Whacko! said Quick, turning the pages of the paper. They gave him death. Thank God for that.
Good riddance, said Rose, giving Harry her breast.
Oriel and Lester looked horrified at one another. Lester put his finger to his lip, advising caution, but Oriel couldn’t help herself.
Killin is men’s business, she said, not God’s. If you think it’s somethin to celebrate leave God out of it.
Quick smiles in disbelief. What’ve you gone soft on the Monster all of a sudden?
He’s only a man, said Lester.
What about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?
Barbarism! snarls Oriel. That’s for primitive tribes.
Gawd, she’s gone all modern on us. What about the Bible, Mum, that’s your old inspiration isn’t it? I’ve seen you out there with it, burnin the midnight candle. I know what you’re doin out there where no one can see you.
Oriel flushed.
Oriel, come on outside, said Lester. The old girl had water on her cheeks. Rose gaped and even Wax Harry left off feeding to stare. Oriel held herself firm before them awhile, mustering up her message, but she seemed to collapse in the face right at the end, and went out running.
Gawd, said Quick. What was that all about?
Lester rubbed his hands together absently. Principles, Quick.
Quick winked at Rose whose face showed worry cracks all of a sudden. What’s that? I thought she only cared about work. Mum’s principles are work, work and work.
That’s right.
Well?
Lester took off his glasses a moment: You don’t understand what she works at, do you?
Obviously not, said Quick with a smirk.
Then Lester pulled a little book out of his shirt pocket the size of a harmonica. He found a page and read: Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Quick snorted nervously. It’s from another time. She doesn’t even believe it.
She tries, said Lester, putting the book away. That’s her work.
But she can’t believe it, said Quick. Not since Fish. She can’t.
But she tries, Quick, can’t you see?
Now old Lester’s lips began to quiver and he had to go outside to join Oriel.
Gawd, said Quick.
Fishing
Early Sunday morning, dressed for a fishing trip he never intended to make, Lester Lamb stands at the back of the cathedral and watches the micks go about their business. He can’t make head or tail of what they’re saying up front, and he doesn’t quite know how to feel about the gorgeous vaulted ceilings of the place and the way it smells like a bank, but when it comes time for them all to file up the front and take the wine and the wafer he feels a sort of homesickness come upon him. Even the sight of them kneeling to the men in uniform doesn’t poison it for him; it’s the pleasantest kind of melancholy, and he knows there’ll be other Sundays like this, secret, strange.
Afterwards he parks the Chev down by the river and plays his spitpacked old harmonica, wondering about himself.
ThePast
On Rose’s birthday, Quick slips into a florist’s shop in uniform to buy flowers for Rose and Dolly and Oriel. Lucy Wentworth stares at him from behind the counter, huge in her pinny, lips painted up, teeth smudgy with the stuff, and she treats him like any girl will treat a traffic cop in leathers. Maybe it’s the uniform, he thinks, uncertain whether or not he should be grateful. He buys roses for his mother who won’t approve of them and daffs for Dolly and Rose and watches Lucy wrap them in a trumpet of paper. She hands them over smiling. Quick gives her money, gets change and walks out. Riding home on the BSA, he feels the flowers pressed against his legs concealed beneath the wind tarp across his knees, and he can’t help but be relieved she didn’t recognize him. Maybe he owed her a favour because right now it felt like she’d done him one years back.
Waiting
In the tent at night, and sometimes on her knees on the duckboards, Oriel Lamb looks out at the house and wonders what it is that still holds her from it. It’s full of light and sweetness now in a way it’s never been before, but why can she still not go back? A whole life of waiting for answers that don’t come. Wait, Oriel, keep strong Mum, keep the steel, you’ll see. Oh, how I missed you all my life. You’ll see it’s best this way. Wait.
Floater
Quick likes it on Traffic. There’s still some lair in him from younger days; the bikes and the speed still do things for him. He has the whole city as his beat either side of the river and all the way to the coast, and for the first time in months he relaxes a little. He knocks off drunks and speed merchants, faulty vehicles and sideswipers, and he turns up to prangs ahead of the ambulance, siren first, notebook later. It’s cut and dried, rules and regs, safe as houses. Until the day he pulls in by the river for his cheese and pickle sandwiches late one afternoon and sees what two kids paddling an upturned car roof have already found. Facedown, a floater on the incoming tide.
Boots, leggings, leather and all, Quick slams into the water with the spray glugging up in his helmet. The river tastes sweet and rotten. A mullet bounces off his thigh and one of those kids is crying. When he gets to the facedown child, he hoists him over, ready to scream, ready to take this river apart, and he finds he’s an hour late to save a life. Cold as welfare, a body light enough to lift one armed. With him over his shoulder and the other kids in tow, Quick wades out scowling before a crowd. On the bank he feels for a pulse, for any hope at all, but this boy is long gone. His skin is already doughy, his clouded eyes look up at the canopy of rising midges, his lips purse in a terrible, naked kiss which moves Quick to cover the face with his own hands. The sight sets off too many thoughts. In time, a siren comes keening, men come at the run, and Quick Lamb is forced to take his hands away and see it for what it is. That’s Harry’s face. That’s his own boyhood face, that miserable washed out set of features there on the ambulance stretcher. That’s the sight of the world ending, someone’s son dead. Then it hits him. That’s my brother. This is my life over again. This will always be happening.
You won’t believe this, says the sergeant from the local station.
Probably not, says Quick, putting his wet boots back on, still jittery.
The kid’s been missin since this mornin. He’s the whats-isname’s kid. The Nedlands Monster.
Quick sat there. It took a while to set on him. Him! Murderer, father of seven. The Nedlands Monster, the face of evil. That was his son he’d been holding and trying not to weep over in front of a crowd. He’d seen himself, Harry, Fish in that dead boy’s face. Quick felt something break in him as he stared at his boots.
The poor bastard, he thought, the poor, poor bastard, sitting down there in Freo gaol waiting for the hangman, thinking there’s no news worse than he’s just heard, with this heading his way in only a few minutes time.
The mother’s comin, said the sergeant. You better go.
Aw, gawd, why didn’t you say before! Quick charged the door, clipped the jamb and met her on the path. He wanted to tell her something, stop and give her something to go on, but he knew he didn’t have it in him and the local sergeant would come down on him like a ton of bricks.