Snake Island

by Ben Hobson

  Judah snorted. ‘I barely touched him. He was drunk.’

  ‘We just thought, in front of all those people, you might like to keep up the appearance of being a good cop,’ Martin said. ‘Good for the town, you know. They don’t all know you and Ernie have ties, do they?’

  ‘Never mind me looking piss-weak, hey,’ she said. ‘You planned that?’

  ‘Well,’ Martin said. ‘Not exactly that.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have hurt him.’

  ‘He’s fine,’ Judah said. ‘He is piss-weak, if that roughed him up.’

  Sharon sat silently for a moment before saying, ‘Doesn’t make me look good though, does it? I didn’t say anything while you were hurting him. And then me leaving with you. Makes me look like a coward, like I can’t control things.’

  Martin said, ‘Guess we didn’t think of that.’

  Judah laughed. ‘He’s still piss-weak.’

  ‘Well,’ Martin said, ‘how about we head around to Jack’s in the morning with our hats in our hands and apologise or something. Make out that it was a misunderstanding. That you’d arrested us, took us in. We could do that.’

  ‘Just leave it,’ Sharon said. ‘He already thought I was weak. It’ll blow over.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Besides, I’m not telling you where he lives.’

  Sharon watched as the houses flicking by her window decreased in number and were replaced with fields. They drove over a drain, a large pipe making a small mound in the bitumen. The ute’s suspension handled it well.

  ‘Let me show you something,’ Martin said suddenly and turned right, onto a gravel road canopied by the paperbarks lining either side. In the dark Sharon saw kangaroos tipping their ears at the sound of the ute.

  Cold in the night with the breeze. There was another car before them. Normally it would be strange to see a car parked on the side of this road at this time of night, but Sharon knew why it was here. Though this wasn’t the right car. No people about, or within, it seemed. She got out, took the torch from Martin and peered at the plates, the registration. Judah remained smoking happily in the ute.

  Martin kicked at a tyre on the car.

  ‘This isn’t the car we were told would be here. None of the product in the back. So something’s gone on. Then, that idiot Judah,’ he said, nodding in the direction of his colleague, ‘slashed the tyres before I could stop him. Doesn’t give things a second thought. Just does what enters his head at any given moment.’

  ‘This is Vernon Moore’s car,’ Sharon said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  Sharon nodded, looked closely at the tail-lights. Knew the car, had seen it when she’d interviewed him about his son. ‘Yeah. Pretty sure.’

  ‘Who’s Vernon Moore?’

  ‘He’s nobody,’ Sharon said. She looked at the trees surrounding them and into the darkness of the forest. If there were creatures other than kangaroos, their eyes were dimmed. Sharon let the torchlight drift over the trees, the trunks. ‘He lives out at Port Napier, I think. He’d be well into his sixties now, I reckon.’

  ‘You know why his car would be here?’

  ‘I’m assuming the trade-off didn’t happen?’

  Martin nodded. ‘We drove up here and this was all there was. Supposed to be quick and easy. We were supposed to be back in the city tonight. When we got here this was it.’

  ‘Did you drive up further?’

  ‘Didn’t realise the Cahills lived near here. They just told us they had a farm, didn’t say where.’ Martin scratched his shorn hair and his half-good eye looked all about as the other focused on Sharon. ‘Why? You think he’s done something?’

  ‘No. He’s too old.’

  Martin asked, ‘So you reckon he’d have the stuff then?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Just some mix-up?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Martin laughed and the sound was ugly. It was swallowed up in the forest. ‘We thought we’d been done in by our competition. Hey, Judah,’ he said. The larger man’s head appeared out the window. ‘Sharon here reckons this car’s some sixty-year-old’s.’

  ‘Right. Well, we’ll sort him, won’t we?’

  ‘What do you mean we’ll sort him? He’s over sixty.’

  ‘Stealing’s stealing.’

  Martin shook his head. ‘You’re not telling porkies, are you Sharon?’

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

  ‘Take it easy.’ Martin held up his hands in mock alarm. ‘Everybody in this town’s as testy as cow’s balls.’

