Yesterday's Dust

by Joy Dettman

  His faith had been a crutch. He’d preached devotion, hiding a faithless boy in the ritual, the ecclesiastical claptrap of the Catholic church. He’d stood in the pulpit offering up words and baseless promises of miracles and deliverance – offering his own splintered crutch for the weak to lean on. But let them lean too heavily and the crutch snapped and they tumbled, fell flat on their faces.

  He’d fallen on his face and he couldn’t get up. Fallen in the mire and he didn’t want to get up any more.

  Tired. Tired eyes. Images moved before them – or behind them, shadow and dream, memory and moment swaying. He shook his head, turning to face the small window as he thought of another window, and the old man, dead these past fifteen years – the only priest he had trusted with his truth, or his half-truth. He’d even lied in the confessional.

  Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

  What is your sin?

  My life here is a lie, Father.

  I am listening, my son.

  At fifteen I promised to kill my father.

  At fifteen you were a boy. Now you are a man. You did not kill him.

  The boy in me wants to keep his promise. The boy in me dreams of it each night. I have cut all ties with my family because I’m afraid of my dreams.

  Take some time. Go to your father and make your peace.

  That I cannot, will not do.

  If you still carry a desire for some childhood revenge within your heart, then you have no place here.

  I am here to find forgiveness, to find the miracle that will allow me to forgive.

  Here, miracles come only from labour. We plant a seed and harvest a miracle of nature. Go to your father and plant your seed of forgiveness in his heart.

  Plant a knife of steel in his heart. Plant an iron axe in his head. Plant a lead bullet in his brain, then plant him deep. When I’m big enough.

  Only weeks after that confession the old priest had died, on the island, in the fields, still planting his miracles. John Burton had not confessed his grievous sin to another, aware that none would give him the reply that he desired.

  Then go home, my son, and kill the murdering bastard.

  He shuddered, blinked, shifting the window again into focus. Grey out, and the wind rising, the oak beating its branches against the roof. Still too early to start on the milking. His eyes roving the walls, found the small head and shoulder portrait of Liza, transferred from the sprawling old kitchen over the river to this small room, and his mind moved back to the day of her pathetic little funeral.

  He’d gone to it. He’d stood at his mother’s side, working hard at doing the right thing for the first months after his return. They’d opened up the other children’s grave. Linda and Patrick’s. His sister. His brother. He hadn’t known them. Had he remained at home they may have been alive today – or never born. He barely remembered the baby who had been Bronwyn, only two when the fifteen-year-old boy had run from that house and hailed down a truck, leaving hell behind him. Leaving little Annie behind him too.

  They had interred Liza’s small white coffin in the early morning, in private. Ben had arranged it. Ben had taken the place of the oldest son. Little Ben, the decision-maker, man of the house. A good man. A lucky man. He looked like his grandfather. Ben had wanted no reporters at the funeral to pry, to spy on Ellie’s grief, so he’d arranged the brief service for the early morning and by nine the white casket holding a seven-year-old’s bones was buried deep.

  Father Fogarty performed the service, and perhaps for a while the well-known ritual had grasped Johnny, carried him. He’d felt that old safe peace, that distancing from self once more, that splintered crutch to lean on. But words ended.

  The stone, chosen in advance, had been paid for by Narrawee, in advance.

  LIZA, LINDA, AND PATRICK. LOVED CHILDREN OF JACK AND ELLIE.

  Ellie had her memorial service in the late afternoon. No pathetic bundle of bones to spoil it, just the large full portrait of Liza that had hung for nearly a quarter of a century over the fireplace in the old lounge room. Miss Tiny Tot, 1963.

  Miss Tiny Tot, and a mountain of flowers brought to the church by the crowd. Most of Mallawindy, Anglican and Catholic, had been in the church, or leaning on the front fence. May Burton had driven up for the day. She’d brought her own flowers, and a flashy condolence card from Sam, who due to illness could not attend the service – or so she said. But John knew all about Uncle Sam. He’d been dead since 1967, his burned remains found in the sand dunes out at Dead Man’s Lane. John hadn’t spoken to May and she had not spoken to him, because she knew that he knew.

