Angel Rock

by Darren Williams

  “Maybe you’re a bit mad as well, then.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Don’t worry. I see all sorts with these eyes. Good things . . . bad. I seen the Lord Jesus once, by a river too. A real funny feller he was. Let me eat his grub and everything. I thought he were as real as you and me sittin’ here but in the morning he was gone and not a trace of him.”

  “What else have you seen?”

  “Like you, I seen a few of the dead. After I been drinkin’ a bit I see ’em.”

  “You ever seen your sister?”

  He nodded. “I told Father Adam. He said it weren’t her but a shade of her. He said I should not be drinking.”

  “What’s a shade? A ghost?”

  “Yeah, something as real as a dream but not quite. I’m not talking about dreams. Dreams are a different thing altogether. I’m talking about seeing things with the eyes in your head.” He jabbed the stump of his finger up at his own.

  “I know you are.”

  They smoked for a while and Tom’s head began to spin again.

  “Who’s Father Adam?” he asked, stubbing out the cigarette on the rock.

  “Old Father Adam. Adam Carney. Good mate of my old man. Helped raise us. He used to help me, after I got out of the hospital. He used to settle me down, help me with the drink, but then he couldn’t help me no more either. Not even him.”

  “You drink a lot.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Does Father Adam still live around here?”

  “Used to.”

  “Why don’t you go and see him?”

  “Don’t know where he is,” he said. He stood abruptly and clambered down off the rock and went over to where the stream trickled down over the rocks to drink. When he came back Tom was ready with another question.

  “Why’d you go into Darcy’s room the other day?”

  “Why’d I what?”

  “Go into her room. Darcy’s.”

  Billy scratched his head. “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember why?”

  “I don’t remember doing it.”

  “You were drunk.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. That drink, it’ll do it.”

  “You didn’t see Darcy, did you? Before she ran away?”

  “No, didn’t see her.”

  Tom chewed on his lip.

  “Billy, you should go and find where Father Adam is. Maybe you wouldn’t need to drink any more. Maybe you could live a normal life.”

  “Normal? Strewth! Normal. I don’t know if a normal life is a thing for me.”

  “Don’t you want to live in a house, and have a wife, some kids?”

  Billy looked at him in amazement and Tom knew from the look that he’d never really thought about it before.

  “No, I don’t want them things,” he answered, quietly. “God don’t want them things for me. Normal people don’t see the things I do. My wife would have to be mad along with me, and we’d have mad children. Too damn right we would.”

  Ham began to whimper a little, and then he stopped and pricked up his ears. He lifted his nose into the air and sniffed. Billy and Tom both watched him.

  “What do you think it is?”

  Billy looked around. Something about the way he did—slowly, deliberately—put Tom on edge, but then, after a few moments had passed, Billy relaxed and shook his head.

  “Food, that’s what it is. He can smell food cookin’.”

  “Yeah, must be. I think he’s hungry.”

  Tom stroked Ham’s flank and put his finger in his mouth. His little teeth pressed down on his skin and Tom could feel his hot breath.

  “He’s a good little dog,” said Billy. “Looks like he’d be a good gunnie.”

  “Yeah? One of the Steeles’ dogs tried to eat him yesterday. I . . . killed it.”

  “You killed it? You killed one of big old Ezra’s dogs? With what? A rifle?”

  “No, a rock.”

  “A rock?”

  “Yeah. A rock. I didn’t want to. It just happened. I had to help Ham. I had to help Grace.”

  Billy nodded, impressed. “Maybe it had to be done,” he said. “A mean dog like that, he would have used yours for a bit of fun. He would have played with him maybe, then killed him, or maybe he would have just killed him. Either way he’d be dead.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. I feel sick when I think about it, though.”

  “I’ve killed a lot of things. I always felt a bit sick. Sometimes it’s just got to be done.”

  Tom nodded. He knew it was true.

