The Mary Smokes Boys

by Patrick Holland

  “ Why are you following me? You’re making yourself ridiculous, you know. There are plenty of other girls around. You don’t have to come chasing me like an old dog.”

  Then she pursed up her little face and cried and could not be tough or proud or dignified anymore. She reached for his hand.

  “Come on then.”

  They went out onto the highway and walked to her car.

  AT HOME IRENE was asleep at the table with her head on her arms. She must have been very tired as she did not wake when Grey came in. It was dark but the embers in the stove glowed and he stood still and stared at her sleeping face. The night before, the mere sight of her was enough to pull his chest tight like a drum and make his insides hollow. But lying here now … he told himself she was just a girl, his sister, but a girl like any other. He noted her long greasy hair, pallid skin and stick thin arms … the tears that stained her cheek. These were capable of breaking his heart if he let them. Why, he wondered, have I only ever loved the small, the weak, the estranged: his worthless father, his suffering mother? Perhaps that was unnatural–one of those things he must change. And he felt he could change it. His heart had already become easier. Before it had burned with dark fires that promised neither light nor warmth and never let him rest.

  He wondered if she had waited up for him tonight. Perhaps she had waited to tell him the thing that until very recently he had most wanted to know. The thing he had made so tremendous for her. It could wait now, he thought.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear while she slept. How I must have wounded her heart, he thought. How I might have–He dared not think. He felt pressure leaking out of him like fluid draining from an infection.

  He went to the sink and ran a glass of water and went to his bedroom without waking her.

  For the first time in months he did not dream of his mother or his sister: those dreams without words that haunted his nights and left an uncharitable ocean residing in his heart. He was amazed at how tired he was. So tired he thought he might shut his eyes and never wake, at least not for the longest time.

  THE BLACK MAN ECCLESTON HAD MET IN THE BAR PULLED off the highway ahead of him and pointed down a dirt road. Eccleston got out of his truck and walked to the black man’s window.

  “Half a mile down. Over the creek.”

  Eccleston nodded. Then the black man drove off.

  He waited on the side of the highway and smoked while the night deepened.

  He rolled down the dirt road in the dark, idling when he could and without headlights.

  He crossed the dry creek on foot and stood in a gully beside the fenceline. Three hundred yards distant were horses. He crawled through the fence and walked across the flat. The horses stirred. He got close enough to see the smoke of their nostrils, close enough to see the smoky-black thoroughbred colt standing above a white mare.

  He whispered under his breath, “Damn it, Grey.”

  He drove back to the highway hotel where he was staying and dialled the operator and asked for August Tanner of Mary Smokes.

  “I know where your horse is.”

  Tanner spat down the phone.

  “I knew it. You filthy black son of a whore–”

  “Shut up, old man. I can get him to you in two days.”

  “Bring him tonight or there’s trouble.”

  “There’ll be no trouble. You listen. There’ll be no trouble. You’ll have your horse in two days.”

  “Get him here by tomorrow.”

  “I can’t. I need another man.”

  “You bring him tomorrow.” Tanner’s voice trembled.

  “What’s wrong, old man?”

  There was no answer but Tanner’s troubled breath.

  “ What’s wrong?”

  “There’s a boy been hired.”

  “What?”

  “By tomorrow night it’ll be too late. That’s all I can say …’ But Tanner stammered on. “There were signs, reasons, that made me reckon it was you and North. Then my client started puttin the screws on me. He knew I wasn’t tellin him everything I knew.”

  “What boy’s hired?”

  “My client’s picked him out. My client’s comin round tomorrow night. I had to be seen to be doin somethin, Eccleston. You pushed me too far.” The old man sounded close to tears.

  “You damn fool, Tanner. Call him off.”

  “You don’t understand. I’ve held him off this long–held him off as long as I could. But I don’t know where he is. I don’t even know his name. You bring me that horse, so I can ring my client and promise him he can come round and see him tomorrow. He alone’d be able to call the boy off now.”

