“Yeh gotta choice?”
“Maybe.”
“Whot happened?”
“Burned,” he said, paling further. “Nearly all the way through.”
“Then ain’t much left, is there?”
The man shot him a look of anger, then helplessness, his face gaunt with pain.
“Yeh got no choice,” Ghan explained. “If yeh want that pain t’stop, yeh got no choice. Can’t walk round wiv that arm sizzlin’.” Bianchi smelled like a half-cooked chicken on an old fire pit. Ghan held his breath from the stink, couldn’t look at the table or the tools. Damn that doc for leaving them out on display like that.
“The doc is good. It’ll be quick,” Ghan lied. “ ’Fore yeh know it, the sizzlin’ stop an’ yeh’ll be good as rain again.”
“But it’s my arm. My arm!” The black pupils widened and Bianchi leaned in with panic. “Gawd damn it, a man’s gotta have his arms. I got kids! How’m I gonna feed ’em?” He looked at Ghan’s wooden leg with disdain. “One leg ain’t stoppin’ nobody. Yeh can still move; yeh can still work. Just gotta piece a wood ’stead of bone there now. But a man needs his hands, gawd damn it!”
Ghan narrowed his eyes. “Yeh done whinin’, yeh pussy?” The man drew back with the verbal slap. “Got news for yeh, Bianchi. Yeh ain’t got no arm. Know whot yeh got? Yeh got a stub of a match left hangin’ there, so stop cryin’ for somepin yeh ain’t got anyway!” The young man’s lips parted and drooped, the corners stuck with dried saliva.
“Yeh’ll still work, Bianchi.” Ghan tempered his tone. “Those kids of yers still get fed. Morrison’s already got a place for yeh in the pickin’ line. Not so bad, that pickin’. Done it m’self. Borin’ as all ’ell, but safe. Won’t need t’worry ’bout no more burns.” The man was listening intently and Ghan continued, “They’ll give yeh a hook or somepin. Won’t be pretty, but yeh won’t be crippled. One hand’s all yeh need for pickin’ anyway.”
Bianchi’s fingers rose to his mouth before he realized he didn’t hold the cigarette any longer. He drew his hand into a fist and dropped it back to the blanket. “Does it hurt?”
“Naw.” Ghan shrugged. “Not so bad.” Blood ran from his face and he worried he might vomit all over the wool blanket. The sound of saw against bone ground in his ears.
Strange thing about pain, he thought. Always worse when you know it’s coming. Ghan knew pain like a lifelong foe, but this kind of pain was different. He’d lost parts to explosions, to brawls with hard right hooks, but you never saw it coming, didn’t even feel anything when it was happening, only felt it after the surprise wore off. But when a man plans for pain, waits for it and watches for it, sees the person who’s going to give it and the tools he’s going to use, the pain starts before anything even happens.
Ghan wasn’t going to show this man his pain before it happened. Bianchi would see it soon enough. Any luck, the man would faint before the cutting started. “Doc has morphine,” Ghan lied again. “Yeh’ll hardly feel it.”
Morphine. That’s what the doc said it was. Won’t feel a thing. Last thing the butcher said before he rammed a bullet between Ghan’s teeth. Morphine, my arse! Gave him something that made him feel drunk but didn’t numb the pain, just made him feel drunk and out of control, out of his mind with pain but too drunk or stupid to do anything about it.
The memories and the pain came back too quickly and his stomach cramped and kicked. Ghan rose stiffly. “I’ll get the doc. Be over ’fore yeh know it.” He fled the tent in jagged steps, galloped to the nearest tree and vomited.
CHAPTER 17
Morning dew held silver upon the grass, sparkled spiderwebs and dampened the soles of Father McIntyre’s shoes as he met the postman in the arc of the road. He smiled at the sound of the fairy-wrens, their chirps waning with the morning light, fading away and evaporating like the mist in the sun. “Beautiful morning, isn’t it, Mr. Cook,” Father McIntyre greeted.
The postman pulled his head out of the canvas, his neck skinny, his face dark as cowhide. “Mornin’, Father. Didn’t hear yeh on the stones.” He lifted a stack of letters tied with twine and handed them to the priest. “Saw yer ad in the paper.” The postman scratched inside his large ear, then inspected his finger. “Gettin’ many bites?”
