I am breathing fast. Fidgeting with my drink.
“So you still don’t think anything, I don’t know, more sinister?”
He sighs and shifts his weight toward me.
“I talked to you about that.”
“I know, but …” I point to the television.
“Listen. There is still nothing to suggest that there is, Charlie. Okay? Laura Wishart was at home and in bed on Thursday night. Her parents have verified it. And she wasn’t there in the morning. It’s as simple and as difficult as that. There are no signs of interference or struggle or anything of that nature. Everything suggests she might have just slipped out of her window and left.”
“By herself?” I ask.
“Probably. Apparently, I discovered today, Laura had a tendency to go out at night for long walks, but she’d always be back by morning.”
“Do they know where she went?” I am on the verge of panic. There’s a midge in my drink.
“No. Strangely, they let it lie. They didn’t talk to her about it. But it’s opened a can of worms. Now they’re thinking she may have been meeting someone at the river.”
I swallow heavily.
“Do they know who?”
My mother interrupts.
“Wes, I don’t think we should be discussing this. Not in front of Charlie. I think that’s enough.”
“What? Why not?” I object loudly.
My father shows a calm hand.
“Your mother is right.”
“What? Why? Why is she right? That makes no sense! Of course I should know about this!”
“Charlie!” my mother snaps.
“Charlie!” my father warns.
I glower. My mother flaps her tea towel.
“You see, Wesley?” She is brimming with emotion. “He’s just like you! He won’t bloody listen!”
She storms out. She slams the door.
I am dumbstruck.
“What was that about?” I whisper, gesturing at the door.
My father sighs again, and leans forward.
“Charlie, do you remember what I said? About diplomacy?”
“What? Sure. But …”
“Listen, you and I can always talk about this stuff later. Okay? Be smarter about it. Don’t provoke her. And believe me, I’m telling you more than enough. In other families, you wouldn’t hear a thing about this, so be grateful.”
He is right. He is always right. But something stubborn and unresolved in me still has to press at it.
“Okay. I understand. But just now, please, while we’re talking about it, answer me this: do they know who she was meeting?”
I can’t help it. I have to know.
My father’s face broadcasts dwindling patience. I am pushing my luck.
“No. They have no idea. And I couldn’t help them either. She wasn’t sweet with anybody at school, that’s for sure. She didn’t have a lot of friends. But it’s still conjecture that she was meeting anybody at all. It’s just as likely she was heading out by herself.”
“So does this mean that they will stop looking here? In Corrigan?”
“Charlie …” My dad glances up at the door. We’re still whispering.
“What? She can’t hear. I need to know.”
“I know you’re concerned, mate.” He pauses and observes me for a moment. “Okay. No. It doesn’t mean they’ll stop searching. There’s lots of bush out there. They have the spotter planes for a little while longer. A few more days, I should think. And the dive crews are coming tomorrow. The search teams will operate as long as there are volunteers. But it’s a real needle in a haystack. She really has disappeared without a trace. It’s hard to know where to begin. She could have gone anywhere, really. She’s a clever girl. And if Laura doesn’t wish to be found, then that makes it all the more difficult. People are doing their best with very little. So I don’t know. I feel so terrible for her family. They must be going through hell.”
We fall silent. I stare at the floor for a time. Then, as casually as I can, I ask: “Can I come with you tomorrow? To help with the search?”
My father just frowns.
“Of course not, Charlie. No. Under no circumstances. No. End of discussion.”
He half smiles as he rises and rubs his thumb along my hairline.
“Remember what I said, too.” He points toward the door. “You’ve got a good head. Use it.”
I smile back weakly and nod.
***
Later, when I think about Jeffrey, I wish I’d tried to talk to my father about Vietnam. About the war there, and Jeffrey’s family, and how they got killed. None of it makes any sense. I want him to explain to me just how it could happen.
