by Joy Dettman
‘A transport. Coming towards us. A mob of spaced-out hoons trying to pass on a bloody sixty-kilometre curve. She didn’t have a hope. She didn’t have a bloody hope. We were almost home. Didn’t have a hope in hell.’ She watched a tear trickle, become trapped in his beard, watched it glisten there, watched it joined by another tear.
She had tasted his tears that day. She had patted his wet face with a tiny hand.
I love you, my Daddy.
But she shook her head. Hard. She freed her hair from the band, ran her fingers through it, determined to ignore his tears.
‘Her head. Mandy – ’
‘Her head is okay. She said your name. Before they operated, she was talking. She knew what she was saying. Her head’s okay. It’s internal. The injuries are internal, but she’s going to be okay. They took her arm off. Crushed. Had to cut her out of the car. The microsurgeon couldn’t . . . couldn’t do a bloody thing. But she’s got the elbow. They’ve saved the elbow. She’ll be okay. They’ve pumped gallons of blood into her. Hours – hours in the theatre. Eight hours. More. I don’t know. I don’t know. But she came out of it. They didn’t think she’d come out of the theatre. But she came out of it. She showed the . . .’ He was leaning forward now and Ann watched a fat tear drop onto the bed cover, then two more.
She lifted her chin. His tears would not move her. They would not move her. She clenched her jaw, her teeth. She tapped her foot on the floor.
But how could she let him cry like this? How could she sit there and watch him cry? She couldn’t. His tears had always hurt too much. She touched the back of his hand. A brief touch, and his hand turned, gripped her own, then as quickly released it.
‘She’s got to be all right,’ he said, and he broke down, put his head on the bed and howled.
She moved away, afraid of the power of touch, of sympathy. Better it be withheld tonight. Let him hold his fear inside as she held her fear. In the morning tears may not be needed. Time enough in the morning to mourn for May’s lost hand, her lost hair. In the morning. Just let the light come, let the sun flood this room and lend her strength. Let the morning come.
Jack turned his face when a sister glided in, adjusted the drip flow while Ann walked the corridors. She found a coffee machine and she made two steaming cups then returned to the room.
For half an hour then there was silence, but the coffee was hot and strong. It went down well and she went back for more. Sweet. One sugar for him, She remembered.
‘She’s holding her own,’ a doctor said at four-fifty.
‘What does that mean?’
‘All we can do now is wait. You should be getting some rest, Mr Burton.’
Jack lifted his good hand. A swipe. Go to buggery, the hand signed. His lips could form no words. The doctor didn’t understand. He saw a broken, aging woman in the bed, a woman without hair, without teeth. A problem to be fixed, if fixed it could be.
May would have hated this. May had always brushed her teeth in private. No one ever saw her without her upper denture. And no one should ever see her like this. But the doctor didn’t care about hair and teeth. A car full of druggies had created this problem for him and he had to work it out. He didn’t understand that his problem was Aunty May, and that she could make twelve small pairs of bloomers from a fine linen sheet and she could stitch pretty dresses and curl wild black hair, that she could cuddle and tickle and kiss and fix things. He didn’t know that. But he wouldn’t let her die, because that was his job. He was a fixer too. He fixed the broken, repaired the maimed. He wouldn’t let her die. Not now. Not now that the world was finally getting back on track.
Ann glanced at the drawn blind, then at her watch. Bethany would be waking soon for her bottle. How would David manage today? He’d have to miss work. He rarely missed a day.
Johnny would be walking off to the school room in a few more hours to spend his day a wall away from Kerrie. She’d be good for him. In the short time he’d been with her at the school she’d done more for him than his family had done in six years. He needed a wife, children, a life.
But Ben. What about Ben? Poor Ben. He’d be pussyfooting around Ellie until the day she died.
She’d be waking. Up, dressed, and out to her paddocks, happy as a cow in clover. She’d be out playing bingo tonight at the shire hall, maybe taxied there by Bob Johnson instead of Ben.
Dear gentle Ben, what then? What if Bob Johnson became a permanent installation in Ellie’s life? What then for my Benjie? He’d wasted his life on Ellie.