“A few,” he said sullenly. “Have two families coming this week to meet the children.”
Mr. Cook scrunched up his face. “That’s a good thing, ain’t it, Father? Gettin’ ’em children adopted is a good thing, no?”
Sure it’s a good thing, Father McIntyre answered in his mind. Just like the cliffs and the ocean were good things. But they all made his head spin and his stomach drop. “Yes.” Father McIntyre gave a weak smile. “It’s a good thing.”
Footsteps barreled onto the gravel. “Did it come?” James huffed between breaths.
The postman grinned, settled his hands on his hips. “Expectin’ somepin, son?”
Father McIntyre patted James on the shoulder and rolled his eyes. “He’s been waiting for a letter from Ireland. I told him not to get his hopes up.”
“Ho! T’day’s yer lucky day, m’boy!” Mr. Cook clapped his hands. “Saw one in there. From Limerick, I think.”
Father McIntyre’s stomach dropped again. He shoved the letters into the crook of his arm, locking them with his elbow.
“G’day, gorgeous.” Mr. Cook tipped his hat at the silent girl who joined them, then turned his attention back to the priest. “Be on m’way, now. See yeh in a few weeks, Father.”
“Please open it, Father!” James begged as he held Leonora’s hand, squeezing it in pulses.
With a sigh, Father McIntyre untied the pile of letters, shuffled until he found a thin blue envelope with an Irish stamp, the paper soiled and smudged. He ripped the glue that held the back flap and pulled out the card, read the words and blanched. He read them again, his eyes bobbing left to right, his jaw clicking near his ear.
James followed the priest’s movements. “What’d it say?”
Father McIntyre closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, son.”
“What?” The boy blinked fiercely and tightened his grip on Leonora. “What did it say?”
“There’s no one there, James.” He couldn’t look at the boy. “I’m sorry.”
“But the l-l-letter,” James stammered. “It . . . it was . . . they sent it.”
“The letter was from a priest I know outside Limerick.” Father McIntyre exhaled and his eyes shifted under the lowered lids. “The O’Connells are all gone. They’ve either moved away or . . . passed. I’m sorry, son.”
James dropped Leonora’s hand.
“James . . .” Father McIntyre reached for the boy, but James jumped from his touch. He spun on his heels, splaying gravel as he ran, his head and shoulders plowing forward like a bull with a sword through his neck.
Father McIntyre’s own sword lodged in his heart as he watched the boy hurl across the trail, felt Leonora’s grief-brimmed eyes upon his skin. “He’ll forget with time, Leonora.” His voice was hollow and distant but crisp as ice water. “He just needs time.”
Leonora stepped away, her feet angled toward the cliffs.
“Just leave him be, Leonora.” Father McIntyre reached for her. “Give him space.” But she was already gone.
A great loneliness hung in their wake. He should have never written the letter, and guilt spit cruelly. And so the priest did not rush but walked soberly and carefully upon the bleached pebbles until he reached that invisible line that he did not have the fortitude to pass. There, from the ridge where the sea is first seen and teases in a line above the cliffs, he saw James with toes pointed at the edge of the world, his arms clasped around his knees. Leonora stood behind.
James turned to her and shouted harshly through the sound of waves, pushed her away. The girl did not move. James leaned toward her and shouted again, his face red and wet with tears and anger. But still she stood, her arms hanging loose and immobile. James pounded the ground with his fist and then t
urned back to the sea and buried his head into his knees.
Leonora moved now. She inched beside him and lowered to the ground. Her tiny, thin arms wrapped around the boy’s shoulders. James struggled against the embrace and she tightened her hold, her arms rigid as steel as she held him as a mother would a child. She rested her head atop of his and held his spine up. This waif of a girl did not let go but held his shoulders so they did not break and she took his burdens and carried them against her own sloped shoulders and her thin spine. And there upon the cliffs where the sea worked daily to beat the sandstone to crumbs, there could be no distinction of one child’s grief from the other’s.
