‘Don’t hurt me, Billy! Please don’t hurt me!’ Jessica’s throat grows tight and she begins to sob softly.
Billy looks confused. ‘Jessie my friend. Billy don’t hurt.’ He lifts his head and sniffs deeply, clearing the contents of his nose into the back of his throat, then he knuckles the tears from his own eyes. ‘Billy hungry, Jessie.’
‘Hungry?’ Jessica asks stupidly, not comprehending his meaning.
Billy claps his hands together. ‘Hungry, hungry, hungry!’
Jessica slowly becomes aware of the smell of fresh baked bread coming from the kitchen and thinks that she can buy some time to distract Billy.
‘It’s the bread, it’s burning!’ she cries. Then she runs into the kitchen and over to the stove and grabs a cloth, opening the oven door. This simple task steadies her.
She’s lost all sense of time but sees by the loaves that she’s been away no longer than it would have taken her to milk the cow. The loaves stand high and handsome in the bread pans, the brown tops just beginning to turn to a darker burn.
Billy enters the kitchen while she’s busy with the bread. ‘Bread!’ he shouts excitedly.
‘It’s too hot to eat, Billy,’ Jessica says with her back to him. She brings a pan over to the table and up-ends it so that the loaf falls free, resting on its side.
‘Bread!’ Billy repeats urgently and grabs at the steaming loaf, picking it up in both hands. There is a moment’s delay before he drops the loaf onto the kitchen floor. ‘Bread hot!’ he yells.
Jessica has got herself together a bit, though she’s still trembling. She stoops, picks the loaf up with the cloth, and places it back on the table. ‘I told you!’ she scolds, surprised how strong her voice sounds. Billy looks contrite.
When she’d bent down for the bread she could smell the urine soaking the front of her moleskins. I don’t want to die pissing my pants, she suddenly thinks. The absurdity of this thought almost makes her laugh out loud. Pis sing my pants is the least of my problems, she thinks. ‘I’ll make you some real nice tucker, Billy. What would you like, eggs and bacon, as much as you can eat?’
‘Billy hungry now!’ he cries again.
Jessica looks up at him. His expression is completely harmless — Billy Simple is a little boy who’s hungry and nothing more. She tells herself he’s forgotten all about the dogs, and his confused mind is now concerned only with the need to eat. If she pulls herself together she’ll be all right, if she doesn’t think about the deaths, the deaths everywhere. She takes a deep breath and removes the remaining three pans from the stove, tapping them out onto the table. ‘Don’t touch,’ she cautions Billy, more for the reassuring sound of her own voice than for him to take note.
Billy watches her, and then smiles again. ‘Soup! Billy want soup!’
‘It’s not ready, Billy. I put some fresh vegies in, and they won’t be cooked yet.’ The ordinariness of this carryon in Hester’s kitchen has a calming effect on Jessica. She begins to realise that Billy Simple isn’t going to hurt her unless he thinks himself threatened.
‘Soup! Soup! Billy hungry, Jessie,’ he whines, looking disappointed.
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Jessica thinks of the Billy she knew at Riverview and understands that, despite her fear, she must take control of the situation. Billy expects to be told what to do, knows no other way to behave. If she doesn’t take charge, he’ll grow nervous again. She must dominate him — it’s the only way he knows. The reason he’s come to her in the first place is because he expects her to take over, to tell him what he must do.
‘Billy, you can’t sit in the kitchen like that, you’re going to have to wash and change your clothes before you can eat. You hear me, Billy? Wash! I’ll get you some fresh clobber to wear.’
Joe is not quite as tall as Billy but he’s nearly as broad in the chest and age has thickened his waist, so Jessica decides his clothes ought to fit Billy well enough. Either that or she’ll have to strip Billy naked and wash what he’s wearing. The thought makes her want to throw up again.
Jessica thinks about what she’s going to have to do. She’s going to have to take Billy Simple in. Turn him in to the magistrate at Narrandera. Her heart pounds as she realises what will be involved. She knows she can’t keep him on the farm. Even if she can trick him, lure him into a room, there’s nowhere she can lock him up safely until Joe returns in two days or while she rides for help. Billy would break down the door of the shed the moment her back is turned. Unless he could be persuaded to let her tie his legs and wrists?
Jessica looks at him — she doesn’t much like her chances. Right now Billy Simple trusts her. But if she tries to restrain him or push him he’ll grow nervous again, and she shudders at the thought of what he might do if he’s panicked, as he was with the dogs.
Billy looks down, examining himself as though for the first time. His torn flannel shirt and ripped moleskins are stiff with dried and drying blood. Red’s gore, bits of skin and hair and tissue add to the mess. Long crimson runnels of drying blood run the length of both arms down to his wrists and over his hands, disappearing between his fingers. It is as though he has been carelessly tattooed or viciously raked. The torn bottom fifteen inches of the right leg of his moleskins are also fresh-soaked, though already starting to darken as the blood dries. Billy Simple is a fearsome and frightening sight to behold.
‘There’s a tin tub beside the windlass out the back, go and draw up some water from the well and fill it and take all your clothes off, Billy.’ Jessica speaks slowly as if instructing a child. Then she goes over to a shelf and takes a bar of lye soap and hands it to him. ‘Get in the tub and wash all over with lots of soap.’ Jessica makes a soaping motion in the air above her head. ‘And mind you wash your hair. Can you do that for me, Billy?’
Billy nods and grins, holding the bar of soap in his hand. ‘Lotsa soap, hair!’ he says happily, making a scrubbing motion above his own head.
‘And everywhere else.’ Jessica makes more circular motions, this time over her body, ‘Lots of soap, everywhere. And wash your belt and boots when you’re finished.’ She tries to smile at him. ‘You come back a good clean boy and Jessie will let you have soup and bread, eggs and bacon, all you can stuff into yourself,’ she promises him.
Jessica is amazed at the increasing calm she feels. ‘Leave your clothes at the well, Billy, I’ll bring you some others. Call out when you’ve finished washing yourself. There’s a scrubbing brush in the tub, use it real hard, you hear me now, Billy?’ She sees his face has darkened again — he looks panicky. ‘What’s the matter now, Billy?’ she asks.
Billy clasps his hands over the top of his head, sniffling. ‘Billy want hat, Jessie. Please!’
Jessica looks at him, his big hands covering his head.