The Serpent's Skin

by Erina Reddan

  I rushed along the rows of boxes trying to do a fast decipher of how the records were set up. I’d just figured out numbers against years when a voice stopped me.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  I turned slowly, thinking fast.

  ‘Sure.’ I smiled brightly. ‘Could you point me to the nineteen sixties?’

  The man did not smile back. He went to raise his arm, then paused. ‘But how did you get in here?’

  I made up some story about being directed in here by somebody to get something for Dr Ryan from Cardio, thinking I needed a few facts to tie this lie to the flag of convincing truth.

  I’m not sure how convinced he was, but his hand continued upwards and pointed me to the furthest room, and I turned on my heels, checking my watch as if Dr Ryan might actually be sitting there tapping his toes back in Cardio.

  I found 1966 in the back corner of the far room and started to work my way up to 68. The bees on my skin got busier as I got closer. I was a cloud of buzz so I didn’t hear the far doors opening, nor the footsteps.

  I did hear the almost tentative voice, though. ‘Miss.’

  I turned with that bright smile plastered on again. But it faded fast at the sight of the security uniform.

  ‘You’ll have to come with me,’ he said with a polite smile, the stubble on his chin patchy because he wasn’t old enough to have grown into a beard.

  I tried out my Dr Ryan again, but he was firm. Diffident and uncomfortable, but sure of the ground he was standing on.

  ‘Let me just have a quick look—’ I reached for the box of Ms in 1968. I was sure Mum’s file and whatever it had to tell or not tell me was only a few beats away. But I didn’t make it because, unexpectedly quick, he grabbed my arm and twisted it up behind my back, slamming me into the bookcase. I yelped. Without thinking, I kicked at his shins. It was his turn to yelp but he didn’t let go. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the records woman looking grimly at us from the door.

  ‘The police are on their way,’ she said.

  ‘Really, JJ?’ was the first thing Tye said to me when he picked me up at the police station hours later. ‘You think Maurice won’t hear about this?’

  ‘He’s not going—’

  ‘Stop being an idiot, JJ. You’re on skid row with Maurice anyway after what you got Suze to do.’

  ‘How did he find out?’ I blanched.

  ‘He’s Maurice. He knows everything.’

  ‘You saw where Jenna Stintini and the kids were living. We had to figure out where that scumbag husband of hers put the money.’

  ‘Getting Suze to flirt with him at the bar—’

  ‘He’s been hid—’

  ‘JJ!’ He bunched his fists in the air and waved them in frustration. ‘It’s not about what you can get away with—’

  ‘Not even Jenna knew.’

  ‘Whether our client knows or doesn’t know how we get information on her ex is irrelevant and you know it. Your charm and brilliance won’t keep protecting you if you keep crossing lines.’ He waved a hand at the police station we were leaving behind. ‘Despite Maurice’s undying devotion, there is a part of him that’s got to be wondering if you’re too much trouble.’

  ‘The cops only gave me a warning so it’ll be okay.’ But I was deflating now, all the raw and rise subsiding on the tide of this truth.

  ‘You attacked the security guard.’

  ‘Not real—’ I tried to break in to protest.

  ‘If you’d had the actual file in your hands, you’d be up for theft of government property.’

  ‘But it wasn’t.’ I couldn’t match his force, though, because he was correct.

  ‘Wait.’ He stopped in the street and spun around to squarely face me. He grabbed my forearms. ‘You knew all that.’

  I scrunched my face.

  ‘What the fuck, JJ? You were willing to screw up your career.’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly a thought-through—’

  ‘Shut up, JJ.’ His palms in the air. ‘You went to your aunty’s funeral last Thursday.’ He ticked off one on his fingers. ‘You avoid me all weekend.’ Two. ‘You come in late, leave early, then stop coming to work altogether.’ Three. ‘I didn’t realise this was going to set you off like this.’

  ‘If you don’t like the view you don’t have to stick around.’

  He slapped his thigh. ‘Get some perspective.’

  ‘My mother died when I was ten and my dad’s been lying about it ever since.’

