Tobe burst into tears as soon as we were alone, keening like a fly-blown sheep. Unable to stop myself feeling sorry for him, and hating myself for doing so, I reached through the bars and squeezed his shoulder in a pathetic attempt at comfort.
He grabbed me in an awkward approximation of a hug. I struggled against him when I started to run out of breath.
He collapsed in slow motion and ended up sitting on the floor. He looked defeated, his head hanging low. Dark questions ran through my mind; I couldn’t stop them. Had he been sentenced to death? Was he to be exiled? Were Ruby and I to share his fate, as both accomplices and friends should?
I didn’t ask any of them, instead letting Tobe’s tears run their course.
‘Sorry,’ was all he said, his voice broken, small.
‘She’s ‘right, no need to apologise.’
He looked up at me with red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. He didn’t speak. I started to panic; Tobe wasn’t the type to give in, I had never known him to hit the wall. I stared at him, giving him time to get it together. But he didn’t, and kept sobbing.
I cracked. I asked a stupid question. ‘Tobe, what is it?’
He shook his head, then looked back at the floor and started babbling. ‘He woke up, Bill. He couldn’t see, of course. I made sure of that. But you know what? He didn’t really need to.’
I was lost. ‘Tobe!’
But he kept on. ‘That dog-killing prick—he recognised me, he knew who I was. I should have killed him while you were unconscious, back at the train station. I should have done more than taken his eyes. But I thought that’d be enough.’
‘Tobe!’ I yelled.
He ignored me again. ‘So the bastard wakes up, and the first thing he does is tell the nearest Creep about me. And then that Creep tells the commander …’
‘Tobe!’
‘… and then he comes to visit, all pompous and smug, dangling treason and court-martials and you name it in front of me. Threatening you …’
At that one, I sat down on the desk facing Tobe’s cell, deciding to let his panic run free so that I could get a straight answer.
‘… and threatening Ruby, making me choose between telling you the truth and exile. All for a bit of fun, he said. Knowing that prick, if I chose otherwise, he’d tell you the story once I was gone. That arsehole, he’s probably listening to us right now, laughing it up.’
His torrid stream abruptly ran dry. ‘Bill, I’m so sorry.’ He fell silent, leaving it at that.
‘Tobe?’
He wouldn’t look at me.
‘Tobe, what’s going on?’ I asked again.
‘Don’t you get it?’
I didn’t answer because I didn’t get it, as confused as a roo caught in a bushfire.
‘Fuck, mate, do I have to say it?’
I still didn’t answer.
‘Bill, I was one of them.’
‘You were one of what?’
He raised an eyebrow, waved around the room. Everything started to make sense; I didn’t need him to repeat himself or explain himself. All I needed was a moment to let his words sink in.
But it was as if he needed to say it.
‘A Creep, Bill. I was a Creep.’
And just like that, everything slowly started to numb. Not a frozen-in-amber numb or the numb of deep sleep, but a dulling numb that fell over everything—my body, my feelings, my thoughts. It rendered me a spectator in my own story; all I could do was sleepwalk through it, watching helplessly as my life suddenly made no sense.
I opened my mouth to say something—anything—but nothing came out.
‘Are you happy now?’ Tobe asked.
He looked at me, his eyes cold. I had to look away.
‘Or would you like to know the rest?’ His voice had regained a little of its vinegar.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked stupidly.
Tobe started babbling again. ‘That night when it all turned to shit—when your folks took the easy way out, when we lost her in the dark, when I disappeared—well, I headed to Bendigo. I’d heard about a ruined chemist, thought I might find some antibiotics or sedatives, anything to help ease her pain. I’d barely been gone a day when I got caught in a sweep. Same as we did, Bill, after the bridge fell.’
I said nothing, stared at him blankly. Why hadn’t he told me this before? I expected to feel anger, hate, rage, betrayal. There was nothing but an emptiness, and a feeling that at any moment I might come untethered from the earth and simply drift away.
‘Anyway, those bastards hauled me up here, same as they did to the three of us.’
The thought of Ruby broke my numbness. How would she react to Tobe’s news? Badly, I guessed. Without even rationally thinking about it, I decided to try to keep it from her.
‘You’re a right bastard, Tobe,’ I said. ‘How could you lie to us?’
Once more, Tobe ignored me and kept on babbling. ‘Stuck in this shithole while she was out there suffering, I lost it pretty quick and started putting my hand up for a fight. I wasn’t a man, I was barely out of my teens, I didn’t know how to let go. My anger made me strong—I beat almost everyone I faced.’
