Happy as Larry (27 page)

‘
Two-seven-nine. Copy?

' Constable Tomlinson adjusted the volume at his hip and excused himself, stepped away two paces and spoke into his microphone. ‘Two-seven-nine. Go ahead.'

‘
Dave, we've just had a call reporting an incident on the
highway three Ks east of the Cradle Creek road exit. There's
been a fatality. You in a position to attend?

' Denise grabbed Mal's sleeve.

‘No, Gary, we'll have our hands full here for a while. Can you go, Rob?'

Three seconds of gravid silence and then another voice crackled through.

‘
I'm on it
.'

Mal took his wife's hand and led her behind the four-wheel drive to the motorbike. They rolled it in the darkness, down the hill away from the atrocity. When they were well clear, Mal kicked it to life. ‘Hurry,' he said.

Denise hurried. ‘Do you think it's Larry? It's not Larry, is it?'

Mal couldn't have answered even if he'd wanted to.

Denise's nails clawed at Mal's waist. They'd stopped some distance from the strobing police car but neither moved for some time. A policeman stood beside a white campervan, talking to its driver.

‘Come on,' Mal said as he removed his helmet. ‘There's only one way to know.'

Denise struggled with her helmet and had to jog to catch up with her husband.

She took his hand. He squeezed.

They startled the policeman and the driver.

‘Ah, sorry. You can't go down there,' the policeman said. It was meant to sound authoritative but Denise could sense the cracks in his demeanour. Her free hand was shaking. What would it take to unsettle a cop?

‘It's our son,' Mal said. ‘We think he might . . .'

The driver whimpered and covered his mouth, turned away.

The policeman shifted feet. ‘I wouldn't recommend . . . It's just that . . .'

‘We need to know,' Denise said. Her words were resolute in spite of the fear.

The cop was still for a moment, then he nodded and pointed down the highway. ‘Constable Jefferies will look after you. Down there with the torch.'

Mal and Denise ran but didn't let go of each other. As they drew closer to the arc of flashing red lights that marked the scene, their grip tightened. Another police car arrived. And another. And an ambulance, sirens mute.

Constable Jefferies' torch beam spilled over a mess of limbs that barely registered as a human form. Without the clothing, it would be another pile of roadkill waiting for the flies.

It was the clothing that began dousing Mal's doubts and fuelled his hope. They weren't Larry's jeans. Larry didn't own a belt like that. The body rested on a canvas of its own blood. So much blood. The white line on the roadside glowed pink beneath it.

Bright light shone in their eyes. ‘What are you doing here?' Constable Jefferies barked. ‘You can't be here. This is . . .'

‘Our son,' Mal said. ‘We thought it might be our son.'

The light swung back to the corpse. ‘Sorry,' he said.

‘Is it?'

‘No,' Denise said. ‘I know who it is.'

As soon as she said that, Mal realised. The face was unrecognisable but the hair was mostly intact. Not their son's hair. The puckered burn scars on the brow were the final clue.

‘Clinton Miller,' Denise said. She tried to hide her relief. ‘Lives near us on Condon Street.'

If Larry's nemesis is dead, Mal thought, where does that leave our son?

‘Larry?' he shouted. It was out of his lips before he could rationalise. ‘Larry!'

He walked into the traffic like a madman, Denise stumbling behind and gripping his fingers.

‘Larry?' she yelled.

Maybe she could feel it, too? That clawing desperation.

They crossed the road and looked hard into the dark. ‘Larry?' Mal hollered.

In the silence, a miracle unfurled: luck or deliverance or something ancient and instinctual, animal and pure. They would later agree it was a sound they heard, but neither could describe it. In reality, all they could hear was traffic. There was no way they could have heard their son die.

But they did.

They charged down the slope in the direction of the sound. The grass had been flattened and passing headlights revealed a broken trail that led to the fallen shape of their son.

His skin was cold.

STICK

O
NE MINUTE THE
pain was there, the next it was gone. One minute his body was one big knot of struggle, then it was at peace. Dark, quiet peace. He knew that feeling: a sigh before sleep in a cool, clean bed, the warm weightlessness of the bath, or the last mouthful of his mother's fish curry. It was contentment in its most undiluted form. But the dark was not dark for long, and then the silence was sprinkled with something that sounded like distant wind chimes. Colours appeared like the sheen on the surface of wet oil, grew more vivid until Larry's mind was ablaze with the whitest light, the air around him silky and opalescent. He'd been in this place before, only something was different. He felt a presence, as if someone was watching him. He had a sense of standing on solid ground, of something being dropped near his feet. As his mind began to adjust to the glare, the colours merged to form shapes.

