After the Smoke Clears, page 7
‘The whole world?’ I gestured, squatting to his height.
Otto nodded. ‘Her coffin. There were tears splashing all over it, pouring down from the sky.’
My throat caught, picturing his sausage hands reaching for his mother’s coffin in a rain shower, surrounded by suits. I’d forgotten the words I needed to sign, so I went with an exaggerated frowny face and gave a thumbs down, which made the kid smile.
‘That’s all I remember. Oh, and the free bickies that no one even told me to stop eating. I threw up on the grass.’
‘You once told me how you built a Christmas tree from sticks together. Sounds like she was creative.’
He nodded.
‘And you’ve lived with just your dad since?’
He nodded again, as expansive as Augie when it came to emotions.
After a quiet minute, we returned to the diner to find our meals ready, and the kid bounced back with the influx of calories. We ate in comfortable silence, then the nags for an ice block began. Otto spent forever choosing between a frozen Milo cup and Bubble O Bill from the board above the freezer, which was right next to a newspaper stand. And there he was. My dad, with his thick silver hair and Bill Clinton smile, gracing the front page, shaking hands with the prime minister. I pulled the paper from the wire rack before another story caught my eye. ‘Brightside finds new light’ along with a picture of the creepy place we’d just left and some positive quotes from Eldham locals.
Otto pushed my thigh and handed me his ice block to help him open the wrapper.
‘Ever been to Eldham, O-man? That’s where we’re heading next.’
He jumped on the spot. ‘To see Margo with the dogs?’ Missed-Call-Margo.
I pulled out his Bubble O Bill. ‘You’ve met Margo?’ Whoever the hell she was.
He looked confused. ‘Dad showed me photos.’
‘Is she young and pretty?’ I asked, feeling the shame of stooping that low to gather info.
‘Nah, that’s Becca,’ Otto said before he ran outside to the picnic area, now cast in a warm glow from the streetlight. He sat on the swing holding the cone in two hands in front of his lips like a microphone. When that got eaten and the swings got old, we played a few rounds of hide and seek behind the trees buffering the diner from the road, and I tried not to think about the young, pretty Becca.
I’d saved Margo’s number from Augie’s phone as Missed Caller before he’d disappeared. My finger hovered above my screen. The prefix was the same as the one plastered over the diner. She was local, and likely connected to him being here. She may even be with him now. An urgent need to know if she was came over me. I rang, unsure of what I’d say until the moment the woman’s voice answered on the second ring.
‘Margo?’ I asked.
‘That you Becca, love?’ Who the heck was this Becca? Her voice was rougher than expected, perhaps from tobacco, perhaps from life. Either way it put a question mark over the ‘bit on the side’ theory and now confronting her about why she’d been calling my boyfriend incessantly felt a little dramatic.
‘You don’t know me, but my name’s Charlotte Hill. It’s about August.’
A humourless cackle. ‘You journos’ve got no respect for privacy. Was that you outside church?’ There was something in the way her voice strained, as if stretched to a place she didn’t want to go. ‘I got nothing to say about August Nash,’ she spat, before dial tone replaced her voice.
Dread clawed at my throat.
He’d told me his name was August Silverfell.
Chapter 6
AUGIE, 2009
Brookes had given the giant missile-shaped capsule about forty strokes with an axe, right where the bastards had welded it shut. All it’d done was create a few teasing sparks and a few ugly dents. That weld would have survived an apocalypse, not just the fifty years the Brightside Motherfuckers had hoped. I was too old for these sorts of shenanigans and wished I was back at the bus with my kid and my peace of mind. I had neither now. All I had was a stiff shoulder and what felt like a drill bit tunnelling through my temple. The ute’s spotties were the only light source, shooting two glowing arcs high into the surrounding blue gums that were so much thicker than I remembered. Brightside did what it did best, lurking in the shadows behind us as we fumbled in the dark.
He bent forward in exhaustion with the axe as a prop. I was less drunk than him, so had another crack myself, but it was futile.
‘Jesus, Brookes, if this was your caper, you didn’t think to ask me to bring something to open this up?’ I asked the numpty.
