The Legend of Winstone Blackhat (21 page)

There weren’t many gumboots left but Jemma found a pink pair with yellow butterflies on them and Winstone got some new tracksuit pants and he and Jemma both got a Chupa Chup on the way out and they crossed the wet car park flinging up the dark grit with their shoes. They went to the bank and the
supermarket and outside the supermarket Winstone saw Tara and Sara-Jane and they saw him and they hid and Winstone looked at Jemma but she was busy stirring a puddle with the toe of her new gumboot and he was pretty sure she hadn’t noticed.

Debbie drove home and Jemma went to sleep in the back and ahead the grey sky was banded with rain and the hills stained dark and rain misted the fence wires and seeped from the black gravel verge and Winstone was still thinking.

In the night the wind got up and came howling through the hedge like a coal train bound for the coast and it slammed against the roof of the house and gave it a shake and the iron moaned and outside the windows the bushes twisted and clawed at the glass as if bent on escaping the storm. The noise woke Winstone and it woke Jemma too because he heard her start to sniffle and pant and the thud of her feet on the floor of the hall and he heard Todd’s voice say it’s okay, Jem, just the wind, and Debbie say go on, Jemma, go back to sleep and you’re too big for our bed now.

Jemma’s feet went back up the hall but she didn’t go back to sleep and he could hear her whimpering over the noise of the storm and then the first thunderclap rolled round the hills and he waited and no one got up and through the wall he heard Todd snore.

He went quietly so he didn’t wake Debbie and Todd and he closed Jemma’s door behind him and sat on her bed in the small amber circle of the nightlight and put a hand to the lump under the covers. It’s okay, he said. Jim-jam, shush.

Jemma poked her head out from under the duvet. I don’t like it Winson, she said.

I know. I’m here, it’s okay.

I don’t like it. The trees are trying to get in.

It’s the wind, that’s all.

Will you stay with me?

Okay.

Jemma lifted the corner of the duvet. You can be here.

Winstone climbed in and Jemma got close and he tucked the duvet around them both. He held her against him squirmy and soft and smelling of Debbie’s new apple shower gel and he patted her back and stroked the hair falling over his hands and she snuffled herself off to sleep and her quick little breaths fluttered in and out on his neck and then he slept too.

He dreamed about Tara and in the dream he sank his hand into Tara’s silky brown hair and grabbed it and pulled it hard and pushed Tara down and he woke up angry and hot.

Ow, Jemma said. You’re pinching me.

He relaxed and felt her warm downy skin swell under his fingers. Sorry, he said, and Jemma rolled over and pressed her back to him and he stroked her arm where he’d hurt it. The wind had died and the room was getting light.

Prrr, Jemma said. I’m a pussycat. Prrr.

She’d curled into a ball and he stroked her hair again and all the way down the side of her to her feet and she lifted her chin and he rubbed her throat.

Good pussycat.

Prrr.

Nice pussycat.

Prrr.

Jemma rolled onto her back and held her arms and legs in the air and Winstone rubbed her stomach. She flopped over again. Do you want to play cowboy and cowgirl now?

Not now, he said. It’s too early for cowboy and cowgirl. It isn’t morning yet.

When I come to school can we play cowboy and cowgirl then?

When you come to school you’ll play with the other kids your age.

Do they know how to play cowboy and cowgirl?

No.

Jemma thought about that for a while. Winson, she said.

What?

Who will you be playing with?

Where’s that pussycat gone? he said. There was one here just a minute ago.

Prrr, said Jemma. Prrr.

That was the morning that the rain cleared and Glentrool began to dry out and Jemma asked him to draw her a calendar so they could cross off all the days that were left until she started school.

COOPER AND THE KID
rode the high yellow crust of the world and the world turned under their horses’ hooves and their shadows stretched as with each fall of their feet they moved further from the sun. When they came to the canyon rim in the hours after dawn the wind was up and the earth around and the sky above were cold and hard as the barrels of a gun. They rode wound and buttoned against the cold and the light was behind them and anyone watching them come would have seen preceding their dark muffled shapes on the sky the first swirling rumours of snow.

