Only Killers and Thieves

by Paul Howarth

  “Tomorrow’s too late,” Billy protested. “They’ll be too far gone.”

  “Don’t worry, son. Noone’s boys track natives like hounds after blood.”

  “Noone?” Tommy echoed. “Billy, please . . .”

  Locke grunted distastefully. “Aye, anyone but that cunt.”

  “He has the district now,” Sullivan told him. “We don’t get to choose.”

  “Rather just do it ourselves, like we used to.”

  “This isn’t the old days, Raymond. I don’t intend on getting hanged.”

  Billy jumped to his feet. “You killed three of the bastards for duffing, now our whole family’s been done and you won’t even—”

  Sullivan rose also. He held out both hands. “Easy now, son, easy. I’m not saying I won’t help, but there are other considerations, we have to be careful with these things. Tomorrow we’ll talk it all through.”

  “I don’t need to talk it through. I’ll ride out myself if I have to.”

  “You wouldn’t last two days,” Sullivan said. He picked up a handbell from the mantelpiece and rang it. “I’m not going to stop you, but if you want my help you’ll sleep on it. Jenny’ll show you to your room.”

  The housemaid appeared in the doorway. Sullivan gestured for them to leave. Billy shook his head and stomped to the door; Tommy was slower in following him out. As he left the room Tommy glanced back at Sullivan and Locke, whispering together close-in. Sullivan caught his eye and smiled at him, nodding enthusiastically, the smile supposed to be reassuring, Tommy guessed. He didn’t return it, hurrying after the others as they went along the hall.

  The atrium was square and entirely open, vaulted into the roof space and encircled by a balcony landing that covered three sides of the first floor. Its walls were decorated with ornaments and display cases and, on one side, a row of animal heads mounted on wooden boards. There were doors everywhere—Tommy had never seen so many doors. All of them identical, white-paneled; all of them closed. As he walked up the stairs he looked over the rail and the height made his stomach dip. He gripped the polished banister. The wood felt oddly cool. He followed Billy and the girl around the landing and onto a corridor lit by golden sconces and lined with more doors, until Billy stopped suddenly and asked, “Which one’s Mary’s room? Our sister, which one’s she in?”

  The housemaid looked around nervously, then pointed to the door nearest Tommy. “That one there. Only, I’m not meant to say.”

  The room glowed in candlelight. Weeks was hunched over the bed. As they entered he glanced over his shoulder, then continued with his work. Mary lay beneath him, only her face visible, the blanket pulled to her chin. She had her eyes closed and her bunches spilled across the pillow. Her skin was pale and bloodless, but she looked peaceful, asleep.

  They weren’t alone in the room. A woman sat on a chair by the window at the end of Mary’s bed, fingering rosary beads in her lap. She wore a cream housedress and heavy ringlets of dark brown hair fell onto her chest. She stood when she saw them, her skirts ruffling as she crossed the little room.

  “I’m so sorry to hear what happened. They’re monsters, all of them. A terrible, terrible thing. I’m Mrs. Sullivan. Katherine. Kate. So sorry for your loss.”

  She offered her hand. Tommy took it awkwardly, more of a hold than a shake. She smiled and he saw her age for what it was: she resembled a girl playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes. Could not have been out of her teenage years.

  “How is she?” Billy asked, and Weeks straightened, wiping his hands on a rag.

  “I took the ball out. It had gone in deep, tore her up on the way through. She’s all but bled out, unfortunately. I doubt she can feel anything, but I gave her a drop of laudanum all the same. There ain’t nothing for it but to wait.”

  Tommy edged forward to look at her, lying there so peaceful and small. The stain of her wound showed on the blankets, a faded crimson spot. Up close her face looked yellow and tired, her lips like cracked earth.

  “You boys look wrung inside out,” Mrs. Sullivan said. “Why not get off to bed? There’s some clean clothes for both of you, and a basin for a wash. If you leave your things outside your door we’ll get them scrubbed and dried.”

  “Thank you,” Billy mumbled.

  “Shouldn’t we stay?” Tommy asked.

  Mrs. Sullivan smiled at him warmly. “If she changes, we’ll wake you. You have my word. But the best you can do for her is to get some rest yourselves. I promise, someone will fetch you. Go on now. Get yourselves to bed.”