Strangely, of all the horrible things I’ve encountered and considered recently, dropping a bomb seems to be the least violent among them, even though it’s clearly the worst. But there’s no evil mug shot, no bloody glove. It’s hard to figure out who to blame. There’s something clean about all that distance. Maybe the further away you are, the less you have to care, the less you’re responsible. But that seems wrong to me. It should be in the news. It’s wrong that they died.
But if they weren’t Jeffrey’s family, would I care so much? That’s hard. Probably not, I guess. I mean, if you took every bad event in the world to heart, you’d be a horrible mess. You’d spend your life crying, wading from one tragedy to the next. You’d be a wreck. Maybe that’s why people stay in Corrigan and pull their hats low. The less you know, the further away you are, the easier it is to shrug and tut and move on. And so Corrigan remains a town of barnacles. A cluster of hard shells that suck themselves stuck and clench themselves shut and choose not to know about dying. And the way I feel right now, I don’t blame them.
I flop my pen up and down between my fingers so it looks like its made of jelly. I sigh. It feels like somebody is ripping my insides out. Like some kind of mongrel dog has ahold of my intestines, and it’s tugging at and wresting them right there in front of me, low and angry. And I feel like letting go, truth be told. I feel like letting the dog have me, letting myself spool out like an old woollen jumper until I’m empty and light.
What kind of lousy world is this? Has it always been this way, or has the bottom fallen out of it in the past couple of days? Has it always been so unfair? What is it that tips the scales so? I don’t understand it. What kind of world could let pretty girls get beaten and hanged? What kind of world gives birth to Fish and Cooke, lets them fester and hate, lets them torment the innocent and make good people afraid? What kind of world punches someone for using big words?
Verbosity. Verbosity. Verbosity.
A world that kills parents and makes orphans of children and kicks away cricket balls and lies through its sharp teeth. That makes a decent person feel like rubbish all his life because he’s poorer and browner and motherless. That hosts three billion folks, each of them as lonely as the other. A world that’s three-quarters water, none of which can quench your thirst.
Bugger it. There is nothing directing this stupid play. There can’t be. If there is, He’s a crueller bastard than they give Him credit for. It’s timing and chance, isn’t it? Shit luck and good luck. You dodge bullets or you get hit.
Laura Wishart got hit. She’s dead. She really is. I buried her with Jasper Jones. I touched her while she was still warm, I carried her. And they’re out there, looking. They’re out there now. The police, the news, Corrigan. And I’m afraid they’ll find her. Somehow. And then they’ll find us.
Only one other person knows where she is, and I don’t know how Jasper and I can ever find out who they are. It seems the most impossible of tasks.
And what if we don’t? What happens then? If the search is abandoned, and if Jasper and I finally admit defeat. When Laura is just a bundle of lonely bones tied to a stone, do we leave the Wisharts to cling to their threadbare hope? Leave them to a life of speculation and prayer? I wonder if preserving the part of them that believes she made it to the city might be a good
thing. The part of them that believes she might still be out there someplace. That there’s a chance, no matter how slim, that she’s making a life out there. That she’s doing okay. I wonder whether it would be comforting or torturous, to never fully know, to never put the matter to rest.
I guess, over time, you’d want to protect that fool’s-gold glimmer, like you’d clutch a candle in a jar down in a cave. And eventually that hope, that faith, would become a kind of truth. She’ll turn up. She’ll turn up. They would be more than bittersweet words.
But you could never move on from it, could you? You could never set things right in your heart. You’d spend your life wavering between the flickering spark and the dark tunnel you’re in, and you’d seek solace in your little bottled lie each time, instead of heading for the real light at the end.
I think the comfort would be thin and hollow. I think the knot of not knowing would be the worst. You’d be at the behest of your howling imagination, beset by it. It would never let up. The possibilities, the frayed ends, the fragments and scenarios. Forever out of your reach. You’d crave the truth most of all, wouldn’t you? No matter what it meant. Even coming to know that your daughter, your sister, is anchored at the bottom of a water hole. That she was assailed and beaten and hanged. That she was taken from you. Stolen. And buried without you bearing witness, without you tossing dirt or murmuring goodbye.
