Paulie Roberts had gone out to the lake that Monday after a morning at work installing outdoor lighting at the back of the Clarke Hotel, and then a few hours spent at home on the garden. Tom almost accompanied him fishing but changed his mind at the last minute on account of a stomach ache he acquired from eating too many unripe strawberries. Paulie loved green strawberries. Tom told his dad he’d better have a lie down instead of dropping a line that day. Paulie was forever glad that Tom was spared the discovery that lay ahead.
Paulie drove over the high bridge above the deep water. He let the spring wind wrestle his hair through the open window. The boats bobbed to meet him, as if waving. He looked at Bart’s ghost boat, as he always did since Bart had disappeared, with grief and a feeling he couldn’t describe. Luck? Guilt? Guilt that he felt lucky that it hadn’t been him? Lucky that his guilt didn’t stop him from fishing? He liked Bart tremendously, but Paulie was so horrified by what had happened that he pushed his feelings into a space the size of his tackle box and shut the lid. It wasn’t him. June still had a husband, Tom still had a father, he still had fishing on the big lake. It was Bart. It wasn’t Paulie. He shook the whole thing off like Backflip did when she got out of the river.
Paulie Roberts parked his car and carried his gear to his boat. He started up his motor and cut the lake with his wake. The brown water lapped against the fibreglass hull as he curled around the marshes. He didn’t usually go left. He usually went to the middle, or close to the bridge, where the water was cold and bottomless and full of opportunities.
But that day he went left. He intended to fish the horseshoe inlet where no cars or feet could get close to by land. The bush was dense and scrubby right up to the edge. But The Horse, as it was known to locals, had its own opportunities: it was deep in the centre, and the flathead and bream and blackfish would not expect him.
His boat was motoring along nicely as he hugged the bank and watched the tiny fish part in the marshes. The wind was high. Clouds flew past the sun above him, and for a moment he closed his eyes to the sky. He saw the inside of his eyelids go dark and light and dark and light and dark again; and when he opened his eyes he saw the clouds pass and pass and pass. He felt happy it was spring.
As he entered The Horse he slowed his boat and took his time around the edges. He could tell the depth from the way the water rested and he smiled at the deep centre. He was just about to make a right turn and head towards it when he saw the log. A big log, stuck fast in the marshes. Maybe there was some discoloured fabric there too—faded greys and browns; he couldn’t really tell. It was a heavy-looking log, wedged in and half sunken.
His thoughts went here and there.
Thick log to be floating on the lake. Lots of trees find their end in the marshes. Rotting wood is wasted on the water. The sawmill made beautiful tables and dressers. It’s such a shame there’s no more cedar. Maybe he could try his hand at furniture.
Paulie got closer.
It wasn’t a log.
He looked and saw that, yes, there was fabric. Faded greys and browns and some hint of old yellow. Then matted hair, then bloated skin.
All the blood went from Paulie Roberts’s face as he cut his motor and dropped his anchor. He was near it now, just beyond the marshes. He could see it in there, closer to the shore where no cars or feet could enter.
Not a log. A body. Or what was left of it. There could be no doubting it, as the clouds went past and past and past.
Paulie felt sick to his stomach as he stood up in his boat, leaning over the edge to get a better look.
He knew what he was seeing. It was Bart McDonald. Or what was left of him. There was no doubt about it.
Paulie Roberts had not been among the people who had searched the lake—the divers, the policemen, the group from town. He’d said to June, ‘Why go looking for something you don’t want to find?’
‘True enough,’ said June.
And now, true enough.
He sat down in his boat, queasy, as the breeze came in across the marshes. He looked away from the body. He couldn’t bear it. But the smell whooshed up his nostrils. He breathed it in thick and tried to get it out again, quickly. He did it as if blowing his nose and felt like a horse, snorting. ‘Uggghh,’ was the noise he made, before he vomited half-digested unripe strawberries into the brown water of the lake.
