Dust Off the Bones

by Paul Howarth

  So what was Noone doing here, then, in this sleepy backwater retreat?

  Henry walked to the gate, opened it, the hinge creaked as it swung, felt obliged to close it behind him, such was the tidiness of the place. He followed a flagstone path between the flower beds, then noticed a man sitting smoking on the porch. He was sprawled on a bench with his legs splayed and his arms hooked over the backrest. Henry couldn’t make out his face, only the white of a ragged cigarette dangling from his lips.

  “Good morning. I’m looking for Chief Inspector Noone.”

  As he said this, Henry stepped up onto the porch and got a better look at the man. He was young, early twenties, with hooded eyes, sandy brown hair, and scar-pocked cheeks. Dressed in scruffy trousers and a loose-fitting shirt, an immense long-barreled rifle propped beside him against the bench, he certainly wasn’t a police officer; he looked more like a larrikin off the streets. He drew on the cigarette, blew a smoke ring.

  “He ain’t here.”

  Through the open doorway Henry glimpsed an empty front desk and office, no sign of a clerk or constable inside. “This is the police house, isn’t it? I was told this is where Mr. Noone resides?”

  “Nope.”

  “But . . .”

  “Resides means live, don’t it. Ain’t nobody lives in here.”

  He was grinning. He slopped his tongue noisily around his gums.

  “Stationed, then. The chief inspector is stationed here, is he not?”

  “Depends on who’s asking.”

  “Henry Wells, attorney-at-law. And you are?”

  The man spat. “I done told ye: he ain’t here.”

  “Well, when are you expecting him back?”

  “Hard to say.”

  He stared off into the distance, took another pull on his cigarette. Henry stood there impotently. No idea what to do next. Ordinarily he would have marched inside but this man, his rifle . . . he shifted his feet and looked about, until a voice from a back room called, “Show him in, Percy, please.”

  The larrikin uncrossed his ankles and leaped to his feet, scraped his cigarette dead on the arm of the bench, and tucked it behind his ear. He snatched up the rifle, barged Henry aside, went in through the open front door. Henry hesitated then followed the trail of smoldering tobacco into a pristine office bereft of people, papers, or stationery of any kind. The place looked utterly deserted. Not a working police house at all.

  Through they went, along a narrow hallway to the back of the building, until they reached a door standing ajar. Percy leaned against the frame and folded his arms and rested an elbow on his rifle like a crutch. He nodded for Henry to enter. Smirking, the light now dancing in his eyes. Henry gripped the handle of his satchel all the tighter, pushed open the door and stepped into the room.

  Noone was sitting behind a broad writing desk, reclining in his chair, a book open in his hand: Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality. He placed the book facedown and stiffly turned, his posture oddly upright, as if his spine was pinned. Even sitting he was incredibly tall—over six and a half feet, Henry guessed—and wore a light gray three-piece without the jacket, a gold watch chain dangling between the waistcoat pockets. His hair was black and so precisely combed that Henry could see the tooth marks, and his mustache was black also, full but neatly trimmed. He smiled at Henry warmly. Didn’t rise or offer his hand.

  “Chief Inspector, I’m very grateful. Sorry to arrive like this, unannounced.”

  “On the contrary, Mr. Wells, you announced yourself most clearly outside.”

  Only now did Henry notice the man’s eyes. Gray, opaque, unblinking—for a moment he even wondered if Noone was blind. Certainly that would explain how he could have heard the conversation on the porch. Henry leaned a little forward and to one side, noticed the eyes follow him, then straightened and swapped the satchel to his left hand, approached the desk with his right outstretched. Noone shook it reluctantly. A grip like a blacksmith’s vise.

  “Please, have a seat. Now tell me, how can I help?”

  There were two wooden armchairs angled in front of the desk. Henry put his satchel on one of them, shrugged out of his coat and draped it over the back, and lowered himself into the other, saying, “A spur-of-the-moment impulse, I’m afraid. I do apologize, visiting with you uninvited, I hope you do not mind.”

  “That depends. What do you want?”

