Dust Off the Bones

by Paul Howarth

  Hopelessly Tommy was fixating on Noone’s revolver, the same revolver with which he had once killed a man. Delirious thoughts of grabbing it, of doing the same to Noone, his mind lurching uncontrollably between imagined and real. There was a pistol in the room behind him, he was thinking. Mother kept one hidden under the bed. As if he was still living here. Fourteen again.

  Noone leaned forward, into a bar of sunlight, his gaunt face looming, those terrible dead gray eyes. “Are you hearing me, Tommy? Are you still with us in there? I hope so, because I want you to know exactly what I plan on doing down in Gippsland once you are dead.”

  Tommy grunted nonsensically, spittle bubbling; a defiant, animalistic growl. Noone was still talking but he could hardly hear him, consumed by the pain and a futile urge to stand. If he could just get that revolver . . . if he could lay his hands on Noone . . .

  In the corner of his eye Tommy glimpsed the doorway and stalled. Katherine stood there with a shotgun, barefoot in her housedress, framed by the sunlight outside. Visibly trembling. Pleading with her eyes. Tommy nodded as best he could manage, screaming internally, willing her on. Across the room Noone was now rising to his feet, dumping his dead tobacco, collecting his things, preparing to leave. Katherine wavered terribly. Tommy grunted but she still didn’t move. And all the while Noone was saying, “I have Drew Bennett to visit then this is over. Unless of course the widow is part of it too. My God, if I have to see to her and her children also . . . how far must this thing go?”

  Katherine sprang forward and Noone went for the revolver but before he could reach it she unloaded the shotgun in a searing, deafening blast that tore his face in two. He staggered, still pawing for the revolver, his mouth hanging slackly, a lopsided palsied stare. Part of his jaw was missing, his cheek a bloodied, ragged pulp. He groped for the table edge but missed it and down he went, toppling the chair as he collapsed. Moaning horribly. A noise that was not of this world. Seething, Tommy forced himself upright as Katherine fumbled another cartridge, struggling to reload. Noone’s legs, beneath the table, began to shiver and twitch. His hands were still moving, one clawing the air, the other drifting to the second revolver holstered on his belt, and with an immense effort Tommy flung himself forward and crawled across the floor. He reached Noone’s boots and climbed up him: kneecaps, thighs, rib cage, the bones like fingerholds, until he was looking down into the voids of his eyes. Noone’s neck and face had been lacerated, the artery punctured; blood pulsed in weak gouts. His eyes settled on Tommy and his mouth twisted oddly in what might have been an attempt at a smile. He said something. Wait for you, it sounded like. Tommy reared up and clasped both his hands around what remained of Noone’s neck, and with everything he had left in him, everything he was, squeezed. Blood bubbled over his fingers. Noone slapped a limp hand puppetlike against Tommy’s cheek. Tommy didn’t falter. Didn’t slacken his grip. He wrung the life from Noone’s body until his final foul breath escaped. The hand slid from Tommy’s cheek and the eyes clouded further still, yet Tommy went on throttling, tears falling, screaming, “Die, you fucking bastard! Die!”

  A gentle hand on his shoulder. “Tommy, enough, it’s done.”

  Slowly he came back to himself. His grip loosened, his body wilted; Katherine held his arm and helped him stand, and together they looked down at Noone. Tommy felt for the shotgun. He peeled it from her hands. She’d managed to get the second cartridge in. “I have to make sure,” Tommy said. Katherine backed around the table but didn’t avert her gaze, watching as Tommy rested the muzzle squarely on Noone’s forehead, and blew it clean away.

  * * *

  The house went up like a bonfire, flames gorging the desiccated wood. In the yard Tommy leaned against Katherine, her arm around his waist, holding a rag to his side, watching his childhood burn. And all it held within it, all the memories, all the pain; Noone. There would be nothing left when the fire was finished, nobody would find the body, nobody would be looking for him out here. Another unseen killing, another hidden pyre. All across this vast country they were burning, as they had for a hundred years, all lit by men like Noone. So many dead in the ashes, thousands of them, scattered over the colonies, never to be found, the wind tossing their remains like a plaything, and teasing the dust off their bones.

  Epilogue

  1908

  Gippsland, Victoria

  He is pulling up carrots from the veggie patch when he hears singing from inside the house. He pauses, straightens, grimacing; his hand goes to his side. Barefoot and shirtless in the warm sunshine, wearing only a pair of ragged shorts, there is a star-shaped knot of scar tissue in his sunken midriff and a jagged white line high on his left arm. He stands listening. She must have been crying again. But Emily has the same way with their daughter as he’s had with certain horses over the years. Just the sound of her voice soothes her. Soothes him too, in truth.

