Evie Wyld - After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

But she had a memory for faces. ‘Frank? Frank Collard?’ She bobbed her head up and down to try to lift his gaze.

He nodded, collected a smile together. ‘June. How are you?’

She looked thrilled to see him, but the blond child wriggled and tugged at her. ‘I’m pretty good, Frank — Clay!’ She shook the arm of the wriggling kid. ‘Get back inside!’

The kid looked up at her from under a heavy brow, sullen and threatening a scream. ‘But Ma!’

‘Inside, now — we’ll go later. I have to talk to the man here.’ Little Clay gave him an ugly look up and down, before turning round and stomping back into the shop. Frank’s teeth bit his lip.

‘Sorry ’bout that, Frank,’ she said, flattening down her T-shirt. He shrugged, tried to smile. ‘Well, we haven’t seen you around here in a time!’ She was talking like a woman from the deep south of America. ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘I’ve moved up north — country sort of thing.’

She nodded, eyes wide. ‘So, you had a fight with your old man?’

He blinked, didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. Which didn’t seem to bother her.

‘So what d’ya think to the old place? Have we looked after her all right?’ She chuckled and he didn’t know what she was talking about. ‘You want to come on in?’ She squinted into the brightness at him. ‘Give youse a Coon Cheese Twist on the house!’ She chuckled again, stepping back and holding the door open for him. He saw a slice of inside. The counter was in a different place and behind it stood a man, fat and glazed like a doughnut. He wore a green apron.

‘June — you live here?’

She looked unsure of herself for the first time, ‘You didn’t know? — Oh. Well,’ she said a bit softer, letting the door swing closed and taking a few paces towards him. ‘Your old man left some months back, Frank. Me an’ Jimmy.’ She nodded in the direction of the doughnut man. ‘We bought it up from him with the money Gran left. Sorry, Frank — were you looking for him? Jeeze, that makes it kind of awkward, eh?’

He turned round and headed away from the shop without a word. His skin prickled. He worried that June wasn’t as big a bitch as she had been when he was young and perhaps she was hurt by his abrupt departure, but he thought it just as likely that she watched him march away from the shop with a look of having sunk an enemy ship.

The Parramatta Hotel had been painted cream orange since he’d last seen it. There was an old black dog tied up outside, its water bowl boiling in the sun. He untied it before going in and it sloped off down the street looking over its shoulder at the pub. Inside the dark-blue carpet still stuck to his feet. A blackboard still read STEAK WITCH. It was dark and smoke drooped in the air. He ordered a beer. Horses ran on a black and white television at the bar, but no one watched them. He fidgeted with a beer mat as the drink went down him. Six men sat in quiet communion in the pool room drinking and avoiding each other’s eyes. He felt sick. He tried to think, but all that would come was that last time, busting into his father’s room, the smell of the grey sheets, the air thick and damp like breath. His dad lay underneath the bedsheet, the bare ticking spoiled round his shoulders. He hadn’t sat up, hadn’t moved anything but his eyes, which swivelled towards the door. A liquorish cigarette wilted at the edge of his mouth. Frank had felt the violence leave him because what would he do? Pull the sheets away? Leave his father naked and splayed on the bed like a baby? His father didn’t speak, but there was the smallest twitch from his eyebrow, his lips hanging on to the cigarette.

‘You don’t even know what you’ve done, do you?’ Frank had asked.

The tip of the cigarette had glowed weakly.

Frank drank and drank some more.

By the time the street lights came on outside the pub his legs were heavy with beer and the bar nuts did nothing to soak it up. He looked at the dirt under his nails and wanted to go home. Strange to call it home. A voice said movie-like in the gloom of the bar, ‘Thought I might find you here.’ It was June but without her exclamations.

‘June.’ He raised his glass, then looked away from her.

She smiled and he could hear it. ‘You going to buy me a drink, Collard? Thought maybe we could swap stories.’

He took a ten-dollar note from his pocket and handed it to her. ‘Get yerself somethin.’ Crikey , he thought as she moved towards the bar. I’m buyin’ June Shannon a drink. Wonder if I’ll get the change . The thought tickled him and he was smiling when she got back with her own beer. She gave him the change. There was a silence while she got started on her drink and he wondered why she’d come.

‘So where’s… Jimmy?’

She drank past the halfway mark of her beer before she answered, ‘Top Pub.’

Another silence while he turned this over. ‘How come you’re not there?’

‘This is my local. Not Jimmy’s. Anyway — I thought you could do with a friendly ear.’ She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her own ear. Then she trailed a finger down her throat and rested it on her collarbone. He felt angry and looked away. She finished her beer, got up wordlessly and went to the bar again. When she came back she had a new one for him too.

‘Quick drinking.’

She shrugged. ‘Thirsty. So!’ The exclamation was back. ‘You’re living up north now then? What do you do there?’

‘I work on a boat. Occasionally.’

‘So, your woman left you?’ she said, not batting an eyelid.

He felt his ears move back on his head. Same old June. ‘My woman?’ He tried to make it sound insignificant, something to be snorted at, but he snorted too loudly and sounded angry. ‘What is it that you heard about my woman, June?’

She shrugged. ‘Lucy, wasn’t it?’

He pictured himself knocking out June’s front teeth. He drank the rest of his old drink instead, and put the new cold beer in its place. He drew his lips back over his teeth and looked up at her. ‘How did you know her name?’

‘You say it like she’s dead.’

‘How do you know she’s not?’

He’d meant to scare her but only scared himself.

‘She was here. Looking for you.’

He breathed out another snort. ‘She was not here,’ he said under his breath like she was a child telling tales. Lucy wouldn’t look for him here. She wouldn’t look for him. He felt sick. She said nothing. Someone turned off the old television and it made a snapping noise.

‘She left you?’

The beer burnt in his chest. ‘That’s nothing to talk about.’ He slapped his palm on the table, spilling the first centimetre of his drink. There was a long silence but June didn’t look uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure if he’d imagined the whole conversation, if he wasn’t just making this up in his head.

But she was still holding her shit shovel. ‘It must feel weird to come back home and your old man’s gone. I can’t believe he didn’t tell you! We paid fair price on that shop, Frank, I can tell you. I’d be on to him for a fix of it — you worked there for a time, after all.’

She glittered in the cigarette smoke. He was silent. He wanted to ask questions but then again, he did not. He didn’t want the answers and he especially didn’t want the answers she would give him.

‘I can tell you where he’s gone. I can tell you why. And I can tell you with who.’

He peeled a bar mat; drank his beer. There were pins and needles in his bum bones.

She took a swallow and ran her tongue over her teeth. ‘Do you know about that, Frank? Know about the woman he went with? An evangelist, Frank. Fucking true. She passed through here like honey on a stick and your old dad stuck to her.’