Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

by Anthology

  He heard a fiddle and a flute duelling in the distance and suddenly, somewhere close, the crack of a pistol. Evan checked each new face carefully. A few of the cleaner folk were burning green wood. It was good to hear talk again, even though the accents rang strangely in his ears. The Irish boys were usually companionable and would share a song or two if the mood took them. The Americans drawled their way around camp and laughed at everything. Evan did not trust the Easterners. They smelled all wrong and their campsites always made his skin itch. Something about the charms that they hung from their tents increased the flutter of panic through his chest. Besides, the smoke that drifted from their camps muffled his senses and rendered his seeking useless.

  A smile might have earned him a better trade at the store, crowded as it was with barrels of flour and salt and stacked with pannikins. Twisted paper cones held Barnes’ Rock, a bright yellow peppermint sweet. Picks and shovels with gleaming blades sat up against the tools of the dead, dusted with rust and forlorn with their cracked handles.

  Evan eyed a stout pair of mining boots with heavy soles, remembering when he’d owned such a fine pair. The family had once wanted for nothing, but that was before people had started asking questions. It was simple supplies he was after, for his solitary life. Hot tea and lumpy damper kept him moving. Kept him alive, in a manner of speaking.

  The shopkeep was in no mood for barter, busy as he was with a delivery of bacon and eggs. Such goods were snagged by only the wealthiest miners. Even a single yoke was out of Evan’s reach, unless he spent more than was safe. An egg wasn’t worth his life.

  Evan traded for his staples and added chunk of ripening mutton to restore some of the fat to his body. He added a few potatoes and an onion. The shopkeep had some greens from the Easterner’s gardens that were half dead and cheap, so Evan took those too. All of that and he still walked out into the cool afternoon air with a tiny pouch of gold dust. He would make it last. The less seeking he did, the safer he was.

  He’d gone two steps into thoughts of dinner when a fist cracked down over his cheekbone. Stunned, he slipped and bit his tongue. His mouth filled with spit and blood. A kick slammed against his ribs and he lost every bit of breath that he’d ever sucked into his lungs.

  “Found you, didn’t we?” The shaggy beard parted an inch away from Evan’s swelling eye-socket. “The deal was good,” the voice continued. “Your life for your help. Simple. But you gave us the slip, eh?”

  All Evan could do was gasp in the dust, his chest crushing down on the contents of his newly-filled swag. He couldn’t seem to catch hold of any air. A drop of rain fell into his ear. Others chased it. Thunder brooded overhead.

  “We’d like your help again, Evan. Oh, we would. So you’ll come with us, and we’ll eat and we’ll set you up nice and close to a fire. We’ll head out in the morning, just you and Mully and I.”

  Evan curled around his swag, just trying to be smaller, trying to be not there.

  The last time he’d heard Bobby Cole’s voice had been just before he’d fled. Your life for your help, Bobby had said. It had been Mully who’d seen Evan using his gift one careless afternoon. They’d beaten Evan senseless before proposing their deal. And so Evan had lived, and used his gift for Cole and his boys. He’d worked until he was exhausted and wasting away, but it wasn’t enough. Evan could seek all he pleased, and found plenty, but it didn’t make the gold any more accessible or the rock any softer. Bobby and Mully beat him all the same, ringing slaps to his ears and boots to the knees. One night he’d stolen away, intending to return to his family’s house on the outskirts of town when things had calmed down some.

  Maggie and Kate had suffered for his cowardice.

  “Come on, now,” Bobby crooned, yanking Evan to his feet. “We need you back, laddie.”

  The rain was drumming down now. Evan’s wet shoes creaked as he swung out wildly with a bony fist. Bobby was ready for the blow but it still clipped him just under the ear. They were in the mud in a moment, rolling and kicking and jabbing at each other. Bobby was muscled and wiry from the digs but Evan fought him, fist and elbow. He would have bitten and hammered and wrestled until Bobby killed him if they hadn’t caught the attention of the Joes.

  Shrill whistles cut through the noise of the storm. Fights were common but the police had no fondness for dealing with dead miners. Time filling out papers could be better spent in the pub. The attack stopped long enough for Evan to suck in a shallow breath. His copper hair was plastered to his face and he was wet to his skin.

