Angel Rock

by Darren Williams

  Flood took the photograph and peered at it in the flickering light of the lantern. After a while he put it down and reached over and picked up a pipe and a tin of tobacco from a small table. He filled the pipe and lit it with a match and started puffing. Gibson sneezed but Flood didn’t seem to notice.

  “What is your business with Mr. Smith?”

  “I want to ask him about a town called Angel Rock,” answered Gibson, his heart beginning to thump, “and a few things that have gone on there recently. Why don’t you just tell me if he’s here.”

  “You’re wasting your time, Mr. Gibson.”

  “Maybe I should be the judge of that.”

  “You’re wasting your time because Mr. Smith passed on, nearly a year ago.”

  It took Gibson a few moments to absorb Flood’s statement and when he had he rejected it absolutely.

  “Mr. Smith is dead,” Flood said again, as if he had read his thoughts.

  “He . . . he can’t be.”

  “He is. I assure you. I give you my word.”

  Gibson looked at him. He looked into his calm, grey eyes and his certainty began to ebb away like so much water.

  “But I thought . . . I was sure he’d gone back to Angel Rock. I was sure he’d taken Flynn.”

  “Flynn?”

  “Henry Gunn’s son. Henry told me Smith blamed him for your daughter’s death. I thought he’d gone back . . . to get even with him.”

  Flood puffed on his pipe and looked around, as if inspecting the tent, and then he nodded.

  “After Annie drowned,” he began, “Henry did come to me. He told me of Smith’s fascination with my daughter. I found it hard to believe, and as for his accusation that Smith was somehow responsible for her death . . . well, I can tell you, Mr. Gibson, he loved that girl like she was his own—he would never have harmed her. No one knows what happened that day, but so many things changed that I can only come to the conclusion that she was called home for a purpose. Many good things—this place, perhaps—might not have come into being.”

  “So you didn’t believe Henry at all?”

  “No. Not until some years later. It took that long for me to realise that Smith hadn’t seen what I had the day we both gave our lives to Christ, the day Adam Carney baptised us. I had no idea that his heart hadn’t been changed as mine had.”

  “What did you see?”

  Flood ignored the question and continued. “Mr. Smith was still enslaved by his baser desires. It took time, but finally his habits were uncovered.”

  “What happened?”

  “I banished him.”

  “No, I mean, what did he do?”

  “He pursued a young woman who was . . . inappropriate for him.”

  “That’s all?”

  “He forced himself upon her.”

  Gibson nodded. “And for that, all you did was send him away?”

  “No, you must understand. He was a part of this family. I trusted him implicitly. I heard his version of events and I almost believed him too, but I sent him away; I banished him from New Eden, for the good of my people, although I wasn’t wholly certain, and I told him he could never return. This was the harshest penalty for him for, you see, Mr. Smith never had any kin of his own and for some of us, to belong is all that matters, to be bound by faith, by loyalty, or by blood. But the price we pay for the bond is that even the smallest crimes cause a far greater hurt.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You know it to be true, I think.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re getting at.”

  “Then why are you here, Mr. Gibson? Why did you come all this way? Are you kin to this boy?”

  Gibson shook his head. “Tell me how Smith died, and where,” he said, tersely.

  “In Melbourne. In a boarding house there. I was called down as his next of kin. There’d been a fire. Two others were also killed.”

  “You saw the body?”

  “I buried the man.”

  Gibson shook his head again. He couldn’t believe it.

  “Now, Mr. Gibson, I have duties . . .”

  Gibson felt everything slipping away. He wanted to ask him about Billy, but, in the end, Flood was right; it was his own kin—his sister— that had brought him all this way.

  “Listen, you preached about heaven just now—that’s where you’d all rather be, right?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Yet suicide is a sin?”

  “A grave sin.”

  “What about an unhappy kid, promised all this glory, mightn’t they want to take a short cut to it?”

