Snake Island

by Ben Hobson

  ‘I think I’ve heard his name before.’

  ‘An uncle or something?’

  ‘You remember when I had a look at my family tree?’ She still wouldn’t look at him. ‘I had researched a bit of Newbury history and I think his name was in there somewhere. I think he died a long time ago.’

  ‘You know how?’

  ‘No.’

  She picked up a stick and started stabbing the ground. Orange light flickered up her arm. What was she imagining? Whose face was on the end of that stick?

  Soon she said, ‘You think the Earth knows about anger?’

  He scoffed. ‘Bit of an odd question.’

  ‘You think it does, though?’

  He grunted, sighed. ‘I don’t know. You sound like Bill Kelly. Big ideas.’

  ‘I know, I just …’ She hesitated. ‘There’s been so much murder and violence here, you know? In Australia, I mean. But here specifically, too. There was an Aboriginal bloke murdered out here a long time ago. The McAndrew stuff?’

  ‘Yeah. He was pretty awful.’

  ‘And they still have a monument up to him in the park.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He spread a rumour that a young white girl—I think she was fourteen?—was seen held captive by a tribe out here. Never mind that nobody else saw any evidence of it happening. And so he sent out a decree of sorts, just written on napkins and distributed in the town, asking that if any black person were to be happened upon they were to be asked some serious questions, in any manner the asker deemed necessary. A lot of Aboriginal people were roughed up. So a couple of McAndrew’s diary entries say. You never know the real thing though, do you? At least one Aboriginal was killed. Out here, on Snake Island. They found him hanging over a branch of a tree, like a sack of potatoes. That’s what McAndrew said. That was his metaphor.’

  She fell silent. He looked at the cans of spaghetti, saw an edge blackened. He went to their tent. Inside their pack he found the tongs. Walking back to the fire he said, ‘I didn’t know any of that.’

  ‘Well. You know how Margie takes an interest in it. She told me all about it.’

  ‘You’ve never told me about it.’

  She didn’t respond. He turned the cans of spaghetti, moved them a little out of the flames.

  ‘I always felt funny about this place. Still do. It feels ugly. Like it remembers what happened. And who knows what else.’

  ‘So that’s why you’ve never come camping out here with me?’

  She nodded.

  He added, ‘Lotta things like that happened, all over the Earth.’

  ‘Yeah. They did. They do.’

  ‘I don’t think the Earth has any memory. I think each person is a person and that’s it. And all decisions they make are theirs. Nobody else’s. Not some made up ancient violence the Earth somehow remembers. I don’t get this idea we’re supposed to blame the world we live in for the actions we take.’

  She said, ‘I think it remembers. I think we’re all infected with it.’

  ‘Get off it.’

  She glared. ‘Don’t you think there’s more to us than this?’ She waved her hand around at the trees, at the shore a distance from them, at the fire. ‘I can’t believe that we’re nothing more than this. That there’s no … anything else. Things can’t just be this.’

  He poked at the fire. ‘I’ve fought in a war, Pen. I’ve seen men die. Without reason. No glory, not doing anything remarkable. Weymouth died having a laugh, telling a dirty joke I won’t repeat. And he was shot. If there’s more than this—if God exists like Kelly says—then you’ll need to explain to me how things like that make sense. Because they don’t. They just can’t.’

  She took a moment. ‘I think God’s the only thing to give me hope in all of that. What hope is there without him?’ She breathed. ‘I know it’s silly, but I dream of Mark sometimes. I dream I held him. Before he died. When I wake up every morning I pray God exists. Because then I might get to yet.’

  He said nothing to this. The whole time she’d spoken she’d still not looked at him. Her face golden, a flickering flame. Her weathered eyes. She didn’t seem sad. Not what he’d call it. She leaned forward, and finally met his eyes. And smiled.

  He cleared his throat and said, ‘You know what I hate?’

  ‘Talking about stuff like this?’

  ‘I hate when you call me Vernie.’

