Fire Eye (38 page)

As the seconds continue to tick by, Alex replays what just happened. Once again she escaped death by a whisker. Only fate has prevented her from shooting Jed in a climax of pent-up anger, emotion and adrenalinfinally exploding after years of acidic tension eating away inside her. And yes, things again happened so fast there was no time for a warning. The rational part of her brain takes control and slams the lid back on the Judge Dredd part of her that has reared its head to take revenge.

As she carefully drops the hammer on the pistol and slowly lowers the Colt, Jed feels the tingling between his legs lessen and disappear. Starting to breathe normally, he lowers his own revolver.

“What do you propose?” Alex asks warily.

Jed thinks carefully before responding. They have both killed and, in a black and white world, they are both guilty. Charcoal’s story flashes through his mind. Their situation is painted in many shades of grey. Who is right and who is wrong? Would he want to be judged by people far away who haven’t been here and will never face what they have experienced? The decision is easier than he thought. He knows it will start a journey into the unknown.

“There’s a shovel in the Patrol. Perhaps we should clean up this mess and get back to our lives,” he suggests as he drops the hammer on the revolver and tucks the old war horse back into his belt.

After a luxuriously hot, bubbly bath that transported her to another time and place, Alex sits cross legged and returns Ruby’s gaze across the table carrying a spread of outback hospitality that would do justice to a five star restaurant. For the first time in many years, she is barefoot in public. The damaged toes of her right foot, hidden for years, are in full view of everyone in the room. She doesn’t give a damn. She is aware of the curious glances, the wide-eyed shock that follows and then the averted gaze as conversations resume.

After she and Jed arrived back with the boys, they all wanted to know what happened. Alex’s cold, pointed response killed their curiosity. “They’ve moved on but there won’t be a problem,” she told them. The hard, determined look in her eyes discouraged any further questions and, quite frankly, the boys didn’t want to know. They had seen enough to know that Decker was a bastard and had no desire to pursue the subject. A good man is dead. If a suitable price has been paid for that, is it their place to judge? They take Alex for her word. If he isn’t going to be a problem, that’s good enough for them. It is far better to be curious and ignorant. After all, there is cold beer to enjoy.

The grandmother is something else. Even in her seventies, her body is still strong, wiry and agile, annealed to outback strength by a hard life in unforgiving country. She still has a full head of hair, gone a sophisticated shade of grey and tied back in a businesslike bun. Her hair frames a round, tanned face, its features formed by a mix of Asian and Aboriginal blood. In her lap, her hands hold the original copy of the letter Karl wrote so long ago. The missing page is there, recovered from the Nissan before it was dumped in the dark water of a swamp. Ruby eyes Alex intensely, with wisdom borne from hard experience and a mind still as sharp as a carving knife. “So you came up here to find the plane?” she asks with an expression that conveys no hint of her thoughts.

“We did,” Alex responds bluntly, “And we found it! Karl, your father and the others will eventually rest in peace.”

Ruby thinks about that. Faint, confusing memories from the past stir in her mind, as well as emotions of guilt and regret. She always intended to find and bury her father, but the pressures of life had intervened. It had been a continual struggle to grow up without a father or mother, get an education, qualify as a nurse in the face of prejudice, and serve the people who accepted her over the decades that always threatened to wear her out. Now her peaceful retirement has been disturbed by ghosts from the past.

“Why?”

Alex considers her answer. She senses this woman is unusual, with a wealth of experience Alex can barely imagine. “I wanted to change my life, to break free from a shitty past and rebuild trust in people. Karl gave me the excuse to create a better future.”

Ruby eyes Alex appraisingly. It is an honest answer. She recognises a woman who has also done it hard and survived. She has her own ghosts roaming unsettled in her mind since childhood. Now they confront her in all their glory. “You buried my father,” she states pointedly.

Stuart’s voice, fuelled by beer and relief booms across the room, “We’ll find a job for Brad if he wants it. Poor bastard! Bloody bad business!”

Alex watches Charcoal raise his glass as he rests on the couch with a cool beer in his hand. Ruby’s skills have worked wonders. He is recuperating in the comfort of her skills and medication. The boys are happy but well aware something has happened it is best not to ask questions about.

From across the room, Alex sees Billy watching her with an appraising look as he lounges against a doorway. She ignores him. Not the icy response she has delivered to men in the past, but a simple, tactful acceptance. He is a decent man obviously curious about her and has done far more than she could have expected. She will thank him later. “On this trip, I buried your father, my grandfather and some other demons,” she tells Ruby. No mention of Decker.

In spite of her age, Ruby reads between the lines. “It’s good you can bury that part of your life,” she says pointedly. “But you didn’t find Fire Eye?” she adds with what could have been a twinkle in her eye, but may have been just a reflection of light through the windows.

“No, we didn’t. That’s the least thing we were interested in!”

Ruby smiles confidentially. “Ungondangery was quite taken by it. Mesmerised in fact! It was something beyond this world to gaze upon. He would play with it, holding it in his fingers, moving it around to find the best reflection from the sun. It was a small price to pay for life.”

So she had given it to the native warrior, Ungondangery, who found and brought her out to the people who accepted her! It was an unusual act of kindness, adding further mystery to the real nature of the man.
It explains the old chain among the bones on the plateau!
Alex gives no hint as to the direction of her thoughts. “It was a small price to pay. Your father would have approved.”

“Yes, I think so. Thank you for burying him. I should have done that.”

