Yesterday's Dust

by Joy Dettman

  ‘Like a pair of bloody old honeymooners, we were. Sex on the bloody floor in front of the fire. Sex for breakfast, and better than eggs on toast.’

  He’d sat through the inquest in his wig and mo. He’d handled it, but he’d sweated when the black-headed little bitch had started talking. He never had known what that one was likely to do next. May hadn’t been too certain that day either. She’d clung to his sweating hand. Two hands, clasped, welded together with liquid fear.

  But the little bitch had stood up there and spoken of a man who probably had an English accent, but it could have been Scottish or Irish. When you’re six they just sound different. Not Australian, she’d said. And Jack had almost believed her. She couldn’t guess at his age, she’d said, but she thought he was older than Uncle Sam, and he’d had sandy-red hair. She remembered that. He’d ridden a motorbike with a sidecar. She said she had watched him bury Liza in the rose garden, but remembered nothing after that. She couldn’t remember him locking her in the cellar.

  There had been many questions but her story had not altered. Just the image of the man. And his voice. No. He had not spoken as if English had been a second language. It was some sort of English accent.

  The psychiatrist she’d seen after Mandy’s death had said his piece, and the old copper who had run the search – eighty if he was a day, and eager for his moment of glory – hadn’t been able to remember what he’d eaten for breakfast that morning.

  They’d called Samuel Burton’s name then, and Saint Sam had released May’s hand to tell his tale. He’d been away at the time, in Queensland. He’d driven day and night to get back home. He knew nothing of the day Liza had disappeared, but he’d retold the tale of the Englishman who had come to their door looking for a job. Crow. Ted Crow. He’d been on a working holiday around Australia.

  May copped the worst of it. She’d said her piece, admitted leaving the girls watching television while she’d driven to town for bread.

  ‘There had been several cases of meningitis in town. I was petrified. I kept the girls home from school. Sam did the shopping. I was afraid to take the girls into town. My friend’s son had been left deaf by the disease. The girls were in my care and I made a bad decision I’ll regret until my dying day.’

  They’d questioned her on the length of time she’d been gone from the property and doubted her reply. A child murdered and buried in the time it had taken May to drive into town, buy bread and return home, but they gave up when she broke down and howled.

  David had done his fair share of staring that day. He hadn’t seen much of Jack, and had never set eyes on him sober, so he’d been taken in by gentleman Sam in his wig and his mo and halo, his sibilant Ss. He’d shaken his sweating hand when the day was over, but Ann had walked away, walked away fast with May tailing her, begging her to wait.

  Jack had sighted his own discarded car in the car park, and he’d known that Johnny Jesus was in town. Hadn’t seen him, but later that night the car had been parked for an hour at the Narrawee gates. May had panicked; she’d sat on the telephone until she’d got two cancellations on a ten-week tour leaving the following day. Canada and America – she wouldn’t have cared if it had been to Timbuktu.

  Piebald at night when he’d taken his wig off, when they hit American soil, Jack pitched his wig to buggery and May had given him a haircut. No black then. Only the grey left, and a greyer grey than the wig.

  He wasn’t Jack hiding beneath a wig and mo any more, and he wasn’t bloody Sam either. He saw his great-grandfather in the hotel mirror that night, old Samuel standing there with age and death staring him in the eye, so he’d escaped May and gone on his first bender with the money a pawnbroker had given him for his watch. Got a bit for it too. He might have stayed away long enough to miss the morning bus out, but he’d been mugged, and the mugging little bastards had put the boots in, letting him know just how bloody old and decrepit he was.

  The New York cops got him back to May, sore enough, sober enough to fake it. He told her he’d gone for a walk, sightseeing, that the muggers had taken his watch as well as his wallet. She’d still believed him back then.

  Ten weeks of trains and buses had been enough to grow a good beard and moustache, and the dinner tables at night had given him freedom to have a few glasses of wine. He’d done all right, lost his halo but not his sainthood.

  It had taken longer to grow hair down to his collar.

  ‘It’s safer,’ May had said when he’d fought her for the old short back and sides. ‘For the moment it’s safer to look the way you’ve always looked, Sam.’

  Bloody Sam.

