Forgotten Places

by Johanna Craven

  God Almighty, who was this man? His skin was brown and weathered, his beard wiry. A permanent scowl creased the bridge of his nose. He brought a hand to his chin to make sure it was really him.

  The last time he’d seen his reflection, he was a young man of twenty-three. An insignificant lag. He’d never seen Macquarie Harbour. Never met Robert Greenhill or Alexander Pearce or wretched Tom Bodenham. Had never considered the lengths he’d go to in order to ensure his own survival.

  Once, he’d been vaguely handsome. There’d been women— flings, games, Maggies and Sallies. Never love. But now: such darkness in his eyes. He felt like all the horrors of his life were etched into his face. What had these colonists seen when he’d sat amongst them at the dinner table?

  He turned his shoulders, checking those tell-tale scars were hidden beneath his coat. White streaks showed above his neck cloth. He wished he hadn’t cut his hair. Wished he’d let himself hide.

  After breakfast, Dalton traipsed out to the farm with Edward Porter and the two remaining convict workers; short stocky men with scowls and hunched shoulders. One was Dalton’s age with a shock of orange hair on his head and chin. The other was older, greyer. Sunken and weary.

  Frost crunched beneath their boots. There were fences to rebuild and their arms were loaded with axes and saws. The redhead looked over his shoulder and gave Dalton a twisted half-smile.

  “All this is ours,” Edward announced. “Right up to the creek.”

  Yes mate, thought Dalton, you told me that already.

  The four of them got to work in the wood yard, sawing and planing tree trunks into fence posts. Dalton let himself get lost in the physicality of it, the way he used to do hauling pines at Sarah Island. Feel the burn in his arms instead of the ache in his chest. Don’t think further than the next swing of the axe.

  They’d not been at it a half-hour, when Edward wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve and wandered across the wood yard. Following his lead, the redheaded convict released the saw and let it rest in the log.

  “Keep at it, Howell,” shot Edward. “You got a whole forest to get through after that one.” He nodded at Dalton. “Why you still got that coat on, bog-trotter?”

  Dalton kept his eyes on the log. “There’s ice in the air.”

  “Ice in the air. You’re pouring sweat, you mad bugger.”

  Dalton tried to lose himself in the rhythm of the plane against the wood. Shah. Shah.

  “Take it off. I’m hot at the sight of you.”

  Dalton looked over his shoulder at Edward. “I’m not one of your convict slaves.”

  Edward cleared his throat and spat into the grass. He leant against the barn and watched the men work.

  Dalton snorted. “Lazy fucking narrow-back.”

  Howell grinned.

  “You say something?” Edward demanded.

  “No, sir. Not a word.” He lost himself in the beat of it. Shah, shah, shah.

  XVIII

  Hobart Town Gazette

  Friday 25th June 1824

  ‘The Learned Gentlemen then proceeded to detail certain confessions made by the prisoner, [Alexander Pearce], before … Lieutenant Cuthbertson— commandant at Macquarie Harbour— and to the Rev Robert Knopwood. Confessions which, although in some respects inconsistent, would yet, when coupled with all the facts, merit the most serious attention.’

  The bastards hired them. Called Dalton and Grace into the parlour on Friday morning and said they’d have them on at half rates, three shillings a week. Three shillings.

  Did you do the sums, Grace?

  Four years or more of sweeping the floor until she got two tickets back to London. Good thing she’d lost Violet, or she’d have had to earn enough for three.

  They stood side by side in the Porters’ parlour. Grace was gushing with curtseys and thank yous, pretending Dalton wasn’t there.

  He’d proved himself good with a saw. Convinced the Porters to hire him and made that Edward look like a right pansy in the process. He’d thought she’d have been pleased with him.

  He followed her into the kitchen. Brought his muddy boots from the doorstep and sat at the table. He slid his feet into them slowly, not taking his eyes off her. She had a faraway look about her. “I thought you’d be happy,” he said.

  “I am happy.”

  “You don’t seem it.” He followed her gaze. Through the window he saw the Porters’ two daughters rolling a hoop across the lawn.

  Grace went to the cupboard for the broom.

  “You miss your girls,” said Dalton.