  “Nothing,” Henry said laughing. “Perhaps I’m not explaining myself very well. I happened to be in Southport this morning—looking at real estate, you understand—and when I realized you were stationed here, it occurred to me the two of us have never met. Which is a grave oversight on my part, of course, since I usually make it my business to acquaint myself with our higher-ranking officers as best I can. I find it can help immeasurably, given the line of work we are in.”

  Noone weighed him evenly. Henry shifted in his chair. Finally Noone clapped his hands, rose, and said, “A drink then, since it’s a social visit—what’s your poison, Mr. Wells?”

  It was still only midmorning. Henry stuttered, “Uh . . . perhaps a whiskey?”

  “Whiskey it is.”

  Noone fixed the drink at a side table. Henry glanced around the room. It was more like a gentleman’s parlor, no indication of his position at all. On the desk were his notebook and writing things, and a pipe upturned in a golden ashtray; paintings of the seaside hung on the walls. The bookcase was filled with academic journals and legal volumes and what looked like scientific texts: Darwin, Mendel, and something foreign, possibly about history, by men called Breuer and Freud.

  Noone handed him an enormous whiskey. “You’re not having one?” Henry said.

  “No.”

  He retook his seat and gestured for Henry to drink and reluctantly Henry did. All the while Noone watching him; Henry coughed as the whiskey went down.

  “So,” Noone said, “you’re buying real estate. Whereabouts exactly?”

  “Just . . . on the bluff there, along the coast. Somewhere with a sea view, it’s such a lovely outlook. I have to say I was a little surprised to learn that you were stationed here. Rather a quiet post for a chief inspector, particularly one as eminent as yourself. I’ll admit to being more than a little curious. Your lofty reputation rather precedes you, Mr. Noone, at least among my colleagues at the bar.”

  A smile twitched beneath his mustache. “Oh, it’s not forever. A well-earned rest after years in the field. The commissioner and I have an arrangement. And as you say, it is a lovely little town.”

  “You don’t miss the city then? Or the country for that matter?”

  “We are building a house in Hamilton. The family will be joining me soon.”

  “Hamilton. Very nice.”

  “Yes, it is. Where are you?”

  “Spring Hill.” Noone grimaced and Henry added, “That’s not forever, either. So, you have children?”

  “Girls, both grown. Yourself?”

  “A boy and a girl, still young. My wife certainly has her hands full.”

  “Now that does surprise me.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “You just don’t particularly strike me as the marrying kind.”

  Henry didn’t quite know what to make of that. He sipped his whiskey and was grateful for the pause. The conversation wasn’t going how he’d intended, how he’d rehearsed it over the previous days. He got the impression that Noone was already growing bored of him. He needed to start moving things along.

  “I have to ask, since I’m here, all those years you spent in the Native Police Force, weren’t they just so terribly . . . hard?”

  “On the contrary, I rather enjoyed myself.”

  “But surely living out there, in the interior, so far from the civilized world . . . and the tasks that fell upon you, witnessing it all firsthand.”

  Noone shrugged, his mouth downturned. “Some are better suited to the work than others. I doubt you’d have fared quite so well.”

  Forcing laughter, Henry said, �
�No, no, I think you might be right,” and drank hurriedly, more than he would have liked; already he could feel his head swimming, the heat rising into his cheeks. He leaned and placed the whiskey on the desk then remained there, bent forward, an earnest, confiding stare.

  “Tell me something, Edmund, if I may be so bold: what was it really like? Did you kill as many as they say? Thousands, I have heard. Is it even possible that could be true? And rest assured I ask not as a critic but out of admiration, even wonder—through your service you have built a country, given us a land of our own.”

  It was as close to an accusation as he could muster. He watched Noone’s reaction carefully. The man didn’t so much as blink.

  “I imagine your father is most ashamed of you,” Noone said, his voice steady and cold. “Your accent is Sydney, you’re not from Queensland, and few in your profession would have moved north out of choice. Those nighttime proclivities you try your hardest to conceal, yet are written upon you like a tattoo; were they the real reason you left? Did you fly the nest in disgrace, I wonder, when your father discovered what you are? Was it him who caught you? Or did your mother find you fumbling with some sweaty-faced schoolboy, his hand in your trousers, yours in his? And now, what about this poor wife with her children in Spring Hill? Does she know who her husband really is, what he gets up to, where he goes? This marriage of convenience—is she aware of it, did she consent, or is the convenience all yours? Oh, I see you, Mr. Wells. I see you just as you see yourself, when you stand before the looking glass, and an ugly sight it is too. You are a fraud. Your very presence here is fraudulent. You are not buying a house in Southport. You could barely afford a beach hut, I would guess. Now, if you wish to disagree with anything I have said, I am listening. Otherwise, I suggest you leave.”

