Yesterday's Dust (3 page)

Unable to contact her one evening after his screen had gone blue, he'd panicked, read the instruction manual, which mentioned nothing at all about not forcing it. However,
when he'd given the
machine an elbow jab and tossed the keyboard to the floor, it hit back. The bewildering bastard of a thing had gulped down three chapters of Number 10 and refused to regurgitate them.

The computer now sat idle in its corner, a sheet covering the blank, gloating face, replete with his last words. He loathed the dogmatic abomination, considered tossing it, with Jack, in the
river.

‘Aggressive bastard,' he snarled at it now, hating it, but wanting those chapters back. They hadn't been his best, but they had been a start. He wanted the large computer screen too, with its large text, or he wanted his antique Royal typewriter back. It had rolled over and died, like his dream of England had died. Maybe the world was trying to tell him something.

He slid the top drawer
of his desk open, and his hand touched a red, cloth-wrapped parcel. The knowledge of what it contained calmed him, but with a deep, chin-trembling sigh he closed the drawer, and his hands returned to hover over flat grey plastic keys.

‘Reasons for the murder. Come on, Coll, think. Think. Reason number one.'

Husband comes home, finds Jack . . . Mack in bed with his wife.

‘Or perhaps allow him
to blow his brains out. Finding his murdered daughter, finding Liza's bones, buried on the family property at Narrawee, may have pushed him over the edge. That was a possible.

‘But not good enough. She'd been missing for twenty-odd years, and you cannot use it anyway. The son's return; did the son kill the father then bury him? He certainly has skill enough with a crowbar to have buried him deep.'

Fact and fiction now becoming confused, Malcolm stood, walked to his window, staring at John Burton, still out there, still thunking.

John had arrived home that Christmas Eve, only minutes before his father had disappeared. Had he perhaps dispensed with him? An interesting theory, but as Malcolm had been at the Burton property at the time of the disappearance, he knew it was illogical.

‘Forget
the logic. Put logic aside.'

So, John had done it later. Or killed him that night and buried him later.

‘A possibility. A definite possibility.' The crowbar man had not only retreated from his church, but from life.

Why?

‘Guilt? Obviously. So . . . so assuming he committed a mild case of patricide, where does that leave you?'

For minutes he gazed at the crowbar man, an unworthy replacement
for Jack. No spark in his eye, no fire in his belly, and no women, thus no obligatory sex scene.

Ann had stated back in '91 that she'd last sighted her father beside the insane structure they now called Ben's Bridge. He'd had his gun with him. There had been several lightning strikes that evening. One may have homed in on him, fried him. It was also possible that he had fallen accidentally. Once
only had Malcolm attempted the crossing of that footbridge. Three metres into it, he'd turned back. The thing had springs in it, and as the trees dried, the planks twisted and six-inch nails protruded. He, like Jack, had never learned to swim.

He sat again and hit the B with his middle finger then looked at his row of Bs while considering the bridge as a first line.

He hit the T. Quickly. Only
three Ts this time. He selected a new line, and carefully typed in:
Ttthey haad nevvver fffouuund ttthe guuun
.

Excess letters deleted, he read his words aloud. And found the sentence lacking.

‘Lighting struck the old shotgun – or, he aimed his shotgun at the thunderclouds, threatened by the bastard, lightning struck back. Mack was flung screaming to the river.'

‘Better. Certainly visual.'

Malcolm sat forward. There was movement across the road. The grass widow Burton had come to milk her cows. She angered him. For years he'd wanted to pick Ellie Burton up by her ears and
shake some sense into her. Laboriously he rose from his chair and waddled to his window, this time reaching for his binoculars as John stopped his thunking and left his crowbar upright in the post hole. Malcolm
had him in his sights, clear and close up.

In the fading light the fallen priest was his father's image, the build, the colouring, the fine classic features. But not the mannerisms, stance or personality. John was a loner, nursing some deep guilt. Malcolm had on occasions made the effort to be neighbourly, to walk across the narrow road, but the ex-priest had little to say, and not once had he
knocked on Malcolm's door.

‘Too much of the mother in him. A victim born,' Malcolm admitted, aware that he was wasting his time attempting to create characters from the characterless. The binoculars placed down, he glanced at his bottle. Still empty. He'd have to get out, fill it before dark. His vision was not good for night driving. He lifted the large bottle, loving its form.

‘Our game has
ended, Coll. Perhaps we must face it together. It was a killer on the bones, and the hands are not as supple as of old. Perhaps we should retire. Travel the world. Enjoy our fame.'

His study walls were covered with framed book covers and other memorabilia. Few came to his house, and none, other than Ann, entered his study. It was a chaos of papers and pages, of stockpiled used brown envelopes
he could not bring himself to toss away. Wall to ceiling bookshelves were packed with copies of his novels, supplied free by his publishers. He couldn't give them away, and thus give up his secret; he couldn't throw them away because he loved every one of them. And he wanted Number 10 to sit beside them.

