Jasper Jones

by Craig Silvey;

  I know now we’re headed for the clearing, but that’s where my certainty ends. I don’t know what to expect. I don’t know what she has to say, what light she has to shine on this dark mess.

  The bush doesn’t slow her down. We follow the same narrow kangaroo tracks. I take note of the same landmarks. My legs are scratched by shrubs and low scrub. I hope that Eliza knows the way better than I do. I file behind her, our hands still loosely linked. I can still smell her from here. I can breathe her in and it takes me over. I could follow that scent forever.

  Still, the creaks and whirrs and clicks around me make my skin tighten. I don’t want to be out here. It feels as though I’m inhabited by a teeming metropolis of insects, trailing up and down my limbs and my neck. Burrowing under my skin. And they won’t be shuddered off or shucked away.

  Eliza Wishart is taking me to the place her sister was killed. My brick is at its lowest. I’m not sure how much more I can absorb tonight.

  Here.

  Here it is. The broad spine of that enormous jarrah, standing monumental and alone. I’m being pulled into its orbit. We pause here. Eliza’s back is to the wattlebush that opens into Jasper’s glade. My head is bowed a little, and I watch her carefully. She opens her thin arms and brushes the musky foliage. I am dead on my feet. Heavier than ever.

  “You’ve been here before,” she says plainly. It’s not an accusation. It’s a simple statement.

  I nod, but I can’t look her in the eye.

  Then Eliza Wishart pushes through the bush and disappears like a ghost. I follow slowly.

  It’s always strange to walk into this space. The air is different. Everything is utterly still and timeless.

  But it’s strangest tonight, being here with Eliza. Being here without Jasper. It feels like I’m trespassing. It’s so hot and quiet and eerie. It’s emptier without him in it. I get the sensation we’re being watched.

  I follow Eliza across the thick lawn to the water. We sit beneath the tree. I’m shaking a little. Directly above me is the space where Laura died. The hole in the world that she fell through. I wonder if Eliza knows that.

  We sit in silence for a long time. I’m not sure where to look. The water, Eliza, the glade. There are lies everywhere.

  Eventually, Eliza pulls her legs to her chest and rests her chin on her knees. She looks at me.

  “We need to tell each other things,” she says.

  I nod.

  “Do you want to go first?” she asks me.

  “No. Not really. If that’s okay with you.”

  Eliza seems to nod without moving. Then she removes something from the pocket of her skirt. It’s a folded piece of paper. She turns it over in her fingers.

  “What’s that?” I ask quietly.

  “A letter.”

  “To who?”

  “Jasper Jones.”

  I frown.

  “Is it from you?”

  “No.”

  The silence settles again. Eliza slowly unfolds the paper, then folds it again.

  “It’s from Laura,” she says.

  “Did she ask you to give it to him?”

  Eliza shakes her head and looks away.

  “Did you find it?”

  She shrugs, still looking over the dam. We fall silent again. Then I ask tentatively, “What does it say?”

  She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even appear to hear. Instead her face seems to glaze over. She tilts her head, and she turns and speaks with that strange accent again.

  “You know those days when you get the Mean Reds?”

  “The what?”

  Eliza looks at me with mild chagrin, like I’m getting something wrong.

  “Like the blues,” she says softly.

  “Oh,” I say. “So you mean, do I get the blues?”

  She lifts a little.

  “No, the blues are because you’re getting fat or it’s been raining too much; you’re just sad, is all. The Mean Reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?”

  “Actually, that sounds exactly like what I’ve had the last few weeks. The Mean Reds.”

  “Really?” she asks.

  “Really. What about you?”

  Eliza stares across the dam again. We sit and we listen to the insects.

  Then she turns and looks me straight in the eye. She looks older in the starlight, her face drawn and furrowed. She stares at me for an uncomfortably long time. I wonder if I should say something. But then she breaks the silence.

  “I did it, Charlie.”

  “You did what?” I have to hold my arms to stop my hands quivering.

  “I killed her. It’s all my fault. I killed Laura.”

  ***

  This is what Eliza tells me.

  This is what happened.

