‘It needs a lot of work, Eli. A hell of a lot. It’s not fit to live in.’
‘I can fix it,’ I said. I didn’t want to tell Buddy, but I’d had an idea I hadn’t told anyone about yet. I’d had it after talking to Sarah the day before and I’d come right into town to get started.
‘Look,’ said Buddy. ‘I’m just on my way to check something out. Why don’t you come along with me?’
Buddy and me drove out through town, bumping along Main until we passed the museum, and then towards the Red Rock road. Buddy was looking out his side window at the houses. There was a big frown on his face.
‘Will you look at this place now?’ he said. ‘I remember clear as day when every house round here was brand new. We had them built for the mine workers. Every one of them new. And look at them now – half of them empty and falling down and the other half as good as. They might as well pull the whole bunch down and be done with it. It’s a real eyesore.’
Buddy’s one of those wiry old guys who reach a certain age and then you don’t know how old they are – they sort of stay put, not changing. He looks pretty much the same as always, even though he must be well into his eighties. But as he peered out the truck window he seemed older suddenly, as if looking at the rundown houses made him seem like them. I noticed how hunched he was over the steering wheel and the brown spots covering his hands.
We parked up alongside the southern edge of the pit and while Buddy was getting out I walked towards the old beach. Straight away I could see the water there below me – shining and glistening, a small lake in the bottom of the pit. Across to my right the trickle of water had become a waterfall, cascading down over the edge.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ said Buddy from behind me. ‘I’ll be goddamned.’ When I turned around his face had gone kind of slow and wizened and blinking, like a turtle’s.
We walked a little further, until we came to the sand of the old beach. Buddy asked me to give him a hand to sit.
His legs were weak and wobbly as I lowered him onto the sand. I sat down beside him and together we watched the waterfall tumbling into the pit, throwing up foam and mist where it fell into the water beneath.
‘They said what’d happened,’ he said quietly. ‘I suppose I just didn’t expect it to happen this quick.’
Neither of us said anything for a while then.
‘Do you know what a legacy is, Eli?’ Buddy asked me. ‘Well, I guess this is what I thought mine would be. Hundreds of people used to work down there. I thought I’d made something that would last, that people would always remember. Forget all that junk at the museum and the Poplars. Forget the bait store and the outfitters and all that. Forget all of that stuff. This was it. This was the thing.’
‘They used to have picnics here,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Before you came here,’ I said. ‘When it was still a lake. And afterwards my grandfather used to play the fiddle in the hotel.’
‘I never saw him play,’ Buddy said. ‘You know, me and your grandfather had a lot in common, Eli. We both came here with nothing. We came here to make something of ourselves. And we both married late … maybe too late. We were busy men. We had a lot to prove and this was a tough place to prove it.’
Beneath us you could see the water lapping against the red stone and earth of the pit. Soon it’d reach the dark seams of granite.
‘Look, Eli, I’m sorry about all this business with Billy. He’s a hothead and he doesn’t listen to me anymore. I guess some of that’s my own fault – I always gave him whatever he wanted and I suppose he got to expecting it. He never had to work at things like I did. But I don’t want you thinking you have to move out of the Poplars – you’re welcome to stay there as long as you want, as long as it’s still standing. I mean, Jesus, your family’s been unlucky enough as it is.’
He meant what with Clarence, and then Mom and Dad, and then Virgil getting sick. People weren’t meant to get sick that young. That’s what everyone said at the time. It wasn’t meant to happen to a man in his prime like that. It was just bad stupid luck. And people couldn’t even look at me and Nana properly then, as if the bad stupid luck had been sprinkled on me and my family like germs, like it was contagious somehow. I remember Virgil thin and frail and hurting, saying for me to look after my nana, saying not to remember him like this, saying don’t look back. And I always tried not to, just like he said. And I did look after Nana too, for those last years, just like he said. And afterwards when I thought about them it was like following Clarence’s footsteps down to the river: when I reached a certain point they’d disappear and I wouldn’t be able to follow them any further. But I wouldn’t be able to follow them back either, and the river would flow around and around in a loop, in a circle.
‘… I’m not asking you for anything, Eli,’ Buddy said. ‘I’m only saying maybe you should give Billy a bit of a wide berth for a while. Until he’s off the warpath.’
I helped Buddy up from the sand and we walked back together towards the truck. Before we got there Buddy took one last look behind him.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘The whole place will be a lake again in a couple of days.’
‘I reckon most water is like a dog … ’ I started saying. But he wasn’t listening.
On the way back to town I got Buddy to drop me off at the road to the Poplars. I couldn’t wait to tell Sarah and Bobby about my idea and I was running down the road so I could find them when I reached the entrance to the Poplars and nearly slammed straight into Billy’s truck. It was coming at me so quick I hardly had time to jump to the side. Billy veered at the last moment and went into the ditch. Bobby was sitting beside him in the front seat. His seatbelt was pulled tight across his chest and his face was pale with fright.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Billy said, climbing out the door and stepping into the ditch. ‘Eli! I should’ve known. I should’ve just carried straight on.’ He was shaking his head and looking down at the bumper.
