Lost - Michael Robotham [47]
Outside the plowed fields were milk-chocolate brown and smoke fluttered like a ragged white flag from the chimney. In late summer wheels of hay dotted the hillsides like spilled lozenges.
I can still smell the mornings sometimes—the burned toast, strong tea and the talcum powder my stepfather sprinkled between his toes before pulling on his socks. As he closed the door the dogs barking excitedly, dancing around his feet.
I learned all about life and death on the farm. I snipped the scrotums of newborn lambs and pulled out the testes with my teeth. I put my forearm deep in a mare, feeling for the dilation of the cervix. I killed calves for the freezer and buried dogs that were more like siblings than working animals.
There aren’t any photographs of everyday workings on the farm. The album records only special occasions—weddings, births, christenings and anniversaries.
“Who’s this?” Joe points to a picture of Luke, who is wearing a sailor’s suit and sitting on the front stairs. His blond cowlick stands up like a flag fall on an old-fashioned taxicab meter.
The lump forming in my throat feels like a tumor. Covering my mouth with my fingers, I try to stop the alcohol and morphine from talking but words leak out through my open pores.
Luke was always small for his age but he compensated for it by being loud and annoying. Most of the time I was at boarding school so I only saw him during the holidays. Daj would tell me to keep an eye on him and at the same time she’d tell Luke to stop bugging me because he constantly wanted to play Old Maid and to look at my football cards.
In the depths of winter when it snowed I used to go tobogganing down Hill Field, starting off near the front door and finishing at the pond. Luke was too young so he rode on a toboggan with me. Several hillocks along the way would throw us in the air and he squealed with laughter, clinging to my knees.
The track leveled off toward the end and a mesh fence sagged between posts having been hit so many times by braced feet.
My stepfather had gone into town to get a thermostat for the boiler. Daj was trying to hand dye my bedsheets a darker color to hide the semen stains. I can’t remember what I was doing. Isn’t that strange? I can remember every other detail with the clarity of a home movie.
At bath time we noticed him missing. We used a spotlight powered by the tractor engine to search the pond but the hole in the ice had closed over.
I lay awake that night, trying to will Luke into being. I wanted him to be lying in his bed, snuffling in his sleep and twitching like a dog dreaming of fleas.
They found him in the morning beneath the ice. His face was blue, his lips bluer. He was wearing hand-me-down trousers and hand-me-down shoes.
I watched from my bedroom window as they laid him on a sheet and tucked another beneath his chin. The ambulance had mud-streaked arches and open doors. As they lifted the stretcher I went flying out of the front door, screaming at them to leave my brother alone. My stepfather caught me at the gate. He picked me up and hugged me so hard I could barely breathe. His face was gray and prickly. His eyes were blurred with tears.
“He’s gone, Vince.”
“I want him back.”
“We’ve lost him.”
“Let me see.”
“Go back inside.”
“Let me see.”
His chin was pressing into my hair. Daj had fallen to her knees beside Luke. She screamed and rocked back and forth, rubbing her fingers through his hair and kissing his closed lids.
She would hate me now. I knew that. She would hate me forever. It was my fault. I should have been looking after him. I should have helped him count his football cards and played his childish games. Nobody ever blamed me; nobody except me. I knew the truth. It had been my fault. I was responsible.
“We lost him,” my stepfather had said.
Lost? You lose something down the back of the sofa or through a hole in your pocket; you lose your train