by M. J. Kelly
His father opened his good eye and looked upward. “I’m sorry...bud.” His face had a blue tinge, and his breathing was a shallow wheeze. “Can’t...do it.” He grabbed Dig’s arm and met his eyes. “Listen,” he said in a weak, croaky voice. “The brewery...is not...what you think. If I go...you should...shut it down.”
“Forget work!” Dig stood over him. “Where do you keep the needle?”
“Tell Max...the deal...is off...no more...packages.”
“Shut up!” Dig screamed. “Where’s the bloody needle?”
“My...sock drawer.”
“Okay. I’ll be back.” His father nodded.
Dig sprinted up the remaining track at a breakneck pace, ducking and weaving through foliage at the side of path that ripped at his torso. When he reached the house, he bounded up the steps at the side of the building, through the back door and into the kitchen.
His mother stood at the kitchen counter, unpacking groceries. The radio played Frank Sinatra. She looked up, and her expression dropped.
“Dad’s in trouble,” Dig said, breathing hard. “We need to call an ambulance.”
She looked at him blankly. “What?”
“He was stung by a wasp...and is having trouble breathing.”
“He’s allergic!” she said in a high pitch.
“I know!” Dig ran past her into the hallway. “We need to find his Epipen!” At the end of the hall he turned into his parent’s bedroom.
His mother’s voice echoed down the corridor behind him. “—in his sock drawer.”
Dig skirted around the neatly-made bed and yanked open the top drawer of the dresser. The drawer pulled out completely and the contents fell to the floor.
He crouched and scrambled amongst the paired socks and underwear until he found what he was looking for—a thin, pen shaped object that had Epinephrine Auto-Injector written on the side. He grabbed it and scrambled back out of the room, striking his shin on the corner of the bed.
He passed his mother in the hall. She held her phone to her ear. Her eyebrows were drawn together. “Where is he?”
“Down the bush track, not far...” Dig bounded through the kitchen, out the back door and across the deck. His mother followed behind him, speaking to emergency services as she jogged.
His father lay on his back beneath the large gum, his face turned up to the sky. Dig was relieved to see that his chest was moving shallowly. He knelt beside him and fumbled with the needle.
“Oh Shaun!” his mother whimpered as she knelt on the other side. She held a bottle of water in a trembling hand, and lowered it to his mouth. The liquid bubbled between his lips, only to dribble away and run down his cheek.
Dig grabbed his father’s leg and positioned the Epipen over his thigh, then jammed down the catch, firing the needle into the muscle.
His father’s good eye opened and darted around. He met his wife’s gaze, and his breath laboured in his throat with a sickening constricted squeal; the words came out slow and punctuated. “I’m...sorry...guys.”
“Shaun!” His mother grasped his hand, her fingernails digging into the skin. “Come on now, breathe!” A curtain of her hair fell from its bun and hung over her face. Tears ran down her cheeks.
The wail of an ambulance approached in the distance, before filling the air, then shutting down altogether.
Dig ran the short distance up the track to see the ambulance screech to a stop outside the house. Two paramedics, a petite blonde woman and a big bald guy, leapt out of the vehicle, equipment in hand.
“This way!” Dig shouted. “Quick!” He led them down the track.
His mother was hunched over her husband when they arrived, cradling his head, panicked. “He’s stopped breathing!” The paramedics took over, starting CPR, and injecting further drugs into his arm.
Dig pulled his mother gently to her feet and led her a distance up the track. The CPR wasn’t something they needed to see. She fell to her rear, clutching the bottle of water to her forehead like a crucifix. “Oh please,” she whispered. “Please God.”
Dig sat beside her with an arm on her shoulder. Tears ran down his face, uncontrolled.
Above him, the cicadas sang uninterrupted in the trees. A bird with feathers of green and blue crossed the sky.
Eventually, the female paramedic approached them. “Mrs. Buckley?”
Dig’s mother looked up. Her eyes were red and wet.
