‘Maybe don’t worry about it, just at the minute,’ murmured Aunty Val.
Three firefighters – one a Murri fella with a plait who Kerry recognised from the funeral – were hosing the smoking timbers at the front of the house. The blaze had destroyed half of the veranda and a good chunk of the kitchen as well so that, to the family standing where the stairs had been, the shack looked like a doll’s house with half the front wall lifted away. The fridge, scorched but with magnets still intact, remained in its normal place next to the sink. Beyond it, the lounge room, smoke-damaged and soggy, was exposed to view. All the world could have watched TV there now if the plasma screen hadn’t been totalled by a piece of fallen roof iron that lay, twisted and steaming, in the middle of the carpet.
Home smelt of smoke, Kerry realised, and not the good clean eucalyptus juhm that cleansed and healed, but juhm tainted with firefighting chemicals and singed lino. Somehow the place reeked strongly of failure and despair as well. Were they cursed to always have bad luck, her mob? Was it about luck, though? Or was this Buckley’s doing, sending goons in the night to enforce what the cops hadn’t been up to? Maybe Ken was right. Maybe Donna had returned to wreak vengeance on the family who’d rejected her a second time. She had signed her death warrant, if so. But nah, Kerry’s money was on Buckley. The prick had form.
‘That’ll do it,’ called one of the firefighters, turning off his hose and signalling to someone on the fire truck to rewind it.
Uncle Richard stood alongside the others, his Akubra pushed well back from his forehead. His brow was creased like a much-folded certificate kept safely in some bottom drawer, and the sceptical expression that the palsy lent his face seemed even more appropriate than usual. Off to the side, Ken was telling Sav that the nasty jagged cut above his right knee was nothing, don’t fucken worry about it.
Something caught Uncle Richard’s eye, something distinctive among the debris, and he frowned even harder. He stepped forward, poked at the charred wood with a steel-capped boot. The wet ashes stirred and broke at his touch. From the dry wood beneath, a tiny plume of smoke made its way to the surface.
‘Gimme that pole, bud,’ he ordered Chris, who retrieved a length of green bamboo that had held a light above the barbecue. Uncle Richard stepped back from the blistering heat of the ruins. From a distance, he tried unsuccessfully to lever something out from beneath the glowing veranda beam.
‘Too hot,’ he finally said, letting the pole drop. ‘It’ll have to wait.’ He turned to Pretty Mary. Beside her sat Donny, hugging his knees, expressionless, in one of yesterday’s folding chairs. Uncle Richard pulled his sister close. His movement unknowingly mimicked that of Brandon last night. The big brothers of the world who care and protect. They do exist alright, Kerry thought with a rare flash of self-pity. Just not for this little black duck.
Uncle Richard kissed the top of his sister’s head, and then used both his thumbs to wipe tears from the inner corners of her eyes, eyes that were no longer laughing. His left thumb ran down her cheek and unexpectedly met a lump bulging on her jaw.
Pretty Mary flinched away. Uncle Richard peered closer, trying with the same thumb to rub the purple-black ash mark off her face, but she snatched his hand away. She took a step backwards, with the mark unchanged on her face. He narrowed his eyes. Pretty Mary groaned faintly as she looked at the fire truck, barely managing to hold in her shame.
‘Don’t ask. Just don’t.’
A moment’s silence. Then Uncle Richard let go a deep rumble of discontent. When he spoke his voice had a sharp edge.
‘Who wants to tell me what the hell’s been going on here?’
When nobody answered he swung around to face the Murri firefighter. ‘Ya know me?’ Uncle Richard quizzed the man.
‘Yeah, course, Uncle.’
‘Was this an accident?’
‘Hard to say, Unk.’
‘Don’t come the raw prawn with me, son.’
Uncle Richard eyeballed the younger man with the authority of his sixty-seven years. His grey hair insisted on an answer.
‘You’re a Brown,’ he informed the man suddenly. ‘Pop Owen got you into TAFE, years back, when you left school.’
‘Yeah, that’s right. Otis is me Dad. Maureen’s me Mum.’
‘I went to Tranby with Otis back in the day. Went out with his sister for a bit, too. Sandy. Well, brother, was this an accident or not?’
