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Mystery, Drama, Suspense, Death in the Australian Outback |
| A fine thread of smoke, boasting a smell of bacon, drifts lazily towards the upper floor, arousing Mason out of his restful sleep. Taking a moment to remember where he is, he slowly opens his eyes to the familiar sights of his childhood bedroom around him. Left exactly the way it had always been. Like a shrine kept in his memory. Beth had changed nothing. Even the sheets smelled freshly laundered when he slipped between them last night, like they were waiting for his return at any moment. Had his mother hoped for this every day since he’d left? Guilt claimed a place deep in the pit of his stomach. It was growing with every hour he spent here. Mason swings his legs over the side of the bed; thankful for the comfort of the mattress, unlike the hardness of the bench the night before. Memories threaten to come racing back as he glances around the room, feeling a wash of emotions engulf him as he struggles to wake. Becoming more aware of the smell of frying bacon and what appear to be hushed male voices down below in the kitchen, Mason stands and grabs a clean pair of jeans and a casual t-shirt that fits his frame like a glove. He leaves his bedroom and makes his way to the top of the staircase. Looking down with a clear view into the kitchen from where he stands, Mason sees Bryce at the stove and a stranger sitting at his kitchen table. The smell wafting towards him hits his nose with appreciation, but the feeling of intrusion once again has him feeling frustrated and irritated. Walking quietly down the stairs, Mason catches a thread of conversation as the two men are unaware of his imminent presence. “Let's take it one step at a time. Give him a chance to find his feet. If we rush this, he will leave.” Mason hears Bryce say to whoever the hell is sitting in his kitchen. What are we taking one step at a time, Bryce? Asks Mason, causing Bryce to nearly drop the spatula in the middle of flipping some fried eggs. “Mason, I didn’t hear you coming,” exclaims Bryce. “Pull up a seat; breakfast is nearly ready”. “I don’t recall asking you to come by and cook me breakfast. I also don’t remember inviting a stranger into my house.” He looks pointedly at the younger man sitting at the table, looking like he belongs there. “And who might you be?” Mason asks. “This is Mick Pickman, answers Bryce, moving over to introduce the two men properly. “Mick, this is Mason Coalbriar”. Mick stands and holds out his hand to Mason. “Pleased to meet you, sir,” he says, waiting for Mason to shake his outstretched hand. “Why are you here? Mason asks. He takes a seat, ignoring the offer of pleasantries. And more to the point, why are you here, Bryce? Don’t you think I can take care of myself? “Of course I do, son,” replies Bryce, returning to the stove to dish up the plates. Steaming piles of ham, bacon and eggs with toast on the side, joined by fried tomato, make their way over to the table. Mason also notices the coffeepot full on the kitchen counter just waiting to be poured into the mugs sitting alongside. “Your mother would appreciate my checking in on you is all. It’s the very least I can do. And Mick-well I told you a bit about him yesterday. He wanted to come and meet you. And I thought you might have some questions for him” Bryce pours the coffee and brings it over to the table, sitting down to his own plate piled high. Before replying, Mason takes a much needed drag of coffee and a bite of what he grudgingly admits is a bloody amazing breakfast. “Thanks for this, Bryce,” he mumbles. “I appreciate it.” “You are very welcome, son,” Bryce says seeming to relax slightly. “So Bryce tells me you worked for my father and noticed a change in his behavior?” Mason directs his comment to Mick, who is tucking into his own plate of fried delight. “That’s correct, sir,” Mick wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and gives his full attention to Mason. “If we are going to have any chance of getting along, Mick, you will need to stop calling me sir. I am not my father. I am not your boss, and I am not above you in station. My name is Mason, and I would prefer you to address me as such.” “Of course, sir, I mean, Mason, replies Mick. It just might take me a minute to get used to that, if you’ll excuse me. I have worked for your father for about 8 years. And if you’ll forgive my saying, I found him quite odd. Had a temper on him too, I’m sure you don’t need telling about. But if I’m completely honest, I found him to be a fair and reasonable boss. If you did your job properly, there were no issues. Mr CoalBriar may have been old fashioned and set in his ways, but I didn’t much mind that either. Reminded me of my father when he was alive. “Then there was your mother. Couldn’t hope to meet a nicer lady than Mrs CoalBriar. The blokes and I used to wonder how two people so different from each other could be married and seem happy about being so. But they were happy. Until they weren’t.” Mick looks to Mason to gauge whether he should keep going. “Is that it?” asks Mason. “No, sir, er, Mason. Shall I keep at it?” Mason nods as he continues on with his breakfast. He’s not overly sure if he is ready to hear more, so maybe shoveling food in his mouth while he listens will help to steady his nerves. “I knew about you. Not just from the other shearers, but your dad used to rant about you from time to time,” says Mick. “I’m sure he did,” replies Mason. “And he would have enjoyed himself doing it. Whatever my father said about me, I’m not overly interested. So, you don’t need to worry about that.” “Fair enough,” says Mick with a slight smile. “Bryce said he told you about your mum disappearing for a time? Something with her being sick, allergic, needing to stay indoors, etc. We all found this really strange, but the doc was coming regular like so it can’t have all been a lie. At the beginning of that time, your