The Dead I Know (8 page)

‘That’s my skipping rope you’ve destroyed.’

‘Terribly sorry.’

‘Taylor gave me that.’

‘Did he? Then I am doubly terribly sorry.’

She scoffed. ‘Doesn’t matter. I never used it anyway.’

She plucked grass and threw it at my shoes.

‘What happened to Taylor?’ I asked.

‘Dad caught him fondling a dead body,’ she said flatly.

I almost swallowed my tongue.

‘It wasn’t even a girl.’

I stood up. ‘I need to . . . I have to get a tool. To cut the rope.’

Skye stood up, too. ‘That’s pretty sick, isn’t it?’

‘Well I . . .’

She stared at me, her mouth crooked with disappointment.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That is quite sick.’

She followed me into the garage and stood beside me as I searched the sparsely populated shadow board for a suitable implement. Pliers. And a sturdy craft knife.

She followed me back to the mower and plonked on the grass.

‘I thought you said you were shy?’

‘I am. Sometimes. Most of the time.’

‘Not with me.’

‘So it seems.’

‘Why not with me?’

‘I’m not supposed to be talking with you,’ I whispered.

‘Why not?’ ‘Your mother said . . .’

She sneered. ‘Who cares what she says?’

‘I do. She’s my boss.’

‘I’m your boss,’ she said.

‘Right.’

‘Pick up that leaf,’ she ordered.

I handed her a leaf.

‘Thank you, slave.’

She spun it between two fingers. ‘Why aren’t you shy with me? Is it because I’m a kid?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Taylor used to give me money. No reason.’

I snickered.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean that you should give me money. You can if you want. I just mean that he was generous as well as being sick.’

‘It wasn’t that. Having a conversation with you is like watching television with a monkey when the monkey has the remote. You change channels so fast.’

She smiled at that. ‘I think you’re a bit slow, Robot. Batteries flat? Try to keep up.’

John Barton appeared from the garage, wiping his hands
on paper towel. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I dug at the skipping rope with renewed vigour.

‘What’s going on here?’ he said. ‘Robot ran over my favourite skipping rope with the lawnmower,’ Skye complained.

‘Robot?’

‘He sounds like a robot when he talks, don’t you, Robot? Say something, come on.’

‘This does not compute,’ I said, and John Barton laughed.

‘Yes, you’re right. He does sound a bit like a robot.’

‘Do it properly!’ she said.

‘Leave the poor guy alone,’ John Barton said. ‘When you can no longer tolerate this obnoxious child, Aaron, feel free to head home. You’ve done more than enough for one day. You can fix that next time.’

‘I’m nearly there,’ I lied. ‘Princess Skye isn’t bothering me at all.’

‘See,’ his daughter said. ‘I’m not bothering him
and
I’m a princess. You listening, Father?’

He lobbed the ball of paper towel at her. She ducked and it bounced off the side of her head. John Barton chortled, then picked it up on his way into the house.

‘What’s it like living in the caravan park?’ Skye asked. ‘Some days it’s okay. Quiet in the winter. In the summer there are lots of tourists. Young people from Europe, mostly. And retirees in huge vans.’

I’m not quite sure what happened then. It seemed as if I’d cracked open the next day’s ration of words.

‘Actually, there are bits about living at the park that are horrible. Like sitting on a toilet seat warmed by someone
else’s posterior. Like hearing every detail of my neighbour’s domestic disagreements. Like metal music at three o’clock in the morning, not loud enough to disturb the managers on the other side of the park but loud enough to keep me awake. Like stepping over drug rubbish on my way to the toilet and listening to strangers vomit.’

An unsettling stillness came over Skye. Her chin rested on her knees as she hugged her folded legs.

‘Sorry. I . . .’

‘It must be hard to get any privacy,’ she said. Her voice had grown soft, contemplative.

I nodded.

‘Hearing people vomit makes me feel sick too.’

‘I think that’s fairly normal,’ I said.

‘You can use my bathroom,’ she offered.

‘That’s kind of you, Princess, but your bathroom is a pigsty.’

‘Hoh! Is not.’

I looked at her, eyebrows raised.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘It’s a pigsty. But it’s not syringes or spew, is it?’

‘True, and I thank you.’

She fell silent again.

‘What’s it like living next to a funeral parlour?’ I asked.

