The Wounded Sinner

by Gus Henderson

  THE WOUNDED SINNER

  GUS HENDERSON

  First published 2018

  Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation

  1 Bagot Street, Broome, Western Australia

  Website: www.magabala.com

  Email: sales@magabala.com

  Magabala Books receives financial assistance from the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts advisory body. The State of Western Australia has made an investment in this project through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries. Magabala Books would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Shire of Broome, Western Australia.

  Copyright © Gus Henderson, Text, 2018

  The author asserts his moral rights.

  All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced by any process whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by John Canty

  Cover photograph Ulrika Finnberg/Getty Images

  Typeset by Post Pre-press Group

  Printed and bound by Griffin Press, South Australia

  Dedicated to my Uncle Clyde and Aunty Kath – with me at the start and there at the finish. With love always.

  SUNDAY

  1

  It was still dark and Matthew liked it that way. He lay propped up against the headboard and lit a cigarette and thought. Thought about things, thought about things, thought about things. Jeanie stirred beside him. She hated him smoking and, as she slept, he imagined the broadness of her nostrils twitching in mute protest against the smell. Often he had promised her he would give up, and he would. But not now, not right now, because the coming of morning meant he would have to go back to Perth, and leaving Jeanie and the kids always entailed the sacrificial butchering of emotions, a slashing welter of words. A perfect environment for smoking, and so he lit another with the embers of the last and thought about things some more.

  They had argued late into the night, until the tired repetitiveness of their voices drew an uneasy truce from them. Jeanie, brown and stiff, lay in the warm stillness of the dark, her back to him, till the fire drained from her body and she drifted off to sleep. Matthew listened to the soft in and out of Jeanie’s breathing, and was envious of her capacity to sleep despite the circumstances. For him, those solitary hours from the cessation of hostilities till dawn allowed him the opportunity to chew over the battle-hardened facts of their relationship. He would sit and think and smoke and always hope to find a resolution. It was never going to be easy.

  Soon it would be morning. He would make a coffee and curse that there was no milk. Out on the veranda he would listen to the sounds of the dawning and look towards the east as the night rolled back once more. Although he had done this many times, he would still marvel at the regularity of it all, the coming and going of time and tide, in and out, round and round, a relentless cycle. For some, he would think, it brought cleansing and renewal. For him, Matthew Andrews, it delivered up more of the same, and he would think he was caught up somewhere in the vast, eternal turbulence, bobbing around, gasping for air, drowning.

  He always thought that.

  —

  They stood apart on the veranda and Matthew felt they may have been on different planets. He looked across at his woman, her arms folded over the slope of her chest and a face stained with tears of draining hope. A group of small children chiacked, at various decibels, in the dustbowl of a front yard.

  ‘You go this time and you can’t come back.’

  ‘Aw, woman, you’ll have me back. Besides, you love me, hey!’

  ‘I don’t know anymore, Matty, I just don’t know. I’m gettin’ older. The kids need a regular father.’

  ‘What do you mean, you “don’t know”?’

  ‘You need to make a decision.’

  ‘Jeanie, I can’t do much about the situation.’ The process of death, in this case Matthew’s father’s, was slow indeed. The old man’s unhurried departure was straining Jeanie and Matthew’s relationship to the point of breaking.

  ‘You’ve always been my woman!’

  ‘Make a decision, Matthew! Me or your father.’

  A rheumatic old Ford sat parked beside the front fence. A noisy loose knot of brown kids was in it and over it and driving off to Kal, or Meeka, if they could. The indicator lever pulled off in somebody’s hand.

  ‘Oh, shit. I gotta go before they wreck the whole bloody thing.’ He picked up his bag and walked down the steps onto the dirt.

  ‘I mean it!’ She meant it. She always meant it.

  ‘Dad! You bring me back summin’ from Pert, hey!’ The voice of one of the small, dusty children, blocking Matthew’s path.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll bring back stuff from Perth, okay. You’ll all get something, if your Mumma lets me.’

  ‘Gwan Mum,’ said the oldest girl, Jaylene, thin and brown eyed and aware enough to work the situation. ‘Yer gonna let Dad, arncha?’

