Fat Man, The

by Gee, Maurice

  Colin thought he might rescue it and give it to her. He moved several steps along the top of the bank. Then he saw something under the water – a dull gleam like the belly of an eel. It took a moment, like the hat, for it to come clear – to become a human leg, with a slipper on the foot. He almost screamed. He stumbled partway down the bank, beside the mudslide where the tip had been, for a better look. Mrs Muskie came into view, with the top part of her body floating face down and her arms hanging deep in the water as though she were reaching for her sovereigns down there. Her legs were deep down too, in the green pool, lit with the dull gleam Colin had seen. Her thin hair floated like grey weed, with a single hatpin, caught in a knot, weighing an edge of it down.

  Colin clawed his way up the bank. ‘Dad,’ he screamed. ‘Mrs Muskie’s in the creek. Dad, Dad.’

  Laurie came down the scaffold like a monkey. He ran to the creek, saw the body, climbed down. He grabbed a shoulder and tried to lift. Mrs Muskie swung round heavily.

  ‘Is she dead, Dad?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s dead. She’s cold as ice. Go and get some help, Colin. We’ve got to get her out.’

  ‘Dad, I can hear his car. The fat man’s coming.’

  The sound of slamming doors came from the road.

  ‘Stop him. Don’t let him see,’ Laurie said.

  Colin ran back past the house. The fat man and Bette and Verna were halfway along the front path.

  ‘Busy already, kid?’ the fat man said.

  ‘Don’t go round there. Dad said not to go,’ Colin cried.

  The fat man understood instantly. How had he been so quick? He gave a bellow – rage or grief? – and swept Colin aside, bowling him among the brittle hydrangeas on the lawn. He ran as lightly as a sprinter, knees high, belly thrust forward like a chest.

  ‘Ma,’ he bellowed. His hat flew backwards off his head.

  Colin picked himself up and followed, with Verna at his heels and Bette Muskie twittering behind.

  The fat man reached the top of the bank. He saw Laurie tugging at the body and gave a roar. ‘Get your hands off, Potter. I’ll kill you if you touch her.’

  He plunged down the mudslide like a woolbale in a chute, into the water, under the water; reached his mother’s body in two wallowing heaves. Laurie drew back. The fat man seized her and seemed to fight. He got her in a wrestling hold and pushed and lifted her on to the bank. He struck at Laurie when he tried to help. At last he had her out of the water, although it leaked from her, and from him, and ran in streams. He sat and held her in his arms, with her grey nightie draped in folds and her white feet sliding on the mud. (The slipper had come off. It sank slowly in the pool.) He hugged her against his chest and dripped on her and let out cries like the mooing of a cow.

  Laurie climbed the bank.

  ‘Colin, get on my bike and get the police. You better say to bring the doctor too.’

  Colin rode along Millbrook Road, over the bridge, into Loomis, to the police station. He told Constable Dreaver what had happened, then rode back as fast as he could. The constable’s bike caught him at the gate. They hurried in together and found Laurie and Bette and Verna still at the top of the bank.

  ‘He won’t let anyone go near,’ Laurie said.

  Herbert Muskie was quiet now. He sat with his mother in his arms and seemed to stare into the pool, where her hat was floating towards the far bank.

  Constable Dreaver climbed down to him. ‘Mr Muskie.’ He touched him on the shoulder. Herbert turned his face and snarled, so the constable came back.

  ‘We’ll wait for the doctor. Who found her?’

  ‘Colin did.’

  ‘She was floating down there against the bank,’ Colin said.

  ‘I’ll need to see you later. You better go home now. And the lady and the girl. We’ll have to get them up from there, Laurie?’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy,’ Laurie said.

  ‘She must have slipped down in the night.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I can get her hat if you like,’ Colin said.

  ‘No, you go home,’ Laurie said. ‘Tell your mother I’ll get back when I can.’

  ‘Colin, take Verna with you. I don’t want her here. I’m going to wait in the house,’ Bette said.

  They walked back together. ‘He’s gone mad,’ Colin said.