Paulie Roberts went full speed back to his car, pushing his boat to its very limit. Then he pushed his car, over the bridge and along the long road that hugs the mountain. Kevin Fairley’s cows were in the north paddock through the trees, which were all a blur, like all the world was at that moment.
He got home and told June. He left his car door wide open in the carport.
‘June. June!’ He was so nauseous. ‘I found Bart McDonald in the lake.’
June sat down on the couch as if someone had pushed her over. Tom set aside his lemon water. His stomach ache came on again like a wave.
Paulie went to the Teledex and moved the white plastic pointer down to M and pressed the button. He found Tracy at the other end of the telephone. He spoke as fast as clouds.
Tracy said, ‘Jesus, Paulie, are you all right?’
Paulie swallowed air and pushed down his stomach. ‘Yeah. I’ll be right. As soon as I get the smell out of my nostrils.’
•
By the time Mack got home it was almost seven. Tracy met him at the door. She put her arms all the way around him and he rested his chin on her shoulder. The two of them stood in the doorway as if stuck in time.
Mack closed his eyes. He’d call Clarke station in just a minute and find out the procedure. It was pitch-black and he had no resources. Clarke station was at half-mast; everyone was searching Belanglo. The darkness might let him wait till morning. Tomorrow for the gruesome business.
When Mack finally slept that night, he dreamt of water. Tonnes and oceans and fields of water, crashing through a dam wall, lying in wait at his ankles, destroying their bedroom furniture.
28
At first light the next morning, the browned grass next to the boat wharves was covered in cars. Some had arrived in darkness. They parked with their headlamps high-beaming on the brown water. Then dawn came and the sky was streaked with pale light. It was yellow and orange and then it was day. Police cars, cars from town, cars that brought the ‘authorities’—as Nan called them—or the SES, as they were properly known, and a lone ambulance that couldn’t offer much in the way of lifesaving to a month-old, half-decomposed corpse stuck fast in the marshes.
Bart may have gone in whole, but he came out much diminished. The water had been cold that winter, which slowed the rate of decomposition. But there was not much to remember him by after the fish had done their nibbling business. The bream and flathead and blackfish had their way with his skin and tissues. They’d bitten and nipped and pecked him. They’d eaten away at his kind face and extremities, and burrowed passages for bacteria to find his organs. Over the years, Bart had thrown a lot of bait in the big lake, to tempt the fishes into his waiting bucket. But as it turned out, nothing proved as delicious a meal as Bart himself.
Poor Paulie Roberts stood on the bank, mystified.
Why him?
That had been the thing all along. That it wasn’t him. It was Bart. Paulie had been spared. And he’d been fishing every chance he got since Bart vanished. Why did he turn his boat left?
The log that wasn’t. It was a vision he’d never bury; a smell he would never forget. All he could try were topical applications. He bought a Vicks nasal spray from the Grocer in an attempt to clear the smell from his nostrils. Nance had been helpful. ‘I have some potpourri that’s quite pungent?’ But what was Paulie supposed to do? Carry around a little dish of it? He sprayed his Vicks, more times than the packet suggested. But still he was the only one on the bank who could smell it.
‘Can you smell it?’ he asked. He was standing with Smithy and Carmel Carmichael who, as the proprietors of the only two drinking establishments in to
wn, felt the need to be near the water that day, in honour of their friend, in honour of one of the unofficial leaders of Goodwood, now confirmed dead.
‘Smell what?’ asked Smithy.
‘Bart,’ said Paulie.
Smithy looked appalled. Carmel said, ‘Oh God, Paul.’
Paulie took that as a no.
The three of them stood together. Merv and Big Jim drove out also. Mack told everyone they should go home. There wasn’t much to see; and what little there was to see would traumatise even the most hardened member of any authority, let alone Bart’s friends. The huddle conferred. Mack turned his back on them and stared at the lake, watching the boats bob. A pelican sat on the water, out towards the middle, oblivious. Mack was glad when, in the interests of their ability to sleep that night and the night after, the group from town decided to leave before the authorities brought Bart to shore.