  “I’ll take him. Come on, Evan.” Another voice from the past, but this one a saviour. “It’s all about a woman, if you can believe it.” Not far from the truth. Evan heard Bobby snarl a curse as he was shepherded off. He would not go far with the rain and the prospect of reclaiming Evan’s services.

  Tom Hopkins had a gap in his teeth that whistled when he spoke but nobody dared to tease given that success in his stride and the hulk of muscle that shifted under his shirt. He had once been a neighbour and a friend. His eldest boy Davey had been Kate’s favourite. They’d run up and down the slag- heaps together and made houses out of branches and bark. Kate had been light and fair where Davey was dark and curly, but they made a fine pair with their toothy smiles and well-made shirts. Tom and his wife had looked after Maggie as best he could when Evan was out at work for Bobby and his crew.

  “Come on, get in here.” Tom steered Evan into a pub, “You’re thinner than Death. Eat something.” Tom ordered and paid for both of them.

  The low smoke swirled and clung to Evan as he gratefully spooned up a plateful of gravy with a chunk of bread. Miners squeezed into the pub around them, slinking like wet cats. They crowded around the fire, filling the air with the smell of damp, greasy sweat. Somebody was playing a harmonica. The song was sad and slow. Evan looked up at Tom only when the tin plate was clean.

  “You’ve been out by yourself, then?” Tom sipped at his lager. Evan nodded. “We thought so, when we found the place abandoned, but for poor Maggie. I saw to her arrangements…Bobby Cole, that bastard! I’m sorry, Evan.”

  Evan just stared. After a moment, he started to check on his supplies. Thankfully, nothing had spilled but the tea and it was mostly gathered up in a fold at the bottom of his swag. He’d sift it into a pouch later.

  “It was Katie, too, wasn’t it? We couldn’t find her, though we looked for days.” Tom’s voice was low and thick. “Goddamn it, Evan.”

  It was hearing the name that broke him. Evan's face crumpled into a sob, tears and spit mingling as they ran down his bruised face. The wooden table soaked up his tears as he pounded on it. Splinters dug into his fist. Men stared, though some of them pretended not to. Evan’s chest felt as if someone was driving a pick into the cavity and lifting out the pieces with a shovel.

  He’d not been able to carry them both, but Evan had buried his little girl with his own dirty hands, in the dark, in the hills of Pennyweight Flats. They were truly named—no more than a pennyweight of gold could be found in the ground thereabouts. It was poor land for mining but it was suited for burying their young ones, dead on the fields from measles and whooping cough and scarlet fever. For hours, he had hacked away at the earth, ignoring pinpoints of warmth that sat within the soil below. It wasn’t enough to warm Katie up again. He’d not had time to go back for Maggie, though his heart had broken with the shame of leaving her for the neighbours.

  When Evan had finally dug deep enough to lay Katie down in an old nailed-up box, he’d discovered that the corners of the makeshift coffin were too big to fit. So he’d had to take up his tools and widen the grave, chipping and clawing away at the earth so that he could just be done with it. It was for her that he stayed, when he could have fled into New South Wales and tried his luck there. He’d left his girl behind in life and couldn’t abandon her again.

  Bobby Cole had drowned her in the water barrel.

  “Goddamn it,” Tom repeated.

  “Daddy?” Both men started. Jill
. Tom’s youngest, a little shy of seven. “Daddy, I can’t find Davey.”

  “He knows to be back before dark,” Tom said, rising. The storm was over them now, flinging down rain like it was revenge. “Was he out with the baker’s boys again?”

  “One of them beat him and took his stick. The one he’d pretend was a sword. He cried, but he didn’t want me to see, so he ran off in the rain.”

  The roof was shaking now. Everyone inside moved closer to the fire.

  “That boy…go home, Jilly, love. Tell Ma that I’ll be back with Davey soon.” Tom madeto leave. “I’m sorry, Evan, I’ve got to look for him.”

  Something that he couldn’t name pushed Evan to speak. “I’ll come,” he said. “Maybe I can find him.”

  Tom looked at him sharply. “Aye. Maybe you can.”

