And I understood then that maybe we really did do the wrong thing for the right reasons. If we’d left Laura Wishart where she was, they would find her. Someone, somehow, sometime, would stumble across that glade. And soon enough, they would link Jasper back to that spot. He was right. This town was looking for an excuse. And that coincidence would be more than enough for them.
He would have been cuffed and caged like Eric Cooke. He would have been beaten and lynched like Laura Wishart.
I stared into my lap. Suddenly the thought of being in New York City with Eliza seemed the most wonderful thing in the world. I rested my head against the window and thought on it. I imagined meeting her in Manhattan for high tea, whatever that was; all I cared about was that it was far away from here, from these people. I imagined holding her hand and buying her things. Kissing her cheek goodbye as we parted company. I could live with Jasper Jones. In Brooklyn. We’d be safe there. No one could find us, no one would suspect a thing. Jasper Jones would make New York City his own, and I’d be walking alongside my girl, on the other side of town.
My reverie was interrupted by the Miners’ Hall’s front floodlights. The sun was bleeding out, and the thick yellow light filled the air abruptly. As though on cue, mothers started rounding up their children and men started wandering to the pub to drink their pay. I saw Sue Findlay treading the wooden steps of the hall, holding a white handkerchief to her face, being led by a tall man I didn’t recognize. I wanted to spit poison at her. I watched her with my lip curled.
My father approached and bade me into the front seat by pointing. My mother was staying on to help clean up.
On the short trip home, he explained to me the cause of Sue Findlay’s outburst.
Some months ago her husband, Ray, had been killed in the war. They’d had a rocky marriage, but she’d taken it very badly. And only yesterday her eldest son had announced he’d been balloted through to Vietnam. She’d taken that even worse.
“That doesn’t make it right,” I said indignantly. “That’s got nothing to do with Mrs. Lu! It’s not fair!”
“Charlie …” My dad dipped his head to the side and sighed, showing his dimples.
“Nobody even helped her!” I exclaimed loudly. “Nobody even thought to help her.”
My father didn’t say anything.
***
Jasper Jones is at my window.
My mouth goes dry and my heart tries to escape as I climb onto my bed to flip the louvres.
“Charlie!” he hisses, and taps again.
The first thing I notice is his face. His left eye is like a cricket ball. A shiny bulb with a single seam. There’s a dried cut on his lip.
“What happened to your face?” I ask, urgent and quiet.
“Tell you in a bit,” he says, scanning my room. “Can you come out?”
It’s late. My father is in his library. My mother hasn’t yet returned from the hall. I weigh up the risks. It’s touch-and-go.
“Where?” I whisper. But he has moved back into the dark. I peer out, but don’t see him. I hear a soft thud and a small grunt from Jasper. Next door’s dog starts barking. I hold my breath.
I stack the glass plates as quietly as I can. For some reason I hide them under my bedsheet. I meet Jasper in the backyard.
“Who’s gone and dug a great big hole in the middle of your backyard?” he says, brushing the dirt from his shirt.
“It was me. Long story.”
“Well, shit, Charlie. Fill the bloody thing back in properly at least.”
“Where have you been?” I ask. I want to tell him how relieved I am to see him. But I don’t.
“I’ve bin everywhere and nowhere,” he says, and scruffs at his hair. “You ready?”
That rash of fear and exhilaration is all over me again. I don’t have a choice but to follow. I’d sooner take the risk than keep another vigil, worrying and wondering. I’d rather be in jail than be left to my own devices any longer.
We head out, skulking down the side of our house and onto the street. I feel eager and important.
“Are we okay to do this? Aren’t they patrolling?”
“Nah,” Jasper replies without turning to me. “They stopped that two nights ago. They’re all out pissing it away at the Sovereign tonight, anyways.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
We move quickly, cautious and wary. We keep away from streetlights and push through vacant lots when we can. I have to stop a dozen times to pry prickles out of my pansy sandals. Jasper waits impatiently. On Clement Street, we hear a car approach, then see the soft sheen of its headlights round a bend. Jasper grabs my shirt and tugs me into someone’s front yard, and we crouch behind a broad spicy shrub. I recognize the coarse adhesion of a spider’s web and feel something crawling on me. I want to whimper. Jasper is still clutching me as we wait for the car to pass. I am sweating. Every muscle is taut. I want to run and squeal and clap at my body.
