The Low Road

by Chris Womersley

  The fire he’d built the previous night had burned down, was now mere ashes and coals in the grate. Lee crossed the room, jabbed at the coals with the poker and arranged more logs, crouching until they caught fire. Using the poker for balance, he stood companionably and faced the room. The backs of his knees grew warm and flames crackled and popped. He was reluctant to move. He waited, content to prolong the sensation of being the bearer of exciting news. The moment, he knew, was frail. Water dripped from an icicle over the window. It made a highpitched plinking sound, like glass. Wild didn’t move.

  In hospital after the car accident, Lee was unable to attend his parents’ funeral but his sister had told him all about it. He hadn’t wanted to know the details, but Claire had been so talkative, at a heightened and manic pitch in this new country of teenage grief—perhaps even secretly enjoying the drama. Imprisoned by his injuries, he’d been unable to escape her ranting. She’d told him who was there and what they wore, that Uncle David was drunk and sat in a pew crying, that the church was full of strangers talking about their parents, that they misspelled his name in the funeral notice in the newspaper. L-E-I-G-H, she’d said, incredulous. They’re idiots. Leigh. Can you imagine? She’d discovered things about their parents, as if death had released them from their private histories. With relish, she’d told him that their father had been in the merchant navy when he was a teenager and abandoned ship at Singapore. I bet you didn’t know that? Or that Mum was a swimming champion in high school?

  At the funeral, you could walk past the caskets and look inside and see them in their nice clothes. Dad in a suit and Mum in her red dress, you know the one with the clasp thing at the neck? Or at least see most of them, their faces and stuff. And you could see that they were calm, calmer even than when they were, you know . . . She was terrified, she’d said, but they made her file past. Said it would be good for her, God only knows why. Something about love and saying a final goodbye. She was crying and she wasn’t going to look but she couldn’t help it, and they didn’t actually look too bad. Staring at the ceiling from his hospital bed, Lee had wondered what Claire could have meant, because he knew how ugly and crushed they had been.

  Lee inspected the mantel above the fireplace. He idly ran a finger over the surface and rolled the accumulated dust into a ball between his thumb and forefinger. He picked up a bottle of ink, removed the cork and inhaled the smell of bottled schoolrooms. There was a clump of dried lavender stuck in a glass and a group of toy soldiers. The four thumbsized figures clutched instruments, so crudely carved from wood that they had no hands as such. They each wore curling, painted moustaches and red uniforms with sashes of yellow. Their expressions were bland but stoic as they prepared to play their gold-painted instruments. Strangely, the figures all had a red dot on their pink foreheads. Indian soldiers, perhaps. He picked one up and examined it. A soldier preparing to clash two cymbals. The paint was cracked off one side of its face. Lee tested the glazed paint on its back with a thumbnail and balanced the tiny man in his palm. It weighed almost nothing. An old, dry thing, belonging to some child who was by now elderly or dead.

  He wanted to go back outside into the garden and lie in snowy drifts. To bathe in the silence. He kneeled on the floor beside the bed and rested an elbow on the edge of the mattress. The bed sheets were as cold and hard as marble. He felt incomplete, as if being slowly dismantled. Some prehistoric sorrow bubbled in his throat. He gulped and swallowed. He groaned and shuddered. His face became wet and doughy. His tears were salty on his lips as they passed down to his chin and dripped onto the bed. There were hundreds of them, thousands, springing so readily from his eyes they might have been lurking just beneath the surface, swelling, waiting for this moment. Thus abandoned, he wept, kneeling on the floor, head in his hands, inconsolable.

  He dug a grave for Wild at the higher side of the house, in a space surrounded by low bushes. The ground was frozen and it took most of the morning just to break the icy crust. He had to pause every few minutes to catch his breath, and took the opportunity to look down over the white countryside. Nothing moved, not even the clouds. There were no birds in view. A line of trees stood still, like a distant crowd of mourners.

  Sweat dripped from his forehead and nose when he again bent to the spade. He put a foot on the top of the blade, pressed his entire weight into it and wedged out a clump of soil to add to the sodden pile. Then he did it again. And again. His whole left side, where he’d been shot, made itself known with each exertion. Later, when he removed the dressing, he knew it would be soaked in his own blood. He felt pale and old.

