“It gets worse,” I say cheerfully.
He rolls his eyes and for the next ten minutes, we weave around fallen tea trees, clambering over and under, swearing under our breath. At some points, I hold the shovel in front of my face to break the silvery lines of cobwebs, bashing at the low-hanging branches. All along, I’m fighting hard not to remember, but it comes back hard. I’m walking in my father’s footsteps, taking the track he did. And like me, he wasn’t alone…
God, I shouldn’t have followed him. Why did I do that?
The Bell Miner’s call echoes through the woods, high-pitched, metallic: tink, tink, tink. When I was a child, I loved their background hum. Each call like a tiny bell being struck. Now I just hear:
Go back.
Go back.
A moment later, I swear I hear my father’s voice in their calls.
You fuckin’ dog.
A fallen she-oak blocks the path. My legs shake so badly, it takesme three tries to scramble over it. I reach the other side, landing hard enough that pain shoots up both ankles.
I rest my back against the tree, lowering my head because it’s spinning. Chris lands at my side with a thud, pushing the bottle into my hands again. “Drink,” he insists, annoyed. “Staying hydrated will help…”
He rambles on about lactic acid and body temperature until I rip the bottle from his hand and drink.
Get through this.
Get through this.
Make it right.
I spit on the ground, and he grimaces but at least he finally shuts up. And for the first time I wonder if he, too, is uneasy as hell.
I pass the bottle back to him, and he screws the lid back on.
“Thanks,” I say gruffly before stepping forward. “Come on, let’s go.”
Each step is a battle as the underbrush claws at my legs and branches tug at my sleeves. Every noise we make feels amplified: our breathing, our footsteps. A root sneaks out of the earth and I trip over it, steadying myself with a hand on a tree trunk. I catch my breath and continue. The deeper we walk, the more it feels like the woods are watching, whispering.
And then I see it.
The crudely made cross is just two black twigs entwined with blue string, long faded.
I come to an abrupt stop. I remember setting that cross down so gently. Hoping it would dull my guilt, but knowing all along it wouldn’t.
I’m sorry.
At the time, I didn’t know his name. But a few days later, a man’s face flashed on the TV screen.
Donny left his home in Warrnambool in a white Mitsubishi Sigma in mid-July. He was believed to be traveling to South Australia to stay with a friend, but he never arrived…
That wasn’t true, though. I saw him in these woods. My fatherwalked him through this path, the tip of his black fishing knife pressed hard into the man’s back.
Donny Granger.
He was the first, I think.
I doubt he was the last.
For years after, I found myself returning to his grave. I’d be walking home from school, my bag slung heavily over my shoulder, and instead of walking home, I’d end up right here. For hours and hours, I would sit beside this man’s grave. Mostly I was silent, still. Sometimes I’d look up, shocked that I was sitting in total darkness. Then I’d stumble home, ignoring Heath’s questions about where I’d been.
Why didn’t I call out? Why did I just freeze like a coward? And why did he even do it?