Of course, the car slows and pulls into the driveway of the very house where we’ve sought refuge. I could burst. I could self-combust right here. The car shudders to a halt. Just meters away. The door yawns open. This is like a horror film.
A man emerges. He’s old. And he’s drunk. If he catches us, we’re in for it. We watch him stumble across his lawn toward the front of the house. Leaning on a veranda beam, he pauses and tries to unhitch his belt. I hate him. Bloody hell, something is crawling on me. I want to strip off my clothes and roll around like I’m on fire.
After some fruitless fumbling, the man lifts his hand like a sock puppet and regards it quizzically, like it’s something he’s trying to read without his glasses.
Upon trying again, he unbuckles and unzips and unleashes a ridiculous torrent of piss onto his garden bed. It goes forever. He must have a bladder the size of an oak barrel. I’ve seen smaller streams of fluid from a firehose. I have some breed of noxious spider on my neck, poised to strike with inch-long fangs, and this man is siphoning the Ganges with his dick. I want him dead. I want him struck from above. I’ve never longed for divine intervention more fervently than now. I watch him, my face creased in agony. He sways his hips and buries his chin deep into his chest as he hums “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.”
Finally he staggers inside. As soon as the door slaps shut, we spill out from under our canopy. I run like my limbs belong to somebody else. At the end of the street, I stop and frenetically scrub at my hair and tug at my shirt. I wipe my neck and slap at my chest and stamp my feet. I must look demented.
“Charlie! What are you doing?” Jasper hisses.
I pause, having taken my shirt off and flogged it.
“Uh? Oh, I thought I had a spider on me. You know. A deadly one.”
Jasper nods once, slowly. Then he shakes his head.
“Christ, I thought you were dying.”
“So did I,” I say, and carefully slip my T-shirt back on. “Anyway, what was that bloke, a camel?”
To my surprise, Jasper laughs. It’s a broad and cheeky grin. I notice he has dimples. I smile too, a little proud I’ve inspired it. After a bit, he waves me on.
We don’t speak when we’re on the path to Jasper’s glade. It’s strange. I feel obliged to stay silent, to walk behind.
When we reach that curtain of foliage, I feel uneasy. Like I’m about to see Laura again, as she was. It’s a revolting, queasy sensation. It puts lead in my heels and kneads at my heart. That huge jarrah looms big and dark. I don’t want to go in.
“You ready?” asks Jasper Jones.
I look at him dazedly.
Jasper doesn’t wait for my response. He peels back the wattlebush and holds it open. I bow and enter. I have to.
I push through with my eyes closed. When I open them and look around, it feels eerie, but deeply familiar. Though I’ve only been here once, it feels like a place I’ve visited all my life, and I’ve just come back after a long absence.
Jasper is by my side. He’s frowning.
“Fe
els strange,” he says.
“Yeah. I feel it too.” I tilt my head and look around. As though the strangeness could make its presence known in the surrounding trees, like a sickly green fog.
“No, I mean, it feels … different.”
“How so?”
“I dunno. It’s hard to tell. It’s a creepy feelin on the back of my neck. It’s like someone else has bin here. That’s what it feels like.”
“Is that possible?” I ask.
“Course it’s possible. I don’t reckon it’s likely but.”
Jasper eyes everything carefully. Like he’s suspicious of the surrounds. He strides, bent-backed, to the edge of the dam, then under the hollow tent of the tree, then out of my sight. I stay where I am.
When he returns, he stands with a hand on his hips, the other thumbing his chin.
“Nah,” he says. “They can’t’ve.”
It sounds like he’s convincing himself.
“Who? The police, you mean? Why not? They’ve been out here all week, right?”
But Jasper appears unwilling to regard that as a possibility. Suddenly he shrugs and shakes his head, surfacing.
