“Sir, with respect, that seems a little cynical.”
“It’s not cynical if it’s factitious.”
“Factitious? That makes no sense. It’s not even a word.”
Jeffrey prodded his pipe in my direction.
“Charles, the problem with you is that you’re not worth a damn. Now, if you’ll kindly refrain from slowing my progress with your impertinence, I’ll remind you that Clifford J. Brawnheart is always right. End of story.”
And it was. Pope on a Rope has been since been stashed in my suitcase, and though its merits have often been discussed, it hasn’t been read again. I doubt it’s my gateway to the literati, but I do know that one day I’m going to work on something big and significant. I’m going to stun this know-nothing town, and I’ll be Manhattan-bound with a book bearing my name.
I’ve often wondered if my father has been working toward the same thing in his library. I’ve long suspected him of secretly writing something in there. He steals away most nights and stays up for hours. Sometimes he falls asleep at his desk.
He’s got to be working on something. I wonder what it’s about. I wonder if he’s close to finishing. I wonder how long it is—how many pages, how many words. It’s been years since he first began going in there, always locking the door behind him, which I never understood. I mean, I was never going to burst in there unannounced, and my mother hasn’t entered that room for eight years. See, my dad’s library used to be a second bedroom, painted lilac and decorated for the arrival of my younger sister, who died just before she was born. It almost cost my mother her life and stole her chance to ever try again.
Still, it’s strange to think of me and my father both scrawling clandestinely through the night, threading lies and secrets from under the same roof. I wonder, if I told him about my writing, would he talk to me about his? Would he let me read some?
I carefully close my suitcase and lock it. I slide it beneath my bed. Then I cup my temples and look out the window for the last time. Jasper Jones is not coming. I’m on my own tonight.
I turn and lean back on my pillow. I look down at my chest and stomach, frowning at my stick arms and my ladder of ribs. My lip curls. I spill onto the floor and embark on a set of push-ups, full of resolve. I make it to ten before I almost enter a coma.
Back on my bed, sucking in air, I tuck my hands beneath my head and think about Eliza Wishart.
It sounds ridiculous, but I can almost smell her. I close my eyes. I should have talked to her. I should have crossed that oval, my pockets brimming with all the right words. I want to see her in a way that almost hurts.
I wonder what is unfolding at her house right now. Is she asleep, or is she awake and frantic? I imagine her parents. Speculating and supposing. Panicking. They must have involved the police. The Authorities. The people whose job it is to locate the missing. They’re probably over there right now. Dozens of them. Specialists. They probably have maps and blackboards and switchboards on trestle tables. They’re getting organized. They’re drinking black coffee. They’re talking fast and loud, punching out their cigarettes dramatically. Collars pulled, ties loosened. Positing and arguing. Embarking on a fresh trail of crumbs and hot leads that will lead them directly to me.
This dread is lousy. When it hits, it’s like someone has turned the dial that controls gravity. Everything sinks hard and cold and fast. It winds you. It’s that same feeling, that same sad panic you confront when you can’t sleep, when your mind wanders and you remind yourself, for no reason at all, that you’re going to die one day. That you will end, you will be buried and forgotten. And everything and everyone you know and remember and love will be void. And in that act of knowing, something rushes inward and twists at your heart and you can’t breathe right. The knowing, it’s a cold kiln for this brick. It’s stuck firm. It’s not going anywhere. And you come to understand that in a hundred years from now, everyone presently in Corrigan, in Australia, in the world—every parent, every child, every animal, everyone—will have died. It’s a weird and unspeakably sad feeling that leaves you hollow but heavy.
That’s what I’m beset by. That’s what Jasper Jones has led me to.
And so I roll onto my side and I think about Eliza. And I recall her scent and my dread spreads and bursts into butterflies. And I think about how soft her cheeks look, and how it might be to press my lips against them. How it might be to say things in her ear that might make her smile slightly, that would settle her frantic heart and have it beating like the sure tick of the Miners’ Hall clock tower. How it might be to encircle her waist with my arms. Tight. How warm she might feel. And I shudder.
must have slept solidly, because I wake in that same position, curled on my side. I feel old and sluggish, like I could sleep the night through again.