She huffed. ‘It’s great. It’s all dead people and crying people and flowers and sad music. I’ll swap you any day.’

‘Have you ever seen a dead person?’

‘Of course. I see them all the time.’

‘You’re allowed in the mortuary and so forth?’

She nodded.

‘How do you feel about death?’

‘What? Fine. I’m used to it.’

‘Has anyone close to you ever died?’

‘No. Not really. Not since I was little. When my grandfather died. I don’t remember much about that. You?’

‘I . . . Is it spooky at night?’

‘Has anyone close to you died?’

‘I think I’d get spooked at night.’

‘Have they?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who?’

A long time passed before I answered. Too long.

‘Skye?’ Mrs Barton hollered.

‘Get in here. Now!’

‘Who?’ she asked again.

‘I know about death.’

15

W
E CRUISED THE AISLES
at the supermarket, and it was a cruise. I’d lucked upon a fresh new trolley that hadn’t yet developed attitudinal problems. Mam whistled the same tune.

‘What’s that you’re whistling?’ I asked.

She answered without hesitation. ‘It’s the opening phrase from Bach’s
Fugue in D Major
. Rosy little tune, isn’t it?’

Rosy? Vigorous, perhaps. A little military.

A large soft cube – twenty-four rolls – of toilet paper landed on top of the bags of fruit.

‘I think we’re okay for toilet paper, Mam.’

She shrugged. ‘It always gets used.’

‘We don’t need it.’

‘I think you’ll find we eventually will.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Never.’

‘Hah! How can you say that? Are you renouncing toilets?’

‘I
will
use the toilet. We live in a caravan park. The management supplies all the toilet paper we’ll ever need. We don’t need our own. Not a single roll.’

She grinned. ‘Yes, that’s correct. This is recycled paper. They’re on sale.’

‘Not a roll.’

She patted the slab.

I slowed and waited until she was out of sight in the next aisle, then propped the toilet paper atop a display of biscuit tins. Around the corner, she’d struck up a conversation with a hoary gent close to her own vintage.

‘I agree,’ the man said. ‘But what’s the alternative?’

‘Buy the spices and mix them yourself. There’s a whole rack of them here. Aisle six, I believe.’

She scurried around my trolley and towards the dairy refrigerator, scanning and touching the shelves as she passed.

The man watched her go and continued his shopping. He wouldn’t know, I thought.

He would see a lean older woman, dressed well and groomed – neat, but not ostentatiously wealthy or stylish. The tiny conversation they’d had would reveal no evidence of her frayed edges.

She came back with four bottles of dishwashing liquid.

I thanked her and stashed them back on the shelves in the tinned fruit section.

Our roles had changed and I
felt
it.

I knew, from my deepest self to the very skin of my teeth, that I would do whatever I needed to keep her safe from the world. If that harridan Nerida Long had to stick her nose in our affairs, I’d find a way to discreetly break it. If that lowlife Candy from
57
or any of her circus decided
Mam was there for the taking, I’d take them out, one by one. Cleanly, without remorse.

Two men entered the toilets while I was locked in a cubicle that evening. They spoke quietly but I could understand every word.

‘Mum’s fine but Dad’s losing his marbles.’

‘Yeah? What makes you say that?’

‘Oh, lots of things. Constantly misplacing his glasses and the car keys, can’t remember what day it is . . .’

‘Sounds like me!’

They cackled, then went silent. Urine drummed on the stainless steel.

‘No, but Dad has always been so sharp. Never missed a trick.’

‘How old is he again?’

‘Fifty-two. Fifty-three in November.’

‘Bit young to be going senile, isn’t he?’

‘Didn’t know there was an age limit.’

‘I’m guessing. I don’t know much about that stuff.’

Their voices trailed into the night and I was left with all the free toilet paper I needed and a sense that Mam and I might not be alone.

That night, I used my JKB tie to bind my wrist to my bunk in the annex. I lay there for a long time, staring at the distorted green stars through the panel in the ceiling. I figured it would take more than a tie to hold me down, but less than a bunk dangling from my wrist to wake me as I wandered the night.

16

I trace the shape of a foot beneath the pink sheet and see a leg, the round of a hip. The body is twisted and the linen is drawn tight across the back. A time-lapse flower of red blooms there. The stain rushes out, threatening to fill the room.