“Smoke?” he asks me, presenting a battered packet of Luckies. I decline after feigning consideration, and follow Jasper to the water. He sits, leaning his back on the tree, then strikes a match and shields it with his palm. His injured face glows orange and lights the night for a moment. I sit cross-legged nearby, but not quite so close to the water.
“You got any whiskey?” I ask.
Jasper raises his eyebrows. Then he grins with one side of his cut mouth. He reaches down and reels in a thin line hooped around a root just by his leg. At the other end is a bottle. The dam’s ripples are unnerving. I look away.
“Here we go, Charlie. Black Bush. This is top-shelf, mate. Not a bad one at all.” I turn and Jasper is proffering the bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Here. Fill yer boots.”
And I do. Well, I fill my sandals. I take a thimbleful into my mouth and it’s as scaldingly poisonous as the first time. My lips try to squirm away from my face. I have no idea why I felt the need to request this. But now I’m stuck with this bottle, and I need to make some show of reducing its content. I breathe out and choke its neck tight. Then I take an almighty swig. My eyes burst open and I have to wrestle every impulse to keep the fiery stuff in my stomach.
“Yair, Christ. That’s … better,” I wheeze, and hand the bottle back. I can barely see Jasper through my tears. “I bloody needed that.”
Surely I’m not fooling anybody. Nonetheless, I kind of like the spread of heat it gives my belly. It crumbles and corrodes my brick. I look at Jasper, feeling a little looser now. A little lighter. That hideous potion works. I point at him.
“Was it your dad who did that?” I ask.
He sits up a little straighter.
“Was what my dad?”
I draw a circle round my face.
“Oh,” he says, and touches his bulbous eye with a finger. “Nah. I haven’t seen him, actually. He skipped town last Friday. Wasn’t there when I got back.”
Last Friday. I frown and let it sit there. I don’t know. Maybe I’m being hysterical, but I can’t help being suspicious. If someone leaves town the morning after a murder, isn’t that telling? Jasper quickly snuffs the notion.
“And he dint kill Laura either, if that’s what you’re thinkin about. No chance. He might be a worthless, jobless drunk, and he might come home swingin from the fuckin bootstraps some nights, but he hasn’t got that in him. He couldn’t kill his way out of a morgue, my old man. Probably be too much effort, if anything. That, and Laura would’ve beat the piss out of him first.” Jasper smiles ruefully.
“So who has done that to your face, then?”
Jasper drags deeply, then gently coaxes a perfect silver smoke ring from his mouth. He frowns.
“Charlie, come on, mate. Who d’you reckon?”
“I honestly have no idea,” I say with a shrug. I don’t.
“Sarge. The local constabulary, Charlie.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly that. They asked me in for a visit, and had me locked in for the weekend.”
“What? Why? Are they allowed to do that?”
“They don’t need a reason, mate. Besides, who am I going to report it to, anyway?”
“So then they did that?” I gesture toward his face.
“Sure did.” Jasper spits and stubs out his cigarette. He pockets the end. Lights another. He mumbles with the fresh smoke between his lips, “My ribs hurt the most. Steel caps. Bloody brutal.”
“But why? Why would they do that?”
“Shit,” Jasper says without menace. He holds the whiskey aloft for me to take, and I oblige. “It’s obvious, innit? They reckon I got somethink to do with Laura being missing, and they wanted me to say as much.”
“They wanted you to confess?”
“Pretty much.”
“So what did you tell them?” I suck at the bottle and wince. I feel the heat sink, then lift through me.
“I dint tell them nothing, Charlie. Not a word. Not a single word the whole time. That’s why I couldn’t breathe right until yesterday.”
“That’s horrible.” It’s all I can say.
“That’s one way to describe it.” Jasper smirks. “But one good thing about it all is that it let me in on what they know, which is fuck-all of nuthin. That’s good for us, mate. Means we’re in the clear for a bit. But it don’t help us in nailin the bloke who really did this to her.”
I take another tug at the bottle and hand it back. It still tastes molten and revolting, but it feels nice. I’m beginning to understand why you’d want to pour it down your neck.
