Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 11, Issue 3 Read online

  ‘No,’ Bishop said.

  ‘Why not?’

  He picked at a sore on his lip. ‘Father worked the missions. Know it near all by heart.’

  ‘Where’s your father now?’

  ‘Dead,’ Bishop said.

  The man kept his eyes on the road. ‘My mother gave me that bible. She used to say people are born good, but sometimes need a little guidance.’

  The man changed gears, and the engine of the old vehicle sputtered. In the back seat the woman said something in her half-sleep, then tugged her seatbelt loose and rolled over.

  ‘What happened to your hand?’ the man asked him.

  Bishop’s right hand was missing a pointer and middle finger. ‘Accident,’ Bishop said. ‘Rifle backfired,’

  ‘Ever shoot again?’

  Bishop stared out the window: a fallen jetty rose from the frothing swell, wood rotten and salt-blackened. In the sand nearby there sat a rowboat waiting to be launched again. Beach grass grew long and tangled between the slats of it—a still moment, echoes of a choice once made.

  ‘Do you believe in God?’ Bishop asked.

  The man did not respond for some time. ‘There are days I do,’ he said. ‘There are days.’

  In the van’s rear view mirror, thermals rose from the bitumen—the shapes otherworldly, like spectres following in the vehicle’s wake.

  As the light waned and the ocean clouds grew dark and sparse, they pulled over into a flat stretch of grassland.

  The man stepped out of the driver’s side, and said: ‘This is perfect.’

  A ghost gum stood in the middle of the open field—towering and ancient, the wayward branches peeling bark like a snake sheds skin.

  The woman walked towards the roots of the gum, and sat in the branched shadow it cast across the scrub. As she watched on, Bishop helped the man collect kindling from the bracken that grew wild in the field. In his peripheral he could see her put a hand to her stomach and rub gently.

  ‘We’re going to be parents,’ the man told him.

  Bishop picked up a thin branch, cracked it across his raised knee.

  They found a collapsed wombat hole near the van, and they used the hollow as a fire pit. When the flames had finally settled, they sat in a circle and warmed open cans of beans and sausages in the coals.

  ‘Getting late,’ the man said. ‘Could stay the night and start again early morning. Got a swag and some blankets we could use.’

  Bishop, with rucksack by his side, watched ash rise from the fire and lilt in the air above them.

  The man continued: ‘Bad stretch of road out here. Best to stay put, I reckon. People take corners too sharply in the dark and they end up ass over end in the drink.’

  ‘Or worse,’ the woman added.

  ‘Too right,’ the man said. ‘Strange place this is. Bad history going all the way back to the settlers. I can tell you about seven or eight murders in the last few years alone. Hell, one happened just back the way we came. Man and woman found in a ditch by the road, right in the middle of town. Car missing, money gone. Can only hope it was quick.’

  ‘Police there are no help either,’ she said. ‘They do nothing to make it safe. Just sit in their offices all day.’

  The man nodded. ‘My dad was a copper. Used to tell me horror stories about working Brisbane back in the day. Detectives would roam the Valley shaking down anyone who didn’t look right. Bodgies, widgies. Sometimes they would lock up your kind for days at a time. No reason for it. Just didn’t want them walking the streets. Rotten bunch, they are. ’

  Dusk slowly settled into night around them, and beyond the mangroves a curlew began to wail—pained and lonely in the dim.

  The man searched for something in the pocket of his shirt. He brought out a rollie and lit it. When he offered it to the woman, she shook her head and began to speak: ‘When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to tell me a story,’ she said. ‘She told me that in places of sadness an animal would be born. Dziecko o Kainie she would call it. A child of Cain. It lived off the sad, drank it like we drink water. So we had to be good little dzieci and do as we were told, otherwise it would come into this world and get us.’

  The man blew smoke from his nostrils, nodded. More curlews joined the call, the sound now a dissonant chorus.

  ‘You trust me?’ Bishop said. ‘Out here alone?’

  Both of them said they did.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  The man just smiled at him, the whites of his teeth incised by the flickering light of the fire.

  Bishop awoke to a starless sky. Something close to him was growling. The sound was guttural, rattling with sputum. Beyond the circle of light cast by the dying embers, he could see movement. At first it appeared to be the silhouette of an animal circling the ring of their makeshift camp. But, as it moved, the shape shifted and began to stand—walking on two legs like a person. Briefly, tenuously, it had the dark face of a man. The growling started to rise and fall in volume, crashing and receding like waves against stone.

  A dream, Bishop thought. A dream.

  He turned under the blanket. In the half-light he could see the man and woman on the other side of the fire pit. The woman was on all fours, her shirt unbuttoned and her breasts dangling and glistening with sweat. She moaned softly as, from behind, the man held her thighs and pulled her closer. His face was tight, mouth forming silent words as if in prayer.

  Bishop closed his eyes, let sleep drown him.

  The morning air was cold, all colour dimmed by the grey cumuli swirling on the horizon. Bishop stoked the dead coals with a piece of leftover kindling; his breath ragged, steaming.

  He undid the canvas straps of his rucksack and brought out each component of the rifle. There was a metallic snip as he inserted the trigger grouping into the oiled wood, but the couple did not stir from sleep.

  Bishop stood up. The blanket at his feet was painted with dirt and grass, the material stretched like sinew—a mantle of an older lineage.

  The man opened his eyes to find Bishop standing above him: face hidden by snarled black hair, rifle in his hands. Around his shoulders he wore a blanket tied in a knot at the throat. The haggard material was draped like a clerical vestment. When the man took in the visage of what stood before him, he lay motionless.

  ‘Please,’ he whispered.

  Bishop was silent. He eyed the sleeping woman.

  The man continued: ‘Please, don’t.’

  Bishop lifted the rifle, looked down the sights and aimed at the man. The stock was in his marred hand and the remaining fingers sat below the trigger guard.

  ‘There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain,’ Bishop said, ‘for the old order of things has passed.’ The tendons beneath the flesh of his arm tensed, but the rifle was silent. No finger sat upon the trigger.

  Despite this, the man still flinched. ‘I have some money in the van.’

  Bishop was silent. The tightening in his arm grew faster and faster, like a piston gaining momentum.

  ‘God, no,’ the man said, voice louder.

  Beside him, the woman began to stir. When she awoke and saw Bishop, she let out a scream. The sound was loud in the silence of the new morning and crows broke from the upper boughs of the gum, skeletal branch tips shaking in the wake of their flight.

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