To Name Those Lost

by Rohan Wilson

  But his boy wouldn’t look at him. Instead he walked away to the outhouse.

  I’ll have him there, Payne said.

  Toosey glanced around the yard one last time. He raised his hat to Payne in a gesture of thanks and of brotherhood, and stuck it on his crown and pushed it. A dog yowled in a yard beyond. He wanted to say more to the boy. Promise more. What was it worth though? Air, spit, sentiment. Nothing. Worth nothing. What counted now was deed. The boy kicked a grass tuft with an outsized boot. The sense that he would never see the lad again struck so hard that he felt unsteady. He looked to the blue fullness of the sky and the distant smoke and his ears boomed with the gale-wind of his blood. No thought but the thought of that loss. A loss to crush him like a noon shadow into the pits of his boots. He breathed in, breathed out, and hoped to hell it would never be. He left along the lane.

  At the corner he stopped and looked either way along Charles Street and adjusted the useless pistol. The sound of the dog cut through him. Men were coming and going from the troubles, young men with a perilous certainty of movement, some armed, some calling brashly as if they owned the street. He lowered his eyes. He hugged his arm to himself and set out. The weight of the gun tugged in his pocket. As he walked he trawled over the sorrowful acts of his life and he saw, like he always saw, how he’d never done well by anyone. He’d lied, killed, stolen. He watched the road ahead and ground his jaw. In making a man of himself he’d given up all other mantles. Other futures. But see his boy safe and well and that history was rethreaded through a new eyelet, to be pulled as he saw fit. That was the only sort of acquittal for which he could hope now. A gallow’s reprieve. He mopped his forehead. He turned towards the Star of the North.

  THE HOODED MAN

  THERE WAS A GLAZIER’S SCAFFOLD SET below the hotel windows, poles lashed up and braced with crossbeams and a running board slung between them. Perched upon it three Chinese boys at rest. They were dressed as white folk and ate from a cob loaf handed along the line as white labourers might and as Toosey came up the footpath past the head-height row of swinging legs one of the boys wished him a good afternoon in perfect English. Toosey kept his eyes away. At the steps to the hotel he stopped and looked back, all three watching him but saying nothing. The narrowness of their eyes like an insult. He scratched his balls through his pants. Exchanged stares with them. The first of the three said some words of Chinese and quiet laughter went between them.

  He nodded and turned away. Not today, he said. Today the joke’s on you. He disappeared inside the ruined double-doors.

  The lobby was empty. He had his hand on the pistol in his pocket as he crossed the polished boards and fronted up at the reception counter. The lodgings book lay open. It was dim and he saw now that the gaslights were off. He drummed his fingers on the desk. There was an ornate brass bell on the varnished oak and he spun it around in place, studying the flowers engraved upon it, the Latin inscription. He had a smirk on his rimpled face when he raised the bell and rang it.

  At that sound the clerk stepped from the side door. There were crumbs on his chin and he was chewing something. When he saw Toosey there grinning like a charlatan and holding Payne’s rusted pistol he paused. Toosey merely waited and watched. The clerk’s face fell. He called to Chung and crumbs flew.

  Yeah, said Toosey. Get the maggot out here where I can see him.

  The proprietor in his white gloves emerged from the same door. He saw Toosey and saw his gun and he backed away. The two men side by side, the lank Chinese wearing a frown and the clerk grave and stately in his tie and high collar, as upright as men on a flogging post. Toosey moved the pistol from one to the other. He wasn’t smiling any more.

  He needs a long spoon that eats with the devil, he said.

  Pigfucker, said Chung. I shit on your ancestor. You pigfucker.

  Steady now.

  Get out my hotel.

  Not this time, said Toosey. I aint goin nowheres.

  The two men eyed him nervously.

  Now, Toosey said. Produce that gold for me without a fuss. Without no bloody municipals comin by. Without no pissin about.

  Chung raised a long, gloved finger and pointed at him. No gold here, he said. Gold gone.

  Toosey exhaled. He shook his head. That is a lie, he said.