He glanced up at the stacks of rubber-banded pages piled on the top shelf – early drafts
of each of his novels. Six drafts of his first. He couldn't throw them away either.

‘But out of chaos comes creation,' he said, picking up a page of text, his day's work, scanning it before tossing it high. The bottle upended, he squeezed it. A few drops dripped into his glass. Primed
then, he sagged down to his writing chair, his finger prodding at a D for the damned. It led to an E.

Deeetermined
to knooow the truth, Edward asked quuuestions others shrank from asking, but on thiiiis particular evening as he watched the guilty pair he wishhhhed he was close enough to hear, or that his ssssight was goood enoughhh to lip rrrread . . .

Tuesday 1 April

‘Let the rain pour down, and wash my face, let the sky grow grey and dre-aa-ry,'
Jeff Rowan, the local lawman, sang as he showered. Every landowner within a fifty-kilometre radius was singing the same old song; clouds had gathered late last night, and this morning the scent of rain was on the wind.

‘Oh, tell the sun,
I don't want it to shine, for you've gone away, and left me tea-aa-ry.'

Jeff had the perfect nasal tones for country and western; what he lacked was an ear for music.

The water turned off, he stepped out. ‘But not necessarily until tonight,' he said. ‘Rain today will make the job that much bloody harder.' He towelled his hair, eyed his shoulders and waist in the small bathroom mirror. Not bad.
No beer belly yet. He bent his knees and checked out his face. False teeth but plenty of hair. Not too tall, but tall enough. Still young enough.

‘So what's wrong with her?' he said.

Jeff yearned for Kerrie Fogarty, the lanky infant mistress. He dreamt of her, but his dreams were better than his reality. She wasn't interested. Still, that wasn't the business of today. He dressed, donned his
hat and boots, which gained him extra inches, then he headed for the river.

Amy O'Rouke had last been sighted on Thursday 27 March, wandering up the highway in her high-heeled sandals. Those eager to get away usually took the morning bus. Jeff had been considering his options for days now, but when Amy O'Rouke hadn't checked in with her mother by the following Monday, he decided he probably
ought to drag the river. A dragging crew had been organised to do it this morning which was, incidentally, April Fools' Day.

He'd concentrate the search in the area below the bridge where one of his colleagues had pulled out another teacher's wife, old Malcolm Fletcher's wife, Jillian; she'd gone for the long dive thirty-odd years ago.

Teachers' wives didn't do well in Mallawindy, and that was
a fact. One had taken off with a landowner and left her kids behind, another had just taken off, and now Amy O'Rouke, only in town a few months, had gone missing – probably topped herself, and who'd blame her?

Jeff had spoken to little Norman, the husband, and he'd had a word to the Indian doctor who visited the town one day a week. ‘Menopausal,' the doctor had said. ‘She is suffering from the
deep depression. I am prescribing the HRT, Valium and antidepressant.' Norman had been less help; since his wife's disappearance he'd been swallowing her pills and not following the directions on the packets. Today he looked as if the hormones were starting to kick in.

‘You can't do much good down here, Norm. Go home,' Jeff Rowan yelled, sighting the husband, knee deep in reeds.

Norman nodded,
wiped at his eyes with a floral handkerchief and wandered deeper into the reeds, half in, half out of the water. Probably end up dragging him out tonight. Bloody Education Department had been scraping the bottom of the barrel when they dug up Norman and Amy O'Rouke, Jeff thought.

Kerrie Fogarty was trying to hold the fort, and Jeff was giving her what support he could. He would have loved to
give her a bit more too – like he'd dreamt last night. She wasn't having any. Not getting any from anyone else in town either. She was no kid fresh
out of teachers' college – had to be thirty-odd – probably been around the block a few times. The question in town was, had she been around it with a bloke or a lezzo.

‘They're a bloody weird mob, teachers,' he said.

By nine-thirty he had two motorboat
crews armed with grappling hooks, two rowboat crews prodding with oars and poles, and half a dozen walkers poking around tree roots and snags.

One of the boat crews thought they'd found the missing Amy at ten, but it turned out to be a dead pig, minus its legs. Somebody was eating free pork this week – Ellie Burton's pork; it still had her label on its ear.

With no sign of a yellow dress or
yellow sandals found in the vicinity of the bridge, by late afternoon the boat crews had worked their way downstream, down past the Burton property where they scoured the reed banks, prodding mud and catching their grappling hooks on snags and willow roots.

Then they found it!

If not for an errant teacher's wife, Jack Burton's double-barrelled shotgun may have rested a hundred years in the mud.

