Boxed Read online

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and hunches a little more.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The crockery. Someone broke in. Robbed me, hit me, pushed me down, and took the box.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ I mumble, because I can’t think of anything else to say. I sit next to her, and look closely. I know that cuts to the head bleed profusely, and this one is not doing that. Perhaps that’s a bad sign.

  ‘Have you rung an ambulance? The police?’

  ‘I don’t need an ambulance. I’m just shaken up. The cut isn’t that bad.’ She stops, and swallows. ‘He just came straight in, out of the garden, through the doors. I was unpacking the box, and he walked right at me, and hit me. I didn’t know what was happening. He picked up the box, I tried to grab him, and he shoved me away, and I fell. He walked straight back out, and he was gone. The whole thing only took couple of minutes. He was so strong. I’d only just got the box from the post office. It’d been sent on the wrong mail run. How would he know that I had it?’

  While she babbles, the blood begins to stream down her face, bright red.

  ‘You’re bleeding.’ I have mastered the obvious. I look for something to put on the cut, see nothing, so direct her hand to the wound.

  ‘Push down.’

  She does. I jump to my feet and run back to the kitchen. I grab a roll of paper towel, and return quick as. There is blood seeping through her fingers on top of her head. I rip off sheets of paper towel, move her hand, and push down on the cut. I put her hand on the cut, lean her back on the couch, pull out my phone, and dial 000. After I’ve explained I need an ambulance, that there has been an assault and robbery, and supply an address, I go back the kitchen, find a bowl, and half-fill it with warm water, and then return to Elaine. She is pale. The paper under her hand is blood-soaked. I remove the bloodied towels, and try to sponge the area. Her hair is caked, but the cut is a white gash between the follicles — only white for as long as I can swab it. I put fresh towels down, and ask her can she hold them. She says, ‘Yes,’ but weakly, and I wonder how long it will take for the ambulance to arrive. Sometimes, out here, it can take more than an hour and a half.

  ‘Are you hurt anywhere else?’

  ‘Not badly. Bruised, I guess. Sorry you had to see this. Supposed to be here for a drink.’

  ‘Did you see his face?’ I only ask to keep her distracted and awake.

  ‘Balaclava over his head.’

  ‘Was he wearing anything notable?’

  ‘Black jeans, and jumper.’

  I am going to ask if she saw a car, but I think better of it. I don’t want her to keep reliving the moment. Instead, a thought becomes words without my permission: ‘Must have been pretty special crockery.’

  ‘No. Special to me. Worth a few thousand, maybe ten.’

  ‘That’s something.’ I consider $10,000 would be worth robbing someone for, but unless you’re a crockery nerd, this particular theft doesn’t sound like the simplest transaction. I don’t believe she is lying to me. I believe she came to my place looking for crockery. I have a dread rising in my gut that the burglar wasn’t looking for crockery, and that I may have some responsibility for Elaine getting hurt.

  On the road, out the front, there are flashing coloured lights, and I head through the door into the garden. I don’t want them to miss us. The ambulance stops at the fence when they see me, and they get out carrying bags and a fold-out stretcher. I direct them, and have the warm rush of knowing competence has arrived. And then more flashing coloured lights break up the night as a police car motors in. A uniformed policewoman and policeman get out. I think she might be the one I saw at my mailbox, but I can’t be certain. They start asking me questions, confirming they’re in the right place, and who I am, and whether I’m the owner, and what is my version of events. The ambos bring Elaine out on a stretcher.

  ‘Just being safe. No need to worry,’ one of the ambos says as she goes past, picking up on my concern. I nod my thanks.

  After a while, the police let me go, asking me to make myself available for further questioning. At least they haven’t checked my ute.

  I drive home feeling I am a magnet for personal pain. As I brood, an older white car I don’t recognise goes past in the opposite direction, at pace.

  Minutes later, I steer into my garage, and get out. Mick comes out of the house dragging his bag, cursing me, cursing everything.

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘I’ve just been fucken robbed.’

