River of Salt

by Warner, Dave;

  ‘My mum is an alcoholic. My father left years ago. All the girls have it in for me because, well, I don’t want to seem … they’d kill for my figure, put it that way.’

  ‘You’ve got the chemist job.’

  ‘Mmm. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. If I could get some night work I might be able to get my own place.’

  ‘My manager, Doreen, does all the hiring.’

  ‘Yeah, see that’s the problem.’

  ‘Doreen is fair …’

  ‘But she’s thick with Kitty Ferguson. I’ve seen them together, and me and Kitty have a bit of history. So …’ she put the glass down on the table, leaned back to emphasise her bust. ‘… I thought I should come straight to the boss. I’d be really, really grateful.’

  There was no mistaking the emphasis. Her tongue rolled around her bottom lip, her foot swayed back and forth.

  Blake said, ‘Doreen will be fair. I promise you that. Now, I was just about to make myself some eggs.’

  As if she didn’t hear him, Brenda got to her feet and moved to where the Fender leaned against the wall.

  ‘Is this your guitar? I would love to play the guitar.’

  Blake didn’t want this to drag on. He wanted her out. He stepped towards her.

  ‘Brenda, I think …’

  He didn’t get out another word. All he saw was a blur and then he felt a mighty crack in the head.

  She’d driven to the Heights, determined to try something, anything, maybe knock on Kitty’s bedroom window. She’d been to Kitty’s twice, knew her room was closest to the back. One street away from the house, though, she got lucky, recognised the familiar small stature of Kitty walking the family dog. She pulled into the kerb on the wrong side of the road, jumped out.

  Kitty snarled, ‘Stay away from me.’

  Kitty tried to pull the dog but it had locked onto an interesting scent.

  ‘Please, Kitty. This is important.’

  ‘I’m not listening.’

  ‘That essay you wrote for school …’

  ‘Are you mental?’

  She was literally dragging the dog. Doreen grabbed hold of her.

  ‘Let me go or I’ll scream.’

  ‘I’m sorry. If I could change anything, I would.’

  Kitty yanked herself away.

  Doreen called after her, ‘You talked about Brenda as a witch, stabbing you with some pin. Was that Todd’s?’

  Only then did Kitty swivel back. ‘That creep has been arrested. I don’t want to think about him, or you, ever again.’

  ‘Did Todd give Brenda his badge?’

  There must have been something in the urgency that got through to Kitty.

  ‘Yes. One of his rugby badges. She wore it everywhere.’

  Doreen pulled the eight-by-ten black and white from her pocket, unfolded it. It showed Duck before the competition began surrounded by the girls. Beneath the lamppost there was just enough light to make out something on Brenda’s blouse above her right breast.

  ‘This thing?’

  ‘Yes. I’m glad you’re obsessed with her now. Don’t bother me again.’

  She started to jog away, the dog having to canter to keep up. Doreen wanted to call after her, tell her it was all a terrible mistake and she loved her, but what would have been the point?

  Blake’s world was fuzzy, inverted, a demon’s face staring down, yelling words he couldn’t hear because of the sound in his head, high and dull bells all at the same time. His field of vision grew wider, the triple images became one: the ceiling of his lounge room, the demon revealed — Brenda clothed only in her underwear, blood smeared on her cheeks, his large kitchen knife in her hands. He was on the floor, his head throbbed. He sensed the blood was his. No strength yet, he tried to haul himself up, realised his hands were tied back and anchored to something, maybe the table. When he tried to raise his head, a bare heel slammed down onto his forehead like it was squashing a bug. Grey filter, almost black, the image in negative … his ears working again, ‘Apache’ playing on the turntable, words raining down on him now.

  ‘… was everything to me and you took him from me, you fucking bastard. You told the cops, didn’t you? You were the one trying to split me and Todd. Like that fucking slut, bitch, whore, and you’re going to die the same way as she did, like a fucking dog. Everything was working out. That dickhead Tom Clarke was going to get blamed. Todd was mine. As if he killed that ugly bitch.’ She straddled him, then suddenly dropped, all her weight on him. Her crotch ground into his.