  His face came to millimetres from mine, long eyelashes getting there before him. ‘Get—the—fuck—over—it.’

  My hand reflexed up to push him away, but he grabbed my forearm. We stared at each other, locked in intensity.

  I broke first, twisting my arm out of his grip. ‘I thought you were on my side.’

  ‘I am.’ He didn’t blink.

  ‘This is what being on my side means. I’m going to find out.’

  ‘Then get the fuck smarter about it.’

  We picked up fried rice, went to the newsagent for butcher’s paper and textas and other getting-smarter stuff, and headed back to mine. The itch in me to start on Tye’s plan meant we only spent a few minutes saying hi to Marge on the way through, but Rocco was with her so I didn’t feel too bad.

  Tye was right. I’d been too messy. I’d only acted on part of Maurice’s stare-down-the-facts mantra. I had to get methodical. Tye and I set about establishing a clear record of everything we did and didn’t have. By the end of the night, we had a wall covered in butcher’s paper mapping out everything I remembered about Mum’s disappearance. I was the queen of categories, so it took a while to come up with an information matrix I was happy with: red for facts, blue for memory, green for opinions, yellow for vague ideas and grey for whatever else. On the other wall, above the side of my bed, we made a timeline of Mum’s movements those last days. Fact-red only that side. At just after two in the morning, we took our bleary eyes for a walk around everything we had.

  The ocean of empty between Mum leaving Peg’s place at three-twenty-five and her time of death in the small hours of the night six days later funnelled its empty into my veins.

  But Tye shook me by the shoulders. ‘That’s the point of this exercise, JJ.’ His lovely voice soothing my inflamed insides. ‘To fill up all that empty.’

  THE MISSING PAGES

  Tye hadn’t wanted to make my excuses at work on Friday. Was worried about the Stintini case. Was worried that I wasn’t. I was. Just not enough any more. He covered for me anyway. Said he’d check in with Suze and see where she was up to. He could see I needed to find something concrete to put on the Map of Mum. Had agreed there might be something in Peg’s diaries if Dad had gone to the trouble of stealing them. Had helped me take the Map of Mum off the wall and fold it into my backpack. But on the way to Dad’s I got more and more wound up because I was doing the exact opposite of what Tessa wanted. But maybe, as Tye said, even if this wasn’t what she wanted, this is what she needed. Pumping the radio up to blasting volume didn’t help, so I was glad when I arrived and turned down the track to Dad’s. I parked the Austin about halfway up between the trees and in the bushes, hidden nicely from roving eyes.

  Now that I was stopped, though, I found I didn’t want to get out and face what was waiting. The car was a turtle-shell protection around me and my fingers thrummed against the steering wheel. My mind, skittish as a foal, darting forwards and back. The house in the distance hooded and watchful: blinds drawn against the heat. It probably knew I was the enemy by now or was there still a loyalty to Mum in between its cracks?

  A bird flew straight at me, tearing away from the windscreen at the last second. It got so close I saw right into the bead of its black eye. I wound up the window and knuckled into my palm. It was only a few seconds later that the heat tumbled me out of the car.

  I kept behind the tree line, out of sight in case Dad wasn’t where he should have been, but it wasn’t as straightforward as I’d planned. The grass was long an
d snaky between the trees and the fence, and my feet got caught in it. In the far end of the paddock a cow caught me in its eyeline. I froze, but it was too late. It took a few steps towards me, alerting the others. A roan took the lead and trotted in my direction like X marks the spot, the others falling in behind. Big side to side belly joggling. Nothing wrong with Dad’s eyes if he happened to be looking this way from wherever he was.

  I threw myself into a low huddle run, fast along the grass line as best I could, until I reached the gate where they wouldn’t be able to follow. They petered out to a bewildered stop. I wanted to be sorry for them. Max, in the next paddock, took a few hopeful steps towards the herd. But there was a fence between them and a bullring through his nose tethered to a stake, and he knew all of that.