  ‘Robbed?’ I’m not worrying about Mick. I’m worrying about me.

  ‘Yeah, fucken robbed. I’m watching the TV, having a quiet beer, and a car pulls up outside, and someone comes in the door. I figure it’s you. So I don’t pay any attention. Then this tall dude, badly wired, like he’s on something nasty, walks straight into the living room, grabs me, and demands to know where the money is.’

  I’m watching Mick to check that he’s telling the truth, and thinking that the robber, if he’s real, must have come straight from Elaine’s to here.

  ‘I go to my bag with him waving a knife at me, get today’s winnings, give them to him, and he says, “That’s it?”’

  ‘When I nod, he smacks me full in the face, and I go down on one knee. Then, while he’s looking about in a sort of rage, I charge him. He’s big, but I manage to knock him down. It half-winds him, but he struggles up, and starts waving the knife around at me, saying, “Where’s the rest of the money?” I tell him I don’t know. He’s taken everything I’ve got, but if he’s going to be threatening me with a knife, he’d better know I’ve got mates about to come round, and they’ll sort him out. Then he just bolts with my dough.’

  ‘You scared him off? Well done.’

  ‘He still got my money.’ Mick wipes sweat from his face that hasn’t been produced by heat. ‘He wasn’t real hard-core or anything. Looked like he might have been a local bloke, on the gear. Must have seen us winning at the races, and decided we’d be an easy mark. Didn’t think that sort of thing happened in the country. It’s different around here, isn’t it?’

  I walk over to the toolbox, pull out a large wad of money, and hand it to Mick.

  ‘Here. Sorry.’

  This significantly brightens his day.

  ‘Thanks.’ He looks at the money, and his face changes to a question mark. ‘You kept the money in your ute? You knew he might come?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you didn’t trust me?’

  ‘I trust you, Mick.’

  ‘Either option, you could have told me.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  He stuffs my money into his bag.

  ‘You’re in some trouble, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You’ll never get Sarah back if you get involved with crooks.’

  ‘I know that.’ I say it like the idea is ridiculous. Me? Involved with crooks? But I know he’s right. Even though the involvement isn’t my fault, I’m starting to get into territory that will give Sarah presumptions that will destroy what remains of our relationship.

  ‘Anyway, I’m gone. This is too far-out for me. Thanks for the cash. I’ll come back in a month or so and check on you, if you’re still alive.’

  The last bit is a joke, I’m sure, but he gives no hint of it — just dawdles to his car, fires it up, gives me an uncommitted wave, and disappears.

  I’m relieved, and somehow empty. It wasn’t so bad having him around, especially now that I know he’s brave enough to knock down a man with a knife. A man who is probably returning right this minute with reinforcements.

  I go straight to my gun cabinet, grab the keys, unlock it, and extract my .22, my .222, the 12-gauge shotgun, and ammunition for all three. I take them back to the kitchen and put them where I can easily get to them. Drastic, but the evening has been way too unsettling. When they come for
me, I’ll be ready. It’s only 8.30. Too early for bed. I make myself a peanut-butter sandwich with nearly fresh bread for dinner.

  Then I get the box out again. The hammer drill parts come out, and I count and pack $250,000 in piles back into the box, and then tape it up and take it to the mailbox. I leave it underneath the mailbox so the mailman doesn’t have to become involved. It feels like one way of drawing a line beneath everything. They can come and get their loot, and leave me alone. Then I can return to my version of normal. This doesn’t sound all that attractive, because now more than ever it is obvious that my life is rubbish. A few violent criminals couldn’t make it any worse. But they could make it worse for others, so that is enough motivation to give them back what is theirs. Besides, I now have over $160,000 of my own that will pay a few bills, and even a bit of wooing.

  Back at the house, I get out of the ute, and feel my lungs expanding because a downward force has been removed. The night is still and warm, and the stars are a kind of existential joke: perpetually awesome, beautiful, just outside every night, but never looked at, never appreciated. The air has the lightness that suggests the brutal leftover heat of summer is gone and the pleasure of autumn is here. For those who know pleasure.