  ‘He was mad before. How bad does it hurt when you drown?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He was worried about his father, so close to Herbert Muskie, and was relieved when he saw the doctor’s car crossing the bridge.

  They told Maisie what had happened. She made Colin wash and put a clean shirt on.

  ‘I didn’t touch her.’

  ‘Never mind. Verna, are you all right?’

  ‘I’ve never seen a dead person before.’

  ‘Try not to dwell on it, dear. How’s Herbert taking it?’

  ‘He’s holding her as though she’s still alive.’

  They sat on the front steps and ate bread and jam.

  ‘If he loves her, why did he lock her up?’ Colin said.

  ‘He’s just pretending,’ Verna said.

  ‘No he’s not. You couldn’t cry and yell and do that stuff.’

  ‘What about the rat poison? I bet he pushed her down the bank.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For her money. For the house. Because he hates her. I don’t know. You should have looked for footprints.’

  Colin could not remember seeing any.

  ‘Now it’s too late. He didn’t come in till after two o’clock last night. I heard the clock. Then I heard him coming up the stairs, and him and Mum …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  But he knew. And two o’clock, and coming up the stairs: he suddenly knew that she was right, the fat man had drowned his mother. But what about the tears rolling on his cheeks and the way he had hugged her on his chest, like a doll? That was real.

  ‘I think he’s going to get us all,’ he said.

  Sitting there on the steps, in the autumn sun, he told Verna about his first meeting with Herbert Muskie and about stealing the sovereigns.

  ‘You should have told someone. The police.’

  ‘I couldn’t. He said I helped him. We’d be accomplices.’

  ‘He made you, so it’s not your fault.’

  ‘Then he went away so it was all right. I didn’t know he was coming back.’

  ‘You’ve got to tell now.’

  ‘No. Because …’ He knew the trouble he’d be in, and how upset his mother would be. No one would believe him anyway. And then, when it was over, the fat man would come …

  ‘When Dad gets the painting done we don’t have to go back any more. So it’s all finished.’

  ‘What about Mum? What about me?’

  ‘You should run away.’

  But Colin did not believe in that. The fat man would find them just like Verna said.

  ‘I’m so frightened of him,’ she whispered.

  He put his arm around her and did not take it away until he saw his father walking up the street with Bette, pushing his bike.

  Maisie came out to the porch.

  ‘They got her up. They took her away,’ Laurie said.

  ‘How’s Herbie?’

  ‘No one can get near him,’ Bette said.

  ‘He’s sitting at the table in the kitchen.’

  ‘Drinking beer.’

  ‘He won’t let the doctor look at him. Won’t even talk to Bill Dreaver.’

  ‘I don’t know what he’ll do now. But something terrible,’ Bette said, wringing her hands.

  ‘Come into the kitchen, Bette. Come on. I’ll make us all some tea,’ Maisie said.

  ‘I’ll have to go back there, but I don’t want to.’

  ‘Come on.’ She took her away.

  Colin and Verna went around to the back of the house with Laurie, who put his bike in the shed.

  ‘Do they know how it happened, Dad?’ Colin said.

  ‘Near
enough. She slid down the bank.’

  ‘Where the tip was?’

  ‘Yeah. She must have been looking for her sovereigns, damn things.’

  ‘In the rain?’

  ‘If you’re barmy, Colin … Anyhow, I guess she slipped. We found her lamp sunk in the creek. And her trowel. Poor old sheila, she tried to climb up. There’s finger marks in the mud.’

  ‘Footprints?’

  ‘No. Everyone’s been walking around at the top of the bank. You can’t say how she went down. But after a while she got too weak … Try not to think about it, eh? Both of you.’

  In the afternoon Colin told Constable Dreaver how he had found Mrs Muskie’s body. He even said he’d gone there for a pee, but the constable said that didn’t need to go in the report. He said that Colin had done very well, and Laurie too.

  Colin wanted to say, ‘Maybe someone pushed her,’ but he didn’t dare. He wanted to say, ‘Ask Verna what time he came home.’