  Ann had stayed away that day and Ellie hadn’t forgiven her for that. But she’d wept over Sam’s card. Kept it too. Ben had laminated it for her, had it framed. Now it hung over her bed – a large print of the baby Jesus in Mary’s arms, the price written in gold on the bottom. And his words, that bastard’s words written there in black.

  The writing was too familiar. How had Ellie not known? Ben had noticed the similarity, and commented.

  ‘They’re identical twins, love. Of course they’d write the same.’ Poor simple Ellie. His mother, the fool, the child who had never grown out of childhood.

  To my dearest Ellie and family.

  I know that wherever Jack is, he knows that Liza has come home to her family. He is at peace at last, Ellie. Be happy for him.

  Love as always, Sam.

  Jack Burton had always had a way with words.

  Sam, Sam, the dirty man,

  Washed his face in a frying pan,

  Combed his hair with the leg of a chair

  And told his mother he didn’t care.

  That verse was about the only thing his father had ever taught John. He’d sat him on the old kitchen table and kept it up until the two-year-old boy could parrot it. A pair of bastards, a perfectly matched pair of bastards, Jack Burton and Uncle Sam. Between them they had possessed all the vices of mankind.

  Murder too. Jack had killed his brother when he’d caught him molesting Liza.

  A near carbon copy of the two, John saw that pair of bastards every time he looked in a mirror. Couldn’t get away from them. He feared them, or feared the genes he’d inherited from a paedophile and an abusive drunk, thus he murdered his inner self daily, as he killed emotion, fearing it, fearing life.

  The wind was rising, moaning, mourning the Burton twins. Dead. Both of them. Murdered. Both of them. They’d got what they’d deserved. Both of them.

  But what now?

  Saturday now. Bronwyn’s wedding at three. He’d have to raise some semblance of manhood today. He’d have to sit in the church at Ellie’s side. Couldn’t get out of going. He’d have to put on a suit and a tie, walk out of his separate here and into family, a false smile on his face. He’d have to see Ann, make hard conversation with her.

  He rarely saw her, but they were bound together, hand and foot, by an old lie.

  Somehow they managed to keep up a polite facade when forced to be in the same room. ‘Pleasant weather, Ann,’ he’d say, or ‘Unpleasant weather, Ann.’ ‘We need the rain,’ she’d say. ‘How are the boys, Ann?’ ‘Growing,’ she’d say.

  Like Malcolm Fletcher and her husband David, these days John always called her Ann.

  But he thought of her as Annie.

  As little wide-eyed Annie.

  Lost.

  A light clicked on in the passage. It startled the thinker. He looked up as Ben, dressed for the cow yard, entered the kitchen.

  ‘G’day. You’re up early,’ his brother said around a stretch and a yawn.

  ‘I thought I’d make an early start,’ Johnny Burton lied. Lied easily. Lied constantly. Annie had forced him to lie.

  They had held each other the day he’d come home. They’d howled in each other’s arms and talked and laughed, and howled again. It hadn’t been too late for them. For a day, for a week, it hadn’t seemed too late.

  Now he rarely saw her, rarely spoke to her, couldn’t, wouldn’t forgive
her for making him live a lie.

  ‘Cold out. Probably too cold to rain.’ Ben raked the ash from the old wood stove and set to with a twist of newspaper, a handful of twigs, building a tepee, placing the larger sticks of wood on top. He struck a match, held it until the newspaper caught, and flames crept up to the kindling, then licked higher. ‘Feel like some porridge?’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’ Lie. What did it matter what he ate, or if he ate? ‘Is Mum up yet?’ What did he care if she was up or not? Just talk. Something to say.

  ‘Let her sleep. Bessy gave her a pill to settle her down last night. I don’t know what it was, but she’s still dead to the world.’ Ben measured rolled oats into a saucepan; he added salt and water. ‘What a time for it to happen, eh?’

  ‘Very bad timing for Bronwyn.’

  ‘I don’t know how Mum is going to get through it. She was a howling mess last night.’

  ‘Yes.’ But she’ll put on her lipstick, plait her hair, close up her mind. She’ll survive, Johnny thought.

  Silence then, only the wood cracking, warming the old black stove, already sharing a breath of its heat with the tiny room where a small table stood hard against the one bare wall. Only three kitchen chairs. Space was at a premium. The sink was below a high window and beside it, too few cupboards were packed full.