  I watch TV, and sleep on the couch, and wake, and look at crap on my computer, and doze, and am glad to see the morning.

  When it is time, I ring the hospital, and the nurse, Jennifer Peach, who nursed my mother and my father at the end, asks seriously if I’m a relative. I say, ‘No,’ and she apologises, but declines to let me talk to Elaine. It is before visiting hours, and the hospital has strict policies. Then I hear a voice in the background say, ‘She checked herself out. With her husband.’

  I begin to say, ‘That’s not possible,’ but I stop myself. Lately, anything is possible. I ask, ‘Did she look happy to go with him?’

  Then Jennifer puts her hand over the mouthpiece, and asks the voice behind her, ‘Was she happy to go?’ The voice returns, ‘Not unhappy. A little anxious, but that was probably because of the night she’d had. We didn’t want her to go. She and her husband insisted.’

  Jennifer asks me, ‘Why?’

  I do not give in to the melodramatic choice, and say, because her husband is dead. I just respond with, ‘No reason. Thank you,’ and hang up.

  4

  The phone rings again. Until the last few days, phone calls and visitors had become a nuisance of the past. Suddenly, I can’t get a minute’s peace. But I can’t let this one go, because it might be Sarah, or even Elaine explaining herself. But when I pick up, it’s a man’s voice.

  ‘Dave?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I immediately curse myself for the naive confirmation.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this, but my name is Dave Martin.’

  The possibility of an explanation begins to circle.

  ‘Really? That’s amazing.’ But it’s not that amazing, considering that a white-bread name like mine is hardly unusual away from the multicultural cities. ‘What can I do for you?’

  He laughs an unworried laugh that makes me think he is likeable. ‘Well … I was wondering that since we’ve got the same name, whether you might have been accidentally receiving some of my mail?’

  I think, You too, but don’t say it.

  ‘The name is the same, but I’m sure the address is different, and that’s what really counts, doesn’t it?’ Actually, I’m ready to spill all, give him his cash back, and try to forget the whole thing.

  He pauses, and I figure I’ve put him off with my first parry. Wrong.

  ‘The thing is,’ he says, ‘my address is “Fythe Trees”.’

  ‘The road address?’

  ‘696 Wilson Lane.’

  This cannot be true. He’s just made it up to trick me. I hastily bring up a phone-directory site, and check. Dave Martin seems to be waiting patiently, having anticipated my actions. But he is telling the truth. How come I’ve never heard of him or his address? Surely someone would have mentioned it or ribbed me about it sometime in the past few decades? Not a word.

  ‘So, what sort of mail do you think I might be getting?’

  ‘Parcels, mostly, of things I’ve bought online.’ This is not spooky.

  ‘And what would be in those parcels?’

  ‘It’s not really your business.’

  ‘Drugs? Smuggled wildlife? Bricks of money?’

  He is quiet. I can hear currawongs calling somewhere near him. It must be autumn, I think.

  ‘It’s counterfeit dollars, if you must know.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m …’ He corrects himself. ‘My wife … is staging a community production of a play called Money, and I had a friend print me out large volumes of paper money. I needed them to be as authentic as possible.’

  This is an extremely long bow.

  ‘For a community play?’ I’m engaging with him far too much. Complete strangers don’t do this. The fact doesn’t stop me. ‘You can buy a colour photocopier, cartridge included, for less than a hundred bucks. Surely that would have been good enough for a community play?’

  ‘So you did receive it?’

  ‘Receive what?’

  ‘The box of money.’

  And here I am at the point where the rubber hits the road. Suddenly it all makes sense. Dave Martin is my ticket to safety. Take it, I say to myself. Take it.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that.’

  But guess what? I don’t. Despite all the pain I have caused Mick, and Elaine, I’m not quite ready to stop playing. It’s something I hadn’t comprehended. I had been lying to myself about taking the box back to the mailbox. I want to see this to the end. I want to solve the mystery. I want the money — all of it. And somehow, I’m desperate for the distraction. That box is the first thing to get me out of my head, and off the place, since Sarah left the farm, and almost since things went bad. I want this.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Dave, but I haven’t received money of any sort.’

