The Bone Yard and Other Stories Page 10

  “I’ve got some chocolate,” he told his friends. Jake gave his friends a bar each that he’d stolen from his father’s store. They ate them greedily, not suspecting where he obtained them. Jake did not want Mary to know he was a thief. She would not accept it if she knew.

  The four of them often played football or cricket, but it was too hot and dry. So, they talked about Buddy Holly and the Crickets and Elvis Presley. Then Mary and Sam told him their father was going to buy a derelict building on Victoria Street. He planned to open a store where things could be bought cheaper than in the white-owned stores. The Aboriginal people needed a place to shop owned by one of them. Some white-owned stores would not sell things to them because of the colour of their skin – or charged too much. Jake knew all about this. His own father thought no Aboriginals should be living in Freedom. Since Jake was old enough to walk, he had heard his father’s opinions. Darkies. Niggers. Coons. Spades. Mary and Sam were none of those ugly words. One time, when he was six or seven, his father had caught him playing with Mary. His father called her a dirty coon and chased her away. His father banned Jake from seeing her again. Jake stole from his father because of this and kept his friendship a secret. He loved his father but hated him too. George believed there were places in the world where skin colour did not matter, but Jake could not imagine such a place. (A few years later George would die in a far away place called Vietnam.) Every day, Jake saw how the white adults treated his black friends. His father’s drinking friends would like to see them all destroyed. It made him sad and angry.

  “We are going to paint the store green,” Mary said. “Won’t it be wonderful?”

  Jake grinned. “A green house not made of glass. Wonderful.”

  *

  He was home for six but immediately knew something was wrong by the silence. He entered the kitchen and found his mother cowering over the stove. His father was sitting at the table in just his string vest and shorts. He’d been drinking. When he stood up, he towered over Jake.

  “Gary McGregor saw you coming back from across the tracks. From Darktown. You’ve been to see them coons. What have you to say for yourself?”

  “I –”

  The slap struck out of nowhere. He felt the pain in his jaw and tasted blood in his mouth. A tooth rattled loose. His father grabbed and twisted his arm and ignored the sobbed pleas of his mother. “I’m going to teach you a lesson, boy. You’re never mixing with them coons again, understand?”

  The pain in his arm was excruciating. Jake nodded and nodded, loathing his own cowardice as his eyes blurred. His father released his arm, but did not banish him to his room – not yet. His father slapped him again – harder, just for good measure. The blow knocked his head sideways. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth with pieces of his tooth in it. His head hung down, mouth dripping blood. He could feel the bruises forming and the pain of humiliation, but that was not the worst thing - the worst thing was the jarring motion had knocked the stolen chocolate bars from his pocket. One – two – three. They fell one by one onto the dark linoleum and lay at his father’s feet.

  His father stared.

  “Don’t hit him again,” his mother sobbed.

  But his father already had.

  *

  After his father beat him, Jake missed school for two weeks. A doctor should have treated him, but his father did not want anyone to know what he had done – even he knew he had gone too far. The school was told he had chickenpox (though he’d had it before). Jake lay in bed, bruised and aching, wishing he could see Mary, wishing he could tell her how much loved her.

  *

  One day when his father was out working, Jake heard a light knocking at the door. His mother was busy hanging up laundry out in the back yard, so Jake, hurting with each movement, went down to see who it was.

  There was nobody there.

  But he found an old guitar resting against the wall. There was a note fastened between the strings.

  Play this and think of me.

  Love Mary.

  *

  Jake hid the guitar in the attic among the old dusty things and learned to play it when nobody was around. It was his secret. When his hands made music, he thought of Mary. He prayed for the day when they could be together again. But he never spoke to Mary after that – his father kept too close an eye on him. He wasn’t permitted out of the house unless his father knew where he was going. It wasn’t possible to sneak off.

  Jake thought of her whenever he saw the new store across the tracks. The shop and living quarters above were painted bright green – the only green in the town, for most of the buildings were dull white or drab brown. The greenness radiated something more than just reflected sunlight. It bathed him in a good feeling each time he looked upon it. The Aboriginal store seemed to be a magical thing, like a garden blooming in the desert.

  *

  Déjà vu is 1970. His mother and father were away in the city for the weekend, leaving him to look after the store, where he worked for his father as an apprentice shopkeeper, a job he loathed. Unfortunately, Jake had failed at school and could not afford to move out of his parents’ house. His best friend George was dead and Jake didn’t have any others. Mary was living on Victoria Street, but she was married and had a baby. The only thing that gave him any pleasure was playing his guitar.

  In the humid night, he walked to his window and opened the curtains, letting dry air enter his bedroom. The streets of Freedom were dark but the sky was not. The Southern Cross was bright and clear. The stars exhilarated with their cold, simple beauty. There was no moon, which made the stars clearer, the streets darker. It was now so quiet he could hear someone running in the dark, though he could not see anyone. He sighed and stretched. He collected his guitar from the corner. He sat at the window with the guitar in his lap, the wood cool and calming, oddly comforting, like a loving pet. He thought of Mary. He was tuning it when the sound rolled down the street, waking everyone in a radius of five miles. It was louder than thunder. It was louder than anything he had heard before or since.