‘I’m not supposed to say, Unk,’ said the firefighter uneasily. ‘But see the way the flame’s bolted up there, la? Could be accelerant. Maybe. It wasn’t me what told ya, but.’
‘Accelerant. Well, we can talk about that later, I reckon.’
‘I’m supposed to inform the police if there’s any—’
‘Oh, no need for the gunjies here, I don’t think. You blokes were just leaving, eh.’
The man looked at Uncle Richard, then glanced over at his workmates. They were coiling hoses, wiping down equipment. It was a sunny blue Saturday. The swell was pumping at South Golden. His kids were at home, waiting for him to take them surfing. He twisted his mouth.
‘Yeah, I reckon we’ll head off dreckly.’
‘Good lad.’
Uncle Richard clapped the man’s shoulder, then turned to the business of the house. Someone had wanted the shack gone, and hadn’t been too worried about the people inside it. Someone had been prepared to chuck accelerant beneath sleeping bodies and throw a lit match in after it. Who would do that in tiny, insubstantial Durrongo? There were fresh 4WD tracks near the front gate. And Buckley was rumoured to be getting desperate as ICAC got more and more interested in the island development. But the mayor wasn’t stupid.
As Uncle Richard walked back to Pretty Mary and Ken he looked around curiously. His sister was there, safe enough for now, and his niece and nephews. Kerry’s new fella. The neighbours, all present and accounted for. Tall Mary and Helen had shot through after some big blue last night, Ken said, and even the orange cat was okay, sitting on top of the chook pen, washing its paws and utterly scornful of humans who were silly enough to let their homes burn half to the ground.
The third firefighter had at last got the sickly smoke alarm to shut up, and a blessed silence fell. No crows cawing. No bulls bellowing. Not even a dog losing its head at all the excitement.
‘Where’s Elvis?’ said Uncle Richard.
Donny flinched.
Uncle Richard discovered that nobody would look at him, let alone answer the question. The charred leopard tree, Aunty Val’s Hills hoist next door, even the gums lining the creek – all were far more intriguing to the gathered clan. There was a distinctly dog-shaped hole in the picture in front of him. And a Donna-shaped hole, too. Uncle Richard put his hands on his hips and spoke slowly.
‘What aren’t you mob telling me? Where’s Elvis, and where’s Donna? And why isn’t Black Superman here?’
The heavy silence didn’t change. Kerry bummed a smoke off Pretty Mary. She took a long draw. Then, seeing that nobody else would, she described her version of the previous night. How the cops had arrived to do Buckley’s dirty work for him, and gotten short shrift, and how Donna then turned up out of the blue making everything far, far worse with her strange and shameful stories. Probably Black Superman was with her. As for Elvis, that Kerry couldn’t say.
‘He’s dead,’ Ken told her. Shot in the night by the same vicious arsehole who’d tried to burn them all alive in their beds.
Kerry stared at her brother. Elvis – dead? Does not compute.
Uncle Richard’s head flung up in alarm.
‘So where’s Donna now?’
‘Who fucken cares?’ spat Ken, instantly furious at the sound of her name.
‘She’s been shown the door,’ Kerry told Uncle Richard. ‘She’s probably in Patto, I think. At the motel.’
Uncle Richard raised his eyebrows at Pretty Mary. A daug
hter found and lost in one night.
‘That right, Mary? She been shown the door?’
‘That’s right, my brother. I can’t be worrying about … I gotta think about what’s best for us mob. I can’t …’ she trailed off. How to even speak of such hideous things?
‘And the dog – shot dead? Is that definite?’
‘Yep, Donny found him up by the road, first thing this morning. Can’t get much clearer than that, can ya?’ Ken said bitterly.
‘Well, that’s a damn shame, and a worry. Where’d ya put him, nephew?’ Uncle Richard asked.
From the folding chair, Donny merely blinked at the blackened ruins in front of him. Words a universe away. But he knew Uncle Richard understood silence. Would get his meaning, would know that the death of Elvis had been … not altered, no. Not reversed. But at least cleansed, a little, by the roaring flames. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It was only right and proper. Elvis was floating in the air, all around them. He would always remain safe at home, now. He could never be taken away more than he already had been.
Uncle Richard tilted his head a little, looking at the boy.
‘Here?’ Uncle Richard pointed his lips at the ruins.
