by Trent Dalton
‘She needs to concentrate,’ Dave says, head down in his word processor, fingers tapping furiously.
‘What did the cops tell you about the Penn family?’ I ask.
‘What’s it to you, Bellbottoms?’
Dave Cullen calls me Bellbottoms. Bellbottoms is not a crime reporter. Bellbottoms is a fairy who writes colour.
‘They find any clues in the house?’
‘Any clues?’ Dave laughs. ‘Yeah, Bellbottoms, they found a candlestick in the conservatory.’
‘I grew up out that way,’ I say. ‘I know that street well. Logan Avenue. It runs down to Oxley Creek. Gets flooded all the time.’
‘Awww, shit, thanks, Eli, I’ll mention that in my intro.’
He taps furiously into his word processor as he speaks. ‘“Shocking revelations have emerged in the case of the missing Penn family from Oxley with sources not at all close to the family saying they lived on a street that often flooded in heavy rain events.”’
Dave Cullen leans back in his chair proudly. ‘Fuck, mate, this is gonna put the cat among the pigeons. Thanks for the tip.’
But the joke is on the great triathlete weight-lifting smartarse Dave Cullen because as he’s enacting this posturing sideshow of malicious sarcasm my eyes are searching for details across his work desk. A Batman coffee cup with the Caped Crusader’s fist causing the word ‘Kapow’ to explode from the cheek of the Joker. A large orange in a state of decay. A small photograph of the Queensland swimming champion Lisa Curry pinned to his desk divider. A Birdsville Hotel stubby cooler holding six blue ballpoint pens. And a lined Spirax notepad open beside his desk phone. On this notepad are several scribbled lines in shorthand from which I can identify several key words. These words are Glenn Penn, Regina, Bevan, heroin, Golden Triangle, Cabramatta, king, reprisal.
But there are two words I find more compelling than any others. Dave Cullen has placed a question mark beside these two words and he has underlined them. These two words make me shiver. Absurd words that make no sense on their own but make some sense if you have spent a bizarre childhood being raised by drug dealers in the outer western suburb of Darra.
Llama hair?
The name falls out of me. It erupts from me. The hot molten lava of his name.
‘Iwan Krol.’
I say it too loud and Caitlyn Spies spins around immediately on her chair. She recognises the name. She stares at me. Spies digs deep. Spies digs right.
Dave Cullen is puzzled.
‘What?’ he says.
Brian Robertson’s door opens and Dave Cullen sits up in his seat.
‘Bell!’ the editor barks.
It’s a thunderous holler that makes me jump as I turn towards the monster standing in his office doorway.
‘What did I tell you about sniffin’ round the fuckin’ crime desk?’ Brian shouts.
‘You said, “Stop sniffin’ round the fuckin’ crime desk,”’ I say, displaying my uncanny journalistic recollection of the facts.
‘Get in here now!’ Brian screams, walking back to his office desk.
I take one last look at Caitlyn Spies. She’s still on the phone but she’s looking at me, giving me an encouraging smile now, nodding knowingly, giving the kind of smile fair maidens give to knights who are about to be eaten alive by mythological dragons.
I enter Brian’s office.
‘I’m sorry, Brian, I was just trying to give Dave some—’
He cuts me off.
‘Sit down, Bell,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a project I need you to turn around quick.’
I sit in one of two empty swivel chairs sitting across from his single brown leather desk chair that does not swivel for anyone.
‘You heard of the Queensland Champions awards?’ he asks.
‘Queensland Champions?’ I gasp.
‘It’s a load of back-slapping bullshit the government’s organised for Queensland Day,’ he says.
‘I know it,’ I say. ‘My brother, Gus, has been nominated for an award in the Community Champions category. This Friday night my mum and dad and I are going to City Hall to watch Gus accept his award.’
‘What’s he gettin’ his award for?’
‘He walks around the streets of Brisbane with a bucket asking people to give money to help Queenslanders with muscular dystrophy.’
