Angel Rock

by Darren Williams

“N-no, just watching.”

  “Well, you can pay like everyone else. Go on, piss off.”

  Tom jumped up and ran, his ears and cheeks burning with humiliation. He didn’t pause to see what had become of the man in the shadows. As he ran the public address system crackled and squealed into life and the booming voice of Mr. Newman began to call for the crowd to start making its way inside. Tom squeezed back his tears and delved into his pocket and hurried away towards the big top, hard-won ticket in one hand, Ham in the other.

  The sawdust he’d gathered was strewn across the single, spotlit ring. The smell of the rosewood, turpentine and pine shavings mingled with the musty scent of the damp canvas overhead and the perfumes of the women around him and made his head spin. He found his seat in the middle of one of the little stands and sat down. He settled Ham in his lap and then glanced around. Across the ring he spotted Sergeant Mather sitting in a front row, his arms folded, Grace next to him. He couldn’t see Charlie, or Leonard, or Sonny, and it wasn’t until Mr. Newman strode out into the middle of the ring with a microphone that he saw them, slouching in the darkness between two of the stands, so far back they were almost against the tent wall. Then the lights around the edges of the tent winked off and he couldn’t see anything but the ring. Mr. Newman, his voice huge, his tongue stretching out words to ridiculous lengths, introduced the first act, and everything else faded away.

  There were jugglers first, then a little girl who did tricks on the back of a short-legged pony, then clowns who pretended to get drunk and belt each other, and a young woman in a sequined costume who hung upside down from a swing and struck poses. There was a man dressed as a genie who conjured a rope from a jar which his monkey assistant promptly climbed, so high he was almost lost in the darkness at the top of the tent. Then the clowns returned dressed as matadors and proceeded to fight with two dogs dressed as bulls. After the clowns Mr. Newman re-entered the ring on the back of the elephant Tom had seen the day before. He clambered down the elephant’s shoulder and then tapped its leg with a long staff. The elephant stood on two legs on a red and blue stand, counted to ten, sucked up water from a bucket with its trunk and blasted it at an unsuspecting clown. People laughed hard and then the elephant departed and then there was a man—Tom recognised him as one of the clowns from before— who took pieces of burning tissue paper in his mouth and then seemed to exhale flames. When he’d finished with the fire he picked up a long-handled whip and snuffed out lit candles with its cracking end. Then he called for volunteers from the audience and when no one came forward he strode around the edge of the ring until he came to where Pop and Grace were sitting. He stepped across the footlights and held out his hand to Grace as though he was after a dance. At first she refused to go, refused to budge from her seat. The spotlight fell upon her and Tom could see, all too plainly, her unwillingness. He held his breath. Pop bent and whispered something in her ear after what seemed like a very long time had passed, and it was only then that she stood and took the performer’s hand. He could see Sonny and Leonard snickering to each other and a wave of blind fury made him grind his teeth together. The whipcracker called for applause and the crowd gave it in spades, relieved that someone else had been chosen. A clown, smoking a cigarette, wandered into the ring. He pretended not to notice the presence of the whipcracker, or the fact that he’d interrupted his act. The whipcracker had Grace stand to one side and then he called the clown over.

  Who? Me? asked the clown, silently, pointing to his chest.

  The whipcracker responded with a curl of his finger. He stood the clown in the centre of the ring and had him bend forward. The clown began to fret. He ran around in circles and the whipcracker admonished him to keep still. Then the clown began puffing away on the cigarette as if he might smoke it away and escape his fate that way, but the whipcracker, quick as a wink, snapped out his whip and knocked the cigarette from the clown’s painted lips.

  Then it was Grace’s turn. The whipcracker walked her over to the centre of the ring, put an unlit cigarette between her lips, then walked back, very slowly, to his mark. Tom’s heart began to hammer away even harder. Even though he’d seen the demonstration of the whipcracker’s skill he still wasn’t convinced that there wasn’t some trick to it, something Grace couldn’t possibly know. He jumped—not of his own volition—to his feet, and was oblivious at first to the calls from behind for him to sit down, only slowly becoming aware of the whispered chorus of his name all around. Tom Ferry. Tom Ferry.

