Hailstone

by Nina Smith

  “I wonder what’s more damaging, Preacher, a person who refuses to hide their differences, or a fist in the face?”

  “Gentlemen,” Peter said. “Please, let’s get back on topic.”

  Magda got up.

  “Where are you going?” John eyed her.

  “Bed. I can’t watch any more of this.” Magda left the room before he could argue.

  She went straight to her bedroom, locked the door and swallowed a pill from a stash in the closet. Then she buried her face in the pillow and tried to sleep.

  THURSDAY

  Magda sat on the kitchen table and drank vodka. The door was locked, even though John had gone out earlier. She was amazed he’d left her alone. She’d downed three pills since she got up two hours ago. She’d gone into the bathroom and looked at fresh bruises on top of fading bruises on her face. She was a mess. Of course she wouldn’t go anywhere, looking like this. She couldn’t face Kat. She didn’t dare go to Adam. She thought about Joseph’s black eye, and the mayor addressing the Congregation, and the burning Hells Bells Vodka poster. These people should all be put in jail. The whole thing was completely insane.

  She drained the last drop of vodka from her bottle and ditched it at the sink; the glass smashed.

  Magda swung her legs off the table. She unlocked the kitchen door and listened to the house. Silence greeted her. Good.

  She went to the front door and locked it. Preacher had a key, so she shoved the hall table up against it too. “Alright John,” she said to the empty house. “There’s no way you’re squeaky clean. What is it you do?”

  She started in the lounge room, but it was clean, of course, he wouldn’t leave anything in there; the kitchen was her domain, so that was no good either. She tentatively pushed at his bedroom door and found it unlocked.

  They’d never shared a room. Of course there’d been a fumbled coupling or two early in their marriage, but he was as repressed as all the other men who thought the sun shone out of Preacher’s rear end, and she had little use for men.

  She closed the door behind her. She’d never even come in here, not once in ten years. When John was away she preferred to pretend he didn’t exist. When he was home she still preferred to pretend he didn’t exist. The room was nothing out of the ordinary; he’d made the bed. The floor was neat and tidy, the curtains drawn. There was a cross on the wall.

  She pulled out the drawers in his bureau. Nothing there but neatly folded socks and underwear. God, could she have been forced to marry a less interesting man?

  Magda went to the built-in wardrobe. The doors slid open, same as hers, onto shelves and hanging space. She rifled through his clothes, searching for anything hidden at the back, before turning her attention to the tops of the shelves. She patted the area down with one hand and found a briefcase. She lifted it down, followed by two shoeboxes. Apparently that was it.

  She took the case and the boxes over to the bed. The first shoebox had photos in it. Their wedding photos. Charming. She’d worn a long white dress and a heavy veil to cover the bruises Preacher gave her when she tried to run away the night before. The veil had to come off after the vows, and then everyone had pointedly ignored her puffy eyes and split lip and told her she looked beautiful. The memory still made her want to slap people.

  There was a picture of John and Preacher outside some building. The two had taken a trip out of Hailstone once, years ago. Best week of her life. Then a bunch of people she didn’t recognise. An old woman. His mother, perhaps? He never spoke of his family. Groups of people in suits. They all looked like they belonged to the church, but she didn’t know the faces. A young girl. A middle-aged man. The young girl triggered a memory. Had she gone to school with her? Magda could remember a girl who looked like that who’d left the church, years and years ago, but a name eluded her. Maybe she should stop killing brain cells.

  She pushed the photos aside. The second box wasn’t much more help; just a bunch of keepsakes, the kind she’d expect a bearded old man to have, keys and school medallions and an old bullet.

  The briefcase wouldn’t open. Magda shoved the two shoeboxes back into their places and took it out into the kitchen, where she jimmied the lock open with a screwdriver she kept in the back of the drawer behind the spoons. She’d learned to break locks almost as soon as Preacher had taken to locking her in places as a kid.

