TWENTY-NINE

BRENDAN CAHILL

After the visit with Sharon he sat with Martin and Judah in the bakery down the main street, eating pies for lunch. The festival was now over, the street reopened. Streamers and confetti pooling in gutters. The other two taking their time, laughing it up. It pissed Brendan off that they felt no urgency. These two thought they knew it all and had seen it all, and that the people around them were country bumpkins who wouldn’t get one over on them.

He knew Mel had always liked this bakery. Knew more about her than he cared to admit. He’d always been interested in her at high school, had even taken to smelling things she’d handled. Nothing creepy, at least he didn’t think so. Just things like paper she’d pass him, a bottle of water. His friends all knew, and never said a word to his face about his strange obsession, but he knew they saw weakness in him. When he was around her his brain would piss-fart and moan about and he’d end up a stammering idiot. She took all his hesitation and twittering with good grace.

And the difference in her face now—it made his tendons tighten. Made him relish the memory of snapping Caleb Moore’s forearm. That rotten mongrel. What he’d done to her. Scarred. Her twisted nose. Wished he’d put his foot in the small of that bastard’s back and snapped his spine.

The two jokers finally finished their meal and got up. Out in the car they both sat in the backseat, leaving him up the front like a bloody chauffeur. He felt a right dickhead driving these two around like that and he sank low in his seat, hoping no one would see him.

‘Look at them,’ Martin said. ‘Look at them.’

‘Who?’ Brendan said.

‘Your people, mate. The people in this town. Just take a look at them.’

‘What about them?’

Brendan did look. The people were just people. Back to normal after the festival. One fat slob walking across the street with his gut wobbling like a hippo glanced up at the car as it bore down on him and smacked it angrily as it passed. He was wearing a blue flannel shirt tucked into jeans. Old Frank Forster. Brendan knew him from the hardware store. Reinforced the station’s door, apparently. Old Frank Forster who whenever you went in wouldn’t stop complaining about his back starting to seize up when he worked not working so much nowadays.

He kept driving the car Martin had pissed on. Out of the town and past farmland with cows munching grass or lying down in the shade of trees. Through his mind flashed the pain etched in Sharon’s face. He kept going, took the left that led down to Port Napier.

‘Where does this guy live?’ Judah asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean you don’t know?’

‘I mean, I thought we’d just look for it.’