Jessica

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘There’s a tin tub beside the windlass out the back, go and draw up some water from the well and fill it and take all your clothes off, Billy.’ Jessica speaks slowly as if instructing a child. Then she goes over to a shelf and takes a bar of lye soap and hands it to him. ‘Get in the tub and wash all over with lots of soap.’ Jessica makes a soaping motion in the air above her head. ‘And mind you wash your hair. Can you do that for me, Billy?’

  Billy nods and grins, holding the bar of soap in his hand. ‘Lotsa soap, hair!’ he says happily, making a scrubbing motion above his own head.

  ‘And everywhere else.’ Jessica makes more circular motions, this time over her body, ‘Lots of soap, everywhere. And wash your belt and boots when you’re finished.’ She tries to smile at him. ‘You come back a good clean boy and Jessie will let you have soup and bread, eggs and bacon, all you can stuff into yourself,’ she promises him.

  Jessica is amazed at the increasing calm she feels. ‘Leave your clothes at the well, Billy, I’ll bring you some others. Call out when you’ve finished washing yourself. There’s a scrubbing brush in the tub, use it real hard, you hear me now, Billy?’ She sees his face has darkened again — he looks panicky. ‘What’s the matter now, Billy?’ she asks.

  Billy clasps his hands over the top of his head, sniffling. ‘Billy want hat, Jessie. Please!’

  Jessica looks at him, his big hands covering his head.

  It’s as if he’s only just realised he hasn’t got his hat on. ‘You take a bath and wash your hair good, like I said, and I’ll bring you a hat. Orright?’

  Billy nods, happy again. ‘Righto, Jessie.’ He leaves carrying the bar of soap in both hands as though it’s some precious object. Jessica watches him shambling towards the windlass and sees that he is limping, dragging his right foot along the ground. She remembers the billy and milking pail she’s left near where the dead dogs lie. She should fetch them back but right now she doesn’t have the courage to go back there.

  Jessica feels herself go cold. She has been so calm until now — in shock — that she hasn’t thought that Billy might run away. If he does, she thinks, there isn’t much she could do except ride around to a few of the surrounding stations and farms and get what men she could find who aren’t too Sunday-drunk to saddle up and ride out to track him down.

  But she feels sick at the thought of what these men might do if they came upon Billy alone in the bush. If a bunch of drunken larrikins should find him in some lonely gully they wouldn’t stop to ask any questions, they’d string Billy Simple up to the nearest branch or shoot him and leave him for the dingoes and the crows. Jessica quickly crosses the kitchen and walks into the tiny dark parlour where Joe keeps the small .22 lever action repeater. She takes the Winchester from the wall above the mantelpiece and goes over to the dresser and takes a packet of rim-fire cartridges from a shelf. Then she feeds eight copper-cased bullets, one by one, into the magazine. The feel of the metal bullets in her hand gives her a little more confidence, though she knows a .22 won’t stop Billy if he comes for her unless it’s a heart or brain shot. She pulls down the triggering arm and pushes the safety catch on. Jessica returns to the kitchen and puts the rifle into the wood box, covering it with several split logs.

  The rifle now hidden, but easy to retrieve if need be, she runs to her bedroom and pours fresh water into the washbasin. Kicking her boots off, Jessica tears the clothes from her back and, standing naked at the basin, scrubs herself furiously. She rubs the sticky blood from her arm and scrubs between her legs and the inside of her thighs where she’s wet herself, then, rinsing the washcloth in the basin, she pulls a bucket from under the washstand and stuffs her discarded clothes into it, emptying the basin of soapy water over them. Jessica refills the basin from the jug and rinses the soap from her body. She washes her hair then dumps the soapy water again into the bucket and uses fresh water to rinse her hair. She reaches for a small, rough towel which hangs from the end of the washstand.

  All this is done at a frantic pace, Jessica’s heart pounding all the while, fearful that Billy Simple might return and discover her naked. By the time she’s changed into fresh clothes and tied a new pinny about her waist, she is panting from the effort and the anxiety.

  She moves to the back of the house, to Joe’s sleep-out.

