Stonedogs

by Craig Marriner

  BARRY [strangely subdued, over his shoulder]: See ya’s when I see ya’s. I’ll do a raindance around midnight.

  [For a while GATOR and MICK absently watch his torchlight bobbing downstream.]

  GATOR [out of nowhere]: Eleventh hour, Mick. Make your decision and make it now. Are you committed or just involved?

  [MICK leaps to his feet too quickly; almost stumbles, catches his glasses an inch before they tumble.]

  MICK [wild-eyed, defiant]: And what if I choose not to make a fucking decision? Eh? What then?

  GATOR [unimpressed]: So you can sit there sulking? Absorbing events like an overheated engine? Then you’re an even bigger dickhead than you’ve so far acted, because with three of us co-operating, with you doing your job, my idea stands a far greater chance of saving our arses. And you will’ve burned your other bridge, anyway, ’cause if your next sentence isn’t, ‘I’m leaving. See you in court,’ I’m revoking the option. You don’t have to stand tall, Mick … but you gotta stand up.

  [For a long moment it appears as though MICK will throw the challenge back at GATOR, perhaps just for its own sake. At last, though, the tension leaves him.]

  MICK [hoarsely mordant]: Let me see. Decisions, decisions. Do I go to the oinkers, take the stand against my two best mates, with the world watching, condemning me for a turncoat, later to suffer abduction and agonising death at Rabble hands? Or do I throw my lot behind a plan of maniacal audacity, conceived by a dude who’s plainly thrown a rod or three sometime within the last hour? [He spreads his arms in bitter supplication] Pray direct me, oh, murderous one.

  GATOR [stooping for an armload of wood]: Logic at last.

  Sunday, 12 March, 10.40pm

  The fire does Steve justice. Encapsulates his life. Or perhaps I’m just being maudlin. How could I possibly know any more?

  With petrol from the Commodore’s boot, we’ve increased the pyre’s volatility as much as we dare, and in seconds of being lit the flames have forced us back, roaring a more stirring dirge than mortal throats have ever, returning to Steve’s body a dignity the Fiend had robbed him of.

  He’s soon in my nostrils; I sniff him deeply.

  Mick also seems moved, silent alongside me, and for minutes I’m free to feel as one with my dead brother. Indeed, the flames leap with such height and vigour, reflected on both sides by rushing water mere feet away, glistening off the sheer banks, off the trees nearby; with such benevolence does the spangled sky accept the palls of smoke; with such force does the fire heat me, for a time my heart thrills in my chest, convinced such a goodbye can never be final, wishing almost to share the flames with Steve. Even when his skull explodes it feels more zenith than termination, and for a while the icework around my soul, the hole at the core of my gut, grants me sweet release.

  But before long, as the flames ease, thunder mocking me in background, they become reflective of other things.

  And soon they’re simply a tool for disposing of a dead friend I’m never going to see again.

  This time the coldness has greater purpose; the apathy more calculating.

  ‘Let’s go get a load of blow.’

  12

  Monday, 13 March, 1.13am

  Barry — locking his battered ‘companion’ in the Commodore’s boot — returns from his mission about forty minutes after Mick and I do from ours. By this time the storm’s begun in earnest. For once Jim Hickey got it right, and if this front behaves itself the heavy rain and gusting winds should last days.

  More than long enough to expunge from Takahera’s gravel roads all traces of a ’74 HQ Holden.

  More than long enough to wash the crime scene of forensic evidence.

  Though no one will ever visit it in that capacity, anyway.

  I hope.

  Me to Barry, loud above the wind: ‘How did ya go?’

  Barry: ‘Not bad. Ron freaked out, but there’s no way he’s gonna grass us unless the oinkers show up on his doorstep. I’m pretty sure of that. ’Specially after he watched me give Wallace the full facial. And, yeah, on the map Ron pointed out a disused single-laner in the forest’s south-east. He reckons there’s plenty of places to squeeze a car from the road a decent distance, and as far as he knows no cunt has any business there right now.’

  ‘Good shit.’ Relief blooms in me, but it’s queerly subordinate to the listlessness: a sprinkle of sugar on ice cubes.

