Jasper Jones

by Craig Silvey;

  “Jasper! Good God, it’s you! How about that! Strike a light, what a surprise! Come on in, come on.”

  Jasper wasn’t lying: he knows his name. Lionel reaches out to usher Jasper in by the shoulder. Jasper responds by rearing and ripping his arm back. I flinch.

  “Don’t be touching me, mate. That’s not happening. Understand?”

  Lionel regards him. Then nods once.

  “I understand. That’s fine. But come in anyway. Please. Come on in.”

  Lionel turns awkwardly and waves him on, walking down the hall in front of us. He has a pronounced limp, favoring his right side. Jasper glances at me with a furrowed brow. He is sweating. There are beads on his brow. Half-moons under his arms. I hold a shrug. Jasper breathes in deep. His chest swells. And we follow Mad Jack Lionel into his home.

  The inside of the cottage is dim. It’s a strange light, the color of an egg yolk. The wallpaper is split and faded. Everything smells of dust and turpentine. On my left is a wall hanging of butterflies with pins through their bodies. They don’t look very colorful. The hall mantel is full of photographs and trinkets and doilies, but I don’t get time to look at them carefully. We shuffle into Mad Jack Lionel’s living room. There’s a rifle mounted on the wall. I step back. He hasn’t seen me yet. Maybe if I remain unseen, I’ll get out of here alive.

  Lionel extends an arm.

  “Have a seat, Jasper. Have a sit. Go on.”

  “I’m not sittin,” Jasper says, firm.

  Lionel nods again slowly, arms behind his back. Before he replies, he sees me for the first time.

  “Oh, who’s this? I didn’t see you out there. Is this your mate? Hello, son.”

  Jasper stands back with his arms folded.

  “This is Charlie. That’s all you need to know. But it dunt matter anyway, because we come here to talk about what we know. About you.”

  Mad Jack Lionel shuffles on his feet. His face falls. He looks uneasy.

  “Right.”

  “We know it was you. We know you did it.”

  Jack Lionel fixes Jasper with a thoughtful look. His eyes look red and rheumy and sad. He sighs.

  “Why don’t you boys have a seat? Go on, have a sit and I’ll make a brew. I don’t have much here, but I got plenty of tea.”

  He gestures toward two ratty couches by the window. Jasper shakes his head.

  “We don’t want anythin from you. And I tole you, we don’t want to sit. We’re not stayin. I want to talk about what you done. That’s what I want.”

  Lionel nods slowly.

  “Orright, Jasper. Well, let me sit, then.”

  He crosses to his couch and gingerly lowers himself.

  Jasper narrows his eyes and leans forward. His breathing has gathered pace.

  “So you admit it? You admit that it was you? That you killed her?”

  The silence is thick and tense. I glance from Jack Lionel to Jasper Jones, who glares aggressively across the room, hands by his sides now, bunching his fists and then releasing them. Then back to Jack, who sits with his elbows nursed on his knees, kneading his dry palms. I think he is searching for words. He rubs at his nose, then reaches to the sideboard for his tobacco pouch and papers. He frowns and concentrates on the task. The thin gully in the groove of his fingers, the peppering of copper flakes.

  “Jasper, listen to me, I know you’re upset. I know it. You know, though, I always thought you’d’ve found out before now. I thought that’s why you never come to see me. Who finally told you? Your dad? Or have you known all this time?”

  I shrink back and swallow hard, bumping the edge of the piano. Is this really happening? Was Jasper right this whole time? I look at Lionel, shocked and shaken. None of this makes any sense. He looks so slight and frail and slow. His manner, his frame, none of it seems right. There’s no way he could have restrained Laura Wishart, let alone scaled that tree to loosen the rope. But why would he be owning up to this? He’s not right in the head. He’s insane. It’s the only answer.

  Jasper tries to settle himself, sticking with his plan.

  “Nobody told me nuthin.”

  Lionel looks doubtful. He licks the adhesive lip of his cigarette carefully, taking his time.

  “Nobody told you? But you must have found out somehow.”

  “We saw you,” says Jasper forcefully. It sounds like the lie it is. “We saw you do it. Me and Charlie. We both did.”

  This stops Lionel. He bucks back; his fingers pause. He looks genuinely baffled.

