Page 12 of Lawless
“Yeah.” I sucked my finger and stuck it in the bottom of the chip packet to get all the crumbs, and then sighed. “He’s a copper.”
Which, on Dauntless Island, was less welcome than the devil himself.
Addy looked suspicious when we got back to Button John’s place.
“What are you two up to?” she asked, peering through the shed door at us.
“Making the frame for the beans,” I said.
So then we had to do that too. Which wasn’t hard or anything, but of course Button John still managed to nail his shirt to one of the frames. Better than his thumb, at least. When we were finished with the frames, we went through the shed and grabbed what tools we might need for the copper’s yard: a couple of shovels, some saws, a rusty pair of shears, and a rake. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough to prune back the oleanders and dig out the worst of them before they swallowed the house.
We made it back to the copper’s house without being seen—well, without anyone obviously seeing us, which wasn’t at all the same thing on Dauntless. It wouldn’t be very long until someone found out I was doing the copper’s yard, and then the whole island would know inside of five minutes, but so what? I had to work to get money, and if I wasn’t allowed on the boats, then what the hell else was I supposed to do? If people didn’t like it, that was their problem, not mine.
At least, that’s what I told myself as Button John and I arrived at the copper’s house just in time to see Robbie Finch leaving. Robbie gave us a look like we’d busted him sneaking out of a brothel while the rest of his family was at church, but then he took note of our gardening tools and his shoulders relaxed.
“I think this is what’s called mutually assured destruction,” Button John said, giving Robbie a wave. “He won’t tell if we won’t.”
The copper was standing in the doorway holding a big plastic jug of milk.
“I think it is.” I nodded at the copper and tried not to notice how hot he was. “This is my cousin. He’s gonna help out.”
Button John saluted the copper with his shears. I definitely needed to take them off him before he hurt himself.
We headed around the side of the house to the back yard. It really was a mess. The oleanders had taken over since Short Clarry died; the yard was a jungle. I took the shears off Button John and leaned them on the back fence, and then we took the saws to the oleander on the back of the house. Would have been a hell of a lot quicker with a chainsaw, but I wasn’t going to be responsible for putting one of those in Button John’s hands.
Button John had some music downloaded on an old MP3 player, so he turned that up and we worked as it played. The wind took most of the sound away, sweeping it straight out into the harbour where the gulls could hear it. There was a speck of a boat on the horizon, and I wondered if it was the Adeline, though it was impossible to tell from this distance. Gulls circled it like flurries of smoke. It was a warm day despite the wind that came straight off the sea. Button John and I stripped our shirts off after a while and worked in just our jeans.
We took a break for lunch, jumping the sagging back fence to my house. I left Button John washing the worst of the grime off him in the outside sink and went inside to check on Mum.
“Mum, it’s me,’ I called out, even though she never answered. Half the time I didn’t even know if she heard me.
She was sitting in the living room, old records spread around her. The turntable on the record player was spinning, the needle scratching over nothing. Static crackled in the speaker. The record player had belonged to Dad’s parents back when the house was theirs. So had the records. I lifted the needle, put it back, and turned everything off.
Mum didn’t notice. She was still humming along to music that had never been playing in the first place.
I crouched down in front of her. “Do you want some lunch, Mum?”
She smiled at me, but her gaze was distant. “Oh, Will, I love this song.”
She wasn’t mistaking me for my brother, I knew, but for Dad. I’d never looked anything like my dad, but it wasn’t like that mattered. Half the time she talked to him there was nobody there at all.
“It’s a good song,” I said, my heart aching. “Come on, it’s time for lunch.”
She let me draw her up and lead her into the kitchen, where Button John was rattling around in our fridge like he owned the place, pulling out whatever we needed for sandwiches.
“John,” Mum said with a smile, and Button John straightened up and looked at me, like maybe I could tell him if she knew it was him or thought it was her brother Big Johnny.
“Hi,” he said. “Hi, Aunt Susan.”
She blinked at that, and then said, in a tone that sounded almost wondrous. “Button John! You’re getting so big!”
Like it had been years since she’d seen him, instead of days.
He grinned and puffed out his chest. “Almost as big as my dad!”
Even Mum laughed at how ridiculous that was, and Button John led her into a conversation about how we were doing yard work, and making ourselves useful for once by borrowing Big Johnny’s tools. He didn’t say whose yard we were working in, but Mum probably wouldn’t have followed if he had. Sometimes I thought that when Dad died, something in her mind had stopped, like a piece of clockwork had cracked and jammed up all the other bits so that nothing moved right anymore. Most of Mum had drowned with him, and what was left was just a ghost.
I took over making the sandwiches, and then made sure Mum remembered to eat hers before Button John and I hopped the fence again and went back to work. We worked in silence for a while. Button John was good like that. He knew when I needed silence. Then, when he must have figured enough time had passed, he said, “He’s not that hot.”