  That night they lay in separate iron-framed beds, in a room whose walls were floral-papered, the drapes blanket thick. Tommy couldn’t sleep. The mattress was too soft, the feather bedding too heavy and warm. The total silence was unnerving: the glass windows masked all outside noise, and there were no gaps in the walls, no uneven shingle roof. Sometimes a sound would travel through the house, echoing footsteps, a door closing, someone coughing or clearing their throat, and Tommy would try to trace it, mapping the rooms in his mind, wondering if it was Mrs. Sullivan or Jenny or Weeks bringing news. It never was. There wasn’t any news. The light around the door never darkened, until Tommy woke to find that he’d been sleeping and all the candles had been snuffed. He lay listening. He was sweating, his stomach churned, the dawning recognition that this was all real. He couldn’t help but picture them. How they’d both been lying, all else he had seen. Or maybe he was still sleeping, he couldn’t quite tell; a night filled with delirious, lucid dreams. At some point he felt Billy crawl into bed beside him, his back against Tommy’s back, the way it had always been. But the next time he woke it was morning, and Billy was gone again.

  12

  Two pairs of stockmen carried them from the house, bundled in white bedsheets, gleaming in the sun. A slow processional across the clearing and out into the nearby scrub, to the bald patch of earth where the little group was gathered and two graves had been dug, mounds of red soil piled alongside.

  Tommy watched them come. He was standing with his brother, both of them smeared in dirt and sweat from the digging; Sullivan had offered his men but the boys had refused, it felt like their task to do. Father would have wanted it, certainly. Would not have liked Sullivan’s men preparing a McBride grave. Bad enough Sullivan was even here, squinting solemnly at the bodies as they advanced. He had brought his ex-priest with him. He waited at the head of the graves. A grizzled old bushman, gray beard and flaking skin, sun-narrowed eyes and a body of bones, clutching a ragged and loose-leafed Bible in his hands. Tommy didn’t even know his name, this man who would be sending their parents off, but he knew what Father would have made of it, all this, them standing here with Sullivan, using his priest, his tools, wearing his clothes. Nothing felt right about it. Shame on top of grief.

  On the stockmen came, behind them the house and a thin column of smoke still rising from the yard. Both dogs had been burned. They’d done it while Tommy and Billy were digging, hadn’t thought to ask, they were only dogs after all. Tommy had smelled the tinge on the smoke and guessed what it was, swung his spade all the harder, mumbled his own good-byes to Red and then to Blue.

  The men set the bodies at the gravesides, then retreated a few yards. Drinking from their flasks, lighting smokes, whispering between themselves. Didn’t even take off their hats. The ex-priest opened his Bible and the pages rustled in a wind that trickled dust into the graves and pulled the bedsheets taut. Tommy stared at the outline of his parents: their faces, their bodies, such as he could make out. Mother looked so much smaller, nearly half Father’s size. She had not seemed it alive. She was beside the hole that Tommy had dug and he worried that he’d made it too big, that she’d somehow be uncomfortable down there. He imagined her scolding him, a smile in her voice: Look here now, Tommy, look what you’ve gone and done, and a hundred petty crimes skipped through his mind. Trailing mud onto the verandah, waking baby Mary as she slept, letting the hens out of the fowl house, spilling the last of the flour . . .


  “Sorry, Ma,” he muttered, and Billy looked across at him and frowned.

  “Come on, man, get on with it,” Sullivan ordered.

  The ex-priest glanced up from his flimsy Bible, settled on a page, cleared his throat, and began: “The Lord is my shepherd. Uh . . . I shall not want . . .”

  Tommy knew the passage. Mother had read it to them many times—she could have probably delivered it backward without need of the text. Father had no time for the Bible. Nothing but made-up stories, he said. Many times Tommy had listened to him railing against God: “That bastard don’t care nothing for us, whatever your mother says. We’re on our own, Tommy. There ain’t no God out here.”

  “Thou prep-preparest a table for me . . . before me, in the presence of mine enemies. Thou, uh, an-an-anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will . . . dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Sullivan echoed irritably. He looked at Billy and Tommy. “Either of you want to say anything?”

