Read Online The Following by Roger McDonald - Free Book Online

knocked me, the sack told me everything.’
    ‘Everything?’
    ‘A constrictor knot, in the neck of the sack.’
    ‘What was in the sack?’
    ‘When I walked home I went down into the back lane behind the police residence . . .’
    ‘You were trying to prove . . . ?’
    ‘That he might have been the dunny man, mate, but didn’t have a cart.’
    ‘Fill me in, Marc. You’re getting ahead of me.’
    ‘There’s a side window, a kitchen window. Imagine the copper, McHale, pouring a drink, a drink pale as Lourdes water, the bloke tossing it back. Imagine a man standing on a chair, the shape of a rope in his hands, nine turns up the doubled lengths, they say, is the way to go with the knot because a cat has nine lives, and this knot’s for the last one of them, while others say there’s thirteen turns, as it’s the unluckiest knot, bar none. Except I’ve heard eight turns is best, Timmo.’
    ‘Eight – what’s that mean as a number?’
    ‘Eight is seven plus one, the start of a new rule, a new order, the death and the resurrection and the life ever after.’
    ‘Well, I never.’
    ‘Imagine shadows on the wall, magnified, from a point near the ceiling six feet down to the floor, a twist of fingers knotting a rope. My bloke takes a bow when it is done. You might remember how I said, Tim – there was a bloke I knew – courtly, unbothered –’
    ‘I know which bloke you knew, Marc. The Dutchy, the Deutsch, the Boche. Change the subject, Marc. If you think he’s the one, I feel sick. The way you talked about him he was good, a good man.’
    ‘He’s the same man,’ said Marcus. ‘Whatever he is.’
    ‘My thinking can’t go that far, Marc. You are the one, so watch it. You are the bloke, Marc. You are the chosen, brother. Get us through to the end, wrap us up worthwhile. They’re waiting inside there for you, in the meeting room. Don’t go the other way, Marc. Stuff a rag in it. I don’t want to talk about it.’
    ‘Want a smoke?’ said Marcus. He rolled one, flared a match, took a drag, passed it over. Tim looked at the lung-buster between his fingers before handing it back.
    ‘No, but thanks,’ he said. ‘Chuck it in the gutter. I’m through.’
    Normally Tim was a fumatorium with smoke coming out from under his shirt collar. But he knew the power of absolute limitations. The man with the crutch always did. It was the same when he’d shot the hat, according to Marcus, that might have had a head under it, the one that turned out to be a paper bag floating in the wind, as Tim knew all along it was.
    Tim was fixed on finding whatever was practical to stand against in Marcus, yet without breaking their bond.
    Marcus went into the meeting. Tim went back to his line-caster.
    As Marcus sat through that meeting, pondering decisions involving the railways; the government; the unions; the accursed, doomed Wobblies; the war and the conscription referendum dodging between yes and no, it was as if the man who was the bit player had the choices of history. The handsome, sooty man wearing a suit and tie.
    Marcus emerged from the meeting after five hours of rotten wrangling, compromise and vituperation to sum it all up. They sat on the park bench again, the late afternoon sun burning a hole in the clouds.
    ‘It’s a strike,’ said Marcus. ‘We’re all going out. It’s the big one.’
    S OME MONTHS LATER A MESSENGER BOY ran through the Harden rail yards jumping rails and dodging rolling stock, looking for the fireman Marcus Friendly. When he found Friendly oiling an engine, working himself out from under the wheels of a locomotive, he produced a letter from his canvas satchel.
    ‘Watch how Friendly takes it,’ he’d been tipped by the depot clerks. ‘Wait around for his flaming reaction.’
    Marcus Friendly – the engine driver who’d been demoted to fireman for his role in the strike. Other men had caved in, accepted lesser conditions to hold their post and retain their gold watches. They were often