‘Could you please go into specifics? I’m sick of fragments. All you people ever do is talk in fragments and I don’t ever get any specifics. You always say you’ll tell me when I’m older but I get older and the stories only get more vague. Nothing fits. It’s all cracked glass bullshit. You don’t tell stories. You tell beginnings and middles and ends but you don’t tell stories. You and Dad have never told me a single complete story.’
Long silence. Long silence and tears.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says.
‘What did Iwan Krol do to Lyle?’
Tears.
‘Don’t do this, Eli.’
‘He cut him up, didn’t he? Darren told me what he does. If he’s nice he chops the head off first . . .’
‘Stop it, Eli.’
‘But if he’s feelin’ real sadistic, maybe if he hasn’t had his lunch yet, or maybe if he woke up on the wrong side of his coffin, he chops off the ankles first and he keeps them muzzled but he keeps them alive. Then he chops the wrists and then a leg and then an arm, maybe. Back and forth he goes . . .’
‘Eli, I’m worried about you.’
‘Not as worried as I am.’
Long silence.
‘I called to tell you something,’ Mum says.
‘You cut off Teddy’s head?’
Long silence. Stop it, Eli. You’re losing your mind. Find it, Eli. Find your lost mind.
‘Are you done?’ Mum asks.
‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘I’ve been doing some study,’ she says.
That’s great.
‘That’s great.’
‘Thanks. Are you being sarcastic?’
‘No. It’s really great, Mum. What are you studying?’
‘Social work. I started reading the books inside. The government kicks in a bit for my tuition and all I have to do is read up a storm. I think I’ve read more textbooks on the subject than some of my tutors.’
‘That’s really great, Mum.’
‘You proud of me?’
‘I’m always proud of you.’
‘What for?’
‘Bein’ here.’
‘Bein’ where?’
‘Just bein’.’
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Look, I’m calling because a woman in my Communications lecture says her nephew is a young journalist at The Courier-Mail. I told her that’s where my boy, Eli, dreams of working. I told her he’s going to be a great police rounder . . .’
‘Roundsman.’
‘Yeah, a great police roundsman, and she says I should tell my boy that the paper is always hiring youngsters for cadetships. You just got to go knock on the door and ask if you could apply for one.’
‘I don’t think it’s that simple, Mum.’
‘Sure it is. I looked up the name of the big editor-in-chief on the newspaper. His name is Brian Robertson. You go in and ask for him to come down from his office and see you for two minutes – just two minutes – because that’s all it will take for him to see it.’
‘See what?’
‘The spark,’ she says. ‘He’ll see it. He’ll see how special you are.’
‘I’m not special, Mum.’
‘Yes, you are,’ she says. ‘You just don’t believe it yet.’
‘I’m sorry, Mum, I gotta go. I’m not feeling well.’
‘Are you sick? What’s wrong?’
‘I’m okay, I’m just not up for talking so much. You wanna talk to August?’
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘You go ask that editor for one of those cadetships, Eli. You do it. Two minutes. That’s all you need.’
‘I love you, Mum.’
‘I love you, Eli.’
I pass the phone to August.
‘Can you stay out of the room for a bit?’ I say.
He nods. August never talks down the phone to Mum. He just listens. I never know what she says to him. I guess she just says.
*
I close the door on our bedroom and lift a thin slab of A4 paper up onto my bed. Paper. For burning this house down or setting the world on fire. With my spark. There’s a chewed blue Kilometrico ballpoint pen on my bedhead. I write on the paper but the ink won’t come through the ballpoint. I roll the pen furiously between my palms to heat it up and the ink runs enough for me to write and underline the title of my story.
A Noose of Eli Bells
In the event I die in a suburban Bracken Ridge inferno or in the event that I am splattered on the Sandgate Station platform 1 railway line by the 4.30 a.m. train to Central after I’ve greased the rails with Vaseline like Ben Yates did two years ago when Shannon Dennis told him under no circumstances – not even if he completed his butcher’s apprenticeship – was she going to have his child, I feel it is important for me to at least lay down some of the specifics