by Chris Hammer
Ever so slowly, Martin eases the door open. It leads into a kitchen. An empty kitchen. He quickly identifies the source of the thumping: a loose shutter, banging in the wind. He sighs, releasing his pent-up breath, turns back to Scotty, signalling him forward. The boys enter a generously sized room with a table and four chairs beneath a window. The benches are covered with dirty dishes and discarded food packaging.
‘It’s different,’ says Scotty.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It smells.’
He’s right. There’s the smell of rotting food, of spoilt meat, permeating the room. Martin looks at the banging shutter; the sash window is open a couple of inches. There is air flowing into the room, but the smell endures. Water drips into a sink full of unwashed dishes and festering remains. Someone has been here far more recently than the dining-room feasters.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ says Scotty.
‘No, we can’t move Jasper,’ says Martin. ‘Find a container and fill it with water. I’ll look for bandages.’
Scotty moves reluctantly towards the sink. Martin checks a cupboard, retrieves a blue plastic jug, its bottom coated with dust and the powdery remains of moths. ‘Here,’ he says, and tosses the jug to Scotty, deliberately casual. Scotty panics, flails, and only just catches it. Martin smiles. He searches drawers next to the cupboard, full of placemats and kitchen implements. The third drawer down holds what he needs: dishcloths. The top one has a thin layer of dust and mould, accumulated even inside the drawer, but those underneath are clean and neatly folded. He grabs a handful, waits for Scotty to finish scrubbing out the jug and filling it. The boys nod at each other and return quickly the way they came, through the dining room and into the lounge.
Jasper is still in the chair by the French doors. He’s holding his foot up, looking at it with an anguished expression. Relief sweeps his face as he sees his friends. Martin thinks there are tears in Jasper’s eyes but neither he nor Scotty say anything.
‘Here, let me,’ says Scotty, kneeling beside Jasper. ‘We did it in scouts.’
It’s dry in the house and sheltered from the wind, but Martin’s starting to shake with the cold. He walks to the fireplace. A wire fireguard has been cast aside. There are some dry branches, cut or broken, in a pile to one side of the hearth. If he can find some kindling, he can get a fire going. He searches the room, looking for a newspaper or magazine, finding neither. He’s tossing up whether to venture further into the house again when he sees a bookshelf under the windows on the north side of the room. Books. The lower shelf has a set of World Book encyclopaedias and, wedged in beside them, a dozen or so comics. Martin pulls them out: the Phantom. No way is he burning them. He takes them over to where Scotty is cleaning out Jasper’s wound. ‘Here, check it out,’ he says, handing the comics to Jasper, who takes them with a grin.
Back at the bookcase, Martin ponders which encyclopaedia to sacrifice. He selects the slimmest volume: U–V. No one will miss U–V. He returns to the fireplace and, before ripping out any pages, he starts using the book to clear a hollow in the ashes.
‘Holy shit,’ he says, turning to the others. ‘Scotty, come here.’
‘In a minute, I’m almost done. What is it?’
‘The fireplace. It’s still warm.’
Silence falls upon them with an ominous weight. Jasper is staring at him in disbelief; Scotty’s eyes turn upwards, looking at the ceiling, the floor above.
‘Good,’ says Jasper, adopting an approximation of confidence. ‘They can help us.’
Martin thinks of the dining room, the abandoned feast, the foul and fetid kitchen. His guts are telling him there is nothing good about it.
Scotty ties off Jasper’s foot, now a bulging swaddling of tea towels, and walks over, kneels and holds his palm above the ashes, confirming Martin’s discovery. ‘We need to get out of here,’ he whispers. All they can hear is the hostility of the storm, wailing outside.
Martin is about to suggest Scotty stay with Jasper while he runs for help, when the door from the hallway bursts open. There’s a man, grey hair wild and eyes wilder, a sneer revealing yellow and broken teeth, a curse on his lips. And in his hand, upright with its blade forward, an axe.