  When Lee had finally stopped weeping and rolled Wild over, he’d discovered a dozen empty morphine vials gathered to the curl of his body like a clutch of glassy, misshapen eggs. There was also a handful of used plastic syringes, their metal tips jewelled with blood. The inside of Wild’s arm was darkly bruised and smeared with blood, and the sheets were also stained with it. His lips were purple, his skin damp and cold.

  Wild’s face had been long vacated and contained no expression, the blue eyes like stones jammed into the cavities. There was a tiny mark high on Wild’s left cheek, perhaps a chicken-pox scar. The straggling beard. In an otherwise unnoticed breeze from the window, a fold of Wild’s grey hair had waved gently from the side of his head, giving the body a suggestion of mere dormancy rather than death. Lee had reached forward with one hand and smoothed the fold back into place. He half expected Wild to sniff and sit up and wonder what the hell was happening, but of course nothing of the sort occurred; nothing remained.

  For some time he had deliberated what to do before unchaining Wild from the bed frame and dragging him still on the mattress into the garden. It took nearly an hour. The mattress snagged and tore on rusty nails that crooked from the floor. The guy had weighed a ton, surely heavier dead than alive.

  And so Lee kept digging, spadeful by scratching spadeful, trying to determine a rhythm in the work. He sank into the grave up to his knees. His hands and feet became numb. Mumbling an apology, he covered Wild with a blanket and tried not to look at his shape as he worked. The black goat stood nearby eating some paper, apparently not bothered by the cold. It chewed and watched and chewed again. Every so often it bleated its expressionless, faintly comical bleat and the sound was carried away by the wind, over the rise at the back of the property.

  The day wore on. The air grew harder and colder. Occasionally he clambered from the hole and went back into the house to smoke a cigarette and warm himself. He stoked the ancient kitchen stove. He trembled inside and out and was shaken every so often by sobs that bubbled to his surface. He tried not to think of anything. When at last almost done, he paused and looked up, panting heavily as he rested on the spade handle. Steam ballooned in front of his face. His lips were dry and cracked. In the hours he had been outside digging, the cold had stolen through his clothes and skin and then through his muscles until his bones were like ice. He squinted and stared. There, in the space between the bottom fence of the property and the distant crease of the horizon, something moved. A tiny shape by a jagged fence that was stitched across the landscape. He wiped the back of one filthy hand across his nose and watched. The dot was moving ever so slightly, almost not at all, like a dark satellite trembling across a milky sky.

  The shape drew larger and closer. What on earth would be out travelling on such a day? Too big for a dingo or kangaroo, too slow for a car.

  Eventually, Lee could make out the shape of—what? A bulky person? Perhaps a horse. A man. Hat. A man wearing a wide-brimmed hat. It was the old man who’d driven them here. And his cart. The old cougher with the horse and cart. Lee had to get the hell away from here as soon as he buried Wild. Had to hit the road and get to Claire’s place. Needed to escape. Whatever he wanted, the old man and his cart might be perfect timing. The old guy was still a mile away and moving pretty slowly. Lee was nearly finished. His palms were blistered and sore, but he should be able to bury Wild before the old bloke arrived. Just a few
more spadefuls.

  Lee looked across at the figure of Wild under his blue blanket. There was no mistaking the shape—the higher peaks of the face and toes and the awkward, spreading sag through the middle. Yellow foam stuffing crumbled onto the snowy ground through a tear in a corner of the mattress. If Lee left him there, the snow would soon cover him and nobody would ever know. The crows would peck and the possums would paw. By the time spring crept across the landscape, the wind would be able to sluice through the very wreck of him. Maybe someone would find him in a year, when Lee was long gone. After all, it was unlikely anyone would come to this part of the garden anytime soon and discover the body.

  He pondered this for a while, then bent and leaned his weight into the spade until another small portion of the ground gave way. The level of the earth was at his stomach. A little more and he could tip Wild into the hole and cover him. The earth at least would be warm. He could be done with this and get out of here. He kept digging, became contentedly enslaved to the circular rhythm: dig, press foot upon the spade, lever some earth and hoist it over the edge of the grave; dig, press foot upon the spade, lever some earth and hoist it over the edge of the grave. Dig.