I blink. Twice. And my eyes settle on the window.
There’s a paper wasp. Right there. Perched on the edge of the glass slats. It looks busy. Its backside bobs, sinister and slow.
My fear spreads like a dollop of molasses. Dazedly, I seem content to observe it, and then I suddenly leap from my bed like I’ve just had volts shot into my body. I have never moved faster. Nobody, ever, has moved faster. I am a mess of limbs, and my mouth blurts a series of vowels. I grope at my nightstand and throw a book at it. The Naked and the Dead misses the wasp entirely, but hits the louvre lever, snapping them shut.
I snatch my towel and leave. I’m not sure if I just locked the wasp in or out of my room. My fear tells me inside. And, it whispers ominously behind the back of its hand, You just pissed it off. My heart is thrumming like a speed bag.
In the bathroom, I splash my face with warm tap water and try to calm down. Rather than risk an encounter in my room, I take some clothes from our washing basket and throw them on.
Of course, I’m assailed as soon as I walk into the kitchen. My mother doesn’t even turn around. It’s as though she can sense the grit and the rumples.
“Charlie! Take those off. I haven’t washed them yet!”
My mother sets a cup of Pablo in front of me and tugs at my striped cotton tee. I rub my eyes and sigh.
“But it’s not even dirty. It’s fine,” I say, and sip at my coffee.
“No, it is not fine, Charlie. I won’t ask you again.”
She fixes me with a glare that could swipe a swath through an iceberg. But this morning, I just don’t give a shit.
I keep quiet, which I am sure she translates as grudging assent. I chew the toast she presents and uninterestedly flick through one of the papers my dad isn’t reading. He’s especially quiet this morning. He’s usually a little distant in a distracted sort of way, but this morning he’s like a ghost.
My mother pretends to busy herself, wiping down her immaculate kitchen. She talks sternly at me while looking out the window.
“Charlie, if you’re going to Jeffrey’s today, I’d like you to stay there or on the street, where I can see you, please.”
I pause and frown.
“Why?”
“Because I said so. That’s why.”
I look to my dad, but as ever, he offers no opinion from the other side of the table. I may as well be sitting with a well-fed bloodhound. I hold my hands up, like I’m holding an invisible bowl full of questions.
“How can that possibly be a reason?”
“I’m your mother. I don’t need a reason.”
“That doesn’t even make sense!” I blurt out, and she whirls around. I am in it now. The glare returns. Those eyes could make a eunuch out of Errol Flynn. You have to squint and look away; it’s like trying to look into the sun.
“Are you going to continue to backchat me, or are you going to do what you’re bloody told?”
I hate this rhetorical standoff. I can’t win. There is never any winning. I can’t even forge a stalemate. I have three red doors with three labels: SILENCE, AFFIRMATION, and FATAL BEATING. Opening any of them hands her the victory.
At the moment, I hate them both like I hate wasps
: my father for being bewildered and useless, my mother for flying the red flag.
I open the red door that says SILENCE. The least painful loss.
“Good.” My mother turns to wipe her clean bench.
Quietly fuming, I finish my toast and bide my time, with the occasional betrayed glance toward my father. I skim over the newspaper headlines and read about how Americans are saving the Vietnamese and more Australian troops might be sent there soon.
It’s confusing, because my dad hates the war. He wanted to drive to the city to join the protests, but my mother wouldn’t let him. She said it was a waste of time and money to drive out there just to take a stroll with a crowd. I wanted my dad to be defiant, to drive up there anyway. I might have gone with him. But he stayed.
Eventually my mother leaves the kitchen, speaking loudly about doing a load of washing. I listen to see how busy she is. Then I quietly up and leave, gently shutting the front door behind me. The second time I’ve snuck out in as many days.
I walk quickly to Jeffrey’s, intermittently looking over my shoulder. I imagine that my mother has just swung open my bedroom door to a rapacious swarm of insects so thick that they coat her entire body like chain mail and buzz louder than a sawmill.
