The Cross

Chapter One

Chapter One

I slowly slid back into consciousness.

Noise echoed into my head – then slowly faded away.

The inside of my skull spun like a roulette wheel while a thick pea-soup fog clouded my soggy mind. I gradually peeled open my eyes. I shook my head from side to side and swallowed a bitter taste in my mouth. The bottom of a sewer flashed through my brain.

Why am I here? I thought.

The words kept hitting me like a sledgehammer.

I slowly sat up and lifted the brim of my hat. I looked around my crowded cabin with portholes. I felt like a cheap imported sardine that was shoe-horned into a flying tin can. The tin can was a Douglas DC-6 flying bird called Discovery. Our final destination was the other side of the world. We’d been airborne for more than thirty-six hours over the past few days.

I’d left San Francisco on Thursday afternoon at midday and flew to my first stop, Honolulu, Hawaii, the first of three. I’d only been in a flying tin can a couple of times and I always hated the thought of flying. My first time was five years ago, during the war in 1943… a flight I’d never forget. The platoon flew from Port Moresby through the Owen Stanley Mountains, over the Kokoda pass to Dobodura, New Guinea. A few hours later, we went into combat for life and country against the j**s.

I sighed and shook my head again.

Coming back from the war hadn’t been easy for me, or my business. It was hard to adjust to a normal, civilian life. My only escape had been to live out of the bottom of a scotch bottle. Now, I was flying halfway to hell with a fear I’d be confronted by the memories of my war years. I was flying back to a town where these memories had a foothold – when life was different, and the world was a different place.

I realised we were getting close to our destination. A stewardess moved around the cabin to check all passengers were properly strapped into their seats. My seat was at the back of the forward cabin on the starboard side. Our bird was full. We had forty-eight passengers and eleven crew on board. The aisle in the middle of the tin can was narrow. Luckily for the busy stewardesses, they were all on the slender side.

People around me gripped their seat arm rests, as we all felt our flying bird start to descend. I looked out of my porthole window. Faded fingers of light stretched into the dusky sky as the sun started to dip below the visible horizon. The DC-6 broke through the layers of scattered clouds and I saw a sprawling city, slowly being enveloped by nightfall. It reminded me of the harbour city, San Francisco, on an early twilight evening.

The DC-6 lowered its nose and turned to head out to the sea harbour. People started to grip their arm rests a little tighter now. From my porthole the airport was to my right. There was a cluster of buildings positioned on the upper right side of the airfield.

We started a steep descent and the aircraft wobbled around like a staggering drunk. The aero-plane’s altitude dropped, and the pit of my stomach began to do flip-flops.

A moment later, the DC-6’s rear tyres hit the tarmac like a hammer as the cabin shook violently. I sunk back into my seat and closed my eyes. I felt relief, exhaustion and gratitude that I’d finally arrived.

The plane slowly taxied across the airfield and made its way to the airport buildings. The vibration in the cabin began to ease. Finally, the only thing I heard was the noise of people getting up from their seats. The chatter grew louder as they all moved towards the open front door of the cabin. I sighed and got up unsteadily.

I grabbed my coat and fumbled towards the front of the cabin like a dizzy moth. I paused at the open door of the aircraft and felt nausea flood my body, as a barrage of thoughts began to hit me – flashbacks of war and fighting, of Brodie and New Guinea, of Kings Cross and Sydney, as they stomped across my brain. I leaned to one side of the doorway and let the other passengers disembark.

I took a deep breath and focused on where I was.

Remember why you’re here – Brodie. You gotta find out why he died, I said to myself.

I straightened up and shook my head just as a stewardess asked if I was all right. I nodded and said I felt better.

I slowly descended the stairway to the tarmac. The other passengers and I meandered like sheep across the tarmac and up towards the arrival gate of the main building. It felt great to have some space around me for a change. It was also great to move on my own two legs, now I remembered how to walk again. All I wanted to do was to get out of this creased blue suit, take a bath and pass out in a comfortable bed. A bed that didn’t move…

*

Two weeks earlier

San FranciscoOn a cool autumn morning, around ten, I sat in my downtown office. I flicked a playing card into my upturned hat at the end of the desk. I had just gulped down my third cup of coffee. I flicked another card towards the hat, but then I stopped with the cards and got up to stretch. I had piles of paperwork from my last case scattered all around my upturned hat. The focus for my work had also been scattered lately.

I slowly panned around my office. I knew I’d been out of touch for a while. I started to reflect on the cases I’d worked on in those good years – when I wasn’t so screwed up. Those late nights, early mornings, day after day, week after week, and year after year. My desk had seen some of the best cases anyone could have worked on in this city. I’d thought about all the scum I’d taken off the streets and how I’d got justice for the everyday Joe.

