Yesterday's Dust

by Joy Dettman

  He’d preferred the suicide theory. Ellie wouldn’t get the insurance if he’d suicided, and he didn’t want her to get it. She’d get his trust fund, though. There was no justice in the bloody world and never had been; she’d end up with the lot and he didn’t have enough in his pocket to buy a packet of smokes or a bottle of louse shampoo.

  ‘The black woollen sock and the briefs found on the body have been tentatively identified by your sister-in-law as those worn by her husband.’

  ‘Have you been able to ascertain the cause of death?’

  ‘A small calibre wound to the rear of the head.’

  ‘Shit!’

  That one got away. Shit! he thought. Poor bloody Jack, executed and buried in his underdaks. He almost felt sorry for himself.

  West of Daree. West of Daree. Who was west of Daree? He searched his mind, allowing memory to travel that road. He tracked the farmhouses, saw Jim Watson’s place, Harry Docker’s, then he had it and his chin lifted while a smile broke across his features. Buried in his underdaks might suggest Jack had died in bed, and Vera Owen had a welcoming bed out the Daree Road. Charlie had surprised him in it one night, sleeping like a babe. And the bastard had brained him with a tyre lever. Maybe it was payback time. Maybe the day wasn’t going to be a total write-off after all.

  Then Sam came. Just like that. The voice lifted, his Ss became a sibilant hiss, and his vowels became more rounded. ‘I assume you’ve spoken to Charles Owen? I believe he owns a few acres in the vicinity.’

  May was behind him.

  ‘Who is it, Sam?’

  ‘Jack,’ he snarled, but quietly, then altered his tone. ‘It’s concerning brother Jack, my dear. Sergeant Robertson is on the line.’ He liked doing Sam’s Ss, he’d mimicked them from childhood.

  ‘We are holding Charles Owen for questioning, Mr Burton.’

  ‘Has he been charged?’

  ‘What are you doing?’ May hissed.

  ‘Doing my best to assist the police with their inquiries, my dear.’ He cleared his throat and lit a cigarette from the butt of his last, standing the old butt on its end on May’s telephone table. ‘Oh, and I believe the eldest son, John, arrived home shortly before my brother went missing. There was always bad blood between Jack and his son. Just between you, me and the gatepost, Sergeant Robertson, I wouldn’t trust that one as far as I could kick him. An ex-priest – ’

  May snatched up the cigarette butt, replaced it with an ashtray, then attempted to relieve Jack of the phone, but she’d nagged him to pick the bloody thing up and she wasn’t going to get it off him now. He was having fun. He was starting to enjoy himself for the first time in weeks. He held the phone high, well out of her reach.

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to have heard Jack mention the name of his dentist, would you, my dear? Didn’t go against my will and pay any of the unprincipled swine’s accounts, did you? I know how fond you were of him.’

  May had dressed for town, her make-up smooth, her frock expensive; appearances were deceptive. The little bitch trod on his foot, ground it into the floor, choosing the site of the perennial corn that still dogged his smallest toe.

  She didn’t fight fair. He paled, and his voice paled. ‘She doesn’t know,’ he breathed, hopping, dragging the shoe from his foot, tossing it across the room to hit a small table and send it and a vase of flowers crashing to the floor, water darkening the pale carpet.

  May retrieved the vase, unbroken. She placed it on the mantelpiece, collected her scattered flowers, and his shoe, which she aimed at him.

  Bloody-little-wild-cat-bitch, he mouthed. He was easy to lip-read.

  Not a tendril of her champagne blonde hair out of place, agile, slim as a girl, a well-born lady, but the language she mouthed back from across the room was not that of a lady. Always a fast learner, May.

  ‘When did you last see your brother, Mr Burton?’ the distant voice continued, unaware his words were falling in the midst of a battle zone.

  ‘Some years ago. Six and a half to be precise.’ May had picked up the cracked guts of the phone, held it poised to throw at him –and she’d do it too. ‘I’ll pass the handpiece to my wife.’ He got in his last Ss, dropped the receiver onto the floor and left her to it.

  Ten minutes passed before she placed the phone down, then she began in earnest. He’d heard it all before. He replaced his shoe, tied his lace and leaned against the doorframe, raking at his scalp with his fingernails until she drew breath.