  No gold—

  Shut your mouth, you cunt-eyed fuck.

  Toosey walked towards him. He held the pistol close under the proprietor’s chin. That is the last lie you ever speak to me, he said. The last. You hear?

  The tall man’s nostrils pumped and his lean mouth tightened. You go fuck pig’s arsehole, he said.

  Now, Toosey said. I am quite nettled. Understand? Quite nettled indeed. I’m as likely to give fire through your fuckin teeth. Split your cunt face clean apart. How would that be?

  Chung ground his jaw.

  Best you produce that gold, Toosey said. Right now. Fore I act the wild man.

  A few instants passed where the Chinese stood facing that darkly visaged bushman. Toosey grinned at him, a grin of threat. His shirt spattered in blood, his armpits ringed with sweat, his hand a swollen grotesquery at his chest. The Chinaman’s puckered brow flattened a little at what he saw.

  You take gold you go, Chung said.

  That’s right. I go.

  You no come back.

  I’m as gone as the proverbial rat, old mate.

  Chung gave a snort. He ran a white glove over his greased black hair. Then he knelt down and prised loose a false floorboard and buried his arm to shoulder inside the cavity. When he stood he had the bag of sovereigns cradled like a child at his breast. He dumped it on the desk making the books and calling bell all jump. Toosey was grinning even more. You almost had one past me, he said. I’ll give you that. You almost had me believe it.

  Neither of the men moved. They stared at Toosey and waited.

  He pointed with the gun. Open her up, he said.

  The Chinaman unknotted the throat.

  Take out two bits.

  Reaching inside, he retrieved a single immaculate coin. Even in the dull hotel interior it threw a light that winked off the walls in a gleam of fire. He lay the coin on the counter.

  And another, said Toosey.

  Chung pulled one more coin.

  That’s for the door. The window. The rest of it.

  The Chinaman glared, his nostrils grew. He said nothing.

  Now listen good, said Toosey and he shook the pistol. This is what will happen. I intend on retrieving me swag and other bits from me room. You have a palm gun somewhere. I know it. When I walk up them stairs I don’t want you to send a bullet through me. So give me the gun here.

  The Chinaman gave a snort.

  I will shoot the man to pieces that betrays me. Be sure of that.

  The clerk reached under the counter. He fished around. Chung was delivering a baleful glare but the clerk seemed unrepentant and after a moment he came up with the derringer and slid it butt first along the desk to Toosey.

  Good, Toosey said. We are all friends now. No need for no one to shoot no one.

  The derringer was loaded. Toosey laid down Payne’s useless pistol and took the American gun in hand and cocked the hammer with his thumb. It was small and cold and solid-feeling. He looked it over. He pointed it at them. That old bitch weren’t even primed, he said and he wanted to laugh. I bailed you up with her and she was as empty as a cup. That’s a trick I learned off some lads out Liffey way.

  The two men looked at each other and looked at Toosey and said not a word.

  You can keep her now, he said. A parting gift.

  He swept up the bag under his arm and rounded towards the stairs. As he walked away he glanced at them, pointed the pistol, unsure what they would do, what they would say, but he crossed the broad wood-panelled lobby with his boots falling heavily and they both remained still. Outside, the Chinese boys had taken to horseplaying along the platform and their shadows cast through the glassless holes like spectres, eerily silent. He cro
ssed to the stairs and started upwards and there was only the squeal of boards as he ascended. Then he was gone into the murk of the landing.

  • • •

  In the first-floor hallway the gas lamps were out so he was presented with a den of perfect gloom. Toosey looked along its entirety left and right before advancing. At the door to his room he dropped the coin sack and dug the key from his pocket with his one good hand but when he bent to the lock he saw how the door was ajar. He straightened up. It swung slackly as he pushed it back. He fished out Chung’s pistol. Stepping into the room he found it empty, his swag and other pieces still on the floor rug where he had placed them, the grand posted bed undisturbed. Likely the Chinaman had searched it for more gold. The greedy little coolie. He stowed the gun.

