Crystal Coffin

by Anita Bell

  Locklin shrugged his eyebrows. ‘You can’t blame an animal for being a good judge of character.’

  ‘What happened to his markings? It looks like they shrunk.’

  ‘Shoe polish,’ Locklin said. ‘I just wish he’d keep his mouth shut or Eric Maitland might recognise him.’

  ‘Nah, the black works. Maitland couldn’t tell a mare from a stallion unless you painted them pink and blue,’ Scott said, grinning. The stallion pricked his nose over the top rail, curled his top lip up and tasted the breeze for more mares. ‘Jack doesn’t seem too impressed with his new pyjamas, though,’ he added.

  ‘Better he lost his markings than his hide. Listen up. Jack’s got to stay dead, okay? As far as anyone knows, he’s pet food, just how Maitland wanted it. Got it?’

  Scotty wanted to quiz his cousin why, but he could figure that much out for himself. He didn’t want the death of a perfectly good stallion on his conscience, and blabbing about seeing him alive — and with most of his markings blacked out — was sure to make it happen.

  ‘Do us another favour, hey? Don’t tell anyone you saw me either.’

  ‘Why?’ Scotty asked. ‘You’re on leave, aren’t you? Holidays, I mean. You missed your dad’s funeral, but the army owes you some time off from saving the world, don’t they?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Locklin said. ‘I guess, but this is just a quick trip. I don’t want anyone to see me.’

  ‘You mean you haven’t come back to kick up a stink?’

  ‘Not a bit.’

  ‘Jeez Jays,’ Scotty said, flushing red. ‘Maitland stole everything you had, your dad’s whole estate. What about your sisters? You can’t leave them dumped in the street only a few weeks from Christmas. You have to do like your horse did. You have to kick his butt!’

  Locklin shook his head. ‘Don’t be so dramatic. My sisters are hardly dumped in the street. You know Helen wanted to get her own place anyway after the baby’s born and Kirby’s going off to uni in the new year, so they’ll only be staying with you and Gran for a few weeks. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the extra help over the holidays feeding the ostriches. So no fuss over Dad’s estate, got it? Just let Maitland have it.’

  Scotty swore. ‘Then you are a coward, just like everyone’s been saying!’

  Locklin’s finger twisted into Scotty’s chest like a corkscrew, but it wasn’t the stab of pain that shut him up. It was the hurt look on Locklin’s face. His eyebrows squeezed down like twin safeties on a double-barrelled shotgun, and his breath held, like a sniper steadying for a kill.

  ‘Is that really what you think of me?’ he asked slowly. ‘A coward?’

  Scotty closed his eyes, trying to imagine it. All he saw was his cousin, barely older than he was now, lying in a hospital bed, savaged from the waist down by a pair of Dobermans. That was his thirteenth birthday. Scotty remembered, because it was the day he got his first skateboard, the day he discovered that Mrs Thompson’s Dobermans hated skateboarders so much that they’d jump a six-foot fence just to chase one, and the day he saw how fast his older cousin could run. It was also the day he discovered what guilt was, of being carried above the dogs and watching from his cousin’s shoulder while they savaged Locklin’s legs — of smelling all that blood and knowing that it should have been his.

  When Scott opened his eyes again, he didn’t see the face of a coward. He hung his head and let the silence apologise. Locklin’s finger released the pressure from his chest, but it didn’t make Scott feel any better.

  ‘So how’s your first job shaping up?’ Locklin said, as if Scott hadn’t said anything at all.

  ‘Sucks,’ Scotty said, scratching his groin where peach fuzz itched inside his pants. ‘But it pays the bills, I guess.’ He forced a smile but it twisted and looked wrong, more like a toothache that made his cheeks swell.

  ‘Yeah, like a grade tenner needs to worry about bills. Wait till you’re my age, Sport. Then you can worry about bills.’

  Scott looked at his sandshoes, wondering why his cousin hadn’t shoved them down his throat. And slowly, like goopy engine oil dripping into a bucket, he began to understand. His cousin was trying to cheer him up. With so many problems of his own, Jayson Locklin was still more concerned about family than he was for himself.

  Scott let a smile creep back onto his face. ‘Hey, I got bills,’ he said, remembering the jibe about his age. ‘Just last week my Yamaha done its muffler up the scrub and Gran reckons she’s not springing one red cent to fix it.’