“He’s resting in peace and you’ll get your chance to lay him down again,” Alex says with sympathy.

Alex is rescued by Miranda who judges the moment perfectly. “Come on mum! I need your expertise to check how Charcoal’s going!” she announces, giving Alex a flash of her brown eyes. Both women share the fire that attracts men like moths to a flame, the fire that men can never quite get a handle on. Alex thanks her with an intangible glance full of meaning, one the men would struggle to interpret.

Jed is relaxing at the end of the table with a plate of food and a wine. He hasn’t missed a single word of the conversation. Alex meets his eyes and holds them for a few seconds as he raises an eyebrow and taps his chest with a finger where a necklace would rest, shaking his head slightly from side to side. Alex recalls the image of a skeleton hidden among the rocks on the plateau and the chain hanging between bleached ribs. Fire Eye! They had found it after all, but Fire Eye would lie unclaimed forever among the dusty bones of Ungondangery.

The Blackhawk helicopter, painted in tones of stealthy grey, flew low and fast. The thundering beat of its four-blade rotor hammered the landscape below with a cacophony of sound. The flight crew enjoyed the opportunity to fly free, but still disciplined.

Alex and Jed sat together on the rear canvas bench seat, opposite the loadmaster wearing the uniform of the Royal Australian Air Force. Headphones reduced the raw power and thunder of the helicopter to a dull background vibrating throb. They had a grandstand view of the country they had recently shared together, fighting for their lives.

Alex and Jed recognised the jump-up at the base of which they had buried the evidence of their deed. As they passed it, and the swamp where a vehicle lay submerged, they did not look down, only into each other’s eyes. Jed placed his hand on Alex’s leg. No comment was made. That story would be swallowed forever by the vast expanse of country below.

The Blackhawk began a sweeping turn to set up for a descending approach onto the beach next to Karl’s B-25. As they flew over the plateau where Fire Eye lay hidden among the bones of Ungondangery, both looked down and then at each other. Jed tapped his chest with a finger, shook his head and smiled. Alex nodded and smiled in return. Fire Eye and Ungondangery would continue to rest together.

The big helicopter settled for a landing near the members of the recovery team. Along the edge of the scrub are the body bags containing the pitiful remains of the crew and passengers of the B-25 ‘Eve’s a’com’in’.

As the rotors slowed, Alex and Jed leapt from the helicopter onto the white sand of the beach.

Alex strode purposefully toward the team leader, nodding a welcome. “Which one is Karl?”

With no comment, he pointed to one of the body bags.

Alex walked over to it and knelt down. Jed followed and stood behind her. It was her moment. “You’re coming home at last, Karl,” Alex said. “Death ends a life but not the legacy left behind.”

She turned to Jed with a softness in her eyes that Jed had never seen. “Thank you—for everything.” Alex kissed him gently on the cheek. “Now I can breathe again.”

Jed finally realised that the journey they had been on was about more than finding her grandfather, a necklace and a plane. It was about Alex finding herself. He wondered what else this woman had in store for him, and smiled.

“Samantha Knight, for outstanding work in the maths quiz!” Jed announces in a voice that projects across the hall without effort.

As little Sam skips out to receive her certificate, her bright blue eyes beam with happiness, framed by blonde pigtails hanging down over her shoulders. Her pigtails bounce to each lively step as she comes out in the front of the assembly. So their eyes can meet on the same level, Jed goes down on one knee to shake her hand and make the final presentation for the weekly assembly, backed by enthusiastic applause from a student group covering Kindergarten to Grade Twelve. Sam is a popular little girl with friends across the school. He stands and backs away, handing over to his Assistant Principal to dismiss the school at the end of another day.

Before he heads out on bus duty, he drops into the office to check on his messages. Trish has the mail ready and hands it to him, but not before picking up a final envelope. She runs it discreetly past her nose and drops it on the top of the pile.

“That might be the only one of interest among that lot!” she suggests with a glint of cheekiness in her eyes.

These days he has other things on his mind. Months have gone by, months in which every day is punctuated by thoughts of Alex at the most inopportune times. Unpredictable Alex—intelligent, funny and creative, who can flit between playing the sophisticated southern belle to a rampaging Judge Dredd napalming everything around her. Alex, whose courage and sheer bloody mindedness have worked their way under his skin.

Since his return, those around Jed have observed subtle changes in him. He is a touch harder, not unkind, but firmer in the way he deals with people. He is more guarded and there is a hint of dark shadow in his eyes, something uneasy or unsettled that is hard to identify. Perhaps it is linked to the envelope on top of the pile, addressed in a feminine hand that carries the faint scent of Giorgio.

Jed leans on the counter, throws the pile of mail down next to him and carefully opens the envelope. A look of puzzlement crosses his face, then a smile as he reads the hand-written words,
‘So, are you man enough for another one?’

Even from behind her desk Trish can sense something unwind within him. She stands, pretending to replace a file in the corner shelf and glances sideways. She sees photocopies of two newspaper clippings, one fairly old by the look of it, and a sheet of paper. There are some words written in a feminine hand, a hand-drawn smiley face and an address.

Her feminine intuition works like lightning. “Taking some leave again soon?” she asks in her best foxy tone.

“Quite possibly,” Jed answers thoughtfully. “Quite possibly!” then heads out on bus duty.

Trish notices he leaves the pile of mail sitting on the counter while the letter and the clippings have gone. She wonders how they managed to get Indiana Jones for a principal and hurries off to answer the phone.