Backflip went around in a circle and butted her head into Ethan’s chest, wagging her tail. He held her around her ribs and dug his hands into her fur.
‘Who did that?’ I asked again.
Ethan seemed full of sorrow. His eyes were so gentle. He wiped at them with the back of his hand, as if there were tears there, and looked ashamed. ‘Oh, you know,’ he said. ‘My dad got heaps pissed off at me.’
The image of old Mal West with his bung leg came into my mind. Old Mal, leaning up against the bar at the Bowlo, looking indignant. Old Mal with his stupid cane, limping along Cedar Street, growling at the concrete, spitting at the birds.
‘Constable Mackenzie came over asking about me working for Kevin,’ said Ethan to his knees. ‘He asked my dad about it. And my dad hates dairies, since his accident, you know. He fucken hates them. Hates the cows and that. He said I was never allowed to do it again. So—I didn’t tell him. I asked Kev not to tell, and he swore he wouldn’t—but he must have told Constable Mackenzie.’
Ethan’s handsome face was hollow. He turned back to look at me. ‘That’s why I didn’t tell anyone—you know—because my dad gets pretty pissed off.’
I felt my cheeks stinging and wondered if Ethan could see me blushing.
I thought about how the wounds had felt under my fingers. They were raised like ridges; the foothills of the mountain. My mind went to Judy White, convalescing in her terry towelling.
Ethan looked at me expectantly. I didn’t say one thing. What could I say? I said nothing at all, and Ethan came over with a deep expression that only Lucas Karras could puncture as he came out into the garden looking very happy with himself and slightly dishevelled. George wandered out after, eating salt and vinegar chips. She offered the bag to me, smiling, and I took a handful; and the boys were over by the back fence by then, peeing into the bushes.
‘Off you go, Myrtle, do your business,’ said Big Jim’s gentle voice from over the fence, and the sound of Myrtle rustling in their yard made Backflip wander over and sniff for her under the wooden palings.
‘Yeah, do your business,’ said Lucas to Ethan from the back of the garden, and the sound of Ethan West trying to laugh made me feel like I might cry.
•
The next day, I spent most of the morning lying on the couch in the living room feeling terrible while Mum fussed about, rearranging furniture, talking on the phone to Tracy, reading aloud particularly humorous sections from a Bill Bryson travel memoir, and complaining about the magpies.
It was two weeks into spring, and a family of birds had taken up roost in the flowering gum. The gum was grand and ancient. Its giant branches offered Backflip shade when it was too hot for her to use her kennel. The rest of the tree hung into Big Jim and Fitzy’s yard and offered a little shade for Myrtle, too. But the dogs were to have no peace that spring. None of us were. Within mere days of the roosting, the swooping had begun.
In everyone’s memory, that year was particularly brutal. The magpies attacked like guided missiles from the sky. Mum rarely went outdoors. And Fitzy started wearing her bike helmet, decorated with a cluster of brightly coloured cable-ties, every time she gardened, or hung up the washing, or checked the rain gauge. Poor Fitzy, she looked a real sight watering the herbs with her helmet on, and with the neck brace she’d acquired from hitting the pole outside the Vinnies, and her intense prescription.
I had a nap in my room after lunch, and when I came out again I found Mum sitting in the sunroom, her book face down on her knees, watching Fitzy weeding. She was dealing with a bad case of wandering jew, and such a big task clearly demanded further protection. Fitzy had put netting over her Stackhat and coloured prongs, giving her the appearance of a confused space bride.
Mum was silently laughing, with tears coming down her cheeks.
‘She looks like she’s been let out for the day,’ she said.
Fitzy was suffering with the lack of rain. Apart from the two brief showers we’d had during winter, Goodwood was as dry as bones.
‘Lake’ll drop’, said Big Jim, looking up at the empty white clouds. And then, grimly. ‘And you know what that means. Fish’ll stop biting.’
Fitzy watered and watered. She worried about her family, who were apple farmers in Stanthorpe, Queensland. The drought there had dried them up for the best part of a year. Their apples refused to grow.
Fitzy requested a copy of the government’s newly published National Drought Policy. It arrived promptly by mail. She read sections aloud to Big Jim in their garden regarding how farmers should ‘increase self-reliance’. How are they supposed to do that? Choreograph their own rain dance?