  No room for a refrigerator and the kitchen door, so the door had been removed years ago. The equally small dining room was across the passage. They never dined there. It was Ellie’s room; it was where she sat her visitors when they came for afternoon tea. It was where she read her newspapers and did her crosswords.

  ‘Annie and Bron are coming down at twelve. David will leave later. He’ll drive straight through and meet us at the church.’

  ‘Right.’ Ben still called her Annie. Annie and Bron. Never Bronwyn. Pretty name, Bronwyn. Johnny had named her too, found that name in a book. How Green Is My Valley. At thirteen he’d liked that name. Liked the book too. It was still on the shelf at the old place. He’d read it again.

  Wind in the vines moaning. Wind in the wires, adding their low, mournful whistle. John stood and walked to the sink, staring out at the gun-metal sky while rinsing his mug.

  ‘I’ll have to get down there before two, they said. Have to pick my suit up. You should have hired one, Johnny.’

  ‘I’ll do okay, Ben.’

  ‘It’s not as if we’re on the breadline.’

  ‘You forget, I’ve got a ready-made wardrobe.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Ben stirred the porridge. ‘You’re as bad as Mum, you know. You won’t move on. Burn his clothes. They still stink of him. I don’t know how you can wear them.’

  ‘Waste not, want not, lad.’

  The words were memory. The smell of porridge bubbling in this kitchen was memory. The small sandy-haired man making porridge was memory.

  Big pots of porridge cooked each morning by Grandpa. And there he was, his back turned, still leaning over his little black stove, stirring.

  Get the bowls out, lads. It’s a good brew this morning. It will stick to the stomach like glue.

  The Burton brothers – so different. John tall, thick hair, dark but greying now at the temples, and Ben small and wiry, his sandy hair kept short. Three years separated them. Since their father’s disappearance, Ben had been overflowing with drive and energy; Johnny was an empty shell.

  He sighed and took two bowls from the cupboard, placing them on the table with the sugar. He took the milk from the fridge as Ben carried his saucepan to the table, ladling the heavy concoction evenly into the bowls.

  ‘It’s a good brew this morning,’ Ben said with a grin.

  ‘Stick to the stomach like glue, lad,’ Johnny replied.

  mother of the bride

  ‘My goodness, what a crowd of them,’ Ellie whispered. One glance through the telephone book was enough to prove that Smith was a common name, but Ellie hadn’t expected all of them to be at Bronwyn’s wedding. The Daree Catholic church was full of Smiths and ex-Smiths.

  The Burtons were not so well represented. Only Bessy, her son Mickey, his wife Jenny, and her great-grandmother, old Granny Bourke. Why Bronwyn had asked her, Ellie did not know. Still, there was no understanding her daughter – daughters – and that was a fact. She’d never understood them, not when they were little, and even less now. She never knew what they were going to do next, and she’d found it better not to know sometimes. Like this rushed wedding!

  Annie was seated in the row behind, with David, and she was wearing black! Johnny was on Ellie’s right. He almost hadn’t made it to the church. They’d picked him up from the Daree hospital at two-thirty.

  What a day. The rain had started misting down ten minutes after she and the girls had left Mallawindy. It hadn’t let up since. So cold in the old church too, but when they closed the door, if they closed the door, the crowd of Nick’s relatives would warm it up.

  Bronwyn had invited Kerrie Fogarty and she actually had a skirt on. It was the first time Ellie had seen her in a skirt. Not much of a skirt. Not for a wedding. Lord only knew why Bronwyn had invited her, but at least having Kerrie on the guest list had given Ellie the excuse she’d needed to invite her uncle, Father Fogarty.

  Bronwyn hadn’t wanted him at her wedding. She’d put on a turn, threatened to invite Mr Fletcher if Ellie asked their old priest. ‘And I’ll sit them side by side,’ she’d said. ‘You see if I don’t, Mum.’

  Bronwyn didn’t even like Mr Fletcher, and well Ellie knew it, but she’d stuck to her guns and given him a late invitation. He’d turned up too, and was seated two rows back, taking up half a pew. Ellie intended altering the place cards at the reception – if she could get to them before everyone sat down. Father Fogarty and Mr Fletcher may have been born in the same year, but that was all they had in common. Always arguing. Every time they got together they argued, and they could become very loud about it.