dad actually seemed different in a good way. He seemed more chipper than normal. Less irate. Joking even with us lads and coming down to the sheds to share a beer or two.” “Wait,” says Mason, “a beer or two? Dad never drank beer. He was a scotch man through and through. I never saw Dad swig a beer in all my life.” Mason shakes his head; he cannot imagine his father, the great Thomas CoalBriar, drinking beer. “Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but drink beer he did,” says Mick. “Mind you, you could tell by the look on his face it was a struggle to get it down,” Mick has a bit of a chuckle. Mason joins in, enjoying the thought of his father trying to be ‘one of the boys’ and having a hard time doing so. “And then one day, just like that,” Mick clicks his fingers, “he turned stormy as shit. It was like a switch had flipped overnight. His face wasn’t just black with anger and frustration. He looked as though he had aged ten years. Something happened that night that turned your father to stone. No more beers with the boys, that's for sure. There wasn’t another kind word ever spoken. Not to us anyway. Not to anyone. At first we thought your mum might have taken a turn for the worse. Died even, to cause such a change in your father. But he assured us that Mrs CoalBriar was fine and we needn’t worry ourselves about her. It was also about this time that he had us move the sheep up to the top paddocks and put restrictions in place about where we could and couldn’t go on the property. The house was out of bounds. If anyone was caught within a hundred meters of this house, it was instant dismissal. Two of the blokes tried at different times, just to see how serious your old man was. They were packing their bags the very same day. The house was closed up like a tomb. None of the windows were open; the blinds remained drawn. Mr CoalBriar said it was a fresh development with your mum's illness and none of our damn business. The lads and I were concerned about your mum. It was stifling hot during the days and not much better at night. Surely being closed up tight in this house could not be healthy. We even thought about calling the police. But then one day, out of nowhere, your mum came out onto the side porch and raised a hand to us all in greeting. She didn’t come over like she usually did, but she had a smile on her face and seemed in good spirits. She also seemed to have gained a little weight, not much mind you, but she looked healthy, happy.” “So who tidied the loft, cooked for you all, did your laundry?” asks Mason. “We had to look after ourselves,” states Mick. “Your father wasn’t hiring extra staff to take care of us. If your mum wasn’t doing it, we were. Eventually, Mrs CoalBriar started up again, but your father forbade us from speaking with her. We weren’t to enquire about her health; nothing. We thanked her of course, all the time. Your mum meant a lot to us blokes. We appreciated every little thing she did for us and, if I’m not speaking out of turn, we missed her while she was unwell and genuinely worried for her.” Mason says, “Bryce tells me you looked out for her. How could you have managed this if my father wouldn’t let you speak with her? Seems that would be pretty hard to me.” “It was,” says Mick, “until your father's brief stint in the hospital himself. That’s when I took my chance to really check on your mum.” Both Bryce and Mason stare hard at Mick. Looking over at Bryce, Mason could see this was news to him as well. “Continue,” says Mason, wondering what more was to come. “It was the strangest of things. Mr CoalBriar was out slashing the fields one day. Something he did regular like, you know? No one saw what happened, but after some time, we wondered where your dad was. He’d been gone a lot longer than usual, and we became concerned. One of the lads volunteered to go look for him and found him lying beside the slasher, unconscious and a dirty great gash across his head. Naturally, we called the ambulance. Henry, the lad that found him, said it looked nasty, the gash on your father's head. And he still hadn’t regained consciousness by the time the ambulance drove out of here like a bat out of hell. But what was strange was that your mum didn’t go with him. She didn’t leave the property. Didn’t go to the hospital to visit him, and he was in there for just shy of a week. She told us he was doing fine and would be home soon, nothing to worry about. But I could tell she was worried. So, one afternoon after work, I saw your mum out in the garden picking some vegetables for dinner. I went over to enquire how she was coping. She had been crying. I could tell by the puffiness of her eyes. She seemed desperate to talk, but she held herself back. She asked me to speak to the lads, to assure them Mr CoalBriar would soon be home and to please understand that none of his recent behavior was his fault. That he couldn’t help it. I tried to get her to open up more, but she wouldn’t. She just asked if I would give your father some understanding without asking for answers. If I could do this for her, it would make a world of difference. So that’s what I tried to do. “Your dad came home in a taxi one day, earlier than expected. He had signed himself out of hospital, refusing to stay any longer. He was quieter at first. Like the life had gone from him, and he struggled with his words at times. He mentioned the doctors had him on some medication for high blood pressure and it was messing with his head. Said it would calm down once his system became used to the tablets. For awhile, he did return to his normal self. Not the beer drinking, kinder version, but the Thomas CoalBriar most knew. His temper flared, then calmed, then flared again. For us, it was business as usual.” “The real trouble seemed to start when your mum was in the loft one day for a bit longer than usual. We had left more of a mess due to some celebrations the night before. One of the young kids had just