  And I’ve got to get it out quick, I’ve got to loosen the valve on it and let it go, fizzing and spraying, because it’s too hard, it’s too heavy, it’s too much. I can’t hold on to it for too long because it’ll burn. Do you understand? It’s the knowing. It’s always the knowing that’s the worst. I wish I didn’t have to. I want the stillness back. But I can’t. I can’t ever get it back. So. Thisiswhathappened. See, Eliza, she knew all about Jasper Jones. She knew he was with her sister. She knew they were in love. And she knew they went someplace together at night. From her own window, right next to Laura’s, Eliza could observe Jasper approaching. When he first started coming round, he was cautious. He’d hide in the shadows and wait and move slowly. Toward the end, he got more brazen. He just sidled right up. Tapped on the window. And Eliza could see Laura striding back out with him across their lawn after climbing through her window. It had been happening all year, even on the coldest of Corrigan nights. They’d skip across the frosted grass and leave Eliza behind to wonder and speculate. As the weather warmed, it happened more and more frequently. Recently it got to be almost every night. Eliza always wondered where they went to. She imagined they were going to the river, maybe under the old traffic bridge. She was curious and envious. She longed to follow them, but she knew she shouldn’t. It was all so perfectly romantic to her. Like it was from a book or something. A fairy tale. They always stole away in the dead of night, and Laura always returned just before dawn. The shire president’s daughter and the town outcast, the dangerous boy all the girls secretly wanted to be with. Sometimes Laura and Jasper embraced tightly before they parted. And he’d wink at her and leave. They seemed to fit so tight and right. But then, near the end of November, as the summer heat crept in, Jasper stopped coming. Eliza wondered if they weren’t going steady anymore. It seemed sad that they weren’t, though a part of her felt guiltily satisfied that Laura no longer possessed something that she couldn’t have. Listen. Thisiswhathappened. Like a geyser. Like a burst dam, I can’t hold it. Because Eliza didn’t know, never knew, that her father, the shire president, she never knew that he visited Laura’s room as well. But he didn’t tap politely. He crept in, drunk. Always drunk. Always discreet. There were no locks. It was all in the letter, see? Long before Jasper Jones came to her window. Since she was a girl. Eliza’s age. Thisiswhathappened. Like a cork from a bottle. A train with no brakes. On that night, when I’d been reading, something was happening. Building and garnering and gathering. Something was up. It had been strange in the Wishart house for days. It had been tense and sullen. A sickness had sunk. Trouble was brewing. Eliza tried to stay out of the way, as she always did when the mood was foul. Her mother seemed the same as ever, serenely unaware. Her father was louder and angrier; his threshold was thinner. He reeked of spirits and tobacco all the time now. And Laura, who had retreated from them so much this year, who never ate anymore, who never talked or laughed with her little sister like she used to, she was more sallow and sapped and silent than ever. It was as though she wasn’t even there. A ghost in a haunted house. She only left her bedroom when her chores needed doing. Eliza thought she must have been upset about Jasper Jones, but sh
e couldn’t ask about it like she wanted. Thisiswhathappened. On that night, there’d been a big argument. There had been words in the kitchen which Eliza wasn’t allowed to hear. She’d been sent to her room. She didn’t want to listen anyway. She read on her bed with the cat on her lap. She listened to Ella Fitzgerald and hummed softly. She tried to carve out a little space for herself, a little vacuum away from the world. And there she stayed. But it wasn’t thick enough. It was too brittle. Because later that evening there was a scuffle in Laura’s room, right next to her, and that’s when Eliza became afraid. Head to the wall, she heard voices, but she couldn’t make out words. She knew it was Laura and her father in there. The argument had flared again. She could sense movement. She could hear odd squeaks and shifts. Sounds that Eliza translated in her mind as two people grappling. But then Laura began shouting, screaming, which was soon muffled into sounds that made Eliza feel ill. Thishadneverhappened. She heard a crack and a yelp. She felt something through the floorboards. Something smashed against their shared wall and rattled onto the ground. And then the door slammed. Hard, loud as a gunshot. Eliza started. The house shook, do you understand? Flakes of plaster fell from the molding around the light fitting on the ceiling and were cast broadly by the sweeping blades of her fan. Like confetti. Like snow. Footsteps, marching. Then the silence was swift, sweeping in like backwash. She wondered if she was allowed out of her room. She figured she didn’t want to go anyway. She