“We’re sorry. But your husband isn’t responding to treatment. He had a severe allergic reaction, and there wasn’t enough time for the Epinephrine to arrest it.”
The energy drained from Dig’s body and he closed his eyes. This can’t be real, he thought.
But unfortunately it was. And even worse, it was just the start of the upheaval to come.
2
DIG SAT WITH SLUMPED SHOULDERS in the lounge room of the family home as an overhead fan pushed warm air down from the ceiling. His mother sat beside him, holding a handkerchief; her hair hung over her face in ragged strands. Dig’s grandfather paced on the opposite side of the room, his furry eyebrows knitted together as he mouthed words to himself.
A straight-backed policewoman wrote into a small notebook. Dig’s mother spoke to the woman between long pauses, during which she would squint and hold her handkerchief up to her mouth.
An engine whined outside the house, followed by a screech of rubber on asphalt. The screen door thumped open and Jake stood in the doorway, wearing shorts and a damp sports shirt. His cheeks were pink, and he stared wildly around the room.
“How the hell...?”
His mother opened her mouth to speak, then pressed her lips together as her face contorted into a new grimace.
Dig’s grandfather stepped toward Jake, holding out an open arm. “It was an accident.”
Jake’s eyebrows drew together. “That’s a fucking understatement.”
“An allergic reaction. Came out of nowhere.”
“Yeah right.” Jake glanced at Dig, then crouched beside his mother.
Dig’s head fell back to the couch, and his eyes fixed on a framed photo hanging skew on the opposite wall. It was a family shot, taken four years previously at his cousin’s wedding. In the photo, Dig’s parents stood with their two sons, arms around each other, catching a rare moment of family harmony. It was a moment that was gone, and could never be repeated.
Over the next week, friends and relatives arrived at the house with pitying looks on their faces, and presented the family with flowers and dishes of rubbery lasagne. Dig moved about the house like a zombie, nodding yes to most of the questions put to him as the preparations for the funeral began.
The nominated day arrived on a cloudy Tuesday morning. Dig found a barely-worn suit at the back of his cupboard, put it on, and walked out to the front driveway where his mother stood by the car. Jake sat in the driver’s seat, gazing vacantly ahead.
As Dig reached the vehicle a rapping sound echoed from across the driveway, and he turned to see a thin-faced man standing at the door to the brewery office. Two broad-shouldered men loitered further up the drive. The three men seemed to be of Indian descent, wearing dark suits and ties. The thin-faced man continued to knock loudly on the door.
Dig crossed the driveway. “Can I help you?”
The man took a step forward and smiled, revealing dark, deep-set eyes. His colleagues approached behind him—they looked like thugs that had just stepped away from the door of a nightclub.
“Hello,” the man said in an Indian accent. “We’re looking for Shaun Buckley. We have a meeting with him today.”
Dig glanced back toward his family and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry guys, but I’ve got some bad news. Shaun died this week in an accident.”
The man’s smile dropped from his face. “He...has died?”
“Yes.” Dig scratched at his ear. “It was pretty sudden. We tried to let everyone know but...obviously we must’ve missed a few.”
“Oh.” The men exchanged glances. “We’r
e sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah. It’s been a tough week.”
They stood in silence for a moment.
“Dig!” his brother shouted. “What's happening?”
“You go! I’ll take the other car.”
Jake frowned before backing the car out of the drive.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking,” the man said. “But is anyone handling your father’s business affairs now?”
“We hope to get things moving again next week. But at this stage the brewery’s shut down.”
The men glanced at each other again, then nodded. “Thank you.”
“No prob.” Dig took a few steps toward the car, then turned back. “Hey, if you want to go, the funeral’s on today...it’s at ten at St Mary’s church up the road.”
“Yes, we may attend. Your father was a good man.”
“Thanks. You’re all welcome.”
The man tipped his head in a small bow, then led his companions up the driveway to the street.
The small church swelled with people during the service. Light streamed through stained glass windows, and the smell of burning incense competed with the perfume of the pale blue flowers piled before the altar. His mother stood frail in a black dress.