  I made it level with the house and got behind the rusty combine harvester that had been peeling paint from its skin since before I was born. As I’d figured, Dad’s ute wasn’t in the yard, so that was a good start. I filled my cheeks and blew the air out. The morning sun was just getting going on laying shadows down so Dad still had plenty to do, what with only one set of hands left to do it all, and he was farmer slow.

  In the kitchen there was a new jacket over the back of a chair like a bruise. Tessa would have been behind getting it for him, as if it could make up for something. There were the remains of only one meal across the table so I knew that if I opened the fridge there’d be a bit of order in there and a fresh set of plastic containers with the days of the week on them. She must have made a quick recovery; that, or such was her level of devotion to Dad’s wellbeing.

  I checked the benches for Peg’s notebooks. I moved through the house, lifting, replacing, being careful. Deep down, I knew I wouldn’t find the diaries. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe he had them, but it was too much to expect that he’d leave them out for me to pop by and pick up. Although I had held out a small candle for finding them in his wardrobe or under the bed.

  I investigated the toolshed for good measure. My watch reckoned it was time to get out before Dad came in for lunch, and I did want to go. On the other hand, I still had nothing. I wiped the residue of grease from the tools down my jeans, the smell pinging me back to a time when Dad was just about God, sorting out an engine with a grease tin and a rubber band. ‘Give the motor a kick, JJ.’ I’d turn the key and away it’d roar. ‘Good job, JJ,’ he’d say, as if I’d been the one to turn it over.

  For a while when I was a kid I’d got it in my head not to go to the toilet at school. I liked the ovals of the plastic seats, but I didn’t want to sit on them. I held on and on all the way home on the bus. ‘Not again,’ Tessa said when I dashed into the clump of boxthorn bushes at the end of our track. Tim got so mad he’d just march off. After a couple of weeks, Tessa took off, too. Nobody told Mum they were leaving me behind.

  Then one day I had a spot that was just right between two bushes in front of the strainer post. I got my knickers off and had them bunched up in my hand. I was squatting and about to go when I felt a charge in the air. I went still. A bird was going on in the gum tree above me. But that wasn’t it. I went in deeper. It was behind me. I turned as far as I could without falling. Then it broke over me and I couldn’t believe I’d missed it. The hissing was coming from a bloody big brown up on its belly aiming at my bare bum. I shot out of there like a bullet.

  ‘Tim, Tim,’ I screamed. Tessa pelted back down the track to me with Tim hard on her heels.

  ‘There’s a worm. There’s a worm. It’s up on its hind legs and hissing.’

  Tim tore off up the track towards the house and Tessa grabbed my hand and towed me along behind. When we burst into the house, Dad was already there, his shotgun lying across the kitchen table, Tim handing him bullets. Dad’s calm hands loading them up, his steady eyes checking the sight line down the barrel of the gun. He swung it up over his shoulder.

  ‘Stay here.’

  He slid one foot and then the other into his boots, lifted his beaten hat off the nail and his footsteps thudded down the path. I raced to my bedroom window, glad Philly was out with Mum. I watched Dad until he was a speck swallowed by the trees. The light glinted from the gum tree leaves. I sat by the window making finger patterns in the dust on the glass— rainbows and high half suns—waiting for Dad.

  There was one gunshot and, ten minutes later, a second.

  As soon as I saw him, moving like a shadow through the gaps in the bushes, I raced out of the house.

  ‘Did ya get him, Dad? Did ya?’

  ‘Got em both, JJ. Snakes come in pairs.’

  ‘Where’d you put em?’

  ‘Over the fence.’ He grabbed me by the back of my T-shirt as I turned to bolt off down the track. ‘Time for that tomorrow. You get in the house and help your mother with the tea. She’ll be back soon.’

  He must have seen something missing on my face because he reached out and mussed the top of my head. ‘And don’t you be doing that any more. Plenty of good toilets at that school we send you to, or wait till you get home.’

  I walked beside him up the track, making a game out of keeping in his shadow.

  Standing in his shed now, I rubbed my palms along my jeans again, all softened by the idea of Dad’s hand on my head. In that moment I wanted to believe Dad so badly my hands shook. I wanted to believe Tim had picked up the butter box by mistake.