  Me: ‘How many trips do ya reckon for two of us to lug the rest of the pot down from the cleft?’

  Barry: ‘That goat track up the ridge was getting slippery when I came down. It’ll be lethal by now. But if me and you go we might just get it all in one hit.’

  Even with what Barry and Wallace brought down, the load Mick and I recently returned with, the pack-load of Steve’s we found in the Commodore’s boot, a good twenty pounds remain on the ridge-top.

  ‘Yeah, it has to be us two: Mick’s busy in the Commodore right now. There’s a load of our stuff in there. Someone fancied petty theft as a warm-up. It’s all gotta come out, and you and I aren’t allowed in the car. At all.’

  I find myself thankful the roster fell in this fashion. There’s something about a forest at night, when alone. Something even more, with wind howling along tree-tops, old growth thudding to ground around you …

  … fresh corpses nearby, a spirit newly unshackled …

  … an inmate on death row.

  I learn that my bleak indifference to the world extends no further than the tangible.

  Barry: ‘How’s Numbnuts taking it?’

  Me: ‘Well, he’s not trying for a Nobel Prize any more, and he’s doing everything I ask of him. I doubt he’ll enjoy staying here alone, but he’ll have no choice. We’ll leave him the pistol for a bit of moral support.’

  ‘He’s the one allowed in the car because of his hair, right? But there’s no way he’ll be able to do the second job alone.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So before we go you and me should drag the cunts over, give the rain more time to wash the grass under them.’

  ‘Sweet. We’ll do it on bin-liners to try and keep as much blood from the carpark as poss, just in case the rain lets up before it can drip through the canopy properly.’

  Barry: ‘Mick’s gonna have to pilot the meat wagon as well, isn’t he?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Has he realised?’

  ‘He hasn’t put two and two together yet, no.’

  ‘What are the chances of him jumping ship in our absence?’

  ‘Not good … considering I’ve got both sets of keys in my pocket.’

  Lashed by squalling rain that has never refreshed me more, embracing shrieking gusts, we pass the charred site of Steve’s departure and learn that the river level has barely risen an inch. Apprehension attempts a tantrum in the mud of my stomach; manages a sluggish kick or two.

  Even the strain and pain of the slog up the ridge seem somehow cathartic. As siblings I welcome each banged shin, each scratched cheek, every complaint from climbing thighs.

  Awkwardly laden, arms of barest use, the slope growing slicker, the down-climb is more perilous and I rouse to the danger, courting it as a desperate man might a jury of his peers.

  We’re deemed innocent, arriving at the bottom to a sentence no greater than muddied bruises.

  Only to face another trial. As augured, the Takahera River has risen to the occasion, The Mother freeing Steve with more finality than we ever could have. However, her growing tempest is such that fording presents her an opportunity to add to the passenger list.

  At our point of crossing Barry and I hoist hand-held gunja to one shoulder, link arms, and step into the water with what might approximate curiosity.

  Midstream, waters charging at thigh level, I slip on a rock, a stumble gleefully seized upon by the current. But Barry stands tall, as if in foundations, swinging me to verticality.

  Another minute and we’re free, Barry expressing a desire to repeat the feat.

  I find mys
elf genuinely tempted.

  Once, during Mick’s hour-long ostrich patrol, he made the mistake of shining his torch into the Commodore’s interior. Jammed with bloody bodies and limbs, sightless eyes and twisted faces, neat entry wounds, explosive exits, the car struck him as something from a Holocaust reel.

  Or a Stephen King novel.

  Of course with Gator appointing him head valet, Mick had himself interned the car with its awful cargo, cleansed the deceased of potential evidence, Barry and Gator helping only with the hoisting of the massive Johnson. But throughout the deed, shock at the actuality of what he was doing had cushioned Mick with surreality. At times he had even found himself giggling, though this is almost all he can recall of the labour.

  Oddly, it seems to Mick that completing the grisly task — his first authentic implication in the killings — has fortified him with a measure of the dislocation and acceptance Barry and Gator so clearly wallow in. He now finds himself unable to empathise with the logic that had earlier impelled him against their tide. With such shamelessness. He finds himself chagrined by the attempts he made to manipulate events in his then desired direction. Indeed, he finds himself chagrined of even possessing that desired direction.