‘I think he might be in shock,’ said Kerry, finding her own legs beginning to quiver. She could have woken up an orphan, if things had gone just a little differently, and she would never see Elvis alive again. Ken nodded as he limped heavily towards the XD. His right leg was awash with blood from the knee down. Somehow this was appropriate, Kerry thought vaguely. Elvis was gone. A line had been crossed. It was a day for blood and flame. And retribution.
‘Shock. That’s exactly right, sis. Shock and awe. Dugais knocked them black houses down in Byron in the fifties. Well, Jim Buckley’s got exactly the same bloody idea. Only the cunt’s gone straight to attempted murder.’ With difficulty, Ken reached in and took his keys out of the Falcon’s ignition. He leaned all his weight against the car, wincing and batting Savannah away.
‘Can you just fuck off out of it,’ he said irritably. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’ Blood made a slick red sock of his foot.
‘You need stitches, idiot,’ insisted Sav, with Dr No clamped onto her hip.
‘Which part of “fuck off” are you having trouble with?’ Ken snapped.
Sav sighed heavily. Went over to Donny, took his chair when he stood up to offer it.
Uncle Richard beckoned Donny over to him.
‘I’m real sorry you had to find him like that, son,’ Uncle Richard said. ‘He was a deadly fella, old Kumanjay, even if he did insist on pissing on me boots every time he seen me. Now listen.’ Uncle Richard put his right hand on Donny’s left shoulder. His straight arm made a dark bridge between the youth and himself. Uncle Richard gazed steadily at his nephew and in the dark pools of his Uncle’s eyes Donny found somewhere to be. He came back to the world, then, shivering and afraid.
Kerry saw the shivers. Tossed a picnic blanket from the barbecue over the boy’s thin shoulders. It went over his head, at first, blinding him for a moment. Then Kerry pulled it down around his back and tucked it into the neck of his shirt, transforming it into a cape. Better than nothing. Donny stood, cloaked in dirty wool, facing his Elder.
‘Nephew,’ said Uncle Richard, very quiet. ‘About this fire, now. You done it, eh?’
Donny’s face crumpled.
‘Cos of yer puppydog?’ Uncle Richard asked gently.
Donny bawled. He had no clear memory of anything after walking up the drive and seeing Elvis hanging there with his red tongue drooping out his mouth … Until the fire engine – also red, a fact that was somehow important in a way Donny couldn’t understand – had come and the hoses began to blast at the inferno. If they said he did it, then he must have. As for why. Reasons were nonsense. All he knew was that death meant smoke and it meant flame. Elvis – a constant presence all his life – was dead. His Aunty Donna – a constant absence – was alive. And, as ever, he was so very alone in the world.
‘Grief comes out in all sorts of strange ways, son, but ya can’t be burning houses down,’ said Uncle Richard, wrapping his dark arms tight around the kid. Holding on, holding on. Let him know with his man’s muscle and blood that he’s safe. Let him feel a part of something good. Something stronger than he himself is.
Donny kept apologising through hiccuping sobs.
Uncle Richard shushed him. Told him it was going to be okay. He would be okay.
‘Are you fucking seriously saying that … Fuck!’ Ken limped in circles. Flung his hands about as it became obvious that this was not Buckley’s doing. ‘What in the fucking name of fucking Christ has got into the kid—’
‘Will you take that lad home with you, my brother, and help him, please? Take him and teach him; he’s growing up all back-to-front here. Got no respect, no culture …’ Pretty Mary pleaded. Uncle Richard’s face hardened. When he spoke, still holding Donny close, he made sure the boy heard him.
‘You talk like this child’s the problem, Mary. In front of him.’
‘If he’s burned half the fucking house down, I’d say that is a problem,’ blurted Kerry. ‘I mean, come on, Uncle.’
‘Yeah. And so who owns that problem, bub? Who made him who he is, to go burning houses down?’
The family stared sullenly at Uncle Richard.
‘This lad is one young fella in a family,’ said Uncle Richard. ‘He’s got a father, doesn’t he? And a Nan. Aunts and Uncles. Cousins. We’re all a part of this. Not just him.’
Kerry fell silent. Recalibrated.