  Isn’t it a bit cold for gardening?

  Pausing with the heavy spade in midair, Lee looked up. He didn’t need to because he recognised the voice. He licked his lips and swallowed. Josef.

  Yes.

  What are you doing here?

  Dumb question.

  Josef was standing near the back corner of the house, beside a glassenclosed room probably designed as a sunroom for warmer months. Within, Lee could make out the silent, motionless tribe of long-dead ferns. Josef tapped the barrel of a pistol impatiently against his thigh, like he’d been waiting there for ages. Maybe he had been. Maybe he’d been standing there forever, waiting for the right moment to finally kill him.

  A wintry current ran through Lee. He nodded and opened his mouth to say something, but had no idea what it could be. He thought of Simon, tried to remember if he had said anything. What the fuck are you doing? It was the moment, presumably, when he should make a—what? A plea for his life? Such a strange, half-formed noise. Plea, plea, plea. Plea. Plea. A meagre grunt. Words lose meaning when repeated, are reduced to lines and scratches. Plead for his life. When he should say something. Instead he sighed, held his breath and closed his eyes.

  Lee waited for the shot, alone in his immense, private darkness. He waited for the sound and the sensation, for whatever would happen after that. He imagined tumbling end over end for a thousand years, as if through space. He felt his heart quivering against his ribcage and was surprised it seemed to make no sound. One blistered hand gripped the smooth wooden spade handle while his other arm instinctively crossed his chest. Otherwise, he made no movement to protect himself. Inexplicably, he recalled the warm smells of fresh laundry and toast, the sound of a springtime wind. He recalled hanging like a monkey from the bough of a tree and he remembered the scratch of his father’s unshaven kiss upon his cheek. Just small things.

  He clenched his teeth and pursed his mouth. At last, he thought. His neck shrank into the curling wings of his shoulders. The earth at least would be warm. At long last. But there was no sound. In fact, the silence became larger and more austere; a cathedral, a city, a kingdom. After a while, Lee opened his eyes again. He looked up and saw that nothing had changed and wondered if, in fact, he had merely blinked. The cold sang right through him. His teeth and gums felt like thick wadding. With difficulty, he swallowed. Was this relief or despair? He exhaled a pale cloud of his breath.

  He and Josef observed each other for a long minute. Josef inspected Lee closely, probably trying to determine whether or not he was armed. Even with the gun, Josef looked different, more frail perhaps than the last time they had met at Lee’s apartment. He was hunched against the cold. His trousers were ripped partway down, revealing a bony knee. It began to snow once more. Flakes drifted into the garden, making white again the area where Lee had been digging, which had become grey and sludgy.

  Josef smiled his thin smile. Got to say, cold weather doesn’t really agree with me, but I like this snow. It’s . . . pretty. He approached, looked into the grave and then at the shape of Wild beneath the blanket. Oh, I see. Planting a person. I tried that once. What do you think will sprout?

  Lee said nothing. He slowly straightened. Snowflakes caught in his hair. His body ached and was sluggish with exhaustion.

  Not quite a gardener, Josef went on. More like a . . . sexton, I think it’s called. A sexton. Again he peered into the grave. He sniggered and sucked at his gold tooth. Not burying any money, are you? It won’t grow like that, you know. Doesn’t, you know, grow on trees.

  There’s no money. You’ve wasted your time.

  Josef pulled up the collar of his coat and hugged himself, evidently pleased with his own uncharacteristic wit. He indicated the house with his gun. Let’s go inside, alright.

  Lee hesitated. He pointed at Wild. What about him? I’ve got to . . . I’ve got to . . . Give me a hand, will you?

  Josef’s surprised gaze flickered between Lee and the shape under the blanket. He blinked and licked his lips before kicking back the blanket to reveal Wild’s pallid face with its dark-blue mouth agape. This your doctor friend?

  Lee averted his gaze. Wild. Yes.

  You kill him?

  No. Course not.