In that place at that hour the only colours were blue and grey in all of their gradations but when the Kid stepped down and squatted and blew at the blackened carcass of fire in the rocks it flared red as the fugitive sun. He looked back at Cooper.

Hot enough to cook coffee, he said.

Cooper scanned the country ahead. You figure their breakfast’s still warm?

The Kid stood and brushed the white feathers of ash from his knees. We got em, he said.

Yeah, Cooper said. We got em.

The Kid remounted and they rode forward and sat their horses on the rim of the tableland looking down into the canyon.

You see anythin?

Not yet, Coop said. But they’re down there.

Yep, the Kid said. Just one way they could go.

As they rode the only trail down from the ridge they saw small signs of riders passed before them and in the hour after noon they came to a wider place of flattened grass and at the side of the trail the doused embers of a fire with coffee grounds steaming upon it. They rode on without stopping and a little time later from the top of a bluff where the trail curved back on itself they looked down and saw two horses below them.

What if they look back? said the Kid.

Well then Kid, said Coop, I’ll guess they’ll see us comin.

They came out of the black and pregnant sky to the shaded canyon floor where the river curdled and all colours were ghosts of themselves and ahead among the grey coils of water and sand they saw their prey and before nightfall they’d ridden them down.

The riders had rested up for the night at the foot of the canyon wall behind a stand of willow. When they saw the fire in the trees up ahead the Kid and Cooper stepped down and led their horses along the sand where the horses’ hooves would make no sound until only a braid of shingle lay between them and the riders’ camp and there in the last fading minutes of dusk they squatted on their boot heels and watched the light of the fire move between the bare willow stems and the riders’ horses graze the bank.

You sure you wanna do this? Coop said.

I got to do it, the Kid said.

Well then, said Coop. I guess you do.

If I mess up, the Kid said. If he’s fastern me.

He aint fastern you, Coop said. An you won’t mess up.

But if I do.

I’ll be there, Cooper said.

You’ll finish him off, the Kid said. So it don’t never happen again.

I’ll finish him off real good for you, Kid. I swear.

The Kid pulled the six-shooter from his belt and he looked at it in his hand. He turned it sideways and spun the chamber and checked it and spun it again and he slid the gun back in his holster and felt the weight of it there and its distance from his hand.

You fixin to give him a chance? Cooper said.

I’ll give him a chance.

Kid.

What is it, Coop?

Maybe he had his chances.

Yeah, the Kid said. Maybe he did.

The Kid stood. He pressed his hand to the palomino’s head and felt its warm broad bones and he touched the horse’s nose and its forehead. Then he breathed the cold night in and sent it steaming back and he set out walking.

As the Kid walked he hitched his coat back behind his belt and his hand curved above the grip of his gun and the waiting metal spoke to the skin of his palm as if some current passed between them. Cooper followed him and he thought the noise of their boots on the stones would rouse the camp but it did not. He looked back at Coop and they motioned to each other and circled the tangled willow belt to come at the open ground behind and the Kid could hear Coop’s steps and his steps and he could hear his blood and the river running.

In the clearing the fire popped and yellow sparks fled up into the night and were extinguished. The light of the fire licked the toes of boots that were dusty and shabby and holed and above them the sickle-blade brim of a hat and beyond hat and boots the figure seated there was on the night just a shape of greater darkness.

Across the fire the Kid stepped slowly out of the dark and he stood and the shifting orange light moved over him head to toe
and it glinted on the pale skin of his face and the silver buckle of his belt and on his white hat and his gun.

Through the swarming sparks the sickle edge of the rider’s hat rose but the eyes below it remained in darkness.

Firelight flanked the Kid’s face and the point of his jaw and his jaw moved as he wetted his mouth down to speak and when he called out the rider’s name his voice rang across the fire and echoed through the canyon.

Winstone!

