“Your property?” I asked him.
“My brother and me built it with our own hands,” he said. “Frank came here from Down Under in the fifties, when the land was cheap hereabouts. Bought a parcel big enough for both of us. Took him ten years to convince me to join him. Raised chickens, alfalfa, apples, the both of us. You can see there’s still part of my orchard left.”
The apple trees numbered a dozen or so, stretching away behind the barn. Gnarled, bent, twisted, but still capable of producing fruit. Ignored and long-rotted fruit.
“Frank died twelve years ago,” Manganaris said. “My wife, eight years ago. That was when I moved to the Outback. Couldn’t stand to live here without Betty. Couldn’t bring myself to sell the place, even so.” He paused, drew a quavery breath, let it out in a kind of whistle. “Don’t come out here much anymore. Twice a year to visit her grave and Frank’s grave, is all.”
There were no other cars in sight, but I could make out where one had angled off the roadway and mashed down an irregular swath of grass not long ago. I followed the same route when we reached the farmyard. The swath stopped ten yards from what was left of the farmhouse’s front porch. So did I.
I had my window rolled down, but there was nothing to hear except birds and insects. The air was thick with the moist smells of growing things. I watched the house’s front door; it stayed shut. And a tattered shade over the one facing window remained motionless.
“He inside the house?”
“Around back,” Manganaris said.
“Where around back?”
“Beat-down path over yonder. Follow that.”
“Not alone. You come with me.”
“No need for that.”
“Both of us, together.”
He said, “As you’ll have it, then,” and eased himself out through the passenger door. I had the .38 drawn and down against my leg when he came around to where I stood. He saw it and said, “Told you, mate, you won’t need that.”
“Just lead the way.”
He set off stiffly through the tangled vegetation. I followed at a wary distance, keening, trying to watch everywhere at once. Nothing made noise, and nothing moved but the two of us. A faint fermented-apple smell came to me as we rounded the house to the rear; bees swarmed back there under the trees. Near where the orchard began, the path veered off toward a huge weeping willow that grew on the creek bank.
“Over there,” the old man said. “Under the willow.”
Graves, three of them.
Two were old and well-tended, marked by marble headstones etched with words that I didn’t read. The other was new, the earth so freshly turned some of the clods on top were still moist. That one bore no marker of any kind.
I jerked my head around to stare at Manganaris.
“Now you know,” he said without emotion or irony. “I didn’t lie to you when I said I have no son.”
I did not know what to think or feel. It was like being electrically shocked: confusion, temporary disorientation. I heard myself say, “He’s dead? Why didn’t you tell me he was dead?”
“Wanted you to see the grave for yourself.”
“How do I know he’s really in there? Some kind of trick...”
“Dig him up if you’re a mind to. But I won’t help or watch if you do.”
He wasn’t lying; it was not a trick. The truth was plain in his face, in his voice — a darkling thing.
“How long has he been dead?”
“Three days.”
Three days. All the running around I’d done, all the tension and anxiety and hungry anticipation and driving need, and the whole time Dingo, Harold Manganaris, the man who’d murdered me... dead and buried himself. No confrontation now. Nothing now, finished now. Dead, goddamn it, dead dead dead.
“How did he die?”
“I shot him,” the old man said.
“You shot him?”
“With my old service pistol. Two rounds, one through the heart.”
“Why, what happened?”
“He brought me trouble and heartache, same as before.”
“Put it in plainer words.”
A little silence. Then, “He was bad, Harold was. Mean and wicked from birth. You said it true this morning — psychotic. Stealing, breaking up property, taking drugs, hurting other boys. Hurting his mother.” Manganaris held up his crooked left arm. “Hurting me.”
“He did that to you?”
“When he was eighteen. Broke my arm in three places. Two operations, and the wrist still wouldn’t heal proper.”
“What made him do it?”
“Wanted money, I wouldn’t give it to him. So he hurt me to get it. I told him before he ran off, don’t ever come back, you’re not welcome in my house again, you’re no longer my son. And he didn’t come back. Not until last Sunday.”
Dead and gone. Dead under those clods of dirt beneath the willow. I still could not seem to come to terms with it.
“He wanted money again, is that it? Tried to hurt you again when you wouldn’t give it to him?”
“Punched me in the belly,” Manganaris said. “Still aches when I move sudden. So I went and got my pistol. He laughed when I pointed it at him and told him to get out. ‘Won’t shoot me, you old fuck,’ he said. ‘Your own son. But I’ll sure as hell shoot you if you don’t tell me where you got your money hid.’ Then he showed me that gun of his. Two of us standing there pointing guns at each other, like in a bloody cowboy movie. Makes me sick to remember it.”
Won’t shoot me, you old fuck. Lay still, you old fuck.
I said, “What happened?”
“He tried to take the pistol away from me and I shot him. Once, in the chest. Stopped him, but only for a second. Then he shot me.”
“Shot you? But...”
“His gun jammed. Didn’t go off.”
“... My God.”
“That’s right, mate. That’s the real reason I brought you out here, why I’m talking to you like this. He killed both of us, Harold did, only God stepped in and we’re both still alive. I reckoned God put the job of vengeance in my hands, so I fired again — shot my son through his evil heart. I didn’t know then about the people he’d murdered. When I found out, I was all the more certain I’d been God’s instrument, but after what you told me this morning...”
He rubbed his face with gnarled fingers. Now I understood that look in his eyes, the one I hadn’t been able to define. It was pain, and it was blood. Another bleeder, Adam Manganaris, the same kind as me.
“I loaded his body into my truck,” he said, “drove out here, brought him to the creek in a wheelbarrow, dug the grave, and buried him. Hard work, hardest I’ve ever had to do.”
“Why bury him next to his mother and your brother?”
“Told you before. ‘Home is the place where.’ I had to take him in, didn’t I? For the last time?”
I walked away from him. Not going anywhere, just needing to move. How did I feel? Relieved, yes. And a little angry and let down, the way you do when you’ve been cheated out of something that was rightfully yours. For Adam Manganaris it had all ended with a bang; for me, with a whimper. No confrontation, no satisfaction in helping to put Dingo away in a cage, no sense of personal vindication. Yet it was stupid to feel that way. There were no guarantees that I would have been able to bring about the finish I’d envisioned; that more blood, my blood, would not have been spilled. The bottom line was that Harold Manganaris had paid for his sins without anyone else except this poor old man being harmed. Closure, Kerry had called it. Right. Justice served, case closed.
Manganaris was standing under the willow, looking down at one of the graves. When I rejoined him I saw that it was his wife’s and that there were tears in his eyes. The moist earth and rotted-apple smells seemed to have grown stronger in my nostrils; the skeletal buildings and fungoid primroses were ugly reminders of death. I did not want to be here any longer — not another minute in this place.