There’d been some tight jams, and merciless crooked deals; I’d even knocked heads with some very powerful people, but I’d always seemed to come out on top. I knew my business had slowed in the past few years, but things were on the up…they had to be. I told myself I had to stop this malaise and pull myself up by the boot straps.

I sat back at my desk when Val, my secretary, stormed in, waving a cablegram she’d just signed for in the front office.

“Jack, you’re going to love this one!”

“I better, Val! The cards aren’t falling my way today. Now stop your flapping and give me the scoop.” I resumed my card flipping.

“Cablegram. It’s from Sydney, Australia. Listen to this Jack—”

To Mister Jack Dallas STOP

My name is Janet Saunders STOP You may remember me as Carol’s sister STOP We met in 1943 STOP Jim and Carol have died in an unfortunate incident STOP On behalf of the Saunders family we would like to engage your services to come to Australia and look over the official investigation STOP We know you and Jim Brodie were friends during the war STOP Will cable you money and airfare if you confirm STOP

“Australia, Jack – what do you think of that?” asked Val. “It’s a long way to send you a cablegram. Do you know a Janet Saunders from Sydney?”

Suddenly, all the strings inside me broke.

I felt like someone had shot me right between the eyes with a gun. I blinked as scenes of people and places from another time, in another life five years ago, banged across my brain. Faces of Brodie…of Carol…of the Cross…of the war.

“Jack? Do you know a Janet Saunders?” Val asked again.

I looked up at her in a daze. “Yeah, precious, and it’s a long story…”

Val looked at me. She could see how my thoughts had engulfed my mind. She waited while I collected myself.

Val knew I’d changed since the war. She had worked as my office assistant since early ’41 and knew me better than most. I never went into details about my time in the war, and, fortunately, Val didn’t push it. She recognised I was in pain… the pain of what I’d seen, and what I’d done – the pain I felt behind my eyes. She knew I’d hidden it in a part of my brain that was buried away.

Val could see the floodgates open as waves of emotions washed over me. She waited until I sighed. I looked up at her and then told her about my time in Australia, and about Sergeant First Class James Mitchell Brodie.

I said everyone just called him Brodie. He was married to Carol, his Australian wife. Last time I’d seen Brodie was ’45. First time I saw him was early ’42. Brodie and our platoon came together to train and then fight the j**s while attached to the 163rd regiment of the 41st Infantry Division. Everyone went to Hell and back in the jungles of New Guinea and the Philippines.

I recounted how Brodie received injuries in New Guinea in early ’43 and was shipped back to Sydney. That’s when he met Carol. Carol was a twenty-year-old trainee nurse at the convalescence hospital. Brodie fell head over heels. The platoon didn’t see Brodie back until May. It was later that year that Brodie, the boys and I went to Sydney on R&R leave. That was when I’d met Carol and her sister, Janet.

I recounted how Carol was graceful, passionate and beautiful. A million-in-one gal, as Brodie used to say. It was something no one could argue with. After the war, in ’45, we were all shipped back to the States. Brodie got his discharge papers and, a month later, booked a one-way trip back to Sydney to marry Carol.

I stopped talking and stared vacantly, trying to recall the last time I’d heard from Brodie. I remembered it was a postcard from Australia – that was a couple of years ago. It said he and Carol were happily married. He’d found good work and Carol was a nurse at a big hospital. They were living in a small house, not too far from town. He hoped to get out of the city one day and buy some land. That was it.

Now Brodie’s dead, I said to myself. I couldn’t believe it.

As in the depths of many seas, my mind began to drown in those memories.

After I recounted my story to Val, my temples began to throb. I needed a drink ­– a big drink. I reached for my desk drawer.

Val told me to hold up. “Hey Jack, wait a minute now. Why don’t you take a few weeks and go down there? You’ve been there before, right? Wouldn’t it be good to see the place again? What’d you say?” she asked while I held a vacant look on my face.

“Listen to me, Jack, your bank balance is slipping way into the red at the moment! Take the job. It’ll be like a working holiday. Hey, you might even have some money left over for me.”

My head started to spin.

“Don’t worry about the cases here, if you get any! I can always stall them until you get back. What, you’ll only be gone for a few weeks anyway, won’t you? But if not, I’ll throw them over to Bernie, he won’t mind. Remember I worked for him while you were away in the war, and he’s done a few cases for you recently … when you were too indisposed.”

Her tone was sarcastic. I knew she was referring to when I was too drunk for work.

I rubbed my hand across the back of my neck. The trip would be a chance to change this crash course I was on at the moment. I knew I needed a fresh start. I wanted to escape my past and be the real person I used to be – the person I knew I still could be.

I started to refocus and thought of Brodie again. My mind began to clear but I was bothered by an echo that went through my skull.

“What Brodie went through – his life – the war – he had a chance at a new life but now…”

My brain started yelling at me. How is Brodie dead?