by Gee, Maurice
‘Where’d you get to, bro? I been missing you,’ David said. Fucking useless, he thought. God help us if the Chinese come down. He saw him lying in his grave with his knees drawn up. One shot under the back of his skull. The ammunition pressed on the inside of his thigh, where Freda liked to slide her fingers as he drove. His cock made a quarter turn at the memory, and he shook himself and made it stop; talked with the soldier, whatever words came into his head. He got up and walked out and sat in the wagon. Grinned at Alan when he followed.
‘You look worried, colonel. You got something you want to say?’
‘Was that you smoking up there in the pines?’
David stubbed his cigarette out and flicked the butt away. His mouth opened, flapping like old Tugboat Charlie’s in there. ‘Not me, mate. You got the wrong man. Enjoy the grapes.’
He drove into Nelson and pulled up at the flat, finishing the first loop of his day. He peeled off his T-shirt and had a shower, put on clean clothes for the afternoon. Light trousers, a sports shirt, proper shoes. He would get back in the others – working clothes – when it was time.
At half past one he went out for a pub lunch and a beer. He left the rifle rolled up in the quilt in his car and the ammunition in the pocket of his jeans. He did not want to handle them again until he used them. Back from the pub, he turned on the TV and watched the first Super Ten match of the season, but grew angry at the kicking for position and the mauls that never went anywhere. There should have been running in the backs and driving play. It made him feel blunted, and suddenly he was tired. He turned the game off and lay on his bed and went to sleep; and woke as if the day had started again and everything was laid out for him to do.
He changed into his jeans and T-shirt and sneakers; used the toilet, washed his hands and brushed his teeth. He wet his hair with water and combed it left to right across his bald spot. In the car he put the ammunition in the glove box, keeping things neat, keeping clean. He put his reefer jacket on the seat. Fitted his baseball cap on his head. Then he drove out to Tahuna and bought himself a Coke and a box of fried chicken – from the Colonel: he laughed. Then stopped laughing. From now on he was serious.
He did not want food smells in the car so he ate sitting on a bench, looking across the park at the tennis courts, where girls ran and hit, ran and hit. He heard the distant pock of balls, and cries of children in the playground by the beach. He would have to cross a barrier to go where they were, where people were, and they to reach the place where he was. He could see a shimmering between, holding him single and pointed on his way.
He put the drink can and the chicken box in a rubbish tin. As he drove westwards he saw a sunset starting, pink and green, not messed with clouds. There was no danger of rain but he hoped that it would rain tomorrow and settle Freda and the soldier heavy in their graves.
The space where he had parked the night before was filled by a caravan. He did not like that. It made a little misstep in his progress. He fitted the Silverado under trees, then climbed on yesterday’s path and reached the road. A piece of grit thrown by a car wheel stung his mouth. He tasted blood. That’s okay, he thought, I’m different. He crossed the road and climbed in the crotches of the trees. Without the binoculars it was easy. He reached the slip and crossed it and crawled beneath the scrub. The darkness of the pine grove came down on his face. He passed through, conscious of Freda and the soldier on the other side. He could taste them, lumpy in his mouth. His anger became jagged and unsteady. Yet his base of calmness remained. He knew how to do it, where to go.
The pickers and the packers were gone. A truck loaded with cartons of apples went out past the cottage. Fat Heather clanged and racketed. She locked the shed and went to the house and straight into the sunroom, where she stooped over the bed. Kissing the old man? He could not see.
A little mound of cigarette butts shone at his feet. He knelt and covered them with pine needles, tramped them flat – taking control of the soldier, changing a part of his memory. He waited for him and Freda to appear. The cottage had a hollow look, a tinny emptiness. They were not in there. He sat down and watched the house.
They did not come. He felt a thickness growing in his chest; felt something in his mind wrench and hurt. He got up and walked to the house, approaching from the back where it was blind. He went silently along the wall and looked through the high window in the back of the garage. Waited while his eyes adjusted to the dark.
