Godelpus    by Paul Bucci (Shortlisted)

 

Johnno pulls up outside Gracie Lawrence’s place, toots his horn and waits. He’s a couple of minutes early, doesn’t have another job for about twenty minutes so isn’t in any hurry. Gracie was just going up the street to do her weekly shopping, same time every week, and he’s happy sitting in the sun with the window down, breathing in the sea air, listening to the roar of the ocean, the singing of the birds. A lovely warm spring morning.

5 minutes later he toots the horn again. He figures if he was in the city he’d be turning the meter on just about now but that’s not how things work in a small town like Port. You had to keep on the right side of people, nothing worse than stories going round about you.

Not like Gracie to be late, he thinks, but with old ducks like her you’re never quite sure what’s going on in their heads. He waits another couple of minutes, thinks it’s time to go and knock on the door. He hates this bit, getting out of the cab to hurry the customers up. Some days he could sit in the cab for four or five hours without ever getting out. But not today.

He gets out of the cab, slowly – he was getting bigger by the day – and makes his way to the front door, knocking loudly. Still nothing so he opens the door – he’s known Gracie for a few years, helped her in with her groceries from time to time so knows his way about.

“Gracie?” Nothing. He pushes the door wide open, sees her shopping trolley in the hallway waiting to go. He gets a bit nervous, “Gracie? Are you there Gracie?” Still nothing.

He makes his way down the hallway to the kitchen. The door’s open and he walks in. Gracie is lying on the floor, next to the kitchen table. Motionless, an overturned chair half across her legs, the kitchen cupboard over the fridge wide open. Looks as if she may have fallen off the chair, reaching into the cupboard or something. Stupid thing for an old girl to do he thinks.

“Gracie. You OK?” He kneels down beside her, touches her forehead. Cold as.

Her eyes are open, staring, no pulse he can find. Dead. He’s pretty sure she’s dead. He notices a trickle of blood at the back of her head. Very dead he reckons.

This is going to bugger his morning up. Last time he found a dead person – Joe Little that was – he’d had to wait for the ambos, wait for the cops and basically wasted over two hours, answering questions, making a statement and so on. Two hours wasted and here we go again.

He’s just about to go back to the cab to get his phone when he notices a wooden box half hidden by the chair, a bit like a jewelry box, open and full of banknotes. Full. He takes a deep breath, instinctively looks over his shoulder and then sits down on the floor next to Gracie.

Now what? He doesn’t touch it. Just looks, his mind going a hundred miles an hour. He gets off the floor, goes out to the cab and grabs his phone, calls the motel to tell them what’s happened and that he can’t pick up his next customer. Then he goes back to the kitchen, takes a tea towel from the rack and using it between his fingers and the box, picks the box up, takes out the money – 50s it is – puts a few notes back in the box, pockets the rest and puts the box back on the floor. Not new he notices – the notes. Not new ones.

Then he goes back outside, calls triple zero, gets the operator to send an ambulance and the cops. He tucks the money away in the tool box in the boot of the cab. And sits and waits.

The ambulance arrives a few minutes later. Annie Gisborne’s driving with a bloke he doesn’t recognize riding shotgun.

“Johnno.”

“G’day Annie. How’s tricks?”

“Good mate, good, thanks. This is Andy, just started in Port.”

“Andy.” They shake hands.

“So what’s the story, Johnno.”

“Yeah well I’m pretty sure she’s dead, lying on the kitchen floor, down on the right.’

The ambos go into the house, Johnno waits outside. Then one of the local cops drives up, Dave Davidson. Not Johnno’s favourite bloke but he’s very conscious of keeping on the right side of the bastard. And he was a bastard too if you believed all the stories, hassling the kids round the skate park and banging people up overnight just because they’d had a few too many.

“Johnno. Gracie Lawrence is it?”

“Yes mate, just found her on the kitchen floor. Pretty sure she’s dead but the ambos are in there checking it out.”

Davidson goes into the house. Johnno follows him in. The ambos are on their way out.

