The Butcherbird Read Online Free PDF Page B

do?’
    Maroubra lowered his head, sighed. ‘I took down that oar and sawed it in half.’ There was an intake of breath from the table and a shuffling of chairs. ‘I took the butt end, comrades, put it inside my overcoat and walked down to that club. Straight in the door. Past those two ugly thugs before they could stop me and yelled as I went past, “If you had a mother she wouldn’t recognise you after I say hello.” I was in the toilet before they could wake up to themselves, put the overcoat over the stall door, the butt of the oar inside and started to wash my hands. It didn’t take long. They came in quietly, cautiously, not sure what was going on. And I let them come, just smiling. I was drying my hands until they were in range. Then I grabbed that oar and belted the shit out of them.’
    Maroubra nodded almost sorrowfully at his own story. ‘It’s a heavy thing, a racing oar. Even half an oar. It did a lot of damage very quickly, so I grabbed the coat and ran and kept running. Straight to Coogee Oval. I always feel at home there, safe.
    Straight to the middle of the oval, dark at two in the morning.
    Down on the ground, comrades, spreadeagled, nose in the dirt, not moving a muscle. You could hear the sirens pretty quickly. I suppose they were both police and ambulance—they would’ve needed one. They went on for a long time, lights flashing around for a while, but they’d never see me out there. I didn’t move for two hours, and when it was all quiet I got up and went home.’ There was nodding around the table. ‘I put the oar back on the wall one piece above the other. I like it that way.
    You’ve got to look after your own, hey?’
    When the thumping of tables and clanging of glasses had subsided and the great steaming bowls of Sicilian fish stew and rice were set down, quiet fell on the group. Jack had felt it an honour when he was casually invited to come to his first lunch. He knew no visitors were ever invited to this informal club. If you were asked once, you were in. And he’d wanted to be in, to be included in this tangle of flotsam and jetsam that washed up on the shores of Bondi once a month.
    When Maroubra had rung him three years ago and suggested lunch, he’d assumed it was merely one of their occasional boozy get-togethers. They’d known one another for nearly twenty years, since the day Jack had first signed on at the surf club for his bronze medallion training. There was the massive frame at the end of the line of newcomers, even then a head taller than the rest. And when they came to the surf rescue training with the old belt and reel, Maroubra had picked him as a partner—although even today he swore it was only because Jack was lighter than the rest and easier to tow as a victim. When the roles were reversed and Jack was required to rescue Maroubra, when little or no headway was being made through the rip, he’d felt the hand on his shoulder and heard the deep voice. ‘Don’t worry, mate, I’ll kick underwater. No one’ll ever know.’
    And no one ever had. Just as they’d never seen the same hand take Jack’s pack when they were portaging in the Franklin River and it was all he could do to scale the cliff, let alone manoeuvre a twenty-five kilo pack. But Maroubra came to him for advice, for support, once for money when he was starting his business.
    They were joined, if not at the hip, somewhere near.
    The group had been formed this way, all from different backgrounds, not a collection of school friends or sporting mates, just one link binding to the next, but a chain forged from a series of found pieces, each as strong as the next. Over the years they’d helped one another with tragedies and traumas, jobs and joyous occasions, funds and faith.
    The only other member Jack had known before he joined that unexpected day was the Pope, who’d been at university with him, but even then was an exotic, distant figure. He seemed to have money when no one had money. It was said he