Mack stood alone then, near the other police and the SES truck and the ambos. The cars from town backed out and departed. If Coral or Nance or Opal had been there, they wouldn’t have had a bar of leaving. But Big Jim and Merv, Smithy and Carmel—they had little interest in drama or gossip. They were happiest when others were happy. They were saddest when the town was in mourning. They had loved Bart McDonald, true and honest. They drove away slowly with their eyes cast low to the road.
Mack was standing alone when the authorities eventually trudged out of the marshes with the unspeakable stretcher.
There was no doubt about it: it was the body of Bart McDonald. He was still wearing the windcheater he set off in, though it was no longer intact. The fish had begun it—the unbuilding of Bart—but since he had risen to the surface by the time Paulie found him, others had joined in, too. Flies; a certain type of beetle; several birds. Perhaps there had been ravens. Mack looked out at the pelican and wondered. He looked back at Bart and felt so nauseous. In life, Bart had a red, kind face, but now he was so many colours. He was sodden and dismantled. There was a hint of a boot on the bottom of what was once a strong leg. Mack could discern it only by the trace of laces. The stretcher was put into the van, and the men and women from the authorities spoke in faint voices. Someone even said ‘sorry’ to Mack, as if it meant anything at all.
Mack would leave the rest to the authorities. There was nothing more he could do there by the marshes. He pulled his police car out onto the road and headed towards the high bridge over the water. He would go to the McDonalds’ house, where Mrs Bart and Pearl were taking the saddles off their horses. He would go there right away.
Mack drove as fast as clouds. The bridge felt even higher than usual and he soared. A kangaroo lay flattened on the road just after. Mack sped up towards the group of ravens that were gathered. A sickness like bile rose up from his stomach. The ravens were picking and pecking at innards. And Mack ploughed right through them. Bam. He got one. Right under his engine: the bird flapped and crunched and splattered all over the bitumen—a mess of wings and organs—and Mack was not even a tiny bit sorry.
29
With the discovery of Bart, and the morbid details of his condition—which spread from the mouth of Paulie Roberts, through the medium of Opal, who mourned the news by talking about it that Tuesday to anyone who’d listen—Goodwood was absolutely beside itself.
Nance, at the Goodwood Grocer, gave impromptu performances from behind her counter, in which she offered her thoughts on forensics and cause of death. She had read Postmortem, Body of Evidence, and was halfway through a brand-new hardcover of All That Remains. Patricia Cornwell had shed a lot of light on how the authorities dealt with corpses. Medical examiners needed a cast-iron stomach, that was for sure. They were normal enough people, but at the same time, heroes among us. As long as there was death in this world, their work was never done. We could all learn so much from their dedication.
Coral was quite distressed by Nance’s uncaring tone and the content of her oral dissertations. She wheeled her tartan trolley out of the Grocer to the bench on the pavement and sat in the sun while tears rolled down her rouged cheeks. ‘It’s too soon,’ she told Mum when Mum was on her way out. Mum had been quite interested in Nance’s revelations. For example, some substances fluoresce under certain laser lights; and some bodies that have been exposed to the elements for an extended period make cause of death impossible to determine. In certain cases, a psychic may be consulted.
‘He’s barely out of the water,’ said Coral, and Mum sat with her for a time in the sun, while Backflip sat tied to the pole.
‘Nance’s just being stoic,’ said Mum. ‘Everyone grieves in their own way.’
Poor Coral. At eighty-seven, she’d been positively girlish when Bart was alive. She’d blushed and winked and slapped his counter. Now she looked every one of her years, and like a few more had come crashing down upon her from some crack in the sky. She heaved her way through town with enormous effort.
•
Smithy, Big Jim and Merv stood outside the Wicko in the long-sunned afternoon with a handful of Wicko regulars. Val Sparks emerged from the Vinnies and joined them.
‘How did we miss him?’ said Big Jim. ‘We did The Horse, me and Merv; I thought we went round every inch of it.’