  For weeks after their return to Australia, he’d stayed in Sydney alone, and had a ball, then for two months they’d lived at the Toorak flat. He’d spent his pocket money wisely, had a beer or three when she wasn’t around, and sucked mints when she was due home. He’d got away with it until she deemed his hair, if not him, fit for Narrawee.

  And he’d left it too late. Without realising it, he’d let the nagging little bitch gain the upper hand.

  ‘Poor hen-pecked, grey-headed old bastard.’

  Hen reminded him of chook shit country, and Ellie. A lot of things reminded him of Ellie lately. His youngest, the wild little bitch Bronwyn, had reminded him of Ellie. She had her walk, her legs, her build. She and her smartarsed husband had arrived at the door only minutes after he and May had driven in with the groceries. He’d seen her as she walked from the car, and he’d gone to ground. Hidden in the cellar while his liver ached. May entertained them, and left him starving in the cellar, and no bloody butter for his toast when she let him know it was safe to come out.

  How old was that youngest one now? Seven years younger than Liza. ‘Bloody near thirty-one,’ he said. Born a bare month before Liza and Sam had died. ‘Shit,’ he snarled, then shook his head and smoothed on a coat of shellac.

  His hands working independently of his mind were those of a perfectionist. They’d surprised him, those hands. There had been a time years ago when he’d believed in them. Time had stolen his belief, left his murdering bloody hands lost in a limbo of waiting. Poor bloody things, they couldn’t do much now. They could still lift a bottle, hold a pen, forge his brother’s signature, and push sandpaper. Couldn’t run the property. Didn’t know how. But they worked on, his hands, and his brain worked on, and never the two did meet.

  Mallawindy. He couldn’t ever go back. Even before they’d found his body, he’d been aware that he could never go back. The best he could hope for was that Ellie might give him a good Catholic funeral, buy him a decent tombstone with her insurance payout, and stick his name on it.

  ‘Two hundred and fifty thousand! She’ll give half of it to the church, you see if I’m wrong,’ he told the can of methylated spirits. ‘Bloody Catholic church. Got money coming out of its ears – it doesn’t need my bloody money.’

  For years he’d worked, on and off, for AMP, and during one bad month back in the eighties, he’d sold himself a big policy. Had no intention of keeping up the payments, but Ellie had liked the idea; she’d paid up every month.

  ‘It’s like putting money in the bank, Jack. We’ll get it back when you turn seventy.’ He could still do her voice, that nasal country tone.

  ‘Bloody seventy. Bloody Mallawindy – sprawled in the dust like a worn-out harlot with her legs spread wide.’

  Narrawee wasn’t much better these days. Like every other town in Australia, it was dying while the cities choked on cars and people. Narrawee had been a world when he was kid. It had possessed a life, a personality; it thought it had a future.

  Melbourne sucked the life from this town. Good farmland was being sold off in five-acre lots to Melbourne’s more affluent retirees. Hobby farmers. They built their own mansions, determined to outdo their neighbours. They built tennis courts but they were too old to hold a racquet. They kept horses they didn’t ride. Poor old Samuel Burton would roll over in his grave if he could see his town today. He’d built it, naming it aft
er his property. The Burtons had been someone back then.

  Jack lifted his head, straightened his shoulders and sucked in his stomach. Old Samuel, his great-grandfather, had stood tall until the day he died.

  Then he heard May’s running footsteps, and his shoulders sagged and his stomach sagged. As the door opened he saw her silhouetted against the light, her umbrella high. For minutes she stood there, looking down.

  ‘You spend too much time in here, Sam. It’s not good for you.’

  ‘Depression is a state of mind, induced by self for the self-satisfaction of wallowing in self-pity. Get used to it.’ He glanced at her to see if his words had hit home, then his hands smoothed another coat of shellac on the cabinet barely recognisable now as the battered old workbench he had dragged from a corner only weeks ago.

  May placed the umbrella against the wall and walked downstairs to his side, where she stood, watching his hands.

  ‘It has come up well. That’s the old one that used to be in the hall in your mother’s time, isn’t it?’

  ‘It came over with old Samuel. Two of the drawer handles have gone.’