  “That Grace, she’s real sweet.”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  Tom fished in his pocket, pulled out the photo of Darcy he’d taken from the kitchen table, and handed it to Billy.

  “Here,” he said. “I found it.”

  Billy took it from him and stared at it for a long time without saying anything. Finally he nodded, slowly, and thanked Tom. Tom said he was welcome.

  They sat up there until the sun was low in the sky behind them. Billy began to tell Tom in a soft voice of all he had seen in the past few years in terms of trees and animals and rain and sun and clouds, his hands describing the tussles he’d had with cranky old kangaroos and dingoes and wild pigs. As darkness fell the sky emptied of clouds and birds and the brightest stars came out and claimed the vacancies. Underneath them, around the town, the darkening country spread out in every direction, barely broken by light of any description. To the south, just over the horizon, they could see the faint lights of another township but to the east and north there was nothing except the odd yellow light of a facing window and sometimes a car’s headlights. Away down the valley they could see fires flickering orange like the eyes of animals.

  “Burning off scrub,” said Billy.

  “Yeah.”

  Every so often a plume of bright orange sparks would reach into the sky as the fires began to collapse into themselves and when the wind blew in a certain direction they could smell their smoke; the faint, sweet scent of burning rosewood. Tom breathed it in and wondered whether he could ever leave the valley, or whether he ever would. He lay back on the rock and watched the great black arc of the summer sky wheel around its load of stars, clearer and in greater number than he’d ever seen in his life before and each alive with its own colour. Meteorites began to spin and burn across the sky near the rising moon. He imagined the chimpanzee Ham riding up there, and all the astronauts, Flynn at the controls of a rocket—a long sleek thing—in a helmet, exploring out past the planets.

  “Wouldn’t it be good to go there one day,” he whispered.

  “Where?”

  “The moon.”

  “The moon?”

  “Yes.”

  Billy had a strange look on his face.

  “Don’t you know? They’ve been to the moon, Billy. They’ve landed on it.”

  “You’re pullin’ my leg.”

  Tom shook his head slowly. “No.” He explained the mechanics, the rocket, the men, the Eagle, their walk, and how they’d planted a flag. Billy looked up at the moon while he explained and at the end he just shook his head.

  “How’d they get back, then?”

  “Flew.”

  “Flew? Down out of the stars, ay?”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  “I don’t think they should’ve done that,” said Billy after a while, shaking his head. “They shouldn’t’ve done that.”

  He seemed much sadder all of a sudden. Tom didn’t know how to console him, or even if that’s what he needed. He pulled the harmonica from his pocket and breathed into it for a while and tried to form a tune. Billy reached for it after a time and began to play. He played the same sad, beautiful song Tom had heard with Grace that morning on the jetty. Tom picked up Ham and held him before his face and looked into his dark eyes and then he lifted him up and turned him in all directions, wondering whether his animal eyes might see something neither he nor Billy could.

  “See anything, boy?�
� he asked, but Ham gave no sign he had.

  “Billy?”

  Billy stopped playing and looked up. “Yeah?”

  “You ever see a lion out here?”

  “A lion? Nope. You?”

  “No. I just dream about them sometimes.”

  “Well, that ain’t the same thing as seein’ ’em for real, is it.”

  “No.”

  Billy stretched. He looked to be getting ready to move on.

  “What’ll you do now?”

  “Get me a feed, now I got some money.”

  He grinned his contagious grin, but Tom thought that the sadness of before was on him again and he hoped it wasn’t what he’d said about the moon, or anything else.

  “Better watch out for Pop.”

  “Don’t worry, old Pop won’t catch me again. Might buy some shells as well, plug meself one of Ezra’s little poddies and have a good roast-up.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Yep.”

  Billy wiped his lips with the back of his hand and stood up. Even in the dark Tom could tell he was shaking a little. They set off, Tom following Billy all the way back down to the road. When they reached it they stopped and looked at each other.

