by Ross Watkins
These were the thoughts rushing through his mind as Fielder looked at his papers and waited for a response. ‘Do you need me to repeat the question, Mr Pomeroy?’
‘Sorry,’ he said. Stop apologising. ‘Yes, I think I do.’
‘Is there any evidence to substantiate your claim that any change in the relationship was initiated by Mr Bowman?’
‘There is.’
*
Two days after seeing Akker in the convenience store, Adrian received an email from a sender called godhand. It was the weekend and he’d been up late marking essays, and decided to check his email before packing it in for the night. When he opened his email account the message sat there at the top of his inbox, boldly begging. At first he assumed it was spam and hovered a finger over delete, but the subject line got his attention: ‘you have been touched’.
Akker …
For two days Adrian had avoided thinking about Akker’s gesture. Still, the fact that he knew he’d avoided thinking about it also meant that it was a thought to be had in the first place, and this implied not avoidance but something far more terrifying – denial. But now, with the appearance of the email, he was suddenly aware of the emotional upwelling he had suppressed. Akker was indeed touching him. The fucker was trying to get under his skin, but what his true intentions were, Adrian could only speculate.
The email had no content other than an attachment with the file name teacher. He hesitated, listening for where Noo was in the house, then double-clicked.
What followed was a story about a young man. He is on all fours like a dog, naked, his wrists and ankles bound, his palms and knees in dirt. There is a block of wood between his thighs and another one supporting his chest. The blocks are there to keep him in this position, with his face and hair hanging forward. A man walks around the boy, kicking dirt in his face, saying that the dog’s crime is denial of what he knows to be true. The man spits on his back, and the dog feels each spit blaze against his skin like a foreshadowing of the coming event. To hide was his crime; to burn alive is his punishment.
Another man gathers wood from nearby and stacks it for a pyre. But this man is different: he’s not there to punish. He has another role to play. And as he walks back and forth, loading and unloading armfuls of wood, he steals glances at the boy. He smiles, and the boy thinks he knows why: this man is here not to throw his body onto the fire, but to liberate him. The man will do this for two reasons: first, because he is the one who caused the boy to be here in the dirt, awaiting hellfire; and second, because the boy knows in his heart that the man loves him. From the description of this man, it is clear he is a rendering of Adrian.
There are other characters, too, watching from the windows of houses. Some are shouting, others crying. But these people are of no consequence, for by the time the wood has been stacked the sun is low in the west and it has grown bigger, and somehow hotter, and somehow brighter. This light has an intensity beyond the sun – it is light from a source far more formidable, and like a star entering the atmosphere, it burns brighter and closer with each passing moment. ‘It is God Himself,’ someone calls out, and the people in the houses move away from the windows. The spitting man kneels in the dirt and begins to pray. The boy is laughing now: he was the one to be burned and yet he is now calm, almost serene, while all others are in fear of the coming fire, their eyes closed against the light, which has become unbearable.
Then the boy feels a hand against his skin. It is a warm hand, a familiar hand, and the hand knows his body well. The hand finds the boy’s hands and a knife is brought through the bindings around his wrists and ankles. The wood blocks are removed and the boy feels himself being lifted, then carried.
When the light returns to normal, the people come out of the houses and the spitting man stops praying. They all look to the sky to see the comet streak towards the horizon. They then turn to see the boy in the dirt, but he is gone – riding, they believe, on the tail of the comet.
*
Fielder’s moustache undulated with his mouth and he sat forward. ‘What kind of evidence are we talking about?’
‘He sent me emails, suggestive stories,’ Adrian said. ‘They might prove something.’
Fielder looked at his colleague and wrote a note. ‘Good,’ he said, then he stood and picked up his papers. ‘Can I get you something to drink? Coffee?’
‘Is this going to take much longer?’
‘That depends.’ Fielder pushed in his chair and looked at the recording device, which was still ticking over, then at Adrian.
‘On what?’