  ‘There’s a lot of junk in one of the old tin trunks. They could be in there. We never threw anything away.’ She walked the cellar until she found the old tin trunk, and she opened its lid, squatting there, searching for minutes. ‘Take it up to the garage and I’ll go through it for you.’

  ‘I’ll look when I’m ready.’

  ‘Please yourself.’ She stood, wiped her hands on her handkerchief. ‘I don’t know how you can stand to work down here. Why don’t you take the cabinet into the garage?’

  ‘Because I choose to work here, May.’

  ‘It’s not healthy.’

  ‘Don’t like the fumes? Or the ghosts?’

  ‘Don’t start that again.’

  ‘Can you still see them lying there on the floor, May?’

  ‘Stop it! Every time you wallow in your guilt, you force me to wallow in it with you. Is that what you want?’

  ‘Come on in, the wallowing is fine.’

  ‘You’re killing me with your moods. I’m trying. I’m trying as hard as I know how to make this work. You won’t let it work.’ He stepped back studying the finish on a cabinet door. ‘I give you access to money and what do you do? You go off drinking. Do it again, Jack, and it will be the end of you. And well you know it.’

  ‘What do you care?’

  ‘I’m finding it more and more difficult, I can promise you that.’

  He picked up the can of methylated spirit, shook it. ‘They say it goes down well with a dash of cordial. Got any cordial in the house or is it fattening, May?’ The sponge again in hand, he wiped another coat of shellac across the cabinet with smooth, easy strokes.

  ‘You need professional help, Jack.’

  He smiled. She’d called him Jack. ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘Join me up to the local AA, or I’ll get myself to a psychiatrist. Spill my guts to him. Think he’d keep it under his hat?’ She walked away, and he called after her. ‘What I bloody well need is to hear you say my name. That’s what I need. Do you know how good it sounds?’

  For minutes she stood halfway up the stairs, watching him work. She had no reply. She knew what he was going through. She also knew she had to wipe that name from her mind.

  ‘I’ve got to go into town. Do you want anything?’

  ‘Yes. A couple of pounds of butter, a crate of Jack Daniel’s, boss, and a cake of Solvol for the bathroom.’

  ‘Do you want anything!’

  ‘No, boss. Not diss boy. He don’ wan’ nuttin. You lockem him in, boss. You takem metho with you, boss.’

  ‘Stop it, you fool. Do you need cigarettes?’

  He turned back to his cabinet. It wasn’t the first piece he’d reclaimed, but it was going to be the best. Stooping low he peered across the glass-like surface. In silence she watched him until he straightened. ‘Bloody beautiful wood, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is. It is. It would sell for thousands in the city.’

  ‘You can have it for five hundred bucks and the keys to Toorak.’

  ‘I’m going now. Do you need cigarettes?’

  ‘Can I come with you, boss, and have six dollars to buy my own?’

  ‘Which one of you?’

  ‘The pervert, of course. I’ll discuss my antiques with Mrs Lamont.’ He wiped on another coat of shellac.

  ‘You really do a wonderful job on them. You really do.’ He made no reply. ‘I remember the day you brought home that little table you made for your mother, when you were fourteen, or fifteen.’

  ‘It’s at Toorak.’ He looked at her, then back to the pad. Cotton wool wrapped in fine sheeting. It had been made as he had been taught by the trade teacher. Just a kid then, eager to learn. He could have been anything, done anything. Back then. ‘I need some more sandpaper.’

  ‘What grade?’

  ‘Superfine. No. No. I’ll go in. Something to bloody well do. We’ll have something decent to eat in town.’ The pad dropped into the shellac, the lid screwed down, as he’d been taught in the school room, he washed his hands with metho then wiped them on an old cloth before following her up the steps, closing the door on his own haven, his own little hell, giving it back to the ghosts of Liza and Sam for an hour.

  May was upstairs dressing when the phone rang.

  ‘I thought I’d killed the bloody thing,’ he muttered, washing his hands in the downstairs bathroom, pumping liquid soap into his palm because it made less mess in the basin than Solvol – so she said. She didn’t have to clean the bloody basin. She paid a woman to do the cleaning, paid old Harry to ride around on her lawn mower. She paid painters, and bloody carpet layers, spent money like water and wouldn’t even buy him a bar of Solvol. He ignored the phone.

