Taking Tom Murray Home

by Tim Slee

  Mum looks around, sighs, ‘My husband was like you. He took it in his head to burn our house down instead of hand it over to the bank, and the damn fool died. Now I have no business, no home . . . and no husband,’ she says. She looks down at Jenny and me. ‘But I still have love. Love gives you hope, right? Love gives you strength.’ Now she looks out at the people again, and she lifts her voice, ‘Love gives you fire.’

  People with #BURN signs hold them up and cheer. Mum stands there and lifts her fist in the air and now everyone, all three thousand two hundred and fifty, have their fists in the air too.

  Jenny looks at me like, holy moly, is this our mum?

  Mum looks over at Karsi, who’s making a movement with his hand like, calm down, girl. But she looks at her paper and looks up again. ‘We’ve had a bit of a tradition on this trip. My husband was a bit of a poetry lover, and our family friend Don started this off by reciting a poem in memory of our Tom. So I’d like to finish the same way.’ She takes a pause and the crowd go quiet. ‘It’s another verse by Lawson, and it’s called the Bush Fire.’ Her voice cracks but she keeps going to the end.

  ‘Ah, better the thud of the deadly gun, and the crash of the bursting shell,

  Than the terrible silence where drought is fought out there in the western hell;

  And better the rattle of rifles near, or the thunder on deck at sea,

  Than the sound—most hellish of all to hear—of fire where it should not be.’

  People are dead quiet. I hear a car sound its horn but it must be ten blocks away.

  ‘My husband lost his life to fire,’ Mum says after a moment. ‘People have been taking his example, burning their own properties, burning the property of others. I understand why, but that’s never going to fix things. We need to come together over this. This isn’t about city versus country, farms versus factories, coal versus wind, this is about Australians coming together to solve our problems not just for this crisis, but the one after this, and the one after that. So we can keep food on the tables of this nation, people in jobs, and no one has to walk off their farms ever again.’

  She looks around, like she’s looking for something. I’m serious, it’s so quiet there’s a pigeon goes overhead and he poops right in front of me and you can hear it splat on the ground, it’s that quiet.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ Mum says. ‘Close your eyes and be still.’ And people do. I mean, I don’t, but people all around are closing their eyes. Right next to me is this lady who looks like she just walked out of a bank, in a blue suit and red shirt and tight ponytail, with a briefcase, and she’s standing with her eyes closed and her chin up and she’s not moving. ‘How are you feeling? Worried? Pissed off, angry, scared? Alone?’ Her voice rises. ‘Now open your eyes. Look around! Because you’re not alone!’

  And people open their eyes and start smiling and it’s still quiet until this guy up the back yells out ‘Hell no!’ really loudly and Mum raises her fist into the air again and everyone starts laughing and clapping and Mum decides that’s enough and starts climbing down again.

  I hear a man lean over to his wife and say, ‘She should run for Parliament.’ And I’m thinking, yeah, probably I’ve got the most kick-arse mum in the entire universe.

  ‘She couldn’t talk her man out of killing himself, you think she can do better as a politician? I don’t think so,’ his wife says. ‘Let’s go eat.’

  People are still clapping, and Mum climbs down and journalists jump on her and people are trying to clap her on the back and Coach Don and Mr Alberti are trying to keep a space around her and Darren weaves through them all and comes up to us.

  ‘That didge music was deadly, eh?’ he says. ‘That was my idea.’

  ‘No, really?’ Jenny says, looking at him a bit different and I realise it’s a look I’ve seen a few times now and finally I work out what’s happening. Seriously?

  They start teasing each other which is super awkward so I get up on the milk cart and start looking around. Most of the crowd is leaving now and police are waving them off the roads and back onto the footpaths and a cop with a loudhailer is telling people which streets are the fastest out of town. I can see a big line of cops standing out on the road, but they’ve got nothing to do, there’s no one near them. Trevor is arguing with a couple of police who want him to get Dad’s coffin off the Square.

  What I’m really looking for is Dad. If I’m right, if he is alive, he’ll be here for sure. He wouldn’t miss this. Mum’s big speech? No way.

  I just see families, farmers standing around in groups, someone selling pies, a few people collecting for charities working the crowd, lots of police.