“There was a town meeting tonight. Everyone seems to think Laura ran away. They’re all saying she hitchhiked out of here. It was on the news too. On the telly. They were asking people to help.”
Jasper nods slowly. “They’re either lying on purpose, or they’re fuckin stupid. Think on it, Charlie. Why would they say that? They know that Laura dint pack any clothes, she dint take any money, she dint leave a note or nothing. Know what I reckon? I reckon they’re saying that because they haven’t found anything. They’re tryin to cover their own arses, trying to make it someone else’s problem. Takin the attention away.”
“Would they do that? I mean, Laura’s dad was even on the news, asking people to come forward, asking people in the city to keep their eyes out.”
“Mate, Laura’s old man is the worst out of the whole lot.”
I am taken aback.
“How do you mean?”
“Let’s just say he was down at the station as well,” Jasper says bitterly.
“What, and he knew they were beating you?”
“Knew? He dint just know, he was sticking the boot in most of all. Pissed as a rat and twice as angry. Screamin at me, spittin. Where is she? What did you do? Stinkin of turps, worse than my old man.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. It seems so far-fetched. My head is spinning, and I’m not sure if it is the Black Bush.
“But … but he’s the shire president.”
“So?”
“It’s just … it’s hard for me to believe, is all.”
We slip into silence. The heat is thick. I listen to the rustles and the creaks of the bush. The walls of the glade look formidable. It makes me feel small.
I watch Jasper blow another smoke ring. A large one. And deftly, he slices his cigarette right down the middle of it. For a moment before it dissolves, it takes the shape of a heart.
“That’s a neat trick,” I say. He nods.
“Laura used to like that too. She tried for ages, but she could never do it.”
“You must miss her,” I say plainly after a time.
Jasper grinds his cigarette and nods to himself. He upends the whiskey bottle, takes a solid hit of it.
“You know why else she wouldn’t hav
e left here, Charlie?” He pauses and shakes his head. “Because we were gonna go together. We were gonna get out. She wouldn’t have left without me. We had it planned and everything. I was working the orchards to get us some money up. That’s where I’d bin the couple of weeks before. And she were gonna fleece a few quid from her old man shortly before we went. We were goin up to the city to live. She was gonna study. Do a course to get into the university.”
“What were you going to do?”
“Dunno. Whatever come my way up there, I guess. Anythin. I don’t know. I got a few ideas, you know. Boxing. Footy. Get a trade. It weren’t ever a worry. I mean, shit, even if I had’ve come down here of a weekend and taken back a sack full of crayfish, I would have killed the pig up there. It’s crazy, Charlie. It’s money for nuthin. If you know the right people, if you get friendly enough with the folks that are exportin em, you’re makin out like a bandit. It’s good money for good sizes. And I know all the spots down here that nobody goes. Where the big ones are, in deep, big as your arm. You spend a night setting traps, take them up fresh. You could make a good living, for certain. So, you know, I got irons in the fire.”
Jasper sighs, and his body rises and falls sharply, like a single hiccup.
“I bin thinkin a lot about poker too.”
“Poker?”
“Yair. Never lost money. Not once. I got a gift, I reckon. I could scratch out a living during the week, then make it tenfold again over the weekend. That’s what I do at the orchards. Work hard during the day, pocket my coin, then go find a game and make some real money.”
“Really?”
“For certain. Easy. See, poker isn’t about luck, Charlie. Luck’s got nuthin to do with it. It’s all about acting. It’s all about how you comport yerself at the table. You got to give nothing away. Or, if you do give yerself away, it’s got to be on purpose, you got to be hamstringin them.” Jasper pauses to strike a match and feed it to another smoke. “But mostly it’s about readin people. And that’s what I do best. I reckon I got a gift for it. True. Like a sixth sense or something. See, when it comes to pounds and pennies, it don’t matter who you are, at some point it means something. And when there’s enough of it out in the middle, blokes’ll tell you things with their eyes. It’s almost like I can smell it when they’re lyin.”
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