“Yep, she’s had it mate,” Annie says to the cop. “Looks like she fell off a chair, cracked her head on the table. Job for the coroner I think.”

Davidson goes into the kitchen and Johnno walks out with the ambos who pack up their gear and drive off. He finds himself a seat on the front verandah and gets himself ready for a bit of a wait.

Davidson comes back out. “You touch anything in there mate?” Sits down next to him.

“No just checked her out you know, checked her pulse, that’s all. Pretty sure she was dead so rang triple zero.”

“Just there was a box there with a bit of money in it. Didn’t touch that did you?”

“No, saw it there on the floor but no I never touched it.” Technically speaking not a lie he thinks.

“Yeah well I’ll have to get the coroner over, not sure how long that’ll be but you’ll have to stick around for a while till he gets here. Or she maybe, I think there’s a new one just started, might have a few questions for you.”

So Davidson goes back to his car and gets on the phone. Johnno sits on the verandah watching the world go by, or Ted Bourke to be specific.

“Johnno, what’s going on mate?”

“G’day Ted. Gracie Lawrence. Had a bit of a fall.”

“She OK?”

“Fraid not, just waiting on the coroner.”

“Shit that’s no good, mate, you take it easy” says Ted who now walks off with a bit more purpose to his stride. Now Ted Bourke knows, everyone in town will know in about an hour Johnno thinks – not known for his discretion, Ted.

Throughout all this he’s a bit distracted, thinking about the money in the boot, jumpy, a bit stimulated, wondering how much money he’s got. How much he’s pinched. And above all surprised at himself for doing what he’s done.

He’s been driving the cab for over five years and seen a lot of stuff in that time – domestic violence, drug drops, people on the edge, sexual stuff. He’s watched Phil Hogan piss on the ATM in the main street, had Dave Robson invite him to “the best head job in town”, had some bloke make him drive round and round in the copshop car park, been offered a bag of dope instead of the cab fare to Burton, stood up to half a dozen blokes from the footy team when they got a bit rowdy and a hundred other episodes on the edge of what people might think goes on in a small town.

But in all that time he’s never pinched anything, well apart from not turning on the meter occasionally and pocketing the fare if the passenger’s too pissed to notice. But that’s just pinching from the city mob that own the cab. Not really pinching at all given the shit money he earns. But he does wonder who he has actually pinched the money from. The heir to Gracie’s stuff. He’s not sure who that might be, doesn’t remember Gracie talking about family at all over the weekly encounters to the supermarket and back.

While he’s waiting he has three calls from people wanting the cab – two he knows just going locally and one visitor. Being the only cab in town during the week they’re a bit pissed off when he tells them that he’s not available, the two locals happy to call back later but the visitor – posh sounding bloke – gets a bit angry and aggressive. Makes Johnno happy that he can’t help him.

After about 40 minutes another car pulls over and a young woman gets out, has a chat with Davidson and they go into the house together, Davidson introducing them to each other on the way in. She’s the new coroner, Vikki something he doesn’t quite catch. He’s told to wait.

Another ten minutes passes and they come out again, the coroner asking him to describe what happened and then giving him the all clear to get on with his day.

He gets back in the cab, calls the three customers and gets busy over the lunch hour and into the afternoon. It’s after three before he gets the chance to go home and check out the tool box. He takes it into his shed at the back of the house, gets the money out and counts it. There are one hundred and seventeen $50 notes and eleven $100 notes, nearly seven grand all up. He can’t believe his luck. That’s more money than he could earn in a couple of months in Port. He tucks it away behind the garden tools for later, thinking of the various ways he could treat himself, a holiday perhaps, new fridge, upgrade the car. He decides to give himself a couple of weeks to think about it , take his time deciding what to do with it. He’s stoked.

But amid the excitement is an uncomfortable feeling of having done the wrong thing by Gracie. He’d got to quite like Gracie over the years. She’d always treated him well, always gave him a two dollar tip after her shopping trip, more than most of them did anyway. And in her own quirky way she was a bit funny. But she was dead, he tells himself. Dead. And he hadn’t done anything bad to her. Nothing. Nothing to whip himself about, nothing that anyone would ever know about, nothing to concern himself with.