  She finds an old flannel shirt and a pair of work-stained moleskins, worn and patched but clean. She takes up Joe’s working hat, which has a hole in the crown. He’s gunna be real cranky about losing it, Jessica decides, for she knows it’s a toss-up whether a man likes a good worn pair of riding boots or his old, sweat-crusted hat best. She can’t remember a time when Joe didn’t have this battered and broken old headgear.

  Jessica tucks the clothing and hat under her arm and is about to go to Joe’s medicine box when she notices a half-used packet of shag tobacco and cigarette papers on the apple box Joe uses for a bedside table. She drops the makings into her apron pocket together with a box of lucifers.

  Now, from the small personal medicine box Joe keeps under his bed, she takes out a jar of his famous horse ointment. With Joe’s clothes and the yellow sulphur ointment, Jessica returns to the kitchen, placing the stuff on Hester’s working stool beside the table.

  Since the killing of the dogs, Jessica hasn’t thought about Ada, Winifred and Gwen, the three dead Thomas women. She’s deliberately shunted them to the back of her mind, knowing that if she starts to brood, to stop and think what Billy has done, the horror of what has happened at Riverview will sap her will and she won’t have the strength to continue. Jack, where are you? she thinks, worrying about her friend and what’s going to happen when he gets home.

  But Billy, for the moment, must be her only concern, all she can cope with.

  Jessica still can’t get the dogs out of her mind, though. The terror she felt when Billy killed them so quickly and without a thought keeps returning. The sight of the two kelpies arcing in the air, the dull thud and cloud of black dust as Billy discarded the first, as though it were a bag of oats or a: slaughtered rabbit.

  Joe says death is a part of living in the country and sometimes comes when you least expect it. She loved Red, who was a strong-eyed dog who ran wide. He was a dog, Joe said, that could only ever serve one master and he’d chosen a mistress who was bloody spoiling him rotten. ‘Shows what a smart bugger he is,’ Joe would sometimes joke when he was in a good mood and the dogs had worked well.

  While the other two kelpies were Joe’s dogs, both were loose-eyed and not in Red’s class. Red was hers only and always a champ. When he nuzzled his wet nose into the palm of her hand she knew it was to tell her he loved her. She knows she’ll grieve bitterly for him later. She thinks of his torn and broken body lying in the sun near the pepper tree and her eyes fill with tears. She’ll bury him in some special place — it’s all she can do for him now.

  Joe will be angry at the loss of the dogs. They were animals that grafted for their living and he depended on them to work the cattle and sheep. It will be a long, hard winter without the three of them in the paddocks.

  They’ll have to buy pups from a good pedigree litter and then go through the long hours, the weeks and months of training it takes to make a good sheep and cattle-dog. Joe doesn’t have that much patience any more and she doubts he’s up to the training it takes.

  Jessica knows she isn’t as good as him with dogs and that they’ll never get another like Red. And it all takes time and money, Jessica sighs, money Joe doesn’t have. Jessica tries to think what Joe would do in her place. He’s killed a man before, and she wonders would he do the same to Billy Simple? Take the Winchester and go out and put a bullet through Billy’s head while he’s sitting in the tub happily soaping and scrubbing himself? Is that what she should do? Quick, simple, no questions asked. Bang! You’re dead, Billy. All the blood tidily caught in the tub water. God rest your immortal soul, Billy Simple. You ain’t gurina be missed by no one �
��cept Jack and me. Jessica has a sudden alarming thought. If she shoots Billy then Meg would be certain to get Jack Thomas. It’d be damn near impossible for him not to marry into the family who avenged the death of his mother and sisters. Jessica realises Jack will spend the rest of his life carrying the guilt for what Billy has done. She knows him well enough to think he’ll blame himself for Billy’s actions. First the accident with the horse, then he brought the poor simpleton to work at Riverview. But he couldn’t save Billy from human cruelty, and now he’ll think it’s his fault that his mother and sisters are dead.

  None of this, Jessica thinks, is a good enough reason for Jack to have to marry Meg, even though she knows, if she shoots Billy, Jack will see it as his duty. It would be something salvaged from the tragedy. The whole district would applaud such an ending, the triumph of good over evil. Pretty Meg and handsome, decent Jack united in holy matrimony.

  She knows it’s crazy, but Jessica thinks suddenly that if she brought Meg and Jack together by killing Billy, then Hester would have to be grateful to her.