  Evan’s clothes were nowhere near dry, but he cringed back from the rain all the same. A wind had picked up and was blowing the droplets this way and that. It wasn’t yet sunset but the storm had bought on darkness. Evan squinted through the downpour but didn’t see a trace of Bobby, nor his man Mully. A few men who couldn’t afford a plate or a beer were huddled on the pub porch, hands tucked under arms. The area was notorious for unpredictable weather but they were grumbling all the same.

  It was no use asking around aimlessly for a lost boy. Kids were as common as dogs around the town, scrapping and stealing and shouting at the chase. Tom blustered over to the rear of the bakery. The three baker’s boys scowled in turns and made a show of beating flour from their trousers.

  “Could have gone to the fort,” one of them said, sullenly. All three had short-cropped hair and burns on their hands from hot trays. “We didn’t let him in, but sometimes he’d climb up anyway.”

  “And where is that?” Tom pressed. “Come on, lads. I’m in no mood for games.”

  “Out near Anderson’s bottom dam,” said the youngest and meekest. Tom frowned at the boys and tugged Evan along with him.

  The earthen streets were slippery and shining in the light of the oil-lamps that hung from poles at every crossroad. Only the unfortunates were out in the weather now. Everyone with a canvas to huddle under was stripping off wet clothes by candlelight and cursing the sudden deluge.

  Tom strode purposefully, his face set. Davey was in for a whipping, that was a fact. It grew darker as they left the oil-lamp light of the main streets and darker still as they wove through the shanty town at the outskirts. Evan passed an abandoned boot, laces askew, stuck deep in the mud. Its broken sole leaked rainwater. He stumbled, kicking through puddles, trying to see over his shoulder and into the gloom. Bobby was there, somewhere, waiting, with Mully whispering in his ear of untouched veins and riches beyond any miner’s dreams.

  “He’ll not be back tonight. Come on, Evan.” Tom cupped his hands to his mouth. “Davey! Da-vey!” There was a note of fear in Tom’s voice that Evan had never heard before. “Davey! If you can hear me, get here, now!”

  There was no reply as they arrived at Anderson’s property.

  “See it?” Tom gestured, dashing the wet from his face. “The baker’s boys built it last summer.” His hair was stuck flat to his scalp. “So it was them who stole the door off my kitchen to use as a floor, the bastards. I was in the front and never heard nothing.”

  Evan followed Tom’s point. He made out a dark spot in the split of a ponderous gum. A dam pooled near the base, banks slick and grasping. A piece of bark tore itself off the fort’s makeshift roof and flapped to the ground. Evan couldn’t be sure with the poor light and storm, but he couldn’t feel a body in there.

  There was something, though. A human pulse and flicker that was somewhere else, somewhere lower. The essence skipped and wavered like a guttering candle until Evan remembered the way that Davey’s dark hair curled in the front and the way he’d laugh when Katie pushed him down the slag hill.

  There. Evan had him. All was gasping, thrashing. Evan pushed past Tom, peering through the undergrowth with his eyes as well as his heart.

  The rain had churned the dam and its bank into a soup of rock and mud. It wasn’t until Evan saw the slippery furrow leading from the base of the tree that he noticed the writhing and roiling of a small body in the water.

  “Tommy, there!” Evan pulled Tom’s sleeve. “Can you see him?”

  “Davey!” Tom ran for the dam. “I’m coming!” A snapped-off limb snagged him as he bashed toward his son. A streak of blood ran down his left arm.

  Evan watched, clinging to Davey’s spark. His boots were full of rain but it could have been liquid lead pooling about his toes. He couldn’t so much as bend his knee to take a single step forward. Is this how Katie had felt at the end? Delicate as a tadpole’s flutter, growing softer as the water engulfed her? A shiver jumped from toes to nose, clattering his jaw as it went. Tom was at the dam’s softening edge now.

  “Evan! Evan, I can’t swim…God!” Tom couldn’t reach Davey without flinging himself into the water. He howled and staggered back up toward the gums, wrenching a dead branch off a fallen tree. Tom probed the bank, shoulders shaking.

