Jasper Jones (11 page)

Most folks plan their evening stroll around An’s eruption of color. They like to point and pick out the wisterias, the wild poppies, the jasmine, the heirloom roses. They like to wonder aloud what the
more exotic plants could be, and they marvel at the selection and the scent.

But of course, all I can ever see is the shifting constellations of insects that hover above the petal bursts, and I stay as far away as I can. I’m deathly afraid of them. Bees. Wasps. Hornets. Anything that flies or crawls or hops or stings. My mother is especially entertained by my phobia, but Jeffrey is the worst. One of his favorite jokes in the world is to warn me there’s a bee on my back, or a redback on my shoulder. He pauses, wide-eyed, and says
Don’t move
, like I’m about to tread on a land mine. It gets me every time.

One day I may be able to survey An Lu’s beautiful garden up close for what it is without my skin crawling at the terrifying hum of a million poison-tipped assassins. But for now, my most comfortable vantage point is where I’m standing: outside my house.

Jeffrey hoists his bag further up his back. I peel off onto my lawn.

“I’d ask you round for dinner, but I really don’t like you,” I say.

“Pffft! I’d rather lick my own arse than dine with your kind.”

“Bollocks.” I say. “You’d rather lick your own arse because you like it.”

Jeffrey laughs. “It tastes better than your mum’s cooking!”

“Touché,” I laugh.

Jeffrey turns to go, but spins back, grinning.

“Hey, Chuck?”

“What?”

“What’s the hardest thing about liking Batman?”

I close my eyes and sigh. “I don’t know. What?”

“Telling your parents you’re queer!”

Of course, he dies laughing.

“You’re an idiot. That doesn’t even make sense.”

“
You’re
an idiot. That’s hilarious.”

“I’m not the one licking my own arse.”

“If you had
this
arse, you would.” And Jeffrey’s shadowboxing recommences as he wanders away. “I’m so pretty! So
pretty
!”

“Bye, Muhammad.”

“Because they yarrrrr, Charrrrrlie! Because they yarrrrr!”

Jeffrey skips home. As he arrives, An stands abruptly and jabs his secateurs in his direction, yelling something stern and fierce. Jeffrey stands bolt still. It looks like he’s in the shit. I watch him duck his head and mooch inside.

I do the same.

***

During dinner, I try to sound my parents out about any news, but they don’t offer up anything. Afterward, I take my coffee straight to my sleepout. I’m not in the mood for television or talk. My dad asks if anything is wrong, and I just shrug and say I feel like reading.

I set my brew and open my louvres. I peer through them for some time, hoping to see Jasper Jones waiting in our backyard. He’s not there.

I try to read, but I can’t concentrate. I lay
Pudd’nhead
down. I use a dirty shirt to swipe the sweat from my face. I think about this time last night, and it seems a world away. It’s like I used to inhabit some other dimension, some other body.

Restless, I pull out my old brown suitcase from beneath my bed, unlock it, and take from it my yellow writing pad. I tuck myself into my desk, full of promise. Ready to spin the black silk. And I need it. The urge is urgent. I need to spill some of this over. I need to tell some of my secrets. But my pen won’t push. It’s still and dry and useless. I stare at the page.

I think I hear something. I leap onto my bed, squint through the louvres. I hiss Jasper’s name. Nothing.

So I sit back down. Clean my glasses, tap the lamp with my pen. Still nil. The strange thing is, I’m boiling over with words, they’re like a swarm in my head; I just can’t order them. They swirl and dip like insidious insects. Haunting and noisy and nonsensical.

I sigh and toss my pen aside, rest my cheek on my palm.

I need to see Jasper Jones. And soon. It’s not right having all this
to myself. Laura Wishart is dead. And we buried her. In a water hole. We tied her to a stone. We did that.

And until I see Jasper Jones again, I can’t even begin to make sense of it. I can’t hope to get to the root of things. I need to talk to him about the likelihoods and contingencies and strategies and problems that are bubbling and spitting in my head and my belly. It’s like I’ve started to read a tragic book from the last page and I need to try to fill in the gaps, to write what came before. But I can’t. Not without Jasper. Not without the truth. And there’s just too much I don’t know.

Suddenly I frown and clutch my guts. I burst out of my room and smother our toilet a moment before my arse ejects something foul and molten. And there’s a moth. Right there. On the ceiling. A huge moth, big as a bird. Do they bite? I close my eyes and pretend it’s not here.