  Herbert Muskie drove back to Bellevue House and locked himself in his room and didn’t come out until next day. Then he arranged the funeral beautifully, all Loomis said. He didn’t cry at the service or the graveside. Clyde cried. Three of the four sisters came and they cried too. But it was Herbert Muskie who got the house and the shops and the money – although no one knew if there was very much of that.

  He shifted to his mother’s house with Bette and Verna, so Grandpa and Grandma lost their boarders at Bellevue House. Laurie kept on with the painting. When it was finished he painted the roof.

  ‘Forget about the bathroom and the dunny, they can wait,’ the fat man said. ‘I want you to build a new shed. I gotta have a place to store some stuff.’

  ‘Sure, Herbie,’ Laurie said, relieved to have the work.

  Colin and Verna met on the bridge and walked to school each morning. ‘He hits Mum,’ Verna said. ‘She’s got black eyes all the time. That’s why she doesn’t go out.’

  ‘Does he hit you?’

  ‘Not yet. He’s bought that piano from your grandpa.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘He made her play it all last night.’

  ‘And sing?’

  ‘Ireland must be heaven, for my mother came from there.’

  ‘He’s not Irish.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. He goes into her bedroom and sits on her bed.’

  ‘Does he cry?’

  ‘He hugs her pillow. Sometimes he sleeps in there. He took that chamber pot of beads down to the creek and threw them in. Her false teeth too.’

  ‘He still killed her though.’

  ‘I know. I’m scared he’s going to do something to Mum and me.’

  Colin wanted to save her but could not think how. They could run away. They could hide in the hut. But he only had to think of the fat man and his ideas blew away. Laurie Potter had almost started looking up to him. Herbert Muskie had money. Laurie seemed to go no further than that. Colin saw his family was caught in a trap: Grandpa, his father, his mother too (the fat man dropped off bags of fruit and she didn’t say no). And Verna was caught. He was caught. But catching would not be enough. Sometime soon the fat man would want to do something with the people in his trap.

  ‘We’re going round to Herbie’s for a house-warming party,’ Laurie said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You and me and Colin. Saturday. And Mum and Dad.’

  ‘I don’t want to go.’ Lately Maisie seemed more frightened of the fat man than disapproving.

  ‘Ah, come on, Maise. Just for a drink. Bette will be there. It’s no wild party.’

  They walked around early in the afternoon. Colin wore his shoes. ‘They’re lasting well,’ Maisie said. Bette opened the door and asked them in. They had not seen her for several weeks. Even Laurie, working on the new shed, did not see her. She went upstairs if he had to come into the kitchen.

  ‘Bette,’ Maisie said, ‘what’s happened to you?’

  ‘I haven’t been well. I’ve been sick.’

  ‘But your face?’

  ‘I slipped over in the bath. I’m sorry, I thought the powder would cover it.’

  ‘Bette –’

  ‘Don’t say anything. Don’t let Herbert know you can see.’

  ‘A blind man could see.’

  ‘Please, don’t. He’s coming. Oh Herbert, they’ve arrived, isn’t that nice?’

  It was afternoon tea rather than a party. They sat in the living room, still with its bulging wallpaper and its ragged scrim, while Bette wheeled round a tea trolley loaded with cakes. Colin had never seen so many kinds. Bette had not baked them; the fat man had brought them from Auckland in his car. ‘You gotta know where to go,’ he said, when Maisie exclaimed. ‘There’s sandwiches too, with ham and mustard. Have one, Laurie. You like sandwiches.’

  ‘I like ’em,’ Grandpa said. ‘Shoot ’em over here. What we need with these, Herbie, is a beer.’

  ‘You’re having tea. Beer is later on. This is a party in memory of my mum. Pour it, Bette, don’t stand there.’

  Bette poured while Verna took her place at the tea trolley. Colin ate a chocolate meringue. He ate a piece of strawberry sponge. The fat man smiled at him.

  ‘You’re not going to get sick this time, are you kid? Give him another piece, Verna.’