  Henry held Noone’s gaze then straightened; all this time he’d been leaning forward, his elbow on his knee. He reached to the other chair, collected his satchel, gathered his coat, draped it over one arm. Trying hard not to hurry, to look like he was running away. He stood and said, “Good day, Chief Inspector,” then walked slowly from the room, felt Noone’s gaze on his back the whole time. He didn’t close the door behind him. He walked along the hall. In the front office he found Percy sitting with his boots on one of the desks, ankles crossed, cleaning his nails with a pocketknife. He smiled as Henry passed him. Neither man said a word. Out into the sunshine, beneath the rosebush on the porch, along the path into the street. He glanced behind him warily—the little house all sweetness and light—then set off to find the post office in town.

  Since hearing Reverend Bean’s confession, Henry had looked closely into the Native Police, that uniformed band of mercenaries marauding with impunity up and down the frontier. They were hardly a clandestine outfit—the whole colony knew what they did—but time and again blind eyes were turned. Yes, there were letters in the newspapers, and when the evidence was overwhelming or the clamor grew too loud, inquests had sometimes been held, whereupon officers were simply reprimanded, moved, or quietly retired. Henry and his clerks had been through every record they could find: despite all the evidence, the eyewitnesses, the mass graves, the charred remains, there had never been a successful criminal prosecution of a Native Police officer in relation to an Aboriginal death.

  Well, Henry was going to change that. He was going to be the first.

  At the post office he pulled out two envelopes from his satchel, one addressed to the colonial secretary, the other to the attorney general. He paid the postage and watched the postmaster drop them in the sack, then turned and made his way back to the station to catch the next Brisbane train.

  Reverend Bean’s testimony was one thing, but before taking things any further he’d wanted to get a good look at Noone. Henry had been shaken by the accuracy with which his life had been unveiled, and in such a short time; nobody had ever seen him so clearly before. But with his outburst, Noone had surely revealed himself too.

  The man was guilty as hell.

  * * *

  As soon as the lawyer had left the building, Percy scooted in his heels and went along the hall to the open office doorway, found Noone carefully preparing a pipe. He got it going with a match, great hollows in his cheeks, then waved for Percy to come in. He offered him the matchbox. Percy plucked the cigarette stub from behind his ear, lit it, and took a seat. They sat smoking. Percy brushed ash off his thigh. He noticed the half-filled whiskey glass and took it for himself.

  “I’d like you to follow that man, Percy. I believe he is up to no good. We’ll find out eventually what he is planning, I suppose, but for the time being I’d like to know who he is, where he lives, where he works, what he eats, who he fucks, every little detail down to when the bastard shits. Would you do that for me, please?”

  Percy nodded, drinking. “That all? You don’t want nothing else done?”

  “For now. There is no sense in taking unnecessary risks.”

  “It wouldn’t be no risk to you at all. I’d be careful.”

  “I know you would, my boy. And I’m very grateful. But no—let’s leave Henry Wells alive for the moment, until we’ve seen what he’s going to do next.”

  Chapter 18

  Tommy McBride

  A week after Arthur had left him, as he ran errands for Jack Kerrigan in Marree, preparing for their next cattle drove, Tommy was walking past the post office when the postmaster stuck his head through the open doorway and asked if he was Bobby Thompson, and after a beat of hesitation Tommy remembered that he was. “Letter for you,” the postmaster said, ducking back inside. Tommy collected the envelope and in the shade of the building found his new name and Marree written there in a scrawled and slanted script. He opened the flap and slid out the thin paper and, his frown lifting, a sudden churning in his gut, read his real name in the greeting, then the message underneath:

  Tommy—

  I hope this reaches you. I figure you’re still living it up with Flash Jack in Marree. I’m headed south like I told you. I can’t stay round here. Good luck on them cattle runs. I hope you’re right about him. I’ll write again when I get somewhere—leave word if you move on. So it’ll find you. If you want to, I mean. Anyhow, take care of yourself. No hard feelings, eh?