What do we do if somebody actually comes forward with information? It’s unlikely, but what if somebody really were aiming to set Jasper up? What if they saw what we did? What if Mad Jack Lionel calls in, tells the police where she is, and she’s not there? What happens to us? How much trouble are we in? Would Jasper be true to his word? Would I still be safe?

The moth applauds the light globe above me, casting strange distorted shadows. It’s enormous. It’s a giant moth. It probably has fangs. It could eat a rat in a single gulp. There are centipedes in the Amazon that eat bats. They hang from the ceilings of caves and snatch them as they flap past. I grit my teeth and turn away as more acid jets out of me.

And why hasn’t anything been reported yet? Aren’t the Wisharts worried? She’s the daughter of top brass, and high-class; where are the search teams and the news people? I palm my forehead. It’s this hot tension I can’t stand. The sleeping giant. The ticking bomb.

I retreat back to my room. I check my window again.

I quickly down my cup of joe, and it gives me a little buzz. I try
Pudd’nhead
again, forcing myself to follow the words, intermittently glancing out the window.

Something stalls me at the beginning of chapter twelve. From Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.” My head tilts. Exactly. That’s what I’d wanted to say to Jeffrey about Superman. I wish he were here; I’d wave that quote like a red flag.

I run my thumb over those words. Maybe my father was right. Mark Twain has something smart to say about everything.

I shift to my desk and write those words down. Then I write around them and under them, shielding my words with a cupped palm, the same way I do in school. And I keep going, I strike up a rhythm, and it feels good.

See, I think it’s harder for me to get brave. It’s harder for me to suck it in and square up and bunch my fists. I think the less meat you’ve got on you, the more you know, the more you’re capable of being beaten, the more it sets you back. The lower your weight division, the more often you’re swinging up. I think the more you have to defend, the harder it is to press forward without looking back. I’d have Superman’s swagger if I couldn’t get hurt, but I’ve got the Charles Bucktin slouch. Because I bruise like a peach. And I’m afraid of insects. And I don’t know how to fight.

Does that mean it’s easier for Jasper Jones than me? But what about Jeffrey Lu? I don’t know. Maybe he’s bravest out of all of us.

My scribbling is interrupted.

“Jesus
Christ
, Charles Bucktin! What have you been
eating
?”

My mother has just walked into the toilet. I smile to myself. I have a dozen wisecracks about her cooking tickling the tip of my tongue, but each one would be a death sentence.

I keep writing. It’s aimless and desultory, but it feels good. Like I’ve loosened a valve. Like I’ve shared some of this mess, pared it off me.

It’s late when I ease up, exhausted. The house is hot and quiet. I slip onto my bed and check the window again. I whisper Jasper’s name to the space I want him to be standing in and give my eyes more than enough time to adjust. Nothing. I sigh.

I clear up my desk. Lay my yellow pad back in its case. Before I snap the combination lock, I thumb through the thin pages of my filled pads, just to touch their grooves and ridges. Right at the bottom, a thick brown paper package makes me smile. I untie the red string and sift through the bundle of pages.

This winter, Jeffrey and I spent rainy days writing a novel together. It was a penny adventure that quickly spiraled out of control, through no fault of my own. I’d sit with the pad on my lap while Jeffrey Lu paced in front of the fireplace, one arm behind his back, gesturing with an empty pipe, garrulous with wild ideas. The plot had more twists than a hurricane. Jeffrey took care of the action and the intrigue, mostly in the form of kung fu bouts and hot pursuits, while it was my responsibility to concoct an actual story (which Jeffrey dubbed “the girly stuff”) around these sequences. I was also dubbed Minister of Witty Dialogue.

Our fast-paced adventure involved a jaded ex-cop from Detroit called Truth McJustice who, after his wife mysteriously disappeared, quit the police force with an impeccable crime-fighting record and buried himself in his first love: archaeology.

What followed was a series of barely believable plot developments, with Truth discovering the Holy Grail, Joseph Stalin masquerading as a furious faux-Pope after kidnapping the real one, and Truth’s missing wife emerging as a brainwashed assassin called Ivana Knockyourblockov, hired to execute him and recover the precious artifact.

Of course, it ended in a flurry of martial arts in the Pope’s chambers. Truth was passionately reunited with his wife, while Stalin was duly hanged in St. Peter’s Square for heresy.