  She lifted the lid on the briefcase. Interesting. He kept a laptop in there. Magda switched it on and waited for the operating system to load.

  Password. She scowled. He really did have something to hide. What would a man like John use as a password?

  God, she typed in, but it didn’t work. Neither did Jesus, or God is great. She typed in Satan, just for a change of pace, but that didn’t work either. Congregation of the Holy Bible was just as useless. Magda tried her own name, and Preacher’s, to no avail.

  Preacher McAllister, she wrote in, just because anything was worth a try. The screen blinked and the desktop loaded.

  “John McAllister, who’d have thought it?” she murmured. It kind of made sense. Why else would he have agreed to marry her ten years ago, if not to establish himself as Preacher’s successor?

  She brushed her fingers over the mouse pad to move the cursor to the documents folder. It took a moment to open up.

  Magda frowned at the list of files. They were all names, none of them names she knew. She opened one at random; Miranda Tyson.

  The file contained a head and shoulders shot of the same young girl as the photo in the shoebox. She was pretty, in a pale, serious kind of way, and wore a drab grey collar high around her neck. Miranda Tyson. Magda remembered her now. She’d been a lot like Joseph, a church teen who rebelled at every opportunity until her parents sent her away.

  So why did John have a file on her?

  Magda read down the page. The file listed her age as 27, which would be right. Condition: Drug Addict, insolent, it said.

  Then there were a whole lot of words Magda couldn’t for the life of her understand.

  Miranda has made great progress since undertaking the experimental program, the file said, right at the bottom of the page. Despite being one of the first subjects to undergo the treatment, and one of the most difficult, she no longer uses drugs of any kind. She is meek and obedient and praises the word of God. She has stayed on at the Centre as an assistant.

  Magda shuddered. Great. No doubt another one of Preacher’s little pet outreach projects, although it was odd he hadn’t based it in Hailstone.

  She read more files. Brian Page, 42, had been cured of alcoholism and Sarah Michaels, 34, of a problem with anger. Amanda Wales had gone in for promiscuity. Magda looked closer at the picture. “Amanda?” she murmured. The same Amanda who had failed so spectacularly to cure her of being a bad girl?

  Magda listened to the house for a moment; silence. She breathed a sigh of relief. All of the files she’d read so far said the people had stayed on as volunteers and assistants. Whatever this program was, it sounded like a one way ticket.

  She opened up another file. Jonah Sand, 18. His condition was listed as immoral lifestyle choice. Magda felt ill, but she clenched her teeth and read on.

  Jonah entered the program at the request of his parents, read the paragraph at the bottom of the page. He showed early promise under the ministry of the program’s foremost counsellor, John McAllister, but later showed signs of rebellion. A more intensive series of sessions was implemented, but Jonah could not be brought into corrective behaviour patterns. Counsellors were unable to prevent the suicide. Lawsuit pending.

  Under that, the death was dated as happening just a week and a half ago.

  Magda rubbed her head. The throbbing was back. Something here was really, really, off. John, a counsellor? And was Amanda a typical result of his counselling? How could she not know about this? Surely Preacher wouldn’t sanction something that pushed kids to suicide. Surely not.

  Magda shut down the file and put her head in her hands. Well, this was
something, but she didn’t know if it was enough. She wondered what exactly had driven Jonah Sand to suicide. It wasn’t hard to imagine. Her hands shook against her face.

  The house was still. Magda reached for the vodka, but the bottle was in pieces in the sink. She swallowed a pill instead. She took the laptop over to her house computer and swapped the network cords from the internet Preacher didn’t know she had to the laptop. There was no problem getting the machine onto the web; it was all set up.

  Magda pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes and thought about what she was about to do. She typed in a few search terms. Sex toys. Boobs. Bums. Male on male. She wished she had more vodka to numb the feeling that this time she was going too far, but she didn’t. She saved a few choice pictures to John’s folders.

