But Eliza promised this: if her mother wished to come forward, to declare what was true and see that things were put right, then she’d take her to the place where Laura lay. Until that day, she vowed to stay quiet.
So far, neither of them has spoken. The secret has stayed with the Wisharts, sealed shut in a jar, locked in a dusty cupboard. And Eliza thinks that’s where it will always stay. Once, I asked Eliza if she wanted to see her father punished. She narrowed her eyes and softly assured me: he’d get his. And that’s all she said on it.
I’ve been seeing a lot of Eliza Wishart. She retreated a little these past couple of weeks, but she’s coming back. She’s getting some meat back on her bones. As am I, slowly.
She and I, we go to the glade in the dead of night, like Jasper and Laura before us. I’ve devised a route to her window that means I’m unlikely to get caught. It’s the next best thing to digging a tunnel under Corrigan all the way to her street. I tap the glass with my knuckle like I always dreamed of doing, and she swipes the curtain back, pleased to see me. She even has sunflowers on the windowsill. And we walk together, hand in hand, to that island in the bush, and it no longer feels like we’re trespassing. Sometimes Eliza takes flowers and sits by the water’s edge with her legs crossed, and I stand apart while she whispers things. Sometimes she brings her sister gifts and she drops them to the bottom like a wishing well. Sometimes she gets quiet and hard and it’s best for me to leave her be. Sometimes we muck about, we giggle and dance and have fun. We don’t ever swim in the dam. We lie down and drink in the stars and talk about books and cities and things that are important to us. The things we wish for. Who we want to be. I confide in her. I tell her about my father’s novel. I even sneak her a copy of the manuscript, which she reads in a single day, and we get giddy over the parts we liked. We talk about how famous he’ll be, how one day I might have a book that sits next to his on the shelf.
We sleep in the tree hollow, snug and safe. Eliza and I hold on to each other the same way you’d cling to a lamppost during a blizzard. I put my hand on her hummingbird heart and see that it settles.
And we kiss as we lie under the thick tent of that eucalypt. I’m not even nervous anymore. It’s the nicest thing in the world. I press my mouth to her neck and I breathe her in and our hands go places. I touch her belly, her ribs, and the warm thrill of her breasts. I was wrong to ever declare there is nothing softer than a girl’s lips.
It’s our secret. And this one is worth keeping. And I don’t feel the need to share or shuck it. This one keeps me light. In a way, this secret has helped untie the knot of the other ones. The hushed stuff in our chests seems to hum and dissolve when we press our hearts together. I look forward to seeing her so much.
Visiting the glade has softened our talk about leaving; it’s leached the urgency right out of it. We’re mostly wistful and wishful now. We may not have high tea at the Plaza, but billy tea in Jasper’s glade is just as nice.
Every so often, when she’s particularly low or sad, or thinking on horrible things, that curious accent of hers returns. But I think I understand it now. I’ve seen the film. I know the flippant and frivolous manner, the snips of scenes. The Golightly voice, it’s a wily vice. Eliza WishArt. So I don’t ever say anything. I let it pass.
But mostly, Jasper’s glade fills our lungs and settles us down. And it feels like love. It really does. It seems to mirror everything I’ve read about it. And if it’s not, then it must be awfully close. I want to ask her to marry me. I don’t want anybody else. She’s the finest thing in this town. And I don’t want to be without her. She’s the single sliver of something good that I’ve got to hold in my hand. And I want to wrap it around my finger and make a ring out of it. One day, when I’ve got enough courage in me, I’ll tell her. I’ll say all the right words. And she might even say them back.
oday is the first day back at school. As expected, the summer’s events are foremost on everyone’s minds and mouths. The disappearance of Laura Wishart is gossiped about for hours, with the abduction of the Beaumont kids in Adelaide just a few days ago giving the mystery fresh ingredients. Nobody is safe anymore. The air drones with the murmurs of rumors.
The girls cluster and hush when Eliza appears. The boys jostle and grin and elbow each other.
Jasper Jones doesn’t turn up late to tick off his name for the football team.