  ‘You’re an arsehole, Matty.’ But the woman followed him to the car and, as he stooped to give her a kiss, she told him, ‘Piss off!’ but kissed him just the same, thinking it could be the last time. Anything could happen, she thought. Matthew sat in behind the wheel, smiled his see-ya-later smile and turned the key, firing the car to life. Jeanie watched the Ford as it burgled off down the road into the unknown, and wondered if she was pregnant again.

  —

  The road between Leonora and Perth is unforgiving in the summertime. Matthew stood under the shade of a salmon gum, smoking and thinking, and with each car that sped by, he cursed his piece of shit, its hood up, coolant dripping out the bottom of the radiator and steam rising skyward from its top. He was somewhere west of Coolgardie, he guessed, but he’d been driving on autopilot, his mind on other things, so he could have been anywhere. In times past, men were persuaded by a more necessary brotherhood; there existed an unwritten bush law of assisting those in need lest they, in peril, perish in similar circumstances. These days nobody seemed to give a shit. He kicked the dirt and felt the hot-breath air stir up around him. Another time blew past, a dust-devil of tattered memories; he thrust out his arm into the swirl of fine sand and grabbed a few brief moments.

  ‘Jeez, it’s a bloody big country, boy.’

  ‘Yer reckon, Grandad?’

  ‘Yep. Just listen for a minute.’ And the boy did.

  ‘I don’t hear anything.’

  ‘That’s because the country’s so big there’s not enough sound t’go around.’

  ‘Fair dinkum?’

  ‘Yep. But don’t let the silence fool you. It can be a dangerous thing, that quietness.’ He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘If you’re stuck in the bush, never lose hope. Remember that. Now, let’s head back t’camp. I can smell a cuppa brewing.’ The boy, couldn’t smell anything but gum oil and dust and he was truly amazed.

  The old Ford lay there in the dirt, barely breathing, perhaps beyond help. Matthew watched as a twin-cab pulled up. He hoped it was the cavalry. A short man got out and soon two heads were looking into the engine bay.

  ‘Hey, thanks for stopping. I almost gave up.’ Matthew watched him squeeze the top radiator hose and then check the oil level.

  ‘No worries. You off to Perth?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Matthew played with some wires and things, hoping to disguise his ignorance. ‘What do yer think?’ Cluelessness hovered like bush flies.

  ‘It’s rooted.’

  ‘Yer reckon? Maybe we could tow it into Southern Cross. You know, get a mechanic to look at it.’

  ‘Nah. Trust me, it’s had the dick.’ The stubby thumb of a man unscrewed the oil filler ca
p and passed it under his nose. ‘Yeah, mate, it’s cooked, I think. Here, smell that.’

  He passed the cap across to Matthew who sniffed the plastic cap. Perhaps a plastic cup. Wine tasters, he thought, sampling one of Margaret River’s finest, or just a cask. He really had no idea. ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right.’

  ‘Yeah. Get yer stuff. I’ll take the plates off for ya.’

  ‘Jeez, it was a good car, too.’

  ‘Yeah. They’re all good until they break down.’ He busied himself removing the number plates, hacking away using tin snips and a hammer wielded with Neanderthal skill. ‘I’m Vince, by the way.’

  ‘Matthew.’ He placed his sports bag and laptop onto the back seat of Vince’s twin-cab. Bold black print under a layer of dust on all four sides advertised JONES’s WELDING; the tray at the back, however, was swept clean. ‘You a welder?’ The twin-cab pulled onto the bitumen and Matthew saw his sad, old car disappearing from view.

  ‘Shit, no! I just bought it like this. I’ll get those signs off one day. I work at Murrin Murrin. On the trucks.’ Murrin Murrin, a big nickel operation east of Leonora. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m a writer.’

  ‘Are yer famous?’

  ‘Hardly. I’m working on my first novel.’ Matthew looked out at the bush drifting by. ‘In my previous life I was a primary school teacher. Now I care for my invalid father and write.’

