‘Close the door,’ said Leon quietly, but it stayed open.
‘We should check in there,’ Cray said, breathing into his elbow.
‘I’ll go,’ said Leon, because Cray had a son at home. Cray stepped aside uncomplaining as he pushed the door with the tips of his fingers. Maggots made the man’s chest move up and down. It’s just meat, it’s the same as rotten road kill, nothing unnatural about it, he thought and tried to keep his eyes above the level of the man’s heaving chest. It was a wonder he’d been alive, still been able to hold a gun, even if he couldn’t fire it. A chain held him by his good ankle to an eyelet in the wall. The room was bare, a small table held a cup of water and propped against it a photograph of a woman and a child. The heads had been ripped off them, their identity kept a secret, but still they stood on the man’s table, like any bedside table in the world, a glass of water and a picture of your wife and child. All that was missing was a bedside lamp and a dog-eared novel. Empty boxes dotted the floor, a pair of pyjamas hung on the back of the door. That was it. He turned to leave, but even headless, he felt the horror of the man’s family as they looked down on him, maggoty and dead. He picked up the photograph and slid it into his pocket. ‘Clear,’ he said as he closed the door.
Outside a few men smoked while the family huddled softly nearby, looking uncertain, the old man muttering low to the child, the woman holding the back of her baby’s head.
‘The guy was chained to the wall,’ he told Cray. ‘Must have done something.’
‘Old matey down there would have been too hurt to go with them. They get chained so they have to fight to the death.’
He looked at the family. The man’s knuckles gripped white on the boy’s shoulders.
‘You need to leave,’ said Pete, turning to face the man. He pointed at the jungle with his gun. ‘Go on. Get.’ The man said something back, something angry, but the boy looked up at him, the face of a soft moon, and held on to the man’s finger tightly. The man shook his head and the woman made to go back into the house.
‘Nup,’ said Pete, pointing to the forest. ‘Go-On-Get-Going. Fuck off out of it!’ The woman made a pleading gesture. Pete shook his head. She waved her arm, pointing at the baby, and Pete shouted, ‘Get Away!’
Leon pointed his gun at the woman. She looked stunned and the old man gently held her shoulder and turned them towards the jungle. He muttered something to her and she relented. The old man looked at him and he felt a jab in his guts like he’d swallowed a pen. I would never have shot, he thought, I would not ever have shot, it was just to move you along, but the cold maw of the thing told him he was not so sure.
19
A southerly blew at the marina and brought with it the sweet smell of tarry old fish. A few blokes had long sleeves on, and Bob had a scarf that he wound round his head so that it covered his nose and lips. ‘Can’t take the smell of that fuckin’ wind,’ he said with his palms on his temples.
‘Pretty changeable up here, eh?’ said Frank, wishing he’d brought something warm. The sun-white hairs on his arms stood up like cactus spines and he felt girly rubbing them down.
‘Yeah — we catch all the dud weather as it goes past.’
Frank nodded as if this were well-known scientific fact.
‘You hear about Pokey?’ Bob looked at him with one eye, protecting the other from the wind with his hand.
‘Nup.’ Frank pulled on his gloves.
‘Some joker got him last night. Hurt him pretty bad if you want to know the truth. He ain’t talking, though.’ An engine started up, guttering and loud, and they had to shout over it.
‘Christ. He’s all right?’
‘Yeah, he’s around — probably shouldn’t be, but what you gonna do?’
‘Do we know who did it?’
‘Nup. He’s giving out that he’s gonna find who did it himself. Find ’em with a hook.’ Bob picked up his bag from the floor and pulled the scarf from his mouth. ‘You ask me though, mate, he’s just a scared old man. I wouldn’t mind finding the culprit meself with a shovel on my side.’
Stuart passed by with an armful of thick orange rope. ‘Bastard of a thing, eh?’ he shouted, straining like he was carrying bricks not rope. Bob nodded, put his scarf back up and headed down the gangway. Stuart caught Frank’s eye and came close to him. ‘Be those black fellas again, I wouldn’t be surprised,’ he said, low and soft. There was a smile in his voice and he gave Frank a wink as he walked away.
At morning tea, Pokey came out of the foreman’s hut. The left side of his face was the deep swollen dark of black wine gums. Stripes of red showed the imprint of a fist on his cheekbone. His left eye was closed, but you could make out the blood-red line that was his eyeball. He walked with a limp, his good eye searching out the faces of his workers, daring anyone to say anything. Most people looked up and then got on with what they were doing, but the silence was heavy. Charlie watched Stuart with an empty look on his face and Stuart giggled.
The ceremony was out in the long grasses by Redcliff. There were five or six cars all by the side of the road and smoke came up from the point, made the air thick and smell of burnt seawater and cloves. It had already started by the time he got down to the small assembly of people, and he was alarmed to see that at first glance they were all aboriginal and mostly young. They turned to look at him, then turned back to themselves, thin scarves round their foreheads. A young girl with hoop earrings and red paint in her eyebrows fanned a small fire, fed it with grasses and the smoke blew low over the lot of them. Two boys sang a song that could have been joyful, if their faces weren’t stretched in the way that they were, if their eyes didn’t stare, full and black. He stood a little way from them, feeling the marsh wet his boots, the sponge earth seeping. He spotted Linus sitting with his shirt off, white lines down the length of his nose. He smiled at Frank and Frank nodded.
Through the smoke he saw a white face, Vicky, her hair tied at the nape of her neck, covering her ears and trailing round her throat. In the heat of the gully she wore an oversize oilskin coat. Frank caught her eye and she slipped through the smoke round the edge of the gathering. They stood next to each other, and he could feel the heat of her and smell the wax of her coat. She stretched out her little finger and all at once she was holding his hand, and it was hot and wet, and she squeezed so that the bones of his fingers ached.
‘Where’s everybody else?’ he whispered.
‘Who?’ she said, not whispering, but no one looked up.
‘I thought there’d be others.’ It felt silly his being there — he hadn’t even known the girl, hadn’t met her father. ‘What about Bob?’ She shook her head but didn’t offer anything else. He stayed quiet, feeling the strange hand in his and wondering what it was supposed to mean. A girl sang a song from a movie. Celine Dion. A kid, about seventeen, his thick hair shaped into a short fin, gold chains round his neck, sat alone cross-legged close to where the smoke blew thickest.
‘That’s Johno, Joyce’s boyfriend,’ Vicky said in his ear. The boy’s jaw was hard set and he blinked a lot in the smoke. His fingers pressed at each other. A dark orange scarf shone against the matt skin of his face. The boy stared at the two of them and there was something bad about the way he did it. Then he got up and made off into the long grass, and Frank wanted to leave too. Linus gave him a look and he wondered what he was thinking about the two of them holding hands. Crickets cracked all around them. The ground seeped under Frank’s weight, the water stained brown from the tea trees. He tugged on Vicky’s arm and she looked at him as if she’d forgotten he was there. She didn’t resist when he steered her back towards the path, when he took them down the route to the beach, razor grass slicing at their shins. ‘Where’s everyone else?’ he asked again, once they were out of earshot, just the occasional high voice and the smell of smoke on the breeze.