  ‘The way I heard it,’ Locklin said, ‘is you split it from backside to breakfast. And you didn’t do it up the scrub. You were riding home from school, right up the centre of Peace Street. You spotted Sergeant Knox turning up the road looking for you and you packed death. You took off up Main Street past the church, jumped the gutter, two cars and a four-foot fence, and finally come a gutser in the gully below the cop station.’

  ‘I did not come a gutser!’ Scott protested. ‘I laid her down on purpose, nice and steady how you showed me, so Knox Pox wouldn’t spot me.’

  ‘Scotty, Scotty, Scotty,’ Locklin said, shaking his head. ‘We’ve been through this before, mate. You can’t lie any bike down nice and steady at a hundred clicks an hour.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m working on it.’ Scotty grinned wider. He felt his lungs constrict in the heat and then took a hit from his asthma puffer. He could hear splashing at the public pool further up the hill and decided they’d both be better off if they couldn’t hear anyone else having fun. ‘You wanta come inside for a while?’ he asked. ‘It’s a stinker out here.’

  Locklin scanned the street like a predator and checked his watch again before nodding. ‘Not for long though, Sport,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go soon.’ He flipped the Bedford keys into the pocket of his black denims, told Tuckerbox to stay, and followed his cousin inside.

  At eighty-four kilos, Locklin cast a solid silhouette in the doorway, but he stepped quickly to the right, removing it out of habit, as he did when re-conning ruined village huts in Timor so a sniper outside couldn’t catch him in the back. To anyone in Lowood he looked casual enough, but Scotty Nolan knew him better.

  Eighteen months in the army had changed his older cousin. Judging by the cigarette packet that bulged from his chest pocket, it had driven him to take up a habit that had killed his mother. But the changes ran deeper than a new vice. Locklin seemed cautious now, defensive, eyes always on the lookout for ambush. But there was something else about his cousin that worried Scott — something in his eyes.

  The overhead chimes rocked into chorus as they entered and Scotty worked fast. He knew Janet Slaney would hear them.

  He hustled Locklin onto a barstool at the far end of the counter and held the Queensland Times up, opening it in front of his cousin’s face about two seconds before Janet poked her skinny nose around the corner.

  ‘Need any help out here?’ she asked, scratching her long fingernails through the spiky pink tips of her blonde muppet hair. ‘Any help at all?’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Scott said, hoping to plug her yapping. She was looking at the newspaper, but she could only see the top of a black hat, a pair of shoulders at the sides bulging under a black chequered shirt and two suntanned hands holding the newspaper wide. ‘One Coke,’ he said, wishing she’d disappear. ‘I can handle that.’

  She frowned, making her nose longer and her glasses slip down. She pushed them up again and seven gold bracelets slid down her arm to her elbow.

  ‘Well all right, Mr Nolan,’ she said, screwing her lips up. ‘But double-check the change this time.’

  ‘Mr Nolan?’ Locklin asked when she’d gone. He put down the paper. ‘What’s with that?’

  ‘It’s a power thing,’ Scotty said, rolling his eyes. ‘She thinks it keeps me in line.’

  ‘A lost cause, doesn’t she realise?’

  Scott grinned and pushed a bottle of Coke along the counter towards Locklin. He would have offered to make him a burger too, but he wasn’t heating up the burger
plate for anyone. The air conditioner was barely keeping the temperature under thirty with the stove off.

  Locklin flipped him the right coins and Scotty fed them into a cash register that was even noisier than the door chimes. In the storeroom, they heard Janet Slaney start counting again and realised she must have been waiting to hear the register.

  ‘So what’s with the quick trip then?’ Scott asked, putting a saucepan full of water out for Tuckerbox. ‘How come you’re not staying long?’

  ‘Escort duty,’ he said, perpetuating the half-truth. He moved to the corner nearest to the window and leaned on a pinball machine to watch the street. ‘I leave again tomorrow night.’

  ‘Tomorrow? Whatcha doing in the meantime then?’ Scott insisted. ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Forget it,’ Locklin said. ‘None of your business.’

