The Lost Man(70)

Ilse took something from her bag, but at that angle Nathan couldn’t tell what. She was bending forward, close to the earth where her husband had been found, and was partly hidden by the headstone. Nathan breathed out a lungful of hot air, and tipped the last of his water bottle into Duffy’s cup. The rest of his water was packed out of reach in the back. The interior of car was stifling now. He let himself open the window a crack. It made no difference.

Glenn had told him a story a few years earlier, about James Buchanan from town who’d got into an argument with his wife. Worse than an argument, really, and as things escalated she’d managed to lock James out of the house. He’d knocked on the door, then, when she wouldn’t answer, gone around the outside of the family home and smashed the air conditioner with a cricket bat. Then he’d sat down and waited, bat in hand. His wife had been too scared to open the doors and windows, Glenn had said. Eventually she passed out from heat exhaustion. She had nearly died, there on her kitchen floor. Nathan thought Glenn had been trying to make him feel better. See? Other people do shitty things too. It had not made him feel better at the time – at all – and now as his skin stuck to the seat, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He glanced at Duffy and wound down the window some more.

He wondered how long Ilse was planning to stay. She must be feeling the temperature herself, down there. When he looked again, he thought he could see her shoulders moving. Was she crying? he wondered.

She knelt for another minute, while he sweated, and then finally, at long last, she stood up. Nathan breathed out. She ran her hand over the headstone, before picking up her bag from the ground. With a last look at the grave, she opened the car door.

Nathan wiped a hand over his face, freezing mid-motion as Ilse suddenly stopped. She was scanning the land, her head turning slowly. As her gaze reached Nathan’s direction, it seemed to settle. He held his breath. Down the binocular lenses, it was as though they were looking straight at each other.

Can you feel anyone now?

Only us.

Nathan didn’t dare move. He held the binoculars in place, staring back as his heartbeat thumped in his ears. Had she seen him? He wasn’t sure, but there was something unfocused in her face that made him think perhaps not. At last Ilse dropped her eyes. She climbed into the car and he heard it start.

Nathan sat watching the dust trail as she drove away, back in the direction she’d come from. He made himself wait until she’d fully disappeared from sight before finally turning on his own engine.

The air came through lukewarm at first but he gasped with relief, gulping in huge lungfuls. He got out and grabbed water bottles from the back, and while both he and Duffy drank deeply, Nathan checked his watch. Ilse had been at the gravesite less than fifteen minutes from start to finish. It felt longer, but it hadn’t been. He frowned. All that way for fifteen minutes. Sophie’s voice popped into his head. We didn’t do anything at the grave. We got out of the car, then we went home again.

Nathan drank another mouthful of water, watched the horizon and listened. No dust, no noise. She was gone. He put the car into gear and slowly made his way down, over the crest and towards the grave. He parked a short distance away and got out. The dust circle around the headstone was long gone, but had been replaced with Ilse’s footprints. He could see the soft dents in the ground where she had knelt. Could she have been praying? he wondered. She had never seemed the type, but death did funny things to people. Nathan touched the headstone, warm in the sun. Something felt wrong, but he couldn’t tell what. Finally, he knelt down himself and all of a sudden, he could see it.

The hole they’d exposed beneath Cameron’s body was disturbed. It had nearly refilled itself the last time he’d been there with Bub and Harry, but now it looked different again. Nathan reached out and touched the ground. The earth was freshly turned. He ran a hand through it, looking to see if Ilse had left anything here, but all he could feel was sandy soil. There were a few small things that could possibly be seeds and Nathan thought of his own dad’s grave. He and his brothers hadn’t even liked the bloke and they’d still planted a tree for him. Had Ilse been doing something like that for Cameron?

The sun was beating down on him and he shifted on his knees until he was in the shadow of the headstone. His movement left a mark in the dust that was familiar in a way that made Nathan feel slightly ill. He stood up so fast he was dizzy.

Back in the safety of his car, Nathan turned up the air conditioner. It was a physical relief to be back in the cool, and he sat back, feeling the fibres in his body respond as his temperature crept back down towards normal.

Cameron would have fought for his life to stay with his car.

The thought came out of nowhere. Nathan reached for his water bottle and took a long sip. Cameron knew what it was like to be out there with no shelter and no supplies. It was a death sentence. If Cam had been forcibly separated from his car, he would have fought. Nathan stared at the grave. He pictured his brother’s body as the tarp slipped away. There had been no injuries to his hands or face.

Nathan took another slow sip of water and thought about that. An hour later, he was still not sure what to think. He knew he should go home. It was Cameron’s funeral tomorrow. Another one for the land. Nathan should drive back and speak to his son. Speak to Ilse. Instead, Nathan sat in his car beside the grave until the sun moved the shadow almost all the way around the base of the headstone.