The car wasn’t there. She was still gone.
He crept along the side of the garage and looked in the yard. Empty too; no Camry. He felt a cry rising in his throat, breaking past the rigid thickness there. But kept it down. Wait on. Wait on. They had to come back. She had to bring the old man’s Rover back. They wouldn’t have taken off for long in different cars.
He retreated to the apple trees and climbed to the pine grove, where he tried to pull things back in place. It had not occurred to him that they would not eat in the cottage – they had done it once, it was established. That was when he would go down the hill for his car. He would leave it in the trees beside the gate and wait for them with the rifle when they shifted to the house. March them to the wagon with the gun in Freda’s back. Make the soldier drive to the forest.
It had been like something already done. Now the pieces lay in a heap and he could not fit them into place.
Get them when they drove up? What if they did not arrive together? He needed them side by side so he could hold the soldier still by keeping the gun on Freda. But if it happened in the yard the fat girl in the house would hear. Maybe he should take the fat girl too. But no, no, she was not in this.
He ground out a cigarette he did not remember lighting and raised his face to the sky. One thing was clear: he would do it. It would kill him to stop now. He felt the lumpy thing in his chest twist and almost fracture at the thought.
Shoot them all! Shoot everyone! It might have to be, have to be that. It would please him to shoot his father. But this was not for pleasure. This was to make things straight. So it had to be just the two. Keep it clean.
Gradually his easiness returned. When the time came he would know what to do. It would happen as simply as it had in the house when he found the gun; when just thinking seemed to make it follow. One by one, together, here or there, Freda and the soldier were delivered to him.
He watched the sunset fade. Darkness came down the curve of the sky. Fat Heather fed the old man. She half closed the curtains in the sunroom and turned out the light, then sat in the lounge watching TV. It was like watching TV himself – the slow part before the good part came.
The Rover cruised along the drive just before ten o’clock. It stopped in the yard and he heard Freda open the garage door. The soldier’s car appeared. He had stopped to close the gate. Freda climbed to the patio as though swimming up from the trees. He saw an earring flash, saw her teeth gleam. Then everything dimmed as the Camry’s lights went out. The soldier climbed the steps and stood facing her. She put her hand on his chest and seemed to push him away. What were they saying? I should be down there, David thought.
They went into the house but left the doors wide. Fat Heather zapped the TV and talked with them, then the soldier went out of sight. A moment later he stepped on to the patio. Freda followed. What was this? She kissed him, rising on her toes. For a moment David thought they would go down the steps together and sleep in the cottage to be out of fat Heather’s way – and that would make it easy, he could get them with no trouble. But the soldier went alone and Freda waited in the door and waved. It blunted David again; another misstep. Then he adjusted. So they were having a night off. He would get Freda from the house, get her first, and use her to pull the soldier out of the cottage. It was easy, just as easy. A picture of it happening formed in his mind.
Freda walked through the lounge and vanished. Heather watched more television. She switched the set off and locked the doors, pulled the curtains tight and was gone too. David waited. If I was that dumb soldier, he tho
ught, I’d come up here looking with a torch. He imagined it and was ready for it – sinking back in the trees while the soldier prowled. I could garotte him, he thought, and felt a wire in his hands, pulled tight. But the cottage was dark. And the house was dark. He stood up. Then he heard a cry or cough and thought it was a possum. It came again and he pinpointed it in the house. He went down from the pines and approached through the apple trees. The lounge light went on, shining pink through curtains, then the night-light in the sunroom. Close up now, he saw fat Heather at his father’s bed. The noise must have been the old man calling. He could not see what was going on, just her back, but she was doing something to him – and he had it: helping him pee. David almost laughed. What a fucking comedy. Heather went away with the bottle held in a towel, and the toilet flushed at the bedroom end of the house. She turned the lounge light off as she came back, and closed the sunroom door – and what was happening now? She took off her dressing gown, and this time a grunt got out of him and only wind rising in the trees made it safe. She climbed into bed with his father. Her naked arm came up and turned out the light.