  Nick’s family lived in Daree. Bronwyn had said that he had a lot of elderly relatives who were not up to travelling. That was the reason they were marrying in Daree. Not that Ellie could see many old ones. She glanced over her shoulder at Granny Bourke, resplendent in pink, hat and all. And the hat smelt of mothballs. She’d lay a bet that none of the elderly Smiths had made it to one hundred years old. Not that Granny was a blood relative, but since Bessy’s Mickey had married her great-granddaughter, she’d sort of moved herself back into the family.

  Ellie shivered, folded her arms, wishing she’d worn her old overcoat. Bronwyn wouldn’t allow it.

  The wedding should have been in Mallawindy – and it probably wasn’t raining there. The whole town would have turned out to see Bronwyn; and Father Fogarty, who had baptised her, should have done the service. He wasn’t happy at all. Ellie glanced at him. He was sitting beside Kerrie, at the opposite end of Mr Fletcher’s pew. She smiled at the old priest. He nodded, but didn’t smile back.

  Then the organist changed tunes mid note and started on ‘Here Comes the Bride’. And there they all were, flower girls and pageboys, and Bronwyn, looking so beautiful, like a walking angel – but with bare arms and shoulders. She’d catch her death of cold. And Benjie! He looked so handsome and proud. Ellie’s eyes filled. This was her first wedding. Annie hadn’t married in the church. She and David had gone to Sydney one weekend and Annie had turned up the next week with a wedding ring on her finger, married to a divorced man. Terrible, Ellie thought.

  White weddings were so beautiful. A tear fell onto her jacket. She grabbed for her handkerchief as the bride halted her procession beside her.

  ‘Don’t you cry, Mum. You’ll spoil your make-up.’ Bronwyn lifted her veil and kissed Ellie, hissing between her teeth. ‘See how they set it up? Half a dozen Smiths in front so I can’t make a break for it through the vestry. Half a dozen more cutting off my bloody escape from the rear.’

  ‘Bronwyn!’

  Ellie shed no more tears. Bronwyn was no angel and never had been, and if the truth was told, Ellie doubted Bronwyn’s r
easons for the hasty marriage too.

  It was a long service, and half of it in Latin. She loved the Latin, loved the whole ritual – not that she understood a word of it. But she had the book with the translation in it and Bronwyn and Nick’s names on the cover. Not that she could read a word without her glasses. It would be nice to keep, though.

  ‘Do you Nicholas Thomas Smith, take Bronwyn . . .’ At least that was in English. As was Nick’s reply.

  ‘Just call me the last of the good Samaritans,’ he said.

  There was laughter, and half of the guests continued to giggle. When Bronwyn handed the priest a bull’s nose ring instead of the wedding ring and said, ‘Put it through his nose, please,’ everybody roared with laughter.

  ‘What a terrible thing to say. Neither one of them has got one ounce of respect for the church,’ Ellie whispered to Johnny.

  He had his metal crutches on the floor beneath her feet. He’d dropped the crowbar on his foot this morning and broken a small bone. Mr Fletcher had driven him down to the hospital. What a time for it to happen.

  And Jack . . .

  Not that Ellie thought for one minute that it was his body they’d found. Not for one minute did she believe it. Not today. Of course it wasn’t Jack. Who on earth would do such a thing? Lord only knew what she’d been thinking of last night. She’d let her imagination run away with her, that’s all. And Bessy – it was almost as if she’d been pleased about it.

  Yesterday. It had started out bad and everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong after Bessy came down with her news about finding that body. The little brindle heifer had miscarried in the late afternoon and Ellie was petrified that she might lose more calves. One year they’d lost six.

  It wasn’t Jack’s body. It couldn’t be.

  And that pill Bessy had made her swallow last night, and when she rarely even swallowed an aspro. She couldn’t remember getting into her bed. Couldn’t remember getting into her nightgown. All she could remember was Bessy drying her hair with the dryer, and making a tangled mess of it, then the cup of tea Benjie had made and the tiny little pill that didn’t look as if it could harm a fly. The next thing she knew it was fourteen hours later, her bladder bursting and Mr Fletcher at her door telling her he’d left Johnny at the Daree hospital with a broken foot. Minutes later, Bronwyn and Annie had turned up and she hadn’t even had breakfast or a shower.