Jasper Jones (15 page)

I try to think of what purpose this hole could possibly serve. I am hoping, maybe because I am roasting out here, that it is to accommodate some breed of shady tree. Like a blue gum or a paperbark. Or an enormous mulberry tree, like Mr. Malcolm down the road has. Something to read beneath. That would be nice. Maybe even a peppermint tree, broad and moppish and spicy, like the ones lining Eliza’s street.

I think of Eliza and me, standing in the shade. Her clean girl smell, the bloom of heatblush on her cheeks, her sad turndown eyes. The strange, absent way she looked toward her house when she told me about Laura. I wish I could have held her hand, or brushed her cheek. I wish I could have told her everything was going to be okay. That Laura would turn up soon.

But Laura Wishart is dead. I know that. I watched Jasper Jones cut her down. Then we threw her in the water. And now they’re looking for her, and when they find her, they’ll come for me.

I wish I’d asked her more. I have so many questions. Eliza may not know what I know, but I think she has something up her sleeve. Does she suspect anybody? Does she know about Laura and Jasper Jones? Does she know about Jasper’s grove? Does she know Laura used to steal away there of an evening? Surely not.

But maybe.

Eliza Wishart holds the pages of the book that leads to that horrible ending. Or at least some of them. But how to pry them out of her fingers? I have to see her again. And soon. So I can give something to Jasper when he comes to my window. So that we might clean up this mess.

My blister bursts. I suck in air through my teeth. And I look down
to see a copper-colored centipede just centimeters from my foot. It’s huge. It’s as big as a python, surely. Does it eat bats? It could take down a cat, easy. Or a small child. I gasp and drop the spade, and run to the fence.

Of course, it’s at this point my mother emerges from the house like an angry outlaw exiting a saloon. Our flyscreen door claps against the side of the house, then slaps back into place. She looks sharply from the hole to me.

“Excuse me, I don’t remember telling you to stop! Keep digging, Charles Bucktin,” she says sternly.

I close my eyes and exhale.

“I have a blister.”

“And I have a lazy son. Both of them are painful. I’ll give you some iodine when you’re done. Come on!
Dig
! Is that your
shirt
? Get it out of the dirt, you filthy boy! Now! Show some
respect
for your things!”

Walking back to the hole, I smirk inwardly at having pissed her off, but it’s a fleeting comfort. I take up the shovel and hold it aloft like a spear, but the centipede has disappeared. It’s worse when I can’t see it and I know it is there. It’s probably lurking underground, waiting to strike, like some maniacal alien tentacle from
The War of the Worlds
. My spine is tingling. I suddenly need to piss.

“Dig!” my mother yells, and I do so.

My mother has become so
hard
. It’s perplexing. She’s always been curt and impatient, but there used to be warmth beneath it all. I don’t know. Maybe she’s finally fed up. It’s crystal-clear to everyone except my father that she hates Corrigan. I suspect she always has. Of course, I can only speculate, but the fact that my parents were married and moved here six months before I was born suggests that maybe they were shamed into eloping and alighting someplace far from the city. Or maybe this was the only place my father could get posted. Maybe it was a sense of adventure: a fresh start in an expanding coal town.

Seems unlikely.

See, my mother comes from old money. And I’ve gathered from
overhearing various snide comments that she was expected to marry into more of it.

But my father comes from no money at all. My grandfather was a laborer who died early from tuberculosis. From what I’ve pieced together, my dad’s elder brothers were forced to leave school to keep them in food and board. Being the youngest by far, it was easier for my dad, and he was able to stay on at school, where he excelled. They were all convinced he would become a doctor or a lawyer. They wanted him to have the opportunities they never had. And so I think he disappointed everybody when he announced he was going to study literature.

My parents met at university. It’s hard to think of them as young people, with healthy hair and shiny skin. It’s even harder to imagine them in love on the banks of the Swan, excited to be with each other. I wonder if my dad intended to be a writer back then. I wonder if that’s what drew my mother to him. I don’t know. But he was a long way removed from what she had grown up with.