  “Jasper, what do you mean, saw? Eh? You saw what?”

  “We saw everythin. We even saw you scratchin that word onto the tree, days after. So you can’t deny what you done. We saw it. Because it’s my spot. It’s my bit of the bush, it’s where I go. You know it. You seen me goin there for years. And I were there that night. Both of us. We saw you do it.”

  “Jasper, what on earth are you talking about?” Lionel shakes his head shortly, but he speaks patiently. “That’s not possible. You were barely two years old when it happened. D’you understand? You couldn’t have seen anything. Nobody saw anything.”

  The walls are pressing in. Jasper looks affronted.

  “What are you on about? It only just happened. Three weeks ago. Don’t lie to me. You can’t get out of it. I saw you. I know the truth. Do you have any idea what you’ve fuckin done? Any idea?” Jasper takes a threatening step forward.

  I wonder if I should intervene. I feel like a spectator in a play. My heart is drumming at my ribs. If Mad Jack Lionel is in any way intimidated, he’s masking it well. I wish I had his composure. I want to back out of this house, but my legs won’t move. This is a bad dream.

  Lionel finishes rolling his smoke, pats his pockets and searches for a light. After he finds one, he flares up, then seeks out Jasper’s eyes.

  “Listen, Jasper. Look, I understand. I understand why you’re … hostile to me. I really do. I’ve wanted to speak to you about this for a very long time.”

  “Well, here’s your chance,” Jasper says.

  “This business about you two seeing it? Three weeks ago? Mate, I’m sorry, but I do not follow you. That’s impossible. You know that can’t be right. What are you tryin to tell me? What’d you see?”

  “We saw you kill Laura.”

  “Laura? Who is Laura? That wasn’t her name.”

  “Whose name?”

  “Your mother’s.”

  “My mother? You mention my mother again, I will have you. No lie.”

  Now Jack Lionel looks completely lost. So am I. He sits upright, his head tilted. I notice a slight tremor in his hands.

  “Jasper, I still don’t follow you. Who is Laura? Charlie, can you help me?”

  He glances at me in appeal, and I blush and shy away, looking down at the dusty piano keys. I shouldn’t be here. This is a mistake.

  “Who?” he asks again. “Who is Laura?”

  “The girl you killed, you sick old prick! You don’t even know her name? The girl you beat and hanged and whatever else you did to her! I know it were you. I know it.”

  “Beat and hanged? Jasper, good God! What in Christ are you talking about? Who are you talking about?”

  They’ve both raised their voices. I am deathly afraid. I need to piss urgently.

  “Who? Laura Wishart. And don’t get all confused, like you don’t know, because I know you seen her. You know exactly who she is! You seen her walkin past with me, out the front there, when you’re calling out my name every other night like a fuckin madman. I’m not stupid, mate. Don’t try to pull the wool. I know what you done! It’s over. Just admit it.”

  Jasper is leaning and pointing now. Looming. But Lionel still shows no sign of being threatened, no fear of having been caught. He mutters to himself, shaking his head, squinting while he tokes on his smoke. He just looks like a confused old man. I fear that Jasper has played his last card.

  “Wishart? Wishart, Wishart, Wishart …” And he looks up suddenly. “You mean that young one who’s gon
e missing? That’s her name, isn’t it? Laura Wishart.”

  “Yes,” says Jasper impatiently. “You’re not all there, are you?”

  Lionel leans forward, his brow knitted. He coughs. One of his knees cracks.

  “You mean they’ve found her?”

  “We found her. Charlie and me. On that night. That’s what I’m tryin to tell you. You’re good as caught.”

  “Caught? Jasper, I …”

  “Listen. We’re not gonna do you in straight up. We’ll give you the chance to come forward, to tell them what you done. That’s why we come here. I reckon you got that in you. It’s over anyway. We seen you, understand?”

  “Hold up, son. Now, wait. What’s happened? You’re telling me you found her, and she’s dead?” He speaks stronger now, more assertive. I sense a shift of power in the room.

  “Don’t play the fool. You know exactly what happened. We seen you do it. How many times do I have to say it?”

  “Oh, Jasper. Oh, strike me.” Lionel plants a hand on his heart. “You think it was me? You think I killed that poor girl?”

