by Rohan Wilson
Mr Thomas Toosey.
THE SHED
LATE IN THE NIGHT THE PRISONER Thomas Toosey raised his eyes at the sound of boots to see amber light slanting through the fissures in the siding, light made hard by the weightless dust and growing longer and brighter as the bootsteps loomed. The door swung inward and standing in a hollow of dark was the deadman who had taken him. He was holding a primitive lamp, this deadman, and as he moved inside the shed the shadows wheeled around him. He bobbed beneath a crossbeam and squatted by his prisoner, whistling, not a tune but a kind of birdcall, and he placed down the lamp and tested the bindings that made Toosey fast to the centre post. The lamp was a candle bedded in dried clay, shrouded by a brown beer bottle. Toosey watched it flicker.
I aint the one.
Shut it, the deadman said.
He hitched another knot in the bindings, took up the eerie amber lamp, and walked a turn around the interior. The dark retreating like it was full of life. He looked down upon the prisoner and straightened his hat. The brim was folded back and pinned in place. He waved the lamp a little.
This’ll do you.
Listen now, Toosey said.
It’s a waste of breath, old mate.
I aint the one they want. I’m tellin you. Listen.
The deadman considered him a time. Then who are you?
Toosey inclined his head to look up. Hard luck, he said.
Oh a hard luck. You’re havin a laugh, I see. Very good, very bleedin funny.
You hear me laughin? Toosey said.
The candle flame guttered as the deadman raised the lamp and tapped the amber glass. That’s you now, he said pointing at the flame. Caught. Good and proper.
Cut me loose, said Toosey.
Damned if I will.
There’s a boy in this. My boy. You’ll be makin an orphan of him.
You’re off to the constable I’d say.
Toosey shook his head solemnly. The constable, he said. These two don’t like constables. They’ll hoist me in a tree someplace. With a nice bit of cord.
Will they now.
Believe it.
Forty quids, the deadman said. That’s what I believe.
A death on you for the sum of forty quids. You are some kind of saint.
I shall sleep like a lamb, I promise you that.
Stringed grey hair hung past Toosey’s shoulders and when he tossed it back there was a quality to his eyes made mean through his hardship. He clicked his tongue. Course I could be wrong, he said.
About what?
The dead man might yet be you.
This seemed to unsettle something in the fellow. He puckered his lips and whistled his low and melancholy birdcall, shook his head, and shaped up to his prisoner like he meant to give him a kicking. He half lifted his boot, turned his hip. But without another word he stepped back and bobbed out past the tools. Toosey leaned against the post and watched the knife-light withdraw through the slats until he was plunged again into cold abyssal dark.
• • •
There were cows crying somewhere in the night and that was all the company he had until dawn. He sat and waited, his eyes open, his mind burning with thoughts of his boy. The sun was a long time in coming and then a long time ascending and yet he did not sleep but sat with his knees at his chest watching for the first of the sky in the unjoined cladding. In the quiet the cows called and Toosey waited to where the light shot through the wall like sheets of silk, to where he could see by it. Bailed hay mouldering in the stall. Articles strung on nails. Piled by the wall were tools for working the soil and tools for working wood. He stood awkwardly by snaking up the post and shuffling his feet closer. Once he was upright he could circle around the post in his tethers. His eyes jumped about for something of use. He would not be kept here. His boy needed him.
Among the straw he spied a hand scythe that had a rusting blade and might have had an edge. He stretched out a leg. If he huddled down he could touch the handle with his toe. He inched it closer with little flicks of his foot and he soon had purchase enough against the dirt floor to drag it under his bootsole level with his thigh and then, heaving, level with his buttocks. He rotated around the post so that his hands would reach and he lowered down and strained hard and he had the coarse wooden handle clutched cigar-like between two fingers when the deadman shouldered the shed door inward. A muzzle-loading rifle over his shoulder, a tin bucket in his elbow. He looked at Toosey and he looked at the scythe. He brought the gun to bear.
That’s a pretty trick, he said.
Toosey stood up rigidly. In the band of sun issuing through the doorway the oiled gun barrel shone almost blinding. He did not take his eyes off it.
The bucket sloshed as the deadman set it down, full of milk, a ladle hanging on the rim, and he assessed his prisoner and scratched himself through his waistcoat. Kick it over here, he said.
Toosey didn’t move.
Old cock, I will bruise you black. Don’t think I won’t.
With a flick of the foot, Toosey kicked the scythe towards him. The deadman tossed it among the various tools by the wall and then knelt and filled the ladle from the bucket and held the lip up to Toosey. He drank. The man dipped again and gave him some more. The cream was warm and rich in Toosey’s gut. The man lowered the ladle.
They’ll be comin this way again today, he said.
Who?
You know who.
Toosey watched him. That Dublin jackeen I suppose, he said.
Aye, and that barmy little man that follows him about.
Toosey gave a snort of contempt. That’s no man, he said.
Whatever he is under that flour sack he wears, he gives me the cold horrors.
They aint to be trusted, Toosey said.
Course they aint. Any halfwit can see that.