  I heard Blue, one of Dolly’s, bark a long way off. It was time to get out of there. I took a quick inventory to see if I’d disturbed anything, and then I realised I was busting to pee. I swayed for a moment undecided: the long trip home holding it in or a quick trip to the outback toilet shed?

  I heard the flies before I even opened the door. Big, fat, blowsy ones. I held my breath and dashed in, counting. Now it was just Dad on his own, he didn’t have to change the pan that often. I had my jeans undone and peeled down before I’d counted to four. I was not even up to twenty-eight and I was buttoning up again. Under a half a minute. Record. That was when I saw the butter box beside the old copper washing machine that was still there from when the toilet shed used to be a laundry.

  Bastard.

  My eyes took a moment to adjust to the dark. The pale wood of the butter box announcing itself in the gloom. I lifted the lid, but it was all empty space inside. I sat back on my haunches, relief rolled up in the disappointment, like twisting fingers. This box must have been Mum’s. I fitted the lid back on, smoothed my hand over it and turned to go.

  But there they were—a stack of black notebooks butted against the tin wall opposite the toilet pan. I kicked a can across the shed. It skidded and crashed. I was in after it and kicked and kicked and then missed and crashed my boot into the wall.

  ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’

  All fucked out, I stood there panting in the quiet, hands up against the wall in among the cobwebs.

  I gathered the notebooks into my arms and then carried them down the track, tipped them onto the passenger’s seat and climbed in beside them. I didn’t start the car because my arms were concrete heavy on my lap and the ignition too far to reach.

  The cows had ambled back to the far side of the paddock, but Max stared straight at me.

  It was Blue’s bark, closer now, which finally got my hands working and the key turned. The car got on the track and followed the potholes and curves to the road. It went past Pete’s place, down the hill, but not over the creek. The car came to a halt just beside the ford. A full stop. I took my hands off the wheel and they fell like stones back again into my lap. The heat sweated me up and the blood in my head got itself pulsing, so I had to unwind the window, then chock the door open, but it wasn’t enough, so I got myself out and wrapped Peg’s diaries in a shirt from the back seat and headed down to the cool of the creek.

  The sky was burned free of clouds and dragonflies skimmed over the dank, dark surface of the water. As I got closer, a frog leaped from a fallen tree and into the water, its charcoal body no bigger than my thumb, sinking below without a splash.

/>   My feet got lost in the slow cold of the water, the detritus collecting around my calves, clinging and then sweeping away with the current, on to the next thing in the way. I hunched right over and trailed my hands in the chill. A bird called and nobody answered.

  I wiped my hands on my jeans and opened the first diary. There was no date. I flipped through the pages. The sugar tasted like salt today and I saw a box of good cherries at the shops. No dates anywhere. Oceans of Peg’s kind of ordinary. I kneaded my palm. And settled to proper reading.

  It was in the fourth diary that I found something. But not words. There were a whole lot of pages ripped out. I ran my index finger along the jagged edge left behind.

  ‘Fuck.’

  He was always one step ahead.

  TIM’S LEAD

  There was one person in this family who might just be on my side. And right then I needed him. I loaded the diaries back into the car and drove the quiet farm roads to Tim’s place. As I pulled on the handbrake in their driveway, Shelley was down the steps of the house to greet me, her wide eyes smiling and her fair ponytail swinging.

  ‘Got the jacket you loaned me,’ I said as I opened the door.

  ‘Thought I’d lost it forever.’ Shelley grinned her big-as-a-moon smile, walking me through the rose bushes and up on to the verandah. I’d often thought she was so sunny because of the roses and all that love and appreciation. Even her dad was a steady, light kind of bloke.

  ‘What’s cooking?’ Shelley asked, because she was far too polite to ask why the hell I had turned up on their doorstep for the first time in a year.

  I shrugged. ‘Around at Dad’s. Had to pick up something he took from Peg’s.’

  ‘Tim’ll be in for a cuppa soon.’

  ‘Your dad?’

  ‘Rounding up cattle in the Dargo.’

  ‘Playing house, then?’