‘Vince, life’s a bitch at times. It’s like God is sittin’ up there,’ he moved his eyes skyward, and Vince’s followed, ‘pulling all these levers and making our lives shit.’
‘I’m not sure God works that way. Maybe we mess things up ourselves … so Nonna says.’ He fired the twin-cab to life once more and eased it out onto the road. ‘She says we’re our own worst enemies.’
‘Maybe we’re victims of circumstance, too.’
Grasshoppers splattered on the windscreen. ‘Maybe.’
2
Sunday morning. Jeanie watched Matty drive off, half-wishing that frigging heap of crap would break down so he would have to return. She stood on the veranda for a time, listening to the kids play and caught up in the factory of her own ruminations; there was no breeze to blow the how-comes and what-ifs away. Jeanie closed her eyes and breathed in deeply the undeniable conviction that life, however bad, goes on. As the last sounds of Matty’s old V8 drained away into the warm, still air, the image of his own demons tumbling along behind him gave Jeanie a sense of wicked satisfaction. But then, even that left a bitter aftertaste of regret. What had her life become? Jeanie hadn’t imagined this scenario when she left Perth, eyes wide open but unable to see past the adventure of youth. She had just made the best of it: Henry Lawson’s drover’s wife in sepia.
More kids appeared in Jeanie’s front yard: Tina Passmore’s horde of sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, street phantoms all, a roaming invasion of bad language and head lice. Rastus, Matty’s old dog, lay at Jeanie’s feet, his fat, black body soaking up the sun. At the noise of the alien children, he raised his grey-flecked muzzle to offer up a single, tired bark, then sank back, his duty done. For him, the halcyon days were but memories and dreams, and Jeanie laughed to see him kick out his legs and growl while sleeping, still chasing that elusive bungarra in the mysterious world behind the fish-scale cataracts. Jeanie crouched down and patted the dog’s belly, and Rastus twitched and stirred to life once more. His sleep interrupted, or perhaps because of the heat, he struggled to his feet and painfully waddled indoors, jelly-slumping to the kitchen floor. Valves opened at both ends: with a wheeze and a fart he was soon back to sleep.
The kids had moved off to the vacant block next door, on an adventure only kids could have, making fun out of bugger-all, the mother of invention nurturing her brood. Jaylene, the eldest, was busy organising and directing the others; soon she would outgrow this childishness to walk within the realms of puberty and beyond. And Jeanie knew that that walk might eventually take Jaylene, and the others, away from Leonora. She watched them play in the scant shade of the trees, all fast talk and nimbleness in variants of brown. For them, now, it was an age to collect up memories into the vast storehouse of the mind; much later comes the sifting.
—
Jeanie Bayona sat at the old formica kitchen table, staring into her mug of tea. A pedestal fan hummed back and forth, moving through the dry air, pushing it from one place to another, working hard yet sadly ineffective. She wrapped the mug in her fine, brown hands and felt the warmth it brought. There is comfort in simple pleasures. She remembered the coast where she grew up, the taste of salt on her lips and the Fremantle Doctor blowing in of an afternoon. They were good times, then, in the naivety of childhood, in the blessedness of ignorance. How Frances and she would walk down to Cottesloe Beach to swim and play and wonder why the people stared. Just two girls having fun. Then you grow up. She sipped her tea, made a face, and reached for the sugar bowl.
—
It was 40° and the sun hung at about 11:30 in a blue, cloudless sky. Jeanie stood at the clothesline, pegging up yet another load of washing. The rotary hoist had long since lost most of its functions and some of its wires. Now it just sat in the yard, its working parts rusted together, too tired even to spin for the kids, or Jeanie, one last time. Matthew says: ‘we’ll get a new one, soon.’ ‘Maybe when your Dad dies,’ says Jeanie. It’s a mercenary hope, she thinks, but thinks it just the same. Seems their whole lives hinged on the old man’s date of departure and Jeanie thought it must give him a perverse pleasure, surviving as he does, willing himself to live for another day, another week, another year, just to spite them. She didn’t hate him; she just wished.
