The Untold (13 page)

H
er physical energy was almost spent but her mind was a flurry of memory and her memories were ceaseless. She sat down on a rock and squeezed her throbbing head as one after the other the memories rose up. And as if there were pincers in her head, she would try to snatch a memory as it rose, to determine if that was the fate-altering moment when things could have been different.

For one whole day she swayed back and forth on her haunches, tapping her forehead with her knuckles as if she might extract something from herself. But by the end of the day she knew only two irredeemable facts: she had deceived Jack Brown and she had killed Fitz. She did not know who she was to do either.

Houdini grazed around her and it occurred to her that she might be undernourished. She did not move from the rock but waited with her gun and eventually she saw a roo and shot it. As she did she recalled the fleeting moment when she could have shot Fitz and it would have appeared a perfect accident.

S
HE HAD BEEN
with him for almost a year. By then she had lost count of the times he had hit her and she had already begun fantasizing about her escape to the mountains. On this day he was demonstrating to her how to muster and brand his cattle. He said he was going to promote her, send her out on a ride. She had no skills with
cattle, or none that she had cultivated. She had a natural talent for horses but cattle she found to be too stupid to care for. They reminded her of Fitz—she did not know what dumb things moved them.

For the sake of peace she took Fitz's lead and they rounded up half a dozen cattle that he had brought in. They were moving them from a lower paddock and into the holding yard when a bull broke from the herd. It charged out in some kind of fit and while Jessie jumped the fence, Fitz held his ground and swung a rope over the bull—but it was to no avail as the bull was fast and deliberate in charging at him and pushing him against a fence post. Fitz yelled at Jessie to get his gun from the stable and as she started to run she realized she did not care if the bull killed Fitz or not. She found the gun propped against the wall; knowing better than to run with a loaded gun, she walked back to the yard. She could see Fitz crawling in the dirt and she aimed at him, but the bull tossed him up and then up again and then the bull's horns seemed to twist right into him and she thought that they had impaled him. She fired a shot in the air to scare off the bull and the bull charged the gate. Fitz took his chance and rolled under the fence and it was too late to shoot him so she shot the bull instead, twice in the head, and watched the bull fall back, its full weight upon itself, and die right there in front of them.

Fitz was a mess. Jessie washed and dressed his wounds. Just from feeling she could tell he had two broken ribs and his knee was shattered. He insisted she stay and mind the farm and he left her with the same gun she had grabbed from the stable. With great difficulty, he mounted his horse, one leg completely straight. She handed him a full bottle of whiskey and then she did not see him for two days.

She should have escaped. She packed the one bag she had brought from prison, a green canvas thing that lived under her bed, and she filled it again with the soaps shaped as angels and birds that by now had gathered dust on the windowsill. She looked around her bedroom and around the house and there was nothing else in it that she valued. The only useful things now were a knife and a gun and her shirt and her trousers. She saddled Houdini and rode down into the forest, which was the only way out of there. When she cleared the forest, she would head to the mountains. She thought she would be safe there. But she was not even halfway along the track when she thought she heard a galloping horse and she feared its rider was Fitz so she turned Houdini around, as sharply and swiftly as she had set off, then put Houdini back in the stable and herself in the brown armchair that she despised. By the time she realized it was not Fitz she had heard in the forest she had lost her nerve.

When he did return he was blind drunk, like a bull himself, and full of talk of his bull wrestle and, worse, full of plans. He announced to her that he would bring in another rider and her and the rider would be his drovers, his lackeys, heist to heist, as more or less his droving days were over.

He said,
I'll get a black fella this time
.

And Jessie asked,
Is that because of his droving?

But she did not even register his answer. She knew that to Fitz a convict woman and an Aboriginal man were as good as slaves.

Later, when she first saw Jack Brown in the forest, she could have told him there and then to flee. But she knew that without Jack Brown she would be left alone with Fitz and if she did not kill him first, it was unlikely she would survive him.

S
HE DID NOT KNOW
how much time had passed. She had skinned the roo completely. She wished that she could skin herself, that she could pare herself right back to bone and pull apart those bones and reconstruct herself again.

She lit a fire and cooked some of the meat but as the fire licked up she saw the carnage she had created and her appetite was gone. She was disgusted with herself and with the waste of it.

There was blood all over her.

She smothered the fire with dirt and spread out the fur of the roo on the ground and then she lay down on it and wept. She was inconsolable.

Jack Brown was nowhere within reach and he would never be. The pact to wait was not for the reason she told him, that they must choose the right moment to escape. She had asked him to wait because she was trying to muster the courage to tell him that the child inside her was not his, it was Fitz's. In almost six months she had not found the courage to tell him. At first she thought it could have worked, their escape to the mountains, man, woman, child, seeking freedom. But could he have ever loved a child of Fitz's? Or could she? Imagining Jack Brown was my father was the only way my mother did not find me a repellent thing. As I grew inside her, she did her best to blot out my nasty biology. But the truth remained. And the truth was awful.

I could not hold that against her, her fiction. Because in it there was a seed of truth. Jack Brown could have been my father and, like my mother, I would have preferred that he was.

My poor mother curled against the fur of the roo. She pulled it around her and then she said,
Hold me.

And her own words surprised her. But the words kept coming:

Hold me.

Hold me.

Hold me.

And in their utterance, she did not have another thought.

In the morning the stench of the pelt was made real by the sun and she unrolled herself from it and peeled off her bloodied clothes. She walked silent and naked, leading Houdini, afraid of how much death was in her.