‘A man’s gotta do,’ Brian says. He lifts a booklet of papers and drops them over on my side of the desk. A list of names and phone numbers. ‘We’ve come on board as a sponsor for the night and we’re gonna give a bit of coverage to ten Queenslanders who’ll get awards.’
He nods at the sheets in front of me.
‘There’s a bunch of names and contact numbers the government has given us,’ he says. ‘I want you to go interview them. Gimme twenty centimetres on each of ’em and I need it to the subs by 4 p.m. Friday. We’ll run them Saturday after the awards night. Can you do it?’
My own project. My first big project for the great Brian Robertson.
‘I can do it,’ I say.
‘Now I want you to go flowery on this one,’ he says. ‘You have my blessing to go full florist on this one.’
‘Full florist, got it.’
Boy writes flowery. Boy writes violets. Boy writes roses.
I scan the list of names on the paper. It’s a predictable mix of popular Queensland Champions from the worlds of sport and art and politics and sport.
A gold medal–winning Olympic cyclist. A famous golfer. A powerful voice for Indigenous rights. A gold medal–winning Olympic swimmer. There’s a lovable yet cantankerous TV chef whose cooking show, Tummy Grumbles, is a fixture of daytime television in Queensland. A powerful voice for women’s rights. A bronze medal–winning Olympic rower with loads of charm. There’s a half-blind man named Johannes Wolf who climbed to the top of Mt Everest and buried his glass eye beneath the snow at the summit. There’s a mother of six who ran around Ayers Rock 1788 times in 1988 to celebrate Australia’s bicentenary and raise money for Queensland Girl Guides.
I take a moment to process the last name on the list of Queensland Champions. The winner of the Senior Champion award. Below his name is a supporting statement that runs for about nine centimetres in journalist copy length, about as long as my right forefinger would be now if it was still attached to my right hand.
‘An unsung hero of Queensland philanthropy,’ the award statement reads. ‘A man who began his life in Queensland as a Polish refugee, who lived with his family of eight inside the Wacol East Dependants Holding Camp for Displaced Persons. A man who has transformed the lives of thousands of Queenslanders living with disabilities. A truly deserving Senior Champion.’
The Lord of Limbs. Ahab. The man who made Lyle disappear. The man who makes everybody disappear. I read the name three times to make sure it’s real.
Tytus Broz. Tytus Broz. Tytus Broz.
‘Bell?’ Brian says.
I don’t respond.
‘Bell?’ Brian says.
I don’t respond.
‘Eli,’ he barks. ‘You there, kid?’
Only then do I realise my right fist is scrunching the papers with the names that my editor just handed me.
‘You all right?’ he asks.
‘Yeah,’ I say, smoothing out the papers between my hands.
‘You went all pale just then,’ he says.
‘I did?’
‘Yeah, your face went all white, like you’d seen a ghost.’
A ghost. The ghost. The man in white. White hair. White suit. Whites of his eyes. Whites of his bones.
‘I’ll be damned,’ Brian says. He’s leaning across the desk. He’s looking at my hands. I place my right hand in my pocket.
‘You’re missing a finger?’ he asks.
I nod.
‘How long you worked here now?’
‘Four months.’
‘And I never noticed you’re missing your right forefinger.’
I shrug my shoulders.
‘You must be good at keepi
ng it hidden.’
I hide it from myself.
‘I guess I am.’
‘How’d you lose it?’
A ghost walked into my house and took it. When I was a boy.
Boy Conquers Moon
Wake. The springs in my bed have snapped and my mattress is so thin that a sprung spring is stabbing through the mattress into my coccyx. I’m leaving here. I must go. Bed is too small. House is too small. World is too big.
Can’t keep sharing a room with my brother, no matter how low cadet wages are at the paper.