  Sharon started walking back to the car. ‘So I guess we’ll keep going?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The car was full of cigarette smog. Martin turned the key in the ignition and drove up the gravel track and they re-emerged from the shadows, back onto bitumen.

  Sharon said quietly, ‘Cows don’t have balls.’

  THIRTEEN

  SIDNEY CAHILL

  They had him resting on the couch. His left arm was cradled to his chest and there was blood coating his forearms. He couldn’t make a proper fist with the hand. He kept trying.

  His daughter hadn’t woken up, despite the noise. She’d somehow slept through it. He hoped. Hard to hear her over the sound of his own breathing.

  His wife sat beside him cross-legged on the floor, her chin in her hands, staring at the carpet. One hand left her chin to pick at a thread in the couch. She didn’t speak or look at him.

  ‘Who’s with Amy?’

  She breathed out. ‘She’s fine. I can hear her if she calls out.’

  Brendan came in from the kitchen. His father soon followed. There was a darkness in his father’s eyes that bespoke his fury. His mother had not been called and so wasn’t present. Sidney found himself longing for her to hold him, to tell him he would be alright.

  Brendan knelt down beside his brother and said, ‘Doctor’s on his way.’

  ‘At this time of the night? We should just go to emergency.’

  ‘I convinced him.’

  Sidney was in too much pain to delve into what his brother may have said.

  His father sat in the chair opposite him. Sidney moved, suddenly finding the fabric against the bare skin on the back of his arm scratchy. His father looked at Brendan, who sat down as though he’d been commanded, on the carpet. His father’s eyes roamed up and found his own.

  ‘Melbourne didn’t show?’

  Sidney shook his head. His father sighed.

  ‘So tell me about this situation, Brendan.’

  ‘The old man?’

  ‘The old man.’

  ‘Caleb’s his son. I told you about him.’

  ‘You haven’t said a word to me about it, mate. Don’t you bloody lie now.’

  Brendan looked aside. ‘I ran into Melissa. You remember her? She came out here once, for my sixteenth, when we had that?’ His father didn’t nod, just sat staring. ‘I ran into her down the street and saw her face. She still had scars, her nose didn’t sit right. I knew he’d been arrested and all that, but she’d moved away, you know? I didn’t know what he’d really done to her …’ He trailed off, which was unlike him. Then, ‘So I asked Sharon and she said he was out at Boodyarn serving his time for it. And I had to send a message, Dad. Like you say. Had to let him know he wasn’t to hit her again.’

  There was a silence after Brendan stopped speaking. All eyes rested on Sidney, who felt uncomfortable beneath them. Cassie soon emerged from the kitchen. She had made toast, buttered and honeyed as he liked. She propped it on his chest and smiled at him and sat down next to Sarah, extending a sympathetic hand. Sarah took it briefly, gave it a squeeze.

  ‘You fancy this girl? Mel?’ their father asked.

  Brendan scoffed. ‘No. It’s not like that. She’s a friend. Thought it was the right thing to do.’

  Their father stared at Brendan for a moment. ‘I want to be very careful with what I say to you now, Bren
dan, alright? So shut up and listen to me. Because I want you to learn from this and I don’t want to use my fists to teach you this time. Do you understand?’

  Brendan nodded quickly and did not look up. His father waited a moment.

  ‘There are a number of steps you’ve taken here that weren’t the right steps. Do you know what they were?’

  Brendan picked at the carpet. Still without looking up he said, ‘But Dad––’

  ‘Brendan, I’m about to smack you,’ his father said.

  Their father was a big man––stocky, broad-chested, his bald head making him look like a bull––but it wasn’t his size that gave him weight. Standing, he wasn’t as tall or as big as his firstborn. He didn’t shout or yell. Never had. But his softly spoken words were sharp. Little daggers. Each one driving home venom, anger, ferocity.

  Brendan said, ‘I should’ve talked to you about it.’