May’s breathing slowed, then she gasped, and the two watchers at her bedside breathed deeply, willing breath into her lungs, and her lungs laboured on.
She wouldn’t die. Not now, not with the two she loved best in the world guarding each side of the hospital bed. They wouldn’t let her die.
For another hour they sat there while night, crouching like a hungry black beast outside the window, gave up and left. Jack stood then, he limped to the window and opened the blind, allowing in the weak dawn light. Stiff with sitting, he limped the sterile room while sisters and doctor again leaned over the bed.
Ann saw the hand move when they were gone.
‘Dad. Her hand moved. It moved. Aunty May? Aunty May? We’re here. We’re here. We’re with you.’
‘Jack.’ Barely a whisper.
And he was back at the bed. ‘I’m here, May. Ann is here. She drove down last night.’
May sighed and slipped away again.
Seated on either side of her bed they shared that one hand, and sometimes their own hands touched and they pulled back, but that hand was all they had, and their hands, their fingers, crept back to touch it, to stroke it, both aware that May could not leave them while they pumped their strength into her, willed each breath into her lungs.
But too tired to hold up her head, Ann rested it on her hand. Perhaps she slept.
Jack kept watch, and he watched the curtain of dark hair shielding one closed eye, framing the contours of her face. The chin on the hand, determined Burton jaw. Large Burton hands. They had danced through her childhood, held a doll to her scrawny little breast.
It’s mine, Daddy. My ticket was 48 and I won, Daddy. It’s my dolly.
And he saw the other one, his Liza. Her hair the gold of Ellie’s, but that was where the similarity ended. Foot-stamping, manipulating little bitch, that one, she’d had him wrapped around her little finger.
Give me the bloody doll.
And that little half-wild waif had handed him her dolly and he’d smashed its brains out against the wall.
He wasn’t fit to live.
‘Take me,’ he said to Ellie’s Jesus. ‘Let her live and take me. Do something right for once in your bloody life, you useless bastard.’
‘Jack?’ May murmured.
‘I’m here, May.’ Maybe Ellie’s Jesus had been listening.
The flutter of his fingers on her arm woke Ann. She sprang upright in her chair.
‘She’s awake,’ he said. ‘Look who’s here, May. Ann is with me.’
‘There’s still time,’ May said.
Perhaps he misunderstood. Perhaps he didn’t. ‘It’s not too late, May.’
‘Never. You’re . . . you’re hurt, Jack?’
‘Not me. Poor bloody old Satan is shit-scared I’ll do him out of a job when I get down there.’ His finger touched her face.
Love there. Love in that finger, in that gentle touch. Ann had known that gentle touch, his hand on her chin, turning her face to the light, studying her face. A cleaner hand back then, a soap and cigarette perfumed hand.
She leaned over the bed, her eyes blurring, but she was smiling as she kissed her aunt’s cheek, knowing now that May was going to be fine.
‘My dear little girl. So far away. The babies?’
‘All home in bed.’
‘Love you,’ May said. ‘Love you . . . both. Love each other. For me.’
Then May Burton died.
alone
Tuesday 4 Novemb
er
Jack couldn’t take the empty house. Couldn’t take the daily sympathy, couldn’t handle the manager when he came to call, or the cleaning ladies when they came to clean. Couldn’t eat the food the manager’s wife brought over. Couldn’t live like this. Didn’t want to live. Wouldn’t bloody live any more either. Nothing now to live for. Nothing left.
Fake bastard, that’s all he was, and this was real. May was dead, cremated, her ashes spread on her beloved Narrawee.
Life had been coming together for them, old craving, old memories fading, but his moods were all one and the same now.
Black.
He woke up black and went to bed black and he cursed his life, a life wasted. He cursed every mistake he’d ever made and he thought of how it might have been had he married May when he was twenty, had he given her the kids she’d wanted. He would have grown with this place, learned, as she had learned to run the place. He didn’t have a bloody clue about running a property. How the hell could he ever run the property?
Just a useless bastard. That’s all he was and ever would be.
