“Well, I haven’t thought it all through as yet, but I’ll think of somethink. I got some irons in the fire. Footy, maybe. Who knows? Oysters up north. There’s good money in them little buggers. Or I could work on a mine, maybe; put some gold in me pockets. Learn a trade. I don’t know. Anything but a shoe-shiner. What about you? Probly the university, right?”
I squirm a bit. Awkward. It suddenly feels disrespectful to be talking about this right now, talking about the future when Laura Wishart has just been robbed of hers. It doesn’t seem like it matters. But maybe this is the point. Maybe all this talk is for Jasper. Maybe it’s doing the same thing as that horrible bottle. Trying to slow our minds down, sandbag some of the panic.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve always loved reading and stuff. Books, poems. So maybe a writer. I always thought that would be the thing. To write books. Make up stories.”
I try to couch it with an ambivalent shrug, like it’s a fleeting thought, like it’s not the single thing I’ve had my heart set on since I could first read.
To my surprise, Jasper nods his approval.
“Yeah. I reckon that’s you for sure, Charlie.”
“You think?”
“No doubt. Reckon you’d be great. Move to some big city with a typewriter. Meetin people, tellin their stories. Maybe you could write my story one day. Then we’ll make a film out of it, for certain. Imagine that.”
And I do imagine it. Jasper makes it sound so possible and plausible, that I might leave Corrigan to be a writer. To tell tall stories for a living. Real, important literature. When the mood strikes me, I sometimes like to imagine myself as a famous author in an austere candelabralit ballroom, where I am bantering with beat poets and novelists like Harper Lee and Truman Capote.
But Jasper Jones interrupts my musing. He’s up and lurching, huddled over like he’s been shot in the stomach. Before I can panic, he starts evicting that noxious liquid in a thick sheet that seems to almost glow. He grips the empty bottle. It smells sour, his sick. It’s bursting out of him. He locks up violently, like he’s being held and punched in the stomach by invisible assailants.
Jasper retches and coughs, breathing heavily on his haunches. He spits and groans softly before retching again. Then he finally stands up straight.
“I thought you said you could hold your liquor?” I ask.
Jasper spits again, wipes his mouth, and smiles. “Yeah, I can. Just not for long.”
He turns and stumble-steps toward the dam. Kneeling, he fills the bottle with water. He looks precarious. And he collapses back against the tree before he can drink any. The bottle spills. He’s out to it. Oblivious and gone. Maybe that’s all he wanted.
I notice that it suddenly seems lighter in this space. First I wonder if I’ve just grown accustomed to the dark, if I’ve adapted. Then I shoot from my feet like a firecracker and shake him awake.
“Jasper, shit! It’s almost dawn! We have to go back. Now! If my parents know I’ve been out, I am right in it!”
Jasper Jones squints and slowly glances up.
“What?” He seems to ponder it. “Yeah, you’re right. Okay, Charlie. Juss a second.”
His words are slurred. Now I really fear getting lost on our return. But not nearly as much as I fear my parents finding my bed empty. I can’t even imagine.
“No, we’ve got to go now!”
Jasper stands unsteadily and treads heavily. He slaps a hand on my shoulder. Looks at me, intent yet vacant. Full of sorrow. His breath is like acid.
“Orright. Less go.”
He pauses. And, swaying slightly, he lingers and looks up at the ghostly eucalypt. In spite of my worried hurry, I don’t rush him. He takes it in one last time before we turn to go.
The walk back feels much faster than when we first set out. Perhaps it’s because I’m aware of where we’re headed, or because I am almost treading on Jasper’s Achilles in my haste.
His shoulders have fallen forward slightly. He doesn’t walk with that straight-backed poise or intensity he had earlier. He shakes his pack of cigarettes. Empty. So he shoves his hands into his pockets. We walk silently and quickly. Overhead, magpies stir and warble their morning song. The sun is coming, like a harbinger of doom. Strangely, the easier it is to see and navigate, the more afraid and apprehensive I am. But at the least the night is over. There’s some relief in that. I don’t have to bury anybody else. I can sleep soon. Maybe. For a couple of hours at least.