  Verna ate nothing. And nobody spoke much, not even Grandpa. Colin half expected to see Mrs Muskie in the room, see her opening cupboards in her hat. The fat man was conscious of her too, for he said, ‘Mum would have liked this. All her old plates out and her trolley and cups. She always had a sweet tooth. She liked chocolate sponge. Play a tune for Mum, Bette. Come on out here.’

  They took their cups and plates of cake into the entrance hall. The Bellevue House piano stood against the wall. Colin had not seen it as he came in, and the sight disturbed him. He could not work out boundaries any more. Where did the fat man start and end? Bette sat at the piano and Verna stood by her. There were not enough chairs for everyone else.

  ‘You and me can sit on the stairs, Laurie, eh? You too, kid.’

  But Colin stood by his mother’s chair. He could not protect his father but thought he might save her. Bette sang three songs in her thin voice – it seemed more fragile now, more broken at the edges. Light from the stained-glass window streamed down on the fat man, turning his skull red and green. He smiled at everyone with pointed teeth, disturbing the worm in his cheek.

  ‘I love good music. It does something to me deep inside. Let’s have “Old Fashioned Mother” to finish up.’

  Bette sang. Colin saw a tear gleam high on her cheek, but knew it was for herself, and maybe Verna too, not for the words. It made a path through her powder, showing a dark line of bruise underneath.

  How well I remember in years long gone by,

  Together we sat, she and I,

  More like two old sweethearts than mother and son,

  In days long since gone with a sigh …

  ‘Aah,’ said the fat man when it was over, ‘that was good. That was for my mum. God bless you, Mum. Now we can all have a beer. In the kitchen, that’s the place for beer.’

  So they trooped there. The fat man was marshalling them like sheep. Only Grandma Potter had the spirit to fight back.

  ‘I don’t like beer-drinking when children are around.’

  ‘Doesn’t do them any harm. Let them have one too,’ the fat man said.

  ‘Over my dead body.’

  The fat man gave her an ugly look, but Grandma ignored it. ‘Outside, children. Go and play.’

  Colin was so eager to escape he wasn’t offended by her treat-ing him as a child. He and Verna went into the yard. For a while they looked at the half-built shed, then they went further, to the creek.

  ‘Did they ever get her hat?’ Colin asked.

  ‘Someone did. He burned it. He burned all her old clothes.’

  ‘But he hugs her pillow?’

  ‘He cries in it too. I saw him in there once sucking his thumb.’

  Colin was terrified.
‘He’d have killed you if he’d seen.’

  ‘I suppose she was the only one who ever loved him.’

  ‘How do you think he feels now, drowning her?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I don’t think he just pretends to cry.’

  They looked at the pool where Mrs Muskie had drowned. Somewhere at the bottom were her jewels. Colin wished his father’s boxing cups were down there too.

  ‘Show me where you met him,’ Verna said.

  ‘It’s half an hour.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  They went down the bank and along the side of the creek in the shade. Colin took off his shoes to cross the half-sunken log. He carried them stuffed into his shirt. They climbed along the hanging roots and crossed back on the stones.

  ‘There’s the bridge.’

  Black moss grew on its underside. It made them feel bent and small and out of the world.

  ‘He says he helped kill people in Detroit.’

  ‘How?’ Verna whispered.

  ‘He sank them through the ice.’

  The blackberries had grown. Colin put his shoes on and picked his way through. Verna followed, keeping close.

  ‘That’s the pool I saw him in. He was washing himself.’

  ‘With nothing on?’

  ‘Yeah. Like a whale.’ They laughed. But there was no controlling the fat man in that way. ‘The hut’s up here.’

  Autumn and winter had rotted it. Spiders had built their nests, and somewhere under the roof there would be wetas.

  ‘It was a good hut once. We could have come here.’

  Verna shivered. ‘Not now.’

  ‘No, not now.’

  ‘We should go back.’

  ‘There’s a better pool down a bit. We can sit in the sun.’

  They walked another minute or two and came to a wide pool lit on half its surface by the sun.