Part Two
The early summer dusk had melted an hour since into an evening chill. Rupture Hill to the north-west was a shadowy dung-brown, its girdle charcoal and ash-grey and the woodland at its base a sootcovered verdigris and tan. Over towards the Anderson place a bonneted Ruth checked the crucifix hung in the porch-way, blessed herself and closed the door. And one by one the lights in the house went out. Back across the uneven ground and over the path, John Cassidy stood in the doorway of the homestead, black-suited still and backlit from a tawny lamp that flickered. He looked out over the land, over his land. He sniffed at it, at the acuity of the berries, the damp grass and the turned, moist earth.
He’d sat with his father a long time. Sometimes he’d looked at the drain of his face, at its basted stillness and the draw of the leached-mauve lips. Sometimes he’d tidied up the blanket under his chin, the brush-mat at his feet, the kitchen bowl, the face cloth in it. The little things. Then there was the smell, the longer he sat there, of bodily moisture, of stickiness and ooze. He’d put his boots on, folded away the collapsible chairs and put them in the trunk. Then he’d driven away, over the pebbles and dirt. He’d taken a turn along a single-track road that was dusty and uneven. After a mile he came to a clearing, to a space amongst the trees where there was a general store the size of a fairy-tale shack, a low log building decorated with dinghies and surfboards and a makeshift basket of fish reels. His father in the back looked asleep. Sick and greasy, jaundice-yellow cut with lime and gruel, but asleep nonetheless.
He’d wanted to take one of the dinghies, to unhook it from the timber and pull it along the track to the slipway at the end. He’d wanted to go back to the car and lift his father off the seat and carry him like he’d carried him before, his head nuzzled in the crook of his shoulder, his nose pressed against the skin of his neck, his hair against his cheek, and put him in the dinghy, to lower him until he was almost flat, and to push him out and watch him float away.
The burial had taken place in the town halfway across the country where he was born, next to his father, Michael, and the mother he met for minutes only, Catherine. The chapel smelled of naphthalene and must, and the minister, in only his second ever funeral service, edged it too close to the overbearing side of solemn, his words, as well meant as they were, dissipating like the drizzle outside over the collection of motley mourners, people who Jack had either worked with or been a regular salesman to, the man in the pressed cotton shirt with the button-down collar, the one in the lustrous mulberry shoes, the men who’d bought either cars or houses or land, and the men whose lives had been blessed in one way or another by the myriad contents of his encyclopaedias.
John drifted and listened at the same time. He was both there and not there. He’d stayed that way as the casket was taken out and the rain fell harder, as the few remaining mourners stood, as gobbets of clay-coloured earth sprinkled over the mulberry shoes and his father was lowered into the ground.
For him there was no consolation. Any sense of resolution was scant. He had not been made peaceful. There was no solace that was not mauled at the moment it appeared. And, unlike his father, there was no sense of closure for him, no satisfaction in knowing the truth, that there had been no abandonment or rejection, that his father had looked for him and called him every birthday, and that the twisted lies that came out of his mother’s mouth had ravaged them both and boomed them out into the world in different directions because the truth didn’t and couldn’t take away those twenty years of his father’s absence. The knowing didn’t matter. The absence was what mattered.
He made no plans. There was no grand scheme, no thought of what to do next other than go through his father’s things, no thought of how long it’d take him or how long he’d be there, or what to do with the acres of Cassidy land. There was, as he stood in the honeyed glow of the lamp, no thought of the deeds, no inkling, as yet, amidst his anger and lack of appeasement, of retribution.
The town, on the other hand, or certain prominent individuals within it, specifically Ted Mallender of the Land Management Agency, were armed with more plans and contingencies than a uniformed general with a pointing stick. You see, they’d presumed, in the failure of those alleged relatives that had come and gone, that on the death of Jack Cassidy the land would be returned to its rightful owners, the town of Mission, in particular the Land Management Agency, to be built on, developed, turned to economic advantage. But what they hadn’t figured on was John Cassidy, about whom they had known nothing.
Two weeks later Ted and the youngest, most recent member of the Land Management Agency, Doug Sketchings, from the neighbouring town of Serpentine and therefore unsteeped in the Cassidy mythology, walked the unmade track to the Cassidy homestead. A moderate breeze blew the drying Anderson bedsheets like sails and tinkled the bell-like bonnets. It was mid-morning, a clear day with puffball clouds and from the parked car at the end of the track all the way to the homestead the two men never spoke.
When they got to the veranda, Ted turned. “Stay behind me. He doesn’t want to see you first. You look like a preacher.”
Doug almost slipped stepping back and Ted gave him a brief glare. Bags and sacks cluttered the place still, boxes and packets, untouched. The old armchair on the veranda hadn’t moved an inch.
Ted took a breath in and knocked, three short raps. They waited. The wind blew seed husks over the decking, rustled the packets and bags.
“Perhaps he’s not home.”
“Don’t assume anything, Douglas,” he said, and then whispered, “He’s a Cassidy, don’t forget. Now, look round the sides and the back, I’ll wait here.”