  Strangely enough, though, that he can feel shame at his near capitulation actually eases this selfsame burden somewhat. Because the consequences have not lessened, and at this point in time, to Mick, his inner mortification seems the more pressing issue.

  And this surely amounts to a bravery of sorts.

  Doesn’t it?

  So Mick, doffing the head-scarf and gloves he wore while working in the car, hurled himself into his next task with all the aptitude his innate pragmatism had to offer: searching and cleansing of human trace every inch of turf his band or their foes may have had reason to tread. In the wind and wet of the storm, Mick found cigarette butts, matches, a beer bottle, a chip wrapper, shell cartridges, tissues, coins, old batteries. He even located the site of Dusty’s strangulation, consigning the murder weapon to the boot of The ’Dan, alongside Rabble shotguns. All smaller flotsam he offered to the swiftening Takahera.

  In his industriousness, his belated commitment to the undertaking, Mick was able to all but shelve the fears that had earlier crippled and warped him; able to forsake any analytical evaluation of the coming aftermath.

  As he worked, though, fear of a different nature began to lurk near Mick’s shoulder, like a being of shadow — something cold and punctured, patched and tattooed, its thick fingers stealing for his neck …

  Like many folk of intelligence, Mick’s imagination at times got the better of him. Illogical impulses had refused to forsake him as he grew older — as he expected they would — many of them reverberations from grim literature, books with which he had thrilled himself late at night, the covers warm, light switch handy.

  But the mind can prove an erratic companion; treacherous. Can throw into being notions and characters, scenarios and forces, that should, on certain occasions, be left in the vaults.

  On certain occasions when in forests after dusk, as good as alone — apparently — the wailing wind laden with souls, silhouettes cavorting in the fringes of one’s torchlight, all else black as the grave.

  And with the car nearby.

  No matter where his search for rubbish took him, Mick was acutely certain of the car’s position, as if it beat malign rays. On several occasions, as the wind rocked it on its springs, as debris from above dislodged, as Wallace shifted in the boot, Mick grew illogically convinced of hearing a door eased stealthily open, a heavy tread crackling twigs, the rasp of leather on pine needle …

  … the thud of sudden rush.

  Swinging the torch wildly, Mick half expected to encounter something bloodied and smirking.

  When searching near the car-park his eye and torch began to avoid the car, working studiously at denial. Yet despite himself he remained electrically aware of its presence, as though it had a sentience, an enormous and feral intelligence. Its very stillness began to seem a tactic, a stratagem; its colour a hellish boast. And when torchlight caught its windows, glimpsed peripherally, there seemed no doubt that something inside it was stirring.

  As the storm blows on, his companions failing to return, Mick begins to exhaust all areas in need of searching. Everywhere, that is, except around and beneath the car. He finds he can force himself no closer to it than four metres. Yet, like a tongue with a sore tooth, the treacherous urge to peer in its windows becomes inexorable.

  A part of him knows he mustn’t. Knows that what he will find — two corpses, not three — will unhinge him so badly the broken, grinning gangster at the verge of the clearing will hunt him to ground with ease. Scuttle across to him, and …

  ‘Ya all done, bro?’

  Choking on a roar, whirling to find Gator and Barry tramping toward him. He’s seldom been so overjoyed to lay eyes on people. Seeks to hide this almost instantly.

  Barry walks straight past him, toward the car, as if it won’t sound its stentorian horn, impale him in headlights, throw open its doors, unleash its vile servants …

  Which it doesn’t.

  Gator: ‘You all right, man? Who did ya think we were? The Rabble or something?’

  ‘In a sense.’

  Gator joins Barry at the boot of The ’Dan, where they add their contraband to the rest, cursing the cannabis as if it’s hay when the lid won’t close on its bulk.

  Barry: ‘Fuck all this shit! We’ll have to load more in the back, on the seat.’

  Gator: ‘No can do. Steady me, I’ll bounce on it, compact it some more … That’s it. Reckon that’ll do us?’

  Barry: ‘Jump down, I’ll give it a whirl.’