We track back onto the narrow path. And when we walk along it, I feel a weird sense of kinship, like we’re old friends. It’s not without its share of comfort. I know where we are. There is nothing but familiarity in front of me. It’s the same when we push through the bush and onto the road. It’s as though I’ve been away a long time and I’ve finally arrived home. With a horrible secret that I’ve got to cauterize and keep down.
The light is gray and grim, but strengthening quickly. We might make it before the world wakes. We just might.
Now I walk side by side with Jasper Jones. I ponder whether or not we should split up, whether it’s dangerous to be seen together. Or, more to the point, I understand that if I’m seen with Jasper Jones, it might arouse suspicion. I breathe in quick, about to broach it, but I check myself. I suddenly don’t wish to. And it’s not a question of bravery. I don’t know. It seems that because we’ve ridden through something serious and substantial, I feel a real sense of loyalty. I feel as though if we were to separate here, it would sully some kind of tacit pact. We’re comrades in some private war. Suddenly it feels important to stay together, side by side.
And so, as we reach the sepia center of Corrigan—the Miners’ Hall, the Sovereign Hotel, the newly refurbished post office; then the crouching loom of the police station—I realize I am in this. Right in it. To whatever end. Of course, I’m afraid. But walking in his shadow, I’m also buffeted by a sort of anticipation. Me and Jasper Jones, sleuths and partners. Thick as thieves. In spite of everything, it excites me a little to know I’ll certainly be seeing him again. That he needs my help. I don’t feel so ridiculous walking next to him anymore. I don’t feel like an incongruous sidekick. While the rest of this town looks at Jasper Jones like he’s no good, it thrills me that he treats me like I’m equal.
As we turn, finally, into my street and we stride quickly before broad front yards, skirting the side of my house, I’m afforded some slim relief. It seems my parents are yet to stir. I haven’t been caught by anybody. Yet. I don’t imagine I’ll hold this sense of fortune for long. Tonight’s events still lurk in me, cold and uneasy. Anchored in and stuck, like that poor girl we tethered to a stone. When I’m less stunned and tired, it’s going to hurt. It’s going to bubble up and burst in me, I know it.
It is dawn. It is light. But it still feels like the night.
I turn to Jasper. He looks exhausted. And it occurs to me that there is no break in this for him: there’s no comfort, nowhere he can go and lie down and be looked after. Not anymore. If he had anywhere in this world, it’s the place we’ve just come from, the place that has just broken his heart and put him at risk. He’s right: shit has been taken from him his whole life.
He looks done in and drunk, but he arches his back with a jolt, projecting that toughness again.
I wonder where he’s going to go now. If he’s going to go sit someplace quiet and wait for the riot or if he’s going to go home, if that’s what you would call it.
It makes me feel rotten for what I have. For what I’ve always had. I feel stupid and petty for ever having complained about anything. I feel like a spoiled little bastard, about to crawl into my safe nest while Jasper Jones shoulders his burden alone. It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair at all. I want to invite Jasper in, give him my bed, and I hate myself because I can’t and I won’t. I feel sick that I’m going to wake up and have my breakfast made. That my mum is still alive and my dad is a kindly teetotaller. It isn’t right. It just isn’t right that I have so many things that he doesn’t. I m
ight blub again, but I reckon I’m too tired even to do that. I’m so overdone and overwhelmed.
I wipe my forehead. I was right; my relief was short.
Jasper Jones gives a weak, quick grin and claps my arm. He pockets his hands. We don’t say a word. We just look and nod and shift our feet. There’s nothing to say.
I shuck off my pansy sandals, move quietly up to the window. I hoist myself up and hold, like I’m on a pommel horse, but I’m stuck. I turn my head and hiss:
“Give us a hand?”
And Jasper strides over and hefts me easily. I’m through. I made it. Back on my bed.
“Thanks,” I whisper through the window.
“Yeah, same to you,” he says. “I’ll see you, Charlie.” He lingers, as though he has more to say, but just offers a brief wave.
And he’s gone.