  ‘Bloody oath. That’s the lesson we need to learn here. I mightn’t’ve minded you going in there beating on him. Sounds like he deserves it.’ He paused. ‘If you’d talked to me about it I could’ve told you something like this would happen. You pushed it too far, mate. I’m assuming you had to bribe the governor at Boodyarn prison? So you’ve extended us over there. Then you’ve woken up this old man to come and defend his son. And I can’t blame him for that. But if you’d talked to me, told me your bloody plans, I would’ve seen this coming. You do this again, you act without speaking to me first, and I will shove a knife into your neck.’

  Brendan had remained staring down at the carpet but had stopped fiddling with it. Sidney almost felt sorry for him. He seemed like a little kid beneath his father’s words.

  ‘Look at your brother there, on the couch,’ his father added. ‘Look at his arm. That’s on you. You did that. You remember that the next time you come up with a plan on your own and don’t talk to me about it first.’

  He sat back in his chair. The room was silent, no family member meeting the eyes of the others.

  ‘What did he say his name was?’ his father said.

  Brendan said, ‘His son’s name is Caleb Moore.’

  ‘You know his dad?’

  ‘No.’

  His father looked at Sidney. ‘How you going, mate?’

  Sidney nodded. ‘I’m alright.’

  ‘No more bleeding?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘The doctor’ll fix you up. How’s the arm?’

  ‘We shouldn’t keep doing this, Dad.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The pot.’

  Nobody spoke for a moment.

  ‘Just because something’s gone wrong this one time––’ his father started.

  ‘It’s not that. We just shouldn’t. Of course something’s gone wrong. It was bound to.’

  His father sat forward and there was no more of the fury in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry this happened to you.’

  ‘Yeah. I know.’

  He finished his toast. Cassie took the plate and swept the crumbs from his shirt and went into the kitchen. Ernie remained seated. When Cassie returned with a face washer, warmed with water, and started to dab at the cut on Sidney’s forehead like he was a baby, his wife did not turn to watch.

  From a way off they heard a car. Headlights coated the front verandah. Ernie and Brendan stood, turning off the lights in the living room. Sidney raised his head to see. The headlights flicked off, leaving them in darkness. The sky outside was cloudless, he saw through the window, the stars swirling together, hard to see through the pain. He felt foggy. He sat up a bit more, hurting his arm. His father was at the doorway, one hand on a shotgun leaning against the frame, hidden from view. Brendan stood to the side.

  Sidney heard a voice ask, ‘You Ernie Cahill?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You got that hand there on a gun of some description?’

  ‘Considering what’s happened, I have no clue what to expect.’

  ‘Relax. We’re not here to do anything. Look, we’ve brought Sharon.’

  Sharon Wornkin’s voice said, ‘Ernie.’

  ‘They treating you alright?’ he asked.

  ‘They beat up on Jack a bit, but yeah, they’ve been alright.’

  Ernie said, ‘What can I do for you blokes?’

  ‘You know who we are?’

  ‘Of course I bloody do.’

  ‘Well, you’d know why we need to chat, then,’ said the voice. ‘Can we come in?’

  ‘Is there a need for that? We can chat out here.’

  There was a moment before the voice outside continued with, ‘It’s just hospitable, isn’t it? Thought that’s what you found in the country. Small-town manners and all that.’

  His father’s back shifted. One leg closer to the gun.

  ‘You have weapons?’

  Another moment. His father shadowed in the doorway like some ogre from one of Amy’s books. Like there were stories about him. The stars seemed to shift to accommodate his presence.

  One of the visitors said, ‘There. Happy?’

  His father took a step aside. ‘Come on in.’

  He nodded to Brendan, who flicked on the lights. The men who entered, one small, one large, were squinting. Looking around them in judgement. A smirk on the younger one’s face, a lazy eye. Sharon followed, standing to the side like she was attending a party to which she hadn’t been invited.

  The younger man looked at Sidney with his one good eye. ‘What happened to you, then?’

  His father manoeuvred his body in between Sidney and the two men. Cassie was back seated beside him, dabbing at his cheeks. His wife still sullen on the floor.

  ‘You blokes being here means the car wasn’t where it should’ve been, right?’ Ernie said. The younger one nodded. Ernie shot his oldest son a look. Sighed.

