The Boy Under the Table (3 page)

He would watch the young boys—boys whose lives centred around the pub and the girls who they could meet there—and he would smile as they whistled and made jokes. He would feel the sun on his body and breathe in the smell of the sheep.

And he would forget.

It would only be for a moment and then it would all come surging back like a wave hitting the beach. Like a tsunami destroying everything in its path. And he would have to stop the ute because he couldn’t breathe properly. His eyes would prick with salt and his throat would scratch and his lungs would collapse under the memory.

The boys would carry on without him for a few minutes as he tried to get his body under control. They knew now just to carry on. At first they had looked lost. They had stopped too and ignored the sheep and looked at him, wondering what to do.

He was the boss. He was supposed to carry on regardless. If he stopped what were they supposed to do?

Now they just went on with the work and waited for him to get himself together. It had happened enough times that they knew to pretend the ute hadn’t stalled right in the middle of the sheep. They kept on talking and laughing and moving the stock, and even though the jokes had a hollow sound they kept making them.

They didn’t know what to say to him. When he first came back they had mumbled words of sympathy to their shoes. They were young, so very young. Doug had never felt the gap between his age and theirs so acutely. He felt ancient now. He had been regarded as a man who’d kept everything going through the worst years on the farm. The old men in town had nodded at him with respect when he ventured in for a cold one.

Now he was an object of pity.

The old men in the pub didn’t meet his eye. They offered to pay for his drink but they didn’t make the offer to him. They spoke to Will, the bartender and owner. Will would shuffle up to him slowly and whisper the gift of a beer. Doug never took it. A beer bought because you were a mate or because you’d survived the drought along with the others or because you could be counted on to lend a hand or give a bit of advice was different from a beer bought because you had been stupid enough to fuck up your whole life.

People respected strength. They took advantage if they felt pity.

He had caught the boys slacking off in the weeks after he came back and he had to pull out his own old-man voice and give them a reason to get back to doing things his way.

They were just boys really. Jarred was only seventeen; he only shaved every second day. Sean was nineteen but so innocent Doug knew he was still waiting to find the right girl.

Doug had yelled and thrown things and used some pretty foul language and the boys had jumped back into line.

If only everything could be solved that simply.

He was always struck by the irony of his ability to keep his sheep safe. To keep them from straying and getting lost.

He had lost his child.

It sounded ridiculous. You lost your keys and your sunglasses. You lost your job and, if the bad luck had you in its sights, you lost your house and your farm.

What kind of person lost a child? And to lose him in a place where there were so many other kids? Thousands of families went to the Easter Show every year. Thousands of families and thousands of kids and all of them went home stuffed with food and loaded up with toys and whatever other crap they could find. But not Lockie.

Not the Williams family.

At first they hadn’t been worried when they found Sammy in the stroller alone, her cheeks flushed with sleep and her hair damp with sweat. Lockie had been too excited to stand still. He had been darting ahead of them all day.

‘Did you see that, Dad, did you see that? Look at the people—have you ever seen so many people? Wow, what’s that, Dad? Can I have an ice cream? Can I have a toffee apple? Can I, Mum? Can I, Dad?’

So they weren’t worried when he wasn’t standing where they had told him to stand. They had lost him for a few minutes more than once, but even though they had scolded a little they had both been made indulgent by his excitement, his enchantment with everything. And they hadn’t even told him that he would be able to choose the bounty of two show bags yet.

Two show bags, one filled with toy cars and another with chocolate sat unopened in his bedroom. Doug had bought them hurriedly on the last day and he had to take what he could get. He was worried that when they found Lockie he would be disappointed to have missed out. So he bought the bags and showed them to Sarah, who thought it was a good idea.

They had both refused to lose hope.

Refused. To. Lose. Hope.

Lockie would be found.

The judging and prize presentation in the cake-decorating section had been boring for the kids. The speeches went on and on. Lockie had worked himself up into a whine until Sarah reminded him of the promised lamington.

The one distinct feeling Doug remembered from the time he now thought of as
before
was a feeling of pride. The whole day he had felt puffed up with pride.

He had been so proud of Sarah, beating all those Sydney people for the prize. She was a true artist. The kids’ birthday cakes were always the talk of the town. He had also been proud of his kids, of the way they launched themselves into the excitement of the Show. He had stopped once and watched as they walked along in front of him—Lockie occasionally grabbing Sammy’s hand to point out something he wanted her to see as Sarah pushed the empty stroller, waiting for Sammy to grow tired of walking. He had felt the kind of happiness he knew most people never got to feel.

Sarah’s mother had hated him from day one. Her daughter was meant to marry a lawyer or a doctor. She was supposed to drive a fancy car and live in a house in a leafy suburb like the one she’d grown up in. The idea that Sarah might marry a farmer had never even entered Sarah’s mother’s mind.

They had met at a mate’s wedding. He’d taken time away from the farm to come up to Sydney, which had been pretty stressful. In those days he was still running things mostly by himself.

He hadn’t expected to fall in love with anyone, let alone a north shore girl from a private school.

Sarah always said she came up to him because he was the only one who hadn’t drunk himself into a stupor. It wasn’t that he didn’t like to drink, but he was planning to drive back down to the farm that night.

They had sat out under the stars together and listened to the dancing going on inside and Sarah had handed him her life to be discussed and examined. She hadn’t asked for much from him and Doug preferred it that way. If he had something to say he liked to get it said, but otherwise he liked to listen. You learned to live in the silence when you ran a farm alone. Either you loved it or you went mad.

Sarah was bored with all the university boys. ‘Their conversations just circle around the same topics,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to discuss the meaning of life anymore. I want to start living a real life, a life that has meaning because you work hard and get something done.’