May had known this property. She’d given the orders. But May was gone.
Lonely. Soul-crushing loneliness. The never-ending days and the longer nights of his own cursed company. No one to sit with him. No one at his side to watch television. No one to look at the bloody paper and see what was on the television. No bloody milk in the fridge. No bloody food on the stove.
Nothing.
No one.
Almost three weeks had passed, and he’d spent each day of each week on his own. No ears in which to pour his pain. No one to see his tears. But when had there ever been anyone for Jack bloody Burton? Only May and that crazy little black-headed bitch who had refused to run from him.
Bastard. A cursed bastard. What had he ever done for her? But she’d come when he’d called. She’d bloody well come when he’d called. Dad, she’d said. Dad. She’d called him Dad.
Dirty filthy murdering bastard. That’s what she should have called him. Dirty filthy bloody spoiling murdering bastard mongrel of a man.
If he’d been behind the wheel that day, he might have done something. Pulled the car off the road. Headed up the embankment. Hit a bloody tree. Something. He could have done something.
Dead. Fiery little May dead. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t real. But it was bloody true.
Everything he touched, he killed. Everything turned to shit in his hands, and always had and always would, because he was shit and that’s all he’d ever be.
Ann had left for home after May had gone. He’d told her to get some sleep, but she’d taken no notice. Never had slept much – always wandering around in the dark, always sitting somewhere with her dog. Always watching him.
She’d driven down again for the funeral and stayed at the motel. He hadn’t asked her to stay at the house. She would have refused if he’d asked her, and he knew it, and he hadn’t wanted her to refuse, so he hadn’t bloody asked her, had he?
‘Love each other,’ May had said.
Samuel Burton and his niece had sat side by side in the church, and at the crematorium, then they’d driven away in separate cars. She’d gone back home to her husband and her babies. His grandchildren. A nest of bloody little Burtons called Taylor.
May had taken photographs of them on that last day in Warran. She’d filled a roll of film with their small faces, and her camera had survived the crash. He’d dropped it into the chemist, got him to get the film out, develop it. Something unfinished he could finish for her; there was little enough he’d ever done for May, or for anyone.
He kept the photographs on the kitchen table, with everything else. He looked at them when there was nothing else to look at. The eldest boy had the height of the Burton strain, and the dark hair, something of his mother, and the youngest too, but it was the girl, that little black-headed bugger with black beetle eyes that got to him. She was of the old strain, God help her. The Burtons’ mad bloody head was a hard load to carry.
They were all mad, the whole bloody bunch of them. Always looking for more. Always wanting something they couldn’t have.
He couldn’t take any more of his bloody mad head. And he didn’t have to now. The cheques were his to sign. The shares, the investments, the bank accounts were his. The stock; each bloody bull in that paddock was his now. All his. He could sell the bastards to the butcher if he wanted to. No one here now to tell him nay.
‘Blind paralytic drunk, that’s what I need. Close it all out. Blind, blotto drunk.’ He stood and limped out to the hire car the insurance company was paying for him to use. His back had been bruised in the smash, it was still bruised, his hand was still giving him hell; he’d lost a lot of flesh, and the sinew to his thumb had been slashed; they’d had to dig for it. He had a new red horseshoe-shaped scar dissecting his eyebrow and curving down the temple. His eye was still blood red, but they’d saved the sight in it.
Samuel Burton was marked for life. Might as well have the bastard’s name tattooed on my brow, he thought. No one could duplicate these scars, nor identify him by the old scar on his wrist – he had a five-inch skin graft running from the thumb, up the side of his hand, over his wrist.
May had fixed it. Her final action had wiped out Jack Burton.
But not his bloody cravings. He’d buy a bottle. Buy a bloody crate and shit on his liver. So poor, perverted bastard Sam had been driven to the bottle by his loss. So bloody what? Good enough for old Malcolm Fletcher, good enough for Sam bloody Burton.
It wasn’t easy driving with one hand and the tips of three fingers, his thumb, taped in a splint, jutting out one side, but he took it slow, he made it to the licensed supermarket, and he dragged his bruised bones from the car and went window-shopping. Couldn’t bring himself to walk in there and buy a bottle of whisky. He couldn’t do that to May. Not here. Not in this town.