For a moment, a microsecond that stretches forever, they’re frozen there, a confrontation held motionless by its own enormity, its implicit horror. Scotty is the first to move, springing to his feet, shoving past Martin, heading towards the dining-room door. Martin glances at Jasper, who’s on his feet, moving towards the French doors. ‘Stop!’ bellows the axe man. ‘Stop!’
Martin doesn’t stop, he flees, following Scotty through the dining room and into the kitchen. Scotty is madly twisting the knob on the outside door, but it’s locked. ‘Shit,’ says Martin. He slams the door to the dining room shut, wedging a chair up under the knob like he’s seen in the movies. He jerks the kitchen table over, so its leg is wedged in behind the chair. ‘The window,’ he says. ‘Out the window!’
Scotty looks at the window, comprehending, is about to say something when the axe head comes through the door. In an instant the boys are at the window, yanking it up and open. Scotty dives through and Martin does the same, landing on the rain-sodden ground, water sheeting off the roof on top of him. He looks back through the window, sees the doorknob explode off the door to the dining room, bashed free by the axe.
‘Come on!’ says Scotty. ‘Run!’
‘What about Jasper?’
‘He’s got a fucking axe!’
‘Stop. I won’t hurt you.’ It’s the man, his head thrust through the window just a metre away, but his words are belied by the axe in his hand. Scotty is off, disappearing into the storm. But Martin backs away slowly, lingering. The man is too large, too old. He can’t easily come through the window after them. Martin looks him in the eye, sees the madness there, full of desperation and murderous intent but also something else, something pleading, imploring Martin to understand. ‘Don’t go,’ the man says. ‘I’m not dangerous.’ Martin wants to run, knows he has to run, but realises the longer he stays, the longer he keeps the maniac’s attention, the better chance Jasper has of getting the French doors open and hobbling away. Unless he’s already dead.
‘Who are you?’ Martin shouts. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘No one. Just sheltering. Like you.’ His words struggle to be calm, reassuring, and they almost manage it. Martin hesitates. And then the man’s head disappears. Almost too late, Martin realises: the other door, at the end of the corridor. The front door. He bolts, sprinting into the blinding rain. He finds himself on a driveway, a bush track. Glancing behind him, he sees the man come striding out through the front door. He takes a few paces into the rain. To Martin, he looks like he’s limping. Martin realises he’s safe, that the man can’t possibly catch him. The man turns, still wielding his axe, and retreats inside the house. Martin starts jogging down the driveway and into the rainforest, strangely safe and hospitable despite the pelting rain and gathering gloom, yelling Scotty’s name.
Mandy pulls the car over, bringing it to a stop on the shoulder, hazard lights flashing. This new storm has broken upon them just short of the high school, the rain thundering off the roof, flooding the windscreen, wipers unable to cope, the reduced visibility making it too dangerous to drive. Her eyes are wide with delight and wonder, the rain still a novelty after the years of hinterland drought, not fazed in the slightest by Martin’s childhood escape. ‘Fuck I love this,’ she says.
Martin smiles. He knows this weather: sudden storms with pounding rain lasting a few minutes before sweeping off, while a kilometre or two away they won’t catch a drop. Such a different sort of storm from the front that had assaulted the younger Martin and his friends at Hartigan’s.
‘What happened?’ she asks. ‘Jasper obviously got away.’
‘No, he didn’t, as it turned out. I finally caught up with Scotty. Found him crying by himself. He thought Jasper and I were both dead. By the time we got down the tra
ck onto a bigger road and then out onto Dunes Road, it was dark. We were almost at the bridge back into town when the local copper, Sergeant Mackie, found us. They were out looking for us.’
‘What happened?’
‘We told Mackie about the guy with the axe. He dropped us at the station, picked up a local bloke. They took guns, and headed up to Hartigan’s. They found Jasper in the lounge room where we left him. But with a fire going, foot properly bandaged, eating baked beans and toast. The old man had fixed him up, then left.’
Mandy smiles with relief. ‘That’s a wonderful story. The man was harmless, the house saved you. Good karma.’
Martin is tempted to leave it there, let her hold on to that thought, but his eyes betray him.
‘What? What is it?’