Another
clunk
near his feet.

A slowly wagging tail, a rusty coat. Gilligan had a stick.

He crouched and cooed with disbelief. He patted the fur and it seemed real and puppy-soft. He ruffled the dog's head and hugged his neck, but Gilligan was rigid with intent.

Gilligan picked up the stick and dropped it again.

Larry grabbed it and threw it hard into the light.

The dog disappeared in a panting gallop.

‘Nice throw,' came a familiar voice.

Larry turned to see a figure standing beside an old front door. The man's face was painted clown but Larry knew the smile underneath.

They hugged on the doorstep and the familiar smell of the old man's clothes made Larry breathe deep.

The old man chuckled with delight. ‘Sorry, Larry,' he said. ‘We're not ready for you yet. Come back again later.'

Larry could only laugh.

Vince smiled and backed against the door.

GOODBYE

L
ARRY RODE TO
Jemma's funeral in a wheelchair on loan from the hospital. His father pushed, his mother's Sunday shoes
clock clock clock
ed on the footpath beside him. She had her hand resting on Mal's. They were in no hurry.

It had rained overnight and the air felt soupy. Larry felt like a little kid in a pusher, minus the teddy bear and lollipop. His arm was in a sling to reduce its movement and it still hurt to breathe, but he could have walked. His parents had insisted, and he rode in the wheelchair for them.

Larry's skin tingled as they rolled to a stop at the base of the church stairs. He shuffled forward in his seat and his mother took his good arm.

‘Wait,' boomed a voice. ‘Let me help you.'

The red-eyed man in the suit hurried down the stairs as if he'd been waiting for them.

‘Let me,' the strange man said, and scooped Larry out of the wheelchair.

His parents had no time to protest. The man carried Larry carefully up the stairs.

‘Guillermo's already here,' he said. ‘We saved you and your parents a spot down the front with him.'

‘Thank you,' Larry said, confounded.

The man sat Larry on a pew. It was his eyes that gave him away, and Larry's breath caught.

Christopher Holland looked like a different man without his beard.

Guillermo took Larry's good hand and held it to his face.

‘I'm sorry, Larry,' he whispered. ‘Sorry for ever doubting you.'

Larry squeezed his fingers. ‘That's okay,' he said.

The truth had found its way.

He loved Guillermo but was
in love
with Jemma.

The truth had found its way, skipping like a flat rock from the phone they found with Jemma's shoes all the way back to Clinton's bedroom and the stolen mobile the police discovered under his mattress.

The truth had found its way.

Jemma was dead, Larry knew. He'd seen her in death, but sometimes life twisted like the plot of a mini-series. Sometimes the heroes only appeared to die. ‘To be continued' might bring them back to life. They could have lived happily ever after; he'd loved her like that. But there was no nick-of-time antidote or miracle cure for Jemma. Hers was a nature-documentary death, animal and cruel. He wondered if her dying happened in burnished light like his own. Death was grace. Life was the dream. Heaven or hell – you choose.

After the service, Mal and Denise helped Larry back down the stairs. One step at a time. At the bottom, Larry wrestled with his sling and drew them both into a soap-opera hug. From the inside it wasn't cheesy at all, and was as much about beginnings as it was about ends. A bridge had been crossed. Not every family survived, but this one would.

For the moment, just here, Larry was happy.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T
HIS BOOK WOULDN'T
have made it out of my head without the generosity of the Australia Council for the Arts Literature Board. Thanks to the visionaries at Allen & Unwin who, with the patience of Zen monks, carved this story from a chunk of raw manuscript: Eva Mills, Sarah Brenan, Elise Jones and Sonja Heijn. Bruno Herfst: thanks for the clever cover – pages become a book wrapped in your magic. To my long-suffering family I owe a huge debt of gratitude – those long months when I turn into a broody wombat are necessary and I thank you for your love, patience and understanding.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I
IRONICALLY, SCOT GARDNER
started his working life as a gardener. One literal translation of his name is ‘wandering flower lover', which may sound a bit sissy but really isn't that far off the mark. He lives in the mountains in regional Victoria, wanders around a bit and has been known to smell a flower or six. Sissy. He also likes venomous snakes and improvised fi reworks. Grrr.