I wanted him to be lying; that kind of bloke couldn’t be someone I loved like a brother.
‘The rest of the time, I tried to think of ways of busting out. I made it in the end, but they caught me pretty quick. I figured I was in deep shit, but they’d taken a shine to me—I put three of them in hospital before they took me down, not bad for a scrawny teenager, exactly the kind of tough they wanted. So they gave me a choice.’
‘The commander …’ I said hollowly.
Tobe smiled sourly. ‘Same rank, mate, different bastard. Same kind of bastard, though.’
‘And you chose this?’ I asked, waving around with an arm as heavy as lead.
Tobe frowned. ‘Yeah, I did. Wouldn’t you?’
That broke the numbing wall, tore through the veil of distance that lied to me, told me that everything was okay.
‘I would never become one of them. Never.’
He hung his head. Once again, his voice became a hoarse whisper. ‘Yeah, well, like I said—sorry.’
‘Fuck you.’ I said it to him quietly, hoping that cold anger would hurt him more deeply than hot rage.
‘I guess I deserve that.’
I didn’t reply, didn’t want to mollify him or absolve his guilt. Angry and sad in equal measure, all I wanted were answers. I wanted to know why. If he wouldn’t tell me, then we were done.
‘Why didn’t you go AWOL the first time they sent you out?’
‘And do what? Go home? Mate, I spent almost a year here before I tried busting out. In that time, you’d either worked some magic and fixed up her wounds, or you hadn’t and the gangrene and infection had done their work.’ He looked up at me. ‘I couldn’t face you if she was dead, and I couldn’t face her if she wasn’t.’
He once again lowered his head. I didn’t shed a tear for him. What I wanted was to hurt him as badly as he had hurt me, no matter the cost.
‘But you came back in the end. What happened? One day you just decided to pop in and say g’day? Bit late, don’t you reckon?’
He started to curse me. And then he held his tongue, thinking better of it. ‘I did some bad things, Bill. Some really bad things. And I did them with a smile.’
My face fell, even though some part of me refused to believe what I was hearing.
‘When love’s dead, when it’s gone and gone forever, something has to take its place.’
I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Bullshit. I know you, Tobe. You’re not like that.’
Did I know him?
‘No bullshit, Bill. You can’t imagine what it’s like out there, what it does to you.’
His voice was quiet, collected. Any hope I had that he was merely spinning a yarn disappeared in an instant.
‘You bas …’
He cut me off. ‘I’m not a bad guy, Bill, not by nature. But even when I chose to be one, there were still things I wouldn’t do.’
‘I couldn’t care less!’ I shouted, horrified. ‘Did you hurt people, Tobe? Is that what you did? Were you like those bastards that killed your dogs?’
He ignored me, kept on with a story that fought to be told.
‘One day they put me on the spot. I tried to do what they wanted, that’s how bad I’d become. But something happened, something clicked, and I couldn’t pull the trigger. So, I hauled arse in the middle of the night and went home.’ He looked at me, spread his arms wide. ‘And you know the rest.’ Despite his tears, he still managed a smile.
‘What did you do?’ I asked again.
His smile vanished, so quickly that I thought I must have imagined it.
‘Please, Bill, let it go. I’m not that man anymore.’
And then a deafening roar tore through the air, killing the lights, plunging the cellblock into darkness.
My mouth fell open in what I imagine was a perfectly round O. Struck dumb and blind, for a moment I stupidly wondered whether the darkness was actually a new symptom of the numbness that Tobe’s confession had brought forth. The lights flickered briefly and then darkness returned, convincing me otherwise.
A siren started to sound, loud enough to reach us in the cellblock. Another roar tore through the air.
‘Bill, mate, got a light?’
Of course …
‘You bastard …’ I muttered, unable to help myself.
I shook myself together and fumbled around in my pockets. I pulled out Tobe’s antique lighter then sparked it up. Tobe looked all the worse in its flickering glow—dark shadows pooled under his hollow eyes, the folds and lines of his haggard face were cut deeper than ever, old bruises on mottled skin that was pale from being locked indoors too long.
‘How about a smoke?’ he asked.
With my free hand, I reached into my pocket, pulled out his possum skin pouch, passed it over. It was almost an automatic reflex. I hated myself for it.
‘Cheers.’