  “No,” Billy said.

  “No.”

  Sullivan whistled to his men. “Right, get ’em in.”

  “We’ll do it,” Billy said, nodding for Tommy to come. Hesitantly he followed, watching the flies crawling between the folds of Father’s bedsheet. The smell was sickly and strong. Billy took hold of the shoulders; Tommy couldn’t move. He stared at Father’s feet, wondering if it was proper they hadn’t taken off his boots.

  “Tommy. We need to do this. Pretend like we’re lifting cattle. Come on.”

  He gripped Father’s ankles and his eyes filled. He let go, turned and spat, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then went back into a crouch and held the ankles again. Billy counted three and they grunted with the heave, crabbing the short distance to the grave, Father sagging between them, scraping along the ground, the others all watching; dead silence save the boys’ breathing and the scuff of their boots, until the grave was upon them and Tommy’s grip failed: before Billy was ready, he let go of the ankles, and the body tumbled and rolled and the bedsheet unraveled, and Father lay exposed in the earth, bloated and white, riddled with a veiny fungus, ravaged by the flies.

  Tommy recoiled from the graveside. Billy stared at him, aghast.

  “Hellfire,” Sullivan said. “Don’t neither of you think about getting in there. Do the other one and we’ll cover them both up. Quicker you do it, quicker we can start.”

  Billy went to Mother’s body and waited. Tommy trembled and seethed. He looked from his brother to Sullivan, to the bearded ex-priest, to the house and the fire in the yard. He screamed. The scream drifted on the wind. No one else moved, no one else spoke. Sullivan’s gaze passed from Tommy to Billy, and away.

  Tommy lunged for Mother’s ankles. Slender in his hands, warm from the sun. Billy took hold also, and they carried her easily to the hole, lowered her, then dropped her, and she landed with a soft puff of dirt. Tommy stepped away. The ex-priest was making eyes at the mounds of earth and Tommy grabbed a handful and tossed it down. It pattered on Mother’s bedsheet. Billy did the same. Tommy took another handful for Father, threw it in blind, then stomped through the fringe of scrub toward the house, as Billy returned to stand at Sullivan’s side. The squatter cupped his shoulder, acting like he knew, like he understood how it felt, when he didn’t understand a bloody thing. Tommy walked to the house and sat down in the shade, leaned his back against the scullery wall. He drew up his legs and rested his chin on his knees, watching the stockmen shovel the earth and listening to the ex-priest recite the passage about ashes and dust.

  * * *

  The curtains were drawn against the sun, the room warm, the air stale. Tommy closed the door behind him, cracked the window ajar, and flicked the curtains along the rail. Light spilled onto the floor space and the bottom of Mary’s bed; he adjusted the curtains so she was shaded, then knelt on the rug and began fidgeting with sheets that were already pristine. Her arms were exposed, the hands flat, palms-down, little blond hairs raised on her skin. She looked to be wearing a clean nightdress and the stains were gone from the sheet. Beneath the bed was a bowl of water and a still-damp flannel draped over the rim.

  “We buried them today,” he told her. “In that clearing behind the house. Even put in little markers, Sullivan gave them, two white crosses, which would keep Ma happy, though I know what Daddy would have said. It looked nice anyhow. Two proper graves. Me and Billy dug them—Daddy would have liked that—but it was hard getting them in. We dropped him. The sheet came loose. It doesn’t really matter but you want these things done right. Ma went in fine, anyway. She got her prayers and all that; a good death, she’d have said. You remember that? Her good deaths and bad deaths, like there were two different kinds? That woman from Bewley who fell off her horse and when they found her she’d been half et, Ma went on about it for weeks. Like it was the woman’s own fault the state she’d be in when she went up to meet God.”

  His laughter was as fragile as glass, and broke as quickly as it came. He slumped backward, onto his heels, covered his face with his hands, and sobbed into the darkness and the warmth of his own breath: shoulders heaving, rocking back and forth; a desperate, helpless wail.