  He was grinning to himself as he toed the coin sack over the threshold and knelt beside his swag. Grinning for his own sublime luck. He pinned the swag beneath his knee and yanked loose the knot. With his bad arm at his chest he chased the coin sack onto the unfurled canvas and he rolled it and secured the rope with a half hitch. He pulled the gun and placed it on the floor. Then he sat for a moment in silence. His mind seemed to ratchet over and lock, like a piece of clockwork, onto a single insistent thought. He’d done it. The boy was found. The gold. The liberty. Not since he’d shipped here, manacled as a child of fourteen, had he such hope of life. They’d board a boat, him and the boy, and by week’s end be gone off the island for good. Starting in Melbourne with pockets full. Free of all concern. Some good could yet come of this vile business.

  It was as he was sitting and considering his prospects that the door behind him creaked open.

  He looked around. The door swung in and settled on the wall. Standing in the void was a tall thin figure cowled in stained cotton, fissures cut where its eyes were. The figure clutched a brown paper package under one arm and in the other hand was a gun and the gun was trained on Toosey. He frowned at it. The figure entered the room and pushed the door closed and then it just stood quietly. A forlorn and slipshod effigy of a man, breathing so hard he could hear it.

  Jesus, Toosey said.

  The hooded figure said nothing. Toosey looked at Chung’s pistol but the figure kicked it away to a corner and that was it. He was done for.

  What do you want? he said but in his deepest parts he already knew.

  The figure inclined its head. The hood sagged over.

  A modest amount of disquiet started to settle upon Toosey. It was an uncommon feeling for him. I expect, he said, I expect it’s the money you want.

  The figure was breathing fast.

  Toosey pushed the swag forward. Here. Have it.

  It aint the money, said the figure and its voice was quivering.

  Then it reached up and with its gun hand gripped the roughly stitched hem and in one deft jerk removed the hood. Inside was a girl barely reckonable as human. A wide and raw-looking burn mantled the whole left part of her head, pocked and blistered and bleeding. The skin above the right eye had drooped and her ear was a dark nub plastered to her skull. She stood breathing hard and holding the pistol on him. With the black morass of her hair, the weeping sores, the scars. Toosey saw in that moment the whole of his failure. He’d been dragging her along like a shadow. A girl barely older than his own son, made pain-mad by his acts and spitting the taste of his name from her mouth. He was the belly-crawler and she was the fighter and these were God’s own facts.

  I never meant for that, he said.

  Her eyes welled and ran but she never blinked.

  It was an accident, he said. What I did.

  The girl took a step towards him with the gun up. You killed me father, she said.

  No.

  Liar!

  He come at me, Toosey said.

  You killed him.

  I warned him.

  You killed him.

  He give me no say.

  Get down.

  What?

  Right where you are. Down flat.

  Toosey was staring up at her, a sudden woe in his old creased eyes. What do you want, girl?

  Blood. Blood is what I want.

  Aint you lost enough?

  She levered back the hammer and the sound of the barrel and the sound of the lock was huge in the small wood-walled apartment. What I lost is what you took, she said. You think I’m a frightened little girl. Think I won’t do nothin against you. Well you thought wrong on that.

  Toosey shook his head. He give me no say. There was nothin—

  Shut your hole.

  Look, he said and he held up his crook arm. See what he left me with. He come for me, girl, and you know it.

  The girl had started crying and her face contorted into an outlandish ritual mask. We never done wrong by you, she said.

  No. You never.

  Look at me, she screamed.

  Toosey stared.

  What have you done? she screamed.

  Please just put that piece away.

  What have you done?

  Girl, listen.

  Get down. Down.

  She clasped both hands on the butt and steadied the gun. Toosey did not move.

  Down, she screamed.

  This aint right.

  There’s five shots in here. Five. I can make you howl just how I howled. Make you plead for it to stop. Now if you want that, then keep playin me.

  Hurtin you was never me intention. I give you a push. That’s all.

  Shut up.

  Fire in here and half the town will come runnin.

  Let them come, she said and the fervour of it was wholly convincing.

  Slowly and with his eyes fixed on the gun Toosey began to stand.

