We Were Not Men

by Campbell Mattinson

  Mum. And Dad. The scene screamed Mum and Dad.

  But then the food was ready and it was hot and tremendous and the woodsmoke pulled in and warmed you from the inside. Bobbie popped the corn out of the foil and gave it a quick char. We ate from the cob, butter polishing our chins. Then into the potatoes, piping hot. Earthen and sweet, like nothing before. ‘Starving hungry,’ Eden said.

  ‘Hunger is a beautiful thing,’ she said.

  ‘Can we have more?’ I asked.

  ‘Have to grow up,’ Bobbie said. She grabbed a stick and used it like tongs to flick potatoes out from the coals.

  ‘Nothing worse than crap food. Nothing better than good,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said. ‘But lucky it was me or bust. I couldn’t have handled grandma versus grandma.’

  Wallabies floated through and dusk turned to dark and Eden tapped into it.

  ‘Bobbie,’ he said. And he paused. ‘Where’s Hemi?’

  ‘Oh not now,’ she said.

  ‘But where?’ he said.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘She died. She just died.’

  ‘Hemi is dead?’ I asked.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ Eden asked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘She’s buried?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t spoil the meal,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Eden said.

  *

  Later in bed Eden said to me, ‘I keep waiting for Mum and Dad to come and pick us up.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And I’m talking to them in my head,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve talked to the picture.’

  ‘Mum,’ he said, as if just the word was a volume.

  ‘I’ve called out for her at night,’ I said.

  ‘I’m going to wake up and not know where I am again.’

  ‘Wake me up,’ I said.

  ‘Bobbie heard I was coming and went out and strangled her dog?’ His voice could not have sounded more confused.

  His words hung there in the room and to avoid them I thought of whipbirds and wrens because they’d be out there in the morning when we woke.

  ‘We have to,’ I eventually said, ‘water Mum’s garden.’

  *

  I was tired but I did not fall fast and every time I turned in bed I heard Eden react as if we were tied and were on pulleys. Eventually I rolled half onto my back and opened my eyes and looked across the dark. I could smell dust and it was old. I turned more and bumped into the wall and I wished he would speak but then I did.

  ‘Does Bobbie know when our birthday is?’ I said into the dark.

  *

  When I woke the next morning I knew Eden was gone before I even looked.

  Without his wheelchair.

  Without me.

  And then it dawned like a time-lapse reel as I rose and looked and called. He wasn’t just gone, he was missing.

  *

  I looked at the couch with the pillow on it. I looked at the phone off the hook. Bobbie said to me, ‘Jack isn’t going to call. That’s all I need to know.’

  ‘What about Eden?’ I said.

  ‘He’ll come back.’

  ‘Can we call the police?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s around here somewhere,’ she said.

  But he wasn’t. The day opened and spread and then began to close and there was still no sign. We walked through the hazelnut trees, the fence lines, the cornfield, the vineyard. I went to the stack where the firewood was kept and peered into the gaps and lifted blocks as if he might be hiding. Later we held our breath and scoured the creek.

  ‘I’m not going to bed until we find him,’ I said.

  ‘He’s sitting in the bush somewhere,’ she said. ‘God knows why.’

  ‘Can we call the police?’ I asked again. ‘Please.’

  I walked inside and grabbed the phone and Bobbie followed. ‘Okay,’ she said. She took the phone from me but all she did was hold it; she didn’t put it back in its cradle.

  I could feel it all rising in me but I just said, ‘Please Bobbie.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’ Slowly, she put the phone on the hook. ‘If you listen really closely right now you might just be able to hear the far-off stampede of lawyers charging for their phones,’ she said. ‘They’ll have a field day picking holes in me when it gets out that I’ve lost one of you.’

  ‘Bobbie,’ I said.

  ‘Time enough for this old duck,’ she said.