  Carrots dangling in his hand, he walks back to the house, brushes off his feet on the porch. He opens the door, steps inside, puts the carrots on the kitchen bench. Arthur and Rosie will be over later. It’s Tommy’s turn to cook supper for once. Quietly he pads to the archway and listens, peeking around the wall. They are in the living room, the two of them, bathed in hazy sunlight through the window, Emily rocking the baby while she sings. Elizabeth, they have called her, after his mother; Lizzie is what she gets. Swaddled in a white blanket, her pink little face peering out, staring up at Emily with something close to awe. His wife and his baby—Tommy can scarcely believe that it’s real. At a break in the song Emily nuzzles Lizzie playfully, and Tommy hears her giggle for the first time. He gasps and Emily catches it, turns to him and smiles. She beckons him forward. Tommy steps into the room. Emily hands him the baby and he takes her, clumsily, he still looks awkward as hell. He will get used to it, she has told him. If you don’t practice you’ll never learn. But he worries that he is hurting her, or will drop her; he worries about everything now. He cradles her against his sun-warmed chest and her heavy eyes seem to narrow into a frown. As if asking, who is this man, what is he to her, what will he become? Everything, if Tommy is able. He will give her everything he has, though nothing from before she was born: his past is not her weight to bear. His daughter, his wife, himself even; if he can help it, they will know him only for the man he is now.

  The baby’s eyes close gradually. Tommy kisses the top of her head. She is so beautiful, he thinks, so peaceful. Lying there in her swaddling, the soft wash of her breathing, eyelids fluttering faintly, asleep in her father’s arms.

  Author’s Note

  The characters, events and some of the locations in this novel are fictitious, but all are rooted in historical fact. The Native Police operated in Queensland from the colony’s formation in 1859 until the early years of the twentieth century, and is considered by some historians to have been one of the biggest single killers of Aboriginal people during that time. Knowledge of the force’s crimes was widespread, but despite numerous coronial inquests no Native Police officer was ever criminally convicted over an Aboriginal death. For his comprehensive study of this subject, and all aspects of the force, I am again grateful for the work of Jonathan Richards, whose book The Secret War: A True History of Queensland’s Native Police (University of Queensland Press) has been a valuable resource throughout.

  Billy McBride’s line “You’ll get nothing out of it” in chapter 21 echoes notorious Native Police Sub-Inspector Lyndon Poingdestre, who, at an inquest into Aboriginal killings at Kimberley, and aware the bodies had already been removed, reportedly mocked the presiding magistrate, “What’s the use of the enquiry, you’ll get nothing out of it.” Sure enough, Poingdestre was only disciplined on a technicality; no criminal charges were brought. Mark Finnane and Jonathan Richards’s paper “‘You’ll Get Nothing Out of It’? The Inquest, Police and Aboriginal Deaths in Colonial Queensland” (Australian Historical Studies, no. 123, April 2004), provided the quote and its context, along with a helpful overview of the futility of frontier inquests.


  Evan McHugh’s The Drovers (Viking) is both an entertaining read and a trove of firsthand tales from drovers who worked the central Australian stock routes in their heyday. The phrase “coochies and debil-debils” in chapter 18 appears in that book, quoting from George Farwell’s Land of Mirage (HarperCollins), as do the stories of the ill-fated teacher walking to Birdsville and the friends on their way to a race meeting forced to drink their horses’ blood.

  David Hampton (Curator, Workshops Rail Museum, Ipswich, Qld) and Jeff Powell (Curator, Cobb & Co Museum, Toowoomba, Qld) were generous with their time and expertise on period rail and coach travel, respectively—my thanks to both.

  The epigraph is an abridged version of an article that appeared in The Queenslander on February 7, 1885, reporting the acquittal of Native Police Sub-Inspector William Nichols following charges relating to the murder of Aboriginals at Irvinebank by troopers under his command. The full article—and countless others like it—is available via Trove (http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article19796331), a valuable online resource offered by the National Library of Australia.

  Any historical errors or inaccuracies in the novel are my own.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to: my agent Lucy Luck and all at C&W; Anna Stein at ICM Partners; Luke Speed at Curtis Brown; my editors Terry Karten and Laura Macaulay, publicists Tracy Locke and Poppy Stimpson, and all at HarperCollins and Pushkin Press; the many reviewers, bloggers, booksellers, and authors who have supported my work; my family for their continued support and encouragement; my parents—to whom this book is dedicated—for giving me the courage to dream; and Sarah, for helping to make those dreams come true.

  About the Author

  PAUL HOWARTH is a British-Australian author and former lawyer who holds an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia, where he was awarded the Malcolm Bradbury Scholarship. In 2018, his debut novel, Only Killers and Thieves, was published to international acclaim, winning the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for fiction, and appearing on numerous other awards and books-of-the-year lists. He currently lives in Norwich, England, with his family.

  Dust Off the Bones is his second novel.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Also by Paul Howarth

  Only Killers and Thieves

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  dust off the bones. Copyright © 2021 by Paul Howarth. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  first edition

  Cover design by Milan Bozic

  Cover photograph © Trent Parke/Magnum Photos

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  Digital Edition JUNE 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-307602-0

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-307600-6

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