I’ll tell you what I know. There won’t be no forty. Not from those two.
The deadman laughed. Gawd deary me.
Your Dublin mate has me mistook for another, Toosey said. That’s the truth of it.
The deadman drifted off to lean against the corner brace. He tucked the muzzle-loader under his arm and crossed one boot over the other. Toosey saw how the toe was closed up with roofing nails clinched flat with a hammer. In the rest of his dress he was like most tenants of that district, pants secured by means of a rope, waistcoat festooned with a watchless chain that fooled no one. Every bit of him patched and mended. He idly fingered the gun as he took his ease against the wall. He spoke.
There has been a good deal of talk about the town there has. Bout two men goin up and down chasin some poor fellow. I heard it at Williams’ and heard it at the Family and Commercial too. Cause, lord, people will talk now, won’t they.
Prone to it yourself I expect, Toosey said.
So when I seen them wander by me fence I knew who they was. They waved me over. I have forty pound for a man called Toosey or Atkinson, says the Irish.
And you believe him?
Forty pound payable upon receipt, he tells me. Know this fellow by his long grey hair and grey whiskers, he tells me. Wearin always a small black billycock.
At that point the man bent down and plucked Toosey’s hat from off a strawheap. He tossed it at his prisoner. Now that I seen you, he said, I do believe him.
Toosey studied the hat where it lay upturned, light showing through the crown’s holes, a white crust of sweat, and he looked briefly at the man and looked away, as if what he saw was not to his taste.
There came a call from outside, a woman’s voice. Jacky . . . Jacky.
Stay out there, the deadman said.
Where are you?
When she appeared in the door she was clutching her skirts in her fist. She was delicate of frame and drawn about the cheeks, or it may just have been the tight coiling back of her hair. She peered into the murk, leaning forward, and said, You in there?
What did I tell you. Stay out of here.
I want to talk to this chap.
She stepped over the
worn doorstep and past him into the inner dark, among the bladed light, and on seeing the rope-bound prisoner slumped in the shadows she put her hand to her mouth and stumbled back.
So help me, she said, breathless. I thought he was dead.
He’s all right. Aint you, old cock?
Flies squabbled along Toosey’s bare weathered arms. He slowly raised his head to look at the woman, the wife most probably.
Don’t look like much, does he, she said.
No. Cause he aint much.
What do they want him for?
That aint our concern. Long as I get paid.
The wife crossed through the light slats before him, the sequence lighting the fine hairs of her neck like hot wires. She left the scent of lanolin and soap. He stared at her.
What have you done, mister? she said. Killed someone, have you? Stole a horse? What?
Toosey would not be drawn. He stared at the woman and waited.
He don’t look like much to me, she said again.
Well he got this Irishman fired up so I should think he done somethin to warrant it.
You got a name?
Toosey glared back at her.
He’s called Toosey or Atkinson or somethin, said the deadman. I know that much.
Cut me loose, said Toosey. Or they’ll kill me.
The man sneered. That’s more of your lies.
Maybe he aint done nothin, the wife said.
Girl, I swear you are as simple as strikin matches.
How do you know what he done?
Long as I get me forty I don’t care if he is king of the queers.
I’m not worth the trouble, Toosey said. Believe me.
Is that right?
Aye.
Then how is it you come to have a price on you? the deadman said.
Ask the Irish. He’ll tell you before he strings me up.
The wife crossed back past him, holding her dress off her ankles. Praps we ought not to keep him, she said. We don’t want no one killed, do we?
Oh you silly bitch, come here.
Her husband caught her by the arm and hauled her in against his chest, cupping one wide weathered hand about the back of her neck. He said, Give us a kiss fore you flap that stupid tongue again.
They stood clasped to each other with their mouths together. Toosey looked away. When the deadman let her go she staggered a few steps sideward with the suddenness of it, smoothed the hair off her brow and grinned foolishly, her lips red and wet. Her husband leaned down and slapped her on the rump.
Forty quids, he said. That’s the buggy you will have wanted, and a fine young mare to pull it.
Would be nice, she said.
Don’t say I don’t take care of you.
I never said it. Only that you ought to be careful.
Careful, he said. Careful aint got no one rich.
No, I spose not.
Go see about them hens and forget this old loony. It’s just him talkin big.
She wandered out into low dawn light that tinged all the fields in bronze, and her husband followed her as far as the path of cobble, where he stood staring into the oblique sun with his morning shadow gaunt upon ground. He broke off and was heading for the paddocks mumbling a curse when Toosey called from the dark of the shed for him.
You want to know what I done? he called.
A moment of quiet passed before the man cocked his head around the jamb. What you what?
What I done to the Dubliner.
Does it matter?
Matters to you most intimately.
The deadman looked down at Toosey hobbled there among the dark like a malevolent imp. He stepped inside, stood tall above him.
How? the deadman said.
He has offered you a sum, has our man. But he don’t have it. He has not more than a few pound.
You’re a bloody liar.
Hear me now. He does not have it. I know cause I robbed him of his whole worth.
Like hell you did.
Toosey just stared at him.
