Only Killers and Thieves(105)
40
He sits at the table, reading while he eats. He has fried some potatoes in the skillet and warmed the pie in the stove. He imagines Emily making it, kneading the pastry with her hands, then scolds himself for doing so; imagines the baker instead: his big hairy fingers, his chin like a toad’s. The thought never sticks. She filters back in like sunlight through leaves. What if she was with him now, at this table? What if she had kneaded, filled, and cooked the pie right here in this room? What if he took her off the baker and to hell with everyone else?
He concentrates on the journals. Flicking the pages with his left hand, forking the pie into his mouth with his right, just enough light from the lantern to see. He’s been reading The Queenslander for many years now, after coming across a copy in the barbershop in town. No one knew how it had got there; he’d leafed through the first few pages, then Willis had said if he wanted to, he could take the journal home.
“You’re the only one that’s ever looked twice at it, Bobby,” he’d said, laughing. “And the bloody thing’s been in here over a year!”
So he’d taken it home and read it, and there in black and white he had seen his brother’s name. A small entry in the announcements: a child, a girl, their fourth, Suzanna she was called. He’d shaken worse than from any fever, then he’d cried like no man should. He was an uncle. Four times over. Billy was married, a father: “grazier,” the notice said. He reckoned the dates: by the time he’d read the announcement the child was eighteen months old. He hadn’t slept at all that night, stayed out on the verandah drinking, imagining his brother’s life. Three other children, a home, a wife. He pictured them at Glendale, but there was nothing to say he was still there. Might have taken another selection in the district, might even have taken Broken Ridge. Either way, Billy had moved on, made something of himself. Just like he always said he would.
Since then the Queenslanders have become a ritual: a newsagent in Melbourne orders them for him and they arrive in sporadic batches throughout the year. At first it was torture. Like a man searching for his own death notice, he would pick through the pages, anxious for news, for any name he recognized, any mention of Billy or even himself. There was rarely anything. The state was too big, the journal’s coverage too wide. Once there was a piece about the closure of the Lawton saleyards, which was no surprise, but just reading the name brought plenty back. Bewley came up occasionally, and there was regular reader correspondence with titles such as “The Problem with the Blacks.” Nothing more about Billy. Nothing about his family or Glendale. And then one day he turned the page onto a story about Noone.
They had made him police commissioner, the article said, for the entire state force. A talented and gifted naval officer, former chief inspector of the Native Police, where his pioneering work opened swaths of the interior for pastoral use, the man responsible for solving the murder of prominent squatter John Sullivan by the outlaw Raymond Locke, renowned administrator, politician, respected botanist and anthropologist, patron of the arts . . . on and on it went. And now he had command over the entire territory, all of Queensland was his.
He’d cut out the article and kept it. A reminder: never go back.
He eats the pie slowly, turns the pages one by one. Despite his wobble earlier, he’s much better with the journals these days. Can even get some pleasure from reading about home—not his home, specifically, but the land that’s in his bones. He’ll see drawings or paintings of that vast and endless scrub, the red soil and the spinifex, and he’ll imagine himself standing there, the heat, the silence, the smell. It all comes back to him. He doubts it will ever fade. But he doesn’t like to linger there, can’t stay in his memories too long. They only ever lead in one direction. So he’ll turn the page quickly, and move on.
Nothing in this latest batch of journals catches his eye. He is onto the third volume by the time the meal is done and he decides to leave the remaining three for later. He scrapes the last of the pastry with his fork, then dabs up the crumbs with his thumb, sucks them off the end, could lick the plate just about. Bless you, sweetheart, he thinks to himself, then shakes his head and sighs. What’s wrong with him today?
While he smokes he finishes the third Queenslander, then sets the journal aside. He sits back in the chair, the wood creaks. The clock is ticking in the living room and he wonders at the time. After seven, certainly: it’s fully dark outside. Probably too late for a visit but he wants to take over the second pie. They’ll have already eaten but it’ll keep, and he feels an urge to give the thing away. Prove to himself he’s not smitten. He laughs just at the thought of it. Smitten with a pie.
Tess is waiting for him on the back porch. As if she’s read his mind. Maybe she has: the two of them are telepathic in a way he’s never been with a dog. His father would have said he’s too close to her, but what else can he do? She’s not just another work-dog, though at least he doesn’t let her into the house. Some rules you cannot shake.
“Just going over their place,” he tells her, pulling on his boots. “You can come if you want to, but you’ll be outside there the same as you are here.”
Tess follows. With the pie in his hands and his dog at his heels, he sets off walking across the rear yard with its fowl house and struggling veggie patch, through a gate, and out into the fields. A mile to get there, but the terrain is uneven and difficult in the dark. There’s no proper track. Only the flattened horse trail beaten out over the years, a constant passing back and forth between the two houses. Now it’s mainly he who does the journey. His legs are stronger, younger. Perhaps his need is greater too.