  ‘Shot in the back of the head with a small calibre handgun, May.’

  ‘And you told them to speak to John! And that other man. Who was Vera Owen? He said Jack had been involved with a married woman, a Vera Owen. What in God’s name are you?’

  ‘I dunno, May. Finish telling me and we’ll both bloody well know, won’t we?’

  ‘You’re a womanising conscienceless miscarriage of nature, and no better than your father. You’re worse than your father ever was. You make him look like a gentleman. And I can’t take any more of you. I will take no more of you, Jack. Get out of my sight.’

  ‘I was going anyway. I can’t bloody stand living with you, you manipulating bloody rabbit-food-eating little bitch.’

  ‘You can’t go, you insane fool.’

  ‘Make up your bloody mind then.’

  ‘He wants you up there. He knows that you and Sam were identical twins.’

  ‘I know he knows, and how do you think he bloody well knows?’

  ‘John.’

  ‘And that blackmailing, black-headed little bitch. She didn’t waste any time.’

  ‘What did you expect? I wanted to call her back last night. Sergeant Robertson said they were holding Charles Owen on other charges.’

  ‘He bloody nearly killed me one night. Split my skull open with a tyre lever. I hope they hang the bastard.’

  ‘I’m going to call Ann.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to know you.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to know you! You are the reason she stopped coming here. What did you expect her to do? Call you Uncle Sam?’

  ‘I expect bloody nothing from nobody, and that’s all I ever get, May. And it’s almost eleven-a-bloody-clock. I thought we were going to eat in town.’

  ‘I’ve got to clean up your mess. And on the new carpet too. You are the limit, Jack. How did you get to be like you are?’

  ‘Dead easy. Blame the old bastard. He screwed up my life.’

  ‘You’re like a spoiled six year old, always blaming someone else. Your father has been dead for damn near forty years. You can’t blame him forever, and you can’t blame Sam forever either.’

  ‘I’ll blame who I bloody well like. Blame you too, you nagging little bitch.’

  ‘Do you ever stop and think of the consequences of your actions? Have you ever once in your life stopped to think of anyone other than yourself?’

  ‘I try not to. What’s for lunch?’

  ‘It’s too early. Make yourself a coffee.’

  ‘I ate my bloody cornflakes early, didn’t I?’

  ‘Then make yourself a sandwich!’

  ‘There’s no butter and I don’t want a bloody sandwich. I want steak and chips at the restaurant.’

  ‘Your cholesterol is sky high.’

  ‘I like my cholesterol high. It’s about all that is these days.’ He walked out to the kitchen muttering, ‘A poor bloody dead man will fry himself some bread, that’s what he’ll do.’

  He was heating his margarine in the frying pan when the phone rang again.

  ‘That will be Maxine,’ May said. She spoke for only a minute but when she walked to the kitchen, tears were trickling. ‘Ann,’ she said.

  ‘What the bloody hell does she want now?’

  May shook her head, wiped at her tears. ‘She’s in hospital. She’s had another baby. Oh Jack, she said to me that she was sorry. That poor little girl said to me that she was sorry. Sorry for what?’ He dropped his bread into the fat, listened to it sizzle. ‘God, Jack, after what we have done t
o her, she says she’s sorry?’

  ‘Don’t start on that again.’

  ‘We’re going up there. Today. You’re going to Daree, to do whatever the police want you to do.’

  She stood there, her eyes leaking while he flipped his bread over, got the jam from the fridge and sat down to eat.

  She sat by him, her head on the table, and he placed an arm around her. ‘Come on. Stop your bawling. I’m a bastard and you always knew it. She’s all right if she can make a phone call. The kid is all right?’

  ‘It’s very small, and it’s another girl, Jack, and she named it . . . that’s what’s killing me. It’s killing me, Jack. She named her Bethany May.’

  the sand dunes

  Friday 15 August

  Jack had spent the morning in Daree, kowtowing to the Sydney detectives, then he and May had driven up to Warran, booked into a motel and had a decent lunch there. He would have preferred to eat at a pub, but he didn’t feel too confident about walking into a Warran hotel. He’d spent a fair amount of his time in most of them, and been tossed out of a few.

