by Bowes, K T
Flick’s ash blonde head dipped in reverence to her and Hana saw tears in his vivid blue eyes as he fixed his top teeth firmly over his lower lip. He held his hand out to her. “Lock the door after me, can you stand up?”
Hana nodded and reached for his strong fingers, hauling herself up and managing to balance the baby one-handed. “You don’t have to go, Bobby. You said the receptionist was sending help.”
Flick smiled and kept her fingers held tightly in his. “She is, but it won’t be quick. And if Jack means to take you and that wee one out, he’ll be making his move soon. Guys like him always have a Plan B. Hana, let me go.”
Hana’s face crumpled and she tried to mouth the words, “Thank you,” failing miserably as they came out garbled and messy. Robert Dressler, also known as ‘Flick’ for his legendary skill with a knife, wrapped his arms around Hana and gave her a squeeze of solidarity and love. Then he leaned down and kissed her gently on her wet cheek, his bristles scratching her soft skin.
“Be happy,” he whispered, his voice husky and laden with sadness. He unlocked the bathroom door and slid it back into the wall slowly, taking the gun from his pocket and poking his head cautiously around the wardrobe. His body slid through the gap and without looking at Hana again, he closed the aperture gently and with a start, Hana stepped forward and shot the catch upwards with trembling fingers. The baby over her shoulder snuffled and complained as she took his weight one handed.
“Just us now,” Hana said, hearing how pitiful she sounded as though observing herself through another’s eyes. She felt the blood running down her legs and stepped carefully so that she didn’t slip. The light tiles looked like they had entertained a massacre. Hana settled herself on the toilet lid again and exposed her other breast for the baby. He opened his mouth and made distressed noises, smelling the milk and latching on easily. It caused the stomach cramps to increase again and Hana persuaded herself that it was natural and good. “Come on little piggy,” she groaned. “Feed quickly and then mama needs to put you in the bath for a little while. There’s something I have to do.” With her free hand, Hana stroked the baby’s tuft of auburn hair. It stuck up on his head exactly like his daddy’s and apart from his un-Du-Rose-like colour, he was pure Logan. His skin was soft and porcelain and he fed greedily.
Hana felt the wetness percolate through the cardigan and soak her dress, mingling with the other awful stuff in the material. It felt uncomfortable. “Well, at least we know everything’s working,” she told her son optimistically. He snuffed into her breast and Hana heard the satisfying sloop, sloop of him drinking deeply. She smiled to herself at her baby’s strength, already apparent at less than an hour old. “Be a survivor, baby,” she willed him.
The boy was done quickly, efficiently feeding himself to sleep. Hana winded him for a little while, hearing a small burp pop out of his tiny mouth. She wrapped the cardigan tighter, swaddling up his arms and legs and balling the wet part away from his body as she laid him in the dry bath. Hana laid a towel under his body to stop the chill from the cold metal and covered him with another one from the heated towel rail, momentarily comforted by the artificial warmth and the scent of Logan that drifted up from it. “Sorry, boy,” she whispered as she balled up tiny pieces of cotton wool from the vanity drawer and slipped it into his ears. “Not meant to do this but I don’t want to deafen you.”
Hana used Phoenix’s plastic tray across the bath to make a bridge over the baby’s sleeping head. She draped the last two bath towels over it, making a tent that might absorb a little of the sound of the shotgun discharging.
Hana picked up the heavy gun and balanced it against her shoulder, just as Logan had taught her. It was far weightier than the gun she sometimes used but the principle was the same. She lined up the tiny sight with the centre of the door, squeezing her left eye closed and sighting with her right. Her finger on the trigger was light and Hana felt surprised at how natural it seemed after her hours of practice. Flick evidently saw her outside with her small pistol, shooting cans off the rail at the side of the house while Phoenix slept. It was a curiously violating sensation. “That’s embarrassing,” she groaned quietly to herself. He would have seen all the tantrums she had when she missed and probably laughed at the swearing she used to vent her frustration. “Surprised he managed to resist putting me straight,” she said out loud and heard her son move his limbs in the bath. “Please don’t cry, baby,” she begged him. “I don’t think I can make that tent twice if I have to pick you up.”