The service was long, and Dig found it hard to concentrate. His father’s coffin, a glossy brown box with solid silver handles, was propped up front and centre in the church. Dig watched the coffin for a long time, his mind drifting, remembering the last time he had seen his father alive—sprawled on his back, struggling to breathe. Scared. Dying.
That’s the hardest part about death, he thought. Most of the time people go out of this life feeling scared or in pain—or most likely both. And there’s little we can do to avoid it.
At the conclusion of the service, they walked the coffin up the aisle and outside to the waiting hearse. The family stood with the congregation as the vehicle pulled into the street, heading for the crematorium. Everyone stood silent for a moment, then Dig’s grandfather cleared his throat.
“The family would like to thank everyone for coming,” he said from the top of the steps outside the church. “And we now invite everyone back to the house to have a drink in Shaun’s memory.”
Dig drove back to the house with his mother. They were first to arrive home, and as they reached the front door Dig noticed that it was hanging ajar. He stopped and frowned.
He exchanged a look with his mother, then gave the door a push. It caught against something heavy on the opposite side. Dig surveyed the drive behind him, then turned and pushed the door again, harder, forcing enough space between the door and jamb for him to squeeze into the front passage.
Inside the house, a black ceramic umbrella stand lay flat across the beige carpet, wedged behind the door. A mess of umbrellas were spread beside it, along with a chunk of jagged timber that contained the housing for the door lock. Dig looked back to the jamb and saw it had been smashed clean away from the frame.
Dig whispered to his mother. “Someone broke in.” She stiffened and dug through her purse for a phone.
Dig stepped further into the house. Beams of sunlight fell diagonally through the hallway windows, illuminating dancing clouds of dust. He tilted his head. A low hum and muffled clanking could be heard from inside.
He knelt and picked up a long umbrella with a solid wooden handle, and brandished it loosely behind him like a baseball bat, his stomach knotting as he tiptoed across the passage toward the kitchen doorway. When he reached the opening he swallowed, then moved through quickly—arms up, ready to strike.
The room was a mess. Cupboards lay open with their contents spewed on the floor. Cushions from the couch were piled against the wall. The fridge freezer door was ajar, and water dripped from it to form a wide, wet puddle on the tiles. But the room was otherwise empty; Dig allowed himself to breathe.
The noise remained, and louder now, a clattering rumble combined with a tinkling of shattered glass. It was the sound of breakage and destruction, and it was coming from the back of the house, toward the bedrooms. Dig’s grip on the umbrella tightened until his knuckles turned white.
He stepped through the kitchen with his stomach churning. As he reached the counter he spotted a timber block brimming with knife handles. He placed the umbrella carefully on the bench, and selected the largest knife of the collection—with a ceramic handle, wide steel blade and pointed tip. He held it up with a shaking hand, took another breath, and stepped into the hallway that led to the back of the house.
As he entered the passage, Dig stopped and listened. The crashing, crunching sound echoed from the far end of the hall, behind the closed laundry door. His hands were clammy, and he wiped them on his shirt before he tiptoed forward.
As he passed the open doors of the three bedrooms he saw further evidence of destruction: wardrobes thrown open; boxes of shoes tipped out on bedspreads; side drawers emptied onto the carpet; and mattresses pulled up and dumped against the wall.
He reached the end of the hallway and stood before the laundry door, where the noise was loud and immediate. Dig clenched his teeth, then twisted the handle and flung the door open. He stepped into the room, eyes wide.
A heavy, humid heat billowed into his face. The room was covered in white tile, and a washing machine, dryer and sink lined up along one wall. Natural light streamed through a glass door on the opposite side, leading to the backyard. Dig scanned the room—ready to shout, ready to fight, ready to run.
But nobody was there. The room was empty. He exhaled.