  “I’m saying we know it were you.”

  Jasper is less steady now. Less certain. The venom has left his voice. He looks like the one who’s backed into the corner. I’m worried.

  “Jasper, that’s a bloody lie. That’s a bloody lie! You’re talking nonsense! Jesus Christ Almighty. She’s dead? Are you sure? Or are you playing games here? What happened? And you start talking the truth!” Lionel says with feeling.

  “Well, you fuckin did it!” And Jasper Jones sounds like a child. Like a bleating, scared, hurt kid. And I feel betrayed for the second time tonight. We shouldn’t be here. I don’t know who this man is, but he didn’t kill anybody. I’ve done everything wrong. Mad Jack Lionel isn’t a criminal. He’s probably not even mad. He’s just old and sad and poor and lonely.

  “Why? Jasper, why do you say that?” Lionel’s voice is thick and raised, and his red rheumy eyes are glazed over. I think he might be beginning to cry. “Is it because of what happened? With your mum? Is that why?”

  This room is filled with a fat fog and I’m utterly lost in it. I want to crawl into a ball.

  Jasper squints and shakes his head quickly. He jabs a finger.

  “I tole you, if you mention her again, I’m steppin in. I don’t give a shit how old y’are. Why are you even bringing her up? She’s dead, you stupid bastard. You know that? And you got no right at all to be discussin my family.”

  At this, Jack Lionel bucks back again in his chair. He pauses, then slowly shakes his head. I watch the ash of his fag grow perilously close to toppling onto his foot.

  “Oh, good God. Good God,” he says, still shaking his head, holding Jasper’s eye. He looks incredulous. “You don’t know. Anything. You don’t know who I am, do you? You’ve got no idea. You don’t know a bloody thing.”

  “What? Course I know who you are. You’re Jack Lionel.”

  “More than that, though. About us? You and me.”

  “What are you on about? What do you mean?”

  Lionel coughs again, swivels, and stubs his cigarette in an ashtray on the sideboard. He swallows heavily. He looks weary and ragged.

  “Jasper, how do you think it is I know your name? Why do you think I’m talking to you like this?”

  “I bin wonderin that meself. And why it is you yell out at me every time I walk by, every single night.”

  “You really don’t know? Tell the truth, now.”

  Jasper shakes his head.

  Lionel mutters something under his breath, and then he creaks slowly to his feet. I eye him closely as he hobbles across the room, prepared for anything. But he just waves his hand, almost like he’s warding Jasper Jones away.

  “Turn around,” he says.

  “What? No.” Jasper steps back. “What for?”

  “Just turn around.” Lionel is standing next to him now, pointing at something atop the dusty upright. Jasper cautiously does as he is directed. I slink around to see. Lionel is motioning toward three framed photographs. Jasper looks blankly and shrugs. Lionel asks him if he recognizes anyone in them. Looking at the two of them standing side by side now, then at the figures in the frames, I think I understand before Jasper does. It clicks into place, and I really don’t know what Jasper will do. But he’s not even really looking at them. He shrugs again, showing no interest. He doesn’t see. But then Lionel points a gnarled finger, and he says, “That there. That there’s your father. And that’s your mother.” And then he points at the baby between them, and he says, “That’s you.” Jasper scoffs, but I can tell he’s wavering, because he screws his face up and tells Lionel to fuck off. That he’s lying. But Jack Lionel, still patient, tells Jasper to look hard and close at that picture, to tell him if it isn’t really his old man. Jasper cuts his eyes. He’s silent for a while. Then he shakes his head quickly, like a dog trying to loosen something from its collar. He backs away a step. Says it’s bullshit. Asks where he got them from. But Lionel quietly points to another photograph, the smallest one. This time, an older man holds the same baby, and it’s then that Lionel reveals to Jasper what I know already to be true. The man is him. Jack Lionel is his father’s father. Jasper’s grandfather. And as Jasper’s eyebrows knit together and his jaw clenches, Lionel asks him again to sit down with him, as he’s wanted to all these years. Because he has to talk to him about his mother. Jasper is rattled. It hurts me to see. I feel sorry for him. Quiet now, unsteady, Jasper says there’s nothing to say. She’s dead. She was in a car crash.