‘Did you know,’ she asked Mum, ‘that stress from drought can cause a person, and I quote, “disappointment, guilt, shame or feeling like a failure”?’ Mum did not know that. Fitzy went on, reading from the Lifeline Information Service leaflet that she’d also requested by mail, her head bolt upright atop her neck brace, ‘It can also cause “Physical symptoms such as headaches, difficulty sleeping, loss of appetite, aches and pains, muscle tension, weight loss/gain, chest or back pain, diarrhea or constipation, injury or accidents.”’
‘Accidents? Really?’ asked Mum.
‘Yes!’ Fitzy said, ‘It affects everything!’
‘I had no idea,’ she said to Fitzy. And then later on to me in the kitchen: ‘It’s obviously the lack of rain that causes Fitzy to crash into things.’
That evening, Sunday, was my night to make dinner. I decided to make it special in an attempt to improve my mood. Mum popped out to visit Denise, and when she got home she found me stirring spaghetti sauce with my bike helmet on.
Mum stood next to the pantry, forced herself to frown, and told me it was uncharitable to make fun of Fitzy.
Then she poured herself a glass of wine and pissed herself laughing. When it was time to eat she put her helmet on, too, and we sat together in front of the television, with the curtains drawn in case Fitzy happened to walk past the back window.
‘Oh, Jean,’ Mum said, grinning. ‘We’re awful.’
With our helmets still on, I cleared the plates and filled the sink to wash up. Mum finished her wine and Backflip was fast alseep on the rug. It was warm enough to have the kitchen window open, and crickets sang out in the darkness.
‘Dear, oh dear,’ said Mum to the television. ‘Oh, how awful.’
I walked over to look, with my washing-up gloves and my helmet on.
It was the Prime News. A lady on the edge of a forest holding a microphone. Shots of the forest floor, lots of dry leaves. Police in uniform. Lots of police.
‘Where’s that?’ I asked.
‘Belanglo,’ said Mum. ‘They found two dead bodies in the forest. They think they might be missing backpackers. They were hitchhiking. Two girls.’
I looked at the lady and the police tape and the forest. I took my helmet off and held it against my chest.
I thought straight away of Rosie.
•
Mack and Tracy were home with the news on, too. Tracy had Jasper in the bath with the door open. He splashed around with his plastic tugboats and practised whistling while Tracy sat on a little stool and said, every so often, ‘Hoop-la’. Mack was on the couch with a beer.
‘What’s that they’re saying?’ asked Tracy.
Mack was quiet, watching. He saw the police. He saw the dead leaves and the news lady with the microphone.
‘They found two women at Belanglo,’ said Mack, watching.
‘Are they okay?’ yelled Tracy. She came into the doorway, with one eye on Jasper.
‘No. I mean they found bodies,’ said Mack.
‘Oh, that’s horrible,’ said Tracy. She went back into the bathroom and then came out again straight away, her eyes wide. ‘You don’t think?’ she said.
Mack was thinking. He had many thoughts. They raced at him from every angle. Rosie. Davo. Carl. Hitchhikers. Bodies in the forest.
He had so many thoughts and he didn’t know what to thin
k.
26
The rest of Goodwood could speak of nothing but the bodies at Belanglo. On the way to school on Monday, I bought the Gather Region Advocate and the Sydney Morning Herald from the newsagent. Helen got a few copies of the Herald each day. I bought the last one.
‘You shouldn’t be reading about it—it’s just awful,’ said Helen, in a more pronounced version of her panics. The paper quaked in her hand as she gave it to me. She quivered like Judy White. Bill sat next to her on his stool, in front of the cigarette display. A couple on a white horse had big white smiles in an ad for Alpine. A man with a brumby and a rope had a big dirty smile in an ad for Marlboro. Bill had neither. He grimaced at me, like all he ever heard was bad news.
Coral had pulled her trolley up early to buy the papers. She was standing outside Bart’s Meats talking to Joe. Poor burly Joe. His dad was yet to be accounted for and already he’d inherited Coral.
‘They don’t know who they are, they just think they’re the backpacker women,’ said Coral, gesticulating. ‘So it could be her. It could be. Yes.’
Joe was squinting at Coral like the sun was in his eyes, but he was standing in the shade. Coral just kept looking at him and nodding, yes.
