Dust Off the Bones

by Paul Howarth

  “You’re awake. Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. McBride.”

  Footsteps coming closer, a brisk clip of heels. The nurse opened the canopy and put a hand on Tommy’s forehead, nodded curtly, took his wrist and checked his pulse. She was older than him, perhaps mid-forties, with short graying hair and a kindly round face, and though she looked nothing like her, reminded Tommy of his mother somehow.

  “How do you know my name?” he rasped. His throat was dry as hell.

  “Your travel documents.”

  She arched her eyebrows knowingly, let go of his wrist, and from a trolley fetched a cup of water that she held to his lips. When he’d finished drinking, she dabbed his chin like an invalid; Tommy pushed her away and tried to rise.

  “Where are my things?”

  “In the back. Please, just relax.”

  “I need to go.”

  She eased him down by the shoulder. “Mr. McBride, you’ve had quite the fever. You’ve been very lucky, in fact. No sepsis or gangrene—you should be thankful you’ve still got the arm.” Her eyes flicked to his missing fingers. “You’ll just have to settle yourself. It’s important you get some rest. I’ll come back and check on you again in a little while. Perhaps see if you’re up to some food.”

  “Please . . .” He reached up and touched her sleeve. No strength at all in his grip. “I can’t stay here. Bring me my clothes, my tickets. I have to leave.”

  “Out of the question. Look at you. Still a little delusional, I would say.”

  “Please . . .”

  She half-turned from the bedside. “I will let your friend know you are awake. Perhaps he can talk some sense into you.”

  The words came out strangled: “What friend?”

  “Such a lovely man. What I would call a proper gent. Tall chap, very well-spoken, well-dressed. Sat by your bedside for hours this morning, talking to you quietly, he hardly ever stopped. I’ve never seen anything like it. He’s very concerned about you, obviously. Said I was to call him the minute you came round.”

  Tommy lurched upward, fighting off the sheets. He swung out his legs and planted his bare feet on the cool floor tiles, the nurse fussing over him but he waved her away. He stood and swayed a moment, found his balance, found her eyes, and, jaw set, lips tight, told her, “Don’t call that man. I’m as good as dead if you do.”

  She considered him carefully, her bluster gone, like she finally saw his fear for what it was. “What on earth do you mean?”

  “He’ll kill me—do you understand?”

  “Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?”

  “Yes. Was it him that brought me in?”

  “You came in a carriage. With a housekeeper, I think.”

  “But he was here this morning?”

  “First thing. Has he threatened you? My goodness, it wasn’t him who . . . ?”

  She nodded to his wounded arm. Tommy said, “In a way.”

  “Well then we must call the police and report him. He would have signed in when he visited. I’m sure we have a name.”

  Tommy took hold of her shoulders with both hands, staring at her intently, his voice barely a whisper as he said, “Trust me, you don’t want to get any more involved. Just . . . bring my things, let me leave. Give me an hour to get away, then call him, tell him I ran. Thank you for taking care of me, but it’s best for everyone—you included—if I just go.”

  After a pause she nodded timidly, turned, and walked away. Past the nurses’ station at the entrance to the ward, a brief exchange with her colleague standing there. The other nurse left the station. Tommy sank onto the bed. He was both restless and exhausted, his heel tapping the tiles, his fingers drumming the bedframe. Along the row an old man was staring at him, unblinking, with vacant glassy eyes—from the look of him, he might easily have already been dead.

  The nurse brought his boots and duffel bag, placed the bag on the bed and told Tommy to hurry, her colleague would be back soon. Frantically, he dressed. She turned her back while he was stripping, scooped the nightclothes from the floor. Tommy shrugged on his jacket, pulled his boots on, no need for a sling. The shoulder felt far easier than it had done, stronger, more of an ache than that sharp flash of pain. He flicked through his travel papers and pocketed them, then went scrambling through his bag again. “Is this everything?” he said.

  “Yes. Is something missing?”