When she fell pregnant with me, there was just enough time for them to elope and for my dad to finish his degree before the bump was too pronounced. My mother never completed her studies, and my father never published a novel.

And thirteen years later, a cave full of bats could see that she’s bitterly unhappy here. That she’s dissatisfied with her lot and her plot. After my baby sister died, I think she gave up for a while. I think it was with a sense of resignation that she played out a role for herself. She joined the Country Women’s Association, mixed with Corrigan’s leading ladies, helped cater for events, and joined all the amateur pleated-skirt sporting fraternities and committees. She ticked all the community boxes. But now? Now she’s just angry. The varnish is tarnished. She can’t be bothered retouching the gloss. She’s at the end of her tether.

Recently she’s taken to visiting her family more and more often, particularly over this summer. Where before she might go to the city once or twice a year for an extended stay, she has started taking more frequent weekend and overnight trips, and she rarely even announces
that she’s leaving. She just makes sure my father and I have meals and clothes and she leaves without fanfare, as though she’s off to the butcher.

And it used to be that she would go away and come back refreshed. She’d be lighter on her feet. She’d bring gifts and gossip. Her mood would have lifted, and she’d be less stern with me and kinder to my father. But now when she arrives home she’s bitter and irritable, as though she’s been led back to her cell after a foiled escape.

And it’s occurred to me that one day she might not come back at all. She might simply refuse. I know her family pressure her. I know they coddle her with self-serving concern, that they constantly remind her of the things she’s missing, the things they feel she deserves. And I don’t really blame her for being seduced by it. It’s what she grew up with, I guess. It’s right up near the surface of who she is, the girl who always got what she wanted. But I
do
blame her for feeling ashamed of us. I get that prickly sensation every time she returns these days: that she doesn’t think we’re good enough. And that, I can’t abide. My father is infuriating, but he’s a good and honest person. I know how other fathers treat their sons, and I know I’ve lucked out. And as for me coming along as I did, I had no choice. I was timing and chance. I was shit luck. But I didn’t do anything wrong.

I sink my spade into the hard clay and think about what my mother was born into. Her luck and lot. As though there were any difference between us other than that. How does it
mean
anything? I don’t know. But what about Eric Edgar Cooke? What about
his
timing and chance? If he were born in Nedlands like my mother, would he have visited it all those years later like he did? Would he have wrought such terror in those streets?

I pause and wipe my brow. It lacquers my hand. I could lick it, I’m so thirsty. What is this bloody hole
for
? A koi pond? A bomb shelter? I am hot and filthy and fed up. The clay is hard and dense and heavy. The clump of dirt to my right has attracted a brazen pair of kookaburras, whom I welcome with relief. They sift through the mound of earth and feast on insects. I pause to watch one glug down an earthworm.

“You’re welcome,” I say.

It tilts its head, regarding me with what feels like pity. Its friend suddenly flutters away to a neighbor’s tree to laugh at my misfortune.

“Your friend’s an ungrateful bastard,” I growl. It looks at me shrewdly and then seems to shrug.

I shake my head and keep levering up half-spades of caramel clay. One thing that strikes me is the silence of our street. Usually it would be humming, but it’s quiet as a church out there.

In a few hours I’ve dug to the depth of my thighs. My burst blister is beyond pain now. This surely can’t go on for much longer. This is like Dickens or something. Surely the Geneva Convention protects me from having to dig anymore.

I keep going.

And I settle back into considering Cooke and his simple, bitter reason. He just wanted to
hurt
somebody. It sounds so vengeful. But was that really it? Was he out there laying into some kind of version of his father? Was he fighting back through other means? But why would Cooke prey on women, then? Why would he make victims of the innocent, like his father had done to him? It makes no sense. So maybe it was that sense of power that he wanted. After a life of being force-fed shit, of beatings and being trodden, he wanted to turn it right round on itself. Maybe he wanted to
become
his father. To swap roles. To finally be on top. He wanted people at
his
mercy. He wanted to
hurt
them. Just like he’d been hurt. Maybe he wanted a whole city to know that fear. Could that really be it? Could that be the same of Mad Jack Lionel?

Laura Wishart is dead. Someone killed her. That’s all I know for certain.

