There were two of them. The younger woman helped the older one out of the passenger seat, holding firmly to her elbow till she found her balance and leaned against the car.
Dirk spat in an open grave, looking around to check that nobody had seen him. This was Mick’s great revenge plan? His conspiracy theory? Obviously not a hit by a rival gang, or some enemy he’d made on the inside.
Still, if this was what it was going to take for Mick to get off his back about Janine…
He watched the old woman pull her threadbare greatcoat around her shoulders. Were those medals pinned across the front? He couldn’t be sure. Then she turned to step away from the car and her cemetery eyes met his. Dirk reached into his jacket where sudden death waited patient and silent in the midst of so many wasted lives.
The old duck smiled at him. In that moment, with her new hairdo and her glasses perched precariously on the end of her wrinkled nose, she looked exactly like his mother. No matter how many candles appeared on Ma’s cake, even while cancer gnawed and chewed at what was left of her ruined body, Ma had never grown older than eighteen in her heart.
What girl ever does?
“Hell of a thing.”
Dirk nearly jumped into the open grave. If the elderly priest hadn’t reached out and steadied him, he would have had another story to tell from behind the bar.
“Jesus, father.”
The old man laughed. “Forgive me, my son. I often forget how people lose themselves in the intensity of this peaceful place.”
Dirk adjusted his jacket, shrugging his bruised ego back into place. “Ja, well, no, fine, father. S’cool, ek se.” The smell of freshly dug earth, still damp from recent showers, calmed him as he took a deep breath. He realized he’d been trying not to inhale since he’d followed his quarry through the gates.
“Did you know the family?”
Dirk carried on adjusting his attitude. This involved shoulder movements and tiny simultaneous dance steps till he felt comfortable enough to respond.
“No. Not as well as I should have. Never met her daughter.”
The priest raised his hand to Dirk’s shoulder. “Rae never had a daughter. That’s a nurse I hired to help her through this difficult time. She did have a son, though, but he passed a while ago. Car crash.”
Dirk was uncomfortable again. It wasn’t just the goosebumps that stalked the spaces between his arm hairs, or the sudden drop in temperature that had him pulling the collars of his jacket tight. He could swear the sky was changing colour. Those clouds, dark and heavy with life-giving moisture, hadn’t been there when he’d arrived.
This week’s image is again courtesy of fairy goddess Tana Jovic, designer extraordinaire.
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Catch Big Day Out, a mad mercenary romp through the dystopian nightmare that Covid-19 might have become. Might still become, if we don’t keep our self-appointed leaders on a very short leash.
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