Snake Island

by Ben Hobson

  Brendan nodded. ‘Thanks for the work, officer.’

  He walked back to the car, looking at the windows at the front of the house, hoping to catch sight of a hand, a face, any movement behind the curtains. But he saw nothing.

  He climbed in.

  Martin said, ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, he’s not home, at least.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘The cops’re sure.’

  Martin said. ‘Guess we’ll go see his son.’

  ‘Can’t do that, either. Caleb’s run off.’

  ‘Run off?’

  ‘Boodyarn’s minimum security,’ Brendan said. ‘So he’s piss-bolted.’

  Martin sat back. Ran his hands over his face. ‘Guess that leaves William Kelly from the visitor’s log.’

  ‘Bit of a longshot.’

  ‘What other shot do we have?’

  Before they visited Reverend Kelly, Brendan begged a moment from Martin and Judah to check in with his sister at the hospital about his dad and, after dropping them off at the pub, had found the doctors were now confident his father would pull through. This idea comforted him—he loved his father with a devotion known by few—but it also stabbed at the base of his neck. He knew the burning of his father’s skin had been his fault entirely. Nobody else’s. His father had told him to lay off and he hadn’t. That mongrel Moore getting under his skin. And so, if and when the man was back to his normal self, he would bear the brunt of his anger, far worse than the beating he’d already received. He’d cop far worse than the pig. As he watched the man breathe, wrapped in his bandages, he gave thought to unplugging the machine or smothering him with a pillow or simply taking the body, throwing it over his shoulder, and tossing it into the water at Port Napier. But he wouldn’t dare on account of his loyalty.

  He passed by Sharon Wornkin’s room on his way out and wanted to go in and apologise but instead he walked out of the hospital and drove his car down the main street to the pub.

  Martin and Judah were seated at a table eating chicken parmigianas. There were more people here than on a usual Saturday afternoon, no doubt due to the festival. Dan behind the bar was keeping an eye on the lot of them.

  ‘Your old man alright?’ Martin asked when Brendan sat down.

  ‘He will be, they reckon.’

  ‘Good,’ Martin said. He chewed. ‘How hard is it to find one bloke?’

  Judah swallowed and added, ‘One old bloke.’

  ‘Right. One old bloke.’

  Brendan said, ‘If we don’t find him we’re done here. In Newbury. You saw how Wornkin stood up to me. Without her under our thumb, we’re done. She knows everything about how we do things.’ ‘If we make an example of this old bastard,’ Martin said, ‘Wornkin’ll come back onside. Women like her always do. You watch.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I give us tonight. If we don’t get him tonight, Wornkin’ll keep pushing back. And you’ll be done. Put Moore in the morgue by daylight and Wornkin will think twice before chucking you out. This town even have a morgue?’

  Brendan said, ‘It’s in Trenton.’

  ‘So what happens when someone croaks?’

  ‘They get driven over.’

  ‘What if they’re old and nobody finds them and they get all rotten and drippy?’

  Brendan did his best to shrug. He hadn’t thought they were aiming to kill Vernon Moore, and now that it had been said, and in such a flippant way, he found himself looking for a way out. His intention had never been to kill––hit, bludgeon, break, sure––and he wasn’t sure he was capable of it. While he hated Moore and his son and everything he was, Brendan had never considered crossing that threshold. He’d never murdered somebody.

  ‘You’re going to kill him?’ he said.

  Martin gave a nasty laugh. ‘Well, maybe. I guess. Or just rough him up real good.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Judah said. ‘Break his legs or something.’

  ‘Point is he needs to feel it so bad everybody else here feels it along with him.’

  ‘Right,’ said Judah.

  They left as soon as the two of them had finished eating, and Brendan thought he saw a few relieved looks coming their way. He wondered why, and squirmed beneath the focus.

  ‘Well?’ Brendan said once they were back in the car. He was sitting alone in the front once more, looking in the rear-view mirror. ‘Kelly normally hangs out in his church toward dark. They run a few of those programs weeknights for alcos and that. He’s normally in there at six.’

  ‘That’s two hours from now,’ Judah said.

