The Scarecrow

by Ronald Hugh Morrieson

  ‘See yuh,’ I muttered. I ran all the way to the Federal. Prudence had not put in an appearance. None of the kitchen staff had seen her. They looked at me curiously. Out on the street I paced up and down biting my nails. To my surprise I saw our old Dennis parked up the alleyway by Dabney’s chapel. I glimpsed Herbert and Uncle Athol. They seemed to be loading the tray with a lot of old timber and junk. I figured that in an old building like Dabney’s there would be enough junk to sink a boat. I wondered if Herbert was putting one across Pop. Probably owed more money, I thought. To hell with him anyway! I began to jog-trot in the direction of the police station. Sun before seven, I thought crazily, rain before eleven. Great isolated drops of rain were falling, hitting me on the head hard, thudding into the ground around me as I jog-trotted. The sky was greying over. The huge raindrops were like a pup’s pawmarks. I had an all-alone, desperate, melancholy feeling. I was incapable of running any faster, or doing anything more than just jog-trot. My heart thumped louder than my feet. Sun before seven, sun before seven.

  Len Ramsbottom, heading for the police station also, pulled up just ahead of me out on the road. Through a hole in a celluloid side-curtain of the Austin, I gabbled my fears out to him.

  ‘Get in,’ he snapped.

  As we puttered out on to the main street our old Dennis, its radiator steaming, chugged past in the opposite direction. Herbert was driving. It looked like Charlie Dabney’s fat face by Herbert’s shoulder and, I guessed, the third figure in the cab was that of Uncle Athol. It was hard to see clearly in the driving rain, but the three of them looked miserable and unusually pale, almost grey. They were staring straight ahead with set faces.

  Constable Len Ramsbottom and I stood out in the slashing rain in the middle of the backyard of the Federal Hotel and stared around hopelessly at the big oil drums, which served for trash cans, and the heaps of empty crates and casks. Everywhere the raindrops spurted and bounced, and everything (us included) was sodden wet. Faces, masked by windows and the curtains of upstairs rooms, watched us.

  We had explored every inch of the yard. We had prowled along the annexe verandah, ducking under the sheets and pillow slips which Prudence had pegged on the line. We had examined all the rooms opening off the verandah, turning everything over, even looking under the tubs in the washhouse. It was while we were in the washhouse that I must have seen it first, but my meter had failed to register. I must have thought it was a beltbuckle or something of that nature.

  By now, the early daylight had been so throttled by the evil clouds that we could have been abroad in a winter’s dusk. I looked up wretchedly at the tall young policeman’s face and he looked down just as wretchedly into mine.

  ‘Go up on the verandah outa the rain, Neddy,’ he said. ‘Oi won’t be long.’ He removed an improvised latch, a short length of 3 × 2 timber, and opened an iron gate in the high fence. It opened up on the alley between the hotel and the funeral parlour. Now I knew where he was going. The quarry! Oh no, please God! I stood in the rain paralysed by the realisation of what the simple words ‘too late’ could mean.

  ‘We’ll fa-hind her,’ Len Ramsbottom had said to me, as we had driven along the street in his little car. ‘We’ll pull this town apart, board by board, stone by stone, until we do.

  ‘Ber-rick by ber-rick,’ he had added, as we picked up steam. My eyes had glittered when I heard him say these things.

  I thought now: bone by bone. The thought was only a flick, but the drenching rain was neither wet nor cold enough to instantly revive me.

  The formless faces in the Federal were still watching, so the nape of my neck told me. My mind moved in ever diminishing, concentric circles until finally the yard and the annexe and the rain and the piece of loose iron banging on a roof all faded from me and I could only see one small article, a piece of black cloth. Like a mad thing, I rushed into the washhouse. The washhouse was frighteningly dark and empty. There it was on the floor. Gingerly I picked it up. A shiver zig-zagged up my spine.

  ‘Len!’ I screamed. ‘Len! Len! Len!’

  He met me at the top of the track down to the quarry.

