The Beauty Is in the Walking (14 page)

‘Trying out my new toy,' I told her, holding the cane out level for a moment before wedging it against my thigh and leaning my weight on it.

‘Where did that come from?'

‘Present from Chloe. She was with me when I fell over on Monday and decided I could do with some help. Thoughtful, eh, 'specially when I hardly know her.'

‘Thoughtful of a friend, yes, but one who doesn't know anything about CP.'

‘Her cousin has CP.'

‘You're not her cousin. If a cane would make things better, don't you think
I'd
have bought you one years ago?'

It seemed news of my truce hadn't got through to enemy lines. ‘This is not having a go at you,' I said, holding up the cane.

Mum sighed and moved to her bed where she pushed her back against the bedhead and stretched her legs out straight as though she desperately needed to rest. For a moment before she spoke, she even closed her eyes.

‘Jacob, the doctors made it clear from the start. You have to work your limbs as much as you can, no slacking, no allowances. That's what the treatment program is all about. If we hadn't put in all those long hours when you were young, you'd be in a wheelchair now. At best it would mean crutches.'

‘This is a walking stick, not a crutch. It's to help me stay on my feet when I get knocked off balance.'

She shook her head as though I'd failed an easy exam. ‘As soon as you become dependent on any device you lose functionality, and once it's gone you'll never get it back. I didn't put in years of work so you can backslide now, just because some friend thinks she knows what's good for you.'

Mum had already snatched away part of Chloe's gift – the few hours of joy that cut through all the bullshit that had been pestering me. It was back now, crawling under my skin as I stripped off the stupid dress-up clothes. She wasn't having my cane, though. There was more to that wolf's head than the narrow column of wood that grew down from its throat.

Friday morning – my second-last exam ever. School exam, anyway.

I took my new cane with me in the car and Mum obliged with a glare meant to fry me on the spot. She didn't say anything, though, and one day of using the damn thing wasn't going to ruin me.

On the way up Meredith Street the town seemed particularly quiet to me, not sleepy in the way I'd become so used to over the years; this was more a hunched-shoulders anticipation of something unseen and unwanted. In hindsight I should dismiss the memory as a false one seeded in my imagination by what happened later. The mind works like that sometimes.

Whether I truly sensed anything or not, I'd forgotten all about it by the time I walked through the school gates. ‘Made my entrance' would be a more accurate way to describe my progress that morning. I actually wanted people to notice me, like they did when Tyke dropped me somewhere in his flash car. The wolf's head walking
stick was my red ute, I decided, and what was the point if people didn't watch you cruise by? A few did, including Svenson.

I headed towards him and, once we'd come to a halt, used all the play-acting in front of Mum's mirror to strike my most dashing stance. ‘What do you reckon?'

‘Mmm, I'm trying to find the word,' he said in typical style. ‘Can't choose between “grown-up” and “poser”.'

He could have chosen any words and I would have laughed just as much. I was in that kind of mood.

He wished me luck for next week's English exam and set off towards the steps to the staffroom while clumps of kids stopped chatting to watch him go by. Mr Lambert, on his way down the same steps, deliberately switched to the other handrail to avoid him. The poor guy was a pariah.

I set off myself, towards the gym, with Svenson's words in my ears. ‘Poser' was fine. I was milking my new cane for all it was worth, but ‘grown-up'? No, I wasn't so sure. The term was used to mock kids who hadn't really become adults yet, like the patronising grandma who cries, ‘Good heavens, my little darling is all grown-up.'

Stuff it, I had an exam to get through. I texted Amy and got a quick reply.
Good luck. Studying hard for afternoon
.

Good. I'd hang around after my own exam to show her my cane, but hours later, when I shuffled my way out of the gym behind classmates who stretched and smiled in relief, we discovered the world had changed while we'd been sealed off inside.

‘Did you hear? I can't believe it! They've found another one.'

Another horse. That was the word. Details were hard to get, but the announcement was all over the radio which made it official, somehow. Since the rest of the school had gone back into class, we had the yard to ourselves, a dozen groups huddled into different corners and crannies, but only one conversation. It had been the same when we'd heard about Charlotte, and because the pig had been ‘ours' this new outrage seemed close to us, too. A few girls cried and some of the teachers had come down from the staffroom to offer comforting words.

I wasn't part of any of those groups jabbering away in hushed and frightened tones. No group had seemed the obvious one for me to join and a couple gave off a kind of back-turned air towards me, nothing in your face, just a feeling I got. I opened my fist around the cane's handle to look at those predatory eyes. ‘Lone wolf,' I muttered, as I switched on my phone.

