The Beauty Is in the Walking

by James Moloney

  Williamson’s pencil scratched furiously across the page. ‘So you’re clear about this. You’re accusing the police of being racist.’

  ‘Not the police so much,’ Chloe responded, taking a moment to line up exactly what she meant. ‘Look what happened at school last Friday, the way a mob went after Mahmoud. If people aren’t careful, the whole town will end up a disgrace.’

  The look on Williamson’s face worried me, like he’d busted through a doorway and he couldn’t wait to rush inside. ‘Is that your view as well?’ he asked me.

  I didn’t answer straightaway and, as it turned out, I didn’t answer at all. I agreed with Chloe about racism helping those rumours at school get out of hand, maybe, but I wanted our protest to focus on the evidence, or the lack of it, at least. That’s what the knives were about. I tried to explain this to Williamson, but by the time I was ready, he’d locked on to Dan who’d been busting for his attention from the start.

  Williamson wrote down his name and, with the formalities out of the way, Dan launched into what we were trying to show with the knives and the plastic bags. Williamson understood immediately. ‘Very clever,’ he said to Dan.

  I couldn’t suppress a touch of resentment. The whole thing was my idea, yet Dan was holding court now and to poke my head in and say as much would be childish. It was all about the effect we were trying to create, the picture we hoped to plant in people’s minds – that was all that counted.

  ‘Can you take a picture of one of the bags close up?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ chirped Williamson who had taken to Dan like a kindred spirit and, of course, it was Dan he photographed holding his knife in the plastic bag in front of his face. ‘Great,’ Williamson murmured to himself as he clicked off a couple of extras. Then, to the rest of us, he called, ‘Can I get all of you in a shot?’ At least I was at the centre of that one.

  The talking was over now and the kids who’d come to watch parted like the sea before Moses so we could pass through. Nothing much happened in Palmerston and certainly nothing like this, so it wasn’t so strange that they’d come for a stickybeak. We mounted the stairs, paused for a final breath and a nervous glance at each other and then it was on through the doors.

  The whole station knew we were coming and even Marcie Seymour, who did the general office work, was standing with a young cop in the doorway of a room that opened off reception. Now that we’d arrived, they closed the door as though they didn’t want any part of what was happening. At the counter, two older, harder faces waited for us – Sergeant Wallace and the detective from this morning’s paper, both of them big men, as tall as Mitch but heavy-shouldered like Dan and the sergeant, especially, bulged around the waist.

  ‘What’s this about?’ he asked curtly.

  Dan was beside me again, but he left the talking to me this time and I shrank a little now that I was confronted by such a stern figure. What had I expected, though? Wake up, Jacob, I told myself. You wanted to get out front – well, here’s your chance. I stepped forwards to the counter and placed my knife in front of them.

  ‘This was in a drawer at my home. It’s sharp, it could cut open an animal and I’m sure plenty of people have seen me around the high school. That makes me no different from Mahmoud Rais. So I should be a suspect, same as him.’

  I turned to face my friends as a signal that they should do the same. Dan and Chloe were already on the move.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ said the detective in a voice every bit as intimidating as his scowl. I remembered his name at last – Dunstan – and even the sound of it in my head seemed to match the menace in his voice. ‘Before you go ahead with your little stunt, you should know more about the knife taken from the Rais boy.’

  At this, Dan and Chloe slipped back among the others. Dunstan certainly had the attention he was after, but he ignored us and spoke directly to Kerrod Williamson who stood to the side taking notes.

  ‘The knife in question wasn’t taken from a kitchen drawer; it was surrendered by Mahmoud Rais on the orders of his father. He’d been carrying it on his person.’

  He paused to let us take this news in, although it told us little yet. It was all in the suggestion of what was about to be revealed. This guy was a good storyteller, as I should have known from this morning’s paper.

  ‘It was a flick-knife of a type outlawed in Australia and as a result it was confiscated. Rather than arrest Mahmoud, he was cautioned.’

  A flick-knife, for Christ’s sake. Those things were deadly.