‘Like what?’ He was confused. ‘Explosives or somethin’?’
‘A grinder with a decent cutting wheel?’ I said. ‘TNT’d probably work but it might draw attention, don’t you reckon, mate?’ It was like talking to Otto sometimes.
He nodded. ‘You got one?’
‘I’m a mechanic.’
His eyes scrunched in that way they got when he still had no clue. I’d forgotten how literal he was.
‘Yes, mate.’
The grin lit up his face. ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ Brookes never was good at problem solving. Not without me or Becca prompting each step.
‘It’s back at the shop, mate, and this pisser is not opening without it.’ As sealed as their lips about the truth. ‘I’m gonna have to cart it home to my place, grind it open, burn all the shit and chuck what’s left of the shell out at the wreckers.’
Brookes, long and lean, a face as innocent and naïve as any kid’s, scratched his slightly balding head. ‘Yeah, right, that makes sense. Good thinkin’, 99.’ He tapped his temple and sat, relieved to have reached a solution to our immediate problem. If he was Maxwell Smart then Agent 99 was a lot hairier and mud-mouthed than I remembered.
It took drunk courage from both of us to lift the bullet, weighed down with the sentimentality of some troubled kids’ childhood bullshit, into the back of my truck and replace the cover over the tray. I’d have to use the hoist to get the bastard out when I got it to the workshop – it wasn’t exactly the usual cargo the boys would help me unload. The less questions back home, the better.
Home. I shoulda called to say I was here but it was so late. I checked the screen and it had run outta juice. I was still hoping to get back soon enough that the boy would barely have noticed I left. He’d already had enough people leave.
‘You better be right about what you think is in this fucker. Hate to have this thing scratch up my tray just to open it up and find a lot of junk. Wouldn’t they have vetted all the things we put in it back then?’
‘I snuck into the barn, slipped our stuff in when it was getting sealed up all good – got the truth saved away to tell our futures selves.’ He looked proud, not considering the plan had backfired royally. ‘So, that was good of me, huh, thinking about the evidence – calling you and stuff,’ Brookes asked, his tone the same as Otto’s when he’d show me a Lego creation.
‘That was good, mate. Glad you were thinkin’ of me.’ I would have preferred he stay the hell away from all of it, but it was too late for that option. Classic Brookes.
I secured the last hook on the leather tray cover and leaned on the side of my truck. We talked as though no time had passed. Something had shifted, though, and I think it had to do with me having something to lose this time. Two things, in fact, unless I’d already fucked things with Lotti.
Brookes crushed the last can of XXXX Bitter in dirt-caked fingers and opened his mouth that way he always did when he had something to say but the processor hadn’t worked out ‘what’ yet. I hoped it wasn’t a confession that he’d told three chicks at the pub what we did that summer night, long ago. But something in my bones told me I didn’t need to worry. His allegiance was never in doubt.
He sniffed, then came out with it. ‘I was thinking the other night, Gus. About how we were born the same day and, like, what kinda cool person we woulda made if, instead of being two kids, we were, like, one person with your brains and my looks.’
I shook my head. ‘Jesus, you on the weed again, mate?’ I couldn’t help but smile. ‘But, yeah, your way with women and my head for engines would have been a good all-rounder bloke.’
‘Yeah, man! That guy – he woulda scored big time! Like Warney or some shit.’ His laugh reminded me of Goofy, big, dopey and benign.
His lips spread into a foolish grin that made me forget all the stupid crap he’d got us into. Like crashing Margo’s Festiva and blowing up that wreck we thought no one would miss. That was the start of all this.
‘No other bits of stray incriminating evidence you think we need to blow up before I leave town?’ I asked. I was not coming back here for a while. I realised I wouldn’t see Becca even after coming all this way, and wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad. Probably safest.
‘Think we’re good,’ Brookes said.
‘Nothing left at your parents’?’
‘Shit no, they chucked everything neither of them thought was worth fighting for in the divorce.’ Brookes and Becca grew up in a caravan. It was a six-wheeler, but no room for mementos. He hated living in a van park, but we had the best sleepovers there, blow-up mattresses outside in the annex, the night breeze flowing through the gaps in the canvas.