  ‘Salter the Sensational,’ I babbled. ‘It’s his bow tie. It’s him that musta killed Angela. It’s him that’s killed Prudence. He hid in a shed in Smythe Street and waited for her one night, she told me. Because we laughed at him. He’s killed her! He’s killed her—’

  Len began to run back down into the quarry. He stopped and looked back at me. He looked demented.

  ‘Charlie Dabney,’ I yelled above the rain. ‘He’ll know where to find him.’

  He blundered past me like a buffalo. When he started to kick in the chapel doors, I tugged at his arm.

  ‘He’s in our truck,’ I panted. ‘Just as we came along they drove away with a load of junk heaped on our truck—Uncle Athol and Herbert and Mr Dabney. They’re headed for the dump.’

  ‘The dump?’ said Len, stupidly. He had already kicked one panel of the stout door clean out. It was inch-thick, kauri timber. He must have had a foot like a battle-axe.

  ‘The rubbish tip,’ I howled, gnawing at my knuckles. ‘Let’s catch him up and find out where Salter is.’

  We ran for the Austin.

  It was uphill to the rubbish tip and the little car made hard work of the trip. I leaned forward as if to help the motor. My fist was jammed in my mouth.

  ‘Oi didn’t believe her,’ groaned Len. ‘Jesus forgive me. Oi didn’t believe her.’

  So great was my horror of rats that I had resolved never again to revisit the tip. It was considered to be an honour to be invited by older boys, air-rifle owners, to accompany them to the tip on a rat-shooting expedition, but once had been more than enough for me. The rodent-infested gully, crammed with tins and paper and reeking filth was, for me, the stuff of nightmares. There was no need for me, as we scrambled from the car, to glance at the drunkenly leaning notice to glean what it announced. The signboard slanted at the same forty-five-degree angle as the driving rain. KLYNHAM BOROUGH RUBBISH TIP. POISON LAID FOR RATS.

  Our old Dennis tip-truck, resembling, beneath this lowering sky, some armoured, malevolent reptile of the past, was backed up to the gully and a great assortment of old timber and boxes and rubbish was noisily cascading off the tilted tray, down into the putrefaction below. The policeman and I ran across the squelching ground. Uncle Athol, Herbert and Charlie Dabney, stood aghast like the skeletons of lightning-devoured trees.

  ‘This Salter,’ rapped Len. ‘You know this man, Salter, Mr Dabney. Where is he? Where does he live? Quick now!’

  ‘He’s got Prudence,’ I gabbled. ‘He killed Angela. It’s him, I tell yuh. I found his bow tie. He might have killed Prudence, we gotta find him, we gotta. Prudence hasn’t been seen since last night. Where is he?’

  Charlie Dabney sank down on the sodden ground. He was soaked through and through and he was ashen-faced. ‘Brandy,’ he croaked. ‘Athol, don’t leave me to die. Brandy.’

  ‘The shop!’ Herbert suddenly yelled. ‘That’s where the swine’s been hiding. In the shop. Hiding somewhere in Charlie’s shop.’

  Again Len and I ran for the Austin. The little car turned for town as if it were chasing its tail. We hit every bump over the brow of the hill full steam ahead.

  This time Len put his shoulder to the front doors of Dabney’s shop. They flew apart with a splintering crack. The very first charge we were in. I followed him into the gloomy shop, rejoicing in his massive strength and giant outline.

  ‘Prudence!’ he called. ‘Come out, Salter! Don’t try to escape. Oi’m armed and Oi’ll shoot to kill.’

  We listened. I knew Len carried as many arms as a harbour dredge. I looked over my shoulder as if I were alone in the dark. The plate-glass window rippled with rain and the street beyond was a shadow-show. The door behind us banged brokenly and I jumped in terror. I remembered Prudence running out from the shop the night we had come with Herbert, the night she had reckoned she had seen Salter. I could see her beautiful big eyes
bright as stars with fear, and I could hear her husky voice saying ‘Standing among the coffins.’ I whimpered. To be standing breathing this lily-sick air, in this musty hole among the waxen wreaths in those round glass cases, and to be thinking of lovely, sparkling Prudence, was horrible. Stealthily, Len began to advance. It was all I could make myself do to follow him.

