Taking Tom Murray Home

by Tim Slee

‘You have a PayPal account?’

  ‘Mum, you set it up for me so I could play Minecraft, remember?’

  ‘Oh yeah. Do we pay tax on the donations?’

  ‘You could ask your lawyer friend,’ Aunty Ell says. ‘See what he says.’

  ‘What are we going to do with it?’ Mum asks, like it’s the biggest problem on earth.

  We’re sitting having dinner with Coach Don and the others. It’s just ham sandwiches and tea. I tried toasting mine over the fire someone lit in a barbecue pit, but that just made them smoky not toasty.

  ‘Like she said,’ Coach Don says. ‘Just use the money for the costs of the funeral and if anyone asks for petrol money sure, you could give them a bit.’

  ‘How do we get it out of PayPal,’ Mum asks. ‘I just don’t know anything about how it all works.’

  ‘Ben and Deb could use a bit of money,’ I say.

  ‘Did they ask you?’ Mr Garrett says, getting ready to be annoyed.

  ‘No, I just know they’re living on rice and canned corn and they’ve only got enough money to get to Melbourne and then they’ll be broke.’

  ‘They’ve been with us from the start,’ Jenny says. ‘Like everyone else.’

  ‘For a reason,’ Coach Don says. ‘They want to hijack this thing for their own ends.’

  ‘And what ends are they?’ Aunty Ell asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Coach Don says. ‘World bloody peace, save the forests, stop coal mining, reforest the bloody golf courses, all that rot.’

  ‘Sounds terrible,’ Aunty Ell agrees with a smile, which means she doesn’t. ‘Give ’em some petrol money, eh Dawn?’

  ‘I reckon,’ Mum says. ‘If Jenny can tell me how.’

  That’s when Karsi comes up. ‘I’ve been ordered back to Portland,’ he says.

  All the grown-ups stand, like they’re getting ready to say goodbye.

  ‘Highway Patrol will take it from here,’ he continues. ‘You’ll have cars front and back to escort you from Colac tomorrow and they’ll be with you all the way to Melbourne. I’ve also heard they’re going to have uniforms outside every supermarket and bank in town the whole time you’re there.’ He smiles. ‘So spread the word, will you. Anyone tries any silly business in Colac, they’re going to get caught.’

  I look at Coach Don, but he’s smiling a smile like there’s some sort of secret conversation going on only him and Karsi can understand. ‘I’ll do that,’ he says.

  ‘So, this is goodbye then?’ Mr Maynard says, and he wipes his hand on his trousers to get the chicken grease off it and sticks it out.

  Karsi doesn’t take it. ‘Not likely,’ he says. ‘You think I’d go home and just watch on TV to see how this all turns out? I told Geelong I’m taking a week’s leave,’ he says. He looks around and grins. ‘If you’ll have me?’

  Jenny spends the whole night telling anyone who’ll listen about her Facebook followers and GoFundMe page and that means she gets to bed way after me. So I have tons of time lying on my back looking up at the bottom of the milk cart. I thought a hundred times about dragging my swag out from under the milk cart and sleeping out in the open but it’s that time of year where you never know if it’s going to rain in the middle of the night and that would suck even more than sleeping under a coffin. We totally got burned like that one night when there was this total eclipse and Dad had us all sleeping outside on camping mattresses and it was cloudy so we didn’t even see the eclipse and no one slept at all because if it wasn’t bad enough with the frogs in the dam croaking away or the mosquitos biting, about three in the morning it started raining. We all ran inside and Mum was angry because our sheets and doonas were all wet but Dad was laughing and he made a pot of tea and then cooked drop scones, which are basically just flour and milk and eggs all whipped together and fried in butter. Because we were up all night, we didn’t have to go to school next day. I was going to remind Jenny about that, but I must have gone to sleep before she came to bed.