  When the whipcracker noticed the commotion he glanced up at him. Red-faced, he sat down, his legs rubbery, grateful for the dim light. The whipcracker turned back to Grace. She stood with the cigarette between her lips, her chin up, her eyes blazing, defying the whipcracker to knock it out or face the consequences. Tom was struck then by how pretty she was—amazed that he’d never really noticed before—and how brave she was being, especially after the way she’d been chosen, as though she’d taken her fear, her trepidation, and rendered them into different things altogether.

  The whipcracker took long, slow aim then eased back his arm. The crowd went silent. Tom held his breath and almost shut his eyes. With a quick flick from his wrist and an accompanying loud crack the whipcracker caused the end of the cigarette to fly off into the air. Grace didn’t move back an inch, but she flinched and her eyes squeezed shut reflexively. When she opened them again she took the remaining stub of cigarette from her mouth and looked at it, then smiled with relief.

  Tom, in the dark, smiled along with her—for her—and then watched as she walked back to her seat, flicking her long, dark hair back over her shoulder. Pop gave her arm a quick squeeze as she sat, then whispered something to her and kissed the top of her head.

  The whistling, roaring noise in his ears subsided as the lights dimmed once more. After a minute or so, Mr. Newman, almost whispering into the microphone, announced the lions and the lion-tamer. The curtains at the far end of the tent slowly drew apart to reveal the three lions, each sitting on a pedestal, all enclosed within an oval cage. The lion-tamer, his face masked, had them jump from one pedestal to another, then through hoops, then over one another. He opened one of the lion’s mouths and seemed to put his head in it. Everyone gasped. As a finale, he had the smaller lioness, snarling and showing her teeth, leap through a ring he’d set aflame. Tom thought it was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen, but it also left him feeling faintly dejected.

  After the lights had come on and the crowd had begun to make their slow, chattering way homewards he slipped away through the dark, still a little dazed by all he had seen. He made it home without being accosted by Sonny or anyone else. He shut Ham in the laundry and then went inside. He found Henry asleep on the couch in front of the television set, empty bottles strewn all over the floor in front of him. He went and turned off the set and looked down at his stepfather. It wasn’t quite hatred, but he couldn’t name what he did feel as he stood over him. At least with Henry like this and his mother always asleep he’d been able to do as he pleased for the past few weeks. He bent and picked up Henry’s cigarettes and removed a couple from the pack. He spied a box of matches and put them in his pocket with the cigarettes and then he went out and retrieved Ham from the laundry and took him into his room.

  He lay awake for a long time, just thinking. Just before eleven o’clock, he heard Henry stir and mutter and curse, then one of his Hank Williams records began playing. About three songs in, the needle jumped and squawked across the vinyl. Henry let out a burst of obscenities and Tom heard him storm from the house. He slipped from his bed and curled his head round the door just in time to see Henry, standing on the front step, fling the black disc out across the road with all his might. It sailed out over the river, finally arcing down and slicing into the water with a faint, wet chink. Henry stood there for a moment, swaying slightly, and then he went out the gate and headed into town. Tom, not at all curious about where he was going, went back to bed.

  When he finally fell asleep t
he dreams returned. He stood in an open field before a thickly timbered slope. He was all alone and it was very dark but then the moon rose above the trees and lit everything up with its silvery glow. Then, from the edge of the trees, a shirtless man came walking, straps of raw muscle jerking him forward like a bloody marionette. In the crook of his arm he carried a small, pale child and in his other hand a huge, black shotgun. Tied around his head and covering his nose and mouth was a ragged piece of dark gauze—a doctor of antimedicine on rounds. Through the cloth Tom could see that his mouth was full of long, sharp teeth and on his slow and rubbery dream legs he turned and ran—ran for his life.

