There’s a coda to this memory. It was a number of months later, in early September, that I was at the front desk helping our receptionist Connie prepare files for an upcoming county audit, when we heard the familiar ping! of the elevator and Brandon Chittock stepped out from its doors. I would have bristled had he not appeared as he did— dark circles around his eyes, obviously hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, disheveled, dressed in wrinkled shirt and slacks looking like he’d slept in them. He was shattered. He came to the front desk and asked for “the priest who works here. I’ve forgotten his name.” He didn’t meet my eyes. Either he didn’t remember me, or was too ashamed to remember me.
“Father Paul,” said Connie.
“Yes, Father Paul.”
“I’ll see if he’s available.”
Father Paul came out from Client Services and greeted him warmly as an old friend, and they went into a counseling room. Connie and I had just finished the files an hour later when they emerged. Clearly Chittock had been crying; his eyes were puffy and red, but he was now calm, his posture once again erect; he was back in control of his emotions, if no longer in control of the universe. Father Paul walked him to the elevator where they exchanged final words and shook hands. Once the elevator doors closed, Father Paul turned and saw me staring. He walked over and said, “Yes.”
All my rage and detestation for the man had drained away. I whispered, “He’s become infected?”
“No. Not Brandon. His partner.”
He handed me an envelope. “You might be interested in this. Then perhaps you’d give it to Franklin.”
I opened the envelope and peered inside. It contained a personal check for $100,000. I looked back up at Father Paul.
He said softly, “It’s his time.”
Chapter Seven
Premonitions of the Past
[Bogong High Plains, April 1986]
“I was lost out here once.”
I looked up from my book. “Oh?”
Gray was staring into the fire. “About this time of day. Sun going down. I was maybe ten or eleven.”
It was April, early autumn in the antipodes, bringing an early chill to the night. We each had a mug of hot milk tea as dusk settled around us. He said nothing further, so I went back to reading a history of Australia’s European beginnings, as the dumping ground for England’s convicts and political undesirables. “Between 1787 and 1868, the Crown sent 825 shiploads of prisoners, with an average of two hundred per ship, to this penal continent, approximately 165,000 convicts within eighty years— ”
“I was collecting wood for that night’s fire.”
I glanced up again. He was still gazing into the flames, the mug in his hand apparently forgotten. I realized he was in a distant memory and put down my book. “You were collecting firewood,” I prompted.
He started, as if just remembering I was there. “The area had been picked pretty clean, so I kept wandering farther and farther away from our camp, finding a dead branch here, another there, until I finally had an armload. The light was fading fast, like now, and I needed to get back. But when I turned around, I couldn’t see our camper or tent, or recognize any landmark. I’d wandered so far, in so many directions, that I didn’t know where I was.”
The night was moving quickly upon us, shouldering the pale daylight aside. The fire glowed brighter against the encroaching darkness, as if rising in our defense.
“I called out for my father and brothers. But the plains were so vast, so endless, they seemed to swallow my shouts.” He paused. “They seemed to have swallowed me.” He again fell silent, lost in the memory.
“What happened then?”
“I just kept wandering, in one direction, then another, carrying my load of wood and calling for somebody. Anybody. But no sounds came back. I was wearing only walking shorts and sweatshirt, and it was getting cold. I knew I’d be without light soon. And out here by myself.”
I studied his sharp, flame-lit profile as he gazed into the fire.
“Just as I was starting to panic, I saw a figure in the dusk. A man walking over the plains. Thank God! I’d never been so glad to see anyone in all my life. I dropped the wood and began running after him, yelling as I went. But he didn’t seem to hear and kept walking. I tripped over some roots and fell. Got back on my feet, and he was farther away. I was running as fast as I could— and screaming by then— and still he didn’t stop, didn’t even turn around. So, I kept running and yelling. As I drew closer, I saw he was dressed oddly for this time of year. Autumn, but he was wearing winter clothing, a heavy coat, cap and mask with eye goggles, snow leggings— ”
I closed my book. He had my full attention.
“I kept yelling, ‘Stop! Stop!,’ but he didn’t. I was almost out of breath when I tripped again. Just lay there in the dust, panting. And when I got to my feet . . . he was gone. I scanned the horizon in every direction, but there was no sign of him. It was as if he’d vanished into the dusk.”
There was a chill, but no longer from the oncoming night. I had an idea where this story was heading.
“I was just about to start some serious crying when, in the direction he’d been heading, I saw it: the top of our camper poking above the heath.”
A smile came over his face. “At that point I almost began crying from joy, and I quickly hurried through the brush to our camp, back to my father and brothers.” Still smiling, he shook his head. “At the time, it seemed just my dumb luck that, in following that man, I’d found our camp. I figured he must be camping somewhere nearby.”
The crackle of the fire became magnified in the silence; the cold evening hunkered down between us, brushing my face. I remained quiet. I sensed the story wasn’t finished. It wasn’t.
“Several years later— I was at Geelong Grammar, so probably thirteen or fourteen by then— reading for my Australian history class, I came across the 1936 skiing disaster on Mount Bogong. At the end of the account there was this toss-off sentence. I memorized it: ‘Over the years, there have been reports of seeing a man, dressed in winter garb, wandering alone on the high plains. Local lore says that it’s Cleve Cole’s spirit.’ I remember going cold reading those words.”
I went cold listening to them.
After another silence, I said, “That’s . . . well, that’s some story. How have people reacted when you’ve told them?”
He turned to me. “I never told anyone . . . until tonight.”
I nodded. “I can understand why.”
“I know it sounds far-fetched. But I swear, that time I was lost out here I’d never heard of Cleve Cole. I just saw an oddly dressed man walking over the plains and knew he was my only hope. But now I’m sure.”
“Of what?”
He turned back to the fire.
