by Brown, Honey
‘There’s a furnace down there,’ I said, pointing. ‘He was going to get rid of our bodies. He was going to burn us. We don’t know if he’s hurt. If you lift the cabinet and he’s not badly hurt, we’re back to where we started.’
Bruce pulled a length of chain through the gantry. It rattled loudly. He got it to the right length and looped it under the exposed ends of the two planks of wood. Once he had the second length of chain, he used it to pull the first chain tight. He walked down to where the control box was hanging. I wrapped my arms around my body. My husband was too influenced by the drug to comprehend any kind of reasoning, and too caught in the severity of the situation to be made to stop.
The electronic device for the chain block was at the other end of the workshop. Bruce returned with it. The cabling had its own rail, running parallel to the gantry. The control unit hung down to about shoulder height. Bruce stopped in front of me for a moment.
‘Do you even know what you’re doing?’ I said. ‘Think about it. Will you please not lift the cabinet?’
The control unit was about the size of a paperback novel. Bruce’s brow furrowed as he pressed a button. The chain block sprung to life. There was the sound of the chains running through the lifting device. The chain around the two planks of wood tightened. The timber began to lift.
I remembered seeing a hammer during my search. I turned to look for it. The chain block rattled and whirred. The two planks of timber creaked. I prayed the timber would snap and the cabinet would fall back to the floor. I heard things move and shift about on the shelves inside. I found the hammer and turned back to hand it to Bruce. ‘Here,’ I said, ‘take this.’
‘You keep hold of it.’
The cabinet lifted higher. The gears in the chain block struggled with the weight. The whir of the electric motor drowned out any other sounds. There was now room to crawl out from under the cabinet. One of the pieces of timber made a splintering sound. Bruce took his finger off the button. The lifting halted. The chain block fell silent. The room was quiet. Bruce crouched down and looked.
‘He was going to kill us,’ I reminded him.
I was too scared to look for myself. I never wanted to see Reuben again. The thought of his hairless arms and bristled grey scalp made me nauseous. The pressure between my legs had returned. Bruce got down on his stomach and began inching his way under the cabinet. I shook my head. I felt like crying.
‘It’s not safe …’
The timber beams were creaking. Bruce wriggled under until the top half of his body had disappeared. He was like that, lying still, for a moment, and then he began wriggling back out. He was dragging Reuben with him; I could tell by the way his legs had stiffened. The toes of his boots tried to dig in and find purchase on the floor. He edged his way back. I bent and looked. Bruce had a hold of the back of Reuben’s pants. Reuben’s head was turned away. His legs were tucked in. It was as though he’d huddled into a ball as the cabinet fell.
‘Leave him there,’ I said. ‘Come and get a weapon just in case.’
Bruce got onto his knees. He pulled Reuben clear of the cabinet. I watched, expecting Reuben to spring to life: a huge spider uncurling its legs to scuttle away.
Reuben lay on his side, not moving. Inside the cabinet some items shifted and clattered into new resting positions.
‘Don’t take your eyes off him …’ The hammer was tight in my hand. My body was shaking. I held the hammer out for Bruce to take. ‘Hit him.’
Bruce ignored the weapon on offer. He kicked Reuben in the head.
Reuben didn’t show any signs of consciousness. Bruce kicked him again. I realised this was what Bruce had to do – treat Reuben with disrespect, inflict the same hurt that had been inflicted on him. Reuben wasn’t moving, but Bruce pulled back his boot and kicked him again. I cringed at the ferocity of the blow, covered my mouth and looked at my husband’s face.
‘Bruce … stop.’
He kicked again. I heard Reuben’s skull crack. Bruce heard it too. He gave one more savage kick, and then he staggered back, away from what he’d done. His chest was rising and falling. Clammy sweat covered his face. Reuben’s blood was splattered on the floor and on Bruce’s pants. It was leaking, thick and dark, from a pulpy section of Reuben’s head. My mind had gone blank. I had no idea what to say.
For a frozen moment Bruce and I stared down at the body and the blood. Then I walked forward and I rolled Reuben’s body over, so that he was lying on his back. His legs flopped apart. The lifelessness caused me to lean away and look to my husband.