‘On you, Mr Pomeroy. Do you have anything else you can tell me which will assist the investigation?’
Adrian thought about this. Fielder was opening a door for Adrian, or at least leaving it unlocked. But then again, perhaps Fielder was only presenting the illusion of escape – the offer of a drink seemed to contradict the suggestion that Adrian was in control of how much longer he’d have to sit in that chair. No, Fielder knew there was more story to tell. Adrian certainly knew there was more, without a doubt, but he worried about the supposed ‘facts’ and how they were stacking up – what shape they were creating. How Fielder was putting them together in his notebook and the story Adrian believed he was telling were inevitably different, because there were only so many ‘facts’ which could be reported. In this way the whole enterprise was ludicrous. Dates, locations – these things could be objectively reported; but descriptions of actions, intentions, thought processes and contextual circumstances – these were the subjectivities which would come to define or destroy him if the case progressed. The more of these subjectivities he presented, the more complex the story would become, and he assumed there was some kind of tipping point, a point of no return where his only option was full disclosure – or as full as he could articulate. He believed he hadn’t yet arrived at that tipping point. He believed he was still in control.
Yet there was more he could tell, for now. There was still a chance to cut this off, right here and right now. There was still a chance to deny Akker the goal towards which, Adrian now understood, he’d been working for the best part of the school year. Ever since the series of unfortunate events went one step too far.
Adrian made up his mind. He looked at the senior constable, then at Fielder. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can tell you more.’
ALEX
While Alex’s mum wanted him to be a believer, he only wanted someone to believe in him. Someone in the flesh, not a god. But this person could not be his father.
Alex liked working on his vocabulary. When he came across a word he didn’t recognise, he fished it from his dictionary and made note of it, repeating the definition under his breath until it sank in. Doing this had helped his reading and writing, especially in his first year of high school, but when it came to describing his dad his vocabulary was limited to words like prick and arsehole. Because Danny often was a prick, especially to Alex, who was a passive kid who did what was asked of him and tried to please. But Alex’s weakness was his mouth – he just couldn’t help a cheeky crack here or there, pointing out something that he felt was too important or true to leave unsaid.
Danny always got the shits with that. ‘You and your fucken mouth,’ he’d say. ‘You watch your lip, son.’
And when Alex didn’t watch it, Danny’s belt came off. ‘Pull your pants down and touch your toes,’ Danny would say, and if Alex flinched he got double. Sometimes Danny even told him to go and choose a belt from the cupboard – the softer the leather and the wider the strap, he worked out, the better. He also learned that tensing his bum cheeks lessened the sting. Shannon copped it too, so Alex shared his tips with her, and told her to be strong and imagine the day they were old enough that he wouldn’t be able to do it to them anymore. That was what Alex thought of whenever he was leaning over the bed, exposed, expecting. The word hate came easily during those times.
But Alex knew that reducing his father to a belt-wielding prick wasn’t entirely fair. Alex was empathetic enough to know that things were always more complicated – that actions were most often the result of a complex series of events. And while Alex didn’t know exactly what made his dad tick, he knew enough to give him the benefit of the doubt, even if it sometimes meant more disappointment and hurt. Part of this was due to the fact that when he looked at his dad he saw a projection of himself – the same sandy skin, blond hair, angular features.
In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. Alex read this on the plaque at church whenever his mum got the family motivated enough to go. They weren’t devout followers, but his parents liked the idea that, whenever they attended, the family were more respectable. The truth, Alex knew, was that Danny couldn’t give a flying fuck about religion – Michaela was the one pushing for the family’s salvation.
Michaela called Danny her ‘diamond in the rough’, and just how rough he’d been came to light one day when an old mate showed up on their doorstep with beer and rum. The two guys sat together in the lounge and talked about the Westmead they’d grown up in – about the commission housing and the boys they’d go tagging with, the minor break-ins they’d pulled, mainly of cars, derelict shops, empty houses. About sniffing glue and inhaling butane. About nights out on cheap bourbon, and about smoking joints laced with acid. It was at that point Michaela told Alex and Shannon to go to bed, but Alex had listened from the hallway, curious about what this old friend was revealing about his father.