Fear of retribution propels me through An Lu’s death garden without pause. I knock on Jeffrey’s door with some urgency. To my surprise, he answers it. This has never happened. His face is a caricature of disappointment.
“Hello, sir,” I say to him. “I’ve come to talk to you about Cheeeeses. A moment of your time, sir, I beg you. For Cheeses Christ arrrrrr Larrrrrd.”
Jeffrey’s head snaps back like a PEZ dispenser. He sighs upward.
“None shall pass, Chuck.”
“But, sir! The Cheeses!”
“No, really,” Jeffrey says, his hand still on the door. “You can’t come in. And I can’t come out.”
“You don’t have to. Everyone already knows you’re queer.” I smirk and move to go inside.
“Shut up, retard. I mean it. I’m grounded.”
“Really?” I stiffen.
“Really.”
“How? What did you do? I saw your dad yelling at you last night.”
“Well …” Jeffrey sniggers slightly and whispers. “Yesterday, Mrs. Sparkman came over to borrow something, and just as my ma answered the door, Chairman Wow whistles and goes: Ma! We’re going into town to play some fucking cricket! We’re going into town to play some fucking cricket! And so of course she blushes and tells my ma what it means and how rude it is. Stupid bird ratted me out.”
I die laughing. Jeffrey holds a finger in front of his grinning lips.
“I know. It’s hilarious. But she went crazy. She was like a tornado, Chuck. A tornado of fury. But it’s fucked. She won’t even let me listen to the Test Match. I’m going mental in here, Chuck. Do you know the score? Is Doug Walters in yet?”
“I have no idea.”
“Fuck!” he hisses, and he clicks his fingers in a jerky movement like a thwarted villain. “You’re useless to me, Chuck.”
“I’m useless? What am I supposed to do now?”
“I don’t know.” Jeffrey smiles. “Go find Eliza Wishart. Go have a picnic in a meadow and make daisy wreaths and … what’s the word? Frolic. Go frolic in a meadow.”
“I think I’d rather give you a vivisection. With my hands.”
“Queer.”
“How is that even remotely queer?”
“I don’t know. But it is.”
Behind him, his mother shrieks something. I don’t understand the words, but the tone translates clearly.
“I have to go, Chuck,” Jeffrey says sullenly, and I sigh and wave as he shuts the door.
Our quiet, clean street belies its weight of oppression. An’s garden, the creeping heat, my wasp-hive bedroom, the brick in my belly, the she-devil awaiting my demise at home. I start walking aimlessly toward town. Maybe I’ll go to the library. Or the bookstore. I should have brought some of my savings.
As I walk past the school oval, I watch some kids trying to get a kite started. Looks like they’ve fashioned it themselves from a dowel and newspaper and fishing line. I don’t like their chances. The air is static as an oven, and just as hot. Still, they sprint in straight lines, with their kite scudding and skipping behind. From here, it looks like it is chasing them.
I arrive at the library. Save for Mrs. Harvey, the librarian, it is empty.
Since I’ve been devouring my father’s books, I’ve spent less and less time here, so it feels a little like I’m visiting an elderly aunt. It has a familiar spicy smell; I feel instantly at home.
I spend some time browsing the general fiction aisle, but my eyes glaze over spines. I amble on. It’s only when I reach the crime section that my heart kick-starts and I stop and peer. My finger hooks out titles and I bundle books in my arms. When they get too heavy, I carry them all to a desk in the far corner. I put them down and switch on the lamp. I feel suddenly excited and full of purpose. They’re all true-crime books, their covers featuring grainy mug shots or creepy urban scenes. The word chilling appears in most of the blurbs. I check to see who has borrowed these books before me, whether there are any names that repeat themselves. They are indistinct and mostly illegible. No Jack Lionel. Nobody I even recognize.