  We start so early the next morning Jenny sleeps the most of the next day in the back of the milk cart, curled up in her swag at the back behind Dad’s coffin. I ask Mr Garrett can Darren ride with Mum and us, and he says sure thing, and so me and Darren spend the whole day in the milk cart playing Spotto and I Spy and Bullshit. We have lunch in a parking bay on the side of the highway where there are toilets and while we’re waiting maybe another ten cars join us. Mr Garrett says they’re farmers from Colac, come to join in for a while, and he knows some of them from the shows. There’s whole families in the cars and they bring tons of cakes and biscuits and stuff and so we have a real feast. One even gives Darren and me a bag of Snakes but I have to share with Jenny because of course she wakes up for lunch.

  I guess we’re about twenty cars long, our convoy, with Danny Boy still going strong, even if he isn’t very fast. As we get to the sign on the way into town, which says Welcome to Colac, we start seeing them. On the side of the road people are standing and they’ve planted little white crosses in the grass beside the highway. Actually some are quite big white crosses, up to their waists, some of them, and some of them even have #BURN written in the middle.

  ‘Dairy people,’ Coach Don says, waving to a bunch of people standing beside a bunch of crosses. ‘They know what this is about. Some of ’em even knew Tom probably.’

  The police direct us into the showground again and there’s a bit of an argument when the guy who owns the caravan park next door wants to charge us for staying at the showground but the police sort him out and tell him he can’t charge us for using the oval at the showground and that he’s going to let us use his toilets and showers and he isn’t going to charge us for that either. Mum is busy because the Victoria Police want to do a press conference on WIN TV with her, so we’re free to go exploring.

  You can’t exactly see the lake from where they put us, but it’s only a few hundred metres down the road and a bunch of us kids take off and go check it out. It’s too cold to swim, but we chuck rocks and one kid goes in and dares everyone else but no one else does.

  It’s just one of those dumb things. Mum always says they come in threes. We’ve got time to kill, so me and Darren are playing this game we call Droppit, where you face each other about ten feet apart and throw a cricket ball to the other person, nice and easy. If the other person catches it, you both take a step back, then the other person throws, and you keep going until one of you drops it and see how far apart you can get. Our record is thirty-eight steps. Anyway we’re at about thirty steps and Darren is throwing and he tosses it really high up and I lose it in the sun and it comes down out of the sky and hits me right on the cheek.

  I pick it up and go to throw it back to him so we can start over, but he’s looking at me strange, so I put my hand to my cheek and it’s covered in blood. He comes running over.

  ‘Oh wow, sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean . . . I think it split your cheek.’ He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handkerchief and holds it up to my face. He dabs a bit while I stand still looking up at the sky. ‘Yeah, it’s not too bad. Just a lot of blood.’ He takes my hand and guides it to the cloth, ‘Here, you hold it. Press tight.’

  ‘Freaking annoying,’ I say.

  ‘You probably want to sit down,’ he says, sitting down himself, so I sit next to him.

  ‘We would have got the record this time, I reckon,’ I tell him.

  ‘Yeah. You know I think it’s amazing, how you and your sister are,’ he says.

  I look at him. ‘We’re freaks.’

  ‘No, really,’ he says.

  ‘You don’t have to feel bad about it, just because I split my face open,’ I tell him. ‘It’s OK. Everyone thinks we’re freaks, even if they don’t say it.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re freaks,’ he says.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I don’t. It’s more like you have superpowers or something. Like you’re some kind of superheroes,’ he says. He lifts my hand away from my face, then puts it back. ‘Keep the p
ressure on, you’re still bleeding.’

  ‘Superhero that’s bleeding to death,’ I say. ‘Some superhero.’

  ‘No, I mean, you know. You grab a boiling hot billy, you take a cricket ball to the face and you don’t even react. Most kids would be lying on the ground, wailing, but you just pick the ball up, go to throw it back.’

  I pull the handkerchief away and look at it. It’s a green material, so the blood stains it black. I think the bleeding’s slowing down now.

  He goes on, ‘You should play rugby or something. You’d be like, guys coming at you, hit you hard enough to knock down any normal person, but you’d be all, what? That’s all you got?’

  I laugh, which only encourages him more.

  ‘Yeah, or be a cage fighter, like UFC. Some lunatic pounding on you, you just let him go until his knuckles are all broken and he’s got no wind left, then wham, you bring that sucker down!’ He mimes it as he’s telling it.