  “You be right now?” asked Billy.

  “Yeah. I’ll be right.”

  “Say sorry to your little friend. Didn’t mean to be rude to her the other day. Just didn’t like bein’ locked up.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  Billy nodded. “You like her?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Good. That’s good,” said Billy, his voice suddenly sombre. “I’ll see you, Tom Ferry.”

  He crossed the road and slipped away into the wrecker’s yard. Tom watched him go for as long as he could and the thought came to him that he would never see the strange man again. For the first time he noticed how Billy walked, with his head down and wearily, as though he’d done far too much of it, or didn’t much like where he was headed. After he’d gone Tom headed home. He felt a little empty inside. Ham fell asleep in his arms and his own head began to nod and his feet to trip. He walked right through town and then out past the ferry to his own home—not the station house. When he reached it he stopped, surprised at himself. He was about to turn round and head back to Pop’s when he noticed that all the windows were in darkness. It didn’t look like Henry was home. The thought of sleeping in his own bed, in the room he’d shared with Flynn, began to feel like something worth doing. He walked in through the gate and stepped softly up the steps. The door was open. He peered in round Henry’s bedroom door. The bed was unmade and empty. He turned and tried the light but the bulb didn’t come on. He tried another switch but that had the same result. He walked down into the house. It seemed very empty, and not quite the mess he’d expected. He went back to the front door and leant against the doorway. He looked out across the moonlit yard, at the river whispering by beyond the road. He made a decision and then he went back inside to the kitchen and found the blackout candles and a box of matches. He set one of the candles on a plate and lit it and carried it into the bathroom. He glanced at himself in the mirror as he washed his hands and face. So many things had happened that day. He’d held Grace’s hand again, and he’d felt closer, somehow, to Flynn. He thought about Billy then and he thought about Flynn and then he looked in the mirror for the sadness. It was there all right, just like Billy’s. Even holding hands with Grace wasn’t enough to take it away.

  He went and found a tin of corned beef in the kitchen cupboard, opened it, put some on the floor for Ham and ate the rest with his fingers. After he’d eaten Ham tore around the rooms, his toenails snare-drumming against the bare boards, his nose down, sneezing at the dust, maybe smelling faint traces of scent that were almost like his master’s yet not quite. Tom took the candle into his room and lay down on Flynn’s little bed. He fancied he could smell his brother’s faint scent as well. Ham chased Matchbox cars around the floor until he wore himself out and then Tom lifted him up onto the bed and put his nose to the pillow.

  “If you ever smell this smell I want you to tell me,” he whispered, drowsily.

  He lay and watched the yellow flame of the candle flicker and tremble. Ham put his head down on his paws, looking at Tom, looking at the flame. Tom watched the candle’s reflection in his shining little orbs until the dog’s eyelids grew heavy and closed. He yawned and huffed and soon his legs were twitching along with his dreams. Tom reached out and put his hand on one warm flank.

  One day he’d find Flynn. He knew it. It would be a good day. He’d seen it happen in his head so many times now. It was always Pop who answered his knock—wearing a white shirt, the hair at the top of his chest spilling out like beach foam—but now Billy was there too.

  This is my brother, he’d say to them, and they’d ask no questions but take Flynn from him very gently, very carefully, as if he were still alive. Then they’d all head up into the hills and build a bonfire of logs as tall as a house and they’d set Flynn’s bones deep into the side of it and set the wood alight. They’d watch the flames build, half expecting a resurrection, for Flynn to come walking out of the darkness behind them, soft-skinned, to warm his hands at the fire, to tell them of their mistake. The wind would whip the fire and give it a voice, a roar. Billy would sit with a rifle across his knees as the roar summoned strange beasts out of the darkness. All the sad, exiled lions, all the ghosts of their ancestors, all the hiding things, all the things that didn’t belong. They’d stay out there all night, calling just beyond the light, until the fire died down, until it was just a midden of embers glowing under grey ash, until the dawn came. Then he’d see his brother’s glowing bones, the small yellow matrix at the balefire’s heart, and he’d watch them diminish, become like nothing, sink down into the ash and disappear—and that would be that.