  Half-way along a narrow passage was a tiny office with a littered desk and a telephone. An empty brandy bottle stood beside the ‘phone. Half a cigar, well chewed, was on the floor. I ran after Len. We were in the big storeroom and cabinet-making shop. My heart nearly stopped as Len pounced forward and tore aside a grey velvet curtain. As a matter of fact, he ripped it beyond repair. We were confronted by a row of brandy bottles on a shelf. We saw the playing cards scattered on the floor. There were empty bottles everywhere.

  ‘Prudence,’ Len called.

  Our only answer was the muffled thunder of rain.

  ‘Prudence,’ I called. My voice sounded cracked and feeble.

  ‘Prudence!’ Len bellowed.

  We threw stealth away and began a frantic hunt. Ruthlessly, we tossed coffins over and pushed aside the obsolete furniture which cluttered the dark corners. Cobwebs reached for us. Along the echoing passages we stamped, smashing open creaking doors and peering into junk-stuffed rooms. Dust rose and fell all about us like a ground mist. At the very back, up a few steps, was a particularly horrible and very dark passageway with grime-coated windows, overlooking, I guessed, the quarry. We stopped half-way along. It led nowhere. I stood behind him, sick with hopelessness. As we came back along the passage we stopped dead.

  I can still claim my eyes were sharp, although I had missed the knife on our way along the passage. I can plead that the light, meagre as it was, had been against us. I saw the knife in time to prevent me banging my chin into the arm Len threw across the passage. As the building shuddered so did the hilt of the outsize knife, which riveted our vision. It was as if it had just thudded home into the wall above our heads. It was well over even big Len’s head and yet, it dawned on us after our first alarm had abated, it had been slammed up there, effortlessly, in passing. Each time the wind, having battled its way through the ranks of driving rain, shook the building, the hilt of the knife quivered realistically. An intrepid cobweb had already staked its claim on the wicked steel.

  ‘Listen!’ I hissed. ‘Listen!’ When I heard the stifled whimper again from behind us I had to clutch Len’s arm, or I would have fallen.

  ‘Prudence!’ he roared.

  It is very easy to abandon effort just when triumph is at hand. In our despair, we had very nearly done just that. At the end of the passage was an enormous, ancient, very ornately carved chest of drawers. It had escaped our attention that it was not flush with the end wall and that there were several yards of floor space behind it. My chances of shifting the chest on my own can be discounted, but Len heaved an end up and staggered backwards with it, nearly skittling me in the process. It was as if we had burst into the fetid, bone-strewn lair of a robber dog.

  Les pushed me back. ‘Get out, Neddy,’ he said. He thought she was dead, and so did I.

  ‘No, no,’ I whimpered.

  Prudence looked terrible lying on her back, half on a ruptured mattress, half on the filthy floor, among cheese rinds, empty fish and meat cans, chop bones, crusts, bottles, cigar ends, rat droppings. She was gagged with a blood-soaked handkerchief. Sash-cord, ripped tight across the gaping wound of her mouth, held the handkerchief in place. Her eyes were glazed with shock and suffering, but it is heavenly to recall the glint of recognition that refired them. The first word she mumbled when Len had eased off the gag was ‘Eddy’ and that, also, is heavenly to recall. Then she said, ‘Len!’ He would probably tell you it was the other way around, but she definitely spoke my name first.

  ‘Darling, darling,’ said Len, as he hacked through the sash-cord with which her arms and legs were trussed. She was scratched and bruised and all her front teeth were missing. She must have fought like a wounded bear. For all the beating she had taken and the hell she had been through, she was still alive and even dressed. Herbert had struck Salter down just in time to prevent his returning, fortified with brandy, to finish off his fell work.

  It is ironical that the best thing Herbert ever did in his life has to be kept as dark as a black pudding. Prudence knows, of course, but, girl in a million she is, it has gone no further. Even after all these years, the hunt goes on for Salter the Sensational. I know this is wrong, but what can we do? All I can say is that there could be no more fitting tombstone for that fiend than the rotten, tottering notice board at the Borough Tip.

  Klynham has a bush telegraph that made anything in ‘The Fire God’s Treasure’ look ridiculous. It was hard to credit the news could have circulated so quickly. Even Les Wilson was in the crowd that had gathered outside Dabney’s shop.

