Daughter of Australia (4 page)

With warm insides Ghan could think, and he exhaled weakly, rubbed his hand over his eyebrows. He could see again, his pupils widening in the dim light. He was all right. Ghan glanced at the bar, couldn't remember coming in here or leaving Mirabelle's. Didn't want to think about it anymore; didn't want to think, period.

The pub didn't appear the same place he had visited six months ago. Nothing did. Everything about that day seemed half dream, half nightmare. It all blended in dizzy waves of hot and cold, nausea and euphoria. He gulped down the alcohol and closed his eyes to the burn, then opened them quickly to wipe away the haze. He flagged the bartender for another fill.

Brutes lined the bar; brutes hung in the corners; brutes drank hard liquor and smashed butterflies between their fists.
Damn butterflies.
He had chased them, let them tickle his skin with their delicate wings.
Bloody fool.

Silent footsteps gave no warning to the hand that landed on his shoulder. Ghan jumped and sent half the whiskey sloshing over his fingers. “Whot the hell!” Ghan flicked his hand dry.

“Sorry.” Dr. Carlton laughed and squeezed his shoulder. “Didn't mean to sneak up on you.” He sat down on a bar stool, unbuttoned his coat jacket with one hand. “Figured you'd be here. Not many places to go.” He smiled at the bottles lining the shelves. “Mind if I join you?”

The doctor's tone rippled between amusement and hard intent like he was dissecting some oddity of science. Ghan took what was left of the drink and swallowed it hard, the burn mild now. He missed the fire. He stood to go.

“Stay.” The doctor checked his tone this time. “Please.” Dr. Carlton flagged down the bartender. “Two whiskeys. We're celebrating.”

Ghan slumped into the stool and turned the empty glass in half circles between his fingers. “Yeah?” he asked with disinterest. “Whot's the occasion?”

“A reunion, of course,” Dr. Carlton said keenly.

The bartender brought the new bottle and poured it carefully. Dr. Carlton raised his glass and clinked it against Ghan's stationary one, his smile goading. “Cheers.” Ghan pinched his lips together while the anger grew in his stomach and veined through his limbs.

Dr. Carlton leaned casually against the bar with one elbow and intertwined his fingers, shook his head and laughed at some conversation dancing in his head.

Ghan shifted in his seat, rolled his eyes. The doctor was pissing him off and the whiskey fueled it. “Yeh drunk, Doc?”

“No.” Dr. Carlton laughed again. “No, not yet.” He examined the ceiling. “I can't believe I didn't see it the first time we met. But when I saw your face, I understood.” He finished the whiskey in one drawn gulp, his eyes stretching to ovals. “Guess some prayers can still be answered, eh? I'm curious, though . . . what changed your mind?”

Ghan rubbed his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “Changed my mind 'bout whot?”

“Coming back.” Tiny hiccups of laughter rocked the doctor's shoulders. “Taking the girl, of course.”

Ghan felt tangled in cobwebs, his thoughts sticking. The anger was collecting, pulling together from all areas, past and present. His fingers squeezed his glass as he stared down acidly.

The smile froze on the doctor's face. Then he leaned over, shot a glance at the men at the bar and lowered his voice. “Don't worry. No one needs to know. They've stopped looking months ago. You have my word, no one will be the wiser, like it never happened.”

Ghan rubbed his hand against his stubbly cheek, hot tickles of rage plucking his nerves. He tried to control his voice and spoke evenly. “Like whot never happened?”

The doctor leaned in closer and whispered, “That you left her in the desert. That you are her father.”

The anger, blue and fierce, snapped and barreled through his veins to his temples. Ghan grabbed him quick as a hawk, his talons wrapping around the doctor's white neck and squeezing into the flesh. The force lifted the doctor and pressed him against the bar, knocking their glasses to the floor, shattering them to pieces. Every face turned to the violence, stunned and briefly immobile, but Ghan only saw one face, one man—the one he was strangling.

The doctor's eyes protruded out of their sockets as Ghan's hard fingers tightened against the thin bones. “Yeh fuckin' bastard!” he growled into the bulbous eyes, his spit wetting the man's purpling face. “Yeh think I would do that to a child? Yeh think I would do that t'
my own fuckin' child?
”

Something hard and straight hit Ghan in the back of the knees, his hand slipping from the doctor's throat as he buckled. In another instant, the piece of wood was shoved under his chin, blocking his airway. Strong hands held his elbows backwards.

Dr. Carlton's face blotched as he rubbed his throat, put a hand up. “Stop.” His voice was hardly audible through gasps. He pulled himself up and tugged at the wood. “Stop! Let him go.”

No one loosened a grip on Ghan, his windpipe smashing in his throat. “We'll take care of this cripple for yeh, Doc!” panted the man closest to his ear. Ghan's eyes rolled into his head, the dizziness leaving his limbs numb, the black parts growing with the pain.

“No!” Dr. Carlton's voice was hard and stern now as he pulled sharply at the man's arm. “It was my fault. I insulted him. Let him go!”