was afraid. And where was her mother? Where was she in all this? She heard their car roar to a start, and she opened her curtain to see her father weaving dangerously out of the drive and down the street. Then she could hear Laura crying through the wall that separated them. But still she didn’t leave her little bubble. She stayed. Safe. And she didn’t stir, though she was restless and confused. She thought Laura would wave her away angrily. And the house was quiet for some time. After the neighborhood lights went out, when folks had retired for the night, Eliza heard the familiar scrape of Laura’s window. Up, up, stop. She spilled off her bed and pressed her face to the glass. Laura was leaving, heaving, but she couldn’t see Jasper anywhere. Laura was in her nightdress. She was in a hurry. She was alone. But she was barefoot, so she couldn’t have been going far. Maybe just to the end of the street. Still, something was wrong. Maybe she was sleepwalking. Beckoned by something behind her eyes. Eliza worried. And it was worry that propelled her out into the hot night, that had her trailing her sister at a safe distance. It was illicit and exciting. She’d never been out this late on her own. Her body was buzzing, her heart was stammering. Things smelled different, felt different. Trees took a ragged shape. Things felt sinister, threatening. Laura was meeting Jasper somewhere, that’s what she figured. But what had just happened in her room? What was the ruckus? Why had she been screaming? What was the argument about? Had her father struck Laura? Is that what she’d heard through the wall? Why had he left so quickly, so angrily? Things had been so horrible recently. She’d tried to ignore it all, but it just welled up and took her over. It loomed until it toppled. Now she had to know. If this excursion revealed nothing, she would interrogate her sister tomorrow. She was going to finally find out. Thisiswhathappened. Eliza skipped lightly to keep up, still with the thrill of being out at night for the first time. Laura was moving fast, bent forward, arms folded. And they walked for what seemed an eternity. Laura didn’t look back once. All the way through town. Past the station, past the thick end of the Corrigan River by the bridge and the picnic grounds. Right out past the old pastoral properties that kick-started Corrigan waybackwhen. Past Mad Jack Lionel’s run-down cottage, which still had its lights on. Eliza shuddered when she realized where she was. She thought seriously about turning back. But she was committed now. More so when they reached the fringe of bush, and when they pressed into the thick of it. She was terrified of losing Laura. She had strayed out of view a number of times, and Eliza had to pause and listen carefully and follow the path with her head bowed. She became annoyed and confused. She was being scratched and rasped by branches and prickles. She regretted her impulse now. Where was she going? Was this where Laura had been going all year? Where was Jasper Jones? Was he at the end of this journey? She didn’t know anything. She felt small and out of her depth, like a child. When Laura paused at the foot of that enormous jarrah and smoothly vanished, Eliza felt a sudden chill. She desperately wanted to go back. But Eliza crept around under the wattle bush and hid in the scrub beneath a bottlebrush. She peeled back the foliage to reveal that strange little clearing. And she crouched and watched Laura very carefully, stunned by this place. This must be where they had been coming all this time. It seemed so perfect. It was so beautiful and serene. It felt ethereal. A timeless little bubble in the world. A secret garden. Her sister walked toward the smooth gray eucalypt that presided over the small dam on the far side, and she peered into what appeared to be a broad, hollow space at its base. When she emerged, she surveyed the glade, squinting intently. Eliza shrunk into the shadows and held her breath. But Laura turned and slumped and sat by the water with her head on her knees. Eliza longed to go to her, but she knew she’d be in for it if she did. It looked as though Laura was waiting for someone anyway. For Jasper, she assumed. So she’d probably just disappoint her if she crept out from the trees and revealed herself. Thisiswhathappened. Laura got to her feet and started pacing under the tree. She looked distressed. She tugged at her hair. She examined the hollow another couple of times. She came out with something in her hands. Then she sat. And she cried. She hugged her belly and she rocked herself by the water. It was hard for Eliza to watch. She wanted to run out there and put her arm around her. And she wept herself, very quietly, watching all this unfold. She had to bite her fist. She had to look away. She desperately wanted to know what was wrong, but she was trapped by her own indiscretion. It was so hard being outside of this, watching it like a grainy film. Thisiswhathappened. Laura bowed and concentrated over something in her lap. It looked as though she might be