  ‘I don’t know where he lives.’

  ‘Ask somebody. You country folk are all in each other’s pockets, aren’t you?’

  ‘You’re in a hurry, all of a sudden?’

  Judah sighed. Sat back. Punched the ceiling of his car, hard. Metallic thud.

  Martin said, ‘You’re calling the shots, Brendan. This is your mess. You know what’s happening if we don’t manage to clean this up.’

  They waited, Judah smoking, seated in the car on MacMillan Road. People looked at the car as they walked by. Two hours later Brendan pulled out and drove down to the Anglican church. There were lights on inside, the stained-glass windows illuminated. Brendan parked on the street and looked up. Bloody great big thing. Guess the blokes who built it were trying to honour God, or something. The stars above were cloaked in cloud. A cool breeze. Brendan walked to keep up with the other two.

  At the front door, Judah struggled with the handle and then pounded on the door so hard Brendan was afraid the glass would smash. Soon, though, the minister’s face appeared, staring at his guests banded together in the darkness. Brendan tried smiling, waved a hand.

  ‘Reverend Kelly,’ he said.

  The minister did not open the door, but instead shouted through the glass, ‘What do you want, Cahill?’

  ‘Just want a word.’

  ‘About Vernon, I suppose?’

  He didn’t appear to be wearing his minister’s cloak, from what Brendan could tell, but even through the glass there was an air of certainty about him that made Brendan doubt his own intention––he’d barely been sure of it to begin with. The way Kelly gazed down at the three of them, there on the church steps.

  Martin spoke up. ‘We don’t want any harm to come to you, old man, but we were in the police station earlier—’

  ‘So you’re the ones who did that to Sharon.’

  Martin’s smile didn’t falter. He said, ‘Yeah. We did that.’

  ‘You can leave my church now,’ Reverend Kelly said, and started walking away. Martin brought out his pistol and tapped it on the glass. Reverend Kelly stopped and turned around.

  ‘Now I don’t need—’ Martin began in that condescending tone of his, but he was cut short by a rifle blast from within the church. The glass he stood before shattered and Martin fell back on the steps. Brendan saw the raised rifle in the minister’s hands, saw him drawing back the bolt in a practised move. Judah was now down on one knee, going for his own weapon. Brendan ducked and headed to Martin, who was gurgling. He pulled the wounded man to him as Judah started firing.

  There was a lull. Kelly gone, somewhere within. Besides Martin’s moaning, no other sound. ‘Is he still there?’ Brendan asked Judah.

  ‘Just help Martin,’ Judah said.

  There was something in Judah’s eyes that made Brendan do as the man said. He sat Martin up and saw the blood. Already a pool of it. It was gushing out of a wound in his neck. Martin was kicking his feet and groaning and his eyes were wide.

  ‘He needs a hospital,’ Brendan said. He put a hand on Martin’s neck and applied pressure. Martin’s eyes widened further and his boots kicked against the brick of the church.

  ‘You’re strangling him,’ Judah said. Brendan moved his hand away from the trachea and over the wound. The neck was slippery, the pulse there somewhere, thrumming like guitar strings––between his fingers, life pulsing. Martin was crying. He kept trying to speak but all that
came out was the sound of a bathtub emptying.

  ‘He needs a hospital,’ Brendan said again.

  ‘Can you get him to the car?’

  Just as Brendan stood up another shot came from inside the church. Something careened off the brick nearby and flew past his face. He gasped and held it and felt blood already seeping from his ear. Judah returned fire and from inside came a loud groan. Craning his neck Brendan could see that the minister was down, crawling away from the door, towards a table with a purple cloth, a golden tassel hanging from it. Brendan thought he could see flyers of a service. Kelly’s rifle lay on the carpet and a trail of blood was spreading like oil in water. Judah walked forwards, training his pistol on the minister’s back. Brendan followed, leaving Martin in his mess. Kelly grabbed at the tassel and the cloth fell over him and he looked already dead. The flyers fell.

  Judah said, ‘You tell us where this bloody Moore is or I’ll make this worse for you.’