  Dunstan wasn’t finished yet. ‘On examination, the knife was found to be razor sharp. It’s been sent for forensic analysis. I’m sure you avid CSI watchers know what that means.’ He smiled, as though he was sympathising with us, but that wasn’t the message in his eyes. ‘Tests will determine if was used to inflict injuries on the animals in this case.’

  That was it. He didn’t hold back now. No friendly smile, just a gotcha smirk he made no effort to hide. He’d got us, all right, or me, at least. My mind drowned under a waterfall of embarrassment.

  I turned towards the others again and found my own confusion on their forlorn faces. I couldn’t have been more off balance if you’d twirled me around twenty times and, amid the giddiness, I clutched onto one thing: a sudden anger towards Mahmoud, as though he had let us down, let me down. Why did he have a flick-knife? It shouted ‘guilty’ as loudly as this morning’s front page and I wondered why the police had bothered with the plastic bag and the photo at all.

  ‘We’d better go,’ I said to the group.

  ‘Wait there,’ called the sergeant.

  I turned back to see him holding up the plastic bag with Mum’s knife laying along the bottom in silent mockery. I came forwards to retrieve it, but he withdrew it from my reach in the way one brother teases another in the backyard.

  ‘It’s against the law to carry a weapon in public. You’ll have to leave them here and your parents can collect them in the morning.’

  How were our knives dangerous when we carried them in plastic bags? I was too stunned to argue about it, though, and he’d have an answer even if I did. I couldn’t afford to lose any more battles today. One by one, the bodies stepped round me to place a bag on the counter and mumble a name so it could be written on the plastic in felt pen. I saw Dunstan nod at Williamson and, as Dan stepped up, the camera flashed. That picture would end up in tomorrow’s paper – we could be sure of that – and Dan knew it better than I did.

  He took off through the doors without giving his name and the rest of us were soon after him, each of us withdrawn into our own little worlds, I think, because no one was speaking.

  Svenson had stayed along with the other onlookers and, reading our body language, he met us as the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘How’d it go?’ he asked tentatively, not directing his question at me or anyone, really.

  Dan winced at the sight of the rubbernecks waiting expectantly along the kerb and when he answered he turned away from them and kept his voice low, which only pushed more of his dark mood into his reply.

  ‘We made a fool of ourselves, that’s how it went. The Leb is guilty as all shit. He was carrying a bloody flick-knife, for Christ’s sake, a wog’s weapon like he’s some Mafia nut job. I felt like a stupid little kid who’s peed his pants. The look on those coppers’ faces, they couldn’t get over themselves and we had to stand there while they shit all over us. This is your fault, Jacob,’ he seethed at me. ‘Getting too big for your boots, that’s your problem.’

  He stormed off across the road without looking one way or the other, forcing a car to swerve a little to miss him. Mitch wanted to go with him, judging by the reluctance and defeat I saw in his face. ‘Jesus, Jake, you bloody landed us in it, no doubt about that.’ Bec was already on the move.

  ‘Bec, Bec,’ Amy called. She went to the kerb and, when Bec didn’t turn around, she looked back to me, unsure of what to do.

  ‘Go after her,’ I called, since Amy would have a better c
hance of calming her down than I would.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m okay. Go, go!’ I was almost shouting this time and there was a sort of relief in belting words out of my lungs when the rest of me was so flat.

  ‘We have to go, Jacob,’ said Alicia Greaves while my words were still dying in the afternoon cool. There was no spit of anger like Dan, simply ‘Sorry,’ as though her mother was waiting in the car around the corner and she couldn’t keep her waiting any longer.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, too, okay. I didn’t know about the knife.’

  I doubt it mattered to Alicia by this time.

  ‘You don’t have to apologise, Jacob,’ said Chloe. ‘We were still right to go in there.’

  I stared at her. We were? The words didn’t leave my lips, but they were written all over my face and she wasn’t slow to read them.

  ‘The knife! Forget it. I bet the tests show it had nothing to do with the animals,’ she declared with a certainty I wished I could share. ‘This morning’s front page was still a set-up.’

  ‘But he was carrying a knife.’