‘If you’ve damaged this truck … ’ he was saying.
‘Where’s Sarah?’ I asked.
‘Oh, what … ? So you’re worried about your girlfriend now, are you? Isn’t that fucking sweet? Well, no need to wet yourself, Eli. She’s back there in the Pine dorm. Packing up her things, I hope. She’s all fucking yours.’
‘Where you taking Bobby?’
‘That’s none of your frigging business.’
‘Where you taking him?’
‘Do you really want to know, Eli? Do you? Let me fill you in, then. I’ll spell it out nice and slow for you so you can understand it. I’m not too keen on my kid living out here in the boonies with a slut and a retard. Do you get that? Is that simple enough for you? I’m taking him back to a decent home.’
‘He doesn’t want to go with you,’ I said. ‘Sarah says you can’t take him.’
‘Oh, really? Well, this really is one for the books. Eli O’Callaghan telling me what I can and can’t do with my kid. Eli O’Callaghan giving me advice on family matters. Let me just see. Let me just have a little flick through the old O’Callaghan family tree. What a success story that was. Grandfather goes AWOL, dad tops himself, son an idiot, uncle … ’
‘Don’t talk about them.’
‘Talk about happy fucking families … ’
‘I said don’t talk about them.’
‘What an almighty train wreck. Good thing your mom … ’
I couldn’t feel my fist when it hit Billy in the face. It was like it was someone else’s fist. And I was someone else watching it happen. And then we were down in the water of the ditch. Sometimes I was under the water and sometimes Billy was. And then just Billy was and I was pressing his head into the mud until finally he stopped moving and I could feel my hands pressing down on his head. That’s when I stopped. For a while Billy just lay there as if he was a
sleep in the water.
I went to turn him over and when I did his chest suddenly started heaving up and down. A big spout of muddy water came rushing up from his mouth, like out of a whale’s back, and then he started coughing up more of it, brown at first and then kind of green. When he’d finished, he sat up and looked around him for a long time. His eyes seemed like they couldn’t focus properly, but when they could again he pointed them right at me.
‘You tried to kill me,’ he said. ‘You tried to fucking kill me. You’re going to pay for this, Eli. They’re going to lock you up.’
I looked over at the truck and Billy’s eyes followed mine. The cab was empty. Bobby was gone.
‘You tried to kill me, you fucking lunatic. I’m going to the police,’ Billy said.
I went to find Bobby.
The door to the Pine dorm was locked. I knocked on it a few times but nobody answered. When I went around to the back I found Sarah climbing out a window.
‘Eli,’ she said. ‘Is that you, Eli?’ She sounded all frantic. Her head and shoulders were out of the window but the rest of her was stuck in the frame. ‘Get me out of here,’ she said. ‘PLEASE. GET ME OUT OF HERE!’ Her eyes were black and mad again, like the owl’s.
‘That fucking prick,’ she said when I got her out. ‘He locked me in there, that fucking prick. Where is he? Where is he, Eli? Don’t tell me he’s taken him.’
I said how I’d almost bumped into them in the truck, how the truck had gone into the ditch, how Billy had gone back into town on foot.
‘So where is he then, Eli? Where’s Bobby?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where he is.’
Sarah and me checked all the dorms and the office and everywhere. She shouted his name into the woods but there wasn’t any answer. I went through them a couple of hundred yards to look for signs but I couldn’t find any. The sun was beginning to fall when she phoned the police. We waited for them outside the office. Sarah sat on the steps beside Buddy’s sculpture. Her head was in her hands.
‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Oh God, oh God,’ she kept saying.
It didn’t take long for Officer Red to arrive in his car. He spoke to Sarah for a while and wrote down what she said in his book. He asked me what’d happened with Billy and the truck and I told him. Then he went to speak on his radio and when he came back he said there wasn’t much they could do right now because it was so late and there wasn’t enough light left. But don’t worry, he told Sarah, they’d have search parties ready first thing in the morning. They’d have a helicopter too and they’d be out there at first light. And maybe Bobby would be back by then anyway. That was what he hoped. That’s what often happened in these circumstances – in his experience. Stay put here, he said. And if anything happened, contact him immediately. He’d be in touch as soon as it was light tomorrow.
As he was walking back to his car he beckoned me over. ‘Can I have a quick word, Eli?’ he asked.
Over by the car he whispered, ‘Look, Eli, I know this is a bad time but there’s something I wanted to tell you.’
‘About Billy?’ I said.
‘No, not about Billy. We’ve already had him down at the station blabbing about how he was almost murdered. But I know the situation. It sounded like a fair fight to me. You didn’t do anything wrong, Eli. This isn’t your fault. We’ll find him … Bobby, I mean. It’s important you tell her that. We’ll find him. No, this isn’t about that. It’s about your grandfather.’
‘The remains,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s about the remains.’
I didn’t say nothing.
‘We’ve had the tests back.’
I still didn’t say nothing.
‘I don’t know quite how to say this … but they didn’t match. It’s not him, Eli. I’m sorry.’
He got into the car then, but as he started the engine he opened the window.