  Then just as abruptly, it was over. Men did not cry, not even in grief. Tommy caught himself and straightened and scrubbed his face dry. Sniffing and blinking and wiping his eyes, Mary blurred before him—could she hear all this, he wondered, how much did she know? He imagined her waking and teasing him for it, telling him he was more of a girl than she was, and he couldn’t help but laugh again. He took a long breath; it washed out of him in trembling waves. He shuffled back to the bedside, sat tall on his knees, studied Mary’s face but nothing had changed.

  “I’ll pretend you never heard that. Don’t tell Billy if you did. He’s not blubbed once, not that I’ve seen anyway. Seems angry more than anything, just wants to get out after Joseph, but even if we find him, arrest him, kill him, what good is that going to do? Won’t bring them back, won’t heal you up, though the way Billy acts you’d think it will. Really it’s so he can impress Sullivan—he follows him round like a bloody lost dog. I suppose he’s been good about all this, taking us in, but there’s something about him I don’t trust. Maybe it’s just because Daddy didn’t, yet here you’d think we were family the way he carries on. Daddy said a bloke like Sullivan won’t do anything unless it’s for his own gain. So how does he benefit? What does he want in return?”

  Air gurgled in Mary’s throat. Tommy wet the flannel and squeezed water on her lips; her breathing slowed and calmed. He dabbed her forehead, her cheeks, rinsed out the flannel, and folded it over the rim of the bowl to dry.

  “Maybe I’m being ungrateful. I don’t know where we’d be without his help. And maybe the best thing is to go after him, Joseph, not that I’ve got any say. Billy won’t listen to me. Reckons himself the big man. If they go I suppose I could stay here instead, but then I’d be known as a coward my whole life. I don’t know. Sullivan might not be in favor anyway; needed to sleep on it, he said. Billy thinks he’ll help us, maybe give us work after, but I can’t get a read on him, Mary. The whole thing makes no sense: he’s got a vet for a doctor, and here’s his wife watching over you, rubbing them wooden beads, she can’t be much older than Billy just about, which is half Sullivan’s own age. Dressing up like a lady when she’s not but a girl . . . and I know what Ma would have thought about that, beads or no bloody beads.”

  He snorted a short laugh, levered himself up to his feet, and stood over the bed, watching her. Little twitches in her face. The rise and fall of her chest. They said Weeks had given her more laudanum, but he didn’t know what good those drops were doing. She didn’t look any better. In fact, she looked worse than yesterday: a grayness had crept into her skin. Tommy bit his lip and touched her on the arm, then turned and left the room, closing the door softly, like he was afraid his sister might wake.

  13

  “But s
ee the market’s not just Australia, it’s the whole bloody world. We’ve the East Indies on our doorstep, a million chinks wanting leather and beef, and more grazing land than we can fill—if only it’d bloody rain. Not even America’s got our potential, and there’s none of their politics here either, thank God. This country could be the greatest on earth, boys, if them bastards on the coast weren’t so keen on buggering it up. The colonies can’t be run from London, or Sydney, or Brisbane even, and certainly not by a bunch of fucking wig wearers—pardon my French, dear—who don’t have a clue how things work out here.”

  Mrs. Sullivan acknowledged her husband’s apology with a slight tilt of her head, then went back to her meal. They were sitting at either end of a long maple-wood table, lit by claw-footed candelabras and an enormous chandelier. Tommy and Billy were in the middle, opposite each other, directly beneath the chandelier, dressed like church boys in their borrowed suits, their hair neatly combed and parted to one side.

  “Problem is,” Sullivan continued, pointing down the table with a polished silver fork, “those city blokes won’t come out here, get their hands dirty, see what it’s all about. Bastards stick to the coast like fleas on a dog, passing their selection laws, giving it all away, as if any bugger could start a run. But what happens when those runs fail? I’ll tell you—you’ve a bankrupt country broke beyond repair, and all because they’re scared of a few old boys like me.”

  Sullivan took a long drink of wine. It stained his lips dark red. He looked intently at Billy, who had not eaten in a long time, nodding and listening to him speak. Tommy kept his eyes on his plate. Strips of tenderloin beef with baby potatoes and green beans, served on a flowery china plate. Tommy couldn’t eat it. The meat was soft and spongy and had little taste, and its blood had seeped into everything else. He sliced a pink potato. The knife scraped the china as he cut. He put the potato into his mouth and winced as he bit down.