It was old Bill Dooley who reeled it in. He hooked the trigger and, open-mouthed, watched his catch surface.

‘Hey. I've got his bloody gun,' he yelled. ‘Hey! I've fished out Jack's bloody old gun.'

‘Hey, Dooley has found Jack's shotgun!' The call went out across the water, and weary searchers gathered on the bank for a smoko and to talk again of Jack and his insurance policy, while an old cow,
trimming the fringe of the trailing willow tree in the tradition of her ancestors, stopped her labour a while. She stepped two paces into the water and turned an ear, the better to hear.

‘Hey, Bessy. I pulled out his bloody old gun!' Dooley bellowed across the river to Bessy Bishop, sister of Ellie. ‘He's blown his brains out, the poor bastard.'

And the cow lifted her head and she lowed out
her message to the herd.

‘Gone. Gone. Jack is gone.'

And Ellie's hens, scratching in the old fowl yard, heard her; they cluck-clucked and gossiped amongst themselves, and the rooster crowed.

‘Jack-has-gone-to-hell. Jack-has-gone-to-hell.'

Across the river Bessy Bishop's dogs heard the call, and they howled to the ghost of the sun. ‘Jack, Jack, Jack's gone. Jack, Jack, Jack's gone.'

All night
the dogs of Mallawindy barked, and the cats wailed, and the rabbits courted and cavorted on the sand dunes out at Dead Man's Lane, but it was business as usual in the Central Hotel.

‘It was finding his kid's bones that done it, pushed him over the edge. Didn't I always say it? Didn't I? Finding young Liza murdered, like they did. I mean, on his own bloody brother's property too. How are you gunna
feel about that? How are you gunna live with that? He couldn't, the poor bastard. Blew himself to buggery. I bet you a dime to a dollar.'

‘That's what must of done it, all right,' Mick Bourke, the publican agreed.

‘When?' Henry Cooper, a recent blow-in, needed more details. Few in the bar had much time for blow-ins, except for a wizened-up old dame seated in her corner.

‘Back in late 1990,
it was, boy. His daughter – missing for twenty-odd years, she was – then they dug her up on his twin brother's property in Narrawee. Raped and murdered by the gardener, then buried under a rose bush while her little sister looked on.'

‘Yeah!' Henry turned to Granny Bourke, busy lubricating her ninety-nine-year-old vocal cords with the stout she'd been drinking for seventy years, on doctor's advice.

‘He had a tribe of kids, but he loved the one that got murdered. Took her everywhere with him, he did. Used to dress her up like a little princess. She won Miss Tiny Tot, you know, back in . . . back in '63. I remember when it happened.'

‘Go down to the back, Gran,' Mick Bourke yelled.

‘I'll go when I get my second stout, boy, and you remember who owns this hotel, and shut up. I'm talking here.'

‘We can all bloody hear you talking. Go down the back and I'll give you your other stout.' Young Mick had inherited the management of the hotel from old Mick, but unlike his father he had never learned to manage Granny.

‘I'll get it myself when I'm ready. That way I'm sure of getting it. You're too mean to spit, you are. You're getting too much like your bleedin' father.'

‘You tell him, Gran,'
many voices chorused.

Loud in the bar tonight. Like a flock of gaggling geese the drinkers competed for their time, and when they left the hotel, the news spilled out to the street corner.

‘Did you hear they found Jack's gun?'

‘Never would o' believed it of him. Never thought he'd be the type to blow his brains out.'

‘Something snapped, they say, when they dug up his kid. That's what they
reckon at the pub. We all got our snapping point.'

‘I seen him in the pub the night it happened. He didn't look much different to me.'

‘Snapped when he got home. Went off his rocker, they say.'

‘Him and Charlie Owen were going at it hammer and tongs that night.'

‘Jack and Charlie's missus had been going at it for five bloody years.'

Laughter on street corners as they watched a stranger's
car drive into town, park.

‘Looks like that insurance bloke's car again.'

‘Or those bloody news hounds back. Doesn't take them long to sniff out a story, does it?'

The following day the men in boats forgot about Amy O'Rouke and began searching for Jack, or for what might be left of him, which wouldn't be too much after the shotgun had done its worst
and the European carp and yabbies had had
his bones to nibble on for six years.

For days fish played around the grappling hooks, darting, diving, knowing more than the men in the boats. They blew chuckle bubbles while the river flowed on through this red and grey land, and the clouds, refusing to mourn Jack's demise, moved away to drop their payload on a more deserving town.

The frogmen came then, came all the way from Sydney, and for
another week they suited up and scoured the muddy water while the unemployed lined the riverbanks watching, waiting. And the newsmen came, their cameras aimed and ready.

No Jack Burton. No Amy O'Rouke either. By April's end, the little schoolmaster had returned to his classroom, where he stared into space while the students stared at him.