Jessica (17 page)

Joe wouldn't say anything and he'd be happy she was alive, but she knows that deep down he would think she'd failed, that she didn't correctly calculate the risks. ‘Girlie, they killed him, didn't they? And he could've killed ya, eh, eh? A waste o' time and effort and now them what did the killing'll think things about you and him. Bad things.' Jessica can hear him clear as a bell, even though she reckons he'd never say such a thing to her face.

She thinks about Jack. What will he say about all this? Earlier she felt he would agree she'd done right taking Billy to the police magistrate at Narrandera. But now she's not so sure. If he's among the men when they come, will he be the one to pull the trigger? The mob would expect it. Will Jack put Billy up against a tree and blast what few brains he has left out of his ugly head? Jack's own self-respect may demand that Billy die by his hand.

But how would Jessica react then? Would she try to defend Billy Simple against the mob, against Jack? If she did, she knows it'd be taken real bad by all who heard of it, not just the drunken mob on horseback, but by folk everywhere. Jessica can hear the gossip in her head:

‘A woman who defends a murderer must have a reason, don't ya reckon? She's ugly and can't get a man what's normal. Hey, wait a minute, maybe them two .
.. ?
What's he say all the time about what Jesus give him? Maybe she's been helping herself on the side? Joe's youngest, she ain't like her older sister. Never did like her much. A proper tomboy, and ya can't trust a woman what dresses like a man, can ya? Dirty little bugger!'

Jessica can see their looks, hear the sniggers from the women at St Stephen's or at the agricultural show. Hester and Meg could never again hold their heads up in polite society.

Again she thinks about killing Billy. She could claim he tried to rape her when she was asleep. She could say she was trying to bring him to justice and also to save him from what the men would do to him — that was true enough. Then he'd attacked her, a madman coming at her in the night.

Jessica isn't even too sure what rape is, or how it is done. It is a word she'd first read in the newspapers when she was ten and. when she'd asked Hester her mother had said it wasn't something a little girl should know about. When she'd persisted Hester sighed and replied that rape was when a man made a baby with a woman he didn't know from Adam.

The young Jessica simply couldn't imagine why a man would want to do that. Almost all the people she knew had too many children as it was. It was hard enough trying to feed the brats they had with their own wives, let alone the kids of someone they didn't know. But when she'd asked Hester why a man would do that, Hester had gotten real cranky and said that all Jessica needed to know about men was not to let one touch her until she was married and never to talk to a foreigner in a railway station.

As Jessica had never been in a railway station and couldn't remember if she'd ever met a foreigner she'd felt pretty safe from this particular version of rape. When she told Joe what Hester had said and asked him was it true, he'd grunted, plainly embarrassed, then, after a while he'd cleared his throat and replied, ‘Yer mother's right, girlie, most men are animals, not just foreigners.' She supposed Joe had to say that because he'd once been a foreigner himself.

Now, at the age of eighteen, Jessica hasn't acquired a lot more knowledge about rape. If men are animals, like Joe says, then they must do it like animals. This thought has preoccupied her greatly. She wonders how a man could rape her if she refuses to go down on all fours in front of him? He'd have to threaten to kill her and she'd have to do it to save her own life. That's what she'll say Billy did, threatened to kill her. He'd be dead and with him being mad and a murderer, there'd be nobody wouldn't take her word for it.

Still and all, she's read about a woman in Sydney who'd been surprised in her bed by a man who'd come through her window one night. She'd kept a knife under her pillow and she'd stabbed him to death in the act of raping her. Jessica has often puzzled about how the woman could stab him with her being on all fours with him behind her and her with her back to him and her hands and knees planted on the mattress. She's concluded that the woman must have done it afterwards. The paper didn't say, just said she'd stabbed him with a kitchen knife.

Jessica now realises that she can't say Billy threatened to rape her. Because it will mean Billy has made her go down on all fours and done
it
to her before she killed him, like the woman in Sydney must have done. Otherwise how can she prove he tried to rape her?

