Bitterwood, 1930
‘Why did Warra die?’ Orah demanded. ‘He never hurt anyone.’
They were sitting in the orchard, on the bench beneath the cherry tree. The dying afternoon light lingered high above them in the treetops, but here below, the cool fingers of night had already begun to gather.
Edwin cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know.’
Orah’s gaze lifted, and for a while, she seemed mesmerised by something that lay out of sight in the densely growing trees at the far edge of the orchard. ‘He could see himself in the land and sky,’ she murmured. ‘Like looking in a mirror.’
Edwin felt the need to respond, to say something about Warra’s intelligence, his kindness, his honesty, his capacity for hard work – but the burden of the boy’s loss seemed suddenly unbearably heavy. He shut his eyes. ‘A shame,’ was all he said. ‘A terrible shame.’
Orah bowed forward, pressing her fingertips into her eyes. ‘He saved my life. But I couldn’t save his.’
‘It wasn’t your fault, Orah. There was nothing you could have done.’
She looked at him sharply. ‘Mr Burke should hang.’
‘We’ve no proof it was him.’
‘He should be punished.’
Edwin sighed, and then nodded.
Her voice rang of defeat. ‘He won’t, though, will he?’
Strange, how she reminded him of Clarice. Her loyalty, her instinct to protect those she loved; yet she had a strange fragility, as though she clung to life by a thread. He had begun to see Clarice in her gestures too, in the way she walked, the way she fixed her hair on the side, the way she screwed up her nose when she laughed. Had she always been that way, or had she fallen under Clarice’s spell, unconsciously emulating Clarice in the way that every daughter learned from her mother?
She was watching him expectantly. His heart clenched. He groped for words, finding only a short quotation his mother had favoured.
‘Sin makes its own hell.’
Disappointment registered in Orah’s eyes. She looked away quickly, as if embarrassed for him.
Edwin had seen that look before, many years ago, a look bordering on pity. He’d been sitting in the mud with his back against the trench wall, staring fixedly at – a button, he recalled suddenly, a shiny brass button fallen in the mud, its grey thread still attached like a torn-out hank of hair. The captain had been calling his name. He had dragged his eyes away from the button, but only for a moment . . . Just long enough to register the gleam of contempt in the man’s eyes.
He blinked away the memory to find himself alone on the bench. Shadows lapped at his feet, and as dusk began to settle, the ocean’s roar seemed loud, the waves crashing in time with his pulse. He stood stiffly and walked further down the hill. He could see the grassy mound, beneath which lay the icehouse. He thought of its cool dark passageways, its blind silence, and he drew strength from it. He had only intended to look, but then Orah’s words rang around him again, accusing.
Burke should hang for what he did . . .
He rattled the keys from his pocket, weighing them in his hand. Men like Jensen Burke saw themselves as untouchable, immune to the laws that other, lesser men abided by. He had been that way in France – young and bullish, full of his own importance. He and Ronald had been thick, two of a kind; swaggering among the men like lords, quick to jeer and point the finger at anyone they considered beneath them – Aboriginal soldiers, or those under-fed diggers of smaller stature, or bookish loners like Edwin . . .
He should be punished.
Later, in the central chamber of the icehouse, Edwin lifted the iron grate from the drainage culvert and reached for the wooden box concealed inside it. He prised open the lid. His old service revolver gleamed in the lantern light, still smelling faintly of oil and cordite. His mind conjured the image of young Warra lying in the bush, his blood leaking away into the dirt; the senseless waste, the sheer horror of loss seemed, in that moment, unbearable. In his ear, a tiny mosquito-like buzz.
For the love of God, hold your fire . . .
He swatted away the buzz, clicked open the barrel. Took six rounds from a small carton at the bottom of the box, and loaded them into the chamber. Then he hurried back through the icehouse, out into the cold air of the night, and towards the garage.
Stern Bay, 1930
Jensen Burke stepped from the shadows of the barn. He was tall and stringy, red-faced with a thick neck. If he was surprised to see Edwin, armed or otherwise, he failed to show it.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked gruffly.
Edwin hesitated. The sound of the other man’s voice sent him reeling back through time. A gravelly drawl, spoken with just the right hint of nastiness that had once turned Edwin’s legs to jelly. Edwin gritted his teeth. He wasn’t that scared kid any more, and Jensen was no longer his captain.
He raised his weapon. ‘A boy was shot last week. On your land. I believe you know something about it.’
Burke’s jaw began to work from side to side, and he sent a glance across the green paddock towards the farmhouse.
‘Nothin’ to do with me.’
‘You’re wrong. It has everything to do with you. Especially since you’re the one who shot him.’
‘You can’t prove anything.’
‘I don’t need to.’ Edwin lowered his voice and stepped closer. He was now little more than an arm’s length away. He noticed, as though viewing himself from outside his body, that he was strangely calm. ‘I know it was you, Burke. I can see the guilt written all over your ugly face.’
Edwin thumbed the firing pin, heard the neat click as it locked into place. Burke took a few stumbling steps back.
‘Just a minute,’ he said, pushing his palms against the air as though to ward Edwin away. ‘You can’t come here threatening me.’
‘That boy was part of my family.’
‘So what?’ Burke’s voice turned raw. ‘He was thieving my stock. I’ve got every right to defend what’s mine.’
Edwin could smell the man’s sweat. It jogged a memory. Jensen Burke after the war, crouched over Edwin’s prone body, his knuckles slick with blood, his big fists pounding and pounding until Edwin blacked out.
‘Those kids weren’t doing any harm, and you know it.’
Burke’s face crumpled into a grimace. ‘They were trespassing.’
‘They were on their way to see their people. Harmless kids. One of them witnessed the whole thing. And she’s keen to tell the authorities what she saw.’
Burke’s eyes grew small, his mouth turned down. He made a coughing noise in the back of his throat, and then, without warning, lunged at Edwin, swinging his fist. Edwin was ready. Thrusting the weapon forward, he drove the mouth of the barrel into Jensen’s throat and backed him against the barn wall.
‘You’ll pay for what you did to that boy.’
Burke tipped back his head, his eyes wide. ‘What are you planning to do,’ he rasped. ‘Put a bullet in me . . . the way you put one into your brother?’
‘It’s a tempting idea.’
‘You wouldn’t have the guts.’
Edwin slackened his grip, lowered the gun. ‘We’ll see.’
Burke moved away, rubbing his throat. ‘If I get so much as a whiff of interest from the cops, I’ll go straight to Clarice. Tell her what sort of man you really are, Briar. I’ll tell her what you did.’ He coughed and wiped his mouth. ‘Poor bloody Ronald, what did he ever do to you?’
Edwin disengaged the firing pin. He tried to back away slowly, as though with confidence, but Burke’s words struck at him, filling his veins with ice.
‘You know nothing about it.’
Burke was trembling now, his big hands fallen limp at his sides.
‘She loved Ronald, you know,’ he said almost regretfully. ‘Really loved him. She only married you out of pity.’
Edwin had heard enough. He turned to go, but then looked back over his shoulder.
‘One dark night I’ll be waiting.’ He spoke quietly, but his words echoed in the stillness with chilling authority. ‘It might be tomorrow. Or I might let you sweat it out for another fifty years. But I promise you this, Jensen. You’ll pay for what you did to that boy. However long it takes, in the end, I’ll make sure you pay.’