Happy as Larry

by Scot Gardner

  Clinton hit the paling fence on the driveway with a crack. It winded him and he limped into the stranger’s back yard.

  When Larry arrived, Clinton was nowhere to be seen. There was a party going on. Some twenty people – adults and children – stood and sat around on plastic chairs. Larry scanned the faces quickly and left, the chase still sparking in his veins. On the street, he paced to the next house and sat like a loaded trap behind the cover of their fence. A minute passed, then five. Larry caught his breath but the fight was still chanting inside and he had to move.

  He settled back under the bush in the piss-rank corner of the park and waited. The sun went down and the birdsong around him became sleepy, but nothing could slow the working of his mind. It was a game, he thought. It was hide and seek but the stakes were much higher. It was a war where the hunted and the hunter were defined by who held the element of surprise.

  It was the punch-a-thon he’d dreamed of as a boy.

  Larry understood how wars were born. Somewhere, it was one man against one man, pushing and shoving about land or beliefs. The men gather friends, the reasons get lost, and the key to every man’s happiness is the death of the other man.

  Larry heard rumbling wheels approaching on the dark footpath. A figure appeared under the streetlight at the far end of the park.

  It was his mother, heavy-limbed and lugging her suitcase as though she’d walked for hours.

  Larry broke his cover and jogged towards her. ‘Mum?’

  She squinted into the shadows. ‘Larry?’

  There was something different about her face. She looked tired but there was a looseness about her lips that made her seem younger.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ she asked.

  Larry lifted a shoulder. ‘Waiting.’ Suddenly his war seemed petty and stupid, a child’s sport in clumsy big boots. ‘You’re back?’

  She stared for a moment, and then nodded briskly.

  He took her suitcase and they headed for home.

  A car roared past and skidded to a stop in front of their house.

  Larry and his mother ran. The porch light flicked on as they entered the driveway.

  Mary Holland was on their doorstep, her husband on the path at the base of the stairs.

  ‘No,’ Mal was saying. ‘I haven’t seen Jemma. Haven’t seen Larry either.’

  Just then, Larry and his mother appeared from the dark.

  ‘Where’s Jemma?’ Christopher demanded of Larry.

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen her for weeks. Months.’

  ‘But you called her this morning,’ Mary whimpered.

  ‘I didn’t call.’

  ‘Sent her a message, then,’ Christopher said.

  Larry threw up his hands. ‘I don’t have a phone to send messages.’

  ‘Well, someone sent her a message,’ Mary said. She crossed her arms. ‘She told me she was coming here. She rode her bike.’

  Larry’s head rang. From his vantage point of experience, he guessed how this scene ended.

  ‘The weir. He’d take her to the weir.’

  ‘Who?’ Mal asked.

  ‘How do we get there?’ Christopher said.

  ‘You can’t drive down there,’ Larry said. ‘We’ll have to ride.’

  ‘You show us the way,’ Christopher said. ‘I’ll decide if we can drive there or not.’

  Larry looked to his parents. The air between them seemed so fragile, as though the broken film had been repaired with old tape.

  Mal’s eyes weren’t questioning or accusing. He nodded. He didn’t fully understand what was going on but he knew he’d trust his son.

  Denise took Larry’s hand – it felt like years since they’d touched. She squeezed but couldn’t utter a word. Didn’t need to.

  Larry squeezed back and followed the Hollands to their car.

  JUNK

  MAL AND DENISE stood silent under the porch light for a long time after the Hollands left with their son.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mal whispered.

  Denise nodded, bit her lip.

  A king tide of emotion frayed his words. ‘You and Larry are the only things that make sense. Everything else is just junk and distraction. I . . .’

  Tears pulled him under, and for a moment he was drowning. He straightened and smoothed the front of his shirt.

  Denise hugged him.

  Mal held on tight and knew his wife was home. Their embrace was timeless and familiar, but also the newest, most shameless bliss.

  They kissed once and hard, sharing breath and the sweetest victory against the world.

  ‘I love you,’ Mal said, strong again.