Jemma screamed when he did it. He wasn’t expecting that. That it could hurt. It was just his hand but he pressed too hard and Jemma screamed and it gave him a jolt and he didn’t think he just clamped his other hand over her mouth. Shush, he said. It’s okay Jim-jam. Shush.

But she was wriggling and trying to bite at his hand and he didn’t know what to do next and then the light burst on and Debbie was standing there in her dressing gown in the doorway. She screamed too. First she screamed get away from her and then she screamed Todd and everything happened fast after that, Todd stumbling in half panicked and half still asleep and Winstone plucked from the bed and flying off down the hall connecting with doorknobs and shelves on the way and next thing he knew he was on the laundry floor with Todd standing over him and Todd was shaking and had a look in his eyes Winstone knew and it was time to decide which to cover first, head or balls. He figured Todd for a head man.

What were you doing? Todd said, and it didn’t sound like him but a person lost and dazed and his voice was all broken up and he said it again like he hadn’t heard it come out the first time. What were you
doing
? She’s four years old.

Winstone stayed in a ball on the floor with his knees to his chest and his arms braced over his head and he watched Todd’s
face from the gap between his elbows. He did not tell Todd that Jemma was about to turn five or that age didn’t count when you loved someone and he did not say that he’d wanted to make Jemma happy.

What’s wrong with you? Todd said. It’s the worst thing. What you were doing to her. The worst way you can hurt a little kid. It’s sick.

Winstone lay looking up at Todd and he thought about Marlene. He thought about the exact and particular chord her head struck, formica and flesh and bone and the resonant space inside the bone, and he thought of the drum of her feet in her dirty socks on the kitchen floor. He hadn’t known there were worse things than that. He hadn’t known but he looked at Todd’s face and he could see that there were and it didn’t make sense but somehow he’d done a worse thing and then he couldn’t help what he did any more and he let go of his head and his balls and he started to cry.

You little piece of shit, Todd said. Behind him the door opened a bit and Winstone could see Debbie’s jandals and feet and the bottom of her pyjamas. Green with little pink and red hearts.

I rang the emergency line, Debbie said. I said no way could he stay here tonight. They’re going to talk to the police. Sort out someone to come and get him.

Winstone thought about who they might be.

I hope they lock him up and throw away the fucken key, Todd said. Do the world a favour.

He needs help, Debbie said.

Help, Todd said, I’ll give him help. I’ll cut his fucken balls off.

Come away.

Jesus Christ.

I know. Come on. Debbie opened the door wide to let Todd
out and Winstone could see her face all white and strange and she looked him over as if to memorise his shape so there’d be no more mistakes and she’d know it for what it was next time she saw it. We took you into our home, she said. Then she turned away and Todd followed her out and shut the door and Winstone heard the big old iron key snick around in the lock on the other side.

He waited a while to see what would happen next and when nothing did he sat up and shuffled backwards until he hit the washing machine and he leaned against it. He thought about Jemma. He thought about her frightened and crying and hurt and he thought that he’d never wanted to make her those things and then he thought about all the things Jemma had and the things Jemma was and he wondered if it was true that he hadn’t wanted to hurt her even a bit. He thought that if he held her again it would make it true and he wanted to hold her again just even once hair and skin and the warmth of her and if he could hold her she’d laugh and say Winson it’s okay because it was only a touch and how could it hurt that bad?

He thought about how the world had been before he got out of bed and walked up the hall into Jemma’s room and he tried to think of some explanation or action or excuse that would put it back that way and for a while it seemed like there had to be one. But he knew there wasn’t and that only the things that didn’t matter could ever be fixed or changed or undone. It seemed a good time for the world to end and he laid his forehead down on his knees and he stayed like that a long time.

When he looked up the world was still there and it hadn’t improved. He thought about the people coming to get him and how long they might be. He imagined red and blue lights slicing up the highway and through the night and sirens waking all of Glentrool to tell them what he’d done and he imagined his face
and the Jacksons’ house on the TV news like Bic’s face and the house in Rahui Bridge had been with the house all covered in police tape and hung up behind the newsreaders for decoration. But maybe it wouldn’t be the ordinary police. Maybe they had a special force for people who hurt little kids the worst way. Maybe they’d make him wear an orange jumpsuit and chains and stick electrodes to his balls.