  “I’ve seen the horse. I saw it tonight. I can tell you where to find it. And I can get it for you the day after tomorrow. Ring your bloke with that. Be reasonable, you bastard.”

  “The men I’m dealin with aren’t reasonable, Eccleston. This isn’t a reasonable world. Just cause it’s in one place tonight, that horse might be gone by tomorrow mornin, gone without a trace. You should know that.” Tanner paused. “I’m glad I got this chance to warn you … But the boy… I’ll make sure of it … he won’t–”

  “You don’t know what the hell he’ll do.”

  Eccleston slammed down the receiver. He dialled the North house but there was no answer.

  He drove back down the highway, back down the dirt road. He hid the truck as best he could in the trees. He reckoned this was the only road out of here. He pulled dry stick and logs up over the road at a gully between the creek and his truck and doused them with fuel.

  He took his pliers and a halter from behind the seat and cut the fence at two posts and threw fifty feet of barb on the unlit bonfire in the gully and walked to the back of the paddock where the horses were. He checked the wind and poured petrol after his steps until his jerry can was half-empty and poured the rest along the creek and he threw the can into the bed.

  On the other side of the creek was the house. One blue bug light swung on the veranda in the rising west wind.

  He squatted on one knee and whistled and the horse’s ears pricked. He clicked his tongue and whistled as quietly as he might and looked in the colt’s eyes and then looked away, and the colt came. Eccleston shifted close enough to stand and get the halter over the colt’s head. “You remember me,” he said. But he stood on the lead rein and tripped and the horse spooked and squealed and the lights came on in the house behind the creek and men’s voices shouted into the night. He kept hold of the horse. He wrapped the rope around his elbow and hand and pulled the horse toward the road and heard an engine and closed his eyes. The car would come around on the road but men might walk across from the creek. He wrapped the rope around his hand again and knelt in the grass and struck a match and lit where he had poured the petrol. The dry grass caught and the fire began to run in an arc that would shut the creek off to men on foot. He threw another match when he was halfway across the paddock and another at the fence. He dropped his cigarette lighter into the pile of deadwood, wire and brush that he had blocked the road with. He heard a man’s voice cursing down on the creek and then the crack of a rifle shot. The colt was spooked by the shot and by the fire and tried to pull free, but the rope was wrapped twice around Eccleston’s hand and elbow now, and his arm would break before he let go. The car skidded just the other side of the fire on the road. He swore at himself for not having dropped the ramp of the truck. If only the ramp was down and the engine running; if only there was a driver at the wheel to press the accelerator to the floor when he loaded the horse and flung himself after it. But that was a foolish dream. He was all alone.

  A man’s voice swore and told him to stop where he was. He was thinking if he could just pull the ramp down and load the horse he would be safe when another rifle shot cracked the air and he felt a thump in his chest like a horse’s kick and fell on his back and put his hand on his chest and he could not believe there was so much blood. He could see the horse shivering at the edge of the fire, th
e rope dragging on the ground. He went to get up and re-catch the colt and realized he could not move, or perhaps he was too tired to, for he did not feel any pain. Then the horse was gone and even the fire and the men’s voices were gone and there were only the stars and the starlight, roaring like a river in flood above him …

  THE MEN DRAGGED the body further along the gully into a ditch in the dry bank of the watercourse that was the farthest western stream that ran into a little-visited creek in the Brisbane Valley called Mary Smokes. There was no water in the land now and only the blood of the unknown half-caste who had tried to steal their horse trickled in rivulets into the bed.

  IX

  TANNER SAT AT HIS KITCHEN TABLE THE NEXT DAY LOOKING out the window at the long driveway and the road. Watching each vehicle to see if it was a bodytruck or one of the cars he knew.

  Dusk settled upon the country and vehicles’ headlights blinked on and he watched the headlights draw along the road then flash past his turn-off.

  “They’re not coming,” said the slick-haired, leather-coated man who sat across from him. “You said by nightfall.”

  “It’s only just nightfall.”

