘“Huddled up somewhere?”’
‘They might be.’
‘Ellen, they’re dead. They’ve been dead for days. He probably drove them to . . . the Riverland, or somewhere close, a patch of scrub at Wasleys. You’d never find them. Cover the graves with a bit of leaf litter and that’s it.’
Mum looked back at Liz. ‘They might be.’
Liz’s head was turned to the almond trees. She was watching leaves and whole branches move in the wind. ‘If the other two were very keen to go with somebody,’ she said, ‘Janice would go with them, to look after them, and wouldn’t leave them alone.’
The journalist started writing again. I moved back from the chicken wire and sat in the corner of my hutch.
‘Why?’ I heard Mum ask Dad in a whisper.
‘He was probably after Janice. The other two were just in the way. We spoke to this psychologist and that’s what he reckons. Girls that age, no younger. And not boys, not that small.’
So, as far as I was concerned, that was it. The word was with Dad and Dad was a detective. A dozen men in suits and spotless blue uniforms had searched and rang and door-knocked and gathered evidence and come up with this: the Rileys were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And through good planning, or luck, he, whoever he was, had got away with it.
Liz had sensed the same thing.
‘They’ve just finished the Pat, and there’s nothing there. I’m inclined to think that it was all over on the Wednesday afternoon. Whoever it was had nothing to lose. These thoughts have been with me for a long while. I’m looking at both sides, but I don’t know what to think anymore.’
As Liz continued, Mum moved closer to Dad. She hid her head in his coat jacket and Liz looked over. ‘You okay, Ellen?’ she asked, and Mum showed her face. ‘Fine, fine.’
Liz started describing the children, telling stories she knew people would like to hear, things that other mums could rela
te to, even dads and brothers and grandfathers who normally wouldn’t be seen dead with the Weekly in their hands: lemonade stalls, a basketball team that lost every game, fights between brothers and sisters, and rooms that were never cleaned.
‘You need a break,’ Dad whispered to Mum. ‘It’s getting to you.’
‘And what about you?’ she asked, looking up.
‘Do you reckon Rosa would watch Henry?’
‘Tonight?’
Dad smiled. ‘What about the drive-in?’
She paused. ‘Alright, if that’s what you’d like.’
‘What about you?’
She took a moment. ‘Yes, the drive-in.’
Liz continued sorting through a pile of photographs, showing them to the journalist and asking her which would go best.
That’s how I ended up, at eight that night, beneath the healing tree. After Mum and Dad had left it was just Con, Rosa and me. We were soon joined by Liz, telling us about her interview, kneeling and praying and asking Rosa to say something Catholic. Then there was Mr Grinby, who had cancer of the pancreas (although Rosa didn’t believe him, saying, Ten years, at least, he’s had the cancer, Liz replying, It’s the power of your healing tree, Rosa shaking her head and saying, It’s nothing to do with our tree). But she prayed for him anyway, as she did for Mrs Rose (with an aneurysm set to blow any minute) and Mr Lewis, who had come all the way from Torrensville just to tell us about his shaky legs.