  And then Lionel says, softly: “I know. I was driving.”

  ***

  When I’m back in my room, it feels like the first time I’ve ever walked into it. Nothing feels like home anymore. Even my skin, my clothes, my smell. Everything feels different.

  The return journey from Jack Lionel’s house was very strange. We walked fast and purposefully. Across the oval, away from the center of town. We could still hear pulses of music and chatter in the air. Thankfully, I didn’t encounter Eliza Wishart. I might have melted into her arms, I might have told her everything. Jasper and I didn’t say a word to each other. My head was an empty box. Jasper seemed deep in thought. Full of sullen and angry questions. And why wouldn’t he be? His whole world had been lifted and upended like a bag of rubbish.

  When he left me by my sleepout, all he said was that he was going home to see his father, who’d arrived back this morning from the gold-fields, but not before pissing away the money he’d earned out there. It’s an encounter I’ll be glad to miss.

  I look across at the bundle of pages my own father has left me, like a giant steaming shit on my desk. It’s all too much. Like that first night when this whole mess took me over. And it’s tightened its grip ever since. It’s buckled me. I need to sleep it away. I need to wake up somebody new. I need to leave with Jasper Jones.

  We’d gone to confront Mad Jack Lionel about murdering Laura Wishart, only to find that he was driving the car that killed Jasper’s mother. This world isn’t right. It’s small and it’s nasty and it’s lousy with sadness. Under every rock, hidden in every closet, shaken from every tree, it seems there’s something horrible I don’t want to see. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why this town is so content to face in on itself, to keep everything so settled and smooth and serene. And at the moment, I can’t say as I blame them.

  ***

  Jasper didn’t sit down. But he didn’t look Lionel in the eye either, not after the old man presented him with ragged albums full of other photographs and birth certificates, nor after he showed Jasper his father’s old bedroom, which hadn’t been touched or troubled in years. There were still clothes hanging out of the drawers, a guitar and a cricket bat leaning into each other in the corner of the room. Football trophies in a cupboard. I peered at the engravings. DAVID LIONEL.

  Jack Lionel told Jasper that he’d never wanted him to be born.

  Rosie Jones was from a neighboring shire. She and David had met
at a dance outside town. They kept seeing each other, secretly, usually down at the Corrigan River, where they could be alone. When she fell pregnant, Jack Lionel railed hard against it. He demanded that they have it dealt with. He said it wasn’t right, that David was dirtying the family name. But David pushed back harder. He told him they were in love, they would keep the child. Furious, Jack Lionel banished his son from the house. David snatched up some belongings and left willingly. His drawers stayed open all those years. He and Rosie rented a place in town, and he secured an apprenticeship at the mine. But they were cast apart. Even David’s mates turned their backs after saying their piece. Eventually, they all left him alone. The only place he was still tolerated was the footy club.

  They were married three months before Jasper was born. Just the two of them, attended in a small church in the city. And it was there that David took the opportunity to change his surname to Jones. Jack said that hurt him the most of all.

  After Jasper was born, Rosie reached out to Jack. She began inviting him to Sunday dinner every week, which he would routinely turn down. After a full year of cheery requests, he finally relented. He showed up, quiet and tentative, hat in his hand. David pushed past him and went to the pub. But Lionel stayed, and he and Rosie sat and ate.

  Jack Lionel learned that he’d been so very wrong about her. She was kind and forthright and beautiful, and she cooked as well as his own wife had ever done. He began turning up every Sunday, spending longer in their house with Jasper and Rosie. David slapped the bar at the Sovereign and stayed out until the bell rang.

  Lionel began looking forward to seeing Rosie so much, it became the peak of his week. He dressed sharp and took care and combed his hair. And Rosie, too, began cooking more elaborately and took to wearing her Sunday best. Lionel told Jasper that he came to adore his mother like a daughter, that the two of them became very fine friends. And it wasn’t just on Sundays. She often dropped in to Jack’s house for afternoon tea with something she’d baked, and he’d unpack the good china cups and saucers. David, of course, stayed away. Rosie held them equally responsible for persisting with their feud: David for being too stubborn to extend his hand, and Jack for being too proud to apologize.