Nothing to stop him driving to the outskirts of Melbourne, though, and buying his crate. And that’s what he did, but he settled for a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. It returned to Narrawee on the passenger seat.
‘I’m a bastard, and a drunk, May, and you always knew it.’ He scratched his head, and pushed the long hair behind his ears. One hand couldn’t gather the hair and bind it with a rubber band. May had been due to trim an inch off it. She hadn’t trimmed it. She’d died instead. She’d promised to give him a short back and sides and a bottle of louse shampoo for Christmas. Bloody Christmas.
He hadn’t washed his hair since the accident. How could he wash it with one hand? His other was refusing to heal; the slice of his bum they’d grafted to it didn’t want to be there.
Back in the kitchen he stuck his head under the sink tap, used a palm full of louse shampoo on it and he stood there, head down, letting the water rinse clean before drying his hair on a tea towel. Using his damaged hand hurt like buggery, but he used it and managed to get most of his wet hair into a rubber band.
He had a collection of them on a doorknob now.
That’s what Ellie had done with rubber bands. Stuck them on a doorknob. May hadn’t liked it. She’d pitched his rubber bands to buggery, but he had a mess of them on the doorknobs now. The bills and his newspapers, delivered to his mailbox at the gate, were all held together with rubber bands.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the hall mirror as he walked by. ‘Bloody old scarred, pigtailed, bloodshot-eyed poofter bastard,’ he snarled, then proceeded on with his bottle and his glass to the dining room.
Unused, this room, except when they’d opened up the house and property for that one day in June, for his mother’s birthday. He fought the top from the bottle, poured a good shot, then sat on one of the dining chairs. Too long away from the whisky, perhaps he was afraid, had to creep up on it slowly. He sniffed at it, placed the glass down. And the noise was too loud.
There was an echo in this room. Always had been. Hollow.
‘Why bloody not?’ he said. The words had no impact. They floated around him. Ghost words. ‘
Why bloody not?’ he screamed.
Give me a push, Jacky.
Little May, on the table, on her stomach. He’d grasped her feet and pushed, and she’d slid all the way down the end, fallen onto the floor, then picked herself up and run back for more.
Give me another turn, Jacky, but not so hard this time.
Wild little bugger. Tough little bugger too.
Not tough enough.
‘I should have been driving. She’d been driving for three hours. I should have taken the wheel. I should have been the one who died. She could have had her kids here then. Bloody little black-headed Burtons coming out of the woodwork. She would have been happy. She deserved to be happy.’
He stared at old Samuel’s ultra long oak table, now veiled by a layer of dust. No May, no cleaning ladies to wipe the dust away. He looked at the chairs at the head and end of the table. Samuel’s ornate oak carvers that little Jacky, Sammy and May had once believed to be the thrones of kings and queens. They’d sat on them and played Arthur and Guinevere. Bloody Sam had been Lancelot – the bastard who ruined their Camelot.
Jack walked to the head of the table now and he sat on his throne. Hard as the hobs of hell.
‘King Jack,’ he said. ‘Supreme ruler of the ghosts, May. They’re a mixed assembly tonight.’
Old Samuel Burton and his Jane’s ghosts were sitting down one side. William, their son, and his Jessy beside them. Those two had died young, but they’d left two infant sons for Samuel to raise. Uncle Matthew, a consumptive two yards of pale bones, and Jack’s father, John the bastard, who had married Elisa Hamstead, a tall and stately Melbourne lady. She had been the Burtons’ first fine lady. She had bought class into the family, but she’d had no staying power. She gave up, gave in, died young.
They were all here, partying, and now May had gone to join the ghosts.
Bloody perverted twin brother Sam wasn’t here. What the fire had left of that mongrel dog now lay in a nameless grave. Just another John Doe.
‘And all he deserved. Better than he deserved.’
Jack shook his head, shook the memory of Sam and the funeral pyre and the gallon of petrol, and the stench of the burning away, and he forced his mind to old Samuel.