At lunch, George and I spread the papers out on the grass and studied them.
‘It’s not Rosie,’ said George. ‘How would she’ve got up to Belanglo?’
‘How would she’ve got anywhere?’ I asked.
George looked annoyed.
We read the article under the headline FRENZIED KILLER MARCHED GIRLS TO BUSH GRAVES. It was dreadful. The police had identified one of the women—a missing English tourist. They suspected the other body was that of her friend and travelling companion. They’d been in Australia on holiday.
George winced as she read. ‘Ugh,’ she said.
‘It’s not her,’ I said, feeling guilty to be so relieved.
‘But listen to this,’ said George, and read aloud, ‘“Police have also yet to rule out the possibility that there may be other bodies buried in the forest.”’
We sat back on the grassy hill. Toby and his idiot friends were playing basketball on the court. Liz Gordon and Kiralee Davis were smoking surreptitiously by the fence. Puffs of smoke rose above them while Bec Kelly kept watch for teachers. Ethan and Lucas were just up the hill from us with their football.
George looked very grave. She folded up the newspaper. There was no hint of a joke in her voice.
‘Jean, I always felt like something bad happened to her,’ she said.
•
That morning, Davo Carlstrom walked back into the Goodwood Police Station in a terrible state. Mack was standing behind his desk, talking on the phone.
Davo paced in front of the pinewood counter, waiting for Mack to hang up. He was clearly agitated, and fighting back tears. The posters for domestic violence hotlines and Neighbourhood Watch looked over him. He paced and stopped pacing and hit his fist on the counter.
‘Mate, it’s not her,’ said Mack calmly as he hung up the phone.
‘How do you know?’ yelled Davo. ‘How do you know?’ His voice was crackling.
‘They think it’s the friend of the first victim. I mean, they’re sure. They’re sure it’s her friend. They just have to do a formal identification before they release it to the media,’ said Mack. ‘Mate, I’m telling you—it’s not Rosie.’
Davo sat down on the bench under the posters and put his lovely olive hands over his lovely sunken face.
•
Mack arrived at our house just before dinner.
‘Are you staying?’ asked Mum as he came in. She was chopping onions and had a tea towel over her shoulder.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Just a beer. I’ll get home to Trace.’
Mum opened the fridge and got out two bottles of Reschs. She opened one for herself and one for Mack.
‘You poor bugger,’ she said, wiping her watery eyes. She popped Mack’s beer in a stubby holder that said Goodwood’s Good For Wood and fitted the Reschs just perfectly.
‘What a time,’ said Mum, and put her hand on Mack’s shoulder. She looked almost disbelieving. ‘What a terrible fucking time.’
Mum and Mack were close. After Mack’s dad Lang shot himself in the head, cleaning his gun, Mack was catatonic for a fortnight. According to Nan, he rocked himself back and forth on the verandah and could not speak. Mum tended to him. She was only a teenager herself at the time, but she tended to him like a garden, and slowly he stopped rocking, and eventually he was able to sprout words again, and later he even flourished.
I remembered Mack’s mum Grace Mackenzie from when I was small. She mustn’t have been that old, but her skin looked translucent, like you could see her insides if you held her up to a light. There wasn’t much to her, just a thin face atop a thin body. Nan said she died of a broken heart long before her actual death. But she continued to exist, in a half-life, spending most of her later days in a rocking chair, where she stared out the window and quilted. Her view was of the verandah where Lang had ended it all. Nan never knew why she didn’t change her position.
Grace Mackenzie died her actual death when I was five. She was sitting in the rocking chair and her heart pulled up to a stop. Mack was the one to find her. Mercifully, ravens did not attend.
Mum tended to Mack again. She held him through Grace’s funeral. Mack produced tears, but no sound. Apparently I got uncommonly upset and had to be carried away by Nan, who declared me to be very intuitive for a five-year-old and ‘not to be rushed’. I was never sure what she meant by that. Maybe I was not to be rushed into the sad event of a funeral. Or maybe Nan wanted me to stay young and green as long as possible.
‘Terrible fucking time is right,’ said Mack now, drinking his Reschs. ‘I just came from Nan’s. She’s pretty freaked out.’
He gripped the stubby holder and looked weary. He followed Mum into the living room and they sat on the couch. Paul Simon was singing out of our stereo.