I put my pen down. I fold my arms and lay my head on them. And I think of Eliza. Her cheeks and her smell. I have to. It’s the only way I can distract this hungry dog, the only way I can ward off the insects itching my eyes, the only way I can still the hurricane in my snow dome. What a world! said the green witch in my Wizard of Oz dream. I bet she was happy to go. I bet a part of her was relieved to melt into nothing. For some people, it must be nice to know about dying. It must be a relief. What a world. And I fall asleep like that, my suitcase yawned open by my feet, a spread of pages under my arms.
And Jasper Jones doesn’t come.
e doesn’t come, he doesn’t come, and then he does.
Jasper Jones has come to my window.
It is a week since Laura was killed. It’s been a week since I’ve seen Jasper. It feels like my whole life.
***
Nothing much had happened since everything happened. The Ashes Test was a draw; not even Doug Walters could swashbuckle a result. Jeffrey failed to make the Country Week cricket team, which came as no surprise. My mother was irritable, my father quietly concerned and serene. I had been getting less and less sleep. I finished Pudd’nhead Wilson. I started Innocents Abroad. I didn’t have to dig any more holes.
The black dragonflies left and the search teams began to disperse. There were only a few locals and some people from neighboring towns still left to scour the bush. The water crews dived and surfaced with empty hands.
The latest round of draft letters was delivered. I heard that three young men from Corrigan had been called up for National Service. My father shook his head when he told me.
It was a whole week since we drowned her body. And Laura Wishart was still where we left her.
Corrigan was slowly lifting the curfew on its children, but the panic remained. Kids were allowed outside again, and there were color and noise back in the street. But doors were being snapped shut and locked come dusk, and parents remained taut and watchful.
Tonight there was a twilight meeting at the Miners’ Hall. It was standing room only. The Wisharts weren’t there. I was hoping to see Eliza. Jeffrey was there with his mother, but they arrived late and were toward the back, so I couldn’t talk to him. The local chaplain and a few senior members of the local council took the floor. None of them could answer any questions with any certainty. They blustered and touched their collars and said the same things over and again. It’s a complete mystery, they said. There is no evidence to suggest anything untoward. It’s as though she simply disappeared. They said the likelihood is that she hitchhiked out of town. Therefore, the search had broadened to other states, and they have issued bulletins nationwide calling for information. I took a long, deep breath. The chaplain, who everybody calls Reverend Gooseberry because he only has one testicle, took to the lectern with theatrical gravity and self-importance. He led the gathering through a prayer, and assured us that God would see her back to us safely. I looked up and saw my father narrow his eyes and thumb his jaw. Before people began to file out, they were reminded to stay vigilant, to keep their eyes peeled. And if anyone had any information that might be of use, they were urged to come forward immediately.
I slowly allowed myself to exhale.
I’d never felt so utterly alone as then, hemmed in and trapped by every person in this town. It felt as though I was made of different stuff. As though I was from a different place. Like I spoke a different language.
There, among the local police and the firm-lipped city coppers, among the volunteers and the hysterical mothers and the breast-beating fathers, I’d been right in the hornet’s nest. And it struck me afresh, the deed that I’d done, my collusion with Jasper Jones. The heft of it. If any of these people knew what I’d done, I would’ve been spat on and screamed at.
But they didn’t know anything. They had no idea. And nobody in Melbourne or Sydney or Adelaide could possibly come forward to lend assistance. Nobody outside of this town could know what I had seen.
Jasper and I were in the clear for now. Laura had not been discovered, and nobody had seen us in the streets that night. For this I felt grateful, of course, but I still despaired. If these folks couldn’t get anywhere with their search teams and sniffer dogs and planes and dive crews and interviews, if they couldn’t unearth any clues, then what hope had we?
After the meeting, in the open vestibule of the hall, there were trestle tables stacked with urns and plates of baked goods. The parents milled about and spilled out of the entrance, slapping the hands of their children. It was a chance for Corrigan to gossip en masse, for rumors to flap and slip from the lips of high-eyebrowed wives, to be refuted and scorned by their husbands.