  She attacked the floor with violent, noisy scrapes. The broom shot out and collected his ankle. “Don’t you got work to do?”

  Dalton snatched the broom.

  “Alexander—”

  “Speak to me,” he said. “Please.”

  She sighed. “They know you’re sleeping in the barn. People are talking. Porter’s only kept you on because he ain’t going to find no-one else who’ll work as cheap.” She folded her arms. “Why are you out there?”

  “I don’t want people around me.”

  “You’ve had me around you for months.”

  “But these people… They’re not like you.”

  Grace took the broom. “Please, just come inside. Try to fit in. Whatever you’ve come to believe, you belong in here, not out with the animals.”

  Dalton bent to lace his boots.

  “Alexander? Will you try? Please?”

  He nodded.

  Grace smiled faintly. “Thank you.”

  A week, and then a rifle shot in the cold morning. Bill Porter stood on the edge of the cattle paddock with the gun in his hand. Beside him, Edward peered into the scrub. They stalked back towards the wood yard where the convict workers hovered, watching with disinterested eyes. Dalton stood beside them with his arms folded.

  Mrs Porter stepped onto the porch and squinted. “Catch them, Bill?”

  Porter spat in the grass. “Fucking animals ran off like dogs. You—” He held the rifle out to Dalton. “You a good shot?”

  Dalton nodded.

  Porter tossed him the gun and powder. “Couple of blacks come out of the bush and nicked my boots. Go find them. Take Howell with you.”

  Dalton slid a ball into the chamber. The click was loud in the cold morning. He wove through the cattle paddock and out into the thin blue-grey scrub on the fringe of the plains.

  Howell trotted behind him. “We going to shoot these bastards then?”

  “Why would I want to do that?” Dalton looked down. No flattened foliage here. If there truly had been blacks at the farm, they’d not come this way. He kept walking anyway.

  Howell began to whistle. A tuneless thing with two flat notes. Tuu, haa. “Heard a story once. They say some bolters got themselves lost in these woods.”

  Tuu, haa.

  Dalton felt something twist inside him.

  “Done some real bad things. Inhuman things.” Howell stomped through the scrub. “You heard those stories too?”

  Dalton shook his head. Began to walk faster.

  “I think you have.” Howell combed two fingers through his rust-coloured beard. “Porter’ll find you out, you know. Sooner or later.”

  Dalton kept his eyes down. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Aye, you do. A man stumbles out of the bush half-dead, you tend to remember him.”

  And Dalton realised it sickly. He’d seen that bushel of orange hair before. Seen this man in a cattle duffing ring on the Fat Doe River. Howell smiled, like he’d seen the flicker of recognition in Dalton’s eyes. He stopped walking.

  “A silent man. A man that don’t speak because he don’t want no one to know his secrets.” He laughed long and low. “Can’t imagine the Porters would take it too well to find they’d hired a bolter. Especially one with a horror story behind him.”

  Dalton stared him down. “I’m no bolter.”

  Howell grinned. “I seen you come out of the bush, mate. Convict slops h
anging off your shoulders. That canary yellow they dish out at Macquarie Harbour. I gave you my coat and a double ration of salt pork. Half carried you to the fire. You’d be dead if it weren’t for me.” He stepped close and held a grimy finger inches from Dalton’s nose. “You, Mr Dalton, are the only one of those bolters never properly accounted for. You left our ring the day before we raided Bothwell. Ran into the bush. We all knew why you’d disappeared. We knew what you’d done. Did you really think us too foolish to put the pieces together?”

  Dalton ran his hand along the shaft of the rifle. “You’ve got the wrong man.”

  “Have I now?” Howell chuckled and clapped him on the back. “I’ll have to beg your pardon then.”

  That night, laughter rose from the house. A party. The man of the house Bill’s birthday.

  Dalton paced across the barn.

  We all knew what you’d done.

  You, Mr Dalton…

  There was no anonymity in this land of new beginnings.