  I went back outside and called Eden’s name and then came back in. Bobbie was on the phone. ‘All day,’ she said. ‘We’re not all wallies out here you know.’ As she talked she chewed on a white plastic bread tie. ‘Of course I bloody have,’ she said, her breath whistling across the tie. ‘I’m sure we’ll be here,’ she finished.

  ‘I’m going back down the creek,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll check the woodshed,’ she said, pulling a torch from under the couch.

  ‘I looked already.’

  ‘A proper look or a boy look?’

  ‘Are the police coming?’

  ‘Did he say anything to you?’ she asked.

  ‘We should be more frantic,’ I said.

  ‘Frantic rhymes with panic for a reason.’

  ‘I wish he’d taken me with him.’

  ‘There’s always one,’ she said. ‘Even when there’s only two.’

  Together we walked to the creek and the light faded and Bobbie turned on the torch. It shone bright on the leaves and trunks. She talked louder then as though she was talking to me but was hoping that Eden would hear.

  ‘The idea is,’ she said, her voice so calm it almost seemed cold, ‘that you take your miseries and assorted calamities and twine them into a rope. You don’t just run away and hide.

  ‘I don’t know where Eden’s hiding,’ she continued after a pause, ‘but it’s time he came out. The difference between good families and bad is that good families face one another even when they don’t want to.’

  ‘Eden,’ I called out.

  ‘Bloody hell, Eden,’ Bobbie said, properly loud now.

  I kept glancing at the creek. I did not think he would be floating there but I thought he might be swimming. I sucked in breath, the smell of eucalyptus and bark, beetle juice, damp soil, ferns. The earth felt warm but the air suddenly felt freezing.

  Bobbie said, ‘Think hard. Where might he go?’

  I tried to think but I thought of Eden’s soft toy and so I answered, ‘I should have brought his Puffle.’

  ‘He’ll be okay,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘He’s not allowed to die,’ I said. ‘On me,’ I added.

  ‘He won’t.’

  ‘He’s not allowed to.’

  Bobbie moved into the dark bush, her torchlight cutting white beams. I kept on at the creek. Once I’d made it clear of Bobbie I whispered, ‘I’ve lost him.’

  *

  And then a black cockatoo rose out of the bush and it was flashed with yellow and it scared me and I crashed back through the bush towards Bobbie so that I could stand by her.

  *

  When the police came they looked at me as though I was a kid toy. There was more pity than urgency. A search started that night, torches out in the bush, dogs let loose, doorknocking of scattered neighbours. It was an effort but it didn’t seem enough. The search was called off at midnight. The next morning though there were television crews at the front gate. Mum and Dad were dead. My twin brother was missing. Of a sudden the heart of news-following Australia had gone out to me.

  ‘You hungry?’ Bobbie asked.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘You should eat,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘There’s probably some dry biscuits in a Meadow Lea tub in the fat cupboard,’ she offered.

  Bobbie looked through the window at the waiting media. ‘Better not let them discover the doorbell,’ she said. She pulled at her poly-fleece vest. ‘Me in my Fargo-chic t
oo.’

  She went straight out the door and down the driveway as if confronting the media was an everyday thing. I peeked through the curtains. I remembered the doorbell and how it was mock and how it didn’t ring; it was a water pistol. This doorbell had always been funny to us in the family but suddenly then it seemed scary. When you push the doorbell at Bobbie’s house it doesn’t make sound, it squirts water at you. I repeated that sentence but I could not get it to sound good.

  When Bobbie returned she seemed flushed. ‘One of the reporters out there looks like she got a bucket of makeup and dunked her head straight in,’ she said.

  ‘Why didn’t you call the police sooner?’ I pleaded.

  ‘Don’t use that tone of voice,’ she said.

  She moved to the area beside the sink. She put a cup of milk in the microwave.

  ‘Every day,’ she said, the microwave spinning behind her, ‘we lose a little bit of something. Maybe I lost some time yesterday. Maybe some self-respect. But we haven’t lost Eden. I know we haven’t.’

  She turned the coffee grinder on and it ground out noise. She banged the coffee basket louder than normal. When her coffee was ready she came and stood with me at the window.