  ‘Pick that up will you, Sam,’ she called from above.

  ‘That bastard is still dead, May.’

  ‘Will you pick the phone up?’

  ‘Why isn’t the answering machine on?’

  ‘Because I’m waiting for Maxine to call me back.’

  ‘Bloody Maxine. I’m not playing social secretary for bloody Maxine Parker-Jones.’ The ringing stopped.

  ‘Thank you very much for that,’ May yelled.

  ‘A bloody pleasure. Anything else I can do for you, just ask.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have hurt you to pick it up.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have done me any good either.’ Then it rang again, so he picked the bloody thing up just to stop her complaining. He stood listening to the STD beeps, and knew it wasn’t Maxine Parker who had married Herb Jones – liked his money but not his name, so she’d added a hyphen, like his youngest. Mr and Mrs Burton-Smith.

  ‘Mr Burton?’

  ‘Who wants him?’

  ‘Am I speaking to Samuel Burton?’ a stranger’s voice asked.

  ‘So they tell me.’

  ‘Sergeant Robertson, Mr Burton. Your nephew suggested that you may be able to assist us with our inquiries.’

  Jack’s liver quivered, his shoulders crawled and he needed a drink. Nephew? Bloody Bessy’s Mickey. Thirty-odd years ago Jack had named a retarded pup for that hangdog-eyed little shit. And what the bloody hell would he know about anything anyway? Didn’t have enough brains to come in out of the rain, that one – but his mother did. His stomach, his shoulders shivered. Bloody big-mouthed Bessy.

  He needed a whisky. Since he’d heard that they’d found his body, he’d felt that old urge for a whisky. Since the little black-headed bitch had called last night his head had been screaming out for a whisky.

  Then he realised who he was supposed to be, and it wasn’t nephew Mickey Bishop who’d dobbed him in. It would be Johnny Jesus.

  He drew a breath and attempted to raise Sam, all fake concern and bullshit over his twin brother’s not so recent demise, but he’d been caught on the hop by liquid soap and he hated pumping the crazy shit. Anything May wanted, she had to have it. Didn’t matter what he wanted. He was an also-ran in this p
lace.

  ‘We have been unable to trace your brother’s dentist, Mr Burton.’

  ‘A bit late for dental work, isn’t it?’

  The cop wasn’t amused. ‘If our information is correct, you and your brother were identical twins.’ Jack made no denial and the voice continued on about forensic and positive identifications while Jack lit a cigarette.

  He was trying to raise Sam. He coughed, but perverted Sam was slow in coming this morning. It was one thing to play the bastard for a day, a week, a bloody month, another entirely to live him, day in, day out, year in, year out. It didn’t get any easier.

  ‘Still so hard to realise he’s dead,’ he said, looking for Ss while taking Sam’s glasses from his breast pocket, putting them on. It helped sometimes, but not this morning. He was Jack and today he felt like Jack, black as bloody original sin. He ran a hand through Sam’s long hair, he tensed his jaw, then relaxed it into Sam’s. He sniffed his hand. It smelt of Sam. He sniffed at the hand holding the cigarette. Overtones of Sam with a bit of Jack’s nicotine. The bastard hadn’t taken up smoking until after he was dead; Sam’s hands had always smelt like a woman’s.

  ‘Yes. Yes. We’ve been away. Heard the news last evening. The shock. Not functioning at all well at the moment. Where exactly did you find the body, Sergeant?’

  ‘Approximately twenty kilometres east of Mallawindy. He had been buried in a shallow grave.’

  ‘Sad news. Very sad. He didn’t bury himself, I take it?’ Sam’s hissing Ss were coming.

  ‘As you say, Mr Burton.’

  The policeman spoke on while Jack raked at his scalp and, as always, checked his fingernails for movement. He felt an itch near his eyebrow, and knew the little bastards were migrating south. Then his beard and his mo began itching. He scratched. Listened and scratched. Eaten alive by bloody head lice. He looked closely at his nails while the copper waited for a reply, but Jack wasn’t too certain of what had been said.

  How could you tell nits from dandruff? Nits were eggs. Eggs didn’t crawl.

  ‘Mr Burton?’

  ‘Yes. So, you’re treating his death as a homicide, Sergeant?’