  “No one’s coming.”

  Tanner swore under his breath. If Eccleston would ring again … Now the client was in the house, a phone call might count for something.

  But there was no call. And there was no truck.

  “You said yourself these boys had messed you about in the past. The black boy probably lied. I’ve never know one that told the truth more than one time in three. They’re born liars. It’s in their blood. You’ve been taken for a fool. And what’s worse, I have too. No one crosses me, August. Give me the money.”

  Tanner spat in to a handkerchief. He took his wallet out of a drawer and took out a hundred-dollar note and thought his trembling hand looked older than it ever had. He eyed the slick-haired man over the table. He put the note down but kept it under his hand.

  The man began dialling on his mobile phone.

  “We’ll teach them a lesson. Make them keen to get us that horse.”

  “Who are you callin?”

  “The boy I told you about. He works at the local supermarket. He’s just got outta Borallon. I’ve got a friend who gives me the names of boys like him just as soon as they get out.”

  “What was he in for?”

  The slick-haired man shrugged.

  “Something sufficient to put him there. Don’t worry. We’ll teach the bastards a lesson, all right.”

  “They’re not in town,” said Tanner.

  “The North boy is. He was at a dance here last night.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve had this Borallon kid tracking them for a while now, just in case he was needed.”

  The man took his phone onto the veranda, spoke for a few minutes and then returned.

  “The money.”

  Tanner pushed the note across the table.

  “Can’t I see this bastard?’ said Tanner. “To speak to him?”

  “It’s best he doesn’t see you and you don’t see him.”

  The man took the money. “I’ll put this in a mailbox up the road toward town. Can you think of a good one?”

  “Frank Bertolotti’s,” Tanner said. “He’s never home. It’s a twenty-gallon drum. Easy to pick out. Half a mile north of here.”

  The slick-haired man nodded and smiled. Then the man’s eyes became less friendly. “Don’t mention this business to anyone, August. And whatever you do, don’t mention my name.”

  Tanner nodded.

  “Don’t worry, August. The boy’s under orders. He’ll behave.”

  The man left and Tanner stood up to boil water for tea. His eyes travelled between the headlights on the road and the place where the hundred-dollar note had sat on the table in the darkening room.

  GREY ROSE BEFORE Irene that morning and visited Vanessa at the cousin’s house where she had stayed the night. Now she was driving back to prepare their move to the city. She wondered what her parents would say about her splitting with her fiancé after only a fortnight. “They’ll hate it,” she told Grey. “But they know me.” She laughed and shook her head. She ended by making Grey promise he would come back with her. “At the end of the month,” he said. And this time he meant it.

  It was after three but he did not want to go home yet. He walked into town and sat long at the café over black tea, watching winter-dry and dirty Banjalang Street beneath an ashen sky, watching the lives of others while his own was suspended between Mary Smokes and what lay ahead. He stayed at the café until five o’clock. He thought of the boys and of all the evenings, no different in shape to this one, that they had spent and lost.

  A few more people than usual were in town this evening for Christmas in July: tourists who already looked bored and wondered why they had come.

  Grey decided not to attend the party that night. He had seen it many times before and his interest was all gone. He did not drive home or go to collect Irene from the restaurant. He had troubled her enough. He walked over the old railway tracks at the back of town to Mary Smokes Creek. He sat on the bank and watched rain spit into stagnant pools. A shaft of rose-coloured light came through a break in the cloud and lit a paddock where horses picked through winter clover. Then the light drained out of the day. A cold wind blew out of the western plains and drove a rack of clouds before it and he stood up and stared across the grass to the southeast and in that distance he saw two white buildings, formless and indecipherable, and he heard the faint dull roar of the highway, and all at once he was visited by the feeling that Eccleston and Irene were in trouble. Perhaps the kind that could not be handled alone. He reasoned the feeling could not be truth, yet it stayed with him. He spoke to Irene as though in prayer, as though she might truly be able to hear him. I can’t walk you tonight. Run home. Run straight home and don’t stop. As though ruin was waiting somewhere back there on the road, where she herself might be waiting for him now, waiting for him to come and walk her back to the house as he had done so many times before. He ran back to his truck where it was parked at Vanessa’s cousin’s. He drove south on the highway in the twilight. His headlights lit the boy on the side of the road.