Instantly, the wood disappeared and Ghan crumpled to the ground. The air rushed to his starving lungs and he grabbed the edge of the table, the thrust of returning air torture as much as relief. He closed his mouth and sucked through flared nostrils. The smells returned, rose up from the floor where his bent knee rested—old beer that made his stomach pinch; layers of packed, rotten earth—sharper now than before. Worn boots shuffled away. Conversations and the clink of glasses started up again from the bar.

A pale hand extended. Ghan slapped it away and sucked in hard, grabbed the edge of a table and hoisted himself back onto his feet.

Ghan scanned the room, his vision crisp with fresh oxygen. Not a man looked his way. His lungs labored while his body stood limp and numb down to the bones. The whiskey in his veins was gone now, the fire from anger and drink extinguished.

The doctor pointed to a chair, his face gray and aged. “I apologize. Please sit. Please.”

Ghan sat. He was worn. Violence tempered his anger like a choke collar on an attack dog.

Silence swirled amid the cigarette smoke that clouded above their heads as neither man spoke or made a movement. Two new whiskeys showed up at the table. “No hard feelin's, eh, mate?” chirped the bartender. The fight was already filed away into the grains of the worn wood.

The doctor took one glass, his hand shaking, sloshing the drink against the rim. Instead of putting it to his lips, he put it back on the table, lowered his head and reached into his hair, clutching handfuls of it between fists. “I'm sorry. I can't think straight anymore.” His voice was siphoned of life.

“Would have been so perfect.” The doctor hunched in the chair, his eyes scurrying back and forth in their sockets. “If you were the girl's father, Elsa would understand her going away. She would be sad, but she would understand. She wouldn't hate me for sending her away.”

Dr. Carlton tapped the glass to the table, each word increasing the beat. “I told her over and over again she was getting too close, that it was just a matter of time before the child would go. But she had it in her mind that I was going to come around and we could adopt her.” His voice grew rough. “That's not an option.”

Ghan's eyes blinked in question and the doctor read him. “I hate this place.
Hate
it.” His open lips were wet, trembled at the corners. “We're leaving the day my contract is up. I can't afford another mouth to feed and I don't want a single reminder of this place, especially an orphan.”

He leaned forward again, his face tight with clarity. “I need the authorities to take the girl, and when I do, Elsa will hate me.” He let out a short, hollow laugh. “I've grown to scorn that little girl. Sometimes I think I actually hate her. Isn't that sick? But you see, don't you? You see I don't have a choice?”

The men grew silent as thoughts replaced speech. A blazing sun lowered outside and peeked in the top of the pub entrance, caught the edge of an old mirror nailed to the wall. The doctor's profile reflected in its glass and he was nothing more than a picture on the wall—detached and flat—an artist's tribute to a lost man. Silently, Dr. Carlton pulled out his wallet, dropped folded bills onto the table and left Ghan alone.

The sun dipped and turned the mirror to a rectangle of white blinding light. Its blaze exposed a thick line of dust in the air, turning each dot to silver. Ghan's thoughts turned to the child and a hollowness filled and turned soft.

They would take her away. They would rip her from that home and put her back out in the dust. Alone. She had no voice, no voice of sound or say. He thought he had saved her. She would have died. But death is quick; it ends. She didn't ask to be saved, didn't ask to suffer from burns or bounce from place to place, hand to hand, like a used gunnysack.

Every sound in the pub fell to a dull drone. The breeze of the child wafted around him; the light of her rolled into his thoughts; the freshness of her washed away the grime of the bar stink. No, he saved her and there was no regret.

The butterflies came from the eaves then and fluttered to his shoulders, flapped an image to his mind—an image of him whistling toward work, the little girl riding on his shoulders, hugging his neck, laughing, reaching for the delicate butterflies that danced around them. He held her stockinged ankles gently and she knew she was safe; he knew she was safe. The picture softened the creases in his forehead and lost him in the silver dust that enveloped his sight.

A body entered the bar and eclipsed the sun. The quiet broke with drunken greetings. The sparkled dust vanished and the orb of light dulled back to a gray mirror. And in that mirror, his face peered back—a hard face with dark eyes and high forehead, with patchy stubble over scars; a warped face, uneven with one ear, a nose wide and crooked. The butterflies hid from him, fled as quickly as their wings could carry them. He saw a new picture now. He saw an angel perched atop a monster. Saw a man who fumbled under her weight as his crippled leg twisted with each step. Saw the gray paint-chipped walls of his dank boarding room she would have to share with him. Saw the fear in her eyes as drunken miners fought under his window amid crashing bottles. Saw the way the single miners eyed any female out of diapers.

He saw many things now, saw them clearly. Saw he shouldn't have come back here. Saw the ridiculousness of the new shirts and the time off from work. Saw that this part of his life needed to end—this dream needed to fall and drift away. His body turned hard again and filled heavy as lead. It was time to go.

 

Ghan looked at the child's face asleep on the pillow—he knew he would never see her again.

The stairs creaked loudly under his weight and he cursed them as he made his way through the dark. Like a slow-breaking dawn, the hall brightened in one corner with a kerosene lantern. “Yeh leavin'?” asked Mirabelle.