Jeffrey Lu has become something of a minor celebrity, which he doesn’t mind at all. Upon receiving his first snippets of praise, he spends most of the morning reliving his heroic stand to anyone who will listen, mapping out his feats with ball-by-ball emphasis and more than a little liberty with the truth.
The day is strange. I feel as though everything has changed, and yet nothing really has. Warwick Trent is even back in uniform. After a lazy summer of booze and depravity, he failed to secure an apprenticeship but managed to knock up Sharon Noonan. So, bereft of options, he’s returned to haunt the halls.
And it’s this, the reemergence of Warwick Trent, that is the reason I find myself walking to Jack Lionel’s property right now, with a coterie of classmates in tow. The final bell has gone. It’s hot and dry. And I’ve made a wager with Warwick Trent.
If I walk to the peach tree of Mad Jack Lionel this very afternoon, in broad daylight, and steal more than four of his peaches, I will be granted immunity for a full school year. This permits me freedom from beatings and assorted tortures, even casual derision. No matter how deep I delve into my vocabulary, no matter how far I goad, no matter how tempting it is to mention my mother, because everybody knew by now. I will have immunity. Also, Jeffrey Lu gets to play the remainder of the cricket season, and not as twelfth man either. He is also permitted to open the batting and to bowl in at least one fixture.
Trent is convinced I’ll never do it. He thinks I’ll be crippled by fear as soon as I’m there. He doesn’t believe I’ll even make it over the grid past the front gate, where so many have tried and failed.
I’ve agreed to an inhumanly cruel punishment should I fail, because I know I can deliver what I’ve promised. Should I somehow return with anything less than five peaches, my fate is clear and devastating. Not only do I consign myself to being this year’s targeted pariah, but Warwick and his coterie promise to strip me naked and chain me to the door of the Miners’ Hall overnight, not without first pelting me with eggs, flour, sugar, and water. In short, I’m promised a few hours of pain and shame followed by a lifetime of humiliating reminders.
It’s a done deal. Hands have been shaken. Witnesses have nodded sagely.
There must be two dozen kids who have mustered and clustered after the bell for the journey to Mad Jack Lionel’s. I’m fairly certain they’ve all lined up to delight in my failure, but there’s a ripple of underdog hope among them: I might be the one to stick it to Warwick Trent.
I walk calmly across the oval, with Jeffrey Lu beside me. Right now I feel like Clark Kent in a gunfight. I’ve got nothing to lose. I feel invincible, because I’m concealing something powerful. I’m finally holding the aces.
Eliza Wishart intersects the crowd. I long to lean in to kiss her, but I can’t in front of everyone. She pulls me aside.
“So it’s true?”
“Yeah. I guess.” I smile and shrug.
She doesn’t smile back. She looks pale and distant. I touch her hand. She stops walking.
“Are you going to come?” I ask.
“No. I can’t. I’ve got to be somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Just somewhere.” She looks over my shoulder.
“Will I see you tonight?”
She shifts her eyes to mine.
“I don’t know. Maybe. You might see me before then.”
“What? Where?”
“You’ll see.”
I frown and take her arm.
“I’ll see what?”
She wriggles away.
“I’ve got to go, Charlie. I’ll see you soon.”
And she strid
es off alone, leaving her two friends behind. Too fast and sure for me to pull or call her back. Something is wrong. I want to follow her, but I’m trapped in this procession.
Jeffrey sidles over to my side. He sighs.
“Dames,” he says, shaking his head. “Hell hath no fury like a woman’s corn. They’ll never understand, Chuck.”
“I think it’s me that’ll never understand.”
“I’m happy to concede that, because you’re an idiot. But the finest minds in the world still have no idea what women are about, so you’re in good company.”
“I don’t know, my company seems fairly poor.”
“So what’s your plan?” Jeffrey asks anxiously as we turn and catch up to the pack.
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly that. What’s your plan? You must have a plan. How are you going to infiltrate the premises? Are you going round the back? Have you set some kind of trap that I don’t know about? A pit? Have you dug a pit? Or created a diversion? Have you rigged up explosives? Are you concealing a weapon?”