  Flood shook his head. “Life must be endured, Mr. Gibson.”

  “But how’re children supposed to know that?”

  The eldest of the girls who had seen him by the tree came running in before Flood could answer. She stopped and stared when she saw him. Flood held out his arm to her.

  “Mr. Gibson, this is my daughter, Evangeline.”

  “We’ve met.”

  Gibson looked into her wide, luminous, fearless eyes—eyes that had seen nothing else but this valley and its peace—and felt like weeping. He saw the trust she had in her father and he knew then what he’d said was true—Smith was dead.

  “You remarried?” he managed to say, pulling himself together.

  “Yes.”

  He stood abruptly after another moment. “I should be going.”

  “I’m sure we could find you a bed for the night.”

  “No. I really should be going.”

  He turned and left the tent but stopped a few yards from it and looked back. Flood stood at the entrance, his arm round his daughter’s shoulders.

  “Take care of them, Reverend,” was all he could think of to say.

  “I will, Mr. Gibson. I will.”

  He followed the moonlit track out of the valley and found his car where he’d left it by the side of the road at about eight o’clock. Out on the highway despair began to creep into his thoughts, blooming like a drop of ink in water, growing and growing until he could almost feel its presence round the car. He’d been wrong about Smith and being wrong was the worst kick in the guts he could remember. Little Flynn was lying dead at the bottom of a mineshaft somewhere just as Pop had said and Darcy . . . Darcy would share the same fate as his sister and he was powerless to prevent it.

  He hunched down over the wheel and stared at the empty road and its broken white lines of division as they passed beneath him. New Eden to Angel Rock. The two places felt like a pair of lonely ports with nothing in between but a black and empty sea.

  He descended into the valley just before dawn and found it blanketed in thick fog. He remembered crossing the harbour bridge as a kid one morning and seeing the whole of the city flooded by the same, nothing clear of it but the arch of the bridge, a few buildings, and everything else drowned under the eerie silver. He glimpsed the dark bulk of the ranges out to the west and then he slid down into the mist.

  The car’s headlights made little impression down the road and he slowed. In the mirror he could see the fog, stained red, swirling and writhing in the car’s wake like a dancer’s gown, like a live thing. He wound down the window and hung out his head. Nothing but soft, watery white all about. Even with the sound of the car’s engine he could tell that the land around was empty and that he was the only disturbance in it.

  He drove on. Sometimes the ghostly limbs of nearby trees loomed out at him and once, overhead, through a gap in the mist, he saw the waxing moon, skimming along, tailing him. After a half-hour he thought he must be nearing the town. The fog began to change. It cast itself into shapes that settled, obstacle-like, across the road before him and across the paddocks on either side of the road. Some looked almost solid, able to cause damage to the steel of the car, and he flinched as he reached them, pierced them, swept through. Others were wispy and spectral and if he saw objects or faces in them he permitted no names to form and attach. He felt he could have been flying the way the shapes came and went like
clouds, one after the other, leaving him untouched yet slightly damper. Then, suddenly, there was no more mist, and the land, grey and still, stepped back into the spaces it had occupied. He breathed a sigh of relief and sped up, driving the next few miles thinking only of bed and sleep, imagining the pillow already under his head. He crested a rise and saw the outline of the Rock against the grey dawn sky. He put his foot down and roared down the hill. The road ploughed through a stand of tall gums and then took a sweeping left over another little rise. The car rocked on its springs as it cleared it. He sawed away at the wheel to line up the next little right. When he was halfway through the corner he saw, up ahead, a whole little fleet of tiny, tremulous moons, all a soft amber-rose and all floating a few feet above the ground by the side of the road. It took him a moment to realise what they were and by then he was almost upon them. The kangaroos, a dozen or more, were standing still as totems on the grass verge and some were on the road itself. All their heads were turned in his direction, as if they’d been waiting a long time for someone to appear down the road, maybe for a man named Gibson in particular, their glowing eyes ready to see to the quick of him. He braked, swerved. As the car flashed by he glanced out the left-side window, catching glimpses of curved backs as the creatures bounded away into the darkness. He pictured his own pale face looking out of the roaring metal box of car and realised they’d probably been just as startled as he. He looked back to the road, but in the next instant there was a grey shape in the beams that seemed to fill the whole windscreen. Almost simultaneously he blinked, ducked, and swung the car over to the right. He heard a bang as the car’s bumper collected a marker post and then he squeezed his eyes shut again as shards of white-painted wood clattered up and over the windscreen and roof. When he opened his eyes a second later the car was still off the road and skittering along in the wet grass and loose gravel at the side of it. The next marker post along flashed by, inches from the corner of the car, its reflector taking the glare from the headlights and blazing it back a seething red. Gently, he steered the car back onto the road and slowed down, until the faded white lines on the road were just gliding by underneath the car, each with a distinct beginning and end. He looked in the mirror but there was nothing behind but an empty road. It had all happened too quickly to curse, or think, and his heart took a long time to wind down and stop pounding against his ribs to be let out.

