Yesterday's Dust

by Joy Dettman

  The juniors moved back to the safe confines of their own room, the seniors dismissed, Kerrie telephoned Jeff Rowan. It appeared that the silenced one could require transportation to Daree and a stitch or two or three.

  ‘From a plastic missile?’ Malcolm was amazed, if somewhat chastened.

  Later, seated at his borrowed table, shamed into sham submission by the lawman but still in possession of his licence, Malcolm retrieved his trusty thermos from the table drawer and poured the last of its amber contents into his tea cup, catching all the drips; he spread his thighs, leaned back and sipped.

  He had missed teaching when he retired, or thought he had until dragged back into harness by O’Rouke’s absconding wife. Malcolm thought of the body found near Albury, which led him to thinking of the skeleton with its full set of teeth, not as yet identified, which led him to thinking of graves and his son’s grave, and of Ann’s sweet Mandy, which led him to Ann’s boys and to the minute girl child he’d viewed yesterday in the hospital nursery.

  He had visited with Ann, alone, after Ellie Burton left to do a little shopping. Young Benjamin at school, the tyrant sleeping, Matthew at playgroup and peace in the house. For an hour Ann had been his own. A wonderful hour. And for the first time in many a year, Ann had spoken of the future, of one day returning to study.

  ‘So motherhood isn’t necessarily a life sentence, Burton?’ he had said.

  ‘I think it’s a part of the learning process, sir.’

  Always ‘Burton’. Always ‘sir’. Was he friend, father or teacher to this girl, this woman?

  There had been a wholeness about her yesterday, too long missing. Pregnant last week, slim as a reed this week. Jillian had spent three days delivering their son, and three years recovering. Poor Jillian. These days he thought of her often, and of his son, of the baby he had held and dreamed for.

  Malcolm shook his head, shaking memory away. Babies had little personality, but the wisp, Bethany, had frowned at him yesterday, recognised him. So new, yet her eyes had been old, as if her premature birth had left intact the memories of her every former time on earth. What a world she will inherit, he thought. A world ruled by Wests.

  Until three-thirty Malcolm sat in the empty classroom, sipping, thinking, until the electronic bell jangled, releasing him to waddle up to the Central for his daily refill. Safer to leave his car parked at the school today, out of view of the town dictator. And his heart needed the exercise. He’d seen his doctor yesterday.

  ‘Walk,’ the man had warned him. ‘Walk, and cut your food intake by half or you’ll be dead inside twelve months.’

  ‘Promises, promises,’ Malcolm had replied.

  the teachers

  Sunday 24 August

  There was a determined knock on Ben’s front door the following Sunday morning, and in the kitchen, lounge and dining room, heads lifted, ears listened. Friends and egg buyers always came to the back door. Only salesmen, the police and Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on the old front door, but salesmen didn’t come on Sundays, the police had stopped calling, Ellie’s church didn’t approve of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and she was running late.

  ‘Get rid of them for me, will you, Benjie love? Give them some eggs,’ she called from the bathroom.

  Ben left off printing out his shop accounts and walked to the front door where he found Kerrie Fogarty, studying the mud brick wall.

  ‘G’day,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘What are you offering?’ She grinned her cheeky boyish grin, and Ben returned the grin as he swung the door wide. He liked Kerrie. He cut her hair every six weeks and he wished it grew faster.

  Scared silly that first day, embarrassed to be so close to a female head, he’d held back. ‘Shorter,’ she’d said. ‘Short back and sides, Ben. Like you do the guys. More,’ she’d kept saying. ‘Run your clippers up my neck. I haven’t got time for combs.’

  She had no time for lipstick either, or dresses. She lived in jeans and boots, or baggy shorts and leather sandals. She was wearing her shorts today. The sun was out and warm, and her legs were long.

  ‘Actually, I was hoping to speak to your big brother. Is he around?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s reading. Come through. Watch that bottom step,’ he warned, leading her down to a dark and narrow passage, past the steep staircase that led up to Ellie’s room in the roof.