It’s compelling reading. I pore over the misdeeds of famous and infamous killers, fascinated by their stories. I learn that Jack the Ripper was never caught. I read about Burke and Hare, who killed for money, selling the corpses to medical colleges. I suck in the words furiously. It all seems so gothic and surreal. Then I read about Albert Fish, the man they called the Brooklyn Vampire, whose written confessions make me so queasy I can’t even finish. I slap the book shut. Look left and right. I am galled and enthralled. I open it back up.
His photograph stuns me. The face of a child-eating monster. His hawkish, asymmetrical face and sinister eyes. I have to look away. It’s everything I would imagine Mad Jack Lionel to be. That bleak expression, sharp and volatile. As though he could snarl and bite at any moment.
I skim through the other titles. They’re intriguing and harrowing. I bow close over the pages, but something seems slightly unsatisfying. New York, London, Paris. They all seem so far away and long ago. The cases feel a little too much like fiction, like too much is left to imagination.
It’s at this point that I recall the Nedlands Monster, and I know it’s him that I really want to read about. What I remember mostly is his hanging last year, which everyone except my dad seemed to welcome. I don’t know much about the events.
So I slide the crime books to one side and walk quickly toward the newspaper archives. I spend an hour collecting issues that mention him on the front page, building a hefty stack to my right. Mrs. Harvey sternly reminds me to put them back in the right order, but I suspect she’s secretly pleased someone is finally making use of her work.
I haul them back to my desk and try to read about the case chronologically. From the lurking shadow that slaughtered five people on a single weekend almost three years ago to the quiet harelipped man they finally apprehended and hanged. It’s macabre and unsettling, more than the other stories, because these are places I recognize and it’s a time I can remember. The headline hysteria makes me uneasy even though I know how the story ends.
And clearly, it’s not just me. I skim over editorials and letters which gather in intensity as the crimes continue. A fever of panic against an unseen evil, as though Perth were Gotham City itself. I imagine worried denizens clutching their coats and walking quickly as a cool wind herds leaves around their ankles. I read on. Reporters tell folks to lock their doors, recommending curfews and urging ladies to wear full-length clothing. There are double-page spreads, rife with wild speculation and concern, on how to secure your home. Nowhere was safe, nobody was exempt. It could be you next.
And then they caught him. Eric Edgar Cooke, who came looking for his gun and was ambushed by the law. He must have wondered
what took them so long.
I stare at his photograph. The thin, bowed man who tormented a city. The man who had them running for the exits, had them turning against each other. He looks a little like a beaten and battered Jack Dempsey. He looks harried by demons and ill at ease.
There are stories etched into that face, but what I’m really searching for is why. Why he stabbed a woman in her own bed. Why he shot a man between the eyes as he answered his door. Why? Why did he kill all these people? I need to know why he wanted a whole city to close in on itself.
I shake my head slowly and read on and on, no longer interested in the crimes themselves. I find it strange that even after he was caught and caged, even after he was revealed to be such a small and sallow sight, the panic in the articles doesn’t relax. The people still are rattled.
I finally begin to piece together a portrait of his life and his childhood. I read about him being ruthlessly bullied on account of his cleft palate. About his loneliness. His abandonment by everyone except his pitying mother. About his abusive drunkard father who beat him ferociously with his fists, sometimes with a thick belt. Who spent his wages on drink and let his family go hungry, which meant Cooke had to thieve for their livelihood.
It is horrifying and sad. But I still don’t understand. Was this really why? Are these the ingredients of a murderer? I hold my head in my hands and I think about Jasper Jones. An orphan, or as good as. Whose dad hits the drink as hard as he hits his only son. Who also has to steal to eat. I can’t even begin to imagine what has happened under that roof. I think about Jeffrey Lu, bullied every day of his life. I think about Sam Quinn, a boy at our school with a cleft palate. Or Prue Styles, a lonely girl who has a ruby-red birthmark like a bloodstain down her face. And I think of Mad Jack Lionel. I imagine his face as a composite of Albert Fish and assorted movie villains. I think of him alone on his veranda in the still of night. His crooked face, his evil eyes. Surveying his moonlit property. Watching a girl in a nightdress hastily making her way to the river.
Jasper Jones Page 9