Jesus, David thought, what’s going on? He was moved aside from his course and tried to move back – but she was all right, not fat at all but kind of thick, and nipples like jaffas and tits like a porno star. She could be useful in bed – and the old man was getting it. Ninety-one and he was getting it. He wondered if Heather had found a way of killing him.
Later, he thought, I’ll sort it out later.
He retreated through the trees, made a wide circle of the house, saw Freda’s window dark, and saw it would be easier getting her out now, with Heather at the other end of the house. He passed the cottage, padding in the grass, opened the gate and left it ready, and walked down the road, keeping near the bank so he could step into the scrub if traffic came.
A few lights were on in the camp. A quiet party was going by a fire on the beach. He drove out and turned up the hill; eased in at the orchard gate and backed between two trees. The wagon was almost silent, it whispered in the grass.
He reached back for the rifle and unwrapped it on his knee. Took the ammunition from the glovebox, laid a round in the breech and pushed the bolt home. The old .22 was ready. Single shot, but he could reload in the time it took to move half a dozen steps. He threw the quilt into the back and climbed out; put his reefer jacket on; got the torch from the glovebox; left the car door open to avoid making noise. He slid the ammunition into his pocket and walked two bends on the drive until the cottage came into sight. Then he angled off into the trees. Freda first. March her to the cottage. Use her to get the soldier out.
He circled to the side of the house where the bedrooms were, stopping several times as apples broke under his feet. He smelt the sour-sweet smell he had grown up with. The house was still. Amazing how still a house could be, and how all together it was, when inside the rooms broke it down into bits. He tried to see the rooms – and saw them. Saw this side of the house cut off from the other. Freda sleeping.
His torch picked out the back steps. The green-painted door. The wash-house window open two notches, as he had seen it in the morning when he went by to the garage. He put the torch in his pocket. Lifted the catch and let it down; opened the window wide; shifted a cake of dried-out soap from the sill. He leaned in and used the torch again. The key was there, in the lock, where it had to be. He changed the torch to his other hand and turned the key at full stretch, fingers straining. It slipped a half turn with no noise – a click at the end. Good on you, fat girl, he thought. She kept things oiled.
He left the door open, setting it against the wall to keep it from slamming in the wind, which was stronger now. He relatched the window. The hall was dark. He used the torch again, left-handed, keeping the rifle in the crook of his arm. Passed an open door, flashed in the torch and saw an empty bed that must be Heather’s. He arrived at Freda’s door. It was like the passage into a cave. He opened it and drew his breath, smelling her. He stepped in and shut the door behind him. Heard her sit up in the bed. She spoke.
‘Alan? I heard you. Are you sure?’
He grinned. He liked it. He loved it. ‘It isn’t Alan, Freddie. It’s your husband here.’
He heard her squeak, and shone the torch on her, saw her hand go up to shield her eyes.
‘David?’
‘Yeah, it’s me. I dropped in to have a talk with you.’ Then he wanted to change his way again and keep talk out – just move her and make the parts happen as he had seen. ‘Don’t yell out,’ he said, and moved the torch from her, ran the beam up and down his rifle. ‘As sure as Christ I’ll shoot you if you make any noise. Get out of bed.’
‘David –’
‘You and me are going outside. Get up. Move.’
Open-mouthed, gasping, she put her feet on the floor. He almost stepped up and clubbed her then – loathed her white skin, her nakedness.
‘Put your dressing gown on.’
Standing, she obeyed.
‘And your sandals.’
She slid them on without sitting down. She held herself upright with a hand on the wall. He saw her earrings on the bedside table and scooped them up and put them in his pocket. He opened the door and pushed her with the muzzle of the gun into the hall. Saw her decide to bolt and swept the arm with the torch hard around her waist. ‘Don’t, Freda. This is a gun. You run and you’re dead.’