‘We did, BJ,’ said Merv. ‘Every nook and cranny. If he was in The Horse this morning, well—that’s where he was. But I swear blind he wasn’t in The Horse when we looked there.’
Irene Oakman arrived, harried and dressed in crushed velvet. She’d rushed straight to the Wicko when she’d heard the news, clutching her house keys.
‘He was in The Horse?’ she asked, incredulous and out of breath. ‘No. I checked The Horse. Didn’t I, Smithy? You went right, around the little inlets, and I went left in the tinny. I checked all over The Horse.’
‘Same as us—we checked it a couple of times, I reckon,’ said Merv. Big Jim nodded.
Val Sparks prayed silently. She said, ‘God taketh away,’ and blessed herself. Smithy put his arm around her and she worried she’d be forever infected with sorrow.
They expected to see Roy Murray. Where was Roy Murray, anyway? He and Bart had been good mates, fishing buddies, drinking companions on occasion.
‘Where’s Roy?’ asked Smithy. ‘Has someone broken the news?’
‘I haven’t seen him round a whole lot,’ said Big Jim. ‘Derek’s been working mainly. Since—’ everyone looked at their own feet ‘—since Rosie.’
Irene Oakman looked like she’d recovered a distant memory. ‘Oh yeah. Roy. Why didn’t he come out and search with us, I wonder?’
‘Same reason Paulie and a lot of guys didn’t,’ said Smithy. ‘It wasn’t a pretty sight as I understand it. I spoke to Paulie. He said Bart was in a horrible way.’ Smithy shook his head and said with intense solemnity to the small gathering: ‘God is good, but never dance on a small boat.’
Val Sparks looked set to faint. How the grief and horror encroached upon her. She took herself back inside the Vinnies where she turned up her little silver radio and dusted. Her votive candles burned aimlessly. She fretted as to whether to blow Bart’s out.
•
Helen stood in the doorway of the newsagent, talking with Bill while he smoked a cigarette on the pavement—Marlboro Reds, because he fancied himself as similar to the rugged man in the advertisement. He wasn’t. A pile of newspapers behind him announced more on the search of the Belanglo State Forest, which Nance thought was certain to hold clues of Rosie. On that point, Coral could agree. What were the odds? they thought, shuddering at the notion. Two girls. A similar age. Belanglo was not so far away. What if there were more in there?
Derek Murray was behind the counter at Woody’s. He looked like a ghost boy, waiting for an order, an unpleasant expression on his face.
It was revealed much later that that day was the worst day of trading Woody’s ever had. It was no wonder. The news of a rotted body made no one hungry; and it was later considered ironic that the discovery of Bart turned the whole town off meat for the best part of September.
Three doors up, Bart’s Meats was closed. There was no sign on the door and no sign was expected. Burly Joe stayed back at the McDonald house with Mrs Bart and Pearl and Jan, who had extended her visit to be with her sister until news came. Any news. That’s what sisters were for.
The only consolation for Pearl was that Bart had been found in The Horse. Of all the alluvial beds and sheltered inlets and boggy corners, her dad had chosen the Horse: the best-named place in all the lake. At that, Pearl looked content for almost a whole moment. Then she cried with difficulty while Oyster, Pears and Apples neighed a dirge in their stables.
•
Meanwhile, Nan was properly teary for the first time since Bart disappeared. Mum and Backflip went over there after the Grocer and dropped off a bag of vegetables for a light spring soup. Pop hid in his shed with his feelings. ‘Terrible thing,’ was all he could muster. Pop had receded further inwards since Bart had been found. He became quieter and more removed. It had been weeks since he’d asked Nan to dance after dinner.
Nan started chopping. Then she stopped. ‘No one will be hungry for this.’
She put the knife down on the board, gripping it still, looking out the little stained-glass window over the sink.
‘Mum?’ said Mum.
‘No, no. I’m all right, Celia,’ said Nan, gripping the knife, her fingers going white and red from the pressure where the blood was and wasn’t.
Backflip wagged her tail, expecting a liver treat.
Goodwood Page 17