Doug nodded and, holding onto the rail, began to tiptoe. This was partly due to his natural diffidence and partly due to having two small children who woke at the drop of a hatpin, but mainly it was because, given Ted’s snarled description of the Cassidy breed, he expected to meet something that had slithered out of a swamp.
There was no-one in the main room. All he could see through the skimpy netting was a table strewn with papers and a set of accompanying chairs. He went closer to the pane of unwashed glass, held his breath. This was not what Doug had been promised. He’d been promised charts and coloured pins and the occasional measuring of land with modern-day equipment, not what felt like a stakeout.
“Nothing here,” he hissed back.
“Keep going. Round the back.”
Crab-like he went, his hand staining the rail with sweat, his head looming forward at various points like a swimmer looking for air. From the back of the house, he could see the parked car and the road that skirted the Cassidy land. He could make out the rough, untended terrain beyond and the slopes of Rupture Hill. And, if he’d got as far as the other side and looked over to his right, he may even have made out the neat-trimmed edges of the Mallender estate. But he didn’t.
The window opened with a swiftness and a hand grabbed his arm in a lizard’s grip. “What do you want?” said the faceless voice.
Doug had nothing. In his head, beyond being a young father with a melancholic wife and twins who wouldn’t rest, he had only a long-winded and officious rationale for being there, but it never happened. And the grip stayed firm.
Then Doug remembered the badge on his pocket and used his free hand to show it in the direction of the opened window. John’s face appeared, pale and gaunt, half sunlit, half not. He eased the grip slightly. “Do you know who Ben Gunn is?” he said.
“Does he work for the Agency?”
“No, he does not. He’s in Treasure Island.”
Doug swallowed. “We’d just like to talk,” he said.
“We?”
“Ted’s the…”
“Where is he?”
“He’s at the door.”
“Shout him.”
Doug cleared his throat and went for a holler that was supposed to sound clear and meaningful but came out like the bark of an old dog. Ted appeared, weighed up the situation and, speaking somewhere between Joh
n and Doug, said, “Now, what can we do here?”
“You can get off my land,” John said, “You can leave me alone.”
Ted had had the Cassidy legend seared into him from a very early age. But even so, though it coursed through his bloodstream, he’d never actually met a Cassidy face to face. With Jack he’d sent a couple of scouts early on but once he’d found out the man was dying, he’d decided to let fate take its course. And so John, unshaven, grimy-handed and rank-breathed, was like some sub-species of a genre yet to be classified.
“We mean no harm,” he said. “This here is Doug. He’s a father of twins.”
Doug nodded. John glanced at the peachy skin of his face.
“We come to offer our condolences for your loss and, as members of the Land Management Agency, to ask what plans you have for the land.”
“No plans…yet.”
“No?”
“No.”
“In that case, if you’ll excuse us, we’ll be making our way back to the office. And may I suggest that should you consider selling the land then the Agency might be interested. I’ll leave a card.”
Ted took a monogrammed card from his jacket pocket and flicked it into the murk of the room. John turned to watch it land, and let go of Doug’s arm.
On the walk back along the track with the sun high overhead and the summer breeze stilled to nothing, Doug, releasing small islands of sweat onto the pale-cherry shirt he’d ironed himself, said not a word. Ted the same, all the way to the parked car, and then when the doors were closed, the air-con blasted on and the pack of cigarillos reached for, he turned to Doug and said, “You see? Animal.” Then he drove away.
There was a hiatus then, understandably. But then that hiatus became a nothing, and the longer it stayed a nothing, the more it looked like Plan A had failed and Ted Mallender, the Land Management Agency and the townsfolk of Mission in general needed to look at the contingencies: Scouts were sent out, again. Highly innocuous and low in number, these were ordinary volunteers whose fondness for nature and exercise took them close enough to the Cassidy land for a looksee at the shovelers and teals and, hopefully, at the gruff and ruffle-breasted rarity that was John Cassidy. Then there were those edgier individuals who were willing to park their cars on the road and walk as far along the track to the homestead as possible without a genuine reason to be there. There were those who walked out of town, across the rickety bridge and out to Coronation Point and then made their way towards the homestead that way, stopping at the edge of the Anderson land as if to admire how Ruth hung out the bonnets and sheets. And there were those, fitter and braver, who risked the rough terrain and the darkness of the woods to get there from the northern side, out of regular view. Whatever, none of it worked.
Nobody saw him. Not once. Nobody even caught a glimpse of him open his door to take in the summer air, or sit in the old armchair with a cold beer, or climb into the battered Toyota and drive into town to get provisions. And, because nobody saw him, nobody knew what he was like, or what he was capable of.
With Jack it’d been easier. Jack was sick. Jack was dying. It was easier for those mild-mannered volunteers to close the door in the man’s face or watch him struggle with the groceries, or, for those fitter and braver ones to slit his tyres once in a while with a penknife. But with John, nobody knew.
The Anderson family were visited with. They were sat down by Ted at the bountiful table and sermonised on the nature of communal duty even if that duty seemed to fly in the face of tolerance. The following morning a starch-bonneted Ruth and her two milky ducklings crossed the path and knocked on the homestead door with a basket swollen with fruit and homemade bread. The door opened a few inches and, with an abundance of spiritual sweetness and a raising of the basket, she asked whether John would like to partake in the Good Lord’s sustenance. There was a moment’s pause. A bare arm appeared through the gap in the door, then a hand hovered above the greenest, shiniest apple and took it.