The man had jammed his hands into his coat pockets and he stood for a period contemplating his prisoner. He jabbed one finger at Toosey through the coat folds. You’re talkin out your arse, he said.
I dropped the money when you presented that gun at me, Toosey said. Two hundred pound, in a pocket pouch. Dropped in the ditch there by the road last night. Go see if it aint.
You dropped two hundred quids in a ditch?
Go see if you don’t believe me. No skin off your nose, is it. By the road there where you found me, near the fence.
How old are you, Toosey or Atkinson or whoever you bloody are?
Fifty-nine.
Fifty-nine, the deadman said.
Toosey nodded.
Old man, I don’t know how you’ve lived this long.
All the country air, Toosey said.
I swear. Robbin two hundred off a man as vicious as that Irish.
Me boy is alone. I told you. By himself in that arsehole they call Launceston. I intend to see him safe and sound, whatever comes of it.
I can tell you what will come of it, the deadman said. It’s you in a Deloraine cell.
Toosey tossed the hair from his face and sat looking up at the man, one eye asquint in the sun slant that shone through a gap. In the stagnant air the sound of his breath amplified. He held the man’s gaze for a good long moment before he spoke. I’ve knowed the Dubliner half my life, he said. I tell you now. In the sight of God. He will kill me.
The deadman crossed his arms. Will he now.
I may have a prayer if you fetch the money. See it returned to him.
The deadman stood in thought. At length he took up the gun that he’d stood against a crossbrace and he checked the priming and reset the hammer and stuck it over his shoulder. He looked down at his prisoner. The money bloody well better be there, he said. Else I’ll be back to kick in your teeth.
It’s there. Look in the ditch like I said.
The man crossed and stood in the doorway. Cropped land in belts lay framed in its oblong and beyond it hills rearing in a blue haze where the gum grew like a bristle of dorsal hair. He paused, studying the view towards the road, likely seeking out those two wanderers, the Irish with his hooded ally, but there was neither their figures nor their dust upon that baked and peeling back route. He put along the path towards the road holding the gun levelled at his hip. Toosey then closed his eyes and sought some comfort for his hands and shoulders and his wrists that burned. He dropped his head and in the false dark behind the eyelids all he saw was his boy, the mop of his hair, the thinness of his arms, and he was stirred to a rage.
• • •
Some time later the wife came to sort through the tools by the wall. Toosey sat foxing sleep and listening. Within that clamour and contrasted to it was the slight and delicate sound of her skirts. He peered from under his lashes. She was bending over the pile and the shape of her rump had forced the gathers of her dress out flat, and it was a shapely rump at that. The falls of light through the walls marked her back like smelted metal. She tugged a stirrup hoe from the clutter and stood up straight, and as she turned towards the door he lifted his head to address her.
You need a short halter for that greedy horse of yours, he said.
She gave a short sideways step as if startled and brought the hoe up. He aint no horse, she said.
He is draggin you into somethin. By God he is.
She flung the tool out into the daylight where it bounced and rang on the cobble and she squared up to him. There was an agreeableness to her features that at that moment was marred by a tightening of the lips. Whatever you done, mister, she said, whoever you hurt, I hope you get what you got comin.
Funny how men will abandon good sense on the sniff of a few quid, he said.
Oh yes. Funny as a bloody funeral.
Toosey looked her over. Is he back yet?
No, she said.
He continued to watch. I was married once you know.
&
nbsp; More’s the pity for her I expect.
She would have been near your age when we met, he said and narrowed his eyes. Twenty, twenty-one. Near enough to it.
Where has she gone then? Your girl.
Spose you think I run her off.
She would need to be a saint, wouldn’t she. Puttin up with the likes of you.
Toosey smiled. He nodded. That is the truth, he said. The kindest and dearest woman I ever knew. Only God knows why he sent her to me. But she grew sick of my drinking, the many years of it, and turned me out. Since which she has died.
The tears of the tankard, she said. You won’t get no pity from me.
I don’t want any, he said. What I want is to offer my example. I ought to have valued her while I could. That’s the crux of it. If you value your fellow, you will warn him not to cross me.
In the field the cows bayed like wolves. She stood and seemed to consider his words, looking down at him, sucking at her upper lip, but more likely she was giving inward expression to the scorn she held for this bushman. She smoothed back her hair and exited out into the sun, lifting the crusted hoe onto her shoulder and striking out for the crops, and Toosey, his head bowed behind a curtain of hair, was left alone with his life’s sorry tales.
• • •
Arriving back at the shed some time midmorning the deadman prodded Toosey in the ribs. He was slumped in his tethers like a carcass, mouth agape, limbs slack. He woke in a spasm. The cattledog was there and it pushed to lap at his face and he did not pull away but let the dog taste his whiskers. One eye was dark and the other light as if it had been stitched from the pelts of butchered dead and when the man clicked his fingers the dog fell in alongside him. Now Toosey looked up at the fellow, saw the book-sized wallet tied with lucet cord upon which he was tapping his fingers, saw the grin he was wearing, his considerable teeth bared, and Toosey knew he would soon be with his boy. He wiped the slobber on his shoulder.