‘The man. He wasn’t harmless. He was a fugitive. Wanted in Victoria for murder and worse.’
Her face grows still as she considers this new portent. ‘And he was living there? In my house?’
Martin knows what he needs to say. ‘It is good karma, Mandy. Of course it is. The house did save us. No one got hurt. And at the same time, it gave up a killer who’d evaded the police for months. Mackie was no dill; he wasn’t fooled by baked beans and a fire. He tracked him down, arrested him. Karma doesn’t get any better than that.’
Mandy looks out at the rain, her expression unsure. ‘I guess,’ she says.
The cloudburst eases then stops abruptly. The sun breaks through, the horizon returns. To their right, cane fields stretch to the escarpment, glowing an almost iridescent green, ripe and harvest ready.
‘Look,’ says Martin. A rainbow has appeared off to their left, low in the sky but well defined against the grey wall of the passing front. Mandy raises her eyebrows, as if conceding the point. She starts the car, concentrates on driving, brow furrowed.
Martin regards the rainbow, at the sun-laden swathe of the cane fields. He doesn’t tell her of the reward, twenty thousand dollars, split between the three boys, of how Scotty got a chemistry set and a tennis racquet, and Jasper got a trail bike and a bank book. And Martin got nothing. And he doesn’t tell Mandy of the police station: Scotty’s parents waiting there, beside themselves with worry, crying with elation at being reunited with their son, canoe forgiven and forgotten, and Denise Speight, glaring daggers at Martin, then praying quietly to herself as Mackie and his deputy set off to discover Jasper’s fate. And he doesn’t tell her how, when Mackie dropped him home close to midnight, his father had woken from a drunken stupor in front of the television. ‘Martin? Thought you were in bed.’
chapter seven
The high school has been carved out of cane fields at the edge of town, on the road to Longton. It consists of rectangular buildings on a rectangular block of land, as if sourced from Ikea and put together with an oversized allen key. Squares of primary colours try and fail to add vibrancy. A fence of black steel bars, modestly spiked, either to keep intruders out or students in, marks the boundary between school and fields. The cane matches the height of the fence and presses against it on three sides, the greenery moving in the wind as if on the march, challenging the inflexibility of the barrier and the permanence of the school. Martin wonders about snakes. The fence wouldn’t keep them out. Are there still snakes lurking among the sugary stalks, or have they been exterminated, suiciding en masse, gorging on cane toads? There’s no shortage of the feral amphibians revelling on the school oval after the rain, leaping about in their own ugly ballet. A few lie flattened into the asphalt of the drive, having pirouetted too far from centre stage. Mandy squashes a couple more as she drives into the school, oblivious to their fate, a local already. When Martin was a kid they hadn’t reached this far south; dogs, cats and snakes had roamed in safety. There was confidence the cooler winters of New South Wales would keep them in check. Now, climate change could see them reach Sydney eventually. Toads in the harbour, carp in the Murray. What next? Crocs in the Brisbane River?
The most impressive thing about the school is its sign—DOUG ANTHONY HIGH SCHOOL it shouts from its mounting on an imposing stone wall, chaperoned by a larger steel sign declaring the school’s construction was funded by the federal government. The benefits of living in a marginal seat. Martin wonders why the school was built: to meet increasing demand or simply as an electoral bribe? Maybe both.
The school is too new for shade; the drive and the fence are lined by saplings no more than a metre tall, black watering tubes extended like the demanding beaks of baby birds. The dated cars of staff and students bake in the car park, distinguished only by their insignia: P-plates and marijuana-leaf silhouettes versus Baby on Board and Broncos stickers. Everyone is inside, attending to the last lessons of the day. Apart from the cavorting toads and the swaying cane, there is no movement. Mandy proceeds through the car park before turning back out through the fence and off the asphalt onto a track surfaced with packed bluestone gravel, a straight line between ranks of cane. A hundred metres and the greenery bows aside, opening at the childcare centre. It’s the original farmhouse, its sheltering trees tall and cool, the building low and settled into the landscape, weatherboard walls freshly painted and a new Colorbond fence ringing the property, snake and toad proof. A golf club rests beside the entry gate, a nine iron, an open invitation to parents and guests.
