Only Killers and Thieves(107)

Arthur is grinning. Tommy’s laugh trails off in a sigh. “Aye, he brought them. Nothing so far. I’ve still got three to go.”

“Give you much trouble this time?”

“Only on account of what Alf said. Not from the papers yet.”

“Glad to hear it. Never known a man spend so much money on making himself unhappy. I don’t know why you still bother, I really don’t.”

“Yes you do.”

“Aye, well. It’s time you let it go.”

Rosie comes in juggling three cups of tea. She drags a little stool between the armchairs and puts two of the cups on top, hesitates with the third in her hand.

Arthur asks, “Give us a minute, love?”

“Right you are,” she says brightly. “I’ll go and play with the dog.”

When she’s gone they sit in silence, listening to her outside, that singsong voice she uses with Tess. Tommy reaches for his tea but it’s scalding. He puts it back down on the stool.

“Tommy, listen,” Arthur says quietly, urgently. “Stop with them bloody papers. Get on with the baker’s wife, or any other woman you like. Twenty years is long enough. It’s more than long enough.”

Tommy is leaning forward on his elbows, his head hanging low. He looks up at Arthur and asks him, his voice weak, barely forming the word: “How?”

Arthur considers him a long time with those damp red eyes.

“I’ve told you this already: I can’t forgive you. There’s only you can do that.”

“Like it’s so easy.”

“It’s not meant to be easy. It should be bloody hard. But that don’t mean you can’t try. You were fourteen. You only did what was needed to survive.”

“How are you so sure?”

“Because I know you. I’ve known you your whole bloody life. What happened up there wasn’t your doing—there’s men done worse and moved on just fine.”

“That doesn’t make it alright.”

“I never said it did.”

“You talking about Billy? Or Daddy?”

“I’m talking about all of ’em. Every bugger out there. Me included. You’ve seen it for yourself.”

“That was different.”

“In your eyes, maybe. This country . . . people have been fighting since the first boat came, before that even, the whole world’s crooked these days. We each do what we have to to make it through.” He taps his chest, his heart. “It’s what’s in here that counts.”

Tommy shakes his head. “You know it’s not that simple.”

“Mate, there’s plenty of people headed to hell, blacks as well as whites, but you ain’t one of them. You’ll be up there with your family. God’ll see you right.”

Tommy frowns at him. “Don’t act like you believe that horseshit.”

“Hey—I’m a Mission boy. I’m the closest you’ve got to a priest!”

Both men laugh weakly. It fades and Arthur reaches for his tea and slurps it, watching Tommy over the rim.

“Billy wouldn’t make it,” Tommy says. “He’d never be let in.”

Arthur shrugs. “That’s his lookout. You and him ain’t the same.”

Tommy picks up his tea, leans back in the chair.

“You know, I’d be the one that would have to write him. If ever we were to speak again. He has no idea where we are.”

“I thought there was no letters, you said.”

“He has to die one day. Noone. I keep checking the death pages.”

“Well, that’s something else you need to quit.”

“Can’t help it, though a part of me doubts it’ll ever happen.”

“You wouldn’t want to risk it before that?”

“Billy’s got a family. He’d go after them first. Anyway, what’s the point? He won’t have changed that much. He’ll still be what he was.”

“Aye. And he’ll still be your brother.”

He shakes his head. “I think about it sometimes. But me and Billy are done.”

Tommy agrees to stay for supper. They each have a small slice of the pie, then the three of them sit around the kitchen table, talking and drinking until late. He’s back to being Bobby again—somehow Arthur never slips. And even if he did, he doubts Rosie would bat an eye. She must know there’s something about him, about the two of them, their past; Arthur might have told her everything by now. He wouldn’t blame him. He knows the harm keeping such secrets can do.

In darkness he stumbles his way back across the fields, Tess alongside him, the moon lighting their way. A cow bellows as they pass and he mumbles for it to quiet down, but fondly, like hushing a child or pet. He doesn’t mistreat his cattle, won’t whip them or beat them or mishandle them like in the old days. He has a theory that it helps with the taste of the beef, but he keeps it to himself. And that’s not really why he does it. He keeps that to himself too.

The house peels from the shadows. Tess runs on ahead. She’s waiting for him when he reaches the gate, sitting there patiently, her head cocked; he leans over and flicks the latch and the gate swings open to let her through. Across the yard and onto the back porch, where he takes off his boots and kneels down to say good night, scuffing Tess around her jaw, stroking her head and back. Her tongue lolls happily. Like she’s smiling, almost. “See you at sunup,” he tells her, rising and going in through the door to the kitchen, where his dinner plate and the pile of Queenslanders are still on the table from before. He lights the lantern, pours himself a whiskey, sits down in the chair, and slides the next journal from the top of the pile. On the cover is an illustration of a man fishing, happily casting his line into a river at the bottom of a deep red gorge. Looks a bit like Wallabys, Tommy thinks. He lights a cigarette. Sits there smoking and staring at that cover a long time. He takes a sip of the whiskey. His eyes flick to the other Queenslanders, then back to the man fishing: he stubs out his cigarette, picks up the journal, and carefully returns it to the top of the pile.