  26

  Billy Flood, his hat askew, repeated the steps of an age-old dance in the middle of the road as he swigged from the bottle of rum he’d bought at the back door of the hotel. He sang “Rock of Ages” and other old hymns at the top of his voice as he staggered out of town. The lie of Angel Rock—the river snaking by, the railway line—had long ago been branded into his mind, yet he didn’t hate it, not even when he was sober, and not even when he remembered from long ago, as if it had been a dream, his father and Adam Carney harangue the town as though it were Sodom and call down fire and brimstone upon it.

  As he swayed along the road and tried to remember the words to other hymns a carload of youths drove up and stopped to taunt him. He stepped off the road and into the bush to avoid them. He heard the screech of the car’s tyres and the roar of its engine as it left but then a few minutes later it came back and stopped again. He saw the boys gather stones by the side of the road and then he saw them begin to pelt the dark spaces beneath the trees. Before he turned away he thought he saw Sonny Steele’s round, red face. He headed up the slope and before long he was back where he’d sat with Tom that afternoon, the car and the boys forgotten. He climbed higher and higher up into the rocks, much further than he’d taken Tom, risking his bottle and his neck. When he’d gone as far as he could go—the moonlit angel rock towering above—he slumped down on a great plane of broken stone, lichen-covered, stung and spalted by lightning, and drained the last of the rum. He threw the empty bottle high up into the air. As it shattered on the rocks below he fished the second bottle of rum from his jacket pocket and cracked the lid.

  “God bless you, Tom Ferry!” he shouted to the sky, and then he drained a third of the bottle and not long after that he passed out cold.

  When he opened his eyes again it was raining. He was lying on his back in a puddle by the side of a road. It was still dark. He couldn’t remember anything of how he’d got there, or how the puddle had claimed him, but his head was still spinning hard from the rum and he didn’t particularly care. He struggled to his knees and looked down the road, water rilling down his forehead and into his whiskers. He remembered Tom and his money. Mor
e money, more drink. He stood and started towards the lights he could just see through the rain haze, but before he covered even a few yards he saw her.

  “Darcy?” he whispered.

  She was up ahead, standing in the rain, her hair plastered to her scalp, her dress clinging to her body. He stopped and stared at her for a moment—a feeling in his gut like he’d just swallowed a big wet river stone. He let out a low moan, then turned and staggered away in the opposite direction. That was no good either. Standing on one side of the road’s dividing line was his mother, and on the other, his sister— his sister whose face he couldn’t recall any more, whose face, even now, was just a pale blur.

  He turned back to Darcy but she had turned and was walking away down the road. He blinked the water out of his eyes and followed her. He followed her, not a thought in his head, not a question, just a thirst that needed quenching. He followed her all the way into town and then past the shops and up to the cemetery gate. He leapt over— barely aware of the rusted ironwork atop it gouging into his palm as he did—his blood up and carrying him like a river in flood.

  He saw her one last time standing at the head of a grave and then she was gone. He went and stood where she’d last been. He stared down at the bare, rain-dimpled earth, at the runners of grass creeping across it like stitches over a wound. It was her own fresh grave—he saw her name carved into the wooden cross stuck in the ground. He began to weep, clutching at the broken ground, his shoulders shuddering. He cried for a long time, but when his tears finally ebbed it felt as if a small, warm fire of hope had spluttered into life deep inside him. He tilted back his head and closed his eyes and shivered as the warmth spread from his centre and out into his fingers and toes. When he opened his eyes again he looked down at the earth for a moment, his heart pounding, and then he stood and made his way over to the gravedigger’s shed. He found a broken-handled spade propped up against it and he took it back to the grave and knelt before it. After a time he began to dig.