He rubbed his cheek, tried to look casual. “Forgot a shipment's comin' down from Murrin Murrin. Thought I'd help out,” he lied.

“Well, I'll grab yer money. Yeh paid for the week.”

“Keep it.”

“At least I owe yeh for the repairs yeh did around the place.”

“I won't take it.” His voice left no room for argument and Mirabelle nodded.

They were silent for a moment and then Ghan mentioned the person on both their minds. “She'll be gone soon. He's sendin' 'er away.”

“I know.” Mirabelle straightened her back quickly. “It's for the best.”

Ghan nodded. Awkwardly, he handled a wide envelope in his hands, wrinkling it at the edges, the money clinking inside. “Could yeh see this goes wherever she does?” He handed it to Mirabelle. “It ain't much, but maybe it'll help.”

In the shadows, he couldn't make out her expression, but when she spoke her voice was softer, like a woman's. “I will.”

He could leave now. The child would not weigh on him, pull at him like his dead leg. Hell, maybe he'd have the butcher take the limb off now once and for all—the less of him in this world, the better.

S
he waited in bed for Elsa, but the woman did not come. Her empty stomach hissed and spit with a churned ache that grew since the first rays of dawn. She folded her arms against the pain, dropped her feet to the floor, made her way down the stairs draped in silence. A dress hung on the coatrack at the bottom of the steps, a small white cotton dress, pretty and crisp, its tag still on the sleeve. She tasted something sour in her mouth.

A familiar sound tinkered down the hall. She followed it to the kitchen where Mirabelle labored over the sink scrubbing a pot. She watched the woman quietly, half-peeking from behind the doorjamb. Mirabelle washed the pot hard, over and over again even though no grime spotted the metal sides. Her elbows moved roughly and hair strayed from her bun with the effort. Then she stopped and, with a sudden burst, flung the soapy scrubber at the window. Mirabelle lowered her head between shoulders that didn't look so strong anymore.

The stomach acid stung and she leaned closer to the wall. Mirabelle turned and jumped when she saw her standing in the room. The woman's eyes were tired and red.

Mirabelle straightened and rubbed her hands on the wet apron double rolled around her waist. She sawed thick slices from a loaf of bread, then grabbed a bowl of peaches and did not look at her face. “Make sure yeh eat it,” Mirabelle said softly.

The bread crumbled dry in her mouth. She didn't want to eat but finished every crumb, the food fueling the fire instead of extinguishing it. Mirabelle came over and gently placed her hand on her shoulder, her voice too soft. “Come, let's get yeh ready, eh?”

As she held Mirabelle's hand, her body numbed and chilled—the pull of the hand, the vacant look, the silence. Mirabelle led her to the sitting room, undressed her and slipped the new dress over her tiny shoulders. From the closet she pulled out shiny black shoes with silver buckles at the straps. Mirabelle dressed her absently, her lips pursed, her eyes avoiding her own. “Won't be so bad. Yeh'll see.” The woman's voice cracked. “It's for the best.” A rush of blood pumped to her temples with the words.

Mirabelle's fingers were unsteady, clumsy as she slid the stiff shoes over her stockings, then rubbed out the fabric creases on her arms. She looked her in the eye and spoke with finality. “Come. Let's show Elsa how pretty yeh look.”

The new shoes sounded hollow as they entered the bedroom. Elsa sat up in bed, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed into a handkerchief. When she saw the girl, she wiped her nose quickly and tucked the cloth under the pillow. A smile spread across Elsa's lips and she spoke in chopped English, “Oh, so pretty! So, so pretty!”

Elsa motioned for her to come closer, arms outstretched.

The front door slammed.

Floorboards and steps creaked. The voices of men hummed below.

Elsa pulled her close in a frantic embrace, fresh tears in her hair.

A rush of sound filled the room.

Panic surrounded, crushed against her flesh and throbbed in every corner of her body. Elsa squeezed her violently and her chest hurt for air. A wave of heat flashed through her insides and her mind snapped closed like a clam, every part of her retreating, curling tighter and tighter together. Muffled sounds bounced against the blinded shell—crying, yelling, begging.

Her arms pulled from two different directions; her feet lifted off the ground in a sudden sweep. She pinched her eyes.

She was carried quickly through the house, down the stairs and out the door, which slammed away Elsa's screams in one hard whack. Strong arms held her tight; a man panted in her ear while her face pressed hard into the scratchy fabric of a uniform. Every thought closed amid the earsplitting throb between her ears. Senses livened—the smell of horses, the sound of boots against the dirt, the taste of blood as she bit her lip—everything else deadened.

The man dropped her on a smooth leather seat and she blindly scrunched into the corner. Wheels propelled and jostled her head between seat and carriage door. Every inch burned and throbbed. From under her eyelids, distantly, she caught a glimpse of the new shoes strapped to her feet, already scuffed and spotted with red dirt.

She left the lonely desert town behind in a cloud of dust—a town that would give her little more than a name: Leonora.