  When she was happy she had enough pictures, she typed Jonah Sand into the search engine.

  A list of news articles came up. She scanned the first of them.

  Police in the eastern City of Gibson are investigating alleged abuse at a Christian outreach centre after the suicide of Jonah Sand,18, who was reportedly admitted to the Centre for controversial anti-gay therapy.

  Mr Sand jumped from the roof of the three storey building.

  The Centre, which has been operating for eight years at a property outside the city, is battling allegations of abuse from Jonah’s parents and some former clients. One former client, who refused to be named, claims she was manipulated by a counsellor into performing sex acts as part of her treatment.

  Police have temporarily closed the centre and are questioning current and former clients, along with staff.

  Centre management declined to comment.

  Magda pasted the contents of the article into Jonah’s file. Then she closed down the laptop, unplugged it from her modem and went and replaced it in the case. The motions seemed so ordinary they frightened her. How odd, to be frightened by the banal when you’d just found out your husband was responsible for a death. Why wasn’t he back there in Gibson, talking to the police? Had he run?

  She took the case into the lounge room and shoved it under the couch. She turned on the TV to distract herself, but the Mayor’s pudgy face on the news just disturbed her more. She was about to flip channels when his words caught her attention.

  “In a world first experiment, Hailstone City Council will consider by-laws to ban drinking in public places, al fresco bars, restaurants and other family friendly places,” Mr Georgiou said. “The city will also put higher rates on properties where alcohol is produced and charge a levy on all alcohol sales. The measures are designed to reduce growing alcohol-fuelled social problems in the city and make Hailstone the number one destination for families.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Magda turned the TV off. “This city’s going to hell.” She scowled at the blank screen. All this social experimentation was scaring the bejesus out of her.

  She sighed when John’s car pulled into the driveway. She moved the table away from the door, unlocked it and went back to the kitchen to clean the broken glass out of the sink. She put one of her pills on a saucer and crushed it with a knife. The last bottle of vodka was hidden under the sink; she poured a measure into a glass and took a swig.

  John walked in just as she emptied the last shards of broken glass into the bin. He sat at the table. “I’m glad to see you home,” he said.

  “Where else would I be?” she turned on the kettle to make two cups of chamomile tea.

  “I never know, with you.”

  The silence stretched out between them. Magda blocked his view of the cup with her body and emptied the powdered valium into the mug. She poured some of the vodka in there for good measure and added the rest to her own before setting the two cups down on the table.

  She sat facing him and put her chin on her hands. In ten years, she’d thoroughly avoided conversations with her husband, or even having a good, proper look at him. The beard had always seemed just a little creepy. The worn, pitted skin and the flaring nostrils made him look old. His hairline receded from the forehead and thinned even more on top. She tried to imagine him bullying a teenage boy enough to force him to suicide. Or mistreating the trust of a young girl and forcing her to sexual acts. Or fleeing from the police. Looking at him now, she couldn’t imagine him doing anything more dangerous than reading from his prayer book. But yesterday, when he’d hit her, that was a different matter. You’ll become the woman Preacher promised me when I agreed to marry you, he’d said. Was he planning to try his freaky counselling on her?

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” John took a sip from his tea.

  Magda widened her eyes to give the impression of innocence. “Like what?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “John, I was thinking about what you said yesterday,” she said.

  He nodded and avoided her eyes.

  “Maybe you were right. Maybe I haven’t made enough of an effort to be a good wife to you.”

  That took him by surprise. His eyebrows shot up.

  Magda took a sip of her tea. The vapour of the vodka soothed the faint throb in her head. “I just don’t know how,” she said. “The urge to be bad overwhelms me. When you go off and leave me alone I don’t know how to resist it. Please understand, John, I don’t want to be this way. I need your help.” She looked right at him with her best honest expression. If Preacher was right and God existed, she’d go to hell on the strength of the lies she’d just told alone, but doing this kind of thing was getting easier and easier. All she had to do was wing it.