J
ack Brown and Barlow traveled steadily north through the valley. When they sighted a hut they slowed their approach so the occupant would have notice of their coming. Even then, some men were waiting with their guns propped and loaded. Barlow held his badge high above his head and it had the effect, at least, of making the men lower their guns. Then they would ride evenly and slowly towards the huts with their occupants watching keenly.

One of the men had his trousers pinned up over a stump of leg and his hut smelt worse than anything Barlow had ever smelt before. The man claimed to have seen Jessie. As he told it:
She moved through the bush like some bitch or beast clawing at the ground and her hair covered her wild face and if I could have loaded this gun faster I would o' gladly shot 'er.

They rode for three days with few words between them, visiting and marking off each hut on their northern stretch, both the huts that were shaded on the postmaster's map and those that were not. Barlow was grateful not to find any dead thing.

By the end of the third day, there was one more north-lying hut, according to the map, and it was the one that was closest to the mountain. It was growing dark quickly and they could hardly see, but Barlow was determined to get to it, so they pushed their horses on until Jack Brown warned Barlow that their horses could stumble in a rabbit hole and break a leg, so the sergeant finally agreed to stop.

Jack Brown lit a fire and Barlow used the firelight to write police notes in his book. Jack Brown did not ask what he wrote. For dinner, they watched the horses grazing near the fire while they themselves chewed on the leftover damper Jack Brown had made for their lunch. In the distance, Barlow thought he could hear the barking of a dog.

Jack Brown lay down on his swag and soon he was snoring. Barlow felt wide awake. Together the trees and the fire made strange configurations and Barlow looked out into them until some of the configurations seemed to be stepping towards him. He strained his eyes to see them, and then he recognized them. They were all the men he had memorized, all the men in his files. They were moving in on him, and circling.

Jessie was not among them.

When the sun finally rose, Barlow was relieved. He could see the base of the mountain and close by was smoke rising above the trees. They saddled up the horses and soon they were riding towards it.

The dwelling they approached looked more like a cottage than the huts they had previously visited. Hedged by roses, a stable on one side, sheds on its perimeter. As they rode up, a dog started barking, and when they saw an old woman emerge from the cottage to tie it up, they pushed their horses into a gallop.

The old woman was friendly enough and she nodded as Barlow gave a description of Jessie and Fitz. She said she would be glad to see any woman around here, but she had not, not for some years, and as for Fitz, she said she was not one to remember names, only faces, and a ruddy-faced man could have been any one of the men she had seen around the valley for the last forty years.

The dog kept barking, which unsettled the horses, and the old woman could not quieten it.

We would appreciate some breakfast if you have any to spare
, said Barlow.
We've been riding for days.

I am happy enough to offer you food
, said the old woman,
but I'd prefer if you eat it outside as my husband is not well. He has grown used to the racket of the dog, but I know other men's voices will wake him.

The old woman moved towards the house and Barlow and Jack Brown sat on ledges of rock near the stable.

Jack Brown said,
We needn't eat the old woman's food
, and Barlow said,
It's a long ride back, Jack Brown, and I don't have the stomach for more of your damper.

Soon the old woman reappeared with two bowls of warm oats and she sat down near Barlow and Jack Brown. But the dog got loose and took off down to the house and they all watched it jumping up and down and scratching at the door until an old man opened it.

The woman yelled out,
Go back to bed. You are not fit to be out.
But the old man moved towards them, ignoring her. He had a bandage around his head.

What's your business here?

Barlow stood up.
I'm Sergeant Barlow and this is my tracker Jack Brown and we've come by to ask if you have seen a man or a woman who have gone missing
.
The man is large and thick around the neck, his face is red and so is his hair, and his eyebrows knot together. The woman is tall with long brown hair and brown eyes and she is known for her horse breaking and her riding
.

The old woman scuttled around them nervously.

Can I get you more oats?
And whispering:
Don't mind him, he's not the full quid.

She was here
, said the old man.
Come down to the house, I have something to show you.

What are you doing, old man?
said the old woman
. Stop making trouble.

It is no trouble
, he said.

Barlow followed him down to the house and into the bedroom. He reached under the bed and pulled out an enamel cup. He was careful to pick it up with only two fingers by its handle.

This here is the cup that she drank from. It will be covered with her fingerprints.

This is most useful
, said Barlow.
Which way did she head when she left here?

Like any desperate creature, to higher ground. I expect you'll find her somewhere up there on that mountain.

Jack Brown stayed outside with the old woman, who paced around the stables.

Do you smoke?
she asked.
Could you roll me one? A thin one. I'm not a smoker.

Jack Brown took out his tobacco pouch. His palms were sweating and the papers stuck to his fingers.

The old woman sat down on a hay bale and stared at the ground
.

Was she here?
asked Jack Brown.

The woman was silent. Jack Brown waited. The cigarette paper came apart between his fingers and trails of tobacco threaded across his hand. He brushed his hand on his trousers.

She was here
, said the old woman finally.
We found her in a bad way by the river.

Six months pregnant
, said Jack Brown.

Seven by her count.

Seven?

It doesn't matter
, said the old woman
. The baby did not survive it.

Did you see it born?

No
, said the old woman.
The babe was already dead and gone when we found her.

There was no child inside of her?
said Jack Brown.

No
, said the old woman.
She was empty as a bottle.

Jack Brown crouched low to the ground. He pulled his hat way down over his eyes and lit the cigarette he had rolled for the old woman. He smoked it and smoke streamed out his nose as he clenched his jaw and tried to push down all the mournful sounds rising in him.