  ‘I love you, too. I’m sorry it ever came . . .’

  He held fingers over her mouth. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Tell me later.’

  He broke from her hold and sprang down the steps and around the side of the house.

  ‘Mal?’

  Denise followed, took the helmet he handed to her.

  The motorbike started first kick.

  ‘Jump on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go get our son.’

  STEAM

  TRAIN

  LARRY SAT BESIDE April in the back seat and directed Christopher over the railway to the bollards that stopped cars from driving onto the Cradle River track. Christopher pressed the Toyota’s bumper against the middle post and pushed it flat without revving the engine.

  The track was overgrown. Raking branches squealed against the windows. Twigs snapped under the wheels and the cabin rocked.

  The single red eye of a reflector stared from the undergrowth as they drove into the clearing. The headlights revealed Jemma’s rusty bike and Mary stepped from the cabin before the car had stopped. She lit up the undergrowth with a bright torch.

  ‘Jemma?’ she bawled.

  The faint hiss of the overflow was her only reply.

  Christopher had a spotlight that would have been blinding at fifty paces. He scanned the ferns and made the surrounding dark seem even darker.

  ‘Whose bike is this?’ Christopher asked.

  Larry knew the black frame at a glance. ‘It’s my dad’s old bike.’

  Christopher turned the beam on the boy.

  Larry raised his arm but the light continued to glare. ‘I don’t know how it got here. I didn’t ride it.’

  ‘Jemma!’ Christopher hollered, making Larry jump.

  The spotlight scanned the greenery again and they moved towards the river.

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ Mary whimpered. Her torch shone on Jemma’s shoes. They sparkled like a window display.

  Shoes off could only mean one thing. Larry cannoned into the river, panic insulating him against the dark and the cold. How could he have known about the echidna cave? Jemma’s father followed, sweeping his spotlight across the water’s surface.

  ‘Stay here,’ he barked at his family. ‘Keep looking. Check downstream.’

  The river washed waist-deep on Larry and he held his arms high. He scrambled up the shadowy bank with Christopher on his heels.

  ‘Over there,’ Larry said, pointing. ‘There’s a tunnel.’

  Larry led on, his head ringing and Jemma’s father breathing raggedly over his shoulder.

  At the mouth of the cave, Larry held a branch aside. ‘In here.’

  Christopher shone the spotlight in his face. Larry closed his eyes but could feel the heat of it on his cheeks.

  ‘You go first,’ the big man growled. ‘I don’t trust you as far as I could kick you.’

  There was no protest left in Larry. Christopher believed what he believed. Larry had to wear his innocence like a skin. The bright light cut detail into the echidna cave that Larry had never seen, the walls stippled with ancient tool marks, tiny cobwebs rainbowed in the glare.

  The tunnel was empty, save for a scrap of flowery fabric and a single spot of blood, dark and perfectly circular atop an unusually smooth rock.

  Christopher snatched up the fabric and shook it, dropping it and recoiling as he realised
what he’d found.

  His daughter’s underwear, damp and torn.

  A distant scream found its way into the cave and Christopher made a noise like a wounded bear that bounced off the walls as a pure dirge of pain and grief. He staggered over the rocks and back into the night. Larry jogged and tripped to keep up.

  It was April screaming. She didn’t stop. When she exhausted her air, she snatched a breath and screamed again, the terror in her voice so complete that it ripped through to Larry’s core, making his skin gooseflesh and his lungs refuse to fill.

  Christopher hit the river and went under. His spotlight made the water glow eerie for a second, then it flashed and went out. With a roar, he tossed it at the opposite bank. Larry heard it crack on the pebbles.

  The only light now came from Mary’s torch, twenty-five metres downstream. It was a dull but steady glow and Larry could see the body trapped in its beam. Jemma lay cast on the bank like a toadfi sh, her dress folded dark against pale skin. Mary was on her knees in the shadows, holding her daughter’s head, rocking with despair.