  14

  Gibson had woken very early that morning and left the station house in the pale dawn light to the sound of warbling magpies and the sun just turning the tops of the hills to the west of town a fine shade of gold. He was on the front step of the police station in a town called Woodburn a little after half past eight. The local copper was hung over and grumbled constantly, but described Billy to him and the truck he reputedly drove.

  “He cuts firewood up in the forests most of the year. You might find him, if you’re lucky, but if he doesn’t want to be found he won’t be. That’s how I see it.”

  With that he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a scrap of paper and a pencil. He sketched a rough map and handed it across the desk. Gibson thanked him and then he went and bought a cup of coffee and sat on a covered picnic table by the river. He smoked a cigarette while a rain shower came and went.

  When he continued westwards an unbroken blanket of low grey cloud descended and the day became gloomy enough for headlights.

  “Miserable,” he said to himself. “Fucking miserable.”

  He drove west and it was only when he climbed into the ranges that the clouds thinned and the day brightened. Further west and the country began to look like it had only ever heard rumours of rain. He stopped in Tenterfield for a bite to eat and when he mentioned the rain on the coast to the young waitress in the service station café she said they’d had no rain for many months. She said it with her eyes wide open as though she were talking about the Second Coming or a visitation of angels. She said there were bushfires burning to the west of town. He expressed what he thought was sufficient disbelief at the absurdities of the weather and then watched her blue-uniformed bottom as she walked back to the kitchen, his thoughts suddenly as libidinous as any eighteen-year-old’s. He wondered whether all the good country air was to blame.

  He inspected the policeman’s scrap of paper, then his own map. The state forest he’d sketched was crisscrossed with roads and logging tracks and fire trails. Even if Flood were there he might look for weeks and still not find him.

  He set out anyway. With very little breeze to disperse it the smoke from the bushfires veiled the horizon in every direction. He saw no green Bedfords on the way to the forest and when he arrived there he settled down to the task of driving up every track he thought he could follow on the map. Some of them were overgrown, shrubs and long grass slithering by underneath the car, and some petered out into nothing. Up and down the heavily timbered hills, the pale sky appearing and disappearing. He followed fire trails where the land was burnt and blackened on one side and full of life on the other. Crows watched his progress from their dead tree perches.

  He stopped and asked everyone he came across whether they had seen Billy or his green Bedford. Some said they had seen it a few weeks back, a month. Some asked him if he was a cop and what he was wanting Billy for and he answered that he wasn’t a cop but a relative with important news. Maybe it was because he didn’t look much like a cop that they believed him. He followed directions and edged closer to the area some had said Billy frequented. He met an old-timer by the side of one track and asked him. The man said he hadn’t seen Billy but spoke of a particular spot. Gibson asked him to show him on the map and he leant into the car and traced the track to it with a grimy finger. He asked him if he wanted to know why he was looking for Billy but the man just said no and walked on.

  He found the track about an hour later and headed down it. He searched until mid-afternoon and then, when the fuel gauge had dipped down below the half-full marker, he stopped the car and traced the path back to town on the map and wondered how long it would take him to get back there. When he looked up again through the windscreen he saw green. He blinked. He blinked again and saw the curved outline of a vehicle through the trees. His heart started to drum in his chest. He pulled his Smith & Wesson from the glovebox and stuck it in between his belt and the small of his back and then he opened the car door as quietly as he could and hopped out.

  His ears were still ringing from the noise of the car but, gradually, he began to make out the sounds of birds, the throbbing of an engine somewhere in the gully just beyond the truck. He walked on, his shoes crunching in the gritty earth. Tiny green finches flitted around him. When he reached the Bedford he put his hand on its bonnet, gingerly, as if it were not quite real and might dissolve at his touch. He licked his lips and immediately wiped them dry with the back of his arm, surprised at how nervous he was. He walked round to the side of the truck and looked in through the window. Nothing out of the ordinary. A cardboard box, scraps of paper. The seat, the steering wheel and the gear stick were all polished by long hours of hard use and all needed a man of flesh and blood to operate them. Then he saw the black outline of a rifle, its stock scored and battered, on the floor. He tried the door but it was locked. He walked round to the other door. Locked too. He moved along to the rear. The truck’s tray was half full of neatly stacked wood.