I hit reality as hard as if I’d fallen from a tree.

I sat up, befuddled but still in my bed. The bed I’d gone to sleep in. One end of the tie was still hot around my wrist, the other draped across my blanket. It had come loose during the night but had obviously been enough to curb my somnambulism. I stared at the tie for a long time, quietly marvelling at how simple the solution had been and thanking the anonymous man – Mam’s friend the runner – for handing it to me.

The toilets were empty. I was at the mirror shaving when Westy – from van 57 – entered. His face was drawn,
probably from lack of sleep more than the early hour. Our eyes met and he smiled with all the warmth of an autopsy scar.

‘Hey hey! Row, row, row your boat,’ he sang. ‘I ’member you from school!’

He slapped my back and laughed bourbon fumes in my face.

‘Told you I never forget that stuff. ’Member me? Westy? Dale West? Hey, they were prize pyjamas you were almost wearing last night, Rowie.’

He moved to the urinal and farted as he relieved himself. ‘Mate, you were out of it. My mum thought you were hot. You’ll have to come over this afternoon and stretch out, if you know what I mean. Hey? Fancy a bit of the old Candy on a stick?’

I couldn’t move, but I didn’t have to.

Westy shook, tucked and wiped his hand on his jeans before slapping my back again and flashing a stained grin at me in the mirror. ‘My place is your place, Rowie, okay? Any time.’

He grabbed at his crotch with both hands, adjusted his wares and lurched towards the door. ‘Any time!’

It took a good few minutes for my heart to find its groove again. My breathing was sharp, like that of a wild animal having narrowly escaped a brutal death. I finished my shave in a kind of wide-eyed funk.

The shower drummed on my neck and I rocked beneath its warmth. Had I really spent part of the night in the company of Westy and his mother? Perhaps the tie had failed? Maybe I’d undone it in my sleep? He had no obvious desire to hurt me and that had a jot of affirmation about it.
He imagined I was stoned or drunk or both. Those states were a daily ambition for the crew in van number
57
, so that somehow made me one of them. Unconscious, I’d been at their level. The thought of stretching out with his mother almost made me dry heave into the steam. Whatever really happened, the loss of that particular memory would never be mourned.

The white van quietly burbled in front of the open garage, but nobody answered when I called inside. With my brain still fuzzy, I stood there on the gutter not knowing what to do.

John Barton appeared from the office with his mobile phone to his ear and a grimness about his mien I’d never seen. What upsets you if death is your job? He nodded a greeting and ushered me into the van without a word. He juggled the phone and snapped his seatbelt home. With the phone shouldered against his ear, he took off. The tires squeaked and I gripped my seat as we launched into the traffic. He hustled from lane to lane and out onto the highway, the only clues to the cause of his desperation coming from broken bites of phone conversation.

‘Of course. Yes. I guess that’s to be expected when you’re dealing with an impact of this nature. Thank you, Sergeant. Rest assured we won’t be leaving until our job is complete. My pleasure. Goodbye.’

His phone hit the dash with a crack.

‘This may be one of the few vehicles on the planet where there are actually gloves in the glove box,’ he said. ‘I’m going to need a pair and so are you.’

Surgical gloves. He thanked me, snapped them on and then apologized.

‘Start again. Good morning, Aaron. It
is
good to see you.’

I nodded and squeezed a quarter-smile.

John Barton looked at me strangely. There was an expectant moment; then he said, ‘And you reply, “Good morning, John, good to see you too”.’

‘Good morning, John,’ I echoed. ‘Good to see you too.’

Uneasy chuckles on both sides of the van.

‘You are allowed to stay in the van for this pick-up,’ John sighed. ‘Motor vehicle collisions are the stuff of nightmares for the emergency services and the funeral directors. Chances are we’ll be, quite literally, picking up the pieces.’

‘I’ll be okay,’ I said, and I knew I would be. I could finally see the line drawn in my head. The animal side of death – the gore and the smell and decay – could make me feel sick but not really keep me from doing what was required. The parts of my new job that filled me with abject and irrational fear, that twisted me in all kinds of knots, were the raw emotions of those left alive. It was the living who were the great unknown.

A galaxy of red and blue lights. An ambulance, a fire tanker and several police cars. A truck on the gravel with a mangled metal appendage on its bumper that was more modern art than motorcycle. John opened his window.