  All she’d be doing, she tells herself, is what is already going to happen. Billy’s going to die at the end of a rope. Why shouldn’t she kill him now? It would be doing him a favour. It would also bring Meg and Jack together, but this time brought about by her own doing and not the grand plans and schemes of Hester and Meg. One simple little bullet in the back of his head and Hester will forgive her for everything.

  For a brief moment Jessica sees herself as a true-blue heroine, applauded by everyone, for once the centre of attention. She can hear the things people would say. ‘Yeah, the plain one, she done it, Joe’s young ‘un. Showed a lot o’ guts if you ask me! Make someone a grand little missus that one would, not afraid to work neither.’

  All she has to do is kill Billy Simple. Put a bullet in the soft spot where his spine connects with his skull.

  In her mind Jessica rehearses the scene a second time. Billy will be sitting in the tin bathtub next to the windlass, scrubbing away, thinking himself a very good boy, trying his best to please her. She will move up quietly, the creaking of the windlass will cover her until she’s about twenty feet away. She’ll fire the bullet through the back of his head. If he turns and comes for her she’ll still have time with the Winchester to put a second shot right between his eyes.

  Jessica tells herself again that Billy is going to die anyway, strung up at the end of the hangman’s rope. His poor, miserable, unhappy life is as good as over. Her shooting him would spare Billy the cruel treatment that must surely follow his arrest, or the terrible death he would suffer should the lynch mob catch up with him. Jessica goes to the soup pot and stirs it, then she tastes a small chunk of turnip from the tip of the wooden spoon. It’s not fully cooked but it’s soft enough for Billy not to know the difference, and the soup will do him good.

  She takes a skillet pan from the hook above the stove and drops a generous dob of dripping into it. She puts the skillet on the back plate of the stove to heat up slowly. Then Jessica takes down the leg of bacon hanging in its muslin bag and places it on the butcher’s block where she slices an inch-thick slab from the side. She cuts it up into tiny squares so Billy can manage it with no teeth, and soon it’s bubbling and sizzling in the pan. It is more than she could eat in a month of Sundays, but she’s seen Joe tuck in after a day’s shearing, and she supposes Billy will be the same. God knows when he last ate. Then she takes six eggs and puts them into a bowl beside the stove and places a tin spoon and a bowl for the soup on the table, the familiar movements calming her. The bread is still hot to the touch, so using a cloth she lifts a loaf and places it on the window ledge to cool, covering it with cheesecloth to keep the flies away.

  If she did shoot Billy, Jessica thinks, she could always claim she was protecting herself and no one would disagree. A young girl alone on a deserted farm with a madman who has killed three women on the loose. What’s more, when she tells the story of how Billy killed the dogs, most people would feel she’d had every right to shoot him. A good working dog is worth its weight in gold and people have said Red was good enough to compete at the Sydney Easter Show. He’d won at the Narrandera Show three times and once at Wagga Wagga. Everyone knows Joe Bergman has three dogs second to none in the district and Red the best of them all.

  Jessica hears a yell from the yard, ‘Jessie, Jessie, Billy clean boy!’ and she puts all these thoughts to the back of her mind for now. She takes Joe’s moleskins and hat, leaving the faded flannel shirt on the stool together with the ointment, then she grabs a small towel from behind the stove and walks out into the yard and towards the windlass.

  ‘Billy, I’m coming!’ she calls. ‘Now you sit still, ya hear? In the tub. And turn yer back to me. Tell me when you’re ready!’

  ‘Jessie come,’ Billy calls out almost immediately, ‘Billy clean boy!’

  Jessica approaches the windlass and sees Billy sitting in the tub, his broad, strongly muscled back facing her. She walks up and places Joe’s moleskins and hat down on a log beside the tub.

  ‘There’s a pair of moles here, Billy, and a towel and I’ve brought you a hat. Shirt’s in the kitchen — I want to dress them cuts and scrapes before you put it on. You come back when you’re done, tucker’s near ready.’ ‘Hat! Hat!’ Billy shouts excitedly. Then suddenly he stands up in the tub and turns to face Jessica. ‘Hat, gimme hat!’ he pleads, his arms stretched out urgently towards her. Billy’s torso and arms are covered in cuts and dark bruises but Jessica’s eyes are drawn to his thighs the moment before she shuts them tight. She cannot believe what she’s seen hanging between his massive legs. ‘Turn around, Billy! Sit in the tub!’ Jessica says in a low voice, her eyes still closed.