‘Ceils, seriously, I haven’t seen anything like this in my time on the force,’ said Mack. ‘The things I’m hearing are just horrible. The injuries.’
I hovered in the big archway that separated our living room from our kitchen. Backflip, who had been outside eating her biscuits, made a dramatic entrance, her toenails scratching across the wooden floorboards as she hurried in.
‘Good dog. C’mere, Backflip. Good dog,’ said Mack.
Backflip was thrilled. She panted and turned in circles and backed up for a butt scratch. Mack acquiesced. I went into the kitchen and tried to listen and chop the rest of the onions at the same time.
‘They’ve got forty guys searching the forest,’ Mack said, scratching Backflip’s butt. ‘They took a few boys from Clarke. They took Simmons. The base is at Bowral, but they’re calling in help from all around.’
Mum sipped her beer. ‘Awful.’
‘Everyone thinks it’s Rosie,’ said Mack. ‘I had that many people stop me on Cedar Street today. Fitzy just stopped me on my way in here. But it’s not her. It’s not her.’
Mum seemed worried and relieved at the same time. I could sense her mind racing.
‘I hope she wasn’t hitchhiking,’ she said. ‘If she did leave by choice then I hope that’s not how she left.’ She raised her voice. ‘You are never hitchhiking, Jean.’
‘I never would,’ I said loudly from the kitchen.
Mack studied the rug. ‘I’m so tired, Celia, I could fall asleep sitting here.’
Mum rubbed Mack on the shoulder. Mack rubbed Backflip on the butt. There was a heavy feeling to everything. Dismay had spread from the town and seeped in through our open window. I chopped the onions. Tears ran down my face but I hardly noticed them. I could hear Fitzy calling out, Myrtle, Myrtle. Mum and Mack shared a moment of weighty silence. Paul Simon was singing. He said that if he could call us Betty then we could call him Al. The crickets chirped loudly. I was on my way to the pantry for the olive oil when the phone rang.
�
��I’ll get it,’ I said, being closest.
It was Tracy on the other end, asking for Mack.
‘What did I do now?’ he said smiling, getting up. He was always cheered by Tracy. He even whistled just for a moment on his way to the receiver.
‘Sweetheart,’ he said. And then his voice went dry. ‘Who called?’ he asked. Then silence. ‘He’s positive?’
Mum looked up from the couch. Mack was nodding. He made agreement sounds. Listening sounds. Sadness sounds. The noise of crickets drowned most of it out. ‘I love you, too,’ he said. ‘I’ll come home.’
He hung up.
I had taken his seat on the couch next to Mum. Backflip stood in the middle of the rug looking at Mack, wagging her tail with her ears back. Paul Simon was singing about Joseph now, and a yellow moon.
Mack stared at us and said, ‘Looks like someone found Bart.’
27
Paulie Roberts was a tall, straight-shouldered man, with freckles that swarmed like bees across his face, and lips that needed Chapstick. He had a weedy son at our school, Tom Roberts, and a nice wife called June who worked at Harvey World Travel in Clarke. The Roberts had been in Goodwood for four generations. Paulie’s grandfather worked at the sawmill when it was still in operation. Paulie Roberts was the proud owner of a handsome cedar dresser, made from a red cedar tree that had grown by our river, crafted with his grandfather’s own hands, destined to be handed down in the Roberts family for generations to come.
Paulie Roberts lived for fishing. He and Bart knew each other pretty well from around town. Paulie enjoyed a sausage and fished on Sundays. In fact, Paulie fished as many days as he could manage, after work and on weekends. He’d often see Bart setting off and offer a wave. The two men would share a few beers together at the Wicko if they happened to be there at the same time, having a chat to Smithy at the bar. Paulie held the Biggest Catch record until Roy Murray broke it. He hooked a black bream under the bridge on Grants Lake on an overcast Sunday in ’87 and he knew he had a winner. He popped it in his bucket and brought it back to town for weighing and measuring. Carmel Carmichael and Bart presided. Bart described the bream as ‘immensely thick and solid’ and the Gather Region Advocate published that quote, next to a photo of Paul holding the big fish in one hand and a well-earned beer in the other. If you’d looked above the bar at the Bowlo, you’d have seen a golden plaque with Paulie’s name on it, the date of his catch, and a drawing of a fish arching upwards, kissing the sky.
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