  Larry didn’t need to see anything else. His sense of purpose pushed him across the river and back onto the track. A headlight approached, and he stepped into the undergrowth to avoid being seen. He knew the bike. He knew the man steering, and there was enough light for him to see that the person on the back was his mother. They’d help the Hollands the way he couldn’t. They’d work their way through it.

  Larry’s single thought burned, drove him on. When he ran, it was a measured jog with the cadence and momentum of a steam train.

  BOUND

  LARRY PITCHED A rough stub of a brick through Clinton’s bedroom window, the smash and clatter satisfyingly sharp in the night. He held his breath and listened for movement.

  Running on floorboards. Back-door slam. The crack and hollow scrape of a body going over the back fence. Larry was there in a breath, chasing the rat like a bold dog, reading his twists and turns and knowing that this time he’d have no place to hide. He might find another party, but Larry would hunt him there and tear his throat out for the crowd. He might seek refuge in the police station, but it would be all over before the law could take hold.

  Larry toyed with Clinton. He ran hard and came within striking distance, then smiled as the panic took hold of his foe and spurred him to a new and desperate speed.

  They’d almost left Villea when the time was finally right. They’d climbed a grassy verge beside the highway. There were no streetlights, but cars hurtling past splashed them with light.

  A metre from the edge of the road, Larry dropped Clinton in the grass and they rolled back down the slope, locked together, seething, panting, flailing. They hit the drain at the bottom of the incline and the air punched out of Clinton. Larry was on top, pinning Clinton’s right arm with his knee. He gripped a tuft of the scarred boy’s oily hair and Clinton’s free hand fought to release it. The harder he scratched and tore, the more Larry pulled, until Clinton got the message and lay still. He puffed and sweated, saliva gummed at the sides of his mouth.

  Larry saw his contorted face in the milky light from a car passing above them. Face puckered by scars and wrinkled with pain, Clinton no longer looked human – a phantasmic gargoyle with wet lips and shining eyes.

  Larry found his knife with his free hand, opened the blade with his teeth and felt the keenness of the point against the meat of his thumb. Clinton twitched and grunted beneath him. Larry hesitated. How does a warrior kill a beast such as this? Loose his head? Open him up to the night? A single, piercing blow to the heart?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Clinton wheezed. The words climbed from his mouth and wrestled with the noise of the traffi c. Lights ghosted by. Larry stared at his face and thought he saw a flicker of remorse. Clinton became human again – a human trapped in his own version of hell, doing what he needed to do to survive.

  Human nonetheless. And as another human being, Larry saw what he was about to do in a new light. It was murder. Knowingly kill someone, and your soul was bound to theirs. An inerasable link that would set the dead free and torture the living forever.

  The knowledge exploded in Larry like a firework – Clinton would be free and Larry would be tormented for the rest of his life. The Bible was flawed; an eye for an eye was not the answer. He’d almost believed it; almost traded Clinton’s worldview for his own. It wasn’t controlling another person’s destiny that gave you power, it was having control of your own. Larry had tamed the beast and it hadn’t happened by accident – it was a daily struggle with a brute as ambiguous as smoke.

  Larry folded his knife away slowly, deliberately. It was a powerful act and it spread through his nerves until every one of them zinged so loud it tickled.

  Laughter began deep in his belly. It built until he shook with it. He was still laughing when he left Clinton lying in the grass and started the walk home. He knew that no matter what battles went on around him in the hard world, bigger battles – ones that truly shaped his life – were going on inside. He’d had the most momentous victory in his life and he hadn’t even—

  A blade rammed into his back. He toppled like a flagpole and bounced once, coming to rest face-down among the night-damp grass.

  Larry’s body squirmed like a stomped nestling, the pain opening and closing his mouth and fists. His right leg pushed uselessly at the earth. He couldn’t breathe.

  It was Clinton’s turn to laugh.

  ROADKILL

  AT THE WEIR, Denise was still holding Mary when the police arrived. Mal had made the call. He knew they’d book him for riding his bike without a licence but he didn’t care. This was so much bigger than law. Mal had never felt so callow and human.