  John had downed most of his tea and was looking pretty relaxed. He leaned across the table and clasped her fingers with the same big, rough hand he had used to smack her head into the wall yesterday. “Magdalene, you have no idea how it gladdens my heart to hear you talk like this. It’s the first truth I’ve ever heard from your mouth. You’ve taken the first step to God by admitting you have a problem.”

  She almost spoiled it by sniggering, but repressed the urge just in time. “John please tell me you can help me.”

  “I can help you.” He leaned closer. For the first time ever, he looked into her eyes without flinching. “You must put yourself in my hands completely. All of the tools I need to complete the process are elsewhere, but with the bond of husband and wife between us, I’m sure we can manage right here.”

  “Tools? What kind of tools?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about.”

  “But where are they, if not here? Is this why you go away?”

  He nodded. “I’ve never told you about what I do because you never seemed interested. I’ve been working for Preacher, Magdalene, perfecting the kind of outreach he wants to carry out in Hailstone.”

  “But that’s wonderful! When will it be in Hailstone?”

  “Soon, very soon.”

  Magda loosened her hand from his and tidied away the empty cups. “More tea?”

  “Yes, that was very nice,” he said.

  She hid a smile and made him a second cup of tea. No valium this time, but there was still a measure of vodka in the glass, which she added to the hot water. She placed the cup in front of him and busied herself wiping down benches. “Oh, I almost forgot, there was a phone call for you,” she said.

  “Oh?” he stretched out in his chair.

  “Yes, a policeman from somewhere called Gibson. He said he needed to talk to you about something. I told him you’d call back when you got home.” She watched her husband intently; he stiffened. His beard hairs almost stood on end. “I hope it’s nothing serious?”

  “No,” he said. “Just a little thing.”

  “He asked for our address, so I gave it to him.”

  The chair clattered backwards. John stood by the table and gripped it hard. “You did what?”

  “I thought it would be a good start to turning my life around, to always tell the truth to the police. Did I do wrong?”

  John grabbed her arm and pushed her back up against the fridge. Magda felt a moment
of naked fear; was he going to hit her again? Had her experiment gone too far?

  He looked hard into her face. “We need to start your treatment immediately,” he said. “Yes, immediately. And then you and I will go away from Hailstone and start a new life. Would you like that, Magdalene?”

  “But what will Preacher say?”

  “Don’t worry about Preacher. Come with me.” He steered her out of the kitchen and into the lounge room, where he all but pushed her onto the couch. He collapsed in the easy chair.

  Magda watched him carefully. The man should have no tolerance for alcohol, if he was everything Preacher thought he was. He rubbed his head. His eyes half-closed. Whatever he thought he was going to do to her wasn’t about to happen today.

  “Tell me about the process,” she said. “Is it dangerous?”

  He shook his head. “Not dangerous at all...unless you resist.”

  “Has anybody resisted before?” She leaned forward.

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t know he was going to be so difficult. The devil held him fast.” The last words slurred. He snored.

  Magda lost no time. She dragged the briefcase out from under the couch and set the laptop up on the coffee table. She typed in the password and dragged the table over in front of John.

  Then she fished in John’s shirt pocket, found his phone, tapped out a message to Preacher and replaced it in his pocket.

  She didn’t have long to wait after that. Preacher walked the short distance from his house to hers. When he reached the end of the driveway, Magda went and shook John awake.

  He opened bleary eyes. “Magdalene? What’s wrong with me?”

  “You fell asleep. Wake up now, Preacher’s here.”

  His confused look fell on the laptop. “What? Why?”

  “Oh, you said something about keeping him updated, I don’t know with what, and you got out this old thing. Then you fell asleep. I won’t interrupt you, I know it’s men’s business.” She patted him on the shoulder and went to greet Preacher at the door.

  “Magdalene.” Preacher looked her up and down.