I’d often escape to Brookes’ place when the bed bugs and the bullshit got to me, but when his olds were at each other, his place was bad for a whole swag of reasons. His dad used to smoke cigars, sitting in his crackled vinyl chair, highlighting the shows he planned to record on his VHS from the TV guide, and if you interrupted him programming it, he’d throttle you, and his wife for letting you in the house. So, me and Brookes built a safe harbour … up a tree.
It wasn’t intentional. We built a raft out of an old crate, carted it between us all the way to the dam one Christmas holiday with the idea we’d float it somewhere no one would find us. We tried tying on a drum, but when that failed we used the wood to build a platform up a gum tree. It was high enough and remote enough that you couldn’t really see it unless you went looking. And no one ever looked.
‘Remember the treehouse?’ I asked.
His eyes came alive with the memory.
‘Built out of crap even my mum would throw out,’ I joked, and it was nice to be open about her with someone. It had been a long time. I hadn’t realised how long until a laugh rose in my throat.
‘Not funny, man.’ Brookes had always had a thing for my mum as she’d given him the affection he’d craved from his. The only thing he got from old Rhonda were the sloppy bear hugs she’d give when he’d pull her from the bar at closing time. ‘It’s still there, Gus.’
I smiled. We didn’t need our walkie talkie to know where we’d head next.
The first part of the walk to the treehouse was easy as they’d cleared the first few hundred metres where the bones were found. Police tape looped along a wide circle of star pickets flapped in the breeze, and I figured that was where the mine shaft had once stood. There were hundreds of them abandoned all over Queensland – mostly opal and sapphires out here, copper further west at Mount Isa. The distinct smell of menthol hit me as we trekked deep into the bush, a dense litter of foliage underfoot that reminded me of conditions when I was a volunteer firefighter in my late twenties. It still lit something in me, that smell, that association with fire, but it didn’t control me the way it once had.
We made it over to ‘No Man’s Island’ in less than an hour with nothing but moonlight and memories guiding our way, instinctively heavy-footed to scare away the snakes like we always did. There was no dam, no island, just a basin of lower-lying cracked clay so dry it crunched beneath my boots for as far as I could see to the east. He slowed as he approached a blue gum. It was less grand than it had been in my memories.
‘This is it,’ said Brookes.
I circled the wide trunk and, as I looked up, there it was, the splintery old crate we’d slowly built up each holiday, high in the branches. Brookes scaled the tree, relying on muscle memory to propel him from the nest of hard brown fruit and leaves blanketing the ground. Once he reached the platform, he dropped a rope and I followed. The view was familiar and comforting, the earlier drama forgotten as we breathed the sweet smell of eucalypt, listened to the hypnotic wash of crickets and the clicking call of birds drawing us into the stillness.
‘Don’t get so much of that in the big smoke,’ I said, my voice carrying through the night air. ‘Still good.’ In the quiet, I could make out the soft, repetitive grunting of a tawny frogmouth, along with the rustle of leaves, the flapping of wings.
Below a couple of ripped boob mags, I saw the Arnott’s biscuit tin, the faded parrot on the lid now rusted like its feathers were speckled with disease. Dirty water dribbled down my jeans as I yanked it open and smelled mildew. A pile of yellowing Polaroids, folded foolscap notes, cinema tickets and a cigarette lighter scattered from the tin across the treehouse floor. ‘Jesus, Brookesy,’ I said, flicking through the artefacts. ‘This takes me back.’
A wad of negatives nestled behind a stash of random photos. Some of Brightside. Some outside the school hall at a senior disco – Steph’s up-herself smile, Brookes in his Michael Jackson gloves, Becca in her Cindy Lauper try-hard phase. The fringes. The colour. The ballsiness of the eighties was obvious even in the black of night.
‘We should get rid of this shit, mate – they’ll probably clear it – run huge drains through where the dam once was, who fucking knows what else is in this pile.’ My thumb rested on a note from Becca. She was the only person I’d ever written to.