There was no sign of Amy in the yard, even though she had an exam starting in half an hour and no message either, but before I could call I opened one from Mum.

Ring asap.

I scrolled to her number and waited. She answered almost immediately.

‘Have you heard what's happened?'

‘A third one. They're saying it was a horse.'

‘A mare on agistment out past the sewage works. I'm coming to pick you up.'

Her tone of voice killed off any objections. I had more important arguments to win than this one and, besides, I wasn't so sorry that I'd have family close when my imagination was throwing up pictures of mutilation.

Memory is a strange thing. How much of what I'd sensed on the morning run to school really came from that drive home when the pall over our town was so obvious to see? The midday heat wobbled the road surface, cars moved about, their drivers in search of lunch, yet every figure on the streets seemed to be in earnest conversation with another and in Meredith Street cars were lined up outside the police station. I'd heard about shock, after explosions and natural disasters. Now I knew what it looked like in people's faces.

‘At a time like this everyone's better off in their own home,' said Mum. ‘God only knows who's doing these terrible things.'

God might be keeping that knowledge to himself, but there was something the rest of us could be sure of, something all of Palmerston would have to admit at last. Mahmoud Rais hadn't done it. He was a thousand kilometres away.

Leave it, a silent voice warned me. Mum was more upset than she was letting on and this lift home wasn't for
my
safety, but her own peace of mind.

I worried about Amy and the afternoon crew who had to drag their minds into the gym and pretend The Ripper's third attack wasn't a distraction. I texted her about four o'clock and again after dinner and when there was still no reply I called, but her phone was switched off.

I logged onto
Mahmoud Rais is Innocent
and began to write the things I'd been tempted to say to Mum in the car. After a few lines I read my words back and decided they sounded smug, which meant deleting much of it and starting over with careful phrases until I imagined Svenson was staring over my shoulder.

I went out to see what was on telly, just to come down a little after a hard week, and found the house dark and locked up for the night. Without Dad to come home late, the place was a morgue and after a bit of aimless channel surfing I thought I'd go make like a corpse myself.

In the hall, though, with my hand on the doorknob, I stopped. Someone was crying. We occasionally heard noises from next door and I stood still a moment to pick up the direction, listening for longer than I needed to be sure the sound came from Mum's bedroom. It was the bitter intensity that froze me in place. Rousing myself, I continued along the hall to her door and opened it silently. She was lying in the dim gold of her bedside lamp, turned away from me and unaware I was watching. This wasn't a sudden outburst, this was steady rain, the kind farmers prayed for to soak their field, the kind that drained the clouds of all they had.

I backed out of the room as quietly as I'd entered, angry at myself that I hadn't said something to help her and wondering, too, whether I was the main cause of those tears.

Before I got into bed that night, I pulled my curtains together and checked each end carefully so not a sliver of
daylight would wake me before I was ready. And I wasn't ready for a long time; it was gone ten by the time I poked me head into the kitchen, wary of what I'd find. If Mum had been sitting with shoulders slumped and tear tracks down her cheeks I was determined to be a better son to her than last night. But I wasn't needed, it seemed. She had a fresh cup of tea in her hand while she scoured the newspapers.

‘We've made the front page,' she announced, closing
The Courier-Mail
and stabbing at an article that extended all the way down one side. ‘Not the kind of publicity a town like this needs right now. There's something in
The Australian
, too.'

She was being Councillor O'Leary this morning, more proof that last night was over and done with. While I made myself some breakfast she took some calls on her mobile, letting loose with a couple of words I didn't normally hear from my mother. Among the gentle swearing I picked out a couple more words I'd never heard from her before – damage control. She seemed to be helping to prepare a press release.

Back in my room, I tried Amy's number.

‘Hi, Jacob,' she began, sounding flat.

‘Hey, what about yesterday? Must have been hard doing an exam with all that in your head.'

‘I didn't find out until I got to school and I . . . I couldn't . . . I had to duck it.'

This was more than I'd expected. Poor Amy. ‘Did you know the horse?' I asked without thinking about it. She wasn't the gymkhana type.

‘No, nothing like that. I just couldn't. I don't want to explain,' she said quickly, as though she was warning me off.

I spilled out all sorts of sympathy, hardly aware of what I was saying. Really, I wanted to show her my walking stick.

‘Why don't you came round here, help me with Mahmoud's page?' I said casually.

‘I don't know, Jacob. After my meltdown yesterday, Mum and Dad want me to stay close.'