  ‘I reckon he’d knock me out with his first hit,’ I tell him. ‘Feeling no pain doesn’t protect you from getting your skull cracked.’

  ‘Yeah, OK. What does it feel like, to not feel?’ he asks.

  It’s not as stupid a question as it sounds. ‘I don’t know. The nurse at the hospital said it must be like feeling the world through gardening gloves and woollen socks.’

  ‘Except you hit someone’s hands with a hammer if they’re wearing gardening gloves, they’re going to feel that, but you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Yeah, no. Dorotea’s analgesia is supposed to be not as bad as other kinds, so I guess I can feel something. I mean, I haven’t bitten my tongue off accidentally, or ripped off a fingernail without noticing. It just isn’t what you call pain.’

  He leans in and I freak a bit, thinking he’s going to hug me or something, so I pull back, but he’s just looking at my cut cheek.

  ‘It’s still bleeding,’ he says. ‘We’re going to have to tell your mum.’

  ‘Can we not?’ I say to him. ‘Not yet. Can we just sit here for a while?’

  ‘Sure,’ he says.

  It’s not too bad, sitting there in the late afternoon sun with Darren, all the commotion going on around us, but none of it touching us. Mum is going to go spare when she sees my face, but right now things are OK. They’re almost normal for once.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, you could be like a boxer. And I’d be your manager. And we wouldn’t make money on your fights, we’d make money betting how many hits you could take to the face.’

  OK, so much for normal.

  Colac

  I can’t avoid it forever so I go over to Mum to show her my face, but a man is putting a microphone on her. Like a rock star wears. He puts it over her ears and threads it down her back under her shirt and clips it to the waist of her jeans at the back.

  ‘Say something for me,’ he tells her, holding some headphones to his ear.

  ‘I feel like an idiot,’ she says.

  ‘Perfect, thanks,’ he says and goes back to his camera on its tripod.

  ‘Dawn, I’m Stan Einfeld from FRX news, can I have a word?’ asks a man in a suit with a blue tie and side-parted sandy hair and white teeth and white knuckles. He’s holding a microphone.

  Mum looks around. ‘Well, I don’t know, we have an arrangement with the Sun, for newspaper and digital . . .’

  ‘We’re radio, Dawn,’ the man smiles. ‘Won’t keep you but a minute, I know you’re about to go live.’

  ‘Well, I guess . . .’

  The cameraman swings his camera around too, just for the practice I guess since he isn’t actually with the radio guy, and puts it on Mum.

  ‘Thank you, Dawn. Our listeners are no doubt wondering, does someone have to die before you stop this pointless protest?’

  Mum goes quiet. I know that look. I’ve seen people yell at Mum at the soccer, I’ve seen Jenny answer her back; it’s the same look. She doesn’t get bothered, she doesn’t yell back. You take Mum on, she just goes quiet, but when she’s done being quiet . . .

  ‘A man already died,’ Mum says to him. ‘My husband.’

  ‘And you have our condolences, Dawn, but people are burning down businesses in your name,’ the man interrupts her. ‘Your protest group is being accused of arson. If someone dies in one of these fires, the blood will be on your hands, won’t it?’

  ‘This is a funeral procession,’ Mum says, ‘not a protest. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready.’

  ‘Dawn, you can’t hide from . . .’ the man follows her, but she ignores him so he gives up and starts looking for someone else to bother.

  There’s a woman dressed in a blue skirt and white shirt running around trying to get Mum to stand in the right spot and also get all the other people to move out of her shot, and she shoos the radio reporter away. I give Mum a wave and she smiles a weak little smile but she’s not really looking at me, she’s looking behind me and I turn around and I don’t know where they came from but there’s about ten reporters there now, with microphones and hand-held recorder things on top of the two with big cameras on tripods and they’re standing talking with each other but with one eye on Mum so they don’t miss it when she starts.

  There are two of those big vans with satellite dishes and some lights set up and I go look at them but it’s pretty boring. Mum and the others are talking to some police who have hats and jackets on. One is talking with Geraldine and he looks like the boss.