  It was two o’clock before they drove to the Warran hospital. May wanted him to go in with her, to look at the granddaughter – or great niece, depending on which one he was supposed to be. And he’d been planning to do just that. As May had said fifty times or more, Ann had called them; she’d opened the lines of communication, so now it was up to them to keep those lines open.

  So he’d breeze in and front her. He’d planned it all morning, practising Sam’s fake expression of concern. ‘Lovely to see you again, Ann Elizabeth,’ he was going to say. ‘Sad news about your father.’ That’s what he’d planned to do on the eight-hour drive last night, what he’d planned when he’d woken before dawn in a strange bed, what he’d planned while driving to Warran, and to the hospital. But ten metres from the hospital entrance, he’d stilled his feet. Backed off. Chickened out.

  His lack of fear had served him well in his youth, but fear was like a nest of lice in his guts. He couldn’t face those eyes. They’d kill him. She had Ellie’s big round eyes, but hers were black as coal. She’d always shielded them from him behind a film of accusation, and they’d accuse him again today.

  Bastard, they’d say. Murdering bastard.

  He looked at his hands. They were clean. He’d scrubbed them clean last night at the motel, scrubbed them with Solvol, bought at the Daree supermarket. Scrubbed them before they went to the cops this morning too, and made a bloody mess of the motel’s hand basin.

  They’d taken a sample of his blood and a bit of his hair, they’d X-rayed his skull, his teeth, his jaws. He was probably ticking today, probably giving off radium fumes. Then, when the technical mob had done with him, the cops had started in. Hours he’d been with them, and he’d played Sam, played him to perfection until every vessel in his brain had gone into atomic mode, threatening the big bang.

  Fear was a killer. So were X-rays. His head was aching like a bastard. Maybe if he had a heart, then his heart was aching too. Maybe he wanted to see that kid, born early like its mother, with black hair an inch long – like its mother. All Burton, the husband had said when May had called him last night from the motel.

  Another one of the long-limbed, black-headed little buggers, that old Celtic strain that refused to breed out, Jack thought as he drove slowly down the main street, massaging his neck, turning his head from side to side, striving to ease the ache. His heart had been thumping like a dying motor since he’d driven away from the hospital. Maybe he should have gone in. If you’re going to have a heart attack, the best place to have one is at a hospital.

  Too familiar, this town. Back on his old turf, his old stomping ground, it was becoming increasingly difficult to deny Jack. He’d known Warran well, known a few Warran women in his time too.

  A beer and a couple of aspros, he thought. There were aspros in the glove-box. He reached across, and his heart lurched, choking him.

  ‘Bloody world attacking from without and cholesterol attacking a man from within,’ he said, doing a left-hand turn. ‘Ah, you’re already dead, you poor godforsaken bastard, so you can’t die of a heart attack, can you? You’re one of the undead; a bloody zombie.’ He snatched the packet of aspros, peeled three from the foil and tossed them into his mouth as he turned out of the street and onto the road that led to Mallawindy.

  Jack had grown accustomed to seeing green paddocks at Narrawee; the land here was brown with last year’s grass, but already there was a haze of green showing through. Give it a week of warm days and these paddocks would be green again, green for a while. The only time this country was fit to live in was in spring.

  He passed a truck. It looked like Jim Watson’s. Driving on automatic now, he raised a hand, an old habit, then quickly withdrew it to scratch at his scalp. May had checked his head again last night and she’d laughed at him, laughed at his bottle of louse shampoo, bought when he’d gone out for Solvol and cigarettes, a twenty-dollar note in his pocket. He’d used his shampoo before he’d showered this morning but it hadn’t done much good.

  One day he’d get the lot of it cut off. Couldn’t yet, not while the coppers were hanging around asking questions. He had to be unquestionably Sam, the long-haired S-hissing bastard with the pigtail.

  Sam had never worn a pigtail, but he did now. Jack’s hair was worn longer than the old wigs; it had to be longer so he could tie it back, get it out of the bloody way. Without his rubber band he looked like Big Chief Running Bear with a beard. But he didn’t look like Jack. Jack had kept his hair black with the help of a bottle; he’d worn it short, brushed straight back from his brow. Jack had been clean-shaven.

  ‘Poor bloody Jack.’