  ‘What a funny little house you’ve got,’ she said. ‘When I first came here I used to call it the gingerbread house. Didn’t know who owned it then, and every time I passed by I expected a cackling witch to beckon me in with her crooked finger. It’s got real character, Ben. What’s something like this doing in Mallawindy?’

  He liked his house too. Always had. He’d known it well until he was five years old, until his grandfather had died and the house was sold. Then, around nine years ago, Mr Mack, the buyer, had died amid the chaos of his back bedroom, and no one had missed him for a week. The house and land had gone to auction and Ben had bought it for a song, hoping Ellie would move back.

  She’d helped him clean it up and put it back the way it had been in her father’s time, but refused to move in with him. It had taken Jack’s disappearance and Johnny’s return to move her from over the river.

  ‘Mum’s grandfather came out here from Germany when he was fourteen, back in the late eighteen hundreds. He built it. Started off with a couple of rooms and just kept adding bits, then because he’d built the roof so steep, he decided to put a room upstairs. Only trouble is, he hadn’t left anywhere to put the stairs. Watch your head, there.’

  ‘The little house that grew up.’

  ‘Yeah. He made the bricks himself out of the riverbank. Clay and straw, plus a bit of cow manure. So my grandfather always told us.’

  ‘I can’t smell it.’

  ‘Only on wet days.’ They were still grinning when Ben ushered her into the dining room, where Ellie stood ready to make her escape.

  ‘Oh, it’s only you, Kerrie.’

  ‘G’day, Mrs Burton. Just telling Ben I like his house.’

  The newspaper opened to the crossword, Ellie closed it, self-conscious about her spelling, always a little threatened, a mite apprehensive, when around educated people. ‘Sit down, Kerrie. Ben will make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘Not today, thanks. I’m here to see John, actually.’

  Ben walked to the double doors separating lounge from dining room. He swung one wide. Johnny, still seated, looked past his brother to the infant mistress.

  ‘G’day, John,’ she said. ‘How’s the foot?’

  ‘Miss Fogarty.’ He nodded, annoyed by the interruption. ‘It’s improving daily.’

  ‘I like your shoe.’

  An oversized sneaker, cut to fit, now covered his foot. He forced a brief smile as his eyes urged her to come to the point of her visit.

  The three Burtons coexisted within these dark little rooms, but when together in any one of them, the room appeared crowded. Kerrie stepped down to the lounge room to perch on the arm of a well-stuffed couch, and Ben backed off, backed off to the kitchen to his accounts, but he listened in to the conversation.

  ‘I’ve just heard that Norman O’Rouke is in hospital. His mother called, said he won’t be coming back, and I can’t let Fletch into the classroom again tomorrow or I won’t have a school. Uncle Joe said that you had done some teaching, John. I was wondering – ’

  ‘My goodness.’ Ellie was at the front door waiting for Bessy. She walked back to the lounge and stood at the double doors. ‘What’s happened now?’

  ‘Fletch? He um . . . sort of did his block with young Robert West.’

  ‘I meant to Mr O’Rouke.’

  Kerrie turned to her. ‘You knew they found that dead woman near Albury? The police came for Norman and took him down there to identify her. He didn’t come back.’

  ‘I saw it on the news. About finding the woman. Was it his wife?’

  ‘I think it must have been. His mother didn’t say one way or the other.
All she was interested in was her Norman and his breakdown. They’ve got him in a nuthouse . . . psychiatric hospital. Anyway, I was wondering, John – ’

  ‘You’ve got time for a cup of tea, Kerrie.’

  ‘No. Not now, thanks, Mrs Burton. Another day, though. I’ll come back and have a proper look at your house.’ Again she turned to John. ‘I was wondering if you’re qualified to teach, John?’

  ‘Not as qualified as Mr Fletcher, and with less patience these days,’ he said, ending the conversation.

  ‘I doubt that . . . greatly. Very greatly. We could have been in serious trouble on Friday. I could have been in serious trouble. He threw the whiteboard cleaner, could have knocked young Robert’s eye out.’

  ‘Fletch always had a thing with the Wests,’ Ben said, joining Ellie at the double doors.