  Karsi is leaning up against Mr Alberti’s car and watching with half a smile on his face as I walk past. ‘Hey there, detective,’ he says and points at a policeman in a uniform with a lot of buttons on it. ‘The Big Cheese has arrived. Your mum is nervous as hell.’

  ‘Is she all right?’ I ask him.

  ‘She’ll be great. You want to get closer so she can see you, give her a thumbs-up or something.’ He bends over. ‘Wait, what’s up with your face, mate?’

  I’m about to make something up when it goes quiet as the woman in the blue skirt and a clipboard climbs up onto the back of a ute and shushes everyone. ‘Hi, everyone. Regional Superintendent Dawson is going to address the media first, followed by Mrs Murray, and after that there will be the chance for questions to the Superintendent.’

  ‘What about you, Mrs Murray?’ one of the reporters asks. ‘Will you answer questions?’

  Mum opens her mouth but the lady steps in. ‘Mrs Murray can speak with the media privately afterward if she wishes. She won’t be part of the official question-and-answer session.’

  They’re not happy about that, but they don’t have time to complain about it because the Boss Cop climbs up onto the ute, clears his throat and says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, can we begin?’

  They’ve got a TV camera there pointing up at him and a bunch of microphones taped to a small stepladder. Mum climbs up beside him.

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Firstly, I have to say the condolences of the Victoria Police go out to Mrs Murray here for the death of her husband following a fire on his property some days ago. We fully respect her right to transport him to Melbourne for burial in whatever manner she chooses, and as you can see we are facilitating the funeral procession in a manner intended to minimise disruption to traffic.’

  ‘He looks annoyed,’ Jenny whispers from behind me.

  ‘Yeah, but I think that’s his normal look,’ I tell her.

  ‘On the other hand, a number of serious incidents have taken place in towns which this funeral procession has visited,’ the police officer continues. ‘A bank was petrol-bombed in Yardley, another in Port Fairy and a supermarket was completely destroyed by fire in Warrnambool,’ he says.

  A small cheer goes up from the people watching on and the boss cop frowns at them. ‘This isn’t a matter for public amusement,’ he says. ‘Whoever is doing this is putting the lives of police, firefighters and the general public at risk through their reckless actions. Every one of these incidents is being investigated, and the cri
minals will be brought to justice, but I am making a public appeal today to whoever is doing this – you’re not helping your cause, you’re just hurting the very communities you probably think you’re trying to help. Mrs Murray?’

  He steps a bit to the side and makes space for Mum and she kind of shuffles into the middle of the platform.

  ‘My husband Tom died burning our own house down so the bank wouldn’t get it. I thought he was stupid for doing it, and I told him so, but he wouldn’t be talked out of it and it cost him his life.’ She takes a big breath and tells people about milk prices and farmers going broke.

  The police officer tries to look like this has nothing to do with him, but after a minute he gives Mum a look and she takes her cue. ‘This business with the banks and supermarkets being set on fire,’ she says, ‘has nothing to do with me or this funeral procession. Whoever is doing it, I want you to stop before someone gets hurt or put in gaol.’ A bunch of cameras fire their flashes and Mum flinches, but she takes a piece of paper from her pocket and with her hand shaking, she unfolds it. ‘There’s a poem doing the rounds,’ she says. ‘It’s by a fellow called Henry Lawson.’

  ‘Good on you, Dawn!’ someone yells, and there’s some clapping, which dies down quickly as Mum clears her throat. The police officer is a bit unsure if he should stay up on the ute or step down and he looks at the lady in the blue skirt and she just shrugs.

  Mum raises her voice:

  ‘Rise Ye! rise ye! noble toilers! claim your rights with fire and steel!

  Rise ye! for the cursed tyrants crush ye with their iron heels!

  They would treat ye worse than slaves! they would treat ye worse than brutes!

  Rise and crush the selfish tyrants! Crush them with your hob-nailed boots!’

  Then she folds the poem and she stands there in front of everyone and she lifts her fist in the air and she holds it there and people start cheering and the media start yelling and now the police officer decides it’s time for him to get off the ute and out of there and Mum just stands there with her fist raised and so does Coach Don and Mr Alberti and Mr Garrett and Ben and Deb and Aunty Ell and Darren and pretty much everyone else except the police.