  Her face scrunched in, puzzled. ‘But I’ve always called you that.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And you’ve always hated it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Vernie,’ she said, and stopped. ‘You should’ve said something.’

  ‘Well, I knew you liked it.’

  ‘You still should’ve said.’

  ‘No use in that.’

  She came around the fire to look at their cans. ‘They ready?’

  ‘Bit longer.’

  She sat back down. ‘What don’t you like about it?’

  ‘It makes me feel like a kid. It just sounds like a name for a kid. It’s emasculating.’

  She said, ‘Emasculating? Didn’t know you knew that word.’

  ‘I’m full of surprises.’

  ‘You should have said something.’

  ‘Yeah. My fault.’

  ‘Too right it’s your fault.’

  He finally retrieved the cans from the edge of the fire and they ate their spaghetti in silence. It warmed his belly at least. He found himself looking up a lot, at the stars, at Port Napier’s lights. If he squinted just so it looked as though Port Napier itself had faded into the night and become a deeper part of the universe, out of his reach.

  Later, in the tent in their sleeping bags, something felt off to Vernon. He sat up. He couldn’t hear anything unusual and there was nothing different about the ocean’s rhythm. Maybe it was the army still in him all these years later that made him get up, grab his gun, and walk from the tent.

  Outside it was blowing a bit. He pulled his coat around him and with his gumboots on walked to the water’s edge. Behind him came the unmistakable sound of a person murmuring—low, and caught on the breeze. Vernon sat on his haunches and rubbed his hands together. Might be just young people, camping, fishing. Might be nothing at all.

  Then he heard his name shouted.

  THIRTY-ONE

  SHARON WORNKIN

  Out the window of her hospital was utter darkness. The sun had long since set. The television above her bed, hung at an obscene height so that patients who were unable to sit up could still see, flickered with some late-night repeat of a game show. Sale of the Century. Wheel of Fortune. They were all the same. Sharon watched the colours from the set warping across the tiled ceiling.

  Roger hadn’t appeared. She wasn’t sure if Peter had even told him she was here. She should have called him. No telling how he’d respond to her beating, or what he’d do to those responsible. Or what he’d want to do. She supposed she was afraid. If he came, saw her condition, and then argued in defence of Ernie, they’d be through. But she couldn’t stomach the thought of him wanting to protect her, either. So she didn’t call. She put off what she knew she’d have to do soon enough regardless. She just lay there and watched this garbage on television and was simply still for a bit.

  When the two policemen from Trenton had found her earlier in the day, they hadn’t been able to meet her eyes. Perhaps they felt some shame in seeing a woman so pulverised, her face and nose the colour they were. She wanted to laugh at their propriety. Supposed it was sweet, in its misguided way. She’d told them where Vernon lived, that there’d be people out for him. To expect trouble. They’d nodded solemnly before heading out. Later she got word Caleb had escaped from Boodyarn. Trevor and Robert were out helping co-ordinate the search, but come daybreak they’d have to call in more Trenton boys. Maybe even Melbourne. Things in Newbury kept on getting worse and worse.

  She knew Ernie was in a room nearby. She’d seen Cassie earlier, walking by, but Cassie hadn’t cared to enter
and say hello. Hadn’t even spared Sharon a glance.

  She wanted to see him, though. To see him in his agony.

  She sat up and swivelled her feet out of bed. She disconnected the drip from the cannula, in the same manner she’d seen the nurses doing it. The tube hung free, flashing red on the machine. She pressed a button and it seemed to stop. She waited for the nurses to rush to her aid, but no one came.

  With hesitant steps she hobbled out of the room, looking both ways, listening for voices that would send her back. Her bandaged body felt heavy as she walked on down the ward, checking each room until she found the one she wanted. Esther Cahill sitting by her husband’s bedside. Ernie mummified. Heavy gauze, a little red seeping through patches of the cloth. The television cast them both in coloured light. The same gameshow Sharon had been watching. She stepped inside.

  Esther heard her and turned. ‘Sharon, you can come in.’