  ‘Jeff knows about his thermos too. I had to do some fast talking. Anyway, the department will get me a replacement but I can’t contact them until tomorrow and the kids have had a bad year. Norman’s had too much time off, and the temps we’ve had have been in and out . . . like – ’

  ‘Bulls through the milking shed,’ Ben said.

  Kerrie nodded, grinned. ‘And about as much use. It’ll take them a day or two to get someone else up here, and I just thought you might be interested, John. Just for tomorrow, or a few days max. I want to keep the kids in school if I can. We’ve got six who are supposed to be going to high school next year. We’ve let them down badly.’

  Johnny wasn’t adding to the conversation. His book was closed but a thumb kept his place, and his expression suggested he was eager to return to it.

  ‘You’d be qualified, wouldn’t you, Johnny? You said you used to teach at some boys’ college in Brisbane,’ Ben said.

  John looked at his brother, cursing him silently but not denying his words.

  Ben moved into the room. Kerrie, when standing, looked him in the eye, but she was seated now; he could look down at her head, and he knew it intimately, knew her small neat ears, and the two gold studs she always wore, the long slim neck. She’d be coming in soon for another haircut. This pleased him, and he smiled as he looked beyond her head to John and his book.

  His brother rarely left the property; he refused to take any money for his labour, wearing the working clothes Ellie bought for him, or his father’s discarded trousers, the hems let down by Ellie, who was no seamstress. Since his accident he read day and night, replying only briefly when spoken to.

  ‘Would you be interested in helping me out tomorrow, John? That’s why I’m here. I’d be eternally grateful. I can’t ask Fletch again. I dare not. Robert West ended up with two stitches in his head.’

  John frowned at the ones determined to break into the space he’d managed to build around himself. The atmosphere in the house had lightened since the Daree body had altered its status from Jack Burton to John Doe. Ellie was happy, Ben was relieved she’d stopped howling, but for John, for him, it meant that Jack Burton was alive again, living in comfort at Narrawee. It meant that he now had to begin mentally murdering him again – and waiting, waiting for him to show his face in Mallawindy.

  ‘It would be good for you, love,’ Ellie said. ‘It might take you out of yourself, being with the children, teaching again. You could wear the suit you wore to Bronwyn’s wedding.’

  The book closed with a snap. John considered a fast reply to the negative, a faster escape to the old place, but his reply became lost on the way out. He placed his book on the couch as he glanced at Kerrie.

  She was watching him, her head to one side, her teeth chewing on a hangnail. He knew she was in her mid-thirties, but today she looked like a lanky kid who’d landed in a hole but wasn’t complaining about it. An organiser, that one. Her eyes were a deep grey, flecked with blue – too hard to hold, so he looked back to the cover of his book.

  Les Miserables. Fit company for him these days. He’d picked it up from the old bookcase yesterday. Hadn’t read it in years, and he wanted to read it now. The distant past had been trapped between its worn covers and he preferred the past. He’d been planning to spend the afternoon wallowing in the ancient sewers of Paris. Not to be. They wouldn’t let it be.

  ‘I can’t handle the boys, John. Some of them are as big as me. They need discipline. And they need a male teacher with a bit of self-discipline – and one big enough to look as if he means business. You sort of fit the bill.’ Still John made no reply, but Kerrie wasn’t ready to give up. ‘Someone smashed two windows in the senior room last night. It was probably the Wests, giving me a warning. If I get Fletch back, they’ll burn the school down tomorrow. I wouldn’t ask you to do it if I wasn’t desperate – if the kids who want to learn weren’t desperate for help – but I am, and they are, John. And you’re the only one in town I can ask. Beg. Kiss your smelly shoe.’ She grinned, and for a moment his mouth attempted to return the grin. He controlled it, rubbed his eyes instead, rubbed his brow as he looked at his misshapen shoe.

  ‘My movements are somewhat restricted, Miss Fogarty.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up at your door. I’ll drop you home.’

  ‘He can drive Jack’s car. He only needs one foot for it. It’s an automatic,’ Ellie said.

  ‘Three against one. It appears that I am outnumbered. I’ll give it some thought, Miss Fogarty. Can we leave it at that for the moment?’ That answer might buy him time.