Out the front, children played chase among the lanes and parked cars. Kids closer to my age mingled and loitered, daring each other to pilfer from the feast inside. Summer couplings stole a chance to spend some time together, looking conspicuously around before sneaking behind the hall or across the road to the back of the hardware store to kiss and grope.
I found Jeffrey pretty quickly. He was chewing a ginger snap that he’d boosted on the way out.
“Quick hands, Chuck,” he said. “Like the Artful Dodger. I could have taken a whole tray and they wouldn’t have even noticed.”
“Then you’d be the Fartful Podger.”
Jeffrey smiled with his mouth full.
“They don’t really know anything, do they?”
“What d’you mean?” I asked.
“I mean the police. It’s stupid. They called a big meeting just so they could tell everybody they know about as much as we do. I reckon they were just hungry.” And he stuffed the rest of the ginger snap in his mouth.
“You’re probably right,” I said.
“I’m always right,” he said after a lengthy time chewing. “I’m a genius. And I’m bored too. A sharp mind like mine needs stimulation. Go in there and tell them you did it so we can all go home.”
Then there was a commotion. It cut the air and made everything still. From inside the lobby of the hall, I heard a single scream, a crockery crash, the gasp of a crowd, then a sustained barrage of sobbing and screeching. It was loud and unintelligible. Heads turned.
This is what had happened:
A woman called Sue Findlay, whom I’d never met, had walked from the hall’s belly to see Jeffrey’s mother quietly pouring water from one of the urns into her teacup. Sue Findlay was a boxy woman with a thick bob, and from what I was told later by my father, she just detonated. Her eyes had lit up like someone put a penny in her. She screamed until her face was red, then stomped over to Mrs. Lu. She slapped her cup up
, right into her chest and her chin, staining her thin summer blouse and scalding her skin. The cup smashed. Mrs. Lu, stunned, had bowed slightly and backed away. But Sue Findlay hadn’t finished. Jabbing her finger, she screeched the most horrible words, the nastiest things imaginable, her voice uneven with tears, her eyes crazy. It happened so quickly. The surrounding folks just stared. I don’t know where her husband was. It was only when she reached out to snatch at Mrs. Lu’s hair that Reverend Gooseberry pushed through to grab her firmly by the shoulders and lead her away.
Mrs. Lu just quietly reached a trembling hand out to unsheathe a napkin. Nobody took her by the shoulders.
Then Jeffrey pushed through the milling cluster. I was right behind him. He walked straight up to his mother and touched her hip as she daubed at her chest.
“Ma, we should go now.”
It’s all he said. Plainly. As though nothing had happened. Mrs. Lu nodded. She must have been in a lot of pain. Jeffrey led her out with his chin up. Like it was all just an unfortunate accident. Mrs. Lu looked shaken and embarrassed. People slowly made way. I followed them outside silently.
Jeffrey opened the door for his mother and people looked on, watching like they were some kind of exhibit. As their car started, Jeffrey wound down his window and waved.
“Bye, Chuck,” he said.
Words deserted me. I held my hand up weakly.
Afterward, I orbited my parents. I listened to my father air the same platitudes to every concerned parent who wandered our way. And I watched my mother fawn and cluck in an overbearingly sympathetic way. I felt galled. Nobody talked about what had just happened. Not one word.
Then someone mentioned Jasper Jones. The same way they did when the post office burned to the ground. With tilted eyebrows and suspicion. And my father listened blankly, like he was barely tolerating them, like he knew better, but he said nothing in Jasper’s defense. None of the things I wanted to holler. So I sighed and turned and kicked a honky nut as hard as I could. It skittered across the road. I left them and sat in the backseat of our car. And there I scowled and sweated, watching this town through our grubby windows. I was so full of sadness and hate. I wondered how many of them had mentioned Jasper’s name over the past week. Probably all of them. I wondered how many of them might be talking about him right now.
Jasper Jones Page 14