  ‘You have to realise,’ Bobbie said, ‘that I’m frightened of children. Thank God you’re not teenagers.’

  *

  And then after a lull the house was busy with footsteps and radios. It was as if a time had been triggered and suddenly our situation was deemed serious. We didn’t know how long Eden had been gone, the start of the night or near the morning, but we knew he’d been gone thirty hours or more. A pack of police arrived, the leader of them wearing a suit, a grey one, rather than a uniform. She walked through our front door as if she belonged here more than I did. She cut me straight off from Bobbie and sat me on my Flowerdale bed. I should have felt relieved and like everything would now be sorted. But as she sat me down I felt scared and guilty as if what I’d done was dob in the only person I had left.

  The policewoman stood at our bedroom door and called out, ‘Can you make sure she can’t hear?’ and pointed at Bobbie. Before the door was properly shut Bobbie called back, ‘I’m their buffer.’ The policewoman double-checked that the door was pulled tight, then wiped her black shoe along the foot of it as if she could wipe away the light. Everything she did seemed certain or routine. She went to sit on Eden’s bed but it wasn’t made and she stopped herself and knelt before me.

  ‘I need to know some things,’ she said. Her voice was soft of a sudden. I thought I’d be able to smell her breath or her clothes or even her perfume but all I could smell other than dust, mouse and the echoes of Eden were cheese and toast from the kitchen.

  ‘Run me through what happened,’ she said.

  I looked at her and then I glanced at the door.

  ‘Just what happened,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

  I couldn’t think of anything about my life that was normal or unchanged. I wanted to turn to Mum then, or at least to her photo. Instead I looked at the policewoman and said, ‘Can we open the door?’

  ‘Just tell me what happened,’ she said again.

  ‘We can’t find my twin brother Eden,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me how he went missing,’ she said.

  ‘I got his doona cover for him,’ I said.

  She looked at his Star Wars cover and then she said, ‘You boys too big for teddies?’

  ‘Eden has a Puffle,’ I said.

  ‘A Puffle?’

  ‘It’s not here,’ I said.

  ‘He took it with him?’

  ‘It’s at home.’

  ‘This isn’t home?’

  ‘Our other home,’ I said. ‘Where Mum’s vegies are.’

  ‘I’ll look at the brief,’ she said. ‘So he didn’t take his toy with him?’ she asked as if it was important.

  ‘It’s not Bobbie’s fault,’ I said.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Okay. Do you or Eden have phones?’ she asked

  ‘Just,’ I said, ‘can you just make sure that he doesn’t die?’

  ‘You look pale,’ she said.

  I put my shoulder into the bed and dug my head onto the pillow and closed my eyes but then opened them. The room seemed hazy like looking through water and the door was shut and I couldn’t even see the light that would be coming from the picture of Mum. The policewoman stood up. ‘Was Eden happy before he left?’

  ‘Happy,’ I said, though I was just repeating it.

  ‘Any more or less happy than normal?’

  ‘Normal,’ I repeated.

  She opened the door and Bobbie was in the kitchen but her voice carried into our room. ‘The normal pollie waffle,’ I heard Bobbie say.

  And then almost straight after she said, ‘Don’t be stupid. It’s not suicide.’

  *

  ‘The times you’re most desperate for a drink are the same times you most desperately shouldn’t,’ the policewoman said to Bobbie as if ready to go toe-to-toe. ‘You noticed that?’

  ‘It’s called civilisation,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘You sleep on your couch?’ the policewoman asked.

  ‘You should arrest that woman out there for crimes against cosmetics,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘The wine you make,’ the policewoman said, ‘is it any good?’

  ‘It’s a refuge.’

  And then Bobbie said, ‘Look.’ And instead of reaching to pull her hair tighter she shook her head as if willing it to fly free. ‘Hope swims faster than depression. If depression takes the lead, something horrible has happened to hope. I don’t care what you think but that’s not where we are.’