A terrible thickness crowded the Father’s throat and his nostrils flared to keep the tears at bay. This child comforted James when he could not. He brought James suffering and this child brought him warmth. The thickness softened in his throat, but the lines of his jaw grew rigid. Father McIntyre turned away from the children petulantly. To console was easy; to cause a child pain for his own good, for his own future, now that took brute, hard strength.
Father McIntyre stomped down the path, stomped away the tenderness, the warmth and the innocence. He kept his head down as he entered the church and slammed the door to his office. He dropped the pile of worn and traveled letters onto his desk, spilling them out of the loose twine. James’s face, the boy’s raw and open grief, pinched his mind. He covered his face with his hands, rubbed his eyes to rid them of the image. He should have never sent the letter. He could have spared the boy this pain. Father McIntyre pulled his fingers down his face. James would heal in time, he tried to remind himself. Maybe he’d even thank him one day.
The Father sat in his chair and leaned back, rocked against the natural bend of its frame. The fingers of one hand danced against the knuckles of the other until he stopped abruptly and snatched the open letter off the top of the pile. He read it again, carefully this time, and the petulance swirled to anger. He was angry he had written the letter. But he was angrier they had written back. Angry they were alive and wanted James.
His prejudice bubbled now. Some poor Irish farmer wanted James. His James. They shared a name and now they wanted him. For what? To plant potatoes and pull a donkey cart? Pull him out of school and work the brains right out of him? That was not the life for the boy—not for James. Not for his James. Name or no name, blood or not, the boy belonged here.
The letter was sent more than three months ago. His eyes settled on the last line, read it again and again until his blood chilled. They were saving money, coming to Australia.
Father McIntyre held up the letter, pinched the corners with thumb and index finger and tore the paper to pieces, sprinkled the scraps into the wastebasket. “Over my dead body.”
CHAPTER 18
At the turn of the century, Perth could not compare to its splendid rivals across the continent, but to Ghan this was the biggest city in the world. And as he left the bush behind and passed the houses that grew in size and frequency and proximity to one another, he entered the city as a man braces for a hurricane, with body stooped and eyes shielded.
In no time, the buggies and weighted supply drays and the formidable Cobb & Co stagecoaches swallowed up the humble noises from his horses and wobbly wagon. The momentum of the city shook from all sides, assaulting Ghan’s senses until direction blurred. The reins pulled tight, wrapped under his strained knuckles as he worked to hold the panicked horses against street-savvy carriages and trams that honked like geese and veered close, blasting exhaust, gray and heavy, into their nostrils.
Ghan grabbed his hat, wiped his face with it, traveled the streets until he found the Dayton Hotel, as large and grand as a ship, a line of black buggies lining the entrance. He took his place in the queue.
A man dressed in a dark gray suit with tails and a large top hat ran from the gilded doors, blowing hard into a whistle. “Get out of here!” he shouted. “Where you think you’re going with that thing?”
Ghan grimaced at the red-cheeked man, the whistle an inch from his lips again. “Pickin’ up my passenger!” Ghan hollered.
The man scoffed, “No guest here is riding in the likes of that! Go on now. I don’t have time for games. Move this bloody thing out!”
“Not leavin’ wivout my passenger,” Ghan said stubbornly. “Go on an’ look him up. An American—last name Fairfield.”
“Fairfield, you say?” He turned and blew his whistle until a sweaty bellboy came fast as a lapdog. “Go see if Mr. Fairfield’s expecting anyone?” Then he turned back to Ghan and pointed his finger. “Five minutes, then I’m calling the police.”
Before the deadline passed, a man with a white suit, white hat and trim, neat white beard sauntered from the wide doors looking at a pocket watch. His arm linked with a thin woman who was a full head and shoulder taller. The whistle blower bowed to the couple and bent to hear the man, nodded with innocent surprise before pointing sharply at Ghan and blowing madly into the whistle. The other buggies pranced forward, made a U to the end of the line. “Christ, ’ere we go,” Ghan muttered.
Before Ghan could descend, the bags were loaded on the wagon. The tall woman, dressed in blue silk with layers of fabric in darker shades of the same, was stiff, looked older than she probably was. A white-gloved hand pressed against her lips. She didn’t try to hide her disgust and glared at her husband, pulled her arm out of his.