‘Tell her not to worry,’ he said again. ‘We’re going to do everything we can. In my experience ninety-nine times out of a hundred … ’
But I didn’t hear the rest. All I could hear was a sound like water rushing around and around in my head.
As soon as he’d gone, with the sun dipping towards the top of the second island, I set out along the eastern shore of Eye Lake to find Bobby. I had no plan. I had no map. I couldn’t see any signs. I was just going to walk and walk until I found him.
I followed the shoreline to begin with. Or at least what had used to be the shoreline. The water level had dropped a long way – so far you could see the muddy bed of the lake for twenty or thirty feet in places, covered in piles of weed shrivelling in the air. The underwater trees were poking above the surface everywhere, like they were growing out of the water, and the ones that had always stuck up out of the surface were getting taller and taller. It was like seeing a new forest appear – a forest with no leaves except the slime and weeds that hung from slippery, stunted branches. As the sun touched the horizon it turned the mud a shining red and pink, and its light fell through the new forest, turning it that bright golden-green that was the colour of fevers.
Places where I’d fished once were in the open air now. Rock beds and outcrops and sandbars, which I’d only known were down there from snags and lost lures, were in front of my eyes. Everything had changed. Everything looked different. As the light began to fail it threw the second island into silhouette and I could see it was turning back into a hill. Reefs that I’d once trolled around were turning back into ridges.
It was nearly dark when I reached the castle. I could see the black shape of the tower and the sloping roof and the whole of the second and third storeys. It was bigger than I’d ever thought. Out beyond it, about a hundred yards into the lake, you could see the river flowing. Its current blackly rippled the skin of the water like the backs of surfacing fish.
I could’ve walked most of the way to the castle if I’d wanted to. The mud stretched out from the place I’d first cast with the phantom shad. But in the near dark I couldn’t help thinking about the watchers. Where would they be now that the waters were falling so fast? I imagined their eyes opening to find the night sky clear above them, blinking in the air, flashing like the lights of fireflies on the bed of the emptying lake. That did it for me, and I headed into the bush, behind the cover of the trees.
Beneath the branches there was no light at all. I got turned around pretty fast and didn’t know what direction I was moving in. The lower branches scraped against my face and my feet stumbled over rocks and roots and blowdown. There were noises all around me: the calling of loons and the hooting of owls and then other sounds from animals I couldn’t tell properly – shrieks and howls and snapping twigs. I don’t know how long I spent wandering in there, or how far I’d gone, but eventually I began to hear another noise that didn’t sound like any animal at all. It was a low whispering noise, like lots of voices speaking at once, and it seemed to come from all around me. At first I tried to walk away from it but whatever direction I took I just seemed to get closer and closer and it got louder and louder.
‘Bobby.’ I tried to shout, but my own voice came out weak and small and dry like there was no air in my lungs or spit in my mouth.
‘Bobby.’ The whispering got louder and louder.
A white, silvery light appeared ahead of me. It seemed to move this way and that, flickering, catching on the black bark of branches and tree trunks. Sometimes I’d think it was in one place but then I’d lose sight of it and it’d appear again in another. I couldn’t tell whether I was following it or it was following me. Closing my eyes I started to run. I ran blind.
I don’t know how long I was down for. My feet were tangled in some roots and my face was pressed into the moss and pine need
les. As I lifted it I could sense an emptiness in front of me where the trees had thinned out into a clearing. The noise was loud. It was right beside me. And the light was there too. Dancing and flickering. It was the light of the moon shining down on running water. I knew where I was then. I was lying on the bank of the Crooked River.
I realized that in the dark I must’ve headed north, up to where the river came into Eye Lake. I must’ve been going in circles through the bush because I hadn’t reached far: the castle was only a few hundred yards down the shore from where the river joined the lake.
Sitting up, I looked around me, and in the silvery light from the moon I could see the twisted branches of an old red pine leaning across the river towards an outcrop of rock on the opposite bank, as if it were pointing to it with long gnarled fingers.
If it had been daytime, and if the light had been stronger, then I would’ve been able to see the small, faint X scraped into the black lichen covering the face of the rock. Virgil had scraped it there forty years before. It was to mark the spot opposite where Clarence went missing. It was in the bare dirt beneath the red pine’s branches that they’d found his last footprints. They’d gone down to the edge of the river. And then they’d disappeared.
The Blue Danube
Virgil used to tell a story about the last visitors who stayed at the Pioneer Hotel. They were two fishermen from Minnesota, and they arrived in town one day on the new highway. It was about ten years after the war. Dad was around twelve and Virgil was a year younger.
‘The men arrived in a big new car and parked right outside the front door of the hotel. The sign still hung outside it back then. Your dad and I were playing in the porch of number one O’Callaghan Street and we went out to get a better look at the car. It was a Chevy Bel Air. When the men got out they eyed the hotel suspiciously for a long while. One of them started scratching his beard.
‘It wasn’t such a promising sight in those days,’ Virgil said. ‘There was almost no paint left on the walls and the wood was all weathered and warped. The front steps sagged in the middle, and up above the stone chimney had started to lean like the tower of Pisa. There were boards nailed across some of the windows on the second floor.
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