I slot the glass plates back in. It feels like I’ve broken into my own room. It doesn’t feel like the same place I left. It doesn’t feel like home, but it feels safe. I can feel the heat of the day threatening already, and the light is still blue-hued. I notice how dirty I am, how sweaty and scratched, how urgently my heart bangs at my ribs. Laura Wishart is gone. She really is. She was killed, in a strange clearing only known to Jasper Jones. And I saw her, hanging by a thread. Already dead. I helped carry her to a water hole and I dropped her down and she sank with a stone. That’s irrefutable. That’s truth. That’s what we know. I’m thirsty. I’m in trouble. I feel sick and I can’t still this tremor. For some reason, I just know that if I’m in Jasper Jones’s corner, it’s going to be okay. That there’s some kind of protection and rightness at work. I lie down. And it’s over, for now.
am covered in sweat when I wake. It must be late. The sun is beaming directly into my eyes. I squint. I feel like I’ve just emerged from an operation. It certainly feels like my innards have been pulled and scraped. I wonder what time it is.
Last night comes to me in strange fragments and shards. It doesn’t take long to sink in. One bilious moment, a weighted white dress. Then I remember it all.
And I sit up, startled. I expect police with whistles and urgent orders. Sirens. Bells. Spotter planes. Bloodhounds. Yellow tape and busy-looking people. I expect a red sky and ominous clouds. I look through the window. It is utterly serene in our backyard, save for a castanet chorus of cicadas. Even so, I suspect I’m being watched. I peer at length through the window, making sure I’m not being surveyed.
I get up and glance at my bed. There’s a dark patch where I slept. I touch it. It’s wet. Sweat. But around that is a thin layer of grime. It looks like the chalk outline of a murder. Like I died during the night. Or I shed my skin like a snake.
I need to piss. Urgently. But my dick is cruelly jutting at my underwear, trying to assert itself. It’s rock-hard and disobedient. I rearrange myself and grab a towel, then slip quickly across to the bathroom, hoping I don’t encounter anyone on the way. Thankfully, the coast is clear. I slam the door and toss the towel. My aim is appalling, but the relief forces a thin smile.
I sit on the edge of our lime-colored bath. Naked and solemn, I run the water, flinching when the first spurts scald my fingers. It pools and burns my feet. I hold them aloft. Goddamn. Has someone lit a fire underneath our water tank? I want to yell at my parents for this. Finally it eases to a lukewarm stream. It’s the best I can hope for. I splash water on my face, rub my neck. I wash myself thoroughly with granite soap. It feels good to scratch and scrape at my skin. I don’t mind that it hurts me a little.
And I sit. Head bowed and whirring. Dripping. Ashamed of the lack of meat on my body. I’m skin and bones all the way down. It’s the gangly body of a kid. No bumps and curves or lines and scars. Nothing like Jasper Jones.
I linger. It’s cooler in here. And to be honest, I’m nursing a distant urge to cry. I still feel tired. And angry and sad. Kind of the way I get when I’m on the cusp of a cold or something. Sad and weird. My belly is tender. It’s like I’ve been shaken and pounded and stretched. I want to cradle my head in my hands, but I don’t. I won’t. I’ll blub if I do.
My head whirls.
What if it really was Jasper Jones? What if he did this? What if he killed Laura Wishart? What if he killed her and I said nothing? Could I go to jail? Could he really have hanged that girl in that quiet clearing? The notion seemed so implausible in his company, but how well do I know him, really? He could have been feeding me bullshit the whole time. It could have been him all along. I dig at my ear with a knuckle.
But then why on earth would he seek me out? It makes no sense. There’s no chance anyone would enact a murder and then go find a witness. That’s just stupid. So he can’t have. Surely.
But aside from that, I trust him. I really do. And not because I have to. I think he’s probably the most honest person in this town. He has no reason to lie. He has no reputation to protect. Last night I never suspected him of pulling the wool. Not once. The way he talks to you, it’s like he’s incapable of being deceitful. He says things with such conviction that you’re sure he believes them to be true. It’s just a feeling you get.