  ‘That’s funny, because the mailman said he’d been delivering boxes just like the ones I’m missing.’

  I need to talk to my mailman.

  ‘I have received a couple of boxes, but they contained cheap machines … a drill, a pump. No money.’

  ‘Well, that’s weird, because last week I got a submersible pump that I didn’t order. Are you sure you haven’t missed a box somewhere?’

  ‘I’m sure. Sorry I couldn’t help. Bye.’

  I put the phone down. Is he the guy that robbed Mick and assaulted Elaine? Is he Elaine’s boyfriend? Or am I just losing my grip? What are the odds of there being a bloke with the same name and nearly the same address in the same district? It’s a trick of some sort. As per usual, I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t know what the trick is.

  I leave the phone off the hook. All it does is bring misery.

  I decide to wash my clothes — a significant moment of achievement for me. I know, as I put them in the machine and add the last of the detergent, that I will forget I’ve done this, and the clothes will stay in the machine for days before I manage to get them to the clothesline. I take the rake to a thick drift of leaves that rests near the laundry. I keep at it for a while, and then give up after raking only one pile. I think about what I should do with the money. Pay bills and woo Sarah, like I told myself? I don’t think so. It would take a lot more than money to get Sarah back. Perhaps I should go on a world trip. Just a backpack and a phone, and see the world. That’s what lost people do, isn’t it? When you return, you realise how lucky you really are. Bugger that. I know I would just sit in a cheap bar nearest the airport where my plane landed, and drink myself to death. You don’t know how lucky you are. I do, actually. I’m really unlucky. As unlucky as I could ever be.

  5

  It is Sunday, and I am driving around checking stock water: trough
s and tanks. The dogs, Ted and Special, are with me, running alongside, their unique ability to show pleasure in the moment on full display. They are kelpies, black and tan, sleek and full of purpose, and if there was any love left in me it would be for them. They chase and smell and play, keeping an eye on me in case there is work to be done. There isn’t. Nothing in this world confuses them except perhaps me.

  The place has done well with the rain. The grass is green, and even the summer grasses are holding their colour. At this time of year, compared to the height of summer, the stock drink a lot less water, so there isn’t as much pressure on the water systems. It is not as likely they’ll die of thirst if they happen to empty a water tank through a broken hose or a stuck trough-float. That makes it sound like I give a shit. I don’t. Some of the ewes have fly strike, and should be treated. They’re not going to be, but as the weather cools they should be all right. The fallowed wheat paddocks are no longer fallow, because now they are bright and thick with different types of weeds of all heights and shapes. It means they are now grazing paddocks. It would take a power of burned diesel, and a lot of sprayed chemical, to get them back to the sort of order needed for crop growing.

  My great-grandfather had teams of men in this country: fencing, clearing scrub, shearing sheep, running water points. It must have been a village in itself. They probably shot the local Aborigines, too, but not surprisingly there’s no record of that. Many of the people indigenous to the area worked on our place when there was no other way to survive. When I think how much this farm is a part of me, and mine after several generations, I don’t like to imagine what it must have been like for them to be forced off it when they had been here forever. The best way to deal with something like this is to not think about it. We are masters of that. We’re careful never to write detailed histories. Even my great-grandfather’s notebooks hardly mention those original people.

  My father had several men working full-time for him, with their families living on the farm. The wives often helped Mum with the house and garden, and someone had to milk the cow, kill sheep for meat, and look after the chooks. There were plenty of others that came in when there were big jobs to be done. Large machinery and then smart machinery replaced those workers, but I could still justify a couple of station hands if I was running the place the way it should be. Maybe I’ll get back to that sometime. I still get old Lenny and his son Trevor to help me out now and then. I know they won’t talk about what they see. Lenny worked for my father when he was a young man, and his father worked for my grandfather. In those days you inherited a farm, and its stock and working families.