He came forward and crouched down beside me. Together we searched Reuben’s pockets. I found the key to the padlock and unlocked the door.
5
Our car keys were in the ignition and my handbag was still tucked in under the seat. Bruce’s phone was still in the hands-free cradle, his wallet in the centre console. My phone was on the dash; the screen was cracked, the base and back crushed and splintered. Also on the dash were my sunglasses, broken but returned to the car like my phone. I sat behind the wheel.
Bruce was out in the garage looking for a way to open the roller door. He found the remote control and the door began to open.
Bruce climbed quickly into the car. ‘Go,’ he said.
It was sunny outside. I had that feeling you get when leaving the cinema during the day – the strangeness of emerging into the sunshine after the darkness of the theatre to find nothing has changed, not even the weather.
I backed out into the parking area. The house loomed over me. I kept my gaze averted. I felt chastened, as though I’d been taught a lesson by an omnipotent thing. I didn’t know what lesson exactly, but I was contrite all the same.
‘All our things are here,’ I said. ‘My phone, my sunglasses. I think he was going to get rid of the car with all our stuff in it.’
‘Go.’
The terror actually heightened as we left. The open garage gaped behind us. My body grew rigid. It was difficult to steer or accelerate. I think a part of me knew even then that we weren’t leaving, not really. Some things you don’t escape from.
I remembered the bottle of water in the door compartment beside me. It had a pop-top lid, and I drove one-handed and drank. I squirted some on my forehead and let it run down over my eyes, passed the bottle to Bruce and used my skirt to dry my face. It had blood on it, as did my blouse. I’d skinned my knees, bruised my shins, torn some nails to the quick; there were tender spots all over my body. Bruce passed the bottle back. I finished the last bit.
‘How do you feel?’ I asked.
‘Not right.’ He did up the buttons on his shirt.
It was three o’clock. Two and a half hours we’d been at Reuben’s house.
‘We’ll get some distance,’ Bruce said.
I looked over my shoulder. ‘There was no other car. Was there?’
‘We’ll get some distance,’ Bruce repeated.
It was strange how strongly I believed Bruce had been through more than I had. I felt Bruce had been violated and exploited and brutalised and made to act violently. He’d been exposed to the full gamut, whereas I had only experienced the abridged version. I fretted for him, and not myself. I was already deferring the pain.
‘I want to ring the kids,’ he said. ‘I thought I heard them.’
‘You didn’t hear them.’
‘We’ll ring Steven.’
‘He’ll be at school.’
‘See if he picks up.’
My phone wasn’t working. Bruce’s phone had voice recognition. He said Steven’s name in the direction of the blue-tooth device attached to the sun visor, and technology took it from there.
While I waited for our son to pick up, I said, ‘What are we doing? What are we saying?’
‘I’m not sure.’
Steven came on the line. ‘Hey, Dad,’ he said. His voice was as deep as Bruce’s. It was hard to believe the owner of such a voice would be dressed in a school blazer, with grey shorts and long socks and ludicrous
ly dishevelled hair.
Bruce turned his face towards the window, suddenly overcome.
‘It’s Mum,’ I said.
‘Hi, Mum.’
I bit my lip to stop from crying.
‘Hello?’ Steven said.
There were the sounds of life going on in the background, the hustle and bustle of a school corridor, friends joking around nearby. Our children were safe. Only Bruce and I had been catapulted to outer space.
‘Mum?’
‘Are you and the girls at school?’ My voice had an emotional waver.
‘Yeah. Are you back already? I thought we were staying another night at Grandma’s?’
‘Not yet. Yes.’
‘You sound really out of it. Are you okay?’
I was silent.
‘Mum? … Is Dad there?’
‘Not right now. I just wanted to make sure everything’s all right.’
‘Yeah, yeah, we’re fine. Hey, guess what? I got in!’
It took a second, then I remembered and realised he was talking about an under-sixteen state basketball camp.
‘I got selected to attend. In Canberra. I got in,’ he said when I was silent. ‘Can you believe that?’
