Patrick Flanery - Absolution

‘When I take you to your aunt, I’m going to leave you with her. And after that I’m going away. I’m leaving the country.’ Sam screwed up his face and kicked his feet against the bed. ‘People will ask you questions about what happened to Bernard. You must tell them what I did to him, the way I killed him. Only give me perhaps three days after I leave you, before you say anything.’ Sam looked up at you again. ‘Do you understand?’

The next morning, you left your notebooks and the last letter, every document important to you, in Timothy and Lionel’s care, telling the young men, these strangers you trusted, to deliver the papers to me in person when they could.

*

Between the clinic and Beaufort West there was only a dirt track that twisted through hills the colour of dead skin. It stopped a kilometre from town, north of the national route, so no one who did not know what to look for would ever find it. It appears on no map and does not exist today.

From the clinic approach, the white spire of the church appeared first, rising in defiance above the dusty trees. You arrived in town on a street of depressed storefronts and a petrol station where you parked alongside other rigs, glinting bright and aggressive in the summer heat. At a phone booth across the street you paged through the slim Beaufort West directory, looking for the name Sam gave you. When you found it, you phoned the number and after a single ring a woman answered.

‘Yeeees. Who’s this?’ The woman sounded suspicious.

‘Do you have a nephew named Sam or Samuel?’

‘Yes. What is this about exactly? Who is this?’ It was not a voice that seemed to care about a nephew.

‘Sam is with me. I wondered if I could bring him to you. His guardian is dead. Bernard — he’s dead. We’re here in town.’

‘No kidding,’ the woman said, with a flatness that surprised you.

‘May I bring him to you?’ You looked down at Sam, who had wedged himself into the phone booth next to you. He was playing with the cord, twisting it into an unnatural shape, and staring across the street at a fruit and vegetable vendor.

‘Who are you? Who is this?’ the woman snapped.

‘We’ll be there now.’

Sam’s aunt lived in a single-storey house with a broad covered veranda. She was standing on the steps as the two of you approached eating peaches, juice dripping down your arms. You hoped the woman would run out to embrace Sam, but instead she just stood waiting under the canopy, slouching in a pair of blue jeans and a dirty white shirt, arms crossed over her breasts. She had Sam’s sharp features, the same peaked nose and narrow eyes, but with a shock of ginger hair.

‘Sam? Is this your aunt? Is this the house?’

Sam looked at you and looked at the house and looked at the woman.

‘Don’t you know your auntie, Sam?’ the woman asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t you want to come see your auntie?’

You watched Sam climb up the three shallow steps and stand in front of his aunt, one hand holding the peach to his mouth as he sucked the flesh from an exposed hemisphere of pit, the other dangling at his side. The woman put a hand on his head, smoothing his unruly hair. ‘Are you his guardian now?’ she asked, squinting. ‘Are you some kind of friend of my sister?’

‘No. I happened to find him. He said his parents were dead. He said you were his only relative.’

‘I guess that’s right. How do you know that bastard Bernard is dead anyway?’

‘I saw his body. I saw him — I mean I saw him dead. I was hitchhiking and came upon the truck and Bernard’s body. Sam was hiding in the bush. They were hijacked.’ You knew the hijacking story was plausible, hijackings being not so uncommon. And in a way, it had been a hijacking.

‘So much the better. I mean Bernard dead. Not the hijacking. Would you like a cup of tea or something?’ the aunt asked.

‘I should be getting on,’ you said, anxious to get moving. ‘You’ll look after Sam?’

‘You mean you’re leaving him with me?’

‘He’s your nephew isn’t he?’

You stared at each other. The aunt’s lips spread and flattened against her teeth.

‘I guess I have to take him, then.’ Sam had finished the peach and turned back to you, rolling the stone around in his mouth, eyes confused. You thought again of taking him into the wilderness, renewing him, as you thought of it, calling him Samuel . But you knew this was impossible. ‘You’ve dropped a real burden on me, Miss — what’s your name?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Sam’s aunt rolled her eyes and snorted. ‘I don’t mind saying I think there’s something funny about all this. Just turning up with nothing. I don’t mind saying I think it’s strange ,’ she said, grabbing Sam, pulling him towards her and clasping him against her faded jeans. He shuffled his red shoes, trying to squirm out of the woman’s grasp, but she held him closer, her arms tightening around his chest. ‘That’s right. I think this woman is strange.’ She coughed, a deep productive cough that pushed her off balance, freeing the child.

You studied Sam with the same intense focus he had once turned on you. After all the unwanted embraces, the grabbing and clinging, you found yourself desperate to be held by him, to hold him, to feel that heat again around your waist. You reached out three dry fingers to touch his cheek. He did not flinch. You wanted him to throw out his arms and cling to you, cry out not to be abandoned, force you into doing what you could not.

But he had nothing to say.

Of course I remembered him at once. Not just here. I knew him immediately in Amsterdam. And finding him suddenly before me, it was like being faced with my own assassin. I wondered if he had come to exact his pound of flesh. But he has only ever been charming. What does he want? I ask. Why can he not say what he has come to say?

It wasn’t chance that Laura and the boy knew each other already, before she found him there in the dark, in the truck, with Bernard lying dead on the ground. The only chance was them being in the same place at the same time. When his parents blew themselves up with three other people outside a police station the only person in the world the boy had wanted to see was Laura because she was as close to a mother as any he had left in the world. He put his hand out to her and she took it and drew his head against her arm and for a moment he couldn’t remember whether she’d only appeared after Bernard was dead or if she’d been there earlier. They sat in silence for a while looking out on the darkness. The boy wanted to ask Laura if she could be his mother, now that his own mother was dead, but he didn’t. He knew it was impossible.

There was a roadblock on the way, but she showed her ID book, as well as the boy’s, and explained she was going to meet his uncle, the owner of the truck. The boy wondered what would happen to them if the police opened the hold and discovered what was inside. But they were lucky. The police sent them on their way and told them to be careful.

Laura drove almost until dawn to a farm outside Beaufort West where she found her associates waiting for her and there the boy met Timothy and Lionel for the first time. Laura told the boy he must trust the men but that she had to leave — there was something she had to do. It was possible she might see him again and she promised to look for him and said he should look for her and if they were both looking they would find each other someday. She told him to go to her mother, to look for her if he ever needed anything. My mother is a good person , she promised. My mother won’t fail you .