‘You take the heavy end,’ she said in a soft voice.
I couldn’t touch him. Instead, I held fast to the blanket and we dragged him to the cellar door. Kitty went down first and took his weight as he slid down the stairs. We dragged him to the trapdoor.
‘We come back tonight, Jack. And we do what Milo said.’
I was happy to get out of that dead dark cellar and hoped that by nightfall Kitty would have changed her mind. But sometime before dawn she shook me awake and I found myself again standing in the complete blackness of the cellar with Milo’s body somewhere before us. Out of the void I heard Kitty say that I’d have to heft his weight up the steps and into the outside world.
‘Can’t we call the cops?’ I whispered, staring blankly into the dark.
‘We can do it,’ Kit said. ‘Don’t give up.’ I heard her near the trapdoor and when she lifted it a trace of weak light fell on the bundle.
I took a deep breath and stepped forward. I was hardly a robust boy; skinny legs and bony chest, but I was ready to give it a go. I lifted the lump of him and a long throaty sigh burst from his body. It muffled horribly under the blanket and I never felt so frightened in my life. His slumped body felt heavy and human and his limbs shifted stiffly as though he was still alive. I let out a groan of my own and shoved him up and out and when he was finally on the ground I jumped back, hyperventilating.
‘The blanket,’ I said, ‘it’s all wet!’
Kitty drew close to the long bundle.
‘That’s normal,’ she said, ‘that’s what happens.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I just know, Jack.’
‘Well what now?’ My voice was high and panicky.
Kitty hesitated.
‘We have to take him,’ she said flatly.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t! Not now.’
She looked briefly at me and even in the dark I felt her steely blue eyes.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I can do it now. I’ll take him.’
‘No!’ I walked around and took deep breaths. ‘I can do it.’
Kitty let me gather my nerve.
‘You take that end,’ she said.
I could barely touch him, my hands shook so much. I closed my eyes and grabbed the bundle. It could be a sack of potatoes, I told myself. And with Kitty on the other end, at 4 a.m. while the city was all closed down, we got him under the fence and began to stagger off down the street. Whenever a car came by we just sat right down on the footpath. Then I’d steel myself again, lift him up and off we’d go. And in this way we finally got him all the way to York Street.
There we took Milo’s old belt off the bundle, tied it around the metal grid and pulled it up. We were both out of breath and dizzy with the trauma of it. Then, without ceremony, we pushed him into the culvert and I heard the thump as he hit the bottom. We put the grid back and dropped his belt through the grate. Then Kitty put her arm around me and, side-by-side, we went down to the toilets to clean up.
2
You might wonder why I relate this story. The morning after we gave Milo his burial, I went into his room alone and just stood there with the morning sun shining dimly in. I could still smell the presence of that old man and it wasn’t unpleasant at all. I saw his old enamel mug - it still had water in it. And then a great wave of despond-ency came over me. Maybe it was because of Kitty but for some unknown reason my face was suddenly awash. I remember this well because I found myself kneeling on the floor going through his few possessions and as I picked up one book after another I could not see the titles through my watery vision.
Then I came across a little notebook with a title written in Milo’s hand. I used my palms to clear my eyes and read, The New Theory of Everything. My heart jumped. I snatched it to my chest and took it out into the Office. Kitty was not yet up and I found some comfort holding Milo’s precious diary and thinking about what we’d lost. What could we rely on? Nothing. Nothing except each other.
In the morning light I looked at that spiral bound book, took a breath and carefully opened it. The first page had nothing more than a simple list of supermarket items. I turned the page and found a list of names and birthdates. The third page mentioned a halfway house in Fitzroy and details on how to get there. The next had directions for some other place, and beyond that, pages of simple sums in pounds and pence, daily reminders.
There was no New Theory of Everything.
Did Milo have one? If so, he kept it locked within his old skull and it died with him, along with all the other things the man stood for. What could that theory have been like? That night, when the whole city was quiet and Kitty snuffled beside me, I decided to write it. Why not? Would a certificate of some kind help me understand something that no-one has ever seen? Could I not have an idea as clear and valid as any other person about a subject which is only understood in principle?
Someday. Someday I would write that Theory, when I had time to read up on what other people had said - especially about the origins of things. I would write a detailed and comprehensive new scheme like Milo might have done and I would write it for him - for the three of us - so far, anonymous. A new theory would change all that: people would see us; they’d know we stood for something.
In the meantime, at least we’d given the old man a proper burial. Frankly, I think he had a more fitting end to his days at the old Daco building in 1958 than what we got here at so-called ‘Eden’.
The only consolation here is my little room which I am getting used to. Adequate is the word that comes to mind. A single bed, a white laminated wardrobe with an oval mirror about 60 cm x 30 cm and a heavily bevelled edge, greenish curtains made out of a shiny polyester-type fabric. Wooden floor of hardwood and a little rug about one and a half times as long as it is wide. Walls a kind of beige with a few hooks sticking out, though I have nothing to hang on them. At least I have my 14-inch TV, set up on a shelf over my little hand basin and plugged in where my razor goes.
Christopher has delivered some of my other belong-ings though they are still in the boxes. Don’t want to unpack in case I see a way out of here, but I have noticed there’s Epsom salts leaking out of a carton which I will have to attend to.
So far I’ve only found my traveller’s alarm clock, dictionary, ashtray and calculator - the ‘essentials’. I keep my window open to the courtyard so I can have the occasional smoke. And I’ve put a little side-table under the window. I got one of the other inmates to pinch it from the lounge. He’s one of the few still walking - the walking dead. Any questions, I can always say I had nothing to do with it. Now I’ve got all this time on my hands. Which is why I’m writing about my life with Kitty and the day we put old Milo down the culvert so he could be near the long-dead Aborigines.
You might wonder why we didn’t get caught. Well, of course we did. It so happened that somebody said they’d seen something and then it was only 24 hours before the police cut the lock on the factory door and found us. Believe it or not, they knew we were living there all along.
‘You knew about us?’ I said at the station.
The police officer didn’t even look up; he just kept tapping away with two fingers on the typewriter, slapping those inked letters hard against the official form.
‘You think we don’t have enough to do without worrying about every runaway? It’s only when you muck up that we come down on you.’
I