  Arthur

  Tommy folded the letter and scanned the alleyway, as if expecting to find Arthur there. Every day he’d looked for him. His absence impossible to believe. But now here was confirmation: this wasn’t just another fall-out, Arthur was actually gone. The finality of the letter hit Tommy like a fist: No hard feelings, eh? After all these years together, after all they’d been through, and done, his only true friend in the world had left him. In this place. On his own.

  The postmark on the envelope said Lyndhurst, two days’ quick ride south, but by now Arthur would probably have moved on and there was nothing in his note suggesting Tommy follow. He read it twice over. At least he’d said he would write again. It almost sounded like he was giving his blessing to what Tommy had planned: Good luck on them cattle runs. I hope you’re right about him.

  He looked in on the postmaster. “Hold my mail while I’m gone, will you?”

  “That’s the job,” the man said.

  Jack put a new droving plant together—horses, a horsetailer, camp cook, and stockmen—and with Tommy among their number they set out north at a lick, passing long chains of camels carrying teetering mountains of supplies, and other plants plodding in the opposite direction, as they raced for the Channel Country or the stations in the north, or sometimes out west into the Territory, where they would collect whichever mob Jack had managed to get a contract for and drove it first for supplies in Birdsville then down the infamous stock route whose name the little town shared, a grueling month-long slog back to Marree. Onto the trains with the cattle, a couple of days to rest their bones, then they were back on the hoof north again to bring the next mob down.

  Tommy wondered what his father would have made of it, or Billy, or even his boyhood self, if any could have s
een him now.

  It was exhilarating work, but exhausting; he had never been so tired. Eighteen, nineteen hours in the saddle, dust gritting his eyeballs, so thick in his throat it hurt to breathe, droving anything up to a few thousand head over towering sandhills and barren gibber plains, through the abundance of the Cooper floodplains and the treachery of Goyder Lagoon. Nothing was predictable out here. Jack might have been familiar with all the waterholes, and the soaks and wells and bogs, but water they’d drunk and even bathed in on one trip would be gone next time they came through, and feed could disappear in a matter of days. The land followed its own rhythms. Secrets that over the years became lore. In hushed whispers drovers exchanged news with a grimace or shake of the head. Nobody really knew anything. You took your chances every time. Ah, she’ll be right, they all told themselves, since what else could they say, but many times it turned out she was not. Grave markers lined the trackside. Sometimes even bodies, a party strung out one by one across the desert like dropped beads, part-covered by the drifting sand—over the years Tommy helped bury more than a few. Their follies became memorialized in the stories of how they’d died, and by the names given to each place: Misfortune Creek; Dead Man’s Sandhill. It wasn’t always cattlemen either. Mostly cattlemen were better prepared. The teacher who’d decided to walk all the way to Birdsville but was later found eaten by dogs. The group on their way to a race meet so desperate they slit the throats of their horses then perished having drunk too much blood. You felt their ghosts coming at you. In the great silence of the desert, on a warm breath of wind. There were times it sounded like the land itself was howling—this was a place of coochies and debil-debils, and of sandflies gnawing away at your skin. Bites that if you scratched them could get infected and blow up like boils that would later need popping, the puss leeching, a heated knife-tip in the evening campfire. It got freezing cold after sundown, during the main winter season anyway. The night watchmen shivered on their horses, the others shivered in their swags. They slept regardless: some days Tommy could have slept on his feet. He was used to riding, grew up with cattle work, but nothing quite like this. At least the heat wasn’t scorching. Mild, even, in the wintertime; if you found yourself baking, you’d probably left it too late in the year. That’s what did for most men. Bravado, greed, stupidity—these things got them killed. Jack had a rule that come October he wouldn’t set out north again, not for any price, and so it was that Tommy found himself, at the end of that first droving season, back in Marree and at something of a loose end. Every day he called into the post office, popping his head through the door, asking “Anything?” and growing used to the postmaster replying in the negative, until one day he looked up and grinned.