  It was an explosion.

  *

  Jake ran and ran towards the smoke and flames. Victoria Street was on fire. The source of the fire was the store owned by Mary’s family. Flames burned through the roof and broke the windows.

  There was a crowd of half-dressed white people watching the fire, but that was all they are doing - watching. They were not helping. Nobody was going near the green building – they all seemed relieved it wasn’t spreading to their homes. Gary and Ian McGregor were drinking beers like it was a barbecue.

  Jake yelled but nobody heard over the roaring flames. Jake pushed his way through the people, wanting to do something, but someone grabbed him. Their face was blackened by smoke. The man pulled him backwards. “Don’t be stupid, son.”

  “What are you doing? I need to save them!”

  “They’re dead already.”

  “No! Let me go!”

  The man did not leave go.

  “MARY!”

  Jake heard screams as the violent flames burst through the unbroken windows, spraying glass into the crowd. Fifty feet above the ground, someone appeared at the top window. The person was unrecognisable and on fire. The crowd went quiet as the body leapt through the window and dropped and hit the street with a sound like wet meat.

  *

  “Jake, what’s wrong?”

  He was restlessly switching TV channels, trying to find something interesting in the dull pre-Christmas schedules. Kathy knew his moods after twelve years: his taciturn behaviour that evening was a symptom of something bothering him. He had told Kathy about the day over dinner. Donald was in bed, and they had the living room to themselves.

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Are you worried about the McGregors?”

  “Partly. But it’s not that. I was thinking about the fire.”

  “The fire?” Kathy said.

  “It happened thirty years ago. It killed some friend
s of mine. Mary and Sam. And the rest of their family. They were Aborigines.”

  “Jake, why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

  “I don’t know.” He didn’t, either. There were just some things he had never talked about with anyone.

  “How’d the fire start?”

  Jake looked ahead, thinking back.

  “It was a freak accident.”

  “What happened?”

  “They had crates of liquor stored in the back room. You know how I keep my drinks in the refrigerator cabinets? Back then people would store inflammable stuff in cool places, like their basements. Only their house didn’t have one. It probably got too hot and ignited by itself. One night, ten boxes of whisky went up like a bomb. I remember hearing the explosion and coming out into the street to see the green house blazing. A big crowd gathered around their house, but the flames were too powerful to do anything. The explosion and the smoke killed them before they could get out. Mary saved her boy, though. She carried him to an upstairs window. She jumped out, screaming because all her skin was dripping off like wax. Her fall killed her but protected the baby in her arms. I still remember the smell. Like meat.”

  “Ugh,” Kathy said. “Do you think that man is him?”

  “The baby was so badly burned it was taken to a special hospital in Darwin where it wasn’t expected to live. I’d hate to think that he did survive because those burns … those burns were the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

  *

  That night, Jake took his guitar outside and played it softly. The teenage Jake had thought his older self would be a famous singer-songwriter, probably living in Los Angeles, but Jake had never gone further than Sydney. All his life this town had ruled his behaviour, ruled him. His guitar was something he played at the weekends when his store was empty, but he needed to play it now. It was the only freedom he knew. A long time ago he had written a song entitled The Green House that made him cry whenever he sang it. Its sad, lonely rhythms brought back painful memories. As he played it again, he peered into the darkness and thought of the stranger.

  He was a brave man, whoever he was.

  Thinking back, Jake remembered the McGregor brothers drinking beers while Mary’s home burned down. For thirty years, the obvious had been waiting to be recalled.

  They were drinking a brand of beer not available in any of the white-owned businesses. A beer only sold in one place.

  “Hey! I need some service!” Gary McGregor’s voice reached into the stockroom. “Hey!”

  Jake turned around and stepped to the door, where he could see the McGregor brothers. The brothers were the only people in his store. Gary was flipping through a row of Christmas cards. He accidentally knocked several onto the floor, but made no effort to pick them up. “Ah. Here he is. Say, Jake-o, the Crow was seen coming out of here this morning. What did you sell him this time – your soul?”

  Ian sniggered.

  What a double-act, Jake thought.

  “I sold him nothing,” he lied.

  “Goodonya, mate,” Gary drawled. “Maybe we got it wrong about you. You tell him his sort don’t belong in Freedom?”

  “He got the hint,” Jake lied. Lying was easier and safer than the truth. “What do you fellas want?”

  “Just come to tell you we’re going to make him leave.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Chuckling, they left.