Winstone wiped his sleeve across his eyes and sniffed the snot back up his nose. He listened. There were no cars on the road and no voices in the kitchen. He got up. Then he looked about him and took the basket of laundry from the top of the washing machine and put it on the floor and rifled through it and took out a hoodie and socks and tracksuit pants and he put those on and picked up his trainers from under the bench and placed them on top of the washing machine and climbed up beside them and opened the laundry window and sat in it and put on his shoes and let himself down on the other side.

He had no plan or destination in mind but to be outside in the undivided dark below the blue rim of the world where nothing was marked out or stood alone. For a while he sat in the ranch house and smelled the familiar smells of the hedge and listened to the wash of the wind and a hedgehog’s shuffle. But he had a feeling that how the sun found him was how he would stay and he didn’t want to be boy in a hedge so he crawled out and started walking.

He started with the half-moon at his back and by the time it overtook him he was crossing the Glentrool Bridge and could no longer see the lights of the Jacksons’ house behind him.

He expected to get caught on the bridge and he sat in the long grass beside the road and looked at it for a long time. The breeze had died and the stars hung cold and he could hear the stream pushing through the stones and occasionally
the rustle of some other outlaw beast abroad in the night as it hid itself from sight. On the other side of the bridge the road dipped off the flood bank and made a sharp right and he thought headlights would maybe show through the trees but he wasn’t sure they would show or if they did whether he’d have enough time to make it back to cover. He thought that if the car came while he was in the middle he might have to jump and he didn’t know if he had the guts for that and besides he’d have to be over a part of the river with water to jump into. He sat and the frogs that had fallen silent at his approach started up again and he sat for a while longer.

He sat and he thought that all the while he sat whoever was coming was getting closer and then he stood up and the frogs fell silent again and he looked at the willow trees on the other side of the bridge and stepped from the roadside onto the wooden footway and started walking.

There was a crust of grey light on the face of the boards and beneath and between and filling the many worn holes in the boards a blackness of water and shadowed stone and as he walked all around him the notes of the river tumbled and rose and through his feet he felt the weight of the current tug at the piles of the bridge inside the pools it had dug around them and he thought that he would not jump.

The headlights came fast and he saw them coming through the willow trees and above the willow trees like a yellow smoke on the night. He was little more than halfway across the bridge and the unbroken beam of the headlights was overtaking the trees and he put a hand to the wooden rail. He looked down and he heard the engine note change as the car mounted the rise and he looked back across the bridge and the smoky light swept up and became two crisp and separate beams and as it did he flung himself down and pressed himself hard to the
boards and the bridge rattled and rumbled and shook and the rumble echoed over the water and under the boards and on the other side of the wooden kerb a ruler’s length from his head the wheels of the car roared by spitting grit and dust and the rush of it snatched at his clothes and for half a second he thought he’d died.

When he could no longer hear the car Winstone got up and brushed himself down and by the time the headlights came back crawling slow he was a mile or more off the road looking down on them from between the bales in Jim Rudabaugh’s hay shed. He watched the car creep away towards Glentrool and he wondered if they had tracker dogs or were maybe going back to get tracker dogs and then he thought about Todd’s dogs waiting for him at four o’clock and him not coming ever again and he knew someone else would feed the dogs but the thought of them waiting stuck in his throat and he had a bit more of a cry.