writing. Then she stood with her arms folded and her head bowed. Eliza could see her shoulders shaking. And then she watched her move toward the eucalypt. And with a strength and ease that surprised Eliza, her sister made her way up the trunk, shinnying in parts, using footholds and hoists in others. Flakes of bark were peeled off by her bare feet. Her nightdress hung loose. She paused in places, but she seemed to make her way up easily. It never looked precarious. Eliza was quietly impressed. Even so, it seemed perilously high. Eliza wanted her to come down. In any other circumstance she would have shouted out as much, would have demanded she descend. But Laura sat on a thick bough that reached across the front bank of the water. Eliza thought she might jump in. It looked dangerous. She was uneasy. But Laura looked relaxed up there. Swinging her legs, her hands holding the branch. She sat on the bough for a long time. Eliza’s mind wandered. She adjusted her position, got comfortable. She sat cross-legged, rested her chin on her palm. And she waited. Maybe Jasper was on his way. Maybe Laura just wanted someplace quiet to sit. It made sense. She’d had a horrible time. Maybe she just needed to be somewhere peaceful and nice. Her fortress. Her castle keep. Thisiswhathappened. And it was fast. Too fast. Eliza had no time to think, no time to act. Her mind had drifted elsewhere, was too far removed. She was even a little dozy. She hadn’t noticed the rope wrapped around the branch. She just saw it as a natural irregularity in the wood, some strange bind of bark. And so she was slightly bemused when it was picked and unwound. Not worried. Not horrified. Quickly, quickly. She was still a little detached when the halo fell, do you understand? Thisiswhathappened. Laura, with her back to her sister, her back to the town, her hands to her throat like her father tightening his necktie. And then she rocked back and fell. Eliza remembered being startled when she didn’t hit the ground. It made it so much more sudden, when she locked and jolted and listed and twisted, with a gap between her and the earth. Then silence. White noise. Eliza didn’t scream, she didn’t run. She froze. Everything stopped. Everything ceased to be. Do you unde
rstand? It was a mistake. Surely. It hadn’t happened. She’d dreamed it. She’d fallen asleep. She was flinching out of a nightmare. But no. There she was. There she was. No struggle. A heavy bag. Floating. Slowly turning. Until she was still, and then everything rushed inward: Laura was facing Eliza Wishart, who then ran from her hiding space and pulled at her sister until she realized it would do no good. She’d gone. Snuffed like a candle. Laura had just fallen from grace. She’d disappeared. Gulped and swallowed by something enormous and unseen. Eliza panicked. There was something by her feet. A folded piece of paper. She picked it up. Pocketed it. She didn’t know what to do. She was shaking, like her limbs were not her own. She was about to sob, about to scream, but she heard someone approaching. She gasped. She ran back to where she’d been hiding. Just in time. She had to bite down hard to stop her teeth chattering. She’d never been so afraid. This was all a horrible mistake. She hugged at herself, dug her nails into her ribs, and she waited. She breathed in quivering beats. She was close to breaking down. And then Jasper Jones appeared. He slipped in through the wattlebush. A couple of yellow baubles nestled in his hair. And he stopped. Eliza watched him, she saw the precise moment he understood. And he issued a ragged animal sound, like a groan. Then he ran straight to Laura, trying to hold her up, trying to take her weight, to give her air. But she was gone. No matter how high he tried to hoist her, no matter how much he yelled and appealed in a desperate voice that raised hackles on Eliza’s neck. She watched the messy struggle, breathing a million miles a minute. It was a macabre acrobatic dance. Some horrid gothic circus act. She shuddered. And she would have cried and shrieked and wailed right then and there had Jasper not suddenly recoiled and bolted from the glade. She was alone again. She crept out. She had no choice. She had to follow. She had no other way of getting back. She didn’t know where she was. But she didn’t want to leave her sister. Eliza Wishart took her last look at Laura and quickly burrowed through the wattlebush. But of course Jasper was moving too fast, too fast. He knew the way too well. He burst along the kangaroo tracks and disappeared. Eliza was lost almost immediately. She stumbled and staggered on, tired and alone. She followed the tracks that looked the most worn, hopelessly lost. But it didn’t matter, because of what she’d just seen. Whathadjusthappened. She seemed to be moving deeper into the bush. When Eliza reached the river, a broad vein of something familiar, she was overcome. She dropped to her knees and she wept until she vomited into the stream, and it carried her insides south in ribbons. She cried because she was afraid. It was too early for