become engaged and well, you know how messy celebrating can become. Your mum was having a bit of a laugh with Birdie, one of the lads, about who knows what, when your father heard from downstairs. He thundered up that ladder quicker than I had ever seen him, grabbed your mum and told her to get herself back to the house. The next thing we heard was your dad questioning the hell out of Birdie. Did he fancy Mrs CoalBriar? What was he doing talking to her when we had been told to let her do her work and not interrupt? Was he having inappropriate thoughts about his wife? Did he think he stood a chance now that Mr CoalBriar was on medication? It went on and on. Poor Birdie didn’t know what hit him. Shortly after your father returned to the floor, we saw poor Birdie descending the ladder, bags packed and heading for the door.” “What, my father fired him simply because he made Mum laugh?” To Mason, even this sounds extreme for Thomas. “Yes, sir, he fired Birdie immediately. From then on we were hardly game to look at your mum, let alone speak to her.” “So let’s get to the crux of it, shall we? Mason has heard enough for now, and his breakfast is turning to stone inside his stomach. “What happened on the day of the shooting? Where were you all? What happened to the sheep? Why does the property look so uncared for?” These are the questions that Mason mostly wants answers to right now. And Mick seems the man who can give him what he needs. “We don’t know what happened on the actual day of the shooting,” says Mick, with sadness written across his face. “We had been dismissed and thrown off the property a few days before it all went down. Your father lost interest in maintaining the property after the accident. Some of the lads offered to take over the slashing, repairs where needed, improvements to the shearing sheds, etc. Mr CoalBriar wasn’t interested. His response was always that there was no point. And that once the latest mob of sheep died off, he wouldn’t be replacing them. He even mentioned during his increasing fits of rage that he would burn it all to the ground. We honestly didn’t know how to help him. And we wanted to. Help your father and your mother. CoalBriar Farm was our home away from home. We put an awful lot of blood, sweat and tears into making sure the CoalBriar brand maintained its reputation. We took pride in working here. Your father's reputation as a hard arse didn’t deter men from seeking employment. If one lad left, it didn’t take long for them to be replaced.” “The night we were all dismissed, your father was in a thunderous mood none of us had seen before. To be perfectly honest, it was frightening. He had been in the foulest of tempers the whole day. Even the poor sheep were copping a good kicking, and being thrown from the sheds. He raged at us all, for any and every little thing. I saw your dad popping more pills than usual, and he was struggling to keep up with us. There were times he would struggle to remember our names. Words were confused, and he found it hard to keep his thoughts in line. In the afternoon, he left early. Told us not to expect any dinner from the house. To find our own meals for a change. Mrs CoalBriar must have ignored your dad's orders, as right on time, she came down to the sheds to deliver our dinner, apologising for your dad's current mood. She asked me to return the dirty dishes to the back door a little later on once we had finished. But that never eventuated. Your father came storming back into the sheds before I had a chance. It was clear he had been drinking and heavily. You could smell it coming off him in waves. He stumbled and nearly fell trying to climb the ladder. He started yelling, raging; his face was red as a beetroot. I thought he was going to have a stroke. He told us all to get out; we were all fired. Some of the men were already in bed, and he marched straight over to them and reefed the blankets from around them, screaming in their faces. We weren’t able to gather our things or get changed. We were to leave immediately and not to bother returning ever again. He was kicking things over, throwing our property around. Roaring, that none of us will have your mother, or this farm. Shoving some blokes in the back as they tried to get to the ladder. Two days later, we heard the news. I can only surmise that your father killed the sheep before……well, before he ended his life and that of your mother. I truly am very sorry, Mr CoalBriar. It’s a terrible thing.” “Thank you, Mick,” Mason’s voice is raspy and choking with emotion he did not wish these men to witness. I appreciate what you have told me. I really do. And Bryce, Mason turns to the old man, thank you for the wonderful breakfast, I am grateful to you. But for now, I would like some time to myself. Seems hard to get any around here at the moment, to be honest.” Bryce stands and starts to clear the table even after Mason has just asked him to leave. “Well, about that,” Bryce says, wearing the sheepish look Mason is growing ever familiar with. “There is just one more visit I organised for you to save you the trouble.” As Mason wonders just what the hell he is going to do about Bryce and his constant interference, there is a knock at the front door. “That will be the funeral people,” Mick chimes in. “I’ll go let them in, shall I? On my way out, that is.” “And I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee before I leave,” says Bryce. Mason stands, hands on hips, thoughts running a mile a minute. This is a nightmare that just keeps on getting better, he thinks. “If you don’t mind, I’ll call back in a few days?" asks Mick. I would really like to help clean out some of the mess in the sheds and around the property if you would like a hand?” Without waiting for a reply, Mick heads towards the front door, and Mason hears him greet the next round of unwanted visitors and give them directions towards the kitchen. |
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