  Beneath the cloth the minister scrambled. He seemed unable to stop moving, despite what further harm might be done to him. On the steps the drowning of Martin.

  Then, somehow, Kelly was on his feet, holding his weeping leg. He regarded his abusers hopping, with venom in his eyes.

  ‘I’m not telling you anything,’ he said. ‘You can go to hell.’

  ‘Some way for a minister to talk.’

  ‘If I’m going, I’m going and that’s all there is to it. I’ll be with Christ.’ Kelly leaned his head back and laughed, then started coughing. ‘Weymouth,’ he said. ‘Last bloody bloke I wanted in my head at this moment. Still think he was wrong.’

  Nonsense words. Judah brought his pistol up again and aimed it at the minister’s stomach and the old man’s eyes flew open in terror.

  ‘You aren’t going yet, old man. You tell us where Moore is.’

  ‘Shooting a minister in a church is a guaranteed way to get into hell.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be talking about who shot who, preacher.’ Judah’s eyes flicked to his dying friend. ‘You tell me what I want to know or I’ll shoot you in the gut. I’ve been shot in the gut. It’s not pretty, let me tell you.’

  ‘Then you’ll shoot me.’

  They stared at each other, the two of them, and Brendan tried to guess what was passing between them, and then Judah fired his gun. He raised it to the man’s skull and squeezed the trigger. The bullet entered Kelly’s nose and shattered his face. He bucked down and slapped against the carpet. The lifeblood of this man now splattered over the carpet, over the wall. His eyes were still open and one of them was cocked sideways. A giant gaping hole where a nose had been.

  Brendan couldn’t stop staring and soon found Judah’s hand on his shoulder, pushing him away. The minister still draped in his religious cloth. This man with his impotent flyers soaking up the ever-spreading pool of red. This man of the cloth killed in his own church. This man who’d been protecting his own, had done nothing wrong. A minister, a friend.

  Brendan finally dragged his eyes away from the sight of the old man and beheld Martin, who now lay completely still, his head near the shrubbery beside the steps, one arm flung out. Judah knelt down beside him and scooped his legs up in his arms. He motioned to Martin’s face. ‘Get his head.’

  Brendan found words. ‘What are we doing?’

  ‘Get him to the car.’

  Wordless, Brendan did as he had been instructed. Blood was still leaking from Martin’s neck––it coated Brendan’s hands and the steps, making the going tricky. He walked backwards down the grassy slope, the night sky darker than he’d remembered. When a car passed by the lights so startled him he tripped. Martin’s head slapped down against the grass, the sound of a boot striking a football.

  ‘You dickhead,’ Judah said, still holding Martin’s feet under his arms. ‘Pick him up.’

  They managed to get Martin to the car. Judah put him down reverently, and opened the back door.

  ‘Get in,’ he said. ‘I’ll hand him up.’

  Brendan climbed in on the other side of the car and took Martin’s tilting head, held at the door up by Judah’s trembling hands. He hauled him inside until the dead weight was almost atop him and then Judah was in the driver’s seat before Brendan could move.

  ‘Keys,’ he said.

  Brendan handed them over and Judah started the car. He drove carefully out of the church parking lot and onto the main street of Newbury. The pub was still in operation, Brendan saw. He was sitting up and doing his best to treat this dead man on top of him with respect. He could feel his own shirt growing sodden with Martin’s blood, like he’d jumped into Boolarra Falls. Hard to imagine the human body holding so much.

  As he cradled Martin’s body he put his hand over the man’s heart and was surprised to feel a beat. He would have shouted out to Judah but knew it was too late and so just let his hand rest there as the heart thudded irregularly. He wanted to open the man’s eyes and give him one last chance to say something. Brendan tried to remember the last words he’d heard him utter. What words would he himself say in the end, to define him? What part of him would stay, and how quickly would he fade from all memory? As he held his hand gently on Martin’s chest, Brendan felt the heart thump its last, and in that thump the weight of everything.