Mandy parks in the shade of a line of poplars. She cuts the engine, but before she gets out of the car, she takes his hand, speaking softly, bringing him back from his musings, her face serious. ‘You know all about my parents. I was conceived when my father raped my mother. She’s dead, he’s a fugitive. It doesn’t get worse than that.’ She pauses. ‘Look at me.’
Martin realises he’s been looking straight ahead, staring unseeing at the childcare centre. He turns, sees her concern.
She continues. ‘It hurts, Martin. It hurts knowing what happened to my mum, how diminished her life became. But I can’t change it. If there is shame there, it’s not my shame; if there is guilt there, it’s not my guilt. I’m dealing with it. For me. For Liam. For us. You get that? For us.’
Martin nods. He knows what she’s saying, can feel her waiting for his response. If he wants to sustain a relationship with this woman, he needs to let her in, to tell her of his own past. But first he needs to confront it himself. No, not confront it. That’s not the right mindset. That makes it sound like a struggle, something he’s fighting against. He needs to accept it. He draws a deep breath, breaks eye contact, stares back at the childcare centre. ‘My mother and my sisters died when I was eight. A car accident. My father died when I was sixteen.’
He can sense Mandy looking at him, her eyes trying to penetrate his silence, to see what lies beneath. ‘Are they buried here?’
‘I guess so.’
‘You don’t know?’
He turns back to her. ‘Yes. They’re buried here. They must be.’ He swallows; she waits. ‘I’ve never visited their graves.’ Mandy says nothing. ‘It was too raw,’ says Martin.
‘You didn’t go to the funerals?’
‘No.’
‘Is that why you didn’t tell me you were from here? I told you I was coming to live in Port Silver and you glossed over it. It’s still that painful?’
‘Not really. I’d just blocked it out. Like you said, I put it behind me, looked to the future.’
More silence. Mandy nods, as if making up her mind. ‘So you had a shitty childhood. I get it. So did I. But ignoring it is not an option. I know, I tried that. It didn’t work. It will haunt you; it will damage us.’
‘I know,’ he says, chastened. ‘You’re right.’
‘Good. I don’t want bits of you; I want all of you. Don’t blow it.’
He looks at her. Nods.
But she isn’t finished. ‘I can’t tell you how much I was looking forward to you getting here. Moving into the house. Starting life completely afresh. The only thing I want from the past is Liam, nothing else. But if it comes looking for me, I’m ready. I’m going to stare it down. It doesn�
��t own me, not anymore. I’m not going to let it dictate who I am, and you can’t let it dictate who you are.’
‘So, I’m not the past? I don’t belong down there in Riversend?’
She smiles, a smile of wonder and longing. ‘No, Martin. You’re not from the past. You’re the present. And I’m hoping you might be the future.’
She squeezes his hand and gets out of the car, leaves him watching her as she heads into the childcare centre. He marvels at her, at her strength and her resilience. She’s the one police are investigating for murder; she’s the one who witnessed Jasper Speight’s horrific death just the day before. He’s the one who should be supporting her, not the other way around. He needs to lift his game. He may no longer be the bullet-proof foreign correspondent of yesteryear, but that doesn’t mean he has to be pathetic.
Martin arrives home, back from somewhere forgotten, from hanging with Jasper and Scotty, or from walking by himself, or from reading by the river. From somewhere not home. How old is he? Eleven, maybe twelve. Still a boy. It’s a warm night but starting to rain; it’s time to be indoors and out of the elements. With any luck, his father will still be out, boozing it up at the surf club and feeding the pokies. Or maybe Sergeant Mackie has locked him up for the night. If he is home, Martin hopes Ron Scarsden is so drunk that he’s already passed out on his vinyl recliner, belt undone, singlet smeared with food and grog and drool, television blaring inanities. That’s the hope: that he doesn’t have to engage with the father who no longer seems interested in engaging with him. Not a violent man, not a cruel man, just absent. And perpetually drunk. So yes, maybe Martin is twelve, drifting towards adolescence.