  Then across the lights, over by Young and Jackson, I see a dark shadow. A man, standing under a tree, mostly all I can see is he’s smoking a cigarette. The little red light of it in the shade. He’s tall like Dad. Smokes in long draws like Dad. My skin goes cold. He’s a hundred metres away, maybe ten metres up the street, just leaning against the tree, watching.

  I fix the spot in my head, jump down from the milk cart and grab Jenny. ‘Quick, come!’ I take her arm and try to pull her away.

  She shrugs me off. ‘No. What?’

  ‘Just come,’ I tell her, not wanting to say it in front of Darren.

  ‘No. We have to wait for Mum,’ Jenny says. ‘We can –’

  I groan and leave her there. Every minute I waste he could be walking away.

  The crowd is thinning out but I still can’t run in a straight line. I have to dodge and weave up the footpath, get across the lights, counting trees and looking up ahead to where I think he’s standing. It looks like he’s still there, then I lose sight. A cop at the intersection grabs my shoulder and says, ‘Wait for traffic to clear, matey.’ He holds everyone up for a few minutes so some cars can go over, then waves us through. I’m off like a shot, the tree is up ahead, people walking under and around it. I can’t see . . .

  He’s gone.

  I look up and down the street but there’s no one leaning up against any of the trees here.

  When I get back to the top of the steps, Darren is gone, Mum is down in the Square talking to Karsi and some other police, and Jenny is checking her GoFundMe and Facebook pages.

  ‘Three thousand four hundred and twenty followers on Facebook,’ she says, sounding a bit disappointed.

  ‘That’s pretty good,’ I tell her and try to cheer her up. ‘That’s more than the Cats have, I bet, and they’re a football team.’

  ‘No, I got way more than them,’ she says. ‘That’s three thousand new followers today. I was hoping for maybe ten.’

  ‘How many total then?’

  ‘Eleven thousand, three hundred and three,’ she says.

  ‘And how much money?’

  She thumbs across to her GoFundMe page and bites her lip. ‘It kind of stalled around a hundred and twenty thousand for a couple of days there, but I think Danny Boy helped, all those posts I made of him . . .’

  ‘You’ve been posting about Danny Boy?’

  ‘Of course. It was terrible! You think I’m going to be quiet about it? Holy . . .’ She goes a bit quiet. ‘One hundred and sixty-nine thousand and some!’

  I go on my phone and look at what she’s been putting up. Photos of Danny Boy lying in the street and Mr Garrett sitting with him. Karsi in his uniform holding Mr Garrett while he’s crying. Luckily she hasn’t written anything about a cop hitting Danny, which I’m pretty sure never happened. I check the website for the Geelong Advertiser and there’s a story by Geraldine, with a big EXCLUSIVE across the top, where she’s interviewed Mum: HERE’S WHAT THE YARDLEY DAIRY WIDOW IS DOING NEXT, the headline reads. I read a few sentences.

  ‘Did you read this?’ I look further down the article.

  ‘What?’ Jenny asks, not looking up from her phone. ‘Show me?’

  I hold the phone for her so she can see the headline and the picture of Mum that looks like it was taken this afternoon.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It say
s we’re moving State!’ I tell her. ‘Says she wants ‘a fresh start’ somewhere new.’

  ‘A fresh start?’ Jenny says, kind of quiet as she reads on. ‘What does that mean? What about the farm?’

  ‘That’s later.’ I take the phone back, scroll down the bottom. ‘See she says here – “I’ve got dairying in my blood now. I’m not giving up on that. But there’s too many memories in Yardley.”’

  ‘What about Uncle Leo’s? What about staying in Melbourne a while?’

  ‘Nothing about that.’

  ‘Bloody hell, this family is so bloody messed up!’ she half yells.

  We’re both kind of stunned. What the hell?

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘OK. I never really wanted to live with Uncle Leo anyway.’

  ‘Yeah, but what State? Where else has dairy farms? Why are we leaving Victoria?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Jenny half yells. ‘You just keep asking and asking your stupid questions like I have the answers! I. Don’t. Know. Jack.’

