Read Online One Boy Missing by Stephen Orr - Free Book Online

goddamn-piece-of-shit , attempt to pick it up off the floor and say, ‘Everything’s coming back up the toilet.’
    Moy sat up, rubbed his eyes and asked, ‘What’s everything?’
    ‘Everything. Whatever’s gone down, it’s coming back up. Weeks’ worth of it, by the look of things.’
    He stood up, opened his blind and looked out at a pair of red-headed sisters walking to school. One of them noticed him in his boxers. She giggled and told her sister. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour, Dad.’
    ‘What should I do?’ George asked.
    ‘What can you do?’
    AN HOUR LATER, Moy and George were standing in the doorway of the toilet in the family home. Moy dared not venture in. The floor was flooded and the overflow, a mixture of pulped paper, shitty lumps and cigarette butts, had reached and soaked the hallway carpet.
    ‘What a stink,’ Moy said.
    ‘What did you expect?’ his father replied.
    ‘What have you been putting down there?’
    ‘Same’s been going down there for the last thirty years, with no problems.’
    ‘Well, you got one now. How much paper do you use?’
    George looked annoyed. ‘What’s it matter?’
    ‘Well…’ He tried to think of how to say it.
    ‘I use what I need to use.’
    ‘What about the cigarettes?’
    ‘I’ve always flushed them down…never mattered.’
    ‘So, we call a plumber?’ Moy asked.
    ‘My arse. I know what the problem is.’
    George led him outside, halfway up the driveway and stopped to point out a willow that grew on the other side of the fence. He showed him the roots that came onto his side and lifted the pavers he’d used as garden edging. ‘Look. Right across the drive,’ he said. ‘And here, this is where the sewer runs.’
    ‘Y’reckon?’
    ‘I know. I’ve been waiting for this to happen. Ever since she planted that bastard thirty years ago.’ He raised his voice. ‘I told her not to. Not there. I said, why don’t you plant it in the middle? Wouldn’t listen.’
    ‘Dad, ssh.’
    ‘Won’t bloody ssh.’ He called louder. ‘Now who’s gotta pay three hundred dollars for a plumber?’ And he quietened. ‘Old cow.’
    They stood together in the warm morning sun, Moy noticing the iron pulling away from the rotten fence posts. ‘That’ll need doing soon,’ he said, indicating.
    George looked at it. ‘That’s your problem, when I’m gone. Good luck getting any money out of her.’
    Moy knew who ‘her’ was: Thea Miller, ex-nurse, widow and treasurer of the Guilderton Country Women’s. She kept to herself, had a man in to do her garden and lawns, double-pegged her tunics, raked the gravel around her succulents and twice monthly vacuumed the carpet in her 1978 Premier. She generally ignored anyone she hadn’t met prior to her fortieth birthday.
    George shook his head. ‘Only one thing for it.’
    Five minutes later Moy was in the shed, wiping away spider webs as he moved through a jumble of old furniture, boxes and half-made cabinets George had lost interest in. He found the corner where the paints and chemicals were stored, lifted each tin and blew the dust from it.
    ‘Bingo.’
    He made his way back to George who in the meantime had used a stick to take the lid off the sewer access.
    ‘There you go,’ said Moy. ‘Caustic soda.’
    ‘Bung it in.’
    Moy pulled back the lid and looked at his father. ‘You want me to do it?’
    ‘That’s what you come home for, wasn’t it? To help your old man?’
    ‘Yes, that was the idea.’
    ‘Well, off you go. That stuff eats anything. You wanna murder someone, that’s what you use to get rid of the evidence.’
    ‘I know, Dad.’ He started emptying the powder into the hole.
    ‘Fella in East Hay did that.’ George sat down on a planter, remembering. ‘His wife…and I think there was a kiddy. He thought she’d been on with another fella. You heard of that one, son?’
    ‘No, Dad.’ He emptied the last of the powder and replaced the lid.
    ‘This fella at the pub had been bragging