“Well,” she said, quite bluntly, “they’re going to take my hair—so now I think it’s your turn. We might as well beat them to it.”
Between us we formed a queue; it was the opposite of the world, as the barbers lined up to cut. You could see us all w
aiting in the toaster.
There are a few things I remember of that night—how Tommy went first, unwillingly. She got him to laugh at a joke, though, of a dog and a sheep in a bar. He was still in those damn Hawaiian shorts, and he cut so crooked it hurt.
Next went Clay, then Henry; then Rory said, “Going to the army?”
“Sure,” said Penny, “why not?”
She said, “Rory, let me see,” and she peered inside his eyes. “You’ve got the strangest eyes of all of you.” They were heavy but soft, like silver. Her hair was short and vanishing.
When it was my turn, she reached for the toaster, to look at her mirrored image. She begged me to show some mercy. “Make it neat and make it quick.”
To finish, it was our father, and he stood and didn’t shirk it; he positioned her head, nice and straight, and when he was done he slowly rubbed her; he massaged the boyish haircut, and Penny leaned forward, she enjoyed it. She couldn’t see the man behind her, and the chop-and-change of his face, or the dead blond hair at his shoes. She couldn’t ever see how broken he was, while the rest of us stood and watched them. She was in jeans, bare feet and T-shirt, and maybe that’s what finished us off.
She looked just like a Dunbar boy.
With that haircut she was one of us.
This time he didn’t wait in the trees but walked the corridor of eucalypts, and burst quietly into the light.
The ditch was still there, clean-cut and clear, but now more had been dug out, both up and down the Amahnu, to give them more room in the riverbed. The remaining debris—the dirt and sticks, the branches and rocks—had been removed or leveled out. In one place he brushed a hand across, on smoothened-over land. To his right he saw the tire tracks.
In the riverbed, he stopped again, he crouched in all its colors. He hadn’t realized before what a multitude it was; a history lesson of rocks. He smiled and said, “Hi, river.”
As for our father, he was in the house, asleep on the couch, with half a mug of coffee. Clay watched him a moment and put his bag down in the bedroom. He took out the books and the old wooden box, but left The Quarryman in the bag, well hidden.
* * *
—
Later, they sat together, on the steps, and despite the cooling weather, the mosquitoes were out, and heinous. They crouched, light-footed, on their arms.
“God, they’re monsters, aren’t they?”
The black mountains stood tall in the distance.
A panel of red behind them.
Again, the Murderer spoke, or tried to.
“How was—”
Clay cut him off. “You hired equipment.”
A friendly sigh. Had he been caught cheating? Had he severed the bridge’s ethos? “I know—it’s not very Pont du Gard, is it?”
“No,” said Clay, but gave him a break. “More than two people built that one, though.”
“Or the devil, if—”
He nodded. “I know.”
He couldn’t tell him just how relieved he was that the job was already done.
Now Michael tried again.