  She looks back down at her telephone and it really annoys me and I reach out and swat it out of her hand. She looks at me like she wants to hit me back. I know exactly what she’s feeling. But she picks up her phone, checks it isn’t cracked, and then yells up at the buildings, ‘She drives me mental!’ she says.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘She never tells us anything.’

  ‘It’s like we’re just little kids, we’re just supposed to go along with everything, we get no say in anything!’

  ‘I know! Oh, let’s burn our house down, don’t worry about where we’re going to live, oh, your dad died, let’s put his body on the back of a horse and ride all the way to Melbourne to bury him!’

  We’re really getting into it now, and it feels good. I stand up. ‘Yeah! And why would we stay in Yardley where we got friends, or Melbourne where we got family? No, let’s move to another State!’ A paper cup blows past and I kick it and it flies through the air about ten metres and hits a man on the head and he looks around confused but Jenny grabs me and we turn the other way. It’s so stupid, we can’t help laughing like idiots, and I have to grab her for support.

  We straighten up. ‘I thought I saw Dad earlier,’ I tell her.

  ‘Where, when?’

  ‘Saw who, dear?’ Mrs Turnbolt says, coming up behind us.

  Jenny is looking at me like, you did not just say that. We both turn around and smile.

  ‘Uh, Darren, playing the didge. He was one of the ones with the didgeridoo, but she won’t believe me,’ I tell Mrs Turnbolt.

  She stands with her purse clenched in front of her, as though it will protect her from the big city, ‘That was a nice touch, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Mrs Turnbolt, can you tell Mum we’re just going to get a drink at the 7-Eleven?’ Jenny asks. ‘We have our own money.’

  She frowns. ‘Well, she sent me up here to fetch you down, we’ll be leaving any minute . . .’

  ‘We won’t take long, we’ll go straight back to the milk cart after,’ Jenny says.

  ‘I guess that’s all right.’

  ‘OK, thank you,’ Jenny says and grabs my arm and pulls me down the stairs, hugging me in close as soon as we’ve gone a couple of metres.

  ‘You think you saw Dad and you’re only telling me now?’ she says.

  ‘I don’t know!’ I tell her. ‘It was in shadow and he was a long way away under a tree . . .’

  She grabs my arm again and pushes me towards the shop. ‘In there now. You tell me everything.’

  ‘Dad gave up smoking,’ she says after I tell her what I saw. ‘Last year.’

  ‘So he started again, without Mum around to pester him,’ I insist.

  ‘He wouldn’t have stayed across the road, he’d want Mum to be able to see him,’ she says.

  ‘He wouldn’t want to be recognised,’ I disagree. ‘Too many people up front who might know him.’

  ‘So why come at all? It makes no sense. Dad’s dead, all right, his ashes are in that coffin, Jack.’

  I stare at her. ‘What? It was your idea,’ I say and mimic her voice. ‘What if Dad’s alive? What if it’s him and Coach Don lighting the fires? Remember that?’

  She just looks down at her cup and sucks on her straw. ‘That was a hundred miles ago. Lots has happened since then.’ She says it like she knows something.

  ‘What are you saying? Jen?’ She ignores me, just looks away out the window.

  I go to grab her hand and that’s when I notice it for the first time. The back of her hand is kind of blue, and there’s a weird lump sticking up under the skin.

  ‘Stop,’ I say, holding her wrist and pulling it toward me. ‘This isn’t good.’

  She looks at her hand, turning it, flexing her fingers. The little lump slides around under her skin. ‘Oh damn, I think I broke something.’

  ‘When?’

  She looks at it again, poking at the lump. It looks kind of like it has a sharp end on it, like it might break through the skin if you pushed too hard.

  ‘I don’t know, it’s been kind of funny since we jumped off the milk cart this afternoon, before Danny Boy died,’ she says. ‘But we did our checks, then it was the memorial . . . I forgot about it.’

  ‘It must have been when we fell out.’

  ‘Yeah, I kind of landed . . .’ She thinks back. ‘Yeah, I think I landed on this hand.’

  I push the bone and watch it move. ‘That is definitely broken.’

  ‘But I can move my fingers OK,’ she says.

  ‘We have to call Mum,’ I tell her. ‘Go to hospital.’