  ‘We’ve been robbed,’ Ernie said.

  ‘What do you mean you were robbed?’ said the larger bloke.

  Sharon had moved closer to Brendan, whose eyes met Ernie’s, and something passed between them to which Sidney was not privy.

  ‘Sidney was in the car, waiting for you,’ Ernie said. ‘A place I’ve often spoken about being unsafe with you lot.’

  The young one said, ‘We don’t know anything about all that. We’re just here to pick up the stuff. That’s it. Just stick to what happened.’

  ‘I’ll say what I like in my own house.’ Though the venom in Ernie’s words was still present, the Melbourne blokes seemed far less affected by it.

  The younger one smirked wider still. ‘Meant nothing by it.’

  Ernie did not seem appeased. He looked at Sidney before saying, ‘He was in the car waiting. Weren’t you, mate?’

  Sidney nodded, winced, trying to make it plain to them all that he was still hurting. His thoughts on his daughter.

  His father continued, ‘And this bloke comes up outta nowhere and sticks a gun in at him and orders him to drive the car someplace else. So he drives out of there and on the way to wherever this bloke was taking him, he hits a roo. We went looking for him when he didn’t come home. Found him on the side of the road, all banged up.’

  ‘Sharon here said the car we found belongs to some old man named Moore?’ the young one said. ‘Isn’t that right, Sharon?’

  Sharon said, ‘I could’ve been wrong about that.’

  The younger one smiled. ‘Could’ve been. But were you?’

  ‘It looked like his car but could’ve been someone else’s.’

  ‘But you don’t know him?’ the young one asked, looking pointedly at Sidney. ‘Was he an old guy? This was completely unprovoked? How’d he know you were out there?’

  It wasn’t unprovoked. It just had nothing to do with these blokes from Melbourne. Sidney knew his father couldn’t let them know that, though. If Ernie lost this client in Melbourne because of this mess at the very best he’d be out of business. Who knew what the worst looked like?

  Ernie answered for him. ‘No idea.’

  ‘You
telling us all that product’s in the wind, so to speak?’

  Ernie shrugged. Brendan, who up until this point had seemed fitted to the wall, said, ‘We’ll get it back.’

  ‘How?’

  Now Brendan seemed adrift. He said, too quickly, ‘Whoever it is, they’ll be local.’

  ‘How the hell would you know that?’ the big one said.

  Brendan shrugged. Didn’t look directly at them.

  Ernie finally said, ‘They wouldn’t’ve known we were out there otherwise. Unless someone from your neck of the woods let the road name slip? That amount of product worth stealing?’

  The big one answered, ‘No amount of anything is worth stealing from us.’

  There was a pause. Sidney felt the tension in the room, felt how defensive and bitter each of the men were. The younger one, though, seemed at ease. Like he had been born in these types of situations.

  In the quiet the younger one turned to Sidney and smiled. ‘You look real banged up.’

  ‘I feel it.’

  ‘Can you move the arm?’

  Sidney shook his head.

  ‘And a roo did all that?’

  ‘Kicked me in the chest a few times.’

  ‘And was he an old bloke?’

  Sidney looked at his father. ‘He was old. Not sure how old.’

  The man sat down on the end of the couch, near Sidney’s feet. He looked up at Ernie. ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘We’ve just been through all this,’ Ernie said. ‘We don’t have a plan. Our plan right now is to get my boy a doctor and after that I’ve got some people we can call. If it’s local, we’ll sort it. Your product will turn up.’

  ‘I know a few people, too,’ Sharon added.

  ‘And we’re not looking into this Moore bloke?’

  Sharon said, ‘I’ll have a look.’

  The younger man said, ‘I don’t think I need to tell you how important that produce is to us. We run a pretty tight ship in Melbourne. I don’t know what it’s like out here, but in the city, when we say we’re going to do something, we do it. So when we tell our customers we’ll have something for them, and we don’t have it, well, we lose our integrity. I don’t have to tell you all this, right? You know all this.’

  Ernie nodded. ‘Yeah. I get it.’