4.
I spent the first few months after my return jus getting back into the swing of country life. Loui had promised to tone down his demands as long as we at least returned to Cider Hill. It seemed that as long as I took him nearer to the town, he would be content to wait until the proper time came.
There came a day where I felt the need to revisit some old friends. I grabbed my hat and walked out behind my house towards the creek. Halfway there, I looked around the clearing, spotted the broken-down cart and scanned the ground a few feet away.
It didn’t take me long to spot 2 rectangular depressions. Although the undergrowth had all but swallowed both graves up and hidden them from anyone walking past, I could still see them enough to know. As I neared them, I heard distant voices over the next hill. I figured it was at Bill Higgins’s place, if he still owned his farm.
I stopped just before the depressions and looked down at the grass growing in them. I knew that their bodies would be nothing more than bones by then, but hoped their spirits were still down there somewhere, forced to lie in their tombs for all eternity.
Hey Pop, Royce,” I said, dipping my hat a little. “I’m back. Just wanted to see how you 2 were doing. See you’ve managed to push up some weeds.” I smiled a little, remembering Royce’s smashed-in face as I threw the first handfuls of dirt on him. “Here, let me help you guys with that.”
I stepped forward another step, undid the buttons on my pants and pulled them down a little. Although I only had a little bit of stumpy flesh down there, it felt good to aim it at the remains of the 2 fuckers that made my childhood such a living nightmare.
As the urine began to flow and patter down on the grass, I swung my hips slowly from side to side, as if dousing a fire. I wanted to make sure they each received their share, the grass dripping in a long arc before me.
When I finished squeezing the last few drops out, I pulled my pants back up and retightened them. I then looked down at each of the graves, hawked up a humungous piece of phlegm and spat it out where my father’s head was resting a few feet beneath.
“Chew on that, Cunt.” And that was the final time I visited that spot of my property. That visit had served as both my welcome back and goodbye. They were now not only dead in real life, but also in my heart, none of their deeds remaining in my soul. For me, that was the final piece of closure I needed. To confirm they were still there and for me to say goodbye. Behind me, the voices continued in the distance.
5.
I can’t remember how long after I returned to where the bodies were buried that I went for a walk along the creek, but I know that it was a moment that really stuck with me. Because that was the day, I met a friend. A friend who would stick by my side for many years to come.
The reason we had such a “meeting of the minds” upon our first interaction was because little Clancy found me in a very “vulnerable” position. If it hadn’t been for him coming across me right at that moment, we may have never met and his story would have read very differently.
But fate and what-ifs aren’t really part of my normal repertoire. Shit happens, that’s it. There are no excuses, no reasons, shit just happens and you deal with it. As it so happened, a dog had gotten itself stuck in a downed tree. It must have torn itself loose and dragged its rope behind it as it ran along the creek, eventually getting itself caught. The end of the rope tangled in some of the branches of this fallen Gum and that’s where I found him.
He wasn’t desperate to get free. There was plenty of fresh water right beside it, but I doubt he’d eaten for the time he spent tangled in that tree. I found him sleeping beside the main trunk, a black and white border collie. He was a beautiful animal and his tail began wagging almost the second he spied me standing on the creek’s bank above him.
By the time I carefully navigated my way down to the creek bed, he was up on his feet, excitedly bouncing this way and that, his tail furiously fanning from side to side. He gave a little growl of excitement and when I held my hand out, the fingers were drenched in his saliva in seconds.
He was happy to see me, no doubt that he was looking at his saviour and ready to return home the second I released him. I looked at the rope and saw that the end was knotted, repeatedly wound round and round between the branches that were stuck into the creek bed like long protruding fingers.
“You OK, boy?” I whispered as I lifted the rope a little, looking to pull it free. He barked a little, the tail continuing to fan from side to side. That was when another voice interrupted, speaking with a hunger that I knew would need satisfying.
“Let me have him. If I have to keep waiting, let me have him at least.” It was Loui, sounding famished. I knew that he’d been desperate to feed his own hunger, but I kept delaying his ferocity as much as possible. If I was going to continue denying him his urges then I would have to give him something else.
“But he’s just a pup. Not him,” Eddie whispered from somewhere yonder.
“Shut the hell up, pipsqueak. You don’t even know this