  Sharon inched forward. Ernie’s face and head were completely wrapped in bandage. Just two small holes for his nostrils. Plastic tubing ran to a machine snaking from a hole where his mouth should be. This man who had so intimated her was reduced to this, to nothing. What he’d always been, really: a sack of flesh.

  Sharon said, ‘How’s he doing?’

  Esther stared at her. ‘How’s he look?’

  ‘Yeah, alright.’ Sharon took another moment. ‘What did we do to deserve them?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Esther had turned back to her husband and placed a hand beneath one of his, bandaged.

  ‘These men.’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Your husband’s an arsehole, Esther.’

  Esther still didn’t look up. Sharon’s words stuck in the air like hair clogging a pipe.

  Eventually Esther said, ‘I suppose he is.’

  Sharon hadn’t been expecting agreement. It made her pause. ‘So what did we do to deserve them?’

  ‘Ernie does care, in his way.’

  ‘So that excuses what he does?’

  Esther shook her head. ‘I suppose it doesn’t.’

  ‘So why do you stick by him, then?’

  ‘Well,’ Esther said. ‘I reckon I give as good as I get.’

  Sharon snorted at this, but said nothing.

  Esther added, ‘I know Ernie does whatever he wants, but there are moments he seems to care for me. And a lot of what he does is for me, he says.’ Her hand beneath his moved. ‘I wish he wasn’t here, in hospital. Makes it all seem worthless now.’

  ‘Does he hit you?’

  Sharon saw Esther’s back heave. ‘Your husband hit you?’ she finally said.

  ‘No. He doesn’t.’

  ‘Oh. Well.’ Then, turning to face Sharon, she said, ‘You could get off of your high horse.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘You’re just as bad as I am.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sharon said. ‘I know.’

  ‘Just as bad.’

  She breathed. ‘I know.’

  ‘Least my bloke’s worth something.’

  ‘So? That makes it okay?’ she said. ‘An arsehole’s still full of the same shit, no matter how deep you search. Anyway’—she breathed out, her voice trembling—‘I just came to say he’s an arsehole to his face. You can tell him I quit when he wakes up. If he wakes up.’

  Esther had already turned back around. It was hard for Sharon to tell what she made of those last words. It didn’t matter.

  She walked back to her own bed, replaced the tube in the cannula and called for a nurse to make it drip again. The nurse glanced at the machine with a puzzled look before fixing it and leaving. Sharon gazed at the ceiling, again, the way the television light played over the tiles. A ghostly reflection of an image already distorted with static. She wondered how Vernon Moore might be faring, and knew she could do nothing further to stop what was about to happen to him.

  THIRTY-TWO

  SIDNEY CAHILL

  He was scrambling eggs. Elsewhere in the house his daughter was crying because her mother wasn’t paying attention to her. Sarah was busy packing their things. They didn’t own much. All the furniture here belonged to his father. It was mainly clothes she was stuffing into their bags, her make-up, toiletries, a few of Amy’s playthings.

  Stabbing the eggs with a wooden spoon, he yelled out, ‘Your folks got a place for Amy to sleep on?’

  ‘No,’ came Sarah’s voice.

  ‘Should we take the crib?’

  ‘The crib won’t fit.’ She rounded the kitchen door to face him. In her arms Amy sniffling, momentarily mollified. ‘We can take the mattress.’

  He nodded. ‘Good thinking.’ As she turned to go back to their bedroom he said, ‘These are about done.’

  He took the frying pan off the stove and set it on a cork mat on the table. He put in some toast for Sarah and himself and ladled some of the eggs into a bowl for Amy to cool. Her bowl was pink with hippos in floral dresses around the edge. The eggs slightly black from overcooking.

  Sarah placed their daughter into her highchair before heading back down the corridor. Sidney strapped Amy in, who was wailing again now, throwing her arms around as he struggled with the buckle. He put the bowl of eggs before her and she stopped crying immediately and used one chubby fist to grab at it, the bowl at risk of being swept over the side, as usual. He kept an eye on her as he sat down.