  ‘Look after yer Dad, hey? I say, good onya, mate. Couldn’t do it myself, though. Too busy. Mine’s in a nursing home in Vic Park. It’s the big, white place down near the water with those funny cigar trees out the front. Beautiful place. Bars on the windows to stop ’em falling out. God, they think of everything. I reckon he’s real happy there, so Mum says.’ A faster car pulled around and within seconds was powering away from Vince’s twin-cab. ‘Yeah, I reckon he’s happy.’

  They passed through Yellowdine, just a roadhouse lassoed to a more vibrant past. A roadtrain rested under the wide, blue sky and its driver, a long, thin man in shorts and singlet, was checking the tyres. He looked up as the twin-cab motored by and waved: in the heat, almost a mirage. Almost …

  ‘Grandad’s at the window, waving.’

  ‘There, I told everyone he’d be happy here.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem too happy. Why don’t you wave back, Mum?’

  ‘I said goodbye to him inside. Anyway, he’s happy in there and that’s the end of it.’ They reached the car park and Matthew looked back at the stark-red brick of the Forest Villa Nursing Home: a gathering of loneliness. ‘Look, Matthew, it wasn’t easy to put your Grandad in a home but it was our only option. It was getting too dangerous having him living by himself. It’s for his own good.’

  ‘You can see that, can’t ya?’ Vince waved his right hand in a short arc over the steering wheel, his index finger waggling towards the bush.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Out here! I was just saying I couldn’t see the sense in living out here.’

  Maybe Vince was right. The slow-moving twin-cab passed through Ghooli. Bisecting dirt roads led somewhere right, somewhere left, into country straddling a ragged boundary separating the semi-arid woodlands from wheatbelt farmlands. Lately the rainfall didn’t seem to stretch east as much as it once did and for a few miles they passed paddocks given over to salt and stunted scrub and ghosts of better times. Here and there farm buildings rose up from the plain of hard-yakka crops and occasionally an old homestead stood as a testament to the pioneering spirit.

  Matthew gazed out into the depths of the landscape. ‘They’re definitely a breed apart, those farmers. Most of them doing what their fathers and grandfathers did, I guess. Praying for a good season and enough to pay the school fees.’

  ‘Crikey, mate, it’s a long walk to buy a paper. What a life for the poor bastards.’ Vince glanced across at Matthew. ‘You only get one shot at life. Imagine spendin’ it here.’

  Ghosts. Years ago, there might have been a community hall, a knees-up Saturday night and church on Sunday. Families held together by hard work and prayer, a reaping and sowing of an uncluttered goodness, people of stubborn substance and faith, who looked each day to the west for both a sign of rain and a favourable economy. Matthew thought he heard the laughter of children, the sounds of hope. He looked back to watch the yesterdays slip away into a blur of browns and greens and, as it passed, he imagined Ghooli still breathing.

  —

  ‘You married, mate?’ Vince spoke through a mouthful of hamburger: plenty of onions, easy on the sauce.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got a partner.’ Matthew smoked. They sat in the twin-cab, doors open, under a long awning that ran beside the roadhouse. It was air-conditioned inside, but Matthew needed a cigarette or two; this was not going to be the day he gave up. ‘And five kids. We have a place in Leonora. What about you?’

  ‘Married, mate! M-a-r-r-i-e-d! Yeah, got a little boy, two and a bit.’ One burger had disappeared, the second was rapidly going the same way. ‘Yeah, I’m a dad for sure.’ Another bite, another swallow. ‘What’s the go with you? Woman in Leonora, your dad in Perth.’

  ‘Just the same as you, Vince. Three weeks on, one week off. Dad has a nurse who comes in for the week I’m up in Leonora. No probs.’

  ‘Why don’t you move the family down to Perth? Can’t be good for anyone up in the boondies, except miners and Abos.’

  Matthew stubbed out his cigarette. He looked out on the town of Southern Cross, a typical Australian outback town, either living or dying, unsure of which way to go, coated with the fine particles of powdered lifetimes, layer upon layer, over thousands of years. Only the last layer was white.

  ‘My partner’s a Wongutha woman.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘She’s an Aboriginal from the Eastern Goldfields. Teaches part-time at the school. It’s … complicated.’

  ‘Jeez, I reckon!’

  The last of the smoke drifted through the cab; Vince waved it away and continued to chow down.

