Hal could still see the back of the man’s head, half-hidden behind the redgum. Combing his hair back, lighting a cigarette. Stretching like an old dog. Then he turned around.
Dad.
4
At two-thirty the same hot Saturday afternoon, Sergeant Bradley declared it was officially the silly season and festivities would begin. Senior Constable Bligh had a bottle of this Mexican drink his brother had brought him back on leave from Vietnam. Mezcal, he said; it had a worm at the bottom. Sergeant Bradley had provided shot glasses and lemons from his garden. Petrovic got the salt for this strange drinking ritual that Bligh insisted they follow.
After the first two, anything went. Petrovic had put tinsel streamers on the spindly tree in the corner. On the radio, Jim Reeves was crooning ‘Silver Bells’. The lads were on their third round of shots and having themselves a merry little Christmas indeed, in fact they’d just started laying bets on who’d have to eat the ugly brown worm at the bottom of the bottle.
‘Five bucks on Goodenough,’ Bradley was saying, when Mick walked in, smelling like he’d slept in a sheep truck and looking even worse. The merriment ceased abruptly.
Bradley raised an eyebrow. ‘Looks like you got a head start on us, Mick.’ Petrovic broke into gales, shaking and snorting away.
‘What have you been up to, Goodenough, on taxpayers’ money?’
‘I’ve been burying a dog, sarge.’ All three stared at him, eyes glazed.
Ross Bligh winced. ‘Jesus, Mick.’
‘Lord save us, you smell like you’ve just dug it up.’ Bradley coughed, wafted the air. Petrovic snorted.
Keep going, sonny Jim. Mick stared at the wall beside Bradley’s scoffing head and visualised putting his fist through the plaster. This time he only thought about it, though. Counted to ten as he held his breath. Progress of a sort.
Ross Bligh pursed his lips in sympathy. He had a dog, dopey-looking cocker spaniel called Ringo.
‘S’no good Mick. Which one was it?’
‘Charlie, the youngest. Somebody hooked him and killed him.’
‘Hooked him? As…in?’ Bligh tried not to slur.
Mick produced the plastic bag from his pocket, held it up.
‘Hooked him with…that?’ Bradley grimaced.
‘Yep.’
The three of them stared at Mick and his fish hook then at the floor, torn between outrage for hurts done to a brother cop and resentment for the interruption to festivities.
‘There’s some sick mongrels out there,’ Bradley growled. ‘Who’d do a thing like that, before Christmas?’
‘Don’t know. What d’you make of it?’ Mick proffered the hook with its barbs and its steel tracer.
Bligh examined it, pensive. ‘Catch a shark on that. Hey, Pete?’
Petrovic eyed the tequila bottle and belched. Bradley laid his meaty hand on Mick’s shoulder.
‘You sure he wasn’t just fishing for bass and Charlie dived in after the bait? Hooked himself that bad, might’ve been no alternative but to put him out of his misery.’
Mick kept his voice calm. ‘First, it was nowhere near the river. Second, somebody threw him a lamb chop, hooked him like a catfish, clubbed him on the head and cut his throat. Oh, and third, they pulled out a claw. Doesn’t look like a mercy killing to me. In fact, I’d say the dees might be interested in someone like that.’
Ross Bligh grimaced at the bag. In the awkward silence, Bradley kept nodding while Petrovic slowly turned green. It was as if all festivity had been hoovered out of the room.
‘Awful thing, must’ve been some nutcase who did it,’ Bligh roused himself. ‘But it’s a dog, Mick. We’re not the RSPCA.’
Mick was suddenly conscious of his own body odour. Guests are like fish, he remembered. They start to stink after three days. He’d been a guest for six months and had long outstayed his welcome.
‘Christmas party, for Pete’s sake. Lighten up lads!’ Bradley waved his upside-down shot glass at the bottle. ‘Come on, Ross, pour us another round.’ He held up his glass. ‘Some things are best left until after the silly season, Mick. There’s only one dee in Armidale until New Year. Put it down in the occurrence book and come and have one of these. Cheer you up.’
‘No, it’s all right.’
‘Pass him that lemon Peter, where’s your manners?’
Goodenough put the evidence away and looked at the shot glass in Bligh’s hand. It had been a long time since he’d drunk spirits. The thought of it had his stomach turning cartwheels.
‘No. Thanks.’
The others were doing that licking salt from their hands thing, throwing the shots down and sucking on lemons. Where was your sponsor when you needed him? Far from Moorabool. How many weeks had it been? Eighteen? Nineteen? He shuddered.
‘Drink, drink, drink, drink!’ Bradley yelled.
The others chimed in, ‘Drink, drink, drink, drink, drink,’ until he could stand it no more. He snatched the lemon, crunched into its sourness and tossed down the shot, the mezcal burning like caustic soda all the way down.
‘Salt! Salt! Salt!’
He licked it off his palm and wiped his lips. His first drink in eighteen weeks and three days, and it felt…fucking fantastic.
Bligh, grinning, offered another. ‘Get this into you.’
‘Piss off,’ he gasped, eyeing the back door, trying to ignore the jolly entreaties.
Great shafts of orangey light were spearing through the dusty parking area when the cars began streaming out. Hal leaned on the bonnet with his binoculars round his neck, morose and silent as he waited at the car for his parents to say their endless goodbyes. Evan skipped up, swooping his new doll—the accidental gift from Skinny Santa that he wouldn’t return—over the Studebaker’s hood, trumpeting, ‘Buh-buh-da-buh-da…’
Jenna walked by, Kev and his esky wobbling after her, towards a battered grey Holden. He looked plastered and Jenna was trying to coax him into the passenger seat. Not having much luck, by the looks of things. Hal caught her longing glance at the Studebaker. He turned away and heard her shouting over Kev.
By the time he looked back they were driving off, Jenna at the wheel. Could Aboriginal women drive? His mum couldn’t. She appeared then, picnic basket in her hands, keys in her mouth, motioning him to take them and open the passenger door.
‘Get in,’ he told Evan. The brothers squeezed into the back.
‘Mrs Humphries?’ The redheaded boy, Teddy, sauntered over, swinging a tartan-patterned esky. ‘Would you like me to come over and wash the car when Mr Humphries is away?’
She looked up from packing the boot and gave him a tired smile. ‘Better ask Mr Humphries. I’ve got nothing to do with it.’
‘I did. And Mr Humphries said, you tell her I said she can pay you a dollar fifty to do it.’
Corrie turned. ‘A dollar fifty? That seems a lot.’
Teddy’s fingers stroked the bonnet lovingly. ‘I’ll do a good job on her. She’ll look like a million bucks.’ Beaming at the car. Like he owns it, Hal thought.
Corrie watched him, bemused. ‘I’ll think about it, thanks Roddy.’
‘Teddy. Wash her, wax her, get her looking like she’s just come out of the showroom.’