They talked about the poofter-bashing hunts they went on, about trailing guys walking near the public toilets in Parramatta Park, and the time they caught two faggots in the act: they shoved them to the grass, a couple of the boys pinning them down while another spray-painted ‘homo’ across their backs and stuck sticks up their arses. Danny and his mate laughed the whole way through that story. Then there was the turf war with the Lebs, and how one of them had pulled a gun on Danny outside the Westfield.
What Danny didn’t talk about that night was how he’d got it on at a party with a Lebanese girl who turned out to be a sister of one of the Leb Boys, and how the Leb Boys had bashed him when they found out, breaking his jaw and fracturing his skull. Alex knew this because his mum had told him. Danny then moved to his uncle’s house in Port Macquarie, which was where he’d met Michaela. That was when his life’s momentum changed, and he learned that people could be kind, and that he could also be kind if he chose to.
Michaela had also told the kids the story of how she and Danny had met – how his uncle got him a job driving a delivery truck for a farm supplies store her family used to buy from.
‘I used to eye off all the delivery boys,’ she told them, ‘but the day he drove onto our land was the day I knew to stop looking.’
They went out for a few months and eventually moved into a duplex in town. Danny held onto his job and Michaela continued to work for her parents on their small produce farm.
‘We never agreed on anything,’ she laughed, ‘which I thought was sweet at the time.’
They married during a drought year. When the dry really set in, the work dried up too, so Danny convinced her to move to Sydney’s west. They lived with Danny’s parents in the old house for a while, getting by on the dole, until Danny got back into the trucking business and they saved enough for a rental bond. Then Alex came along, and Shannon two years later.
As the children grew and the family moved to a larger house, Danny took on a cleaning job to bring in more cash, which meant his family saw him less and less. He didn’t complain much, but the hours took their toll, and working day and night meant that he got next to no sleep. Drinking came easily, and so did anger – he’d bang the bedroom wall and shout at the kids when they played loudly. And when he belted the kids he said it wasn’t him punishing them but them punishing themselves, which always made Alex think about the saying on the plaque at church – about God’s hand having power and might, just like his dad’s, and maybe like he’d have one day.
Michaela would hug him after each belting. ‘He only does these things because he loves you,’ she’d say, and for a while he believed her.
By the time Alex was twelve and at high school, he was looking for someone who recognised his potential, someone who could open his mind to all that was possible in the world.
He clearly recalled the day he came home with his first Year Seven report. He showed it to his mum after dinner was done and she was washing up. His achievement across most subjects was above average, and the comments from his teachers were glowing, but his best result was in English.
‘What’s that?’ Danny called from the lounge room.
‘Alex’s school report,’ she said. ‘He’s done really well in English.’
‘English?’ Danny said. ‘So he should – he’s probably the only kid at that school who speaks it at home.’
Michaela then read out Mr Pomeroy’s comments. She put her arm around her son. ‘Says he’s got a talent for storytelling,’ she called to Danny.
Alex thought of Mr Pomeroy – his true teacher. A light to follow.
‘That’d be right. Bullshit artist in the making.’
‘It’s reading and writing,’ Alex said. ‘Writing stories is the best part.’
‘Yeah, well, writing stories won’t put food in anyone’s belly, will it? Just think about that.’
Alex didn’t want to think about that. Maybe later, when he had a family of his own, but not now. ‘Yes, Dad.’
‘And this teacher who says he wants to nurture you – you can tell him that if he wants to hear a real man’s story, I can tell him mine.’
‘Yes, Dad.’