  —

  Vince sang country music and sang it badly. The songs of Kasey Chambers, Adam Brand, Troy Cassar-Daley and others were tortured mercilessly as he drove; some he finally murdered and their spent word-bodies floated downward, terribly mangled, to drift about among the dirt and food crumbs on the twin-cab’s floor. Matthew leaned forward, twiddling knobs and pushing buttons, willing the sound system to work.

  ‘Nah, mate, it’s had the dick. Hasn’t made a sound since I bought the truck. But I don’t mind: I just love singing.’

  Matthew gave up, resigned to his fate. It was going to be a long trip. Vince was committed to a top cruising speed of 90kms an hour. He said it was for better fuel economy. Right now, Matthew didn’t care. An envelope in the console between them bore the name of Vincent Romano of a Belmont address.

  ‘Your people originally from Italy, Vince?’

  ‘Yeah. My nonno, my grandpa, came out to work at Wittenoom, poor bastard. Died of that mesowhatchacallit. Shit, what a death.’ He was quiet for a few moments. ‘Met and married my nonna in Perth and eventually settled in Baskerville. Grew grapes and made his own bloody vino.’

  ‘You miss him?’

  ‘I used to take Nonna out to the cemetery to talk to him on his birthday, their wedding anniversary, the date of his death – God, I was always there.’ His laugh swirled around in good memories. Matthew imagined Vince and his nonna doing the Karrakatta shuffle, moving from plot to plot along each row of sun-bleached marble and granite stones, a friend here, a relative there, a collection of the past now lying in consecrated uniformity. ‘The last few years, you know, with working away, I don’t go there much anymore. Him dyin’ affected the whole family. I guess that happens when people pass away.’ Another car hurtled by: speed limits be damned. ‘You want to know what I miss?’ He glanced across at Matthew, then back to the road ahead. ‘I miss the whole Italian thing. Nonno, and then Dad. Everything changed.’

  ‘What’s wrong with your dad?’

  �
��Alzheimer’s.’

  For five minutes or more they drove along in silence. Then Vince said he needed to stop for a minute. The twin-cab eased off onto the red-dirt shoulder and came to a halt pointing in towards the scrub. Vince leaned forward in his seatbelt until his forehead touched the steering wheel and he began to cry.

  Matthew opened his door and stepped into the rush of afternoon heat. He lit a smoke and tried to place himself somewhere else.

  ‘There’s a storm brewing.’

  ‘How can you tell, Grandad?’

  ‘I can read the clouds.’

  ‘Gee! Really?’

  ‘Before all the satellites and weather balloons, people had to rely on discernment.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The ability to read the signs.’

  The marker read ‘M 30’: Merredin, 30km. Matthew crushed the cigarette under his boot, unsure of what to do next, swinging somewhere between awkwardness and anxiety. He crouched in the shadow of red morrells and salmon gums and brushed aside the persistence of terrier-like flies, waiting. A car approached from the distance, a familiar hum. Matthew stood up and walked to the apron of the road and began waving frantically, desperately. A flurry of brown arms and finger gestures waved back in a motorised curse. His faithless blue Ford came and went at speed, to be swallowed up into the wheat and the heat and the soft black tar, heading towards Perth.

  Matthew climbed back into the twin-cab. ‘You’re a shit of a mechanic, Vince!’

  ‘Sorry, mate. Do you want to chase ’em?’

  ‘Even if I was driving, we’d never catch the bastards.’ Matthew reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He lit one and his grey eyes followed the gentle rising of the smoke. ‘Mongrels!’

  It was getting hotter in the cab. Outside, the sun continued to press down, squeezing the moisture out of everything. Vince wiped his eyes: ‘Jeez, I didn’t mean to blubber. What a baby!’

  ‘Yeah, don’t worry about it. We all have things we could cry over, I guess.’ Matthew was thinking about his car and his mind began to clutter with an excess of what-ifs and if-onlys. He stubbed out his smoke and imagined that the day couldn’t get much worse. He never ever thought the whole world was against him but times like these he considered the possibility that a large part of it was. Soon, he would have to put up with his father and he reckoned a man could only put up with so much.