  He helped Christopher carry the slack body of his daughter to the track. They laid her on a dirty blanket from the Toyota. Mal could barely drag his eyes from the macabre fingerprints of bruise on her milky thighs and the bludgeoned asymmetry of her face. This was violent death. Jemma had been stolen.

  Denise appeared at his elbow. ‘Where’s Larry?’ she whispered.

  Mal almost shouted his name.

  ‘That’s a bloody good question,’ Mary Holland hissed. ‘Where the hell is Larry?’

  Her acid words were diluted by torchlight. The beam was pointed respectfully low but it lit the faces gathered around the body. ‘I’m Senior Constable David Tomlinson. What’s happened here?’

  Christopher and Mary spoke together. They were interrupted by a burst of static from the policeman’s radio and a voice followed.

  ‘Two-seven-nine. Copy?

  ’ Constable Tomlinson adjusted the volume at his hip and excused himself, stepped away two paces and spoke into his microphone. ‘Two-seven-nine. Go ahead.’

  ‘Dave, we’ve just had a call reporting an incident on the highway three Ks east of the Cradle Creek road exit. There’s been a fatality. You in a position to attend?

  ’ Denise grabbed Mal’s sleeve.

  ‘No, Gary, we’ll have our hands full here for a while. Can you go, Rob?’

  Three seconds of gravid silence and then another voice crackled through.

  ‘I’m on it.’

  Mal took his wife’s hand and led her behind the four-wheel drive to the motorbike. They rolled it in the darkness, down the hill away from the atrocity. When they were well clear, Mal kicked it to life. ‘Hurry,’ he said.

  Denise hurried. ‘Do you think it’s Larry? It’s not Larry, is it?’

  Mal couldn’t have answered even if he’d wanted to.

  Denise’s nails clawed at Mal’s waist. They’d stopped some distance from the strobing police car but neither moved for some time. A policeman stood beside a white campervan, talking to its driver.

  ‘Come on,’ Mal said as he removed his helmet. ‘There’s only one way to know.’

  Denise struggled with her helmet and had to jog to catch up with her husband.

  She took his hand. He squeezed.

  They startled the policeman and the driver.

&nbs
p; ‘Ah, sorry. You can’t go down there,’ the policeman said. It was meant to sound authoritative but Denise could sense the cracks in his demeanour. Her free hand was shaking. What would it take to unsettle a cop?

  ‘It’s our son,’ Mal said. ‘We think he might . . .’

  The driver whimpered and covered his mouth, turned away.

  The policeman shifted feet. ‘I wouldn’t recommend . . . It’s just that . . .’

  ‘We need to know,’ Denise said. Her words were resolute in spite of the fear.

  The cop was still for a moment, then he nodded and pointed down the highway. ‘Constable Jefferies will look after you. Down there with the torch.’

  Mal and Denise ran but didn’t let go of each other. As they drew closer to the arc of flashing red lights that marked the scene, their grip tightened. Another police car arrived. And another. And an ambulance, sirens mute.

  Constable Jefferies’ torch beam spilled over a mess of limbs that barely registered as a human form. Without the clothing, it would be another pile of roadkill waiting for the flies.

  It was the clothing that began dousing Mal’s doubts and fuelled his hope. They weren’t Larry’s jeans. Larry didn’t own a belt like that. The body rested on a canvas of its own blood. So much blood. The white line on the roadside glowed pink beneath it.

  Bright light shone in their eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’ Constable Jefferies barked. ‘You can’t be here. This is . . .’

  ‘Our son,’ Mal said. ‘We thought it might be our son.’

  The light swung back to the corpse. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘No,’ Denise said. ‘I know who it is.’

  As soon as she said that, Mal realised. The face was unrecognisable but the hair was mostly intact. Not their son’s hair. The puckered burn scars on the brow were the final clue.

  ‘Clinton Miller,’ Denise said. She tried to hide her relief. ‘Lives near us on Condon Street.’

  If Larry’s nemesis is dead, Mal thought, where does that leave our son?