WesterlyMagazine

The Cook

And always the question I’ve been asking myself, ever since I decided to follow Danny — to never leave him, until he’s safe from my world, from me, my good intentions.

At what point did I pass from being The Son, to The Father? It wasn’t at the boys’ birth, or even during their childhood. I was no real parent. Kevin always a pain in the arse. But Danny, never far from my mind. Knowing that until I find a place for him somewhere safe, I will not be able to die in peace.

Because my father did not die in peace.

The moment of his death the answer to my question. The moment I pulled the trigger, his eyes on mine, but grateful, I passed from being the son to the father. A father in a fatherless world. The godless world that he had lived in, when his father had died. What my father meant.

My father had been out here, dying, alone, when I found him.

The cancer, right through him by the time I arrived, just out on remand, come to collect something I’d left, the only bloke I could trust.

He hadn’t told anyone he was dying. He didn’t have any meds. No transport to get into town. Too weak to walk the twenty k to the track, to hitch a ride.

It was already too late. The depth of his suffering. The sounds he made, like a flayed animal. The cancer in his brain. Helpless in his agony.

I broke parole and stayed with him. Couldn’t leave him to go to town, for help, too far gone. Made him broth that he couldn’t swallow. Fed him my own pills, useless.

Then the moment came. He was ready. Eyes became clear for a moment, drawn out of his delirium by the pain. Lost. Confused. Understood where he was. What was happening. His last act of will. Told me to do it. His own hands, no good.

Told me that I could do it.

I knelt before him on the cave floor, the .303 barrel in his mouth, his eyes on mine, watering, afraid. A paste of snot and blood, mixed with the red dirt, in his hair, his eyes, his mouth, in his bedding, all over his skin. He said it then.

‘A father is God to his son.’

I hear the Hilux engine before I see it, the plume of red dust rising out of the riverbed, settling over the red gum and casuarina grove, the car parked there amid the cover. One vehicle. No chopper. Cops keeping it at arm’s length. Warner and one other, a Maori bloke I know, Morgan, who knows me, a good bloke who’s come to do me in. Both armed with shining new shotties, a Sunday stroll, walk in the park, hunting the junkie and his junkie son, their navy blue jumpsuits like coppers’ or miners’ uniforms, black boots and caps, should there be any witnesses.

No witnesses out here.

I wait until they’re in a sparse patch of cynic grass framed by a field of white everlastings, no cover beyond a few crumbling termite nests, shoot Morgan first, the crosshairs on his chest true, swing the bead onto Warner, who’s pitched into the dirt, put a bullet into his shoulders, load another, put two more into each of them, watch their skulls burst like puffballs, red spores settling over the dirt, then start running, down the flank of the covering rock, towards the dried riverbed, to get in behind their vehicle, in case there’s a driver.

There isn’t. The Hilux is parked on a carpet of casuarina needles, the tracks of emu and roo and goat in the dried mud around. Windows down, passenger seat reclined, Warner having snoozed on the drive in, the bastard.

Doesn’t look like a rental. Or a copper’s car, on loan. In the glovebox I find the rego — a company car, Styx Gold Ltd, from a nearby mine, an Italiano family company.

Iced coffee cartons on the floorpan, some bacon egg roll wrappers, breath mints, Warner’s cigarettes.

On the back seat, an overnight bag, two new sleeping bags, dunny paper, some cash in a bum-bag, wank mags, a blue tarp and two shovels, a jerry-can of fuel.

Warner no mug.

He’d make me dig our grave, mine and Danny’s, pile on wood then pour on the fuel. Burn us into ashes and bone rubble, cover us over.

Gone forever.

I park the Hilux fifty metres into the bush, walk back over our track, build up the graded lip of gravel road and use the leaf-blower to cover our trail. The Valiant is waiting hidden in the river bed; its rego plates in the tray of the Hilux.

Warner sits beside me on the drive to the rock, buckled in, reclined, the other bloke in the tray, wrapped in the tarp. Both of them bled out already, into the dirt.

I want to keep this car, for later. An Italiano company vehicle, unlikely they’ll claim it as missing.

Would raise too many questions.

No sign of the chopper either. Same reason. The slightest sniff of something gone wrong, Warner’s stooges will abandon him, start covering their tracks, deleting searches from computers, wiping the flight-logs of choppers, until his body is found.

But it will never be found.

Danny takes one look at what’s inside the Toyota and says, ‘Oh, what a feeling.’

Late afternoon. All day driving and walking. Parking the Hilux in the cave, before I walk back to Walga Rock to collect the Charger.

Now Warner and Morgan are in the front seat of the Valiant, strapped in, sightless eyes staring over the bonnet, beginning to smell bad.

Danny stands aside and smokes, says nothing as I roll the Valiant, slowly, carefully, over the lip of the mineshaft, wanting it to slide, which it does, crashing once or twice on the way down.

I have no idea how deep the shaft is, and I will never know. Danny helps me drag the lighter firewood and tip it in. I put whole dried boughs down, mallee, beefwood, sandalwood, whatever is at hand. Pour over the fuel, follow it with a burning torch of poverty bush, stand back as the whump of heat rises in a vertical column of shimmering clear.

Keep feeding the fire, the compressed explosion of the Charger’s tank, the sound of crumbling rock, superheated, the support boughs burning through.

The work of generations, collapsing in on itself, spume of red dust rising out of the shaft.

An end to it.

I am tired and covered in blood, dirt, charcoal. Haven’t slept for close to sixty hours. We retreat to the cave. No words are necessary. We’ll camp here, a week or two, perhaps a month. I’ll hunt and cook. Danny will get clean.

Then we’ll move. Enough cash to last a year, if we’re careful.

A new start. New Zealand. Different line of work. Set Danny up with some kind of trade. Sit back and give him a chance.

The light in the cave is soft and red, like a child’s crayon drawing. There’s nothing to do now but sleep, rest, live my father’s hermit life for a while, walk the rock, feed the bungarra, watch the light over the desert change as the gnamma holes dry up, as the birds fly to the coast.

I feel it for the first time in a long while, my eyes upon my son, feeding the fire: my father’s presence in the cave with us, and it’s not the violence of our last moments which haunts me, but the feeling that he is looking over us, perhaps, and then I am asleep.

David Whish-Wilson lives in Fremantle. He is the author of two crime novels set in Perth – Line of Sight and Zero at the Bone. His most recent book is Perth, part of the NewSouth Books city series. He is currently the coordinator of the Creative Writing program at Curtin University.

This story first appeared in Westerly 59:2, November 2014.