Detained

“I guess thinking they could build a better life. For ten dollars they got a block of land with no water, sewer or power to it. The services were supposed to come. They never did. But the people were stuck. There was no industry in town, no jobs. They lived in sheds and kit garages and went on the dole. They stole power off the grid, had water when it rained, and jerry-rigged everything else with whatever was to hand.

“The townies called them blockies. Hated them. They were an invading force and they were a drain on the community.”

“Your family were blockies?”

“No, my foster family, the Dunns, they were townies.”

Bo had turned to him, “Show me the house you lived in.”

“Can’t. But I can show you were it was.” Will inclined his head, used his plastered hand to point out the window. “I bought it, razed it, put in the park and gave it to the council.”

Bo got out and walked across the dry grass, stood in the middle of the park, bordered on one side by a brick house and the other by a side street. Will had watched him, thinking of Mrs Dunn. For the two years he’d lived with the Dunns she’d been good to him, patient with him. Helped him learn to read. If Bo had looked on the back of the bench he’d have seen a plaqu

e donating the park in her name. Will had been a fourteen your old boy who only knew how to express himself physically with his fists, with his body, and Mrs D hadn’t been around long enough to see him learn how to use his brain.

Bo got back in the car, bringing a wave of heat with him. “What happened? To them, to you?”

“Mrs D died, cancer I think. Mr D never knew what to do with me when she got sick. When she died he sent me to Pete’s dad. I was supposed to labour for him, work on his block and look out for Pete after school and weekends. One day I came home and the house was empty. He’d checked out. I had nowhere to go except to Pete’s.”

Bo had been outraged. “Didn’t anyone in authority check on you?”

Will shrugged, “Who knows. I guess I was hard to find.” He started the car, pointed it in the direction of what had become his home for three years.

“Where was Pete’s mother?”

“Shot through six months after they came here. Pete was thirteen. He never heard from her again.”

“And Pete’s father, he accepted you?”

“No, he fucking hated me. I was another mouth to feed, but I was useful as a worker and he was big man down at the pub for taking me on. I should’ve gotten out of there the first time he hit me.”

“You stayed for Peter.”

Will hadn’t wanted to lie to Bo, but the truth was tangled and hard to unwrap. “Don’t paint me a saint, Bo. I stayed because I had nowhere else to go.”

“Peter told me you took his beatings and saved his life.”

“Did Pete also tell you he did drama at university?”

In his peripheral vision Will had seen Bo shake his head, but more at the whole conversation than the question. He deserved a better answer.

“I stayed because I had nowhere to go and because of Pete. Norman used to belt him. Poor kid was always covered in bruises and cuts and I had a soft spot for him. He was smart in school, but he never laughed at me for being dumb.”

They’d been on the highway five minutes out from the Vessy block when Will explained how he and Pete owned all the land they could see. How he’d bought all the remaining families out. Gave them enough to make a new start. How everything they could see was Parker land.

“Good land,” Bo had said.

“Not when I lived here.”

“But beautiful.”

Was it? Will had never thought of his blockie land as beautiful. He’d gone to sleep in the tray of the ute that night, thinking about it. It’d been an obligation, then a debt to pay off, then nothing. He hadn’t thought about owning this land for years. He’d never wanted to come back to Tara and now he was about to make a cup of tea in his little kit house on Norman Vessy’s block, right where the old shipping container had sat and rusted.

He didn’t feel at peace, but days of smacking steel, wood and colourbond together had tired him out and given him the gift of proper sleep, untainted by drugs or dreams.

Tonight, Bo was going to teach him to cook pasta in case the freezer meals ran out while he was on his road trip, so he’d have something else in his repertoire other than eggs and beans and a slab of steak seared over a flame.

Tomorrow, he’d be on his own, fractured memories and ghosts who wouldn’t stay dead for company. Tomorrow he was going down to that fucking creek bank and sit there all day if he had to. To remember, to summon up that night; the drunk, the angry boy, and the man who was ashamed to have built his wealth on lies. And finally put them all to rest.