  Yeah. Course not. What happened to him?

  Killed himself, I think. Drugs. Overdose. Last night.

  Josef nodded and looked almost pityingly down at Wild. Well, he’s not going anywhere for now. Go inside, alright. We need to chat. Leave the spade.

  I’m not armed, you know.

  Where’s the gun I gave you?

  Threw it away.

  Josef nodded. Get up here, slowly.

  Lee allowed the spade to fall from his grasp, then hauled himself from the shallow grave on wet and muddy knees and allowed himself to be frisked. They went into the house.

  32

  Trembling with cold, Josef directed the dishevelled Lee to sit at the kitchen table and stood nearby with his gun trained on him. He clutched the collar of his jacket to his throat, but it was fruitless; this was not the kind of cold to be put off so easily. Thankfully, a fire burned in the stove. He stood next to it and shook snowflakes from his hair. They fell about his shoes and dissolved into dirty puddles. What a dump. After all this, to come out to a mouldy, old dump like this. For a few grand. Now that he had finally found Lee, Josef was unsure what to do, or couldn’t be bothered doing what he was supposed to. Lee slumped with his blistered hands resting upon the wooden table like a pathetic schoolboy. The kid looked almost dead, like he was just going to let happen whatever was going to happen. His clothes were bloody and his hands were muddy. He stank like a butcher shop.

  Had a good chat to your sister the other day, Josef said after a few minutes.

  That got the punk’s attention.

  Lee looked up through his little black eyes. There were smears of blood and dirt over his face. My sister?

  Yeah. On the phone. I was surprised to talk to someone who was supposed to be dead. She was surprised at the news, too. Seemed . . . put out, I guess you could say. Put out at the news. Sounded pretty hale and hearty to me, for now at least—

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  Josef paused. You had all this planned, didn’t you? Ditch us and make a run for it? Is that what you thought you’d do? Go and live your other life, the honest version?

  Lee shrugged and inspected his right shoe where there was a hole in the leather sole the size and shape of a fifty-cent coin. The stitching on one side of the shoe was also coming away. It made Josef aware of his own cold feet. The kitchen had the old-dog smell of drying clothes. It was growing dark. It seemed to him that the dark was always closing in. The days lately were like heartbeats or breaths, they passed almost without registering. Another symptom of age.

  For what? Josef added. Eight gra
nd?

  Lee let his foot go and stared at some point on the floor.

  Might be worth it for a bit more, but eight grand? I had high hopes for you. Put my neck on the line for you, you know. Brought you in and talked you up. Marcel had to be convinced, Lee. It’s not a game, you know. You can’t—

  Maybe you’re losing your touch.

  Despite himself, Josef started. Maybe he should just shoot the little bastard right now? Get it over and done with. If Lee still had it, the money must be here somewhere in the house. He sighed and scratched his tattoo. I been around a long time. I’m a pretty good judge of horseflesh.

  Maybe not this time.

  We chose you. I chose you.

  You got it wrong, old man. And Lee finally looked up at him. His lips were blue and his eyes were damp and red. I’m not like you.

  Josef smiled. What we heard. What we heard was you set a man on fire when you were in prison. Lee opened his mouth to speak, but Josef shook his head and kept talking. You set your fucking friend on fire, Lee. That’s no insignificant thing. You can’t pretend that didn’t happen. You blew it. Anyway, you got nowhere else to go now. Your sister won’t have you back if you tell her what happened. Nobody will have you. Except us.

  They were going to fucking kill me. I had to do something. He wasn’t my friend, anyway.

  Josef grunted and took out his tobacco. Careful to stand back slightly in case Lee should try anything, he jammed his gun under one arm and began to roll a cigarette. With his now clumsy, numb fingers, it took some time. The thin paper was uncooperative and the nub of tobacco lolled about in the groove. This cold was incredible, prehistoric. The ride on the old man’s cart had taken him an hour or so over rutted roads. His bony arse was sore and when he licked the gum of the cigarette paper, he could smell the sour leather of the reins on his hands. He felt miles from anywhere, marooned in a stranger’s dream. He looked around. Whatever happened, he would have to stay in this dump tonight.