  ‘Think about it for a minute. Mahmoud was attacked by a mob on Friday. If you hadn’t been there, they would have really hurt him. He’s scared to death, anyone would be. Of course he’d want to protect himself, and where he comes from you take care of yourself. It’s a matter of honour.’

  I turned to ask what Mitch thought of Chloe’s explanation, only to find he’d gone after Dan anyway.

  ‘What’s this about a knife?’ Svenson asked.

  Between us we told him.

  ‘Chloe’s right. If Mahmoud was American they’d have found a gun in his belt,’ he said seriously.

  Was that supposed to make me feel better?

  12

  aftermath

  Svenson drove me home.

  ‘Don’t get too down on yourself, Jacob,’ he said before he’d even turned the key. ‘You shouldn’t see this as a defeat.’

  ‘What is it, then? I messed up.’

  ‘You didn’t go there for a cheap victory. That’s not what direct action is about. You’ve achieved what you set out to do.’

  I stared across at him. What planet was he living on? ‘We got crap on our faces.’

  ‘You put the police on notice, that’s what you did, called their bluff, showed they can’t run this case through the newspaper. I bet they’re scared, actually, because there’s no hard evidence and if they charge Mahmoud they’ll be laughed out of court. You rattled their cage, mate. No wonder they gave you a hard time. Look, don’t lose any sleep over it, okay?’ he said as though the whole thing had already blown over.

  I wasn’t so sure. All the same, I felt better by the time Svenson pulled up outside my place. Bloody sports cars. I needed three attempts to lever myself upright and just as I was waving Svenson off Mum turned into the driveway. She was out of the car quickly, in time to glare at Svenson as he U-turned for the trip back into town.

  ‘What’s that about?’ she asked coolly.

  ‘He gave me a ride home, that’s all.’ A timely brainwave kicked in. ‘He told me I did well with my last assignment.’ No mother can complain about good marks. It’s a rule.

  I went straight to my room and lay stretched out on the bed. Sometimes the relief in my body is like a drug that no one else can get high on. You’ve got to be part of the CP club to understand – the only perk of membership. I needed it because now that I was alone I became despondent all over again. Bloody Mahmoud. Chloe might have been right about wanting to defend himself, but Dan was right, too – a flick-knife was something the whole town would despise.

  I heard the phone ring in the kitchen. My calls came to the mobile in my pocket, which, now that I thought about it, hadn’t made a sound since I’d arrived home, as though I’d become instantly friendless.

  Then Mum’s footsteps in the hall and I knew there’d be no knock, just her face in the doorway. ‘That was Cousin Janice. She saw you coming out of the police station this afternoon. There was a crowd. What happened?’

  ‘We went to see them about something,’ I said, keeping my voice low-key.

  Like that would be enough!

  ‘Were you called to see them?’ she wanted to know. ‘Why didn’t you phone me about it?’

  ‘You didn’t need to know, Mum. It wasn’t something criminal, for God’s sake. I went with some friends from school. Stop worrying.’

  Saved by the phone! Mum backed quickly out of my room and hurried along the hall to answer it and, once she was gone, I took our dog, Mindy, for a walk which my legs could have done without, but I wasn’t exactly doing it out of kindness to animals.

  It was almost dark by the time I returned. Dad’s muddy four by four was in the driveway and both my parents were waiting in the lounge room like the double barrels of a shotgun.

  ‘I’ve been speaking to Sergeant Wallace,’ Mum said before I’d even let Mindy off the leash. The dog scooted away in search of her dinner, leaving me to wonder what it would be like to have four good legs instead of two dodgy ones.

  When I didn’t answer, Mum went on. ‘He’s not very happy with you. Says you were the leader of some kind of pantomime this afternoon.’

  Pantomime! ‘It was a protest.’

  ‘Is he right, though? Did you organise the whole thing? And it seems there’s a knife we have to pick up from the station. What on earth were you doing with a kitchen knife?’

  ‘It’s not like I was roaming around the streets with it. We all had one, in plastic bags, like that one in the paper this morning. That’s what we were protesting about. Everyone’s decided Mahmoud Rais is The Ripper.’