  The tackle came from nowhere, snapping Evan’s head back and ploughing his body into the sodden leaves and bark. Mully wrapped his arms around Evan’s, clamping them to his waist. The two men tangled their way forward, lumps of exposed rock thumping them as they rolled. Bobby’s hoarse shouts echoed over their fight.

  “Get him, Mulligan! Get his hands!”

  Evan tore at the dirty skin of Mully's shoulder with his teeth and spat blood. The lanky man swore and wrenched himself away.

  “Bastard.” He slapped Evan hard across the mouth. Evan scrabbled toward Tom who was, helplessly, still easing his way into the turgid water.

  “Help me! Please, I can’t reach him, I can’t…” Tom was waist-deep now. “Davey, please, I’m coming, I’m coming.”

  Mully stood over Evan, ignoring Tom.

  “Stay down!” Bobby’s broken teeth jutted from the split in his beard. “We’re taking you with us tonight, Evan.” Bobby’s gun was pointed at Evan’s head. It was a grandfather of a piece, but it was still young enough to drive a bullet into his skull.

  “No.” Evan shook his head. He shook all over. “I can’t.”

  “You can, or we’ll end this now.” Bobby drew closer, the barrel of his gun an inch away from Evan’s eye. A droplet hung off the end like a tear. Thunder rumbled, twice, thrice.

  “Help, please…I’ve nearly got him, I just need…” Tom splashed, so close now. “God he’s not moving. God! Help me, you bastards!”

  Davey’s light flared and then went out.

  Evan said, “No more. Just kill me.” He backed up and eased himself onto a knee. “You’ll get nothing if you do, but you’re not taking me. Not again.”

  It was too dark to make out the colour of Bobby’s eyes, but Evan held his gaze. Bloody dirt crunched under his teeth as he tightened his aching jaw.

  “Are you going to kill me, Bobby?” Evan’s voice was only as loud as it needed to be. “Do it. Kill me.”

  “You fucking bastard.” The tip of the gun wavered and dipped. There was no fear in the tremble, only rage. “We could be rich. You fucking bastard.”

  “Kill whoever you want, I won’t help you. I won’t.” Evan lifted his chin, fearless for the first time in months.

  Bobby roared and threw down his gun. He locked his hands around Evan’s throat and rammed his body to the ground.

  Evan rolled so that he was atop the man who had held him captive, who had killed his wife and drowned his daughter. Evan screamed and hit and hit; he raged like a bonfire. Bobby hit back but each blow was weaker than the last. There was a flicker within Bobby’s body, something that Evan could see as he punched. It was the basic element of who Bobby was: his spark. Evan punched one more time and heard the crack of bone. As he hauled in a breath, the spark ran out of Bobby and flooded into Evan, crackling down his arms and legs like lightning.

  Evan rose, jittering, and left the shell of Bob
by bleeding in the muddy grass. Mully’s feet slapped the wet dirt as he ran for town, though not to the law. The Joes knew him well enough not to trust his word.

  Let him run. Evan had a boy to save.

  “I’m coming, Tommy!” Evan staggered and slid his way down the dam bank. Tom was wide-eyed and neck-deep. One arm was wrapped around Davey. The boy was still. Evan perched on the most solid piece of clay that he could find.

  “Bring him here, Tom. Come on.” Evan held the same stick that Tom had used to poke the mud. It was bent and too short, but Tom half-swam, half-stepped closer until his large hand wrapped around it. They were heavy, the pair of them, and saturated.

  Between the two of them, Evan and Tom strained and swore and pulled themselves and Davey out of the dam and onto flat ground. The boy’s lips were blue. His eyes were open but he didn’t blink away the rain that sprinkled, lighter now, over his face.

  “Got to get the water out,” Tom said, turning the boy. “Push, come on.” He shoved at Davey’s ribs. Nothing happened. “Come on.”

  “Here, give him to me.” Evan took the boy. The life that he’d taken from Bobby flickered through his veins, too much for one man to hold.

  Evan took in a lungful of air. He pushed into Davey’s chest the way he did with dirt. He flooded the boy with fire, with breath, with life. He heard a wet noise but didn’t open his eyes. Tom was praying but he kept forgetting the words.