  When he’d heard the voice on the answering machine, mummy’s boy Benjie, telling Aunt May that they’d found the body, he’d wanted it buried wearing his name. Couldn’t have it. The teeth and jawbone of the corpse had been found intact. It wouldn’t match his – unless his old man had bred a third son on the wrong side of the blanket. ‘What a bloody lark,’ he said. ‘The old bastard would roll over in his grave if he found out he’d given me an out.’

  Laughter kept him going for a few kilometres. Maybe it eased the tension in his neck. It or the aspros he’d swallowed were making inroads into his headache.

  The car he drove was near new, a big silver grey Ford. It ate the few short kilometres to Mallawindy, and when he saw the town seeping out of the landscape, he felt nauseated, hating what he saw and knowing he shouldn’t be there.

  ‘Suppurating sore on the backside of buggery,’ he said.

  He should have stayed in Warran or better still, stayed at the motel in Daree, let May drive to the hospital alone. He glanced at the old scar on his wrist, then pulled down the sleeve of his sweater. Should have put a bandaid over it before he’d gone to the cops, but if they’d questioned the injury, all he’d have to show them was Jack’s twenty-four-year-old scar, legacy of the night he and old Rella Eva had played chicken with a train at a level crossing, and lost the game.

  ‘Poor old Rell. It’s a bastard of a world, Rell. You’re better off out of it.’

  He glanced to the left as he drove through town. He glanced to the right.

  BURTON AND DOOLEY’S EMPORIUM.

  Forced to stop at a pedestrian crossing, he squinted his eyes, trying to see through the newsagency door, but King Billy was hobbling across the road, three dogs limping behind him; he and his dogs had known Jack well. His face shielded with a hand he watched the dogs stop, sniff the air. Perhaps they smelt him. He’d kicked a couple in his day. King Billy stilled his feet to eye Jack’s luxury car and to swear at its driver.

  ‘Piss off,’ Jack mouthed, driving around him, then around the block and through town again.

  ‘A bloody man is stark raving crazy,’ he said, but he needed to see someone he knew. Bill Dooley, old Robbie West. Anyone. The town looked dead. The plague had been through and killed every bastard in it. King Billy excluded.

  Ja
ck saluted him – or his dogs, then drove on, looking at his peppercorn tree in front of the Central Hotel, wanting to pull into the gutter and push the old door wide, be himself again. But he wasn’t himself. Couldn’t be himself.

  ‘You’re no one,’ he said. ‘You’re nothing but a nothing, you’re not a thing at all.’

  His watch checked, he made the turn into Dead Man’s Lane, a fitting place for the undead to go, and for half an hour he toured the tracks through the sand dunes, looking left at the rough bark of the gums, looking right at the river, choked with fallen trees. He parked the car and walked the dunes, and he cursed, and he remembered while the sun slowly crept across the sky.

  He thought of Ellie and of the one in hospital; he thought of May. She’d been on a high since they’d left Narrawee. She’d got her Ann Elizabeth back. She’d got a kid named for her, and David had said he’d be taking the boys to the hospital to view their new sister, that he’d meet May there at two. She’d spent fifty dollars this morning on junk, determined to buy the little boys’ hearts. She should have had her own kids. He should have moved to Narrawee back in the sixties. Should have done a lot of things.

  May would be finished with her visiting, but she had the motel key. She’d be full up with the one in the hospital. Four kids in six years. Five kids in ten. The little one who had looked like Liza had been dead for around two weeks that night. That bloody night.

  Run, Dad. Go out to Dead Man’s Lane and I’ll find you there. I promise you. I promise I’ll get you home to Narrawee. Run, Dad. Run!

  He’d thought the game was up and he hadn’t been able to raise a run, but he’d walked, walked through the storm willing a bolt of lightning to strike him dead. It had tried to. He’d kept to the trees and the riverbank, just walking and thinking it was all over, and wanting it over; he’d walked the dunes knowing she wouldn’t come, knowing that he’d fall down on the sand and dig himself in, die of pneumonia.

  He’d been sitting on wet sand, scooping out his hole, when he’d seen the blink of old Satan’s eyes against the black backdrop of Hell. In the distance though, too bloody far away. Twice he’d watched those blinking eyes before he’d raised energy enough to stand, to walk towards them.