Only Killers and Thieves(29)

Joseph’s old five-shot revolver, open-framed, missing half its grip.

Billy bundled past him, running for the house. Tommy watched his brother vault the steps, onto the porch; heard his anguished groan. Tommy went after him, moving very slowly along the front of the house. Through the verandah railings he could see Billy on his knees and the tread of a pair of boots sticking out. Tommy turned the corner. He took each step slower than the last. Billy looked back at him, over his shoulder. His face was red and twisted and his narrow eyes brimmed.

“That fucking nigger cunt.”

Tommy looked beyond him. Father lay slumped against the wall. He was wedged between the doorframe and the bench, and his eyes were open but they did not blink. He had three holes in him. Shoulder, stomach, chest. Blood soaked his shirtfront and pooled in his groin and spread over the boards below. His mouth hung slackly. His empty eyes stared. A fly crawled onto one of the eyeballs and sat in the corner of the lid, drinking. Drinking his final tears. Billy lunged to his feet and went into the house but Tommy stood watching the fly. He leaned and flicked it away, then propped his rifle against the frame of the door. Father’s carbine lay in his lap. Tommy propped it beside his own, then crouched and looked Father up and down. It was him but not him: no longer the same man. He went to touch him, then withdrew his hand as, inside the house, Billy cried out again.

Tommy rose and went inside. The shutters were closed. Thin spindles of sunlight broke through the gaps and crossed the darkened room, and when Billy burst through the bedroom curtain the dust swirled wildly within each one. Billy was raging. A crazed and faraway stare. For a moment he seemed not to notice Tommy, then traced him from the boots up. When their eyes met, Billy’s lips parted, strings of saliva peeling between them, and a noise sounded deep in his throat. He shook his head. Eyes pleading. Tommy’s gaze slid from his face to the blue curtain swaying back and forth. He stepped forward. “Don’t,” Billy said, but Tommy reached out and parted the curtain and held it open with his arm. Mother was in there. She lay twisted on the floor. Her face was turned away from him, her hand reaching for the bed and the pistol they kept underneath. A hunk of her head was missing. A mush of flesh, hair, bone. Her skirts were ruffled around her ankles and from their folds her feet were poking out, dirty and rough-skinned, the little buds of her toes.

Tommy let the curtain fall. His stomach lurched and he vomited on the floor. He looked up for Billy but Billy was no longer there. Tommy spat, straightened, surveyed the room. Nothing was amiss. Nothing any different, the same as when they’d left. Tommy’s eyes filled suddenly. He squeezed them closed and tears ran. He could feel it coming now, the force of it breaking over him. He opened his eyes and his face began to crumble, and at that moment Billy threw back the other curtain, panting, “She’s alive. I found her. Mary’s still alive!”

She lay on the floor in their bedroom, her hands folded, covering a bloodied hole in her gut. Blood stained her little fingers, stained her housedress, stained the floor. But she was breathing. Shallow snatches of air passing quickly in and out. She had her eyes closed. Her hair in bunches still. Her freckles looked to be fading, Tommy noticed. He hadn’t seen that before. She’d have been beautiful fully grown.

“She was under the bed, hiding,” Billy said, crouching and raising her up. He tried to lift her but unbalanced and fell into a squat. “Will you fucking wake up and help me! Tommy! Get her ankles—come on!”

Together they carried her out through the house. Her skin was soft and cold. Her hands slid from her belly and Tommy got a look at the wound. It had gone in messy. You’d do an animal a kindness after a shot like that. Not Joseph. And that bastard would have known. He’d plugged her and left her to die slowly, and alone.

As they passed by the curtain, Tommy asked, “What about Ma?”

“Leave her.”

“No, Billy.”

“She’s gone. Mary’s not. We’ll come back later, do it right.”

“Where are we taking her?”

“For help, Tommy. Where d’you bloody think?”

They paused in the front doorway, came cautiously onto the verandah, beside where Father lay. Billy didn’t look at him. Tommy reached for Father’s carbine but picked up his own rifle instead. Father was precious about that gun. Tommy nudged it so it fell back onto his lap, not neatly but it was with him anyway. He would have fought, Tommy knew. Would have fought as long as he could. As they came down the steps he saw bloody drag marks leading from the yard, meaning Father had crawled onto the verandah after he’d been shot, must have gone out to confront Joseph head-on. He imagined them arguing, Joseph pulling the revolver, Father too slow with the carbine, three balls already in him . . . bang, bang, bang. The noise would have brought Mother onto the verandah and Joseph would have chased her back into the house, got her before she reached the pistol under the bed, Father crawling after them but it was too late, too late. Mary hiding, petrified, but Joseph knew where she would be; the dogs must have tried to get him coming out. No balls left in the revolver so he had to use his spear, or maybe there was another one, an accomplice, some other Kurrong bastard come with him for revenge.

Tommy could almost see it, their ghosts all around, as he and Billy lumbered across the yard with Mary in their arms, then lowered her gently outside the stable door.

“I’ll get the dray,” Tommy said.