Understandable. Wouldn't be right to push her on that. ‘I'll find the right words. I thought I'd put in stuff about the real Ripper, too.'

‘What do you mean?' she asked sharply. ‘Have you heard something?'

‘No, no, I mean what we were saying ourselves, that the diehards won't accept Mahmoud's innocence until the police arrest someone else.'

‘No, don't do that. Leave that part out of it.'

‘Why? You seemed as keen as I was on Wednesday.'

‘I was just agreeing with you. Now that I've thought about it, I don't think that's what the Mahmoud page is for. You said it yourself. Mahmoud is innocent, that's all you're trying to prove.'

‘Yeah, and the sooner everyone accepts it's someone local, the easier that will be.'

‘You can't be sure of that. It's up to the police.'

I was being spun around again.

‘Sorry, Jacob, Mum wants me for something,' said Amy, speaking too quickly. ‘Talk to you later, okay?' and I was left looking at the
call ended
sign on my phone.

I went back to bed just for the sensation of doing nothing, and when that started to feel like doing something I logged onto
Mahmoud Rais is Innocent
.

Woah! I wasn't expecting to find much, as though everyone would wait for the great Jacob O'Leary to deliver his carefully worded verdict. Bloody fool. Every man and his kelpie had jumped into the void – three screens' worth.

I started to read and immediately my heart sank into my useless legs. There were dozens of messages about the latest attack and what it meant for Mahmoud's innocence and every line dripped with the self-righteous glee I'd wanted to avoid. Many were adamant the entire town owed Mahmoud an apology. I agreed with that much, although it was never going to happen and it only served to bore it up Palmerston, just as Dad had warned. I searched for Svenson's name among the clutter, but he must have been too busy marking exam papers. He was there in spirit, all the same, in the words of some barbed comments about the meatworks closing down. ‘You reap what you sow,' was how one signed off. Very original.

I posted my own version on the wall then revised my notes, ready for Monday's English exam. Amy kept bungee-jumping into my thoughts and snapping out of them before I could grab hold. I hoped she was all right and, after the way I'd let Mum down the night before,
I was feeling part guilty and part useless. I was still brooding about Wednesday, too, when I'd tried to kiss her on my own terms instead of waiting for her to choose the moment.

Go see her tomorrow, I told myself, and with the decision made my English notes read more easily.

Amy wasn't the only distraction I had to resist that weekend.
The Truman Show
managed to catch my eye no matter where I put it, and when I finally buried it in my school bag it still taunted me to give it another go. On Sunday, when I set out with my new cane in hand to see Amy, I took it with me and detoured a couple of streets to Blockbuster.

‘Jacob, I thought you were too busy acing your exams to do any real work,' Rory announced to the handful of customers.

I held up
Truman
. ‘Just returning.'

‘I couldn't get ten minutes of shelving out of you while you're here?'

‘You'll have to do it yourself. Might improve your waistline.' Sparring with Rory was the best thing about my job at Blockbuster.

A car pulled up outside. I couldn't see who was driving, at first, just the back seat crammed with black plastic bags, like someone had cleaned out a garage. Then Callum Landis was at the return chute, carefully slotting in his DVDs one at a time like he always did.

When he started for the door Rory called to him, ‘Not taking any new ones, Callum?'

He turned with a jerk and stared at us both for a moment. ‘Oh, er . . . no. Moving down to Brisbane.'

‘But you're our best customer. What will we do without you?' Rory really should have been a politician, the way he'd managed to fit such a smart-arsed put-down so neatly into a compliment.

‘I guess,' said Callum lamely. I doubt he'd picked up on the sarcasm. ‘No shifts at the meatworks, eh.'

I thought of the comments on Mahmoud's wall. Here was a victim of the town's mean-mindedness and for a moment I almost felt sorry for the weedy little shit.

With Callum gone, Rory wanted a look at my cane. ‘A fleet-footed creature – like yourself,' he commented about the wolf. He was one of the few people who dared say things like that to me.

‘I'd beat
you
over a hundred metres,' I said and headed off to Amy's, thoroughly pleased with myself.

Amy was just as pleased to see me and made a big thing out of my cane. ‘I love the wolf's head. Where'd you get it?'

Ah, slight problem there. ‘An antique shop in town,' I told her and left Chloe's name out of it.

We went into her room where she pointed me to the chair beside her desk and sat herself on the edge of her unmade bed.

‘Sorry,' she said, then laughed at the mess to show she didn't care. Neither did I.