See, most people you meet, they’ll talk to you through fifty layers of gauze and tinting. Sometimes you know they’re lying even before they’ve started speaking. And it seems the older they get, the more brazen and desperate folks become, and they lie about things that don’t even matter. Like my dad with his comb-over, or my mum with her russet hair dye. Or when my dad insists he enjoys the challenge of teaching Corrigan kids to love literature, or when my mum assures her sisters in the city that she loves it down here, and no, it’s not too hot at all; it’s just lovely, it’s a wonderful community. I don’t know. Maybe they just get so used to it they don’t even notice. Maybe it’s like a creeping curse and the more you do it, the easier it gets. What’s amazing is that they think they’re fooling anybody.
Yes. I think Jasper Jones speaks the whole truth in a town of liars. I can tell. See, it’s these lies that precede him, these foggy community fibs that I’ve been led through: they’re the source of these niggling doubts in my head. I mean, if it were Jeffrey Lu who’d woken me last night to lead me silently to that awful scene, I wouldn’t doubt his story for a moment. I wouldn’t even question him. So why should it be different for Jasper Jones?
I hoist myself out of the bath, restless and heavy. And I don’t feel much cleaner than when I sat down.
***
When I tentatively enter the kitchen, both my parents pause and eye me suspiciously, brows raised. This is how they demand an explanation without asking for it. For a brief, horrible moment, I think they know something. Perhaps my mother has already inspected her trampled gerbera bed and noticed the fingerprints on the dusty glass louvres of my window, instantly surmising with her uncanny facility to accurately persecute without evidence that I must have been out all night with Jasper Jones, that I’ve seen and done something terrible, that I’m in all kinds of trouble.
But then my father smirks and reaches out to clap my back.
“Rip Van Winkle! The corpse has risen! So nice of you to join us.”
I sit and offer a weak smile.
My mother produces a hot cup of Pablo coffee with a fair dollop of sweetened condensed milk. She leans over, hands on her knees.
“I trust you’re enjoying your stay at our hotel, Mr. Bucktin, sir. Might I remind you that our turndown service ends at ten sharp. Will Sir take eggs for his lunch?”
My dad snorts. My mother is the most sarcastic person in the universe. My father calls it “droll wit,” but I think it’s more or less an opportunity to get up my arse without appearing unreasonable. She’s most acerbic when she’s faintly pissed about something, which is every waking hour of the day.
“No thanks,” I say. “What time is it?”
“Almost noon. So you’ve only wasted half the day. It’s nice for some.”
Her back is to me. She’s wearing a thin floral dress that clings to her in the heat. She looks good today
, I have to admit. Usually she only looks like this if she’s just come back from the city, where she’s been going more often recently. I want to go hug her, to be held by her, but it would be too awkward and unusual. Still, her hair looks nice today.
“Your hair looks nice today,” I say.
This has her whirling around. She glares as though I’d just spat her coffee over the table and called her a courtesan.
“What did you say?”
“I said your hair looks nice today.”
“Oh,” she says, and frowns, searching for a deeper meaning. She cuts her eyes. “What do you want?”
“What? Nothing. I just said your hair looks nice.”
“But why would you say that?”
“I don’t know. Because your hair looks nice.”
Exasperated, I turn to my father. He is nodding and laughing quietly, with his back to her.
After a brief pause, she says, “Well, thank you,” in much the same way she might say, “Well, don’t.”
I shrug.
My dad smiles and folds his paper.
“So, my boy. Couldn’t sleep, or couldn’t get enough?”
I set my glasses and sniff. It’s difficult to play this role. Charlie Bucktin at breakfast: Scene One. I don’t feel the same. I’m uneasy in my own skin.
“Yeah, no sleep last night. It’s too hot. I was just reading, I guess.”
“I see. So what’s taken your fancy?”
“Pudd’nhead Wilson. It’s really good.”
“Ah.” And my father leans in. “It’s been years since I’ve read that. How are you liking it?”
“Yeah, well, like I say. It’s really good.”
I crimp my lips and raise my brows. I don’t want to play this scene out. This coffee is making me too hot. I’m sweating. I’m stuck to this vinyl seat.
Still, it can’t mollify that uneasy feeling that I’m about to be caught. There are insects crawling on my shoulders. At any moment I expect blue-suited troops to burst and bundle into our house and cuff me from behind. Neighbors will line the street, spitting and hollering as I am led, roughly, to a flashing wagon.
Jasper Jones Page 5