  THIRTY

  VERNON MOORE

  There were trees above their tent, rustling in the breeze. His wife dozed next to him on their blowup mattress as shadows of the branches passed over them like giant bats. There was one in particular near the corner of the tent backlit by the sun. He’d been careful not to camp directly beneath the trees but with the sun lower now in the afternoon they cast their shadows all the same. He kicked off his too-hot sleeping bag and looked at his wife. He sat up.

  He rustled from their tent, careful with the zipper so as to avoid waking her, and gumbooted his feet. He squinted into the horizon. He hadn’t really slept. The sun was too bright. He was glad Penelope had managed. He left her there, traipsed over the boggy land and stood in the sand of the shore.

  He looked at Port Napier in the distance, over the channel, over the murky blue. There were a few fishing boats dotted on the ocean. The tide was in. Vernon held his hand up to his eyes. He thought he could see one of the fishermen with his head in his hands. Like he was weeping. His fishing rod left idle, the line running into the water.

  Vernon sat down and watched the tide lap at the shore, the mucky brown seaweed. He wriggled his toes, the warm sand a cocoon for his old joints. As the sun warmed him up he kicked off the gumboots. The sand was dense like that which had so mired the pelican. How long did it take for a body to become bones? That pelican might know. If the dead know anything.

  He looked back at the tent—through the trees, the sound of his wife’s light snore reaching him. She had coated his back and arms in ointment the moment she’d seen his wounds. His face still ached with the gash in it. His ribs. His knees. Amazing he was still walking. He laughed then, mostly at himself.

  He decided he’d walk through the bushland, so put his gumboots back on. He stood and eyed the fishermen one last time, who still seemed bowed with grief, before heading into the forest. The trees were thick and always surprised him with their number and as he passed the closest one he leaned out a hand and felt its smooth bark. There were possums out here he’d been told but he’d never seen one in all his years of camping. He looked up, trying to tell if there were scratch marks on the trunk. Snake Island wasn’t huge, but he’d heard stories before he’d moved here of early settlers shepherding their flocks across the channel to graze, a race when the tide was out. Lord knows where they found grass. If he climbed this tree he’d be able to see all sides of the island at once.

  He came to a small clearing. The grass was thick and up to his knees. A magpie on a nearby branch reminded him of the one that had accused him at the Cahills’ farm. He thought on his actions of the previous night and found it difficult to manufacture guilt. He had been right in what he did, backed into a corner as he’d
been.

  On the base of one of the trees surrounding the clearing he noticed scratch marks and stepped closer. He found a name scrawled into the trunk—Matthew Cahill. He searched his memory but he had never heard of a Matthew Cahill. He stood looking at the name and wondered what had caused Matthew to put it there. What had been so significant about this place? What had occurred here? Probably just the Cahills in their youth, probably years ago now. Ernie’s father, maybe. Or his brother. Vernon felt the urge to scuff dirt against the name and symbolically erase it, but instead he walked back to his tent, trying to shake off the bad feeling that scrawled name had evoked in him.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon avoiding discussion with his wife, who did not look at him, but sat looking out at Port Napier. At nightfall he built a fire and they sat either side of it on their camping stools, the tent behind them, Penelope with her jacket on and her hands spread out before the flames. He’d built it back from the shore, but it could still be seen through the trees. He had put a few cans of spaghetti into the embers and their labels were peeling off, onto the earth, into the black.

  He looked across at her and said, ‘You alright?’

  ‘I’m just great, thank you.’

  ‘Come on, sweetheart.’

  She shook her head. ‘I keep thinking about Caleb.’

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s fine. They won’t be worrying about him now. They’ll be after me.’

  ‘You mean us.’

  He watched the fire for a bit. The sea was a constant, rhythmic thrum. He looked up at the lights of Port Napier, strained to see their home, and couldn’t. Just pinpricks of light far off. Sometimes a car’s headlights. Hard to keep the lights distinct at this distance.

  He said, ‘Found something I never saw out here just before.’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘A Cahill name carved into a tree. Matthew Cahill. You know a Matthew Cahill? Just down there a bit, on a trunk.’ He motioned with a stick. ‘Didn’t know there was a Matthew.’