But he told Mr Pomeroy no such thing, for he already felt love for his teacher. More love, he quickly decided, than what he’d ever felt for his own father. Not that anyone knew. Alex tucked this adoration inside his mind and heart, though even back then he had begun to explore his feelings through the stories he wrote for class. Throughout the year, they became more and more of an outlet, and he looked to Mr Pomeroy for some clue that he had read between the lines of those stories and understood what was there but not there. Those traces of his sentiments, like a message written in lemon juice. And while Mr Pomeroy made no acknowledgement, Alex believed that something was developing between them.
On occasion, his adoration edged into another feeling, this kind more physical. He knew what it was to have a crush, but this wasn’t some short-lived and meaningless thing. The boys in class had crushes on girls from other schools because of the perfume they wore or how thick their lips were, or because of the way their bums looked when they walked, but this was different. Alex thought of Mr Pomeroy throughout the day and imagined being near him, hearing him talk up close, so close they could share breath, and share knowledge of things far beyond Alex’s experience. Sometimes he dared to imagine what it would feel like to touch his teacher – his fingers coming down on Mr Pomeroy’s arm or shoulder, or his thigh. These thoughts were enough back then to send Alex into a storm of longing and increasing doubt – doubt that these developing impulses were normal for a twelve-year-old boy, who he knew should be thinking about footy and girls and whatever.
When Alex learned that Mr Pomeroy’s name was Adrian, he wrote AP in black texta on the underside of his pencil case. One day the boy next to him in English saw the initials and asked who AP was. ‘Mr Pomeroy’s name is Adrian,’ the boy said.
Alex flushed red and shook his head. ‘Didn’t know that,’ he said. ‘AP’s this girl at church, one of my sister’s friends.’ He then added, ‘She’s got huge tits.’
He felt proud of his imaginative rescue, but at the same time humiliated by the realisation that what had been a private preoccupation could become a public shame. At that moment, Alex Bowman knew he had everything to fear and one thing to hide.
NOEL
When Noel had the urge again so soon, he knew he was done for. He’d barely arrived in Sydney and already he was looking around, wondering if and when and where he could do another burn.
They’d touched down, reclaimed their baggage, waited at the hire car desk and were now on the M5. They’d be on the motorway for a while before turning north to Homebush, and then on to Merrylands, and the whole way would be nothing but traffic and buildings and people walking the tired concrete paths of the city Noel had begun to wonder if he’d ever get back to. Yet here he was – and here he wished he wasn’t. The only pleasure he could take from being back was the realisation that he’d changed in his years in the west: Perth felt like home. He was surprised it’d taken him until now, driving with all these other bullshit cars to bullshit places, to realise it. Jesus, he thought, I shouldn’t be wasting my time on grass and scrub when this whole joint should be burned to the fucken ground.
‘Do we drive through the city?’
Riley, with her pretend boy’s voice. He looked in the rear-vision mirror. ‘Nup,’ he said.
‘No, we’re heading west, darling. Your father’s family live in the western suburbs.’
Wendy, on her best behaviour. She’d be his rock over the coming week, as long as she stuck around and didn’t take off to Canberra to see her mum, the widow turned spinster. Noel couldn’t fathom why the old bag never tried to meet another bloke after Wendy’s father died all those years ago. Perhaps he just didn’t have the heart for that kind of empathy.
Wendy hadn’t mentioned Canberra but the idea must’ve passed through her head. He didn’t want to raise it, just in case she’d convinced herself that spending time with his family was more important. After all, seeing his family was what they’d come here to do – why they’d spent all that money on flights instead of on a camping trip near Katherine. Although he was the one who said he’d come back, the girls and Wendy coming along had turned the event into something else. Was this about Adrian? Or the girls? Or was it for Glenda’s sake? The notion of just spending time in the company of family had become a perplexing one for Noel. If he didn’t feel as though he was getting something out of it, he became resentful, and he didn’t want that this time around – he wanted to make this about him, too. Sydney was not only his childhood home but the source of a certain unrest, which he had hoped would die in this shithole the moment he left for Perth. Leaving the past behind and all that. But his unrest had packed itself in his suitcase and shifted into a Perth closet. Ever since then it had morphed into something closer to self-reproach.