‘Where …’ she said, ‘where …’
‘Outside.’ He wiped the arm that had touched her on his jacket. A smell of sex was on her as though she had been doing it to herself. He pushed her ahead of him through the wash-house and out the door. The wind hit his face and freshened him. He prodded her with the rifle into the trees.
‘David,’ she said.
‘Shut up.’
‘You can’t do this. This isn’t the way.’
She stepped fast ahead and turned to face him. He almost shot her then. The trigger moved. ‘Silly bitch,’ he said.
‘David –’
‘We’re going where we can have a talk.’ He said it without thinking. It was in the plan. Keep her from freaking out, keep the bitch hoping. She must have let some tears go with fright in the house because they had made tracks on her face. But now he saw her nerve coming back and saw that she would run at him and grab for the gun. He stepped at her, and jabbed the muzzle hard between her breasts. She gave a glassy cry and fell back; was held in the branches of a tree.
‘I’ll shoot you. By Christ I will.’
‘David. Please. Let me go. I haven’t done anything.’ She moved at him again.
‘Stay still.’ He saw he had to change things. Both of them together would be too much. A new set of pictures slid into place: Freda in the car, in the forest, where he put the gun under the back of her skull and pulled the trigger. Then back for the soldier. The soldier looking at her in her grave. It was good. It was the way.
‘We’re going somewhere to have a talk,’ he said.
‘Put the gun away, David.’ Her voice had a wobble. Her eyes were leaking again and her nose had started to run. A dark patch of blood showed where the muzzle had skinned her chest.
‘Turn around. Go that way. I won’t hurt you. You needn’t be scared.’
He walked her through the trees to the Silverado and made her climb in on the passenger’s side and scramble across to the driver’s seat.
‘Stop there. You go out that door and you’re dead.’ He liked every word he spoke. They came as if he had rehearsed them. He handed her the keys. ‘You always wanted to drive. You can drive now.’
‘Where are … where …’
‘Just down the road a bit. Don’t be scared, Freda. It’s all right.’
‘You’re going to shoot me.’
‘No I’m not. We’re going to talk, that’s all. We’ve got some things to sort out. Start the car.’
‘I can’t … can’t reach.’
‘Come on, Freda, adjust the seat.’
She reached down, f
ound the knob, managed to slide forward. She sat under the wheel like a child. He gave her a nudge with the gun.
‘Now the keys. Don’t go looking at the cottage. That feller’s not going to help.’
She fumbled the key in and started the engine.
‘Go out on the road. And keep it quiet. Okay. Close the door. Soft, don’t slam it. Keep your hand away from the horn.’
He pulled his own door shut.
‘Now the lights.’
They drove down the road and through Tasman.
‘Faster,’ he said. ‘We’re not going to a funeral.’
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘A place I’ve got, where we can talk. And shut up, Freda, don’t talk now, I don’t want to hear you.’
They drove down the Moutere. Once he said, ‘Dip your lights.’ That was all. He watched her. His back was to the door and the muzzle of the gun touched her hip. She took one hand off the wheel and wiped her arm across her face. It came away smeared with snot and tears. He felt a deep revulsion as it gleamed, and he reached out and jerked the arm of her dressing gown to cover it. He had loved her and she was nothing.
In the dirt road to the forest she started to moan.
‘Shut up,’ he said. The closer they got, the calmer he became. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. ‘ One shot was all. ‘Slow down. Turn here.’
She stopped the car with its nose in the forestry road. ‘I’m not. I’m not going in there.’
‘Yes you are.’
‘David –’
‘All we’re going to do is talk. I don’t want to hurt you, Freda.’
‘No –’
‘Just drive. Drive.’
She went in as far as the firebreak.
‘In there.’
‘No, David.’
He reached across and turned the engine off. ‘Get out, then.’
