Frank drew breath but didn’t speak, the silence was long and the doctors on the television stared at each other over a boardroom table.
‘Now — Frank. How did you like my speech?’ Merle laughed, tossed her hair, became serious again. ‘I’m just trying to make you see — your father — he’s not the man you knew. He is safe now.’ She bunched one hand into a fist and held it against her pink drink. ‘So if you’re here to cast blame, know that he has been forgiven. Everything he has done has been absolved.’
‘It’s not quite as simple as that.’
She smiled, stonily. ‘I’m afraid that it is, Frank.’
‘You don’t know.’
‘He has told me everything. He is forgiven, Frank.’
‘Wait just a minute, I haven’t forgiven him.’
‘Yes you have. Jesus has forgiven him. You have forgiven him. I can tell.’
‘I tell you what, I have not!’ Words tumbled out tunelessly. His heart beat against his bones and he wanted words that would shock this woman and make her throw him out of her house. ‘My father does not believe in God,’ he said and watched Merle’s face. But there was nothing but a smile, so he went, didn’t look to see if he’d left mud on her carpets.
Striding back to the Ute, his feet wouldn’t move quickly enough. Shit, though, he was angry, his hands clenched, sweat itched his nose, dust in his face, the smell of someone’s tea on the cooker made him want to shout at the elderly woman who crossed the road to get away from the stranger.
Her fucking lime cordial. He spat and his spit was green.
But he didn’t drive straight home as he had thought he would and he didn’t drive to the nearest non-lunatic town and bury himself in the pub. He found himself parking outside Merle’s house, thinking maybe he was going back to say some of the things that were going round in his head — some of the excellent insults that he kept thinking of — but he just sat with his hands on the wheel, pointed his gaze at the middle of the bonnet and waited.
At a quarter to seven a blue Holden pulled up next to Merle’s orange one. A cross hung from the rear-view mirror.
The man who got out of the car was skinny. He recognised his father’s movements but not his face, not his shape. This man was bald apart from a few light strands carefully placed across his head. His shoulders were coathangerish. Frank wound down the window as the porch light came on, even though it wasn’t dark outside. The man moved quickly to the back of the car, brisk and efficient, neat, his hands touching everything after he had moved it, to make it just so. Open the boot, touch the door, take out a briefcase and set it on the hood, touch the briefcase, close the boot, touch the boot. Merle came out on to the porch, in a different blue dress that blew up in a sudden gust and exposed the lace top of a stocking. She batted it down with both hands.
Frank heard the sound of the word ‘Darl!’ and the reply, ‘Sweetheart!’
He watched them embrace, his father on a lower step. Merle shut her eyes and tilted her head upwards with a smile on her lips like she was suckling a baby.
‘You hungry, darl?’ Frank heard as she lifted his head a little. ‘C’mon in, it’s pork chops for tea.’
They came apart and, holding hands, Merle led him up the steps, a boy for his bath. Frank was gone before the front door closed.
22
Something exploded right on top of them and Leon thought he would be buried alive. Clods of earth smashed down on him, the wind went from his lungs. The noise was hot, it burnt his eardrums. Somewhere he couldn’t see, someone was screaming. With no time to set up he leant the gun against his hip and fired. A figure ran fast away from him, and he walked the tracer bullets across the man’s back and he fell bucking like a sliced fish. Pete was at his side, replenishing the ammunition, missing three fingers from his left hand. His face was limestone, his mouth black. He handed Leon the bullets with his good hand and bled with his bad, holding the radio in the crook of his neck calling, ‘Dustoff, dustoff!’ Banana leaves shredded over them, hot green smoke, it seemed to last for hours.
When earth and dust and leaves had settled, when there seemed nothing left, he let his gun run dry. The screaming had stopped. A mosquito bothered Leon’s eyelid and he let it.
The chopper landed and there were two baddies dead, their bodies eaten by bullets; the others had melted away. Pete held his claw hand, spitting dirt and blood and tooth on to the ground. The screaming man turned out to have been Rod, his legs both gone below the knee. Thick blood leaked from his mouth and his eyes were wide and dead.
Cray sat propped against a tree, a small leak of blood coming from between his fingers where he held on to his stomach. He smoked a cigarette. ‘Flesh wound, I should think,’ he said quietly. ‘Bit of shrapnel scraped by me. Leave a pretty scar, but.’ He looked up at the tops of the trees, watching his smoke mix with rising mist and get carried up. He waved Leon away. ‘I’ll be right after a smoke,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay and keep Daniel company.’ Daniel nodded to him, his hand on his smashed knee.
Leon and Pete carried Rod to where the green marker smoke of the helicopter waited. The medics arranged Rod on a stretcher and tucked him into it like he might have been cold. Someone bandaged up Pete’s messy fingers. ‘Well, that’s it for you, mate,’ he said, ‘no more trigger finger. Time to get home.’
‘I’ll never play the flute again either,’ said Pete and chuckled in a way that echoed and then faded out. ‘Reckon you’ll have to take us all back — Leon here he’s the only bugger not wounded.’
The medic raised his eyebrows injecting something yellow into Pete’s wrist. ‘How many you got?’
‘We were only five to begin with.’
‘That’s rough. Think you’d be better off getting out of here now, mate. We’ll send someone else to pick up the rest.’
Pete nodded at Leon. ‘You happy with that?’ Leon nodded back, and they touched each other’s shoulders and Pete handed over the radio. The chopper took off and Leon watched as Pete closed his eyes and held up his bandaged hand to cover his face from the dust.
Leon led the way for the stretcher bearers, just a couple of minutes away. Their radio buzzed and a voice said there was a chopper zero five minutes away. It was amazing, in just a couple of hours they would be in a hotel room. He’d have a drink for Rod and Clive, then he’d have a drink for himself.
They returned to find that Cray was dead, a long tube of cigarette ash next to him.
Daniel was tight-mouthed. ‘He had one through the throat too,’ he said. ‘Don’t know why the bastard didn’t tell anybody.’
‘Probably nothing to be done anyways,’ said the medic, shaking his head.
Leon spat into the grass.
On the bitumen of the base airport he felt an awkward jab in his pocket. As stinking tired men poured around him, he looked at the mud baby that rested in his palm. Somehow it was still in one piece, brittle as pulled sugar. An eye had rolled out of its socket, but the baby still smiled.
23
It was dark when Frank knocked on the door of the shop. Jimmy was at the bowling club and their kids were watching TV with the sound so loud that he had to hammer on the door. June didn’t ask questions, didn’t invite him in, just slipped through the door, calling after herself that she was out for while. They didn’t talk on the way to the pub, didn’t discuss where to drink, what to drink. Inside, everyone’s attention was on the television, where some other kid had gone missing in some country town. Frank didn’t want to know about it. June ordered, dramatically, four whiskies but he found that he could hardly get through the first and felt sick, like his stomach wanted to crawl into his mouth.