grief. Too close. Something had burst in her, leaving a black hole that sucked and swallowed everything into nothingness. She wanted to dive into the water. To sink, swim, be stolen away by the weak current, she didn’t care. But she stayed where she was, curled and furled, until the first light bled through the canopy. Then she scrapped on. She followed the river, hoping that it might lead her to town. It did. By the time she reached the old traffic bridge, her nightdress was torn by blackberry bushes and bracken, her legs were etched with red lines. Her feet were sodden. But she made it home before Corrigan awoke, without her sister. Eliza crossed the lawn. Their car was still gone. The lights were out. Birds were trilling a chorus for the sun. And she crawled wearily through her bedroom window, which she’d left open. And she read on her bed with the cat on her lap. She read a letter which was never meant for her. It was for Jasper Jones. It was a messy scrawl, spidery and fast. Small and scratchy. Which broke her heart because Laura had such beautiful, careful handwriting. And it destroyed her, this letter. It finished her off. It was the saddest, angriest constellation of words she’d ever traced with her eyes. Thisiswhathappened. They were planning to leave together, Laura and Jasper. They were going to run away to the city. To start a new life. And they weren’t going to tell anybody. And they would never come back. Despite everything, Eliza couldn’t help but feel a cold spike of betrayal. This whole other life that she wasn’t privy to. This whole other world, this bubble she wasn’t allowed inside. But then Jasper Jones vanished. Laura was confused and upset; she thought Jasper had left her behind. While I knew that Jasper had been working the orchards for those two weeks, Laura suspected the worst. That he had abandoned her and fled to the city on his own. That he didn’t love her at all. That he’d broken his promise. And all this had been confirmed for her when there were no fresh signs of him in his glade. The fireplace had healed over. The ground in the tree hollow where they slept was undisturbed. Laura had been waiting to see him that night. Had Jasper shown up, she was going to tell him things. Everything. And she was going to beg him to leave with her before dawn. Because she was in Trouble. She had to go. Now. Urgently. She needed him. Because he was the strongest thing in this town. Because she couldn’t go alone. Because they were supposed to go together. Because there was something insidious growing inside her. Do you understand? Something was very wrong. A measure of milky poison had caught hold and infected her, and now she was in trouble. She was rotten inside. Something worse than disease. And she had to leave. She didn’t know what else to do. She was afraid. And disgraced. Because she’d come out and said it, she finally pointed her finger, all too late, all too late. This was the night she stood up. It was in the letter. She swallowed her shame and she told her mother what had been happening, all this time, under her roof, what it had left her with, the trouble she was in. She told her why she had to steal out as often as she did to see Jasper Jones, even after she was caught and cautioned. Told her why it was she couldn’t stand to stay in that house anymore. What evil befell her during the night. What grim and sinister things her room had accommodated. Why it was she had to steal away to where it was safe, more and more, whenever she could. And her mother didn’t believe her, can you imagine? Not a word of it. She defended him. She stood there and called Laura a liar. Her own daughter. And him? He sat at the table, quiet and calm. The shire president. And when he burst into her room later, he hissed and he leered and he threatened her. He wasn’t even sorry. He had no love in him. And she spat and yelled and flailed her thin arms with all the courage she had left, and he raised his hand and hit her, hard, in the face, which he’d never done. He knocked her down to shut her up. And he swung again, twice, right at the core of her, right where the trouble was. And as she struggled to suck in air, he squeezed her jaw and he warned her, his ugly red face, his rancid medicine breath, he warned her not to say another word. To anybody. He turned to go. As her single last act of defiance, Laura threw her glass paperweight at his back. She missed. It hit the wall and smashed. He slammed the door. That’swhathappened. And she complied. She never did say another word. Her courage was spent. It gave way to dismay. She wrote, though. She wrote plenty. She poured it out for Jasper Jones. She felt abandoned and heartbroken and bitter and ruined. It was as though she wanted him to hurt like she was hurting. There was nothing left in this world for her. And then she fell back from the bough, like a diver on the edge of a boat, paper in her fist. She killed two birds with one stone. When she left her room, she knew it was for the last time, one way or another. That’swhathappened. It’s out. It’s out.