  21

  Grace stared up at the curtained window. It was morning but it was still dark in her room and very warm and airless. They’d returned from fishing the evening before and even though the whole time they’d been out there she’d barely thought of the man she’d seen, once back in her room she kept seeing the vivid image of him every time she closed her eyes. His black, staring eyes and his pale, hairless skin. Frustrated, she tried thinking of something good to force the image of him away. She closed her eyes and imagined she was dancing in her best dress with Charlie Perry, that she was kissing him, that he was holding her in his arms. It seemed to work and after a while she rolled over onto her stomach, wriggled around on her mess of bedding until the nubby seam of the blanket was in the right place, then began to slide her hips back and forth against the seam until a tingling warmth began to build and spread. Her brow furrowed and she thought of his hand on her bottom, of him touching her, and then she concentrated instead on the sensations beginning to radiate out and up into her belly, making everything feel delicious, making her breaths puff out faster and faster. She felt the beads of sweat break out on her brow and she thought she might have to bite her tongue to stop herself making a sound, but then a sudden banging noise made her freeze. She lay very still, not breathing, her heart pounding away inside her. It had sounded like a knock, and so loud she thought it had been on her own door. There was nothing else— no call, no following knock—just a distant clang that made the bed tremble beneath her. She hopped up and opened the door and then stood there, breathing hard, listening. More muffled sounds were coming from the station. She walked down the hall and opened the door to the connecting passage.

  When she put her head round the doorway the first thing she noticed was her father’s back. He was standing just inside the room with the two cells in it, his shoulders heaving as if he’d been working hard, his arm out and resting on one of the bars. He was looking down. He didn’t hear her come in and it wasn’t until she was by his side and had let out a gasp of amazement that he even realised she was there.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Billy. Billy Flood,” Pop said, pointing back towards the house, but Grace had already turned on her heel and run.

  “Tom!”

  “Wha—?”

  She shook his shoulder again. “Wake up!”

  “What? What is it?”

  “Come and look! It’s the man I saw. It’s the man I saw when we were looking for you. It’s Billy Flood.”

  “Huh?” He sat up on the bed and rubbed his eyes. “Who?”

  “Just come and look!”

  When he stood up she got behind him and pushed him along the hall to the station. Pop was sitting at his desk inside.

  “Just a look,” he said, sternly, more to Grace than to him. She pushed him round the corner. At first he couldn’t see anything. Even though the sun was up it was very dim inside the cell. All he could see was what looked like a scruffy pile of blankets or clothes, but then, as his eyes adjusted, he saw the man’s face. His head was back and his mouth was open and he was snoring loudly.

  “It’s him,” Grace whispered beside him. “He was out at the Steeles’. He climbed through the window into Darcy’s room and put on some of her clothes. Look, he’s still got her dress wrapped round him there.” She pointed. “Pop says he’s really really drunk. Said he fought like a Kilkenny cat all the way here.”