Hana settled herself gingerly on the toilet seat, wincing at the pain between her legs. She daren’t look at the blood stained floor anymore. She kept the gun trained on the door, but its weight cramped her arms after a short time. Her mind strayed to everything Flick had told her. She couldn’t seem to process it all properly, her brain fogged and incapable. “Oh, God, please help me!” she prayed, her voice a low wail. “I’ve messed up everything!”
A low rumble came through the floor to Hana’s bare feet as the wardrobe moved and she held her breath in trepidation. “Please God, help me defend my son,” she begged, her face stiff and tight from her dried tears. Unable to stand, she stayed on the toilet seat and supported the weapon, taking aim at the spot where the intruder’s heart would likely be as soon as he stepped through the door. Breathe in, breathe out, fire, breathe in, breathe out, fire, she told herself, stilling her body. Someone pulled at the door, trying to slide it sideways but prevented by the lock. Hana’s breathing made the sight move up and down on the point she concentrated on and she worked hard to bring it under control, feeling the pounding of her heart rendering an accurate shot impossible. “Please be Bobby,” she begged in a hushed whisper, knowing that it wasn’t. The blonde drover would have shouted that it was safe and told her to unlock the door. Unless he was already dead.
Jack had killed him and come back for her, expunging any trace of anyone who could hurt his twisted legacy. The denied Du Rose son intended to kill her and what? Subject Logan to starting again? He wouldn’t, Hana knew it deep down in her soul. Her husband had nothing left to give and nobody to give it to. “I’m not going to die, I’m not going to die,” she chanted, silencing herself when the tiny movement of her lips made the ridged sights move wildly up and down on the target.
Hana heard the sound of metal on metal. The lock had a screw type thing on the outside and whenever she locked herself in the bathroom in a strop, Logan always appeared with a coin in his hand looking smug. “Jack would have taught him,” Hana whispered out loud, her voice a husky squawk, “Jack taught him everything.” It was Jack. She knew it in her heart of hearts. Hana heard a dull thwack come from outside, reverberating around the bush and echoing off the mountains and she recognised it as a gunshot. It triggered something in her brain and she took careful aim at the door. Nobody would help her in time and Jack clattered against the door as the lock slowly turned.
Hana trained the tiny pronged sight on the centre of the door, willing her vision to settle on the space between the markers. She depressed the trigger slowly, feeling the tension against her index finger. Her stomach ached, her heart pounded in her breast, bringing problems of its own and her maternalism dictated that her child’s welfare was infinitely more important than hers. The door creaked as it started to slide open and Hana’s finger closed the final millimetres required by the trigger. The heavy gun kicked back against her shoulder, harder than she expected and her shot went too high and wide. The cartridge shattered the doorframe to the left of the opening, ripping the wood wide open and sending shards in every direction. Hana put her hands over her head and dropped the gun which kicked again, accidentally blowing a hole in the wall to the left of the door and narrowly missing the glass shower cubicle. Shocked grey eyes in a wizened face peered around the remainder of the door frame after a few moments of deafening silence, as the air molecules resettled themselves. It was over and Hana had failed.
Chapter 57
The bath towels over Hana’s son w
ere decorated in wood shards and chunks of plasterboard. But the tent held its shape and he was safe. He gave a frightened wail which galvanised his mother and she set her body rigidly and turned to greet her killer.
Alfred’s terrified eyes glinted at her from his position in the doorway, with only his head poking through. He hadn’t come empty handed and the gun in his hand matched Hana’s like a twin. They stared at each other for a long moment and then Alfred knitted his brow and handed the gun behind him. “Hana?” he said cautiously, venturing further into the room. His boots stuck to the blood on the tiled surface, making the sound of a child pulling off wrongly stuck stickers and reattaching them. Stick, rip, stick. He leaned down and picked up the gun, pulling it towards him using the centre of the barrel. Cracking it open he looked inside and then back at Hana, before handing that backwards too. A hand appeared in the doorway and took it and Hana heard it being laid down on the floorboards in the bedroom. Alfred approached his daughter-in-law extremely carefully, eyeing her hands and body for other weapons. When he turned his head she saw cuts on the side of his face from the shattered doorframe, one of them bleeding in a steady, relentless flow.