‘No, that’s —’
‘I’m pretty pumped,’ he said. ‘Tell Dad for me, okay? I’ve got all the dates and info. He said if I got in he’d fly up with me and stay while it’s on. It’s not for a couple of months.’
I couldn’t respond. I could hear Steven’s friends interjecting and jostling around him.
The implications of what had happened began to sink in, and these were the tip-of-the-iceberg drawbacks; the real ones would be hidden below the surface; even the surface ones would ripple out. After Bruce and me, our children were next in line to be affected.
‘Mum? You still there?’ Steven was saying, ‘I can’t hear you. Ring back when you’re in a better spot, okay? Hello, hello … ? If you’re there – get Dad to ring me. See ya soon, bye.’
He hung up.
Bruce’s arms were crossed tightly over his lower abdomen, his forearms pushing in against his pelvis. His breath came short and sharp and his face contorted with pain or anguish, both.
‘Do you need to go to hospital?’
He shook his head. ‘Stop at a toilet.’
I pulled in at the first service station we came to. The toilets were around the back and I parked as near to them as I could. Before getting out, I turned to Bruce and went to touch him. He jerked away from me. ‘Are you hurt?’ I tried a second time to touch him, gently reaching out. He twisted subtly this time to avoid my hand.
Our bodies remained tense, so I wasn’t surprised by his reaction. Fear had made me retreat inside myself, and I imagined Bruce felt the same. It wasn’t a straightforward thing to accept a person’s touch again and open up.
‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘Could you get me a change of clothes?’
I climbed over the seats and grabbed our overnight bags.
‘We can ring the police from here,’ I said, sorting through the contents of Bruce’s bag. ‘This is a good place to do it. We’ll go inside and ring.’
Bruce and I went together into the women’s toilet. Bruce chose the privacy of a narrow cubicle to get changed in. He half shut the door. Even this slight barricade between us unsettled me. ‘Bruce …’ The hesitation in my voice explained, and he pushed the door wider so that I could see him. While he got into dry clothes and used the toilet, I changed too. I rinsed my eyes and filled the water bottle from the tap. He came out and we swapped places. I left the door wide open while I used the toilet. He leaned over the sink and splashed his face.
‘What are we doing?’ I said. ‘We’re washing off evidence, aren’t we? We have to stop right now and think about what we’re doing.’
‘I can’t think. I can’t.’ Bruce sank down with his back against the bathroom wall. His eyes were wide, but his brow was smooth and unlined, slack with shock.
I pulled up my jeans.
‘Were you with me in the first room?’ Bruce said.
‘It’s going to be all right.’ I went across to help my husband to his feet. ‘We’re all right.’
I held him. We were equally stiff in one another’s embrace. Not rigid against each other, but tense, still frightened.
‘Did he hurt you?’ Bruce asked.
‘No.’
‘I killed him. Is that manslaughter?’
‘I don’t know.’
We stepped back. I couldn’t look into his face for fear of sinking down to the floor like he had. Bruce now wore shorts and a jumper and thongs. I wore jeans and the same shoes and top that I’d had on. I bundled our dirty clothes together in my arms. I could smell Reuben’s workshop on them – the scent of freshly cut timber, a supposedly pleasant aroma. Not any more.
‘Let’s go into the service station and ring from there.’
My husband looked at me, but it was as though he didn’t see me. ‘Tell the police I killed him?’
‘In self-defence.’
‘Tell them …’ He frowned.
‘What happened.’
‘He wasn’t moving.’
‘It doesn’t matter – he could have gotten up.’
‘He was unconscious.’
‘No, he wasn’t.’ Bruce began breathing fast. His eyes grew bright with tears. He looked at the clothes bundled in my arms and shook his head at a private thought.
‘Bruce? It’s okay – the police are going to understand. You were drugged. He attacked you.’
This truth played out distressingly across my husband’s face. His eyes lost their teary glow and grew guarded. Evasiveness crept in. I’d never seen such caginess in him before and it was devastating to realise how completely Reuben had hurt him.
‘You were acting in self-defence,’ I reminded him.
‘I knew he was unconscious.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘He wasn’t moving. I kept kicking.’