  ‘Hat, Jessie! Gimme hat!’ Billy whimpers.

  Jessica’s heart is thumping, filling her throat. She turns about so that she has her back to Billy. ‘Orright, orright, Billy!’ she cries over her shoulder.

  ‘Hat! Hat!’ Billy is now sobbing and panting wildly. Jessica grabs Joe’s hat and turns again to face Billy, whose extreme agitation has caused him to have an erection, though he’s oblivious of this, his arms stretched out to take the hat, his lips trembling. Jack’s right, Jessica thinks, it is a monster. She shuts her eyes again and edges towards the tub, extending Joe’s hat to Billy Simple.

  Billy snatches the hat from her hand, grunting and snuffling like a pig, then Jessica hears the splash as he subsides into the water. There is a moment’s silence as Billy pulls the hat over his head and then, like a little boy addressing his mother, he says, ‘Thank you, Jessie. Billy happy now. Look, look, washed good!’

  Jessica opens her eyes and tries to keep her voice steady. ‘Have you washed your hair, Billy?’ she says. She turns her back on him and begins to walk away.

  ‘Billy wash his hair, lots a soap!’ Billy calls out after her.

  ‘Good boy. Now hurry and dry yerself and get dressed, there’s plenty of good tucker in the kitchen.’

  Billy arrives in the kitchen shortly afterwards, Joe’s hat clamped down over his eyes. The dark ends of his hair poking out from underneath the hat are still dripping water from the tub and it runs down his neck and shoulders onto his naked wet torso.

  He’s done a pretty fair job of washing himself and the bites from the dogs seem to have largely stopped bleeding. He’s also washed his boots and belt and there’s a puddle where he stands in the wet boots. ‘Billy hungry, Jessie!’ he pleads.

  ‘Sit, then,’ Jessica says, pointing to the table with the soup ladle. She feels like she is in command once again. With Billy seated on Meg’s stool Jessica takes Joe’s large enamel soup bowl over to the stove and ladles soup into it, then she returns and places the steaming broth down in front of Billy.

  ‘Careful now, it’s hot. Use the spoon, blow on it, or it’ll burn your tongue.’

  Jessica goes to the window, fetches the loaf of fresh bread and breaks it in half. Steam
rises from the freshly broken ends. Billy grabs one half and tears at it, wide-eyed with excitement, and he stuffs the warm bread into his mouth, grunting happily, his cheeks blown out so that he can barely chew. ‘There’s plenty of food, Billy. Take your time, no need to make yourself sick!’ Now she breaks six eggs into the bacon fat sizzling in the skillet. ‘New bread eaten too fast will give you a gut ache, indeejestin!’

  Billy eats everything Jessica lays in front of him, polishing off the remains of the egg and bacon fat on his plate with the last of the loaf of bread. When she puts a mug of sweet black tea in front of him, Billy beams up at her, licking his chops.

  ‘We’re gunna clean and dress those cuts now, Billy. Drink your tea and be a brave boy while I fix you up.’ Jessica brings a bowl of warm water over and drops a pinch of Condy’s crystals into it, turning the water a deep purple. Then she fetches a bottle of iodine and a pile of old rags from Hester’s cupboard.

  She sponges the numerous cuts and dog bites on Billy’s arms and chest with the warm solution and washes the deep gash in his stomach. Then she makes a swab from a piece of rag, soaks it in iodine from the bottle and dabs it over his wounds. She’s felt the sting of iodine often enough herself to know how it must be hurting Billy. But he only winces momentarily as the liquid burns white hot. Jessica waits until the iodine has dried over his cuts and then she applies Joe’s horse ointment and ties a bandage wherever she can. Billy has a deep, ugly tear in the muscle of his right leg where the kelpie ripped into him. Jessica makes him take off his boot and put his foot on her lap while she rolls up the leg of Joe’s moleskins and cleans and dresses the torn flesh before bandaging it. When she’s through he looks like a giant scarecrow with bits of coloured rag wrapped all about him.