  They looked at him a little longer, at his lank mane of hair, at his yellow teeth, at his waxy skin, and then Pop cleared his throat to get their attention and made a shooing motion with his hand.

  When Pop went to have his lunch they slipped back into the station to look at Billy once again.

  “Come on,” said Grace, urgently. “Pop’ll be back in a minute.”

  They expected him to be asleep still, but when they peered round the door and in through the bars they saw that he was very much awake. They froze, staring, and Billy stared back at them until almost an inch of ash fell down onto his chest from the end of the cigarette he was smoking. They looked at one another and then Grace stepped forward.

  “You frightened me!” she blurted out. “Why’d you do that?”

  “Didn’t mean to.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Heard those boys was missing. Thought I could help.”

  “Why didn’t you search with everyone else?”

  “Do things better on me own.”

  Tom stepped forward. “Billy,” he breathed.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you find . . . anything?”

  Billy squinted at him through the smoke, but didn’t answer.

  “Tom’s one of them,” said Grace. Billy sat up to take a better look.

  “My little brother. He’s still missing.”

  “Yeah, I know. Thing is, maybe I know where to look for him.”

  Tom glanced over at Grace. “You do? Where?”

  “Tell us,” Grace hissed, “or I’ll get Pop!”

  Billy looked at each of them in turn and then he shook his head. “No, if he comes, I won’t say nothin’.”

  Tom stared at him, aghast. “Why not?”

  “Just won’t. Won’t tell him.”

  “You have to!”

  “Don’t have to do nothing I don’t want . . . but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I’ll show you all right.” He tapped his forehead, then pointed at Tom. “Right up here it is. Fresh as daisies.”

  “You’ll show me?”

  “Don’t listen to him, Tom! Pop will make him tell!”

  Billy sprang u
p from the bed and came to the bars and gripped them. Tom and Grace jumped back.

  “If you let me out,” he said quietly, to Tom, “I’ll take you there. Right now. If you don’t, I won’t tell. I won’t ever tell. Not Pop, not no one. I hate being in a cage.”

  “Don’t listen, Tom! Don’t listen! Pop will make him tell!” Grace grabbed his arm and began to pull him towards the door. “Let’s go!”

  Billy glared at her. “You’re Darcy’s little friend,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Grace, stopping what she was doing and staring up at him.

  “Why don’t you just go away.”

  Tom looked at her. He didn’t know whether she was about to cry or fly into a rage. He took her hand off his arm and held it, then turned her to him.

  “Where are the keys?”

  “Tom, no! You can’t!”

  Billy smiled, and from the gap between his front teeth came a snake of blue smoke, its head wriggling and dissolving a few inches out from his mouth.

  “Up on the wall there, kid,” he said.

  Tom looked. Behind Pop’s desk hung a loop of brass with a brace of heavy keys attached to it. He headed over to it.

  “Tom!”

  “I have to! You heard him. He won’t tell Pop.”

  Grace watched him lift the keys down and return to the bars.

  “You promise you’ll show me?”

  “Yep.”

  Tom handed in the keys and Billy took them and began to try each one in the lock.

  “I’ll meet you up under the Rock,” he said. “Have to go get me truck first.”

  “When?”

  “ ’Bout an hour.”

  A key turned in the lock and Billy pushed on the door and stepped out. Grace backed away and Tom went and stood by the station’s front door. Billy paused there on his way out.

  “Don’t forget, you promised me,” said Tom.

  “Yep,” said Billy.

  They watched him walk down the path and then turn right into the street. He didn’t look back. They stood for a few moments and then Tom turned to Grace.

  “Are you coming?”

  “I can’t stay here. Pop’ll kill me.”

  “It’s all right. I’ll tell Pop I did it. He’ll understand.”