  He licked his lips again and walked towards the sound he could hear. It was some sort of small engine. The trees around him were ironbarks and bloodwoods, their trunks rough, dark, grim. Overhead, as he walked, smoke came curling through them. Everything else, except for the engine noise, seemed silent. The birds had all stopped singing, then the engine spluttered and went silent too. Gibson stopped, looked up, listened, continued on. Before he had taken another dozen steps smoke was all around him like a mist. It was as though a giant wave had broken over the country, changing the light to an eerie, otherworldly yellow. His shadow became weak and soft-edged where before it had been blacker and sharper. He shook his head and cleared his throat and called.

  “Billy Flood!”

  There was no answer. His voice sounded puny and unfamiliar. He walked down into the little gully and found a saw straddling a fallen log. The blade was halfway through. Stacked beside the saw was a small pile of freshly split wood and next to that a deeply worn chopping block. A fire nearby had burnt down to embers and beside the embers was a shapeless gunny sack and a small wallaby, partly skinned, its head missing, the red meat drying at the edges. Long-bodied black ants clambered over both.

  “Billy Flood!” he shouted again.

  The smoke became thicker and the breeze which had begun only a few minutes before freshened and Gibson thought again of what the waitress had said about bushfires. He waited for a couple more minutes, called a few more times, and then a man appeared, quite casually, from behind a tree.

  “Yes?” he said.

  He had a large forehead with thick veins straining at the temples, thick and high cheekbones, a scrub of dark beard. His skull seemed two sizes too large for his skin and his hair was long and lank and hung to his shoulders and might have been fair if it had been clean. His clothes were patched and dirty and on his head was a battered felt hat, stitched and mended with brown string. It would have been hard to guess how old he was had Gibson not known they were around the same vintage. He was an average height, but thick with muscle, and a wedge-shaped logsplitter rested on his shoulder. In his other hand was a rifle. Gibson’s insides went a little cold. He thought he must have circled round to his truck to collect it—unless he had two.

  “Yes?” the man repeated.

  “Your name is Billy Flood?”

  “Yes.”

  Flood leant the rifle very deliberately a
gainst a tree and then took the splitter off his shoulder and rested its head on the ground and crossed his hands over the end of the haft. His face was blank but Gibson saw the suspicion in his eyes.

  “Son of Horace Flood?”

  “Might be. Who are you?”

  “Gibson,” he said. “Police.”

  Gibson saw a shadow flit across the man’s face.

  “What do you want?”

  “To talk to you.”

  Flood walked forward until he was only a foot away from Gibson’s chest. Gibson braced himself, his hand creeping up towards his gun.

  “What about?”

  “Darcy Steele.”

  Flood stared at him, his brow furrowing, and then he stepped back.

  “Tea?”

  Gibson was caught off guard by the question and blinked a few times before replying.

  “Yes . . . if you’re making some.” His reply sounded odd and overly formal, belonging to another time and place, and he almost laughed at himself. Flood, however, seemed not to notice as he set the splitter next to the rifle and gathered up a handful of twigs. Gibson sat down slowly on the log and watched as he rekindled the fire and produced a half-full billy of water from alongside the log.

  “What about Darcy?” said Flood, as he set the billy in the flames. Gibson noticed that one of the fingers on his hand was just a stump. He also saw long scars running up his arm from the wrist.

  “You know her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Seen her lately?”

  “No.”

  “You sure? Haven’t been around the farm lately?”

  “No. Not the farm. The dogs.” Billy hung out his tongue and panted to demonstrate.

  “When was the last time you saw her then?”

  “A while ago. Big old Ezra saw me and set a dog on my tail. Had to run hard.”

  “Did Darcy see you?”

  “No, I only saw her, from the trees.”