One Boy Missing(10)

Finally, the small, pale face concluded, there’s been another death on our roads. Familiar footage of a crushed car and a mostly intact grain truck. A driver in a blue singlet weeping as an ambulance closed its doors.

Moy was lost, his eyes full of the red and blue light. He could feel the small body in his arms, could still sense its weight and see how his son, unconscious for ten or fifteen minutes now, had lost the flesh colour from his face. He could feel the looseness of his body and the way the boy’s legs bounced as he ran towards the door of the emergency department.

Moy talking to him. ‘Hold on, we’re there now,’ and he could feel his own heart racing, his arms sore but strong.

‘Could someone help, please?’ as a room full of faces turned towards him.

‘This way.’ A nurse’s professional calm.

When she took him, Moy dropped his arms, shook them and turned to the sea of faces. He remembered stopping to look at a few of the children, and to see what was on the television. To this day he had no idea why he’d done this.

Moy was staring at the carpet on the lounge room floor of his government house. Outside the persistent thwack of a soccer ball against a brick wall. A voice saying, ‘See, that was nine in a row.’

He looked up at the television and there was more about local sport: the Guilderton Thunder ladies’ netball team into the district finals. He turned to his casserole, loading his fork.

Then he heard the ball again. He was standing at his front door, watching Charlie kick a ball against the wall, stop it with his foot and kick it again. ‘One, two…’ he was counting, as Moy forked noodles around his plate.

‘…three, four, five, six…’

And then there was shitty home-made organ music and a chorus of locals singing, wheatbelt quality home improvements. A shot of ten or twelve men standing in front of a brand new pergola.

He felt sick.

‘…seven, eight, nine…’

He could feel himself falling, again. There was no way to stop it. The ground opened, and he dissolved. Tears began, and he surrendered to them as he slipped from his seat. The casserole tumbled from his lap and spilled onto the carpet, then he was on his arse on the floor, his diaphragm squeezing and sucking air from his lungs as he wept. All he could think was stop, stop. He caught his breath and looked up, wiped the tears from his cheeks and took a deep breath; fumbled at the casserole on the carpet, depositing some of the mess back on his plate.

‘…ten, eleven…’

As Charlie’s face lit up.

He was off again, this time settling on his knees, burying his head in the dog-smelling cushion of his couch.

‘The weather,’ the newsreader continued, explaining how there was no rush to get the grain in this year, how there wasn’t even a sniff of rain across the district.

A morse-like tap on the door. Moy knew it was Mrs Flamsteed, wanting but not wanting to disturb him; Mrs Flamsteed, in search of used casserole dishes. He could imagine how she was standing, arms crossed, leaning forward to peer through the bubble-glass.

She would’ve heard the television. He wiped his face and took another deep breath.

‘Just getting changed,’ he called, noticing the remains of the stew on the carpet.

Moments later he was in the bathroom washing his face and drying it with a stale towel. He checked his eyes and took another deep breath. ‘Coming.’

When the door opened Mrs Flamsteed squinted to see him through the flyscreen. ‘Hello, Bart. How are you, dear?’

‘Fine, thanks, Lou.’

‘You got my casserole?’

He remembered he couldn’t let her in.

‘Yes, looks lovely, ta. I might have a bit tonight.’ He had no choice, he had to open the door. She looked at him, studying his eyes.

She knows, he thought.

‘Everything okay?’

‘Yes, fine.’

There was a pause—quiet, except for a distant tractor.

‘Get my card?’

‘Thanks. I’ve got them all on the fridge. It all helps.’

‘Yes,’ she said, slowly. ‘Yes it does.’ She lit up with a thought. ‘I hear you’re looking for a lost kiddy?’

And he explained, concluding, ‘That might be the end of it, unless someone comes forward.’

‘There was a story in the Argus last week. Seems the father kidnapped his own son, from the mother, cos he couldn’t get custody. Couldn’t even visit his boy, imagine that? Still, probably was more to it. Maybe he was a druggie.’

He wondered whether he should risk it, take her straight to the kitchen—but then she’d see he’d already warmed the casserole.

‘From what I hear,’ Louise Flamsteed continued, ‘the courts favour the mother. Is that true?’