  The revolver, but he could hardly say it. “No, it’s fine. What’s your name?”

  “Mary.”

  Tommy smiled. “My sister was Mary. She’d have been like you, I think.”

  “I’m far too old for flattery, Mr. McBride. And I have the nagging feeling you’re playing me for the fool here.”

  “It’s not like that. Thank you.”

  “You do realize I could get into a lot of trouble for this?”

  “Not as much as I’m in.” He hoisted his bag onto his good shoulder. “An hour, then call him. Otherwise, stay away from that man.”

  * * *

  There was a train leaving for Ipswich shortly after he arrived at the station: anything to get him out of Brisbane. From there, the guard told him, he could connect to Toowoomba, then pick up the Western Mail; barring anything unforeseen on the journey, he’d be in Charleville by tomorrow nightfall. Tommy thanked the man and, casting a hurried glance behind him, boarded the waiting train.

  He didn’t take his seat until the whistle had blown and with a judder the train began shunting on its way. Watching the platform through the window, and the carriage doors for any sign of Noone, then as the city receded Tommy flopped onto the cushioned bench and tipped back his head and let out a long, loud sigh.

  He’d been an idiot yesterday. Could so easily have got himself killed.

  He settled into the journey. The suburbs flashing by. Soon they were pulling into Ipswich, then after another leg Toowoomba, high in the Great Dividing Range. It still seemed incredible to him, traveling this way. Once, he had dreamed of small things, of seeing the ocean, or a city, never thought he would actually do it; now he hopped between cities like a bird. These mountains used to be impassable, a natural wall keeping people out—and in—yet here was a train line that carried you right through them like it was nothing at all, to a town built way up in the heavens, all shady streets and parkland, restaurants and hotels.

  He had no time for sightseeing. He’d got lucky with the trains. At just before ten that evening the night service left Toowoomba for Roma with a free first-class berth that Tommy was all too happy to take. Stacking up the miles behind him. The sense of safety that they gave. Rattling over the immense plateau of the Darling Downs, its sea of crops and grazing pastures stitched together like a blanket, different tones of gray and black. Moonlit windmills broke the horizon, dotted shadows of cattle and sheep, the eerie symmetry of crop furrows ploughed in tight-knit rows. This was farming country, grazing country, not unlike the landscape of Barren Downs. A lifetime ago, but it all still echoed, his present only ever a reminder of something in his past. And now he was going back to it, to where that past began.

  Still, it was beautiful country, Queensland. Despite itself. Despite him.

  In his dream that night he was standing in the desert with Billy and Noone, calmly discussing the order in which they should each be killed. They had their revolvers drawn and pointed at one another’s head, a triangular arrangement, links in a chain. It seemed to be understood that all of them would die here, but what they couldn’t agree upon was the logistics, who would fire first, different arguments being advanced and rebutted like they were haggling the price of grain.

  He woke with a start in his cabin, calmed when he realized he was alone. He rose from the bunk and worked out his shoulder—he’d slept fully clothed, boots on. He lifted the blind at the window. The view took his breath away. The open plains of his childhood, gum trees and grassland and the first amber soil he’d seen in years. It grew even darker after the changeover in Roma, where he boarded a mixe
d-use goods train pulled by a black locomotive with a cowcatcher plough, no first-class privileges here, the soil outside steadily turning that deep red color he’d been born to, as vital to Tommy as the blood in his veins. All day the train chugged across that endless nothingness, barren scrubland, empty sky, scorched by a brutal sunshine that boiled the carriage like a stew. Passengers stripped off their jackets and yanked off their ties and fanned themselves frantically with their hats, while Tommy simply gazed out of the window, expressionless, save the twinge of a smile, tight with trepidation, teasing the corners of his lips.