  ‘Like that, do you?’

  Doreen recognised the car at the end of the cul-de-sac, and just knew. She went through the garage and began up the back stairs, wary. Music was playing. She reached the back landing, heard a woman’s voice screaming above guitars. She opened the door and walked in, took it in: Brenda straddling Blake, a knife raised, held double-handed, ready to plunge.

  ‘You. Wrecked. Everything.’

  Brenda’s back muscles tensed to drive the knife down. Doreen threw herself at her. Her hands gripped Brenda’s, keeping the blade pointed upwards. Brenda screamed and tried to get free but Doreen held on with everything she had. They rolled off Blake. She was bigger than Brenda but Brenda was wiry strong. Both slipped on the polished boards. Doreen flashed images: Val Stokes at the mercy of this banshee. Brenda got to one knee, gained leverage, Doreen was still only on her hip, pushing up with a longer reach but Brenda was gradually turning the knife towards her, extending her back leg. Doreen couldn’t hold. She let go, rolled fast, the knife drove down, glanced her somewhere on the side, she tried to crawl, get to her feet, turned to see Brenda standing, grinning … until Blake’s left leg swept wide, taking her foot. Brenda went down. Doreen stood, swung the hardest punch she could into Brenda’s face, heard the knife clatter. Brenda, a mad cat, hissed, pushed off like a sprinter, hurling herself towards the open door and balcony. Doreen watched her jump, cycling in midair. Then she dropped out of sight. Even with the needle bumping the record label you could hear the smack of a body hitting concrete.

  Doreen turned, saw Blake had hoisted himself to sitting position, his head seeping blood. She crawled to him, pressed her chest to his as she reached around and began untying the knotted stocking that bound his hands.

  ‘Are you okay?’ She felt her lips moving, couldn’t recall forming words. His mouth drew close to her ear. She got the knot undone. He pulled her to him.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

  And then she kissed him.

  That Blake’s neighbours were so engrossed in their Sunday night television movie that they didn’t hear anything of the ruckus did not surprise Doreen. Given the option, she would have chosen Ray Milland playing the devil over wrestling a knife-wielding psycho. Doreen was the first to reach Brenda while Blake dialled for an ambulance. She was lying like a broken doll on the concrete driveway, blood pooling around her head in something that looked like a map of Queensland. Remarkably, she had a pulse. When the ambulance came, she was still alive but whatever Brenda Holsch had been was history. Nalder told them later that the doctors said she would likely be brain dead from here on, and maybe never walk again. Doreen had totally forgotten that she had been grazed by the knife. The hospital put a dressing on it and she was fine within a few days. Blake’s skull had a minor crack from being hit by his guitar, but the lacerations were fairly superficial. They ran through the basics while Nalder drove them to hospital. Doreen told how she figured some of Val Stokes’ clothes were missing, along with a pair of slip-on shoes.

  ‘First I was thinking it was something weird, you know, Henley taking her clothes with him because he was a psycho, and then, I thought: what if it was a woman? And it all made sense. If a woman killed Stokes, she would be covered in blood. She could shower and just dress in Stokes’ clothes and burn her own.’

  She told them about how she’d read a story by Kitty where Brenda, ‘the witch in the story’, was stabbing at the heroine with the ‘prince’s
’ pin.

  Nalder said, ‘She was smart. By giving Henley an alibi, she gave herself one.’

  Later Henley admitted he’d had sex with Stokes in her car, paid her with a joint one of the girls had slipped him and given her the matchbook. But after the fight with Brenda he’d gone straight home. His parents and sister had been away that weekend and he was worried that he would be a sitting duck, so when Brenda offered an alibi, he grabbed it.

  Personally Doreen was disappointed that Henley would get away with no punishment but she realised that wasn’t so true. He wasn’t the golden boy any more, never would be. That other creep Winston Clarke couldn’t be charged over his blue movie seeing as he had never distributed it but she’d heard his ex had made sure their son would never visit him again. In truth, none of that mattered all that much since — in the heat of that awful moment — she had kissed Blake.

  And he had kissed her back.