Was I any less a fool since the last time I paced the rickety floor of this treehouse, sweaty palmed and seventeen, waiting for a green-eyed redhead to turn up? I’d had my licence, my truck left from my good-for-nothing dad. I had it sorted, had whispered the plan into Becca’s hair the last day of Year 12: Meet me at the treehouse at midnight, you and me, girl. She’d beamed her wide smile, kissed me hard on the lips and skipped home to pack. I could still taste the adrenalin at the back of my throat, the ache of it, knowing everything pivoted on her – if she’d run away with me like she’d promised, save herself and rescue me while she was at it.
Everything unclenched that night, when I heard rustling in the leaves, saw a flash of yellow between branches as she approached our meeting place. ‘I’ll help you up,’ I’d said, beaming like a fool, my life set.
‘No, it’s okay,’ Becca said, her arms folded across her chest. She wore the yellow sundress that she’d made in home ec. It was the only new thing she had.
‘You’re freezing – have this.’ I’d worn the leather jacket that’d been left in Dad’s closet and finally fit. I shimmied down the rope, jumped to the ground and stripped it off. It was still warm when I threaded her arms through its too-long sleeves. Then I showed her my surprise, the still-tender tattoo I’d persuaded the travelling ink artist to do for a bottle of booze I’d stolen from Becca and Brookes’ caravan, thinking their mum was flammable enough. ‘See what I got?’
She grazed the swirl of the ‘B’ with her fingers. ‘For Brookes?’ she asked.
‘For you, ya dork.’
She swallowed, her eyes flicking to the stars above.
‘Did you leave your bags at the truck?’ I asked, my throat tight.
Panic rose in her eyes. ‘Let’s just say the B’s for Brookes, okay?’
I saw her tears and I knew. There were no bags. She’d only turned up to say she wasn’t coming. I squared my jaw, heat clawing my neck. I started loading rebuttal phrases in readiness for a fight, but then she hit me with a simple, ‘I can’t leave him.’ All my talk of how great life in the big smoke would be, how she’d go to TAFE to study bookkeeping while I did my apprenticeship, how we’d never set foot in this dive again – poof. Counted for sweet F.A. Trumped by my best friend, the needy little weed. And instead of admiring her selflessness in sticking around for Brookes (who we both knew would end up on crack or in the clink without one of us around to keep him straight) I did what I did best. My always-ready anger rose as if it had been waiting for a reason, swearing she’d regret it, how her big stupid brother would just shack up with the first chick to flash her knockers and wouldn’t even realise the life his sister was giving up babysitting him.
‘You’re too good for this place, Becca.’
She stood beneath the treehouse, fragile and tiny in that big coat, choking back tears, and said, ‘I’m not, Gus. This is where I belong.’ There was nothing more to say.
I left town without a backwards glance. I’d left them both here to rot. Thinking back to the grief I dished out that night, thick with disappointment, I reckon I made that decision easy for her.
Now, the adrenalin had worn off, and the silence slowed my breaths to a yawn. It had been a long day driving, digging and walking, and I was beat. I rested my eyes, tried my trick of separating the bird calls like guitars in a band. The treehouse creaked and the floor sank a little.
When we woke, birds were singing. It was a rookie error. Foolish.
We took the tin, the mouldy smut mag and our memories, scaled down the old gum for what was likely the last time, and headed back through the dry, menthol-smelling bush, humming and singing like we were twelve years old again, out for a Sunday hike like they’d make us do, back to Brightside. And it felt good – until we saw the lights.
Flashing blue and red, roadblocks, the whole damn circus.
‘What the …?’ Why the fuck did I let Brookes lead me back to the scene a week after they found bones here? It was impulsive. It was brainless. It was everything I used to be but thought I’d outrun. This wasn’t the eighties. They had a media to placate now. A World Wide Web to look noble for. We were roos in the headlights, mesmerised, just waiting to be run down. The tin was still tucked under Brookes’ arm with all the fodder the cops needed to haul us down to the station – not to mention the time capsule ticking in my ute tray in the lot just behind them.