  *

  As we waited in the house my arms began to itch and come up in lumps. The more I itched the more spots seemed to rise. Suddenly my head was itchy and the sides of my face too. ‘It’s from walking in the bush last night,’ Bobbie said. ‘You’ve walked through something.’

  ‘It wasn’t itchy last night.’

  ‘Delayed irritation,’ she said. ‘It stings?’

  I scratched then until I drew blood.

  ‘Don’t scratch them,’ Bobbie said. ‘That’s what they want.’

  ‘What who want?’ I asked.

  ‘Them,’ she said.

  ‘Where’s Hemi,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ she said.

  ‘I want to pat her,’ I said.

  She picked up a polystyrene tray from the kitchen sill. It had a bed of water with white strands growing up from it. ‘Bean shoots,’ she said. ‘They taste of the seventies.’

  *

  ‘Oh, here we go,’ Bobbie said as she looked out the window. ‘Thank God he’s not in lycra.’ A man walked down the driveway.

  ‘You’ll have to get used to Werner. Lives on Snob’s Hill across the road. He should be retired but he’s still trying to flog houses. He’s supposed to be selling this one but he’s really just trying to get at me.

  ‘I don’t want to sell,’ she continued, ‘I was just sympathetic when his wife died.

  ‘They served roast lamb with Yarra Valley cabernet at their wedding, which is fine, but it was from a cool vintage, which was odd.

  ‘I wonder sometimes whether he might have killed her. Terrible thought. It was just the strangest sequence of events. And he relates them in such a stagey way. Makes his own salami too. That sounds shocking, doesn’t it? I like him really. Reminds me of Christopher Skase. A skinny Skase. Don’t let me call him Skasey to his face.

  ‘Put it this way,’ she added as she turned to the front door, ‘I keep trying to make the word exhumed when we play Scrabble so that I can study the look on his face.

  ‘That’s no way to dress for the creek,’ she said as she finally opened the front door.

  ‘This might sound ridiculous,’ Werner started.

  ‘If it’s not ridiculous I’m not doing it,’ Bobbie jumped in.

  ‘Have you checked your cellar?’ he said.

  ‘He won’t be there,’ Bobbie said immediately. />
  ‘Can’t hurt,’ he said.

  ‘I told him not to go in there.’

  And then we all turned to look at the wooden trap-door in the floor at the edge of the lounge. Bobbie said, ‘What do you think, Jon?’

  *

  I did not know. I was spinning.

  *

  ‘I won’t make you answer that,’ Bobbie said. ‘I’m in no hurry to find out myself. I’ll make us a cuppa and then we can saunter down.’

  ‘Come on,’ Werner said. ‘Let’s look now.’

  ‘If he’s not there then we don’t need to rush. And if he is then he’s made a fool of me, in which case he should just come out.’

  ‘Which one are you?’ Werner then asked as if Eden and I could be mixed up.

  ‘Jon was the flail-chested one,’ Bobbie said.

  Werner turned back to her. ‘Come on,’ he said again.

  I wanted to hear and see everything but I said, ‘I’m going to the toilet.’

  ‘You don’t need permission,’ Bobbie said.

  I closed the toilet door and pressed my ear against it. As I waited I reached out to the basin and grabbed the soap and held it.

  There was a pause and then I heard Bobbie say, ‘I have no idea what the hell I’m doing here, Werner.’ She spoke in a different tone to the one she used with me.

  ‘Keep them fed and watered and they’ll be right,’ Werner said.

  And when she didn’t reply he added, ‘Young kids are easy. It’s when they get older and start telling you to fuck off that it gets more challenging.’

  ‘I’m trying to make them think that I’m battle hard,’ Bobbie replied.

  *

  We stepped down the ladder into the cellar beneath the house. I’d never been down there. The floor was dirt, there was wood all around, the walls were wet with cold. The smell was even worse than it was in the house. It smelled of dust, vinegar, wine and animal. The smells were stronger but they seemed fresher; like smelling someone else’s fart versus one of your own.