Only Killers and Thieves(35)

On the stockmen came, behind them the house and a thin column of smoke still rising from the yard. Both dogs had been burned. They’d done it while Tommy and Billy were digging, hadn’t thought to ask, they were only dogs after all. Tommy had smelled the tinge on the smoke and guessed what it was, swung his spade all the harder, mumbled his own good-byes to Red and then to Blue.

The men set the bodies at the gravesides, then retreated a few yards. Drinking from their flasks, lighting smokes, whispering between themselves. Didn’t even take off their hats. The ex-priest opened his Bible and the pages rustled in a wind that trickled dust into the graves and pulled the bedsheets taut. Tommy stared at the outline of his parents: their faces, their bodies, such as he could make out. Mother looked so much smaller, nearly half Father’s size. She had not seemed it alive. She was beside the hole that Tommy had dug and he worried that he’d made it too big, that she’d somehow be uncomfortable down there. He imagined her scolding him, a smile in her voice: Look here now, Tommy, look what you’ve gone and done, and a hundred petty crimes skipped through his mind. Trailing mud onto the verandah, waking baby Mary as she slept, letting the hens out of the fowl house, spilling the last of the flour . . .

“Sorry, Ma,” he muttered, and Billy looked across at him and frowned.

“Come on, man, get on with it,” Sullivan ordered.

The ex-priest glanced up from his flimsy Bible, settled on a page, cleared his throat, and began: “The Lord is my shepherd. Uh . . . I shall not want . . .”

Tommy knew the passage. Mother had read it to them many times—she could have probably delivered it backward without need of the text. Father had no time for the Bible. Nothing but made-up stories, he said. Many times Tommy had listened to him railing against God: “That bastard don’t care nothing for us, whatever your mother says. We’re on our own, Tommy. There ain’t no God out here.”

“Thou prep-preparest a table for me . . . before me, in the presence of mine enemies. Thou, uh, an-an-anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will . . . dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Amen.”

“Amen,” Sullivan echoed irritably. He looked at Billy and Tommy. “Either of you want to say anything?”

“No,” Billy said.

“No.”

Sullivan whistled to his men. “Right, get ’em in.”

“We’ll do it,” Billy said, nodding for Tommy to come. Hesitantly he followed, watching the flies crawling between the folds of Father’s bedsheet. The smell was sickly and strong. Billy took hold of the shoulders; Tommy couldn’t move. He stared at Father’s feet, wondering if it was proper they hadn’t taken off his boots.

“Tommy. We need to do this. Pretend like we’re lifting cattle. Come on.”

He gripped Father’s ankles and his eyes filled. He let go, turned and spat, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then went back into a crouch and held the ankles again. Billy counted three and they grunted with the heave, crabbing the short distance to the grave, Father sagging between them, scraping along the ground, the others all watching; dead silence save the boys’ breathing and the scuff of their boots, until the grave was upon them and Tommy’s grip failed: before Billy was ready, he let go of the ankles, and the body tumbled and rolled and the bedsheet unraveled, and Father lay exposed in the earth, bloated and white, riddled with a veiny fungus, ravaged by the flies.

Tommy recoiled from the graveside. Billy stared at him, aghast.

“Hellfire,” Sullivan said. “Don’t neither of you think about getting in there. Do the other one and we’ll cover them both up. Quicker you do it, quicker we can start.”

Billy went to Mother’s body and waited. Tommy trembled and seethed. He looked from his brother to Sullivan, to the bearded ex-priest, to the house and the fire in the yard. He screamed. The scream drifted on the wind. No one else moved, no one else spoke. Sullivan’s gaze passed from Tommy to Billy, and away.

Tommy lunged for Mother’s ankles. Slender in his hands, warm from the sun. Billy took hold also, and they carried her easily to the hole, lowered her, then dropped her, and she landed with a soft puff of dirt. Tommy stepped away. The ex-priest was making eyes at the mounds of earth and Tommy grabbed a handful and tossed it down. It pattered on Mother’s bedsheet. Billy did the same. Tommy took another handful for Father, threw it in blind, then stomped through the fringe of scrub toward the house, as Billy returned to stand at Sullivan’s side. The squatter cupped his shoulder, acting like he knew, like he understood how it felt, when he didn’t understand a bloody thing. Tommy walked to the house and sat down in the shade, leaned his back against the scullery wall. He drew up his legs and rested his chin on his knees, watching the stockmen shovel the earth and listening to the ex-priest recite the passage about ashes and dust.

*

The curtains were drawn against the sun, the room warm, the air stale. Tommy closed the door behind him, cracked the window ajar, and flicked the curtains along the rail. Light spilled onto the floor space and the bottom of Mary’s bed; he adjusted the curtains so she was shaded, then knelt on the rug and began fidgeting with sheets that were already pristine. Her arms were exposed, the hands flat, palms-down, little blond hairs raised on her skin. She looked to be wearing a clean nightdress and the stains were gone from the sheet. Beneath the bed was a bowl of water and a still-damp flannel draped over the rim.