  18. The Nineteenth Hole

  Winter had passed the way a headcold does. The winters here were really nothing. Not like back in Philly, stomping your feet to keep warm. That local band The Atlantics had released a hit record, a surf track, ‘Bombora’, good as anything he had heard from the States. Maybe he was wrong, maybe the guitar sound wasn’t dead yet, although The Beatles were getting bigger by the minute. It was November now and he couldn’t believe it but he was lying on the beach beside Doreen, his right arm around her body listening to her heart, just like he’d imagined. The days were warm again and the nights scented, the moon a big pearl on black velvet. Nobody else was around. It could have been a desert island.

  ‘I used to sit on the sandhill opposite your house and watch you,’ she confessed, her thumb moving across his palm.

  ‘I know.’ He had seen movement one time, pretended to move off, found some binoculars, crouched down behind the sofa and checked out who was watching him, his heart in his mouth because he’d half-expected it could be Peste or somebody like him, somebody sent from home.

  ‘No! You knew all that time? Why didn’t you say something?’

  ‘I didn’t want to break the spell. I liked knowing you were there.’

  ‘This is better.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I had an abortion,’ she said. ‘Earlier this year.’

  He remembered when she’d seemed wan, not herself.

  ‘I don’t want to keep secrets from you.’

  It was the perfect time to tell her about Jimmy. He started. ‘I …’ It was too hard.

  ‘Don’t feel you have to tell me stuff.’

  He let go. ‘I killed my brother, Jimmy.’

  He felt her stiffen, even though she tried not to.

  ‘I mean, I didn’t actually pull the trigger but I ratted him out.’

  He held his breath. This was where he always imagined she left him with nothing but the smell of her perfume on his skin. She turned around, stroked his face. He wanted to spell it out. ‘I understand if you want nothing to do with me. I do. I was a miserable coward.’

  ‘I love you,’ she said, and kissed him again. ‘And you’re not a coward. There’s nothing cowardly about the truth.’

  ‘An Englishman, an Irishman and a Jew walk into a bar …’

  They all leaned in, even though they could hear perfectly well, because when George Gardiner told a joke you didn’t want to miss anything. Nalder allowed himself to drift temporarily, to view the tableau as if he was an angel on the wall looking down at this fraternity. Sunday morning, the sun heating the greens, producing the most wonderful smell, exceeded only by that from the skin of a newborn baby. He saw Gardiner, his knees in their check pants pointing forward, whisky tumbler at the ready as his animated hands enlivened the joke. Parker, who had taken to wearing all black like his hero Gary Player, a smile of anticipation already in his dimples, Johnson with his straight back, just out of the circle because he was smoking Kool and was polite enough not to want to puff directly into somebody’s face, and himself, more a Kel Nagle type with his rotund torso and set off to the side the jaunty hat with the little feather. It was a wonderful thing indeed to be part of all this, better than he had imagined. When Edith and the boys wanted to give him a Father’s Day or birthday gift, they didn’t just have to go to socks, no, they could give him a set of golf balls or gloves. Marvellous. It was not lost on him that the sublime had come from horror and blood. Wasn’t that the way it always had been, whether it was the British in India or the Incas? The two are the flip sides of the same coin, the trick in life was to make the right call.

  Kitty had been surprised at how quickly Brenda’s notoriety had faded. She had finally died two weeks ago, never having regained consciousness. The local paper had run a big story and a reporter had tried to interview Todd’s mum but had got nowhere. Her own parents never openly reflected on their eagerness to match her up with Todd. That episode had been forgotten or swept under the carpet — apart from her mum making some comment about Kitty having ‘good instincts’. Yeah right. She was less certain now about being an actress, didn’t think she was pretty enough and, sure, you could play those support roles like Ethel in I Love Lucy but that wasn’t where the fun was. She was going to leave town though, as soon as she could. Maybe there would be something else she could do, like television. At university she could at least join a drama society. Her mum and dad seemed to get on better now, or maybe they were just more careful around her. She had glimpsed Doreen a few times in town. At first she had made sure she crossed the road or went into an arcade, anything to get away from her, but those hours they had trained in the Surf Shack, the afternoons they’d had tea at the Victoria Tearooms and laughed and talked, they were still with her like germs from a flu you couldn’t shake. Somewhere while listening to Please Please Me, out from the vinyl grooves crawled the embarrassing memory of the aftermath of the Todd fiasco when it had been Doreen who had driven her home. She hadn’t wanted to admit it but she missed her.