  ‘Well, Neddy,’ he said to me after we had watched Len Ramsbottom carrying my sister away with her arms around his neck, ‘I love Prudence so much that I’d uv died if anything had happened to her, but after Marjorie Headly last night sticking her tongue down muh throat and everything, I can’t help feeling maybe yuh sister is too old for me. Thas zactly what I thought, Neddy, as soon as Marjorie started this tongue business. I thought, well, Prudence Poindexter is certainly the prettiest girl in town, but I guess she’s just too old for me and too dern set in her ways.’

  I lacked the energy to make a suitable reply. My stomach was too empty to tolerate such feeble chatter.

  Len Ramsbottom put Prudence gently into his little car and tucked an overcoat around her. He kissed her tenderly on the forehead and cheeks. She seemed reluctant to take her arms away from around his neck.

  There was a noise like a concrete mixer starting up and I saw our old Dennis pull away from the kerb with Herbert crouched over the wheel.

  The downpour had spent itself, but it was easy to see that the rain was not over, not by a long chalk. The sky was low and thunderous. Only one yellow gleam had penetrated the scowling pile of cloud and it lay like a path along the glistening, black bitumen of the main street right from the misty, dripping elm tree clear along to the band rotunda. The people moved away in groups from under the shop verandah, and began to cross the street.

  I watched a wet-through Uncle Athol wander into the Federal Hotel grinning all over his chops. The thing that made me so mad was that I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking it was going to be to his advantage to have a cop in the family. I despised that man so much it went against the grain to even think of him as my uncle. In fact I decided never to address him as ‘Uncle’ any more. He was Ma’s brother, but there, as far as I was concerned, the relationship ended.

  ‘Athol,’ a voice called plaintively and Charlie Dabney waddled past. A man was plucking at his sleeve, detaining him, asking him what he was going to do about people breaking in the front door of the shop like that, but Charlie just waved him away and said something. I am not sure what he said exactly, but it sounded like ‘Episode closed!’

  Text Classics

  For reading group notes visit textclassics.com.au

  The Commandant

  Jessica Anderson

  Introduced by Carmen Callil

  Homesickness

  Murray Bail

  Introduced by Peter Conrad

  Sydney Bridge Upside Down

  David Ballantyne

  Introduced by Kate De Goldi

  A Difficult Young Man

  Martin Boyd

  Introduced by Sonya Hartnett

  The Australian Ugliness

  Robin Boyd

  Introduced by Christos Tsiolkas

  The Even More Complete

  Book of Australian Verse

  John Clarke

  Introduced by John Clarke

  Diary of a Bad Year

  JM Coetzee

  Introduced by Peter Goldsworthy

  Wake in Fright

  Kenneth Cook

  In
troduced by Peter Temple

  The Dying Trade

  Peter Corris

  Introduced by Charles Waterstreet

  They’re a Weird Mob

  Nino Culotta

  Introduced by Jacinta Tynan

  Careful, He Might Hear You

  Sumner Locke Elliott

  Introduced by Robyn Nevin

  Terra Australis

  Matthew Flinders

  Introduced by Tim Flannery

  My Brilliant Career

  Miles Franklin

  Introduced by Jennifer Byrne

  Cosmo Cosmolino

  Helen Garner

  Introduced by Ramona Koval

  Dark Places

  Kate Grenville

  Introduced by Louise Adler

  The Watch Tower

  Elizabeth Harrower

  Introduced by Joan London

  The Mystery of

  a Hansom Cab

  Fergus Hume

  Introduced by Simon Caterson

  The Glass Canoe

  David Ireland

  Introduced by Nicolas Rothwell

  The Jerilderie Letter

  Ned Kelly

  Introduced by Alex McDermott

  Bring Larks and Heroes

  Thomas Keneally

  Introduced by Geordie Williamson

  Strine

  Afferbeck Lauder

  Introduced by John Clarke

  Stiff

  Shane Maloney

  Introduced by Lindsay Tanner

  The Middle Parts of Fortune

  Frederic Manning

  Introduced by Simon Caterson

  The Scarecrow