He felt as if he could maybe cry more but he was too tired to do it right then and so he raised his head and the sky had lightened and the valley below was beginning to grey and he climbed down and splashed his face and had a drink from the water race and then in case of tracker dogs he scrubbed the front of his tracksuit pants where he’d peed in them just a little. The first red stain of the rising sun hit the top of the western range picking out old snow and he stood for a moment bare-legged and cold in the shadowed east and watched the redness creep over hanging valleys and screes and bluffs and run down the pock-marked flanks of the range. Then he put his wet pants back on and climbed the rough face of the stacked hay bales and shifted a few and lay down in the small and scratchy space he’d made and in the seconds before he slept he was pleased with his choice of the Rudabaughs’ shed out of all the possible hideouts
he’d thought about as he’d watched the country go by through the window of the school bus.

He woke to the clunk of the shed’s tin roof and a thick dry heat in the space below. He crawled out of his sleeping cave and sat on the wider hay and through the slit he’d made between two bales for a rifle sight or an eye to be trained he watched the Rudabaughs’ house on the flat at the base of the hill and the Rudabaughs’ car outside the house and the Rudabaughs’ drive and the road. After a while he saw Mrs Rudabaugh come out and get in the car and head down the long drive and he heard the gravel pop. When she reached the road she turned left for Glentrool and then Winstone climbed down the back of the haystack and followed the dark macrocarpa line of the shelterbelt down the hill and walked in through the Rudabaughs’ unlocked kitchen door. He gave some thought to what wouldn’t be missed and he stole four slices of toaster bread and a ring-pull can of spaghetti with cheese and half a twinpack of chocolate chip biscuits. He carried them slung in his hoodie back up the hill and the haystack and sat with them there and wished that he’d thought to steal a spoon.

He shook spaghetti onto some of the bread and used the rest of the bread and his fingers to wipe out the tin and then he ate six chocolate chip biscuits and wondered if he could maybe go back to sleep and it turned out he could and for a long time that was the end of his thinking.

When he woke up he still didn’t have much of a plan except not to get caught and that meant he had to keep moving. So much as he liked the Rudabaughs’ shed he climbed down as soon as the moon got up and he threw the empty spaghetti tin in the water race and he started walking.

He left the road and skirted Glentrool to the east along the dry willow corridor between the river and the floodbank
disturbing nothing but empty bottles and cans in the dark below the trees and once he stumbled over a carton of stubbies and across the paddock a dog started to bark and a woman yelled at it to shut up and otherwise he passed by the town without notice.

The next night he reached the end of the Glentrool Road and stood looking at the highway. It stretched broad and pale east to west with its white lines spanning the poles of the night-shortened world and the sun’s warmth still coming up from the seal and the wind rumbling along it cuffing at Winstone’s ears like a turbulent ghost of the day’s traffic. He had no plan but he looked east down the road and the wind was in his face and he almost thought about Zane but instead he kicked a stone out onto the road and then he kicked another harder. He looked east again and he could think of no reason to turn that way. To the west the moon was picking out the line of the ridge high above the road and the chips in the seal of the road and the loose white shale that ran along either side of the seal and in its light the marker posts were glowing.

He thought of walking that way with the wind at his back and the moon up ahead until he reached the badlands. Outlaw country. He thought of the old road that hugged the western shore of the hydro lake and the iron hills with their arroyos and draws and of Bannockburn and in time walking all the way to the tableland on the far side of the gold rush river canyon and he thought that once he crossed that bridgeless frontier he’d be out of reach of whatever might be coming. He wasn’t sure how he’d cross the river unseen. He thought of a rope or a raft or maybe a place he could jump. Outlaws did that kind of stuff all the time and it always worked out so he wasn’t too concerned.

He walked for two more nights and in the days between them he hid and stole and he was sick and tired of all three and he thought about maybe turning himself in because what was the worst they could do but then he remembered Jemma’s
scream and the look in Todd’s eyes and he kept on walking.

The third night when he came upon the road to the dam the fattened moon was bright enough to see the white painted post of the sign and to read the name on its yellow finger. The name on the sign was a name he knew and behind the sign the stone ramparts of the Rough Ridge Range stood against the night sky like a bandit citadel armoured and glinting steel and he turned up the road for no good reasons beyond having seen the name of the dam on Todd’s map and thinking it would be a place to rest up and that he could reach it before morning.