  Sarah had bundled their bags by the front door and returned to the table. They had taken longer than he’d wanted to pack, and now this was it, the last dinner he would eat before leaving this place for good. He had not bothered visiting his father, nor had he called his mother to see how he was. It was past Amy’s bedtime. They would eat and he would shove the bags in the car and she would fall asleep on the way to Devonshire. In the morning things would be different.

  Sidney spared a glance around the kitchen he had grown up in. All his father’s talk of duty and family responsibility had gone up in the same fire that engulfed the shed. There was no excuse for endangering the family the way his father had. Sidney found himself resenting the man for his entire childhood. He thought of everything he would do differently as a father.

  They ate quickly. Sarah was just getting up from the table when the front door cracked open and in came Brendan, covered in blood. Startled, Sarah took a few steps backwards and Brendan seemed perplexed at her reaction, as though he’d returned from any normal night at the pub. Then he looked down at his shirt, his hands, and hurriedly put his arms across his chest in a futile effort to hide the red. Sarah went to lift Amy out of the highchair.

  Sidney found himself looking down on his brother for the first time in his life. All the power and menace seemed to have been stripped from him––it was clear in the way he held himself.

  ‘Can you come out to the car, please?’ Brendan said, arms still crossed. A drip of blood fell from his fingertip. He didn’t seem in pain, at all, so Sidney assumed the blood wasn’t his. And didn’t want to know what he’d done.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you need to come to the car.’

  Sidney looked at his daughter, his wife. ‘We were just leaving. We’re done with all this.’

  Brendan swelled then, one of those baboons in the jungle, puffing himself up as he stomped toward them. Sarah left the room with Amy in her arms before Brendan reached him. He grabbed him in a headlock Sidney knew well from their youth and marched him to the front door.

  ‘Like, I said, you need to come to the car, Sid,’ he said, the last word forced through clenched teeth.

  ‘Alright, alright, damnit, get off me.’

  Sidney could smell the blood, could feel it in his hair. His viewpoint only of his shoes, the verandah, the steps, the gravel walkway. The cool air bit into his back. One of his ears felt like it was being ripped clean off. He kept squeezing at the arms that held him, even though he knew it was no use.

  At the car he was released. He stood up, rubbing his neck.

  ‘In there,’ Brendan said.

  Sidney bent down an
d looked in. In the darkness he saw Judah in the front seat, staring straight ahead.

  ‘Look in back,’ Judah said.

  Sidney saw the shape of a man. The head was down in the footwell of the backseat but Sidney could tell from the clothes that it was Martin.

  He recoiled. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter what happened,’ Judah said. ‘What matters is what we’re going to do about it.’ He was speaking slowly, in a measured way, like he was checking each word before he said it.

  ‘And what’s that?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘We’re going after Vernon Moore.’

  ‘He did this?’

  ‘I told you. It doesn’t matter how it happened.’

  Sidney stood back from the car. ‘Well, you can count me out.’ He looked at his brother. ‘You’re going along with this?’

  Brendan had returned to his smaller self. His hands were so caked with blood that in the moonlight they appeared ancient. ‘We have to, Sidney.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because,’ Judah said from the darkness, ‘you don’t and I’ll be coming back.’

  Sidney looked a moment at his brother.

  Brendan stepped forwards. ‘I’m sorry, Sid.’

  ‘We’re going to find Vernon Moore,’ Judah said. ‘And when we do I’m putting my boots up his arse. And if you don’t help me I’ll come back here and it’s your daughter gets the bullet.’ His grip on the wheel tightened. ‘Have to spell everything right out for you country dipshits, don’t I?’

  Sidney looked at his brother. There was a deep sadness in his eyes that Sidney understood. A look of guilt, remorse. He looked back at the house.

  ‘You don’t need me,’ Sidney tried.

  ‘More people the better. He’ll know we’re coming,’ Judah said. He lit up a cigarette, took a long drag. ‘Go get the guns.’

  Brendan obediently took off for the house.

  ‘You get in the car,’ Judah said.

  ‘I have to go in with him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to tell my wife.’