  Thunk.

  ‘Sorted.’

  Gator, as he crosses to the Commodore: ‘Did you do an evidence sweep, Mick?’ He shines his light into the black car’s windscreen, recoils a little, turns away, face soured.

  Mick: ‘Yeah, we’ve just gotta do right here, but we might as well wait until we’ve backed the cars out a bit. I’ve searched everywhere else top to bottom.’

  Gator takes in the mad dance of the trees around them. Grimacing: ‘Rather you than me, pal.’

  Like a man reunited with his mind, Mick enjoys an inane rush of gratitude.

  Then Gator stomps on it, twisting the heel. Handing one set of keys to Barry, another, unfamiliar, set to Mick: ‘You dudes back the cars out a bit and give it death on the headlights, light this joint right up. I’ll do a final check along the riverbank.’

  For a moment Mick glares at the keys as though he holds a hand-grenade. Blurting: ‘I’m not driving that thing. I can’t.’

  Gator, matter-of-factly: ‘Yeah, you can. There’s no other option.’

  Shrill: ‘Why isn’t there?’

  ‘For the same reason you had to be the one who cleaned and loaded it: your hair. I don’t know how often human hair falls out, but if you drop one of yours in there they’ll need a microscope to find it. One of ours? Stevie fucking Wonder’d see the bastard.’

  His logic is unimpeachable. Sickeningly so. And the level of additional risk it lays at Mick’s feet is negligible.

  But Mick’s abhorrence has nothing to do with logic; has its roots in a force vastly more imposing.

  Mick, pleading: ‘I can’t do it, bro. Please don’t make me.’

  Barry, frowning: ‘Hang on a tick. Just let me clarify something here. Through some clear thinking, we’ve got a chance of being awarded Crime of the Year, and you, Mick — Mr Logical, Mr Reason, Mr Prudence, Mr Caution, Mr Methodical, Mr Pragmatic, Mr Pedantic — you wanna throw a key component of our plan out the fucking window for no other reason than that you’re too superstitious to drive the hearse for a while? Have I summed that up about right?’

  For good or ill something in Mick breaks.

  Leaving him the will to contemplate opening the door of the car; sliding behind its wheel; sealing himself inside it.

  Shuddering: ‘Just let me fetch the Jac
ks, then.’

  Barry, contradictory: ‘Oh, na, ya can’t drink and drive.’

  Mick’s so preoccupied he doesn’t realise Barry’s joking; aborts his walk toward The ’Dan, dropping his head.

  Barry, grinning: ‘What if there’s an oinker out there pulling breath-tests?’

  Ron’s suggested road seems sufficiently disused for our needs. Indeed, pot-holes and channels soon slow progress to a crawl, and after a few minutes of this my patience expires.

  From the passenger seat I lean from the window, probing my side of the forest with torchlight, as Barry does his. Mick follows close in the Commodore.

  Back at the scene Mick’s grim determination for his role had suffered a palpable setback when he learned that, for reasons of navigation, he would need to bring up the rear of our motorcade. But though it cost him, he didn’t complain audibly, perhaps feeling too foolish to voice the misgivings.

  But what if … and there’s nobody to see?

  I sympathised entirely … but declined mentioning this.

  Me, to Barry: ‘Yeah, next decent spot’ll have to do us. We need to be motoring real shortly: we wanna be well clear of the junction of 69 and 1 before it gets light enough to start IDing The ’Dan properly.’

  Barry, a long minute later: ‘Oh, yeah, that’s our baby right there. We’ll get the cunt in about a hundred-odd metres.’

  He brakes to a halt and I spring from the car, head to the trees on my right. A natural causeway has developed over a ditch flanking the road, and the forest beyond appears commodious enough.

  Dazzled by high beams, as I beckon to Mick I can see nothing near the hearse but wind-driven rain. He motors toward me, turning early, easing over the ditch, hitting the gap in the treeline square. Barry follows hard.

  Worried mostly of bog-holes, I lead the way in, clearing the odd branch, but the pine bed is solid enough.

  By my reckoning we’re able to pick our way some eighty metres from the road before the trees bar passage. I signal the halt with a thumbs up.