She closed her eyes and raised her hands to her face. I just nearly shot my father-in-law. Hana breathed in and her green eyes widened in fear as the inhale kept on coming, locked on a one way system that threatened to explode her chest. She made dreadful noises and saw her own hands streaked with the baby’s mess and her own.
“Shush, shush, it’s over now kōtiro,” Alfred whispered and sat on the side of the bath next to Hana. He leaned over and put his long arms around her shaking frame. “It’s just shock, honey. It’ll pass.” He said something in Māori to the person in the bedroom and Hana clung to the gentle lilt of his voice and the comforting language.
“Bobby,” she cried, hearing the hysteria in her voice. “Jack’s killed Bobby.”
“Who’s she talking about?” Alfred shot his question towards the doorway and Toby’s face appeared. The head stockman swore and looked guilty.
“Flick. Jack said he’d moved on. We thought it was weird at the time.” He said a swear word that was infinitely unrepeatable. “I should have checked it out. Sorry. He must still be around here.”
“He gave me the gun,” Hana rambled into Alfred’s shoulder. “He told me to shoot whoever came through that door. I didn’t know it was you, I’m so sorry.”
“So youse didn’t mean to nearly take my bloody head off then?” Hana heard the smirk in Alfred’s voice. “Well, that’s a relief. When did Flick give youse the gun?”
“Now! Just now!” Hana wailed. “Then he went after Jack to stop him coming back for me and...”
“Flick’s still here?” Toby looked rapidly alert. “That must have been the shot we heard.” He jerked his head towards Alfred who nodded and turned back to Hana.
“Ella on reception said she was sure it was Flick who called in. Geez I thought she made a mistake. We came up here to check it out. It sounded like some half-baked story...go help him Toby. Be careful.”
“Help Flick, not Jack!” Hana screamed. “Jack wants me dead! He killed Sylvia and the blonde drover. He wants me dead!”
Toby stopped in the doorway looking ashen. “No! I came up here to deal with Flick. You’re not making any sense.”
“Bobby...Flick helped me. He hid me in here with the gun and told me to shoot Jack when he came after me. Please. I think he’s shot Bobby outside. Please find him.”
“Jack did this?” Toby indicated the blood soaked floor and the shattered room. Hana halted in confusion and then nodded the lie. No, Jack hadn’t spread afterbirth all over two rooms or shot the crap out of her ensuite. She had. But it seemed too hard to explain and Hana felt a wave of guilt as Toby disappeared from the bathroom and Hana heard him gabbling into the radio. Then she felt the vibration of his heavy footsteps disappearing at a run down the hallway and the sound of the gun barrel cracking closed.
Alfred’s arms around Hana felt heavy and claustrophobic and she wriggled free. “I want Logan,” she demanded and he nodded.
“Ok.” He ran his hand through his hair and then looked hard at Hana. “Jack tried to kill you? Our Jack?”
Hana nodded, relieved to feel her heart rate subsiding and the hazy lightness of her vision slowly returning to normal. “He thought I was having an affair with Flick because he took me to the hospital. Then when he saw the baby, he decided it was true. He’s been watching me...”
“Wait up, saw what baby?”
“My baby!” Hana’s eyes widened in fear as she contemplated the towel-tent in the bath. Panic raced her heart again as she listened to the silence. She pushed Alfred roughly out of the way and peeled the top layer of towel away, dropping it with its builders’ rubble at the plug end. The next layer was clean and when she moved the plastic tray, the pink cheeked child peered out at her, his brow knitted and his eyes flicking around at the abrupt invasion of light. Hana lifted him like china and put him over her shoulder, pulling the cotton wool from his tiny ears. Without meaning to, Hana had recreated her womb for him, the darkness of the expensive, heavy towels and the cotton wool in his ears amplifying his heartbeat and giving him comfort. He didn’t behave like anything hurt and shattered eardrums would have yielded an instant response. He lay over her shoulder and sucked on his fist, hungry again.