“I wish I was, Jeffrey, but not to use on Jack Lionel. You’re out of your mind. Explosives? Of course not. There is no plan, other than a brisk stroll up his driveway to take five pieces of fruit and then to walk calmly back.”
“Simple as that.”
“That’s right.”
“Charles, you are batshit insane. You’ll die. You’ll be mauled, you fucking lunatic. He probably has, I don’t know, tigers. Or he’s developed some new savage species of hybrid animal like Doctor Moreau. Like a shark with crocodile legs. He’ll probably come at you with a cutlass.”
“Jeffrey, he’s not a pirate.”
“And neither are you.”
“What?”
“Exactly. Listen, you don’t steal the peaches of a communist psychopath. It’s Golden Rule Number One. Understand? And if you do, if you’re foolhardy enough to attempt such a thing, then you devise a fucking plan that ensures you’re not disemboweled by his bear-wolves or whatever. You’re in trouble, Charlie. This is worse than I thought. You’re not equipped. You don’t even have a basic understanding of martial arts.”
“I won’t need martial arts.”
“You always need martial arts, dickhead. That’s the point. If you want to be brave, you’ve got to be smart and you’ve got to be prepared and you’ve got to know shit. Okay. Look. We don’t have much time. I’m going to mentor you as best I can. Here’s an infallible move, should you encounter an adversary. Are you listening?”
“No.”
“Good. Now. This will save your life one day. It’s the easiest move in the book. It’s called the Monkey Steals the Peach. Honest. It’s appropriate, right?”
“Jeffrey, you’re making this up.”
“I’m not! Okay. What you do, if you’re attacked, is, you drop down on one knee and you slap your assailant fair in the jaffas with an open palm, like an uppercut, or an angry lawn bowler, and then you grab hold and rip the shit out of those peaches. Bang. Fight over. I’m serious, Chuck. People outside the martial arts community say it’s a cowardly act to go at the crackers. I say it’s smart.” Jeffrey taps his head.
“Well, I say it won’t be necessary. I’m picking peaches from his tree, not between his legs. It will be fine. Trust me.”
“Cheeses Christ, Chuck! What is the matter with you? The man is a mentalist. Your head’s in the sand. You’re like a fucking … ostridge. You’re king of the fucking ostridges. This is dangerous, don’t you understand? Don’t do it, retard. It’s not worth it.”
“It is worth it.”
“How?”
“It just is.”
“Don’t do it.”
“I’m doing it!”
Jeffrey tugs at his ear and shakes his head.
“Fuck it. Then let me come with you. If we go down, we go down together.”
“Jeffrey, no.”
“I will, Chuck. I’ll do it. I’ll go in with you,” he says resolutely.
He really would, too. Even though Jeffrey Lu doesn’t know what I know. I have no reason to be afraid, but he does. He’s as transfixed by the myth of Jack Lionel as anyone in this town, yet he’s willing to put that aside to see me through safely. He’s the bravest person I’ll ever know.
“You don’t need to, Jeffrey. Really. Besides, I’ll lose the bet if you come with me.”
“You’ll lose more than that if I don’t. Charles, you’re not equipped.”
“I’m equipped. Trust me, I’m equipped.”
“No, you’re ignorant, remember? You don’t know the first thing about combat. You couldn’t hit the ground if you fell over. And yet here you are, staging a peach mission with no preparation or reconnaissance, with no fundamental understanding of martial arts and no fucking plan. You need me with you. You’ll never make it otherwise.”
“You can’t come with me, Jeffrey.”
“Well, shit. Then lie back and think of England, Chuck Bucktin, because you’re about to get fucked, one way or another. It’s been nice knowing you, at times. I may have mentioned this before, but this time I really mean it: you’re an idiot.”
I put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze it.
“Jeffrey, you’re the best friend I’ll ever have. You’re like a brother to me. You should know that.”
“What? Why are you suddenly queer?”
“Because I love you, little man. And this is something I have to do. Understand? And trust me, it’s going to be the most straightforward thing in the world. Everyone in this town is going to see that there’s nothing to be afraid of. And then we’ll get the spoils.”