  Jake walked to the window and saw Gary and Ian McGregor getting into their grey pickup truck. There was a baseball bat on the dashboard, which Gary grabbed. The pickup truck pulled away. It reached the street corner before going out of sight. Jake rubbed the light stubble forming on his chin, thinking. Going outside, the sunlight hitting him in waves, he walked into the middle of the street and looked into the distance, where the town ended and the desert began.

  He thought he could see a green house, but that was impossible.

  *

  Someone was running down the road, running towards him without slowing down or seeming to notice him. It was Ian McGregor. His mouth was wide open. He looked as if he was screaming, but no sound was coming out.

  *

  Jake walked into the bar and ordered a beer and listened to the rumours already spreading only hours after Ian McGregor ran screaming into town and confessed to the arson-murders of the Tjakamara family.

  Earlier, Gary and Ian had stopped their car beside the black man’s campsite with the intention of beating him. Gary strode towards him with a baseball bat, but before he could swing it something happened – the man waved his arms and said something that caused Gary to burst into flames - first his hair, then his body ignited with bright orange flames. Suddenly, he was burning like a human torch. Instead of helping to put out the flames, Ian fled. When the police arrived, they found a smouldering heap of bones.

  The Crow had gone.

  The bar was filled with speculation.

  Some people believed the Crow was Mary’s boy seeking revenge, but another rumour claimed the boy had died of his injuries. Some people thought it was a case of spontaneous human combustion.

  “What do you think, Jake?”

  “Me? I just think the heat got to him.”

  The miner looked at him strangely, saying nothing.

  Back at the store, Jake looked at the receipt in his hands.

  It was for a pressure pump and hose and a can of kerosene.

  He burned it.

  The Midnight Murderer

  “Here,” Newton said.

  Marilyn Monroe reached over and squeezed Ben Newton’s hand painfully hard when he pulled the pink Cadillac past the GENUINE MAKAH INDIAN FOOD sign and into the diner’s parking lot. The Cascade Mountains loomed over the diner as a blue, green and purple ridge, like the spine of a putrefying giant. Brooding black clouds clung to the snowy peaks, promising bad weather to come. Newton could see rain about six miles off, streaking the blue sky with grey and silver. He parked between two pickup trucks, then turned to Marilyn and pulled his hand free of hers. She scowled. His fingers throbbed when he flexed them. “That hurts.”

  “Good,” Marilyn said, squirming in her seat. “Ben, I’m not going in there.”

  “But this looks just like the diner in Twin Peaks. Maybe it is the diner the Twin Peaks diner was based on. We’ve got to go in.”

  “Not dressed like this,” Marilyn said, pulling up the cleavage of her flimsy white dress.

  “I’m starving, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but I’m not going in like this.”

  “So take off the wig.”

  “And let people recognise me? No way. Find me a shopping mall so I can buy some new things. Then we’ll eat.”

  “Come on - there’s no one around here to recognise you.”

  “I grew up in Seattle,” Marilyn said. “Some of my old school friends might live around here. It’s bad enough having my proper clothes stolen, without people seeing me dressed as a dead movie star as part of your kinky fetish, Ben.”

  The words stung Newton, but not for the reason she said. Newton did not like to think of Marilyn Monroe or any of the Hollywood Legends as dead, for as long as their films were being watched they were alive, in a way. His girlfriend, Angel Shapiro, did make a good Marilyn. The fake mole was a nice touch. She picked it off and flicked it onto the asphalt, ruining the illusion. He could tell Angel was uncomfortable playing the role of Marilyn by the subtle way she mentioned it every ten seconds.

  “I’m sorry, Angel. It wasn’t my fault the suitcases were stolen while we were ...”

  “In the seedy motel?”

  He felt his cheeks burning. “It wasn’t that seedy.” Her stony look said otherwise. “Look, why don’t you just say you’re going to a costume party?”

  “No,” Angel said. “I’ll stay in the car. Bring me out some fries and a cheeseburger and a diet Pepsi. You do what you like in there, Mr Wannabe Movie Writer. This girl is staying here wher
e no one will laugh at me. Jesus H Christ, this is so humiliating.”

  *

  “This is a damn fine cup of coffee,” Newton said to the waitress, in his best Kyle MacLachlan impersonation.

  The waitress looked blank, clearly under the impression he was some crazy Brit who had never tasted good coffee in his entire life. The heart-shaped nametag on her pink apron stated, “Hi, my name is Peggy”. Peggy handed Newton the bill and offered a weak smile, then folded her arms beneath her breasts and stared with all the warmth and friendliness of minimum wage.

  “Is that all, sir?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Newton looked through the windows at the pink Cadillac. Angel was sunk low in her seat, trying to remain invisible. He could feel her stare. Newton looked back at the waitress. He found himself captivated by her noticeably large breasts ... and guilty for the thoughts they produced.

  “I can see a great view of Twin Peaks,” he said, grinning, but the double entendre was lost. Peggy evidently was not a David Lynch movie fan. Worse, she probably thought he was a pervert.

  “You paying for the meal, sir?”