Alfred stared at the child in amazement, instantly understanding the blood-stained floor and state of Hana’s clothing. “Sit down,” he ordered her. “Before you fall down. I’ll get yer man up ‘ere quick.”
Logan didn’t respond to Alfred’s radio call as he galloped Sacha the fast route through the bush, arriving a few minutes afterwards. He flung himself from the mare and ran into the house, leaving her to find grass and water for herself. He had free ridden up, bareback with only a halter rope around her neck. Sacha sensed the spite and tension in the laden air and her body stiffened.
Hana saw her husband’s grey eyes, dark and conflicted as he appeared in the ensuite doorway, having passed by the ruined, bloodied rug and seen the holes in the walls and doorframe. For once, her stunning husband was speechless.
Without permission, Hana’s soul instantly plugged into his and drew safety from his presence, releasing her to resume her role as the frightened woman. She sniffed and tears ran like she had flicked a switch and Alfred stepped back to allow Logan to clear up the mess that was his wife. “I’m not sure which will take longer,” the old man remarked to Toby, “the bathroom or the woman.”
Hana heard their muffled conversation but couldn’t let go of Logan. Squashed between them, their redheaded son fed happily, the constriction familiar and safe and the added bonus of real sustenance pleasing.
Alfred walked back into the room. “The emergency services are here,” he announced in hushed tones. “Loge, I need to talk to you.”
A paramedic pushed past him, closely followed by a uniformed policeman. Both took in the blood spattered floor and the state of Hana. As Logan stood up, the cop noticed Hana feeding the baby and respectfully looked away but the paramedic blundered straight on in, kneeling in the mess and pressing her with a series of questions. Logan went to the doorway in response to Alfred’s look and they had a whispered conversation with Toby over by the bedroom window. Their faces were grave.
“He tried to kill me,” Hana told the paramedic in a strangled voice, the tears dripping into the baby’s silky red hair. “He helped to deliver my son and when he saw him...he had a pistol.”
The policeman’s interest was piqued and he listened carefully to Hana’s ramblings. “Touch nothing!” he said to the men in the bedroom. “In fact, I want you out of here, now.”
“Not without my wife!” Logan said with a glare. The local cop bit his lip at the tone in Logan’s voice and contemplated making him leave. But not for long. “I go when she goes,” Logan reiterated and the cop backed down, forcing Alfred and Toby to leave the room while he used the radio on his vest. Responding to a hazy,
crackled sound from the device, the cop appealed to Logan in a different tone, putting his head around the doorway and averting his eyes. “Mr Du Rose, there’s a problem. I need your help.”
Logan lifted his backside from the side of the bath and walked towards the door. “What?”
The cop lowered his voice and looked at Hana sideways as the paramedic withdrew his stethoscope from inside her shirt. “There’s a massive white horse blocking the gate. It won’t let anyone else in. My colleague just radioed to say that it’s kicked the side of the squad car in.”
The baby fell asleep on his mother’s chest, his arms splayed out to the sides and his soft cheek pressing into her neck. Logan sat on the bench seat opposite, swaying with the movement of the ambulance as it surged towards Auckland General Hospital. He watched Hana intently but his mind was conflicted. Hana saw that he felt split. He wanted to be with her and their son, but he needed to be elsewhere. “Did Toby find Bobby?” Hana whispered as the paramedic moved away with the packaging from the cannula in his fingers.
Logan shook his head. “No, don’t worry about him. I know him. He’ll be ok.”
“What about...him...” Hana began and Logan reached across and laid his hand over hers, their son’s body underneath the pile of fingers. He tried not to bang the cannula, aware of the cop to his left listening and watching everything. “It’s all fine,” his eyes promised.
“Bobby was a hero,” Hana said and Logan’s eyes flashed as his head moved imperceptibly side to side. Hana shut up.
“Trust me,” he whispered and leaned in far enough to kiss her on the forehead. The vehicle lurched and Logan braced his arm against the window ledge above Hana so that his body shielded her from view. “He’s beautiful,” he said, staring down at his son. “He looks exactly like Phoe, but just more...orange.”
“Jack thought he wasn’t yours,” Hana choked, “he was going to kill us.”