I didn’t really agree with lynching Stalin, but Jeffrey said we had to in order for his title to work. He wanted to call our masterpiece
Pope on a Rope
. I was more inclined toward
Truth Will Set You Free
. In the end, we agreed to mesh them together and make my suggestion a subtitle.

After we’d decided on a fitting nom de plume (Clifford J. Brawnheart), Jeffrey wrapped our manuscript in brown paper and concluded that therein lay
the
Great Australian Novel.

“But how can it be, really?” I argued. “It doesn’t even feature any
Australians. And besides, to be honest, the coincidences seem a little outrageous. Our critics will lambast us.”

Jeffrey’s head snapped back and he groaned.

“Chuck, you are officially a Luddite. There will be no lamb-basting. You know
nothing
about literature. You need to understand that truth is
stranger
than fiction. Listen: people are willing to swallow any old tripe as long as you say it without flinching. They
want
to be told stuff. And they don’t want to doubt you either. It’s too hard. So if you say it like you really mean it to be true, then you’re away. Conviction, Charles. You could do with some. Look at Dickens! He got away with murder! And don’t get me started on Cheeses Christ and all that zombie resurrection bollocks. Now,
there’s
a twist ending that’s hard to sell. He’s dead, he’s dead—no, wait, who is that crawling out from behind that rock? Noooo, it couldn’t be! Oops, wait—yes! He’s alive! Hello, Zombie Cheeses! He’s back!”

“Sir, with respect, that seems a little cynical.”

“It’s not cynical if it’s factitious.”

“Factitious? That makes no sense. It’s not even a word.”

Jeffrey prodded his pipe in my direction.

“Charles, the problem with you is that you’re not worth a damn. Now, if you’ll kindly refrain from slowing my progress with your impertinence, I’ll remind you that Clifford J. Brawnheart is always right. End of story.”

And it was.
Pope on a Rope
has been since been stashed in my suitcase, and though its merits have often been discussed, it hasn’t been read again. I doubt it’s my gateway to the literati, but I do know that one day I’m going to work on something big and significant. I’m going to stun this know-nothing town, and I’ll be Manhattan-bound with a book bearing my name.

I’ve often wondered if my father has been working toward the same thing in his library. I’ve long suspected him of secretly writing something in there. He steals away most nights and stays up for hours. Sometimes he falls asleep at his desk.

He’s
got
to be working on something. I wonder what it’s about. I
wonder if he’s close to finishing. I wonder how long it is—how many pages, how many words. It’s been years since he first began going in there, always locking the door behind him, which I never understood. I mean, I was never going to burst in there unannounced, and my mother hasn’t entered that room for eight years. See, my dad’s library used to be a second bedroom, painted lilac and decorated for the arrival of my younger sister, who died just before she was born. It almost cost my mother her life and stole her chance to ever try again.

Still, it’s strange to think of me and my father both scrawling clandestinely through the night, threading lies and secrets from under the same roof. I wonder, if I told him about my writing, would he talk to me about his? Would he let me read some?

I carefully close my suitcase and lock it. I slide it beneath my bed. Then I cup my temples and look out the window for the last time. Jasper Jones is not coming. I’m on my own tonight.

I turn and lean back on my pillow. I look down at my chest and stomach, frowning at my stick arms and my ladder of ribs. My lip curls. I spill onto the floor and embark on a set of push-ups, full of resolve. I make it to ten before I almost enter a coma.

Back on my bed, sucking in air, I tuck my hands beneath my head and think about Eliza Wishart.

It sounds ridiculous, but I can almost smell her. I close my eyes. I should have talked to her. I should have crossed that oval, my pockets brimming with all the right words. I want to see her in a way that almost hurts.

I wonder what is unfolding at her house right now. Is she asleep, or is she awake and frantic? I imagine her parents. Speculating and supposing. Panicking. They must have involved the police. The Authorities. The people whose job it is to locate the missing. They’re probably over there right now. Dozens of them. Specialists. They probably have maps and blackboards and switchboards on trestle tables. They’re getting organized. They’re drinking black coffee. They’re talking fast and loud, punching out their cigarettes dramatically. Collars pulled, ties
loosened. Positing and arguing. Embarking on a fresh trail of crumbs and hot leads that will lead them directly to me.