  Scotty doubted that. His uncle was dead. The newspapers said he’d hanged himself within thirty metres of the spot where his neighbour had drowned himself the year before. But there was more than that. Strange lights over Lake Wivenhoe at night, a dead horse stamping restlessly in a truck across the street, and now his cousin was in the corner, camouflaged against the shadows like a goanna lying flat against a spotted gum. And just like that, Scott thought he understood.

  ‘You’re looking for Eric Maitland. You are going to kick his butt.’

  Locklin held a mouthful of Coke and then swallowed hard as his knuckles went white around the bottle. He shook his head.

  ‘No mate,’ he said honestly.

  ‘But you are waiting for him, right?’

  Seven gold bracelets stopped jangling and Scotty waited until he heard Janet counting again before he leaned closer to his cousin. ‘That’s why you don’t want anyone knowing you’re here,’ he whispered. ‘You want to take care of him and then slip quietly out of town again.’

  Scotty waited for a nod, but he didn’t get it. He knew he had to be right. Both Locklin’s parents were dead, leaving nothing behind in Lowood to interest him except his sister Helen and maybe their grandmother. But they were all under one roof at the moment and Locklin didn’t look like he had any intentions of visiting them.

  Now that he thought about it, Helen was acting weird since her dad had died too. Secretive and withdrawn. Gran said it was just her hormones driving her loopy as she got closer to popping out the baby. But Scotty didn’t buy that either. Something was going on. Then he realised something else.

  ‘Your dad didn’t hang himself, did he?’

  Locklin’s knuckles went white again around the bottle.

  ‘You know what I reckon?’ Scotty said, excited that he finally had a theory to fit the facts. ‘I reckon Eric Maitland faked your dad’s signature on his will and then had one of his dirty-rich mates pay to have him strung up in the boathouse. Your dad couldn’t handle being down at the boatshed after his last neighbour drowned himself off the pontoon. They were best mates, so what was he doing over on Maitland’s place to start with? I reckon he found something.’

  ‘Fishing maybe,’ Locklin said, shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘No way. I don’t buy it. Maitland moves into the valley a year ago, sniffing around for a nice quiet fishing hideaway, your dad’s neighbour decides to see if he can breathe underwater, and Maitland moves in on his old woman and bags himself an instant hideaway.’

  ‘Dad’s neighbour had lung cancer for years, Sport. He couldn’t stand the pain anymore. And his wife, well, Thorna was probably thankful to have someone help her out around the place for a change. It’s got to be tough on a woman with kids.’

  ‘I heard he keeps her in chains. You never see her …’

  ‘Maitland’s rough, Sport, but I doubt that he keeps her in chains. Give your brain a break before it overloads.’

  ‘Come on! Maitland wanted the place for fishing, right? He’s got the only farm on the whole lake with a licensed pontoon, aside from Mad Murphy’s search and rescue, but no-one’s ever seen him use it. The mongrel even closes it so we can’t go swimming anymore!’

  ‘That’s not his fault. You’re not supposed to swim in the lake,’ Locklin said, scruffing Scotty’s thick messy hair. ‘Every time you sneak out there, every one who drinks out of the water supply cops a dose of your cooties.’

  ‘I don’t believe you’re defending him! Your dad dies and who gets to move into your place? Mr Personality himself. I tell you Jays, after your dad and what’s-his-name, his neighbour, kill ’emselves — same place, even if it was a year apart — it sure strikes me as weird that the same jerk is strutting both sides of their fences, especially since your place is supposed to belong to some Fletcher Corp that no-one’s ever heard of before. Tell me what you think?’

  ‘I think Janet Slaney is rubbing off on you,’ Locklin said, passing him the Coke. ‘Here, fill your gob with something useful.’

  Scotty scowled at Locklin and took a long suck on the bottle before handing it back. ‘Hey, you had Mr Richards for history at school, didn’t ya?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, so what of it?’

  ‘He ever preach to you about the world’s first shrink what’s-his-name?’

  ‘Sigmund Freud. All the time,’ Locklin said. ‘As bad as Mrs Wrightway did in English with Shakespeare.’

  ‘You remember what the Freud guy said about the past? That if you don’t remember what happened in the past, then you get all bound up in the guts by it and you can’t function? I don’t remember the quote exactly but it’s like what happened to me after my parents dumped me on Gran.’