  The train line ended in Charleville and with his duffel bag hooked on his shoulder Tommy slipped through the waiting crowd to the coach house, where he booked himself on the next coach heading north. But that wasn’t until the following morning, meaning he would have to spend the night. He took a room at the hotel, ate a meal and drank at the bar, avoiding the gaze of curious locals and the assumptions that they knew him from somewhere—wasn’t he somebody’s brother, father, workmate, son?—with each confrontation a flutter in his stomach that here was another Alan Ames. It never was. Tommy shook his head and mumbled they were mistaken, then, once the bar had become rowdier, drunker, and the questions become more like threats—Miserable bugger, ain’t ya, I only asked yer bloody name—turning and warning them outright to leave him the fuck alone.

  The coach set out with six passengers crammed into the carriage and two more riding on the roof, among a teetering pile of luggage and goods, all of which were gradually shed at the various towns and change stations they stopped at along the route. Now this was truly Tommy’s country. Spinifex and clumps of scrub grass, termite mounds and boulder cairns, virgin soil that had never known a footprint, or the touch of rain. When there was only Tommy and one other passenger remaining, a white-bearded old man with mustaches waxed into points, the old-timer asked how far he was traveling, then after Tommy told him blew out his cheeks and shook his head.

  “Arse-end of nowhere, Bewley. It’s all blacks, thieves, and killers out there.”

  Tommy only stared at him. Another fucking echo. Would it ever end?

  He was alone in the carriage by the time they arrived creaking into the little settlement, jerking upright in his seat as the desert suddenly ended and they passed a whitewashed barn with a cross mounted above its front door. The church looked no different from the last time Tommy had seen it, when he’d gone inside searching for his mother and been chased out by a vision of hanging men. He peered through the coach window. Watching the familiar buildings slide by. The coach halted in front of the post office and the coachman stiffly climbed down, red dust sliding off him like silt. He banged on the siding and Tommy started. “Here y’are, mate!” he yelled, wrenching open the door to find Tommy squatting petrified inside. He looked at his passenger queerly. He was holding Tommy’s duffel bag. “Either you’re getting out or stopping in but if y’are there’ll be an extra fare.”

  Gingerly he climbed out, took the bag, the coachman frowning like he’d lost his mind. Tommy noticed the people watching, strangers all, though there was nothing to say they didn’t recognize him. He doubted he had changed much. He felt like a boy again. Making his way warily along the main street, everything as he remembered it, save the odd little change: the general store whose signage no longer bore the name Spruhl; the courthouse with its flagpole, now missing its wooden stocks; the doctor’s surgery, an older Dr. Shanklin at the desk, the man who was supposed to save Mary’s life but never did; and at the end of the street Song’s Hardware, where Tommy had once stolen a folding knife and briefly fallen for the owner’s daughter, who’d done nothing more than talk to him, and delicately sweep the boards with her broom.

  He crossed the street to the hardware store. It didn’t seem possible she could still be here, but then time had so little meaning to Tommy that it felt just as likely she was. He came up the steps slowly, aware of the eyes on his back. The front door was open and a chair was outside and it was 1885 all over again. Mother was off buying groceries, Father was at the Lawton saleyards, Billy and Mary were waiting back at the house. There was still time to save them, to turn it all around, to change the course of every life he had lost.

  “Help you?”

  Tommy blinked, his eyes adjusting, peering into the dusty shop. The man was standing behind the counter, wiping his hands on a rag, loops of wire, rope, and rubber coiled on wall hooks behind. Tommy stepped forward, through the doorway, approached the counter. He lowered his bag. The shop hadn’t changed. Finally he focused on the man again, his age or thereabouts, but good for it, a vitality to him, a freshness in his face.

  “This still Song’s Hardware?”

  “That’s what the sign says.”

  “You’re Song?”

  The man frowned. “Aye, Nathan Song—do I know you or something, mate?”

  Tommy shook his head. “I was looking for Mia? Is she here?”

  “Mia? What for?”

  “Are you her husband?”

  “Brother.”

  “You came back,” Tommy said vaguely.

  He spread his hands on the counter. Muscles roped his forearms. “What the hell’s this about?”

  “I knew her, your sister.”