“Thank you,” came the voice.
Ruth smiled. So too the ducklings.
“And what about prayer?” Ruth asked. “Would you like to join us in thanking the Lord for his gifts?”
The door opened wider, sending the rank and fusty air out onto the veranda so that Ruth’s nostrils couldn’t help but flicker and the ducklings couldn’t help but frown and pincer those lips as if they’d tasted lime sap. The hand reappeared, returned the apple to the basket, and the door closed.
Then there was the Environment Agency, sent in by Ted and the LMA on the grounds of the risk of infestation and disease and overly high levels of Methane found in gatherings of domestic waste. The two men in hi-visibility jackets and clipboards got some way through their spiel about health issues and possible closure, but then John, through the same chink in the doorway, said: “Chesters versus the State of Nebraska, 1956, unspecific warrant leading to the Law of Trespass and Ungainful Entry.” And the chink was no more.
There were the two law enforcement officers from the town of Mission sent to investigate the Cassidy homestead while reeking provocatively of steak juice and relish who had only opened those savoury mouths before they got, “Williamson, Jeremiah, versus the Los Angeles Police Department, 1965, intimidation. Come back when you’ve got something.”
The longer it went on, and the plans and the contingencies fell by the wayside, so the rumours around John started to spring up like bindweed: One, he was a near-savage who hunted at night in the wild terrain. Two, his antecedent, Patrick, had built subterranean tunnels, one of which came out in the cellar of the general store. Three, there were enough stockpiled tins to feed an army. And four, the body of his father was still in there, part-embalmed, hence the smell.
After two months, standing in front of the fallow ground of last resorts, they turned, reluctantly, to Jake Massey. He’d met John Cassidy after all. He’d spoken with him, and even though they neither trusted nor liked him, even though they considered him unreliable and full of bullshit, still, at that point he was their only chance to find out what was what. They talked about gentle persuasion. They talked about just getting into the house and having a regular conversation with the kind of questions you might ask over a neighbourhood fence, but Jake, with his attention span not much more than a sentence long, heard only hush-hush and camouflage.
The other candidate would’ve been Sophie Li. But, following Jack’s death, she’d left the town. Whether it was that, apart from her neighbours in the migrant housing, the rest of the community had cut her out for her simple association with the Cassidy’s, no-one knew. Whether it was lack of funds or a disagreement with John or that her sister and brother-in-law, Lee Shaw, who lived a few miles to the east of Serpentine were a better prospect, again it was hard to say. Either way, she’d gone. So Jake it was.
For John, the paradox was this; that the ungainly efforts to prise out what his plans were, actually made him give them some thought. Prior to the visits, he had nothing. OK, so his father had told him something of how he’d been maltreated by the town, mentioning the name of Ted Mallender in particular, but he was still a long way off a plan, grand or otherwise. But, with Ted and his sidekick, with the Andersons, the Environment Agency, the law enforcement men and then, on that Saturday morning of slow-rising mist, the jaunty and combat-jacketed figure of Jake Massey making his way along the path to the house, well, it made him think. For the first time, gambits started to twitch. If people wanted to come onto his land and take him on, if they wanted it so badly, then let them come and get it.
Jake knocked, tried, as best Jake could, to play it cool. He offered his condolences, a shake of his hand. He tried, as they sat around the kitchen table and talked about the summer heat and the dryness of the land, about the timber mill and his warnings and the new foreman, Dan Cruck, sent in to examine the efficiency of the place, to play the covert agent.
He glanced and scanned. He extended his stay as long as he could, drew out those questions up to and beyond their natural limits, so
that he could skim and absorb some more. He made enquiries that may have looked like genuine interest in the house, the land and John’s intentions had they not come out of Jake’s mouth. They went down into the cellar to fetch up a couple of beers. They stood on the veranda. Jake used the bathroom, more than once, checked out the cabinets and shelves, the smell of the towels. John heard him, mapped him yard by yard.
“And then there’s Rita and Delilah,” he said, standing in the doorway. “Rita, I like, but I don’t know Delilah. I don’t know who she is. You know what I’m saying? She’s a mystery.”
John’s mouth twitched.
The following day, Ted paid Jake a visit. He tried to be friendly. He bought beer and a pack of his favourite cigarettes. He looked at the posters on the wall: Bruce Lee, Rambo, Scarface.
“So,” he said, “how was it? Did he let you in?”
“I was there an hour. You know, there must be a thousand books in there. Whole boxes of them. Everywhere. And shoe boxes and shirt boxes.”
“What does he eat?”
“All kinds. He’s got cans, fruit, vegetables, pulses. Meats and fish. You won’t starve him out.”
“And is he clean?”
“Clean enough.”
“Did he talk?”
“Sometimes.”
“What about?”
“The heat, the dryness of the land.”
“Did he say anything specific?”
“What about?”
Mission Page 7