  Locklin looked at his cousin. He knew the quotation: ‘Not to know the past is to be in bondage to it, while to remember, to know, is to be set free.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ Scotty said, trying not to smile. He knew he was getting somewhere, but he also knew he couldn’t push it. Too hard now, and his cousin would clam up faster than a dirty set of pistons.

  Scott leaned on the counter and shifted his know-all grin from one side of his face to the other. ‘I thought you’d be too old for that kind of deep stuff.’

  Locklin smiled back at him. ‘Hey, sport I’m only four years older than you.’

  Scotty poked a right cross at his cousin, but military reflexes intercepted it, catching his fist like a fly in midair.

  ‘Ya cheeky, scrawny rat,’ Locklin said. ‘I’ll give you too old.’ He flipped Scott into a headlock under his good arm and tickled him, but movement in the next street caught his eye and he stopped. It was a bus. It passed a gap between the bargain mart and the dry cleaners, which meant it hadn’t stopped where the local buses did across from the hardware store. That meant it had to be a special charter.

  He released his cousin slowly, helping him to stand, but his eyes never left the window. Scott stared at him, but it wasn’t his cousin’s face he was looking at, it was Locklin’s fists, opening and clenching at his side.

  The colour drained from Scotty’s face. ‘You gotta let go, cuzz,’ he said. ‘Or you’re gunna end up as a wipe-out like I did. You won’t ever be free of the past.’

  ‘Sorry, sport,’ Locklin said. ‘It doesn’t work for me. I remember the past well enough and I’m still in bondage to it.’ He emptied the last of the Coke into his mouth. The coach was at the corner now, giving way to a council tractor before it turned into Main Street. His eyes narrowed as he considered the opportunity he suspected was aboard it and he slapped his hand over his cousin’s shoulder.

  ‘Quit worrying,’ he added, dropping the empty bottle into a waste bin. He clapped his hat back on and headed for the door. ‘There’s another way to break free from the past. It’s called justice.’

  Scotty watched his best mate turn away. It wasn’t justice he saw etched in Locklin’s eyes. It was revenge. And it scared him. ‘Whatcha gunna do?’

  Locklin stopped, his hand on the door. Nothing, he wanted to say, but the fifteen year old was already too close to the truth. And Scotty was like him. He’d never drop the subject until he found an answer, and that gave L
ocklin only one path to follow. He sucked in a long breath and slid the cigarette packet from his pocket.

  He opened it, watching Scotty’s eyes widen as he slid the velvet pouch out of the space where cigarettes should have been, and then he opened the pouch. Inside were two gold and silver earrings. On both were angels, but there were slight differences between the two. One was of a child about five or six years old holding a Bible, while the other was a chubby baby that was sucking on a cross as if it was a teething ring. Locklin rolled it between his fingers wishing there was a better way, and then he handed the baby angel to his cousin.

  ‘Give this to Helen,’ he said. ‘Tell her it’s part of what I had to show her and tell her to meet me at twenty-three hundred. Make sure she waits until Gran is asleep. And Scott,’ he added, ‘tell her I said that you can come, but just this once.’

  Scott’s grin nearly cracked his head in two. ‘Twenty-three hundred,’ he echoed. ‘That’s 11pm, right? And Helen knows where?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said in answer to both questions. ‘Helen knows where. Make sure you don’t blab your theory to anyone else though, okay? Not Gran, and especially not Helen,’ he added, more seriously than ever. ‘She’s got enough worries with the baby coming. Got it?’

  ‘Got it,’ Scotty said, opening the door to let him out. ‘I won’t let you down.’

  The bus pulled up at the stop and Locklin crossed the street behind it. He stood against the trunk of a shady gum tree in the park to watch the passengers get off, but there was only one, a skinny brunette with shoulder-length hair and fancy embroidered jeans. Her long-sleeved blouse looked chic enough for a city office, he thought, but the nearest one was about half an hour away in the opposite direction of where he had to take her.

  The girl stepped down from the air-conditioned coach and seemed to wilt in the heat, but even so she tugged her long sleeves even lower over her skinny wrists, denying all but her face and hands any breeze.

  She stood back while the driver removed her two small bags from the belly of the coach and she nodded politely when he dumped them at her feet. He climbed back in without saying anything, the doors closed and the girl watched the bus disappear into the haze of its own exhaust.