The judge let the woman in Sydney off, but the newspaper didn't say if she'd had the dead man's baby. Jessica doesn't want people thinking she is going to have Billy Simple's baby. That Billy actually did it to her. It would shame Joe something terrible and Hester and Meg could never live such a thing down. Even when she doesn't have the child because nothing happened, people will always say that she
could
have, that he'd done it to her rape or not. They'll point to her and whisper to each other that she'd been raped by a madman and they'll giggle and repeat the thing Billy always said about his gift from Jesus. They'll think, she's had his big thing inside of her. The shame of it might even prevent Meg marrying Jack Thomas, which will cause Hester to banish Jessica to purgatory for a lifetime or even longer. Jessica decides then and there that she definitely can't make rape her reason for killing Billy.

In fact, Jessica knows now that she can't kill Billy Simple in cold blood, come what may. She looks over to where he sits with his back against the boree tree. He's finished his tucker and now holds the empty mug on his lap, as he lies fast asleep with his chin tucked into his shoulder.

He'd never even know if I put a bullet between his eyes, she thinks for the last time. Jessica grins sadly to herself. He is so bloody ugly, but she knows instinctively that he won't harm her, and that he's her responsibility. The poor bugger must have copped so much from those Thomas women over the years to do what he's done.

Jessica has no doubt that Billy will be hanged for what he's done. But it must be done by the law, done fairly and respectable and not by a drunken lynch mob. The least Billy has coming to him after his miserable life is a fair trial. There is terror enough in that, but it isn't as bad as being strung up out here in the bush. Someone ought to speak up on his behalf, say what the Thomas women did to him. It won't help, but at least people will know the murders weren't done in cold blood. They'd know he was provoked real bad. Jessica remembers how fair Billy had been when he dealt with the tar boys the day all this started, four years ago. It's only right that he's treated with some kindness in return, though she knows that before the night is out she may still witness him hanging from the branch of a gum tree or see his big, clumsy body riddled with bullets. Jessica feels the tears starting to well up.

She'd once heard tell of how Ben Hall was gunned down, bullets smashing into him. A terrible picture passes through her mind, it is of Billy lying helpless on the ground looking up at her., his eyes confused. Then of men rushing over to fire point-blank into him, the way they did with Ben Hall, emptying their magazines into him, so they could later claim they'd personally shot him.

Poor bastard can't even make a run for it with that leg of his, she thinks, he'd just stand there facing them. He'd be whimpering, confused, not knowing what was going on, looking over at her, thinking she'd let him down, then looking at them, until the first volley of bullets knocked him down, his chest pumping blood into the warm dust.

The sun goes down quickly out here in the southwest, sinking below the flat horizon like a coin slotting into a money box. Nor does it take the moon long to rise in the eastern sky. By the time they have to move on, a moon two days short of being full is up and the track's easy enough to follow in the moonlight. There's been no sign of the mob, no sound of hooves, and Jessica lets herself hope that they haven't crossed the river tonight. She can barely think straight, she's so bone-tired. Billy is drifting off to sleep beside her, moaning every once in a while. His injured leg stretched out in front of him is clearly giving him pain.

Jessica inspected it before they'd left their last camp.

The horsehair stitches still hold and the wound looks clean enough, though Billy's leg is badly swollen and he'd winced when she'd dabbed fresh iodine over the area of the stitches, even though she'd applied it very gently. She's left the original bandage off to give him some relief. The leg has stiffened and Billy is having great difficulty bending his knee, so she's cut two stout black box saplings the length of his leg and used them as splints, tying one on either side of his damaged leg so that the splints rest on the rail of the sulky's footrest and Billy's leg is stretched rigid out over Napoleon's rump. Under the prevailing circumstances it is the best she can think to do to make the poor bugger feel a mite more comfortable.