  ‘We’re leaving now,’ she says. ‘Uncle Leo’s.’ She makes a face.

  ‘Then tell her when we get there.’

  Jenny looks at her wrist and then at me. ‘How about we don’t? Until after the funeral tomorrow.’

  ‘But if it gets infected?’

  ‘The skin isn’t broken, it’s just a little bone or something, I’ll be careful with it,’ she says. ‘Just like, tomorrow morning and then after the funeral we can get it looked at.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘OK.’

  And I reach over and pull her head toward mine and touch my forehead to hers and there’s a deal there, that whatever all this is, whatever is happening, it’s still her and me. Like it always has been. And screw the rest.

  Melbourne

  ‘Seems like things are quieting down,’ Mum says, watching news reports on the TV. ‘Here in Melbourne anyway. They’re still rioting in Sydney and there’s a fire in Perth now.’

  We got a cab to Uncle Leo’s in Carlton. He’s a nice bloke, but his house smells like fried food and he’s kind of shy and awkward which makes everyone around him shy and awkward. The good part is he isn’t home, he’s interstate for work for a week. It kind of tells you a lot about our family that he didn’t even cancel that to come to the funeral. But it’s good that we have the place to ourselves for a while.

  There were nearly twenty people in here earlier. Karsi went off with some other police to ‘do paperwork’, but the Garretts and the Albertis and the Turnbolts and the Maynards and Coach Don and Geraldine and Alasdair were here, and even Pop had his chair pulled up on the steps and people were sitting around the door talking with him. They were all talking and smoking and drinking beer like no one was ever going home. Except Ben and Deb, who I haven’t seen since Federation Square, so I guess they’re off planning something. They talked about starting a thirst strike; I didn’t even know that was a thing. Mum says they’re more likely just trying to find somewhere to stay, and then Coach Don says that’s a good idea, he still has to go and find a room somewhere and suddenly everyone is gone.

  ‘Come with me, meathead,’ Jenny says and points to the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Mum asks. ‘It’s late.’

  ‘Just around the block,’ Jenny says. ‘You can’t expect us to sleep this early.’

  Mum points down past the little kitchen. ‘There’s real beds down there. You haven’t slept in
a real bed since I don’t know when.’ She looks straight at Jen. ‘You need to sleep, miss.’

  ‘Can’t we just take a walk, then get ready for bed?’ Jenny asks. ‘Just me and Jack. Mum?’

  Mum smiles, so I know Jenny’s won. ‘Oh all right. Stay together and don’t wander too far.’ She watches us all the way to the door.

  Jenny grabs the sleeve of my jumper and pulls me outside. When we get outside she pulls her phone out of her jeans pocket and hands it to me. It’s on her GoFundMe page and it’s showing $169,480 now.

  ‘I’m going to cash out,’ Jenny says. ‘End the campaign.’

  ‘How do you do that?’ I ask.

  ‘You just do it in the app, and the money goes to into your PayPal. The plan is, tomorrow Alasdair is going to help me move it from PayPal into this special bank account he set up. Mum and him agreed.’

  ‘Wow. That’s amazing, you know that?’

  ‘I know. People can still give money, but I figure after the funeral, all the publicity dies down, there won’t be that much more.’

  ‘And then how do we get the money?’

  ‘It’s in a trust – we can’t get it until we turn eighteen.’

  ‘No soccer boots then?’

  ‘No, I have a better idea.’ There’s a low wall alongside a small park with dead grass and rusting swings, and she sits down on it. ‘But you have to promise this is just between you and me.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘No, I freaking mean it, Jack. You can’t tell anyone, all right? Even Mum. Especially Mum.’

  She’s never sounded this serious. I sit down beside her.

  She puts an arm around my shoulder. ‘This is my plan. We are getting out of this mess.’

  ‘I am not joining the navy,’ I tell her, guessing where she’s going. ‘Besides, they wouldn’t even take us. As soon as they found out about the Dorotea’s –’

  ‘Not the navy, dummy,’ she says. ‘I mean really out, way way out. Like other side of the world out.’

  I frown. ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘Where’s the one place in the world people won’t look at us like we’re freaks, with our gloves and big boots and stupid routines?’