  The other day she had seen Doreen near Gannons and for the first time she hadn’t walked away. She’d stood there and looked at Doreen who, emerging with her shopping, had looked up and seen her, and you could tell it surprised her, and she just stopped stone dead and their eyes had met. Then Doreen had waved at her, just a small little wave with four fingers while her thumb held the shopping bag, like she was cleaning a tiny window. Kitty hadn’t waved back, but she hadn’t left either. She watched Doreen walk away and was still watching when Doreen turned back, and she was pretty sure she smiled, and to be honest, inside, she was smiling too.

  It was a funny thing but each day now seemed further and further away from the day before. All that mattered was ahead of her. She rolled over on her bed and put down her book. Lately she’d really started pushing herself: French authors, Steinbeck. She looked up and saw the transistor radio she had won in the dance contest and she was filled with joy. Wow, she had actually won. It was funny how you could forget triumphs. She’d been darn good as Nellie Forbush too. She was ready to finish school, to get out, but she knew she was going to miss it, was going to one day long for these hours of utter boredom — spinning the wheel of your bicycle while mothers played slowed rallies on the warm grass tennis courts, dreaming of a future that you’d be lucky if it turned out half as good as your past, of gossip on school playgrounds and decorating your schoolbag with woven plastic strips and badges of Mousketeers, of the joy of opening a new bottle of Fanta, and the scratch of chalk on a blackboard while you wrote the names of the Beatles in your exercise book using three different coloured pens at once.

  She turned on the radio. ‘Ask Me Why’ was playing. The Beatles made you feel great, no matter what. The past was like the poor old fido you had to bury in the backyard. You’d never love another dog as much as the one you had from when you were ten years old but you had to embrace your future: the possibilities were infinite.

  19. The Other Side Of Dallas

  They ate breakfast together, ham and eggs. He cooked, though she’d offered like she al
ways did. The breeze came in through the back door, a westerly today, and leaves gathered at the bottom step. He liked watching her eat whatever he cooked, wondered how she could have such a large appetite but stay so slim.

  ‘When will you be back do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘Tomorrow night, probably. I reckon before you close up.’

  ‘Shame you can’t play this weekend.’

  ‘It’s no big deal. It’s good to take a break.’

  Last month he’d missed a weekend and that hadn’t done the band’s popularity any harm. He began to clear up.

  He said, ‘Panza’s coming down to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Don’t trust me?’

  ‘Don’t trust a bunch of thieving knuckleheads out there who decide to rip off somebody else’s hard-earned.’

  His concern for her prompted reciprocation. ‘I don’t want you speeding. That highway is a death trap. And watch out in Sydney too, the traffic is crazy.’

  He promised he would be fine. He kissed her on the forehead and the lips.

  She looked up into his eyes. ‘You really thinking of buying this club?’

  He’d told her that’s why he needed to go to Sydney, check on the business firsthand.

  ‘I want to keep my options open.’

  She kissed him again. He broke away and walked down to the car, carrying his overnight bag. He drove out slowly with a toot and a wave. She stood on the balcony and blew him a kiss. He headed south out of town but then turned right up to Belvedere, where he laid another right heading north. She wouldn’t check the odometer.

  He’d already made sure he had a full tank, didn’t want to be stopping. It took him five hours give or take to make Brisbane, getting in before the Friday five o’clock traffic. Last month he’d arrived on the Thursday and camped outside the mark’s house, following him all through Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Reason and logic told him that the mark was going to be most predictable on a Saturday. But you never took anything for granted. He parked outside of the main city area and walked six blocks. The pubs were rollicking, the smell of hops and the sound of Friday laughter coming out in a whoosh every time a door opened onto the street. He kept his eyes on the opposite side of the street, an office one floor up. The mark should be in there till late, doing his numbers, getting everything down for the next day.