Ken limped towards the back fence, gesturing and swearing at Mount Monk in disbelief. He didn’t know what the fuck Uncle Richard was on about. His retarded son might have burned the veranda off the house, yeah, but it was all Buckley underneath it. Buckley had thought up the prison, had murdered Elvis. Buckley had set in motion every terrible thing that smouldered in front of him today. There was a problem alright – and every problem has a solution close to hand.
‘Don’t you worry, son,’ Ken called out. ‘We’ll put old mate in the ground and then I’ll go sort that cunt Buckley out once and fer all. He’ll rue the fucken day, truesgod.’
‘Meaning what?’ asked Uncle Richard.
‘Meaning I’m gonna fight for our rights, not die yapping while they pick us off, one by one.’
‘Yeah, okay. We need to fight. But first I think you better come to Men’s Camp this weekend. Get yer head clear, neph. Manage yer anger so you use it, not it using you.’
‘Fuck all that anger management crap. I need to be angry to defend our island!’ spat Ken, staring back at everyone with wild eyes. ‘Angry’s all I’ve fucking got.’
Uncle Richard adjusted his Akubra. Pushed his tongue around behind his lopsided mouth as he gazed at Ken.
‘There’s been a death here, Kenny. And a shooting death at that, serious business. Course you’re angry. We all are. So this is what’s gonna happen. You’ll get that leg stitched. Then you’ll come bush tonight, with yer son. Me and Uncle Kev. Uncle Les from up Tweed way. Uncle Moke, plus a few other brothers from Lismore, with their kippers. We’ll siddown on country and we’ll yarn this business. And after that, if you still think ya need to sort Jim Buckley out, well, he’ll be walking around next week just the same as he is today.’
‘I’m not talking about next week. I’m talking about now,’ said Ken, as he clicked open the boot of the XD and lifted out Pop’s hunting rifle. The air shifted and thickened around Ken. He was blurred and enlarged by the presence of the gun, as it came into focus above all else.
‘Oh, here we fucking go,’ muttered Kerry, catching Donny’s horror out of the corner of her eye.
Without any warning, she was utterly enraged. Had had it up to here with Ken. With all of it. And she discovered she was done with being afraid.
‘Justice delayed,’ said Ken, closing
the boot with his bent elbow, both hands glued on the rifle stock, ‘is justice denied. I’m sick of being denied.’
Kerry sidestepped Steve and headed straight towards Ken.
Fucking macho bullshit.
‘Better put the gun down, Ken,’ said Uncle Richard carefully, ‘and just yarn with me here a minute.’
Yeah, good luck with that, thought Kerry.
‘Show us,’ she said, as though the .22 was a new phone. ‘I thought that was long gone. Is it loaded?’
But Ken kept a firm hold of the rifle. Rivulets of blood had made their way from his gashed thigh down to the earth. Twisting crimson snakes threading down his dark leg. His jinung glossy against the grass. The stock of the rifle was an old, scratched thing. Pale yellow wood. Scraped with years of use, years of putting tucker on the table, and a few times giving the worst of the Durrongo rednecks pause. Kerry had thought it pawned years ago, or stolen; hadn’t seen it for so long. Had never even thought of it still existing. Yet there it was, resurrected.
‘If it ain’t loaded now it soon will be,’ Ken said. ‘I’m sick of fucken talk, talk, talk.’
‘But can I just feel it?’ Kerry asked, reaching down. Ken swiftly swung the barrel behind him, out of her reach. Then he held it even closer, cradling it to his chest as he paced the lawn. Ready to aim and fire. His striding momentum nearly enough to make it happen. Kinetic energy, surging from foot to leg to arm to index finger.
Nigger, nigger, pull the trigger.
‘Don’t fucken play silly buggers,’ Ken told Kerry, breathing fast and shallow. His blue eyes were pinned to dots. Holding the gun like this was the Second Coming. Ken squared his shoulders, looked up to address Uncle Richard, and the family, and the whole fucking world that was arrayed against him. ‘Buckley wanna send cops with tasers to my door, shoot my dog? Fuck him, he’ll pay.’
‘Kerry …’ said Steve, terror jangling in his voice. ‘Can you just—’
‘Then we’ll all pay, brother.’ Kerry let out a harsh bark of laughter. ‘Shoot him and we’re all fucked. We’ll lose the island for sure. And you’ll die in jail an old man.’ A stupid, vain old man, she wanted to add, but Ken had raised the barrel of the rifle and cut her words in half.
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