After midnight. Moon through the open window. August sleeping in his bed. The rest of the house in darkness. Mum’s bedroom door is open. She sleeps in the library room now there are no more books in it. August got rid of them all in the Bracken Ridge Book Bonanza, which ended up running for six consecutive Saturdays, with August making a disappointing $550 from the whole endeavour. He shifted almost 10,000 books through Bracken Ridge’s Housing Commission sector, but, amid disappointing sales, eventually reached the philosophical plateau that suggested giving the majority of books away for free. It wouldn’t help Mum get back on her feet any quicker but it would increase the chances of Bracken Ridge teens being exposed to Hermann Hesse, John le Carré and The Three Reproductive Phases of Silverfish. Because of my brother, August, there are men down at the Bracken Ridge Tavern on Saturday afternoons now drinking beers over Superforms and betting cards while they discuss the psychological resonance of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
I walk down the hall, still in my boxer shorts and an old black Adidas T-shirt that I’ve been wearing to bed, thin and comfortable and full of holes eaten away by what I believe might be silverfish, who survive on diets of Adidas T-shirts and books by Joseph Conrad.
I pull the fading cream curtain back on our wide front living room window. Open the window right up. Lean out and breathe the night air in deep. Look up at that full moon. Look out at the empty street. I see Lyle back in Darra. He’s standing in that suburban night in his roo-shooting coat smoking a Winfield Red. I miss him. I gave up on him because I was scared. Because I was gutless. Because I was angry at him. Fuck him, right. His fault for hopping in bed with Tytus Broz. Not my fault. Cut him out of my mind along with the Lord of Limbs. Cut them off like the ibis cut its own leg off because the fishing line was killing it.
It’s the moon that pulls my legs outside. My legs are moving and my mind follows. Then my mind follows my hands to the green garden hose looped around the tap fixed to the front of the house. I turn the hose on and kink the hose in my right hand so the water won’t spill through the orange nozzle. I drag the hose to the gutter by the letterbox. I sit and stare up at the moon. The full moon and me and the geometry between us. I release the kink and the water rushes onto the bitumen, pooling quickly in a flat pan in the street. The water runs and the silver moon wobbles in the forming puddle.
‘Can’t sleep?’
I forgot how much he sounds like me. It’s like he’s me and I’m standing behind myself. I look behind me to see August. His face lit by the moon, rubbing his eyes.
‘Yeah,’ I say.
We look into the moon pool.
‘I think I’ve got Dad’s worry gene,’ I say.
‘You don’t have his worry gene,’ he says.
‘I’m going to have to live my life as a recluse,’ I say. ‘I’m never gonna go outside. I’m gonna rent a Housing Commission home just like this one and fill two of the rooms with tinned Black and Gold spaghetti and I’ll eat spaghetti and read books until I die choking in my sleep on a ball of lint from my belly button.’
‘What is for you will not pass you by,’ August says.
I smile at him.
‘You know, I think you might have a baritone in that voice you never use,’ I say.
He laughs.
‘You should try singing some time,’ I say.
‘I think talking’s enough for now,’ he says.
‘I like talking to you, Gus.’
‘I like talking to you, Eli.’
He sits down in the gutter beside me, studies the hose water rushing into the moon pool.
‘What are you worrying about?’ he asks.
‘Everything,’ I say. ‘Everything that’s been and everything that’s about to be.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘It all gets—’
I cut him off. ‘Yeah, it all gets good, Gus, I know. Thanks for reminding me,’ I say.
Our reflections morph and disfigure like monsters in the moon pool.
‘Why do I have this feeling that tomorrow is going to be the most significant day of my life?’ I ponder.
‘Your feelings are well founded,’ August says. ‘It is going to be the most significant day of your life. Every day of your life has been leading up to tomorrow. But of course every day of your life led up to today.’
I look deeper into the moon pool, leaning over my hairy and thin legs.
‘I feel like I have no say in things any more,’ I say. ‘Like nothing I do can change what is and what is going to be. I’m in that car in the dream and we’re crashing through the trees towards that dam and there’s nothing I can do to change our fate. I can’t get out of the car, I can’t stop the car, I just go up and then I go down into the pool. And then all that water comes in.’
August nods at the moon pool.
‘Is that what you see in there?’ August asks.
I shake my head.
‘I don’t see nothin’.’
August looks deeper, too, into the growing moon pool.
‘What do you see?’ I ask.