Over the next couple of days he keeps himself busy, tries not to think about the money in the shed, tries not to think about Gracie. And then on the Thursday when he’s reading the local rag, The Port Press, he sees that Gracie’s funeral is to take place on Monday at St. Pats at two. He knows he’s got to go – he needs to see who he’s pinched the money from.

Monday comes round eventually, seems to have taken an age. He doesn’t work Mondays anyway so he doesn’t need to take the day off, has time to think things through. At 1.30 he sets off for St Pats, a ten minute walk away and finds himself a seat at the back where he can watch the comings and goings. The coffin is already in the aisle at the front and there are a couple of people who seem to be from the funeral parlour hovering around but he’s the first mourner. Over the next twenty minutes or so a couple of dozen other people show up. Most of them he knows or recognizes from around town, a few from the Senior Citizens Centre and a couple of shopkeepers. One or two neighbours. Stephan Hooper from the local solicitors office and that’s about it. The only people he doesn’t recognize are an elderly couple sitting together at the front. He assumes they’re relatives, presumably the people he’d pinched the money from. He spends most of the proceedings watching them, trying to get some idea about them.

It’s a short service. The priest goes through the motions, without seeming to know much about Gracie at all, a couple of the locals stand up – Mary Thomas from the Senior Cits saying what a fun member Gracie had been and Peter Pope from the painting group saying how much they were going to miss her. And that was it. The couple at the front saying nothing. At the end of the service the priest invites everyone to attend the burial in the graveyard outside followed by refreshments in the church hall and that’s what they all do, the mystery couple included.

Over a cup of tea Johnno quickly establishes that the mystery couple were from Burton, hardly knew Gracie at all but had showed up because she’d looked after their dog for a couple of months while they were overseas. So no relatives at all. No old friends. While he’s eating his third cupcake Hooper the solicitor comes over.

“You’re the local cabbie aren’t you? Peter Johnson? I’m Stephan Hooper, local solicitor.”

“I am. Johnno they call me. Yea I know you. I’ve had you in the cab a couple of times. How’s it going?”

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m glad I caught up with you. I was going to give you a call. You’ve got a mention in Gracie’s will and I was wanting to make a time to talk to you about it.”

“In her will? You’re joking. We hardly knew each other.”

“Well I don’t know about that but I do need to talk to you about a couple of things. When are you free to come in to the office?”

So Johnno finds himself sitting opposite Hooper in his office at 9.30 the next morning after a fairly sleepless night spent wondering where this is leading. Wondering how much Gracie would have owned – the house, for example? He’d only ever been in the place briefly, hadn’t ever seen into the main rooms, just the kitchen and hallway, had no idea if the place was full of antiques or junk. Certainly Gracie herself had always seemed a down to earth, no frills sort of a woman.

Hooper opens a file and takes out a couple of documents.

“So, Johnno, Gracie didn’t own much. She was renting the house and living on the pension. Also she had no dependents so all in all there’s not a lot of work for me to do. She asked that all the stuff in her house – furniture, clothes, paintings, kitchen stuff, whatever – that everything be donated to the local op shop which is run by the Salvos I think. I’ll give them a call a bit later and sort that out. But apart from that she did leave some specific instructions for you which I’ll read to you.

She says ‘I would like any cash left in my bank account after all expenses have been paid, and in the wooden box above the fridge, to be donated to whichever charity is considered to be most appropriate by my taxi driver Peter Johnson. Over the years I have come to trust him and respect him for his honesty and I am very grateful for the service he has provided to me over that period. I believe he will make an appropriate decision in this regard.’

So there you are mate. She had funeral insurance, so apart from a small fee to my firm there were no debts either. There’s about $480 left in the bank after our expenses and just $150 in the wooden box. So you have a think about it Johnno and let me know what you decide and we’ll send it on.”

Walking home after this conversation Johnno realizes that the decision is his – will he steal $7000 from Oxfam, Fred Hollows, the Kids Cancer Foundation or what?