  “Well, she’s married now, moved away, so if you’re some kind of old sweetheart you’re about seven years too late.”

  “It’s not like that. Look, sorry—I used to live round here, that’s all.”

  “Oh, yeah? Got a name?”

  “She was good to me once, but I did something, took something, so here . . .”

  Tommy scrabbled in his pocket for his billfold, peeled off a note and stepped forward, the note quivering in his grip. Song only crossed his arms.

  “What’s that for?”

  “A folding knife. I stole it. From that drawer there. Mia was sweeping. Your old man was asleep on the porch.”

  They both looked at the empty chair in the doorway. It was the exact same one. Nathan Song’s eyes narrowed, as if seeing his late father sitting there, or seeing himself now in his place. Tommy lowered his hand.

  “When was this?” Song asked.

  “December of eighteen eighty-five.”

  The shopkeeper laughed. “You taking the piss?”

  “Nope. I came in for rubber tubing. Was going to take that n’all.”

  “You stole some rubber tubing?”

  He shook his head. “Mia put it in the book when no one else would.”

  “Well, that does sound like Mia.”

  “But she never knew about the knife. I need to set it right.”

  “Hell,” Song said, laughing, “I think we can let that slide.”

  “I can’t. Just . . . take it, please.”

  He dropped the note on the counter. Song was reckoning something. “You must have been only a boy.”

  “Fourteen. She was fifteen, she said.”

  “Eighteen eight-five. Me and our Peter were at the diggings.”

  “Yeah, she told me. Said you were coming back rich.”

  Song laughed, looked about, spread his arms. “Can’t you tell?”

  Tommy smirked. Song’s face knotted into a frown. “So this pocketknife you stole has been eating you up all this time?”

  “Among other things.”

  He nodded at the note. “And what, was it made of solid gold?”

  “Call it interest.”

  “All right, suit yourself,” Song said, sighing. He rang up the till, the drawer popped open, he slipped the note inside. “Though I’d feel better about it if you’d tell me your name.”

  “Do you ever hear from her? Mia?”

  “She writes sometimes.”

  “Ask her, she might remember. Give her my best. Say thanks for the rubber tubing . . . and that I never did go to school.”

  Nathan Song looked at Tommy like he might as well have been speaking French. Tommy picked up his bag and left. A little lightness in him as he came down the steps; a tiny ghost laid to
rest. In the street he paused and glanced along the track heading west out of town, the track that would eventually lead him to Glendale. He swallowed heavily. He wasn’t ready for that yet, the ghosts were too big out there. He went to turn but glimpsed in the distance, trembling in the heat, the ramshackle buildings of the native camps. He hung his head. Some debts weren’t so easily paid. He understood that now. He wasn’t meant to forget, or bury it, as Arthur had once told him; it wasn’t supposed to be as simple as moving on. What had happened to the Kurrong, his role in it, what he’d done, was a part of him, a weight he would carry to the grave. And rightly so. It was the least he could do. Guilt was not a thing to be shed but a wound, a scar, a permanent reminder like the gash in his shoulder or the missing fingers of his hand. Maybe it would fade in time. As the years ticked over, maybe he would carry it a little easier, but he would carry it with him all the same.

  Head lowered, he trudged through town to the stables, to see about hiring a horse.

  Chapter 42

  Katherine McBride

  “My husband isn’t here, Mr. Collins, as you’ve already been told.”

  “But . . . I’ve traveled all this way.”

  “Which is why you’ll have to make do with me instead.”

  “No offense, miss, but it’s business I’m here for, not a social call.”

  “I’ve not been a miss for over twenty years. Mrs. McBride, please.”

  “McBride, Sullivan . . . you’re married so often it’s hard to keep track.”

  His tongue slopped wantonly around his gums then he offered the same yellow, bucktoothed grin he’d worn when he first stepped through the office door. Now he sat across the desk from Katherine, sipping the bottom-shelf brandy she had offered him, while Katherine folded her hands on the desktop and returned his smile with one of her own.