  He stumbled into the night and peered through the steamy window into the parlour. Guests were crammed around a blazing fire. There was Bill Porter, his bald head shining like a melon, roaring with laughter at what Dalton was sure was one of his own jokes. People were clustered around him, hands full of rum and cigars. Strangers, workers, faces Dalton recognised from the farm beside Annie and Jack’s. Grace was hovering by the hearth, watching the Porters’ girls toss knucklebones on the rug.

  Dalton felt disconnected from the world on the other side of the glass. A world he’d stopped being a part of the night Tom Bodenham had died.

  “Let’s do this.” Greenhill whispering in Pearce’s ear. A sound Dalton had never been able to forget.

  They’d been walking for sixteen days. Macquarie Harbour lay behind them and who knew what lay ahead. The last of the bread they’d eaten days ago. Dalton’s steps were crooked with hunger. His vision was blurred, throat dry.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this, was it. They were supposed to have reached the mainland by now in that little fucking boat. He ought to have been drinking ale with some beautiful lass in Kilkenny.

  Instead, his stomach was bloated and leeches crawled inside his boots. He didn’t have the strength to stop them. The man Greenhill chose to sacrifice wouldn’t have the strength to stop him either.

  “Tonight,” said Greenhill. Dalton was crouched behind a monstrous pine tree. He didn’t mean to hide. He was just too weak to stand.

  “I can’t.” Pearce. Yes, you can. “Who then?” Pearce asked.

  Greenhill whispered: “Dalton. Dalton, the flogger.”

  So that’s your justice then, Greenhill? I take the whip to your back once under orders and you’ll cut out my heart?

  Did he know Dalton was there? Did he want the flogger to see death coming?

  Dalton thought of trying to run, turning his back and tearing into the bush. But if he moved, the twigs beneath him would crackle. Ferns would sigh and birds would scatter. Greenhill would see him.

  The axe dangled by Greenhill’s side, bumping against his calf. Pearce stood opposite, but Greenhill’s eyes looked past him, past Dalton. Thoughtful, hateful eyes. Was he tied up on the triangle at Sarah Island, while Dalton heaved fifty strokes of the cat into his spine? Couldn’t he hear the overseer beside them, spitting and cursing?

  Put your bloody back into it, Dalton, or you’ll be next.

  Greenhill’s eyes panned across the bush and for a moment Dalton was sure he had been seen.

  The night before, he’d sat with Ned Brown and Kennerly, hidden from the others. They’d talked of running. Talked of leaving Greenhill to his nightmarish plans. They’d argued on it.

  Kennerly and Brown wanted to go back to the harbour. Face the commandant and his floggers. But there was no going back for Dalton. That hopeless existence at Macquarie Harbour, that wasn’t life. He’d rather be dead. Easier to say such a thing, though, than face the reality of it. I’d rather die, a man could say with all the certainty in the world. But when death was staring him in the face, well that was a whole other story.

  Greenhill and Pearce; they turned and spoke. A month from now they’d be circling each other in the night, fighting to be the last man alive.

  Dalton stayed where he was, not daring to make the bush crackle or the birds scatter. He stayed as the sun sank, trying to keep his eyes on Greenhill and Pearce as they wove through the purple forest. And suddenly: the crack of iron to bone, hanging on the cold air. Men shouted and cursed at Greenhill.

  English dog.

  Silence fell over them.

  Bodenham. He was only a boy. The youngest of them all. Why him? Did his legs not move as quickly as the rest? Had he cursed at Greenhill under his breath? Looked at him the wrong way over the supper tables one night? Or had he been singled out for his Scottish blood, Pearce reluctant to have the death of a fellow Irishman on his hands?

  Had the poor bastard any idea of what was coming? Was there time for thought when he saw Greenhill’s axe come towards him? Did his poor, sorry life play out before his eyes? Did he see the stained bulkheads of the convict ship and the blood splattered triangle on Sarah Island? Or was it just fear and hunger and then eternal darkness?

  Afterwards, Dalton went to the creek. Tried to purge himself of all he’d swallowed. Fingers down his throat, retching into the stream. But his body clung to those precious scraps of meat. He splashed his face. The water was icy but he was hot with sweat and fear. Feverish. His slops were thick with dirt and hanging off one shoulder.

  He heard a whisper: “That you, Dalton?”