I need to see Jasper Jones. I need to see Eliza Wishart. I need to know more about Mad Jack Lionel. I need to know more about Laura. About Corrigan. About the things that make people do what they do. I need to narrow things down, start pruning back. Until then, I’m a whirring zoetrope of half-thoughts and worries. Beset by bright, dizzy flashes and harried by harpies.

I start to dig like it means something. I try to lose myself in the
task. I don’t want to think anymore. It feels like there’s a tourniquet around my head. I never asked for this.

By twilight I am up to my ribs and I feel as though I have acid coursing through the veins of my arms and my back. As soon as I lay down my spade, I feel stiff and exhausted. I lean on the wall of the well and inspect my palm. My glasses are grubby, but I have nothing clean to wipe them with.

As though she has sensed my lack of activity, I hear my mother burst out the back door and stride toward me. I don’t turn around. She stands at the edge of the hole in front of me, hands on her hips, nodding slowly. I’d like to think she’s grudgingly admiring my craftsmanship.

I’m waiting to hear the reason for which I’ve been toiling in soil all afternoon. I look at the hill of earth to my right and can’t help but feel a little proud of my work. There’s a small blush of real achievement. And there’s another part of me that craves her approval. I want her to admit that this is a bloody brilliant hole. I want her to recognize my effort. To tell me I’ve done a fine job. That it is perfect for its purpose.

But I’m not going to ask what that is.

I keep my head bowed, thumbing my palm. It probably looks insolent, but I don’t care.

“Okay, Charlie,” she says, in a tone that is still stern. “You can stop digging.”

I remain silent, but I look up as she points to the mound of dirt.

“Now: fill it in.”

It takes me a moment. She starts to walk away. I look in horror at the dirt pile. Then I wheel round.

“What?”

“Fill it back in,” she says with her back to me.

“What do you
mean
, fill it back in?” I yell, and I feel a fullness in my throat and a heat on my face.

She turns around. I can see that she’s pleased with herself. She suddenly looks like her father. Like a haughty marmot.

“I mean, fill
this
hole back up with
that
dirt, Charlie. You’re not
leaving it like that. I don’t want a great big dirty hole in my backyard. It won’t take you long. And hose yourself down before you come inside, thank you.”

I am furious. Down the street, I hear the kookaburras start up again. I shake my head.

“No,” I say firmly.

“Excuse me?” Her eyes widen. “What did you say?”

“I said no. This is ridiculous. I’m exhausted. I’m not filling it in. If you didn’t
want
a hole, you shouldn’t have
asked
for a hole. Forget it.”

“What did you just say to me?” She leans forward.

“What are you, deaf? I said I’m not filling it in! This is stupid. I worked this hard for nothing!”

“Well, you’re not the only one, young man. That’s life!”

“No it’s not!” I shriek at her. I don’t care anymore. “That might be
your
life, but it’s not mine!”

“You watch your mouth!” She’s yelling too. An angry vein embosses her forehead. “Charlie, you either turn around and finish your job or you will spend the rest of the summer in your room. I mean that. And you can forget about Christmas! You want a purpose for this hole, young man? Why don’t you drop your bloody attitude in there and bury that? What’s it going to be? It’s your choice, Charles Bucktin.”

That’s not a choice. That’s holding a turd in either hand and asking me to eat the one on the right or the left. I turn my back on her. I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of an answer, or a look at the salt glaze filming my eyes. When I think she’s gone, I clamber out slowly and sniff. With a heavy heart and legs, I glower and scrape the earth back in, cursing her under my breath, muttering that I might like to bury her ugly bloody head in this pit of injustice.

Of course, she hasn’t left yet. And of course, she’s just heard every word of vitriol. I realize this when she clamps a hand on the back of my neck and squeezes like she’s trying to dig out my vertebrae. Her nails are like razors. She hisses in my ear.

“You are a
very
rude boy!”

And she shoves me onto the mound of which I’d been so proud. The dirt is soft and cool and yielding. I move to shield myself from her, but she doesn’t hit me. She just snatches the spade from the ground and marches back to the house with it.