The pony seems fresh enough as they continue their journey, and the heat has gone from the air, so Jessica wraps Billy in a blanket and throws one over her own shoulders as well. The surrounding countryside is now ghosted in moonlight, and the only other sounds besides the jangle of Napoleon's harness and the rattle of wheels are the occasional hoot of an owl or the cry of a nightjar. Billy has long since stopped imitating their cries. The further they travel tonight the more confident Jessica grows that the men have not crossed the river.

It is almost midnight when they finally stop for the night. The river, which has been at some distance from them since crossing the punt, has taken a wide loop of several miles and is now only a hundred yards or so from the track. With water for the pony available, Jessica decides here's a good spot to camp for the remainder of the night.

They move to a clump of cypress pines growing from sand dunes near the river, which Joe says are the last traces of what was once a great inland sea. The softer sand makes a good bed for their blankets and is an unstable environment for a snake to make its hole.

Jessica has a . lot of trouble getting Billy down from the sulky. And again, once on the ground he finds it impossible to move on his own, so that he has to put his arm about her shoulders to move a few steps. He then holds onto the trunk of a cypress pine while she spreads his blanket for him. He collapses gratefully down on it with his back propped against the trunk of the tree.

‘Sorry, Billy, I'm too tired to make you something to eat or even make a brew. Tell you what, how would you like a smoke?' Jessica reaches into her pinny pocket for the makings she took from Joe's bedside and rolls Billy a cigarette. She licks the sticky edge of the cigarette paper and hands him the slim tube of tobacco. Billy brings it to his lips and Jessica lights it for him and goes about the business of setting up for the night.

She unharnesses the pony and lowers the sulky shafts to the ground. Then she reaches for the Winchester and slings it over her left shoulder together with the water bag. A rifle isn't ideal if she should come upon a snake, but she tells herself it's better than nothing, though Joe would disagree. ‘If you ain't got a shotgun use a stick or an axe, girlie. You got Buckley's of making a head shot with a rifle, even if it's a repeater.' But Jessica hasn't got a stick and thinks about going back for the axe, but decides bugger it, she's too tired to bother. She keeps a sharp eye out in the bright moonlight, though, as she leads Napoleon down to the river to drink.

On her return she finds that Billy has finished his smoko. His eyes are closed and his lips are moving, and in his hands are his rosary beads, which he pushes along the string awkwardly as he mumbles his prayers. Jessica swallows the lump in her throat as she wonders how it's all going to end for Billy Simple.

She lets the pony have his nosebag of oats and hobbles him for the night. She pours a mug of water for Billy, then refills the water bag and hangs it from its place at the rear of the sulky so that the condensation through the canvas will cool it overnight. Finally she ties the tucker basket to the highest branch she can reach on a cypress pine in case a fox or a dingo comes sniffing around the camp while they're asleep and jumps up onto the sulky to steal what's left of the bacon.

Jessica brings the mug over to Billy, along with their blankets for the night. ‘Here, Billy, drink some water,' she commands, interrupting his prayers. Billy opens his eyes as though startled to see her, then he takes the tin mug and drinks greedily, water spilling from the sides of his mouth and running down his chin and neck. Finally lie hands the mug back to her.

Jessica sits down beside Billy and wraps the blanket about him. ‘Good night, Billy, sleep tight,' she says to him, touching him lightly on the cheek with her free hand and then settling herself under the other blanket, the Winchester next to her on the ground.

Billy's eyes fill suddenly with tears at her touch and he begins to sob quietly, the rosary beads resting in his lap. Jessica wonders to herself how long it's been since someone has wished Billy Simple goodnight. ‘You're a good boy, Billy,' she says quietly and, bending, kisses him lightly on the cheek.

Billy looks up at her from under his hat. He sniffs and then says in a sob, ‘Billy
not
a good boy! Billy bad boy, Jessie. You shoot him tonight, eh!'