Above his head, square timber cupboards lay open; at his feet, bottles of bleach lay strewn across the tile. Though the room was empty, the sound remained—a loud clunking and tinkling through a resonant hum. He glanced down and saw the dryer was rumbling by his knees. It was a front loading model, and through the glass viewer something churned in the vortex of the internal tumbler.
Dig looked back down the empty hallway, blinking rapidly, then squatted in front of the dryer. He examined the buttons on the machine and pressed the catch on the door. It popped open and the power cut out, and the contents settled to the bottom of the tumbler drum with a final clatter and crash of glass. Smoke billowed from the opening with a stench of burnt paper and ammonia.
Dig prodded the door further open with one finger, and leaned in for a closer inspection. Stuck in the lower corners of the tumbler baffles were piles of splintered black timber and broken glass. Dig squinted closer and saw that nestled amongst the shards was a darkened rectangle of paper. He reached inside and gingerly lifted it out by one corner. The paper was thick and warm, and sticky to touch, and after he extracted the curled rectangle from the machine he balanced it in the centre of his palm.
Its edges were dark and burnt, but the shadowy silhouettes of four people could be made out on the square. Dig recognised it as a family photograph—the same family photograph that up until this morning had resided in the middle of the lounge room wall.
Dig stared at the picture, then glanced at the shards of timber and glass in the dryer. A shiver of unease rippled through his spine.
“Dig? Are you here?” It was his brother’s voice.
“In the laundry.”
Jake stood in the doorway and his eyes darted around the room. His mother appeared behind him.
“What kind of sick bastard breaks into a house while people are at a funeral?” Jake said.
“A smart one,” Dig said. “You can be sure that nobody’s home.” He passed the photo to Jake.
Jake frowned. “Is that from the lounge?”
Dig nodded. “I found it cooking in the clothes dryer. The whole thing was in there, frame and all, smashed to bits.”
Jake swore under his breath and shook his head. “If I ever catch who did this, I’m going to rip their head off.”
Outside, the wail of a police siren approached from the distance. His mother took the photo from Jake and studied it. “We need to forget this for now,” she said. “I’ll deal with
the police. You guys help the people arriving for the wake. We can send everyone out to the back deck.” She looked them both in the eye. “And no jealous fighting between you boys today either.”
The brothers glanced at each other, then nodded.
3
AS PEOPLE ARRIVED FOR THE WAKE, they presented Dig with cards and flowers. The back deck filled shoulder-to-shoulder, and the hum of conversation filled the air. His mother had prepared tables of wilting sandwiches and cubed cheese. Tubs of Buckley’s Chance lay in beds of ice at their feet.
Jake stood at the railing with two of Dig’s older cousins—solid, rugby-playing guys with crewcuts and broad shoulders. They rationed out large helpings from a bottle of whisky.
Dig did his best to socialise. “It was a beautiful service,” said his grey-haired neighbour as he fiddled with the label of his beer.
“Yes, very moving,” said the neighbour’s wife beside him.
Dig nodded and tried to muster a smile, but his mind was elsewhere. He couldn’t stop thinking about the break-in. The house had been full of people that morning—dressing for the funeral and preparing for the wake—then as they stood in the church, a stranger had ransacked through their personal belongings with no regard for sentiment or pity.
“Everyone.” Dig’s grandfather startled him from his thoughts. He stood at the head of the deck, his face etched with wrinkles. “I’d like to say a few words.” The conversation dropped to a murmur.
“First, thanks everyone for coming. It means a lot to see you here. The last week has been difficult to say the least, and the family thanks you for your support.” He pursed his lips. “For Shaun to be taken from us in such a sudden and tragic way is...an unthinkable heartbreak.” He blinked rapidly and dropped his head before continuing.
“Shaun was a great man. Fiercely loyal to his family, a great father, a trusted friend, and a man who had the courage to follow his passions.” He lifted a bottle of beer from a tub beside his feet. “Shaun started his life as a pretty average bricklayer, but during that time the back shed was always full of sacks of malt and hops, and he’d work the mash tun long into the night.” Dig’s neighbour smiled and nodded.