‘Tobe?’
‘Hang on a sec, first things first.’
I decided to allow him that, letting him finish rolling some bush tobacco. I held the lighter out, watched him hold the smoke to the flame. I felt a certain satisfaction as he proceeded to cough his guts up.
‘Ugh,’ he groaned, doubled over. ‘I forgot how long it’s been.’
I couldn’t help laughing.
‘Yeah, very funny, thanks a lot.’
I laughed again. Tobe pulled himself together, bent back up, ground his bush tobacco out, tucked the dead nub behind his ear. He looked me in the eye and smiled an easy smile.
It was almost like old times.
‘How about my keys?’ he asked, spoiling the moment. ‘Did you bring them too?’
My gears might grind slowly—sometimes too slowly—but they grind on all the same. Things were starting to make sense: the bits and bobs that he had left me; running into Jacko so quickly, so easily; the deafening roar happening at the same time as we were finally allowed to visit.
The ‘how’ might not have been clear, but the ‘why’ was slowly taking shape.
‘You did this?’ I screamed, waving at the gloom. ‘You’ve been planning this the whole time?’
He didn’t answer me.
‘How?’
Without speaking, he broke my gaze. I turned my back on him, not knowing what I was going to do, only that I couldn’t bear to look at him.
‘Bill!’
Anger and hate flooded through me yet again—I had followed him, as mates do, only to be played the fool. But that’s me, a dickhead to the last.
‘Bill, please.’
I didn’t answer, didn’t turn around.
‘Mate, I know what this looks like. But you have to believe me, I am sorry. That’s why this is happening. I know I can’t make things right, but at least consider it an attempt.’
‘Bullshit.’
The words hung in the air for a moment.
‘Fine, then, enjoy your stay,’ he said. ‘If you hadn’t realised it, I’m not the only one locked in here.’
I thought about it for a moment. Despite everything that had happened, I couldn’t help smiling at the fact that he was still a step ahead of me.
‘You win.’
I carefully sat Tobe’s lighter on the desk, turned back to him, pulled his jangle of keys from my pocket.
‘Good one,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a look.’
I passed the keys through the bars. Tobe thumbed through them, picked out a rusty one that seemed the same as all the others, passed them back. I kept my face blank. I was done with the cellblock; I wanted to get outside so that I could be done with Tobe as well.
I inserted the key into the lock. I was barely surprised when the door sprang open.
‘Wait for my next trick,’ Tobe said. He pushed past me, started rifling through the desk. ‘Aha,’ he said, pulling something from one of the drawers. ‘You beauty.’
He flicked on a torch. I scooped the lighter up, snapped it shut, slipped it in my pocket, another automatic reflex.
‘Here you go,’ he said, passing me a second torch.
I passed him the keys in return, glad to be rid of them, and he hurried to the door. I brought my own torch to life, deciding to let him lead the way. Until we were free of the courthouse, it couldn’t hurt to have a human shield. The thought, bitter as it was, made me feel a little better.
‘Got you,’ Tobe said, finding the right key. He threw the door open, revealing the rough-brick stairwell and the rusty flight of stairs.
‘How?’ I asked again.
‘I worked here, remember? And you know me, always thinking ahead.’
It was such a pitiful explanation. I deserved more, but I knew not to get my hopes up. Everything had changed and I would just have to deal with it.
And so I watched as Tobe thundered up the stairs. I hurried after him, doing my best to keep him in sight, following him into the long corridor that led to the lobby. Like the stairwell and the cellblock, it was dark.
The acrid tang of smoke tainted the air.
‘Come on, Bill,’ Tobe shouted. ‘Or you’ll miss all the fun.’
He was nothing but a bobbing dot of light at the end of the corridor. I picked up my pace, not to please him but because I wanted to get outside as soon as I could, before some Creep stumbled upon me. The lobby grew ever closer; I rushed through the open door.
I came to an immediate halt—my torch was a pitiful thing that barely dented the gloom; there was no sign of Tobe; I was completely exposed; standing out like the proverbial.
And then I was suddenly blinded.
‘Good, it’s you.’
Tobe stopped shining his torch in my face. He stood on the other side of the cluttered room, in front of the doors that led outside. He flicked his torch off and slipped it in his pocket, taking hold of the doorknob.
He looked at me. He smiled wickedly.
‘Come on, Bill, what are you waiting for? Bloody Christmas?’
And then he disappeared through the door.