  Get down, she said.

  But he did not. He moved onto one knee. He raised up and when he was halfway to standing she kicked out his leg. He tumbled sideways on the patterned rug, his arm in agony as he came down on it. Fuckin mother Mary, he said. He watched as she picked up the hood and threw it to him.

  Put it on, she said.

  He craned his neck to look up. Eh?

  The girl leaned down and pressed the cold muzzle against his forehead. The breath wheezed through her ruined nose. Put it on, she hissed.

  Please, he said. Not this way.

  Still holding the gun on him, she tugged the stained and stinking rag over his head. The eyeholes were misaligned and all he saw was the inner darkness it contained. He felt his own damp vapour on his skin as if buried alive. He lay huffing inside the hood in a mounting fear as she stood above him bearing the big pistol in her fists like a leg of iron, levering back the mechanism with her thumb.

  I want to know something, she said.

  Toosey turned his head but there was nothing to see.

  You killed your baby, she said. All them years ago. Killed it. Buried it.

  No, he said. God no. I never. He was my boy.

  Liar.

  I swear it. Give me a bible. I’ll swear.

  I know you’re lyin. They locked you up.

  That false and murderous bitch sold me for it. She was the one. He was me little boy. He was the pulse of my heart.

  Don’t you dare say that. Don’t you dare.

  Wait, he said. It’s the truth.

  Put your head down. Down. Now!

  Wait.

  She pushed his head down with her boot.

  Wait, he said. Tell me son.

  He could hear the rattle of the hammer. She removed her boot.

  Tell William that—

  The first shot caught him in the throat. He jerked and clapped his palm over the wound and the blood burst through his fingers. His cry was full of fluid. He choked. She worked the hammer and fired a round that snapped back his head and punched a smoking hole in the hood that discharged in a gout. A pool formed that crept across the rug. He slouched over.

  There was freckled blood on her knuckles, which she wiped again and again. The hooded man lay quietly, his head as lopsided as a raggedy doll, his rope of hair hanging in the
slick. She rubbed her fingers and she rubbed her arms but in those small acts she found no relief. She stood long looking down at the wash of gore inching outward, at the hood turning red. She looked away. For a time she just stared at the wall panelling, one hand over her skittering heart that she might slow it, the other gripping the hot smoking pistol. From his pool the hooded man surveyed the room in startlement.

  She was standing thus, staring, when the noise from downstairs started. Her head raised as if from a trance. The voices of men, their boot-thump in the lobby. There was a brown paper package under her arm and she dropped it on the floor. They would soon come and she knew it.

  For a time she knelt on the floorboards looking at the package. She thought of her father and mother, gone from this life, into a cleft of godless earth and gone. There were her sisters though. Alone without her, unprotected, destitute. Given in care of a neighbour. Now, she was needed. Now, she could not be caught here, with him. A time might come when they found her but now she needed to see the money home. She lowered the gun. She opened the package.

  Inside was the crude fringed overskirt Jane Hall had chased up, roughly constructed of cotton the colour of hay. Standing, she stripped to her boots and threaded on the dress. It felt alien after so long clothed as a man. Cold about the ankles. Stifling. She laced it at the front. Then she wrapped her old road clothes and the pistol and the gruesome hood in the sheet of paper and over her scabrous head she drew a bonnet. There was a floral handkerchief, which she knotted at her throat. As she was retying the package she saw Toosey’s bedroll.

  The bank notes. She unrolled the squalid bundle and a sack fell to the floor like a cannonball. She stood still, looking at the sack. Not bank notes but coins, some pounds of them. She was at a loss. She looked around the room. There was nothing else for it. In haste she rolled the dimpled sack among the clothes in the paper and retied the string. It was a poor sort of ruse that might fool the simple. Her heart ran at speed.

  In the hallway she stood the door ajar and began towards the landing, the package pressed awkwardly under her arm. Someone was thundering up the stairs. She lowered her eyes. Slowed her breathing. Thought of her little sisters and the spread of Quamby land. A time would come, but not yet. Please not yet.