  He stumbled, terrified. Freezing water filled his boots. “Get the fuck away from me.”

  Bodenham would keep the men going for a few days at most. And they’d all stood on the top of that ridge and seen the endless miles of nothing. Someone would be next. If Greenhill had his way, Dalton wouldn’t survive the second swing of the axe.

  But this was Bill Kennerly, eyes glowing in the light of the moon. Another man behind him. Ned Brown. Last night, they’d talked themselves out of leaving. Convinced themselves there’d be no bloodshed. They were messmates. Brothers in arms. Surely not even Greenhill could go through with such a thing.

  But now there was one man less among them. Kennerly squeezed Dalton’s shoulders like he was trying to stop his humanity from escaping.

  “You’re going back then?” asked Dalton. “Back to the harbour?”

  “Going anywhere but here. I’d rather die than have this on my conscience. Thought there were nowhere on this earth worse than Sarah Island, but we’re all wrong sometimes, aye?”

  In every moving shape in the darkness, Dalton saw the arc of Greenhill’s axe. In every sound he heard the choke of Bodenham’s last breath.

  “Kennerly.” The footsteps paused. “I’m coming with you.”

  At daybreak, Brown and Kennerly turned west; back towards Sarah Island. Both men had refused to eat the night before. They’d be on the edge of starvation by the time they reached the harbour. Both would be dead by week’s end.

  Dalton turned east. Scratched out a life on the edge of survival.

  He sank against the outside wall of the house, sweat trickling down his back. What a fool he’d been to think he could erase himself from history. A horror story like theirs would never die. It would be told around campfires for a hundred years or more. Spoken of over market counters, across bars pooled with beer. Told by children hiding under the bedclothes and trying to work themselves into nightmares. No one had forgotten. Eleven years and Howell had known his face at first sight. Had known his story, his name, his crime.

  The kitchen door flew open and noise spilled into the yard. A sea of heads and voices. Among them were Edward and the stable-hand with the men Dalton recognised as Annie’s neighbours. Two of Edward’s younger brothers raced into the wood yard with a cricket bat and ball. Dalton tried to disappear into the shadows.

  “What you doing out here, bog-trotter?” drawled Edward. “Our com
pany not good enough for you?”

  The faces came towards him. He stepped back. Felt the wall of the house hard against his spine.

  “Leave him alone.” Grace pushed past Edward. “Are you all right?”

  Dalton nodded.

  Edward slung an arm around Grace’s shoulder. “I want to tell you a story, Miss Ashwell.”

  Grace glanced sideways at Dalton. “What is it?”

  “You’ll like this one, I’ll warrant.” Edward gulped his beer, a trickle escaping out the side of his mouth. “This is the story of Michael Howe, the bolter.”

  “I ain’t interested.” She unhooked herself from Edward’s arm.

  “He lived in the bush for six years like a savage. They caught him at the river just north of Bothwell. Cut off his head and sent it back to Hobart Town.” He grinned. “Governor wanted proof he was dead, see. They can be right bastards, them bolters. Dangerous, too.”

  Grace snorted. “Fine story.” She pulled Dalton away from Edward and the others. “Come on. You’ll have a drink at least.” She led him into the house and poured a glass of brandy from the bottle on the table, pressing it into his hand. “Something’s happened,” she said. “What?”

  What if Howell were to tell her? What if she knew?

  “Nothing’s happened.” He gulped a mouthful and carried his glass back out to the yard. And then a rough hand was on his shoulder, yanking his arm backwards. The glass flew, its contents spilling across the grass.

  “That’s my pa’s brandy,” said Edward. “Better it go to waste than be drunk by the likes of you.”

  Dalton raised his fist. Grace’s hand shot out and snatched his wrist.

  “Bugger off, Edward,” she snapped. “You’re pissed as a bloody sailor.”

  Edward laughed and waved his empty measure at Dalton. “You catch those savages then? Second time this month they’ve come in and nicked our boots.”

  “Why would the blacks want your boots?” Grace demanded.

  “As if I know how their savage brains work. They’re right devils, those black Irish.” He gave a liquored-up snort. “That’s what we call them round here, you know. The black Irish.”