‘You can’t say that to the police. You wouldn’t say that to them, would you?’
‘Were you with me in the first room?’
‘I was trapped at the bottom of the stairs and upstairs. Then I was in the workshop with you.’
‘Do you know what he did to me?’ Bruce said with sudden emotion.
‘Bruce …’
He breathed out to compose himself. He said, ‘He had to die.’
‘Don’t say that,’ I said softly, ‘that’s not what you thought; you didn’t know what you were doing.’
‘I did.’
I reached out for his hand.
‘The police will understand, everyone will understand.’ Bruce took my hand in his, but his damaged fingers closed loosely around mine and I realised it was too painful for him to connect with me this way.
‘You told me to stop kicking, but I didn’t want to stop.’
I cupped his hand in mine. ‘Don’t say that, Bruce …’
‘That’s the truth,’ he said.
‘You can’t say it though.’
‘Why not? He had to die.’
‘Okay …’ I murmured. ‘You need time. It’s okay. We’ll just keep driving.’
As if we were fugitives, I checked that the coast was clear before returning to the car. I helped Bruce into his seat. He was as depleted as I’d ever seen him. He struggled to lift his legs into the car. I began to wonder what the difference was between manslaughter and murder. Bruce’s raw comments had seeded doubt in me. I wondered if we’d be separated from one another during the interview process. If we were, I’d have no way of explaining that Bruce didn’t mean what he was saying. Might the police judge the things he said under the influence of a drug more truthful that what he said later, when recovered? I imagined Bruce saying his attacker had been unconscious, on the floor, and that he had kicked his head, kicked again even after he’d heard Reuben’s skull crack.
Most disturbing, it was the truth.
We drove on. Thoughts turned and t
umbled in my head. Bruce’s breathing grew steadier. I touched his hand to check his body temperature. He was not cold, or overly warm, and he didn’t seem in as much discomfort.
We hit peak-hour traffic in the city. Our tinted windows gave us some privacy from the occupants in the cars on either side. Bruce straightened. He’d been sleeping. He seemed slightly recovered.
‘Where are we?’
‘In the city. Crossing the bridge. How are you feeling?’
‘A bit better.’
I heard him swallow.
‘The water bottle is beside you.’
‘How are your eyes?’ he asked me.
‘Sore. I can see okay, but it’s hard to keep them open. I’m a bit nervous about going through the tunnel. No room for error, you know.’
‘Should I drive?’
I glanced across at him. ‘Can you? Do you feel okay? Because we should turn before the tunnel anyway and go into a city police station.’
‘We have to go home first.’
‘Why?’
‘To check on the children. I thought I heard them. We should ring Steven,’ he said, as though he’d forgotten we already had, like he was stuck on a recorded loop.
An hour from home, Bruce was asleep again. I had my arms draped over the steering wheel and my chin resting on my hands. I peered at the section of road ahead then closed my eyes for three seconds. I softly counted one … two … three … and opened my eyes again. It wasn’t as dangerous as it sounded: my mind was alert. I wasn’t at risk of dozing off. I pushed it out to four seconds of driving blind. The cruise control was set at ninety kilometres an hour. We were in a one hundred and ten zone. Cars overtook with ease.
The final leg home was the worst. We came off the freeway and made it to our hometown, but then had the back roads to travel to our house. I had to keep my eyes open the whole time. My face was screwed up with the effort. It took everything I had in me to stop my eyes from shutting. I had no thoughts beyond that.
Bruce woke and talked me through the final turns. I couldn’t trust him to take over and drive, though – he still wasn’t making sense.
Before that day I’d cursed our decision to build outside of town, in the surrounding countryside of Delaney, living the middle-class ‘lifestyle property’ dream – on countless school nights, doing the sports-training run, I’d whinge about the lack of ‘life’ and ‘style’ involved in driving so many kilometres every day – but that afternoon the road seemed longer than ever. Then again, the quiet road on which we lived, tucked in at the base of the ranges with other country houses spaced between paddocks and neighbours hidden behind stands of trees, suited our current situation. Rural life had some merit when you were trying to keep a low profile.