If he was honest with himself, Doug knew that he had caught her at the right time. She was looking for an adventure and it was either him or a year in London. From the day he married her he was always aware that she might just wake up one day and be done with him.

Sometimes at night, when the heat stopped him sleeping, he wondered what he would do if she ever left him for a life in the city. He couldn’t imagine it.

She seemed happy most of the time, especially after the kids came, but he knew the isolation got to her every now and again.

Doug understood how there could be days when you questioned your own sanity, days that could not be separated from one another. The routine never changed and sometimes those repetitive days could chafe at a person; especially if they were used to a different kind of life.

There had been days in the beginning, when he was just getting started, that he found himself singing every song he could remember, beating the silence with words. Beating the silence and stopping the endless thoughts from going round and round in his head. It didn’t happen so much since he’d hired the boys and found Sarah but now, in the time he knew was
after
, in the time he was terrified would be the rest of his life, the thoughts were so terrible he sometimes hummed under his breath so that the monotone of his voice gave him something else to focus on. Sarah stopped the thoughts in her own way. She had grown used to being on the farm but things were different now. No one could get used to this.

He had known when he married Sarah that she would need more than just the farm. Four years ago, when Sarah started making cakes, it was like she had found a part of herself she had been looking for. Doug hadn’t understood at first, but then she had shown him the cake she had made for Lockie’s fourth birthday—a train made out of icing running across chocolate tracks that went over cake mountains. He had been in awe.

Winning the prize at the Show was the culmination of years of work. Sarah had glowed on the podium. She had lit the place up. She always lit the place up. They were so alike, she and Lockie. They both shined regardless of where they were.

She had won the prize and then, as the applause died down, they had returned to their kids. Sammy was too big for a stroller but she hated all the walking. She was fast asleep in the sea of people, not bothered by the noise or the movement of her stroller as people bumped into it.

But Lockie was gone.

‘Oh that boy,’ said Sarah, her face still flushed with her success. ‘He drives me mad sometimes.’

At that moment, the only thing Doug was feeling was irritation. ‘He’s probably in here somewhere. But he has to learn that he can’t just wander off. He needs to accept that sometimes he has to be responsible for Sammy.’ It was important that Lockie grew up knowing how to take care of someone other than himself. There were times when the farm needed both him and Sarah. Times when the floods came and the stock had to be moved, times when the fires came and the stock had to be saved. Lockie would need to be responsible during those times.

Doug circled the room a few times and then moved outside. It was only after about twenty minutes of looking that he considered the possibility that Lockie might actually be lost. Again he felt irritation flare. The boy was going to lose his ride on the rollercoaster for this infraction. Doug never once considered the possibility that they would not find him, though. Kids didn’t just disappear. They were always somewhere. They were down by the river when they knew they weren’t allowed unless accompanied by an adult. They were climbing trees when they should have been doing their home work. They were hiding under the bed waiting to be found. Kids didn’t just disappear. It was only after they had enlisted the help of the security guards and announcements were being made that he began to think they might be in real trouble.

Kids didn’t just disappear unless someone made them disappear.

‘Relax, mate,’ the head of security said. ‘We’ve never lost one yet.’ Lots of kids wandered off at the Easter Show, he told them. They were always found, usually somewhere near the food.

Doug had tried to relax, to stay calm, but he could feel the panic building inside him.

The place was too big.

There were too many people.

Lockie could be anywhere.

The police were called. It took hours for everyone to leave the showgrounds because every family was stopped. Every parent was questioned and every child identified. It was way past midnight when everyone had finally gone home, and still they had not found Lockie.

The head of security changed his tone. The police held whispered conversations in groups. They began to look at him with sympathy in their eyes.

Doug felt his heart slow down. There was a ringing in his ears. He was underwater and he couldn’t swim.

Lockie was gone.

They had lost one.

Sammy had gone from impatience to hunger to exhaustion. She didn’t understand what was happening.

Sarah sat next to the pram twisting her hands. She did not cry. She didn’t cry for days, but every time Doug went near her he could hear her muttering the word ‘please’. ‘Please, please, please, please.’ It drove Doug mad and he had to move away because he wanted to hit her, to snap her out of her trance. He had never lifted a hand to his wife or his children, but now he had to close his fist and dig his nails into his palm to keep himself from lashing out.

Sarah didn’t believe in hitting children; she believed in time out and consequences. It was different to the way Doug had been raised but he had come around to the idea. The thought of anyone—especially himself—hurting Sarah and the kids was almost too much to bear.

Doug sometimes wondered, after, if whoever had taken his son had hit him. When he did think about someone hurting his boy he could feel his hands curl into fists. He would embrace the rush of heat that came with the anger because at least it was a different feeling to the sorrow and despair. Anger felt constructive. He wanted to kill everyone, even himself. But as fast as the anger came it would recede and he would be back at the place he hated to be. Mired in his own helplessness. There was fuck-all he could do.

They had stayed on even after the Show closed. They stayed at the motel in Sydney for a month, living on microwave food and waiting. At least, Doug and Sammy had eaten. Sarah had begun her existence on dry bread and coffee. She told him she couldn’t swallow anything else. Doug went back to the Show every day and walked up and down the aisles of the different pavilions, paced around the rides and food stands, even though he knew that wherever Lockie was, he was not there. The anger and the fear rose and crashed and twisted inside him. Every time there was a sighting their hopes would rise, only to be dashed. People only wanted to help, but after he and Sarah had gone on television all the freaks came out of the woodwork.

Lockie was in Canada.

Lockie was in the city, living as a girl.

Lockie had been drowned in the harbour.

Lockie had run away because he’d been abused. (Sarah had woken up for that one. Her denial was so vehement that the police didn’t push it any further.)