He stands in his pyjamas. Woolworths cotton ones for summer. White with red stripes, like the nightwear for a member of a barber shop quartet.
‘I can see tomorrow,’ he says.
‘What do you see tomorrow?’ I ask.
‘Everything,’ he says.
‘You care to be a little more specific?’ I say.
He looks at me, puzzled.
‘I mean, it’s awfully convenient for you to maintain your sense of idiotic mystery with all these general comments relating to your bullshit conversations with your multiple selves from multiple dimensions,’ I say. ‘How come they never told you anything useful, these red phone selves of yours? Like, who’s gonna win the Melbourne Cup next year? Gold Lotto numbers next week, maybe? Or, oh, I don’t know, whether or not Tytus Broz is gonna fuckin’ recognise me tomorrow?’
‘Did you speak to the police?’
‘I called them,’ I say. ‘I asked a constable to put me onto the lead investigator. He wouldn’t do that without me giving my name first.’
‘You didn’t give him your name, did you?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I told the constable they need to investigate a man named Iwan Krol in relation to the Penn family. I asked the constable to write that name down. I said, “Are you writing this down?”, and he said he wasn’t because he first wanted to know who I was and why I didn’t want to give him my name and I said I didn’t want to give my name because Iwan Krol is dangerous and so is his boss. And the constable asked who Iwan Krol’s boss is and I said his boss is Tytus Broz and the constable said, “What, the charity guy?”, and I said, “Yeah, the fuckin’ charity guy.” And he said I was crazy and I said I’m not fuckin’ crazy, it’s this fuckin’ State of Queensland that’s fuckin’ crazy and you’re fuckin’ crazy if you don’t listen to me when I tell you that the llama hair the forensic science unit found in the Penns’ house belongs to Iwan Krol who has been running a llama farm on the outskirts of Dayboro for the past two decades.’
‘Then the constable wanted to know how you knew about the llama hair?’
I nod.
‘So I hung up.’
‘No skin off their nose,’ August says.
‘Huh?’
‘What do they care if the criminals of Queensland are slowly picking themselves off?’
‘I think they have to care when one of the people who has gone missing is an ei
ght-year-old boy.’
August shrugs, looks deeper into the moon pool.
‘Bevan Penn,’ I say. ‘They pixelated his face in all the photos but, I swear, Gus, he’s us. He’s you and me.’
‘What do you mean, he’s you and me?’
‘I mean, that coulda been us. I mean, his mum and dad look like Mum and Lyle looked when I was eight years old, you know. And I been thinkin’ how Slim used to talk about cycles and time and things always coming back around again.’
‘They do,’ August says.
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘maybe they do.’
‘Just like we come back,’ he says.
‘I don’t mean like that.’
I stand up.
‘Stop it, Gus,’ I say.
‘Stop what?’
‘Stop that bullshit about coming back. I’m sick of hearing it.’
‘But you came back, Eli,’ he says. ‘You always come back.’
‘I didn’t come back, Gus,’ I say. ‘I don’t come back. I’m just fuckin’ here in the one dimension. And those voices you heard on the end of the phone were the voices in your head.’
He shakes his head.
‘You heard them,’ he says. ‘You heard them.’
‘Yeah, I heard the voices in my head too,’ I say. ‘The batshit crazy voices in the heads of the Bell brothers. Yeah, Gus, I heard ’em.’
He stares into the moon pool.
‘Do you see her?’ he asks.
‘See who?’
He nods at the water.
‘Caitlyn Spies,’ August says.
‘What about Caitlyn?’ I ask, looking into the moon pool, following his gaze, finding nothing.
‘You should tell Caitlyn Spies.’
‘Tell her what?’
He looks into the pool. He taps the puddle of water with his bare right foot and the moon pool ripples into ten separate stories.
‘Tell her everything,’ he says.
Mum’s voice from the front window of the house. She’s trying to scream and whisper at the same time.
‘What the hell are you two doing out there with that hose?’ she hollers. ‘Get back in bed.’ Her stern warning voice now. ‘If you’re tired for tomorrow . . .’