  ‘Kerrie. Call me Kerrie. Everyone does. Miss Fogarty always makes me look over my shoulder for my maiden aunt, and she was an old tartar if ever I met one – although the older I get the more like her I become . . . never know when I’m not wanted, and refuse to take no for an answer.’ She grinned at Ben, then she stood. ‘Can you let me know by six tonight, John? I’ll have to contact the parents, get them to keep the kids home if you can’t make it. Or . . . or get Jeff Rowan in to give them a tour of his jail.’

  ‘We’ll get back to you by six,’ Ben said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Oh, there’s Bessy. I’m off, loves. Take some eggs with you, Kerrie. You do eat eggs?’ Ellie said

  ‘Thanks. Yeah, but another time. Thanks in advance, John, in hope. If you can just give me a couple of days until the department gets its head together and gets me another temp. Three days, tops. I’ll call them first thing in the morning.’

  John nodded. He stood. Taller than his father, slimmer than his father, his grey slacks loose and worn, their half-centimetre hand-stitched hems barely brushing his odd shoes. Not as well pressed as his father.

  ‘I’ll call you by six,’ he said as the infant mistress disappeared into the passage, then he took up his crutch and left the house by the back door.

  the gun

  Malcolm had served his time in the army. He’d fought the Hun – with a pen and ink, which had not been his choice of arms. Back then he’d wanted to get out there, shoot the swine and save the world for old England, but always a little chubby and never the sporting type, he had only seen the ravages of war, the totals of war, and the lands after the bombs had done their work.

  He’d had friends in his childhood, his boyhood, but so many of his generation had been lost to war. Fresh-faced boys, with mischief and laughter in their eyes, had left old England’s shores to return to it with the eyes of old men.

  Saved from the worst of it, Malcolm had stayed on in the army when the fighting ended, travelling with his pen and ink. He’d bought a German rifle in France, and a handgun in Germany. Back in England, he’d got onto two grenades, building up quite an arsenal which he’d had to leave behind when he’d packed up for Australia. But the handgun had travelled the oceans, packed beneath hand-embroidered tablecloths in Jillian’s hope chest.

  He unwrapped the gun now. First the red cloth, then the oilcloth, then the brittle old oiled paper. Each item he placed separately on the table until the gun was in his hand.

  And he loved it, loved it as he had the day he’d purchased it. A treasured toy, owned from near boyhood, he loved the smell of it,
the weight of it in his hand. He opened an ancient matchbox that had lived for fifty years beside the gun, and he poured two bullets into his palm. They weighed heavily. Gently he tossed them, listening to the click-click-click for seconds before rolling them onto the table like dice.

  Hard to believe that death lived within each of those bullets. Tiny things, with eternity waiting patiently inside. His handkerchief out, he polished the bullets first and then his gun, as he had done a thousand times, as a young man, as a husband, as a father and as a fat old fool in his dotage.

  His feet were swollen this morning. He’d barely managed to force them into worn slippers. His fingers were stiff with fluid, and every bone he possessed ached.

  One should use these bullets, he thought. One into the temple. End it fast, Malcolm. Better to be in control of the moment than to die alone here, rot for a week in your own bed.

  But he had two bullets. One would be wasted. Perhaps one should be used to blow a hole through Jack Burton. The bastard was playing dead and Malcolm knew it.

  ‘One for his heart, and one for my head.’ He inserted the bullets and aimed the gun at a shadow on the wall.

  Perhaps it was a game the boy in the fat old man played. Just another scenario, replacement for the tales he could no longer complete, but he sat now, writing this one mentally in minute detail. And it had a satisfying resolution. His publisher liked satisfying resolutions.

  ‘Don’t move, Mr Burton. I have a gun on you. This is for the children you wasted, and for my son, and for me. This is my war and I shall win it.’

  Then he saw Jack Burton’s old car come to a halt out front. Quickly Malcolm wrapped his gun. No time to take the bullets out, he pushed it into his cutlery drawer. He snatched up the old matchbox. It went into his pocket as he walked to his front door, his heartbeat rapid.

  ‘Burton?’

  ‘Might I have a few minutes of your time, Mr Fletcher?’