  THE WIND MADE waves in the long yellow grass on the roadside. The sun was almost gone and a mist of rain was settling in. She had been waiting for her brother to come and collect her from the Chinese restaurant. She had started walking home. At a distance the two trucks looked alike, so she stopped and walked toward the vehicle that followed her. She had been ready to tell him that she knew he would not forget her.

  The blond, stubble-bearded boy told her to get in. Now she remembered where she had seen him: unpacking boxes at the back of the supermarket on the highway when she went there with Amy and Minh Quy.

  She shook her head.

  “I’m goin to your house. I’ve got to see your brother. Get in.”

  She turned and ran along the highway. The boy followed her in the truck. She had made it almost to the gravel of her drive. The car skidded off the side of the road into the grass and the boy leapt out and grabbed her by the hair.

  “Where’s your brother, pretty?”

  She shook her head. He did not ask again. He slapped her face hard and threw her down in the grass. She scratched at him. Blood from his cheek dripped onto her face. A look of animal fury came into the boy’s eyes. He could not bear her beauty and the insult. He put a knife to her throat and told her to be quiet. She screamed and when he covered her mouth and leant to kiss her neck she bit his cheek.

  “You filthy little slut!’ he hissed. “You filthy bitch!”

  And he drove the blade into her heart.

  THE BOY STOOD up when the headlights were on him. Grey saw the blankness and shock in his face and the blood on his shirt, and tears burst from Grey’s eyes. He took his shotgun from the mount at the back of the cabin and loaded and snapped the barrel closed and fired a shot that was meant for the heart but hit the
boy’s shoulder. The boy fell but raised himself and staggered back to his truck. Grey loaded another shell and fired and blew out the back window, but the truck sped off toward the highway and the night.

  He threw away the gun. He cried out and held her to his chest.

  He pushed a tear-wet lock of hair from her face that was wet with crying. He held her arms that were limp like a cloth doll’s. Then he saw the blood on her dress, on her leg, running down to her feet into a small pool on the ground.

  He screamed at her to speak to him but she could not. Already her eyes were clouded mirrors and he was not sure she saw him. She trembled violently. He felt her forehead that was cold. He picked her up and felt the discordance of spirit and body–that the creature who caused him the most pain in this world was made up of so little of it.

  He put her little chin in his right hand and tried to make her look at him but she would not. Then her eyes closed. He cradled her in his arms and realized she did not know he was there. He saw again the places from which she bled, and he knew that this was all because she was too beautiful. He wiped away her tears and brushed her hair with his hand. Another trickle of blood ran down her leg. While he held her a cupful had leaked onto the yellow grass. She gasped and opened and closed her eyes a last time and he screamed that she could not die for a cupful of blood. And when she who he loved stopped breathing, so did he and he hoped he would die with her.

  He screamed out Eccleston’s name. He screamed into the wind but even from here he could see there was no truck in the drive and no light on inside and the decrepit white house was empty.

  HE WALKED WITH her across the grass to the middle of the flat. He sat down where the merry-go-round’s coloured lights flickered through the eucalypts on the creek. He lay down with her and looked up at the sky and from a few hundred yards and a world away at Cormorant Bay he heard the faint strains of song. Children who in his own time had performed the Nativity and now sang popular songs. Excited cries meant a gaudy Santa Claus had come to hand out gifts. Then came the fireworks. Roman candles shot up over the lake where they burst and sprayed. The cinders fell down and vanished on the water. Then the songs and the fireworks were over. It was false Christmas. Only the merry-go-round was left turning. In that northern distance the paint-chipped horses turned without riders, the operator waiting on a few extra dollars to close the day.