  ‘The police know what they’re doing, Jacob. They wouldn’t have gone to his home if there wasn’t some evidence to suggest he’s involved,’ said Mum.

  ‘But that’s why we went there to protest,’ I shot straight back at her. ‘There’s nothing but flimsy bullshit about sightings and knives. If you think that proves him guilty, you’re as stupid as the rest.’

  ‘Don’t speak to your mother that way,’ Dad snapped.

  I didn’t apologise, but I dropped the volume from anger to explanation. ‘We were trying to make a point, that’s all. The knives were to show everyone has something sharp in the house. If that’s all it takes, we should all be suspects.’

  I said this more to Dad than Mum, thinking he would be on my side. He’d got behind my heroics in the school yard, even seemed to admire me for it. I was hoping for some kind of knock-on effect, or that he’d take over the questions from Mum and draw things out calmly so she’d understand, but I must have used up all my credit because he stayed quiet.

  His silence left the way clear for Mum and she wasn’t backing down, not when I stood there as vulnerable on my legs as I’d been at the piss trough.

  ‘Svenson put you up to this, didn’t he?’

  ‘No,’ I said hotly. ‘What makes you think I’d do anything because Svenson told me to?’

  ‘You’ve been talking about him a lot lately. He drove you home this afternoon, from the police station, I suppose. Looks obvious to me. He was using you, Jacob. Protesting, that’s a city thing, a uni student thing. It’s not how we do things in Palmerston.’

  She hadn’t forgiven Svenson for last year, even though she’d beaten him better than three guys with cricket bats. I didn’t give a damn about Svenson. It was Mum I was angry with because she didn’t think I had it in me. She wouldn’t let anyone call me a cripple, wouldn’t let anyone say a bad word about me, but when I led a protest into the police station there had to be someone else behind it, not her CP son.

  I wanted to say all that. I wished I could. It was all there in my head, as deadly as a flick-knife, and maybe that’s why I was afraid to say the words.

  ‘The police were trying to make Mahmoud look guilty through the newspaper,’ I began to explain. I had more to say, but she cut me off with an angry outburst of her own.

  ‘But the Muslim boy could st
ill be the one, Jacob, no matter how much you don’t want to accept it. I mean, who else could it be? Nothing like this has ever happened before in Palmerston – the people who live here aren’t like that. How are you going to look when the boy owns up to what he’s done?’

  ‘He won’t, because he didn’t do it. All this stuff about him being close by is so people can believe what they want to believe. You can see that, can’t you, Dad? You agreed with me this morning, about the picture in the paper.’

  I’d put my father on the spot, but what the hell, I was in the right here and I was totally over letting people steamroller me because I was Jacob O’Leary who lurched about town on dodgy legs. He knew what I was doing, too, and for long seconds he held my gaze, wondering whether to speak up for me, but when he glanced aside at Mum, it was game over.

  Mum went off to the kitchen and I don’t know who was more relieved, me or Dad. He spoke to me at last. ‘Your mum’s only looking out for you like she always does. She’s better at seeing the way through things like this than I am.’

  That night he ate dinner in front of the telly, Mum ate in the kitchen and I took a plate to my room.

  I dressed and even made my bed on Wednesday morning, all the while avoiding my laptop in the corner. Normally I’d check Facebook first thing, but there was an obvious reason for my reluctance and I had my hand on the doorknob, pretending breakfast couldn’t wait, before the shout of ‘coward’ became too strong inside my head. Stuff it. If my Facebook page was plastered with abuse, at least I’d know what to expect at school.

  I logged on and discovered absolutely zilch and maybe that was the ultimate humiliation – that I simply hadn’t made enough of a stir to gain attention. Instead, all the chatter was about Mahmoud, who’d left town yesterday, it seemed, even before we’d climbed the steps of the police station. His father had driven him to the airport in Brisbane and he’d flown to Sydney to live with family down there. I was relieved, to be honest. At last a bit of common sense because the poor kid would have had to stay cooped up in his family’s home for weeks, otherwise.