TWENTY-ONE
Tobe burst into tears as soon as we were alone, keening like a fly-blown sheep. Unable to stop myself feeling sorry for him, and hating myself for doing so, I reached through the bars and squeezed his shoulder in a pathetic attempt at comfort.
He grabbed me in an awkward approximation of a hug. I struggled against him when I started to run out of breath.
He collapsed in slow motion and ended up sitting on the floor. He looked defeated, his head hanging low. Dark questions ran through my mind; I couldn’t stop them. Had he been sentenced to death? Was he to be exiled? Were Ruby and I to share his fate, as both accomplices and friends should?
I didn’t ask any of them, instead letting Tobe’s tears run their course.
‘Sorry,’ was all he said, his voice broken, small.
‘She’s ‘right, no need to apologise.’
He looked up at me with red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. He didn’t speak. I started to panic; Tobe wasn’t the type to give in, I had never known him to hit the wall. I stared at him, giving him time to get it together. But he didn’t, and kept sobbing.
I cracked. I asked a stupid question. ‘Tobe, what is it?’
He shook his head, then looked back at the floor and started babbling. ‘He woke up, Bill. He couldn’t see, of course. I made sure of that. But you know what? He didn’t really need to.’
I was lost. ‘Tobe!’
But he kept on. ‘That dog-killing prick—he recognised me, he knew who I was. I should have killed him while you were unconscious, back at the train station. I should have done more than taken his eyes. But I thought that’d be enough.’
‘Tobe!’ I yelled.
He ignored me again. ‘So the bastard wakes up, and the first thing he does is tell the nearest Creep about me. And then that Creep tells the commander…’
‘Tobe!’
‘…and then he comes to visit, all pompous and smug, dangling treason and court-martials and you name it in front of me. Threatening you…’
At that one, I sat down on the desk facing Tobe’s cell, deciding to let his panic run free so that I could get a straight answer.
‘…and threatening Ruby, making me choose between telling you the truth and exile. All for a bit of fun, he said. Knowing that prick, if I chose otherwise, he’d tell you the story once I was gone. That arsehole, he’s probably listening to us right now, laughing it up.’
His torrid stream abruptly ran dry. ‘Bill, I’m so sorry.’ He fell silent, leaving it at that.
‘Tobe?’
He wouldn’t look at me.
‘Tobe, what’s going on?’ I asked again.
‘Don’t you get it?’
I didn’t answer because I didn’t get it, as confused as a roo caught in a bushfire.
‘Fuck, mate, do I have to say it?’
I still didn’t answer.
‘Bill, I was one of them.’
‘You were one of what?’
He raised an eyebrow, waved around the room. Everything started to make sense; I didn’t need him to repeat himself or explain himself. All I needed was a moment to let his words sink in.
But it was as if he needed to say it.
‘A Creep, Bill. I was a Creep.’
And just like that, everything slowly started to numb. Not a frozen-in-amber numb or the numb of deep sleep, but a dulling numb that fell over everything—my body, my feelings, my thoughts. It rendered me a spectator in my own story; all I could do was sleepwalk through it, watching helplessly as my life suddenly made no sense.
I opened my mouth to say something—anything—but nothing came out.
‘Are you happy now?’ Tobe asked.
He looked at me, his eyes cold. I had to look away.
‘Or would you like to know the rest?’ His voice had regained a little of its vinegar.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked stupidly.
Tobe started babbling again. ‘That night when it all turned to shit—when your folks took the easy way out, when we lost her in the dark, when I disappeared—well, I headed to Bendigo. I’d heard about a ruined chemist, thought I might find some antibiotics or sedatives, anything to help ease her pain. I’d barely been gone a day when I got caught in a sweep. Same as we did, Bill, after the bridge fell.’
I said nothing, stared at him blankly. Why hadn’t he told me this before? I expected to feel anger, hate, rage, betrayal. There was nothing but an emptiness, and a feeling that at any moment I might come untethered from the earth and simply drift away.
‘Anyway, those bastards hauled me up here, same as they did to the three of us.’
The thought of Ruby broke my numbness. How would she react to Tobe’s news? Badly, I guessed. Without even rationally thinking about it, I decided to try to keep it from her.
‘You’re a right bastard, Tobe,’ I said. ‘How could you lie to us?’
Once more, Tobe ignored me and kept on babbling. ‘Stuck in this shithole while she was out there suffering, I lost it pretty quick and started putting my hand up for a fight. I wasn’t a man, I was barely out of my teens, I didn’t know how to let go. My anger made me strong—I beat almost everyone I faced.’
I wanted him to be lying; that kind of bloke couldn’t be someone I loved like a brother.
‘The rest of the time, I tried to think of ways of busting out. I made it in the end, but they caught me pretty quick. I figured I was in deep shit, but they’d taken a shine to me—I put three of them in hospital before they took me down, not bad for a scrawny teenager, exactly the kind of tough they wanted. So they gave me a choice.’
‘The commander…’ I said hollowly.
Tobe smiled sourly. ‘Same rank, mate, different bastard. Same kind of bastard, though.’
‘And you chose this?’ I asked, waving around with an arm as heavy as lead.
Tobe frowned. ‘Yeah, I did. Wouldn’t you?’
That broke the numbing wall, tore through the veil of distance that lied to me, told me that everything was okay.
‘I would never become one of them. Never.’
He hung his head. Once again, his voice became a hoarse whisper. ‘Yeah, well, like I said—sorry.’
‘Fuck you.’ I said it to him quietly, hoping that cold anger would hurt him more deeply than hot rage.
‘I guess I deserve that.’
I didn’t reply, didn’t want to mollify him or absolve his guilt. Angry and sad in equal measure, all I wanted were answers. I wanted to know why. If he wouldn’t tell me, then we were done.
‘Why didn’t you go AWOL the first time they sent you out?’
‘And do what? Go home? Mate, I spent almost a year here before I tried busting out. In that time, you’d either worked some magic and fixed up her wounds, or you hadn’t and the gangrene and infection had done their work.’ He looked up at me. ‘I couldn’t face you if she was dead, and I couldn’t face her if she wasn’t.’
He once again lowered his head. I didn’t shed a tear for him. What I wanted was to hurt him as badly as he had hurt me, no matter the cost.
‘But you came back in the end. What happened? One day you just decided to pop in and say g’day? Bit late, don’t you reckon?’
He started to curse me. And then he held his tongue, thinking better of it. ‘I did some bad things, Bill. Some really bad things. And I did them with a smile.’
My face fell, even though some part of me refused to believe what I was hearing.
‘When love’s dead, when it’s gone and gone forever, something has to take its place.’
I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Bullshit. I know you, Tobe. You’re not like that.’
Did I know him?
‘No bullshit, Bill. You can’t imagine what it’s like out there, what it does to you.’
His voice was quiet, collected. Any hope I had that he was merely spinning a yarn disappeared in an instant.