He shakes his head in resignation and mild disgust. After a little while, he asks:
“Can I have a peach pit, if you get one?”
“Jeffrey, you can have them all. You deserve them.”
We trudge the rest of the way in silence.
At Lionel’s, they gather in an arc around the front gate. Some kids even hang back across the road, keeping their distance. It’s tense. Warwick Trent sneers at me and smiles as though his point is already proven.
“Well? Go on, dipshit,” he says, motioning his head toward the cottage. “We dint come here for nuthin.”
They expect me to prevaricate. To shiver and shake as I survey the scruffy landscape and haunted architecture. They think I’ll back away and say I can’t do it. There’s a sense of fascination and foreboding among this group. All eyes are on me, on what I’ll do. But I’ve been inside. I know the truth. And so I look Warwick Trent square in the eyes, and I unhook the latch on the gate and give it a single shove. I step over the grate. I think about turning and saying something pithy or profound, but I don’t. I pause and straighten my back and stare straight ahead.
“He’s shitting himself,” I hear someone say. They’re probably surprised I’ve made it this far.
I stride down the driveway. Completely in the open. I take no shelter in the weeds. I don’t crouch or step lightly. I walk up like no peach thief before me. Brazen. Bold as brass. I’m making history. I hear that same voice behind me suggest that I’m going to get myself killed, and I grin to myself as the cottage opens itself up fully and I take in the peach tree and the veranda, the rusted shell of the car out past the corrugated-iron shed and the chicken coop.
I’m so far inside that I can’t hear them, or even feel their presence anymore. And even though I know I’m under no threat, it’s still an eerie and intimidating pilgrimage. I start to tread lighter as I get closer. So much so that if Lionel were to come out now, he’d have every reason to be suspicious. I wonder if he’s watching me. I hear the short clicks of crickets, little shifts in the grass. I breathe deep.
I stomp a path out of the tall grass and make it to the tall, gnarly reach of the peach tree. It smells sweet and musty. But upon looking up into its foliage, my heart sinks and dread spreads. There’s not one peach to be picked. It’s barren. The season is finished. Of course. Shit. Which means I am too. Maybe Warwick Trent
knew. Maybe that’s why he was so smug and confident. I edge closer, peering into the higher branches, hoping to sight a cluster of late bloomers that might have held on over Christmas. But there’s no deep orange, no blush of crimson. I’m in trouble.
I’m fixed so fiercely on the tree that I don’t notice Jack Lionel’s shadow filling the open window of his living room. He bends and peers out. I’m startled to hear his voice.
“Charlie! How goes it, my boy?”
I jump back. My limbs huddle together.
“Mr. Lionel. Hello. Sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Call me Jack, call me Jack.” He waves his hand, smiling. “You won’t find any good ’uns this late, I’m afraid, mate. Last of em fell about a fortnight ago, I reckon. Too many to pick this year, plus I bin ill, so I just let em fall.”
I look down. There’s a lumpy carpet of decaying peaches at my feet. It’s a windfall, but it does very little to dissolve my worry. Because hovering above them are dozens and dozens of insects. Mostly bees. I follow their flight, and see a hive under a gutter on the house. There are black ants running trails, slaters and worms burrowing into the soft flesh. March flies and blowflies and houseflies. It’s the stuff of nightmares. I go stiff and cold. This is no longer straightforward. I shudder and step back. I need to piss.
Lionel props his elbows on the window frame and moves to lean forward through the windowsill, but I stop him before he’s visible.
“No! Stay there: they’ll see you,” I hiss, holding my hand up, still looking down.
“Who?”
“Kids from school,” I whisper loudly. “They’re watching me. I can’t explain now. But I can’t let them see that I know you. Jack, I need to take some of these peaches. Is that orright?”
“Be my guest, son,” Jack laughs from inside. “You want a satchel, or a paper bag? Or I got a bucket in the laundry. What are you kids up to? Making a pig trap, are youse? They love my peaches, those bastards. Come right up to the house. You hear em rummagin about of a night, drives me spare.”
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