“Now, now,” Mr. Fairfield said appeasingly.
“Don’t ‘now, now’ me! Where’s your carriage?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer and tapped the shoulder of the top-hat man. “Where’s his carriage? I would think your hotel would have better sense than to leave the lane open for vagrants.”
Instinctively, he put the whistle in his mouth like a pacifier, and she slapped it from his lips. “I want an answer, not a whistle from your blow toy!”
“Eleanor, please,” Mr. Fairfield soothed as he took her hand. “We spoke about this. They’ll never give me a fair price if they see me riding in on one of those coaches. Besides, it’s only a short trip.” He prodded Ghan with peaked eyebrows. “Isn’t that right, sir?”
Ghan cleared his throat. “Be there by nightfall.”
The man winked gratefully, turned back to his wife. “You see, dear?”
Her lips twisted back and forth. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all, Owen.” She set her eyes on Ghan and turned her mouth in unbridled revulsion, spoke as if he had no ears instead of one. “You don’t even know this . . . this man. He could rob you blind, then leave you stripped at the side of the road. Then what would you do? For God’s sake, Owen! I’ll be a nervous wreck.” Her American accent was rough and stern, loud like a man’s.
“I’ll wire you from the train station. All right?”
She stuck out her chin. “You’ll wear your hat? I won’t be seen with a human beet as a husband, you know.”
“Of course, dear.”
She tapped her foot. “You’ll wire me from the station?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Four weeks? Not a day more?”
“Not a second past.”
Mr. Fairfield craned his neck and kissed her on the cheek. “Good-bye, dear.” Then the whistle man took his hand and helped him onto the deck next to Ghan.
Out of the corner of his mouth, Mr. Fairfield whispered, “Just drive.” Ghan stirred the horses quickly and the American mocked surprise with the sudden thrust, gripping on to the sideboard. He blew a kiss to his wife. “Love you, dear. I’ll wire you at every stop.” Ghan peeked back long enough to see Mrs. Fairfield pull her lace collar higher up her throat and scan the street, mortified she might be associated with the old wagon and cripple.
Ghan ignored his passenger, held his breath as he worked the horse through the choking streets. Sweat poured from his forehead as he dodged men and beasts and the moving, burping metals weaving around them, his concentration so tight between his blinders that he only saw what was directly in front. The outskirts of town grew stead
ily, widening and revealing more sky above buildings, buildings that were finally beginning to shrink instead of tower.
The two men rode in silence through the changing lanes of city and country. Ghan’s eardrums opened from their clenched state and welcomed the fresh air, where sounds did not bounce over one another and boom in between buildings and hooves. The wagon crested a small hill and its slight rise made the city feel a million miles away. Ghan finally allowed his lungs to expand in the wide space. His body slumped and he pushed his hat high upon his head.
“Don’t care for the city, do you?” asked his passenger. Ghan looked up, startled. Mr. Fairfield sat erect, watching him. His back did not touch the seat and his hands kept company on his lap. The man laughed. “Your shoulders were creeping past your ears, man.”
Ghan consciously lowered his shoulders, relaxed his muscles. “Just not used to it.”
Mr. Fairfield stretched like a lazy cat in the sun. He unbuttoned his jacket and threw it into the wagon bed, then unsnapped his stiff collar with a sigh and threw that into the dirt. He rubbed his neck. His fingers found the turn of the thick onyx cuff links and plucked them off, shoving them deep into hip pockets. Left to right, he rolled up his sleeves, then pulled out a pouch of tobacco and pile of papers. He sprinkled the tobacco onto a sheet, rolled it tight and licked the seal. “Smoke?” He offered it to Ghan, who shook his head again.
“Yer wife’s right.” Ghan eyed the man’s white forearms. “Sun’ll burn yeh crisp.”
“I’ll manage,” he said good-naturedly. “I’m not supposed to smoke, either. She says it makes me smell like a chimney.” He rubbed a sulfur match on the splintered wood and brought the blue flame to the pinched end of the cigarette. “I plan to smoke every inch of the journey.”
“Fair dinkum. Yer right as a man,” Ghan said.
“Spoken like a true bachelor, Mr. . . .”
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