Jeanie’s foster-father nurtured in her the belief her natural father had been a good man, her natural mother a good woman. It was a nice story and she believed it because she had little else to grasp. Their deaths, though, robbed her at an early age of so much. It was like Death himself had wrapped up their lives in a shroud of mystery and, over the years, he had taunted her with it. Rattling bones. Some days, when she was low, she would go out to the cemetery and look at their graves. Just look and wonder who they were and who she was. And at night when she slept, the people of the Dingo Dreaming would come for her, calling her by name.
Jeanie pegged the last of the clothes on the line and carried the empty washing basket inside, fearful that if it was left under the hoist it would be sucked into the mysterious black hole of a Leonora childhood, and silently wished it would draw her in, too. Her foster-father, a barmy Christian man of Protestant ethics, had always tried to engineer a favourable existence for her. He had stirred a pot of fabrication and lean reality that fed her until she could not eat another bite, till only the bones remained. The foster-father, whom she called Dad, knew he could not hold her further in the urbanity of Cottesloe: even he, a walypala, understood that the rhythmic sounds of her ancestors were singing her back through a cultural warp, back to Leonora. She went there so full of expectation. Now, fourteen years later, Jeanie swung in a difficult orbit of incongruence and, like Halley’s Comet, her hopes diminished a little more with each passing of the sun. She looked around her house at the dry rot of her existence. Blowflies buzzed.
‘You sure you know what you’re doing? It’s not going to be easy in Leonora. I don’t even think there’s a church operating anymore.’ He brushed away at his face, a wiper-blade action of futility. Flies, regardless of government or status, were persistently annoying throughout Australia.
‘Everything is organised, Dad. I’ll ring once we get there, okay?’ Jeanie pulled his face into the car and kissed his cheek. ‘See you later. I love you.’
‘Take care of her, Matty.’
Matthew nodded and kicked the car to life. He drew away from the kerb and headed to the city.
Jeanie wiped her eyes. She listened to the noise of children playing outside in the heat. Too hot, she thought. She would bring them inside and make them lunch. First, though, while the kids were still busy, she would ring him. She picked up the phone, dialled, and spoke in low, conspiratory tones. Jaylene appeared at the doorway, scowly and dark eyed.
‘That fulla com’n agen, Mumma?’
‘Please speak properly, Jaylene.’
‘Is he?’
‘Why don’t you take the kids down the shop for some chips?’
‘Sausage, too?’
‘I … I guess so.’ She pulled a twenty from her purse. ‘Leave Little Albert with me, okay?’
‘Sure, Mumma, sure.’ A thin, brown arm reached up and took the money, then she skated away and was gone.
—
‘Thanks for coming. I didn’t like to ring you on a Sunday.’ The fridge made gurgling, peptic noises. Occasionally it would shudder as if it were drawing its last earthly breath, touched by the cold hand of Death. ‘Matthew said it may be the seals letting in air.’
‘Look, Jeanie, to tell you the truth, it’s pretty near rooted. I told Matty a month ago it was on its last legs. Could go any time. In this heat, the compressor is working overtime. Thermostat’s had it. Everything has an expiry date. It’s pretty old, you know.’
Ben Poulson was a nearly handsome man, frayed around the edges from fifty years doing everything, and now he called Leonora home because, he said, he’d worn out his welcome everywhere else. Truth was, Ben kept to himself and his reclusiveness caused some in the town to gossip and build up fancifu
l images of his past life. He ran a mechanical repair and tyre shop off Tower Street. Some days its guts tumbled out onto the dirt verge, rubber and steel in frightful disarray, but by 5:30 in the afternoon it always found its way back inside, hidden behind the big, tin doors. His uniform was Levi’s, boots lightly dusted from being tossed in the flour of the earth, an Akubra and the ever-present diesel cologne. Underneath his hat was a spot, shiny and pink, that may never have seen the sun. He was good with fridges.
The electric jug came to the boil. Jeanie made tea in an old ceramic pot. Blackfullas didn’t like the idea of tea bags. It was a recent tradition among the Aboriginal people of the Goldfields that a cuppa was made with Bushell’s loose-leaf tea; she didn’t know what they did before the white men came. She stood waiting for the tea to draw, waiting, waiting.
‘I remember once a miner, old Lester Coombes, you might remember him, ah, he asked me: “If there’s a God, why did he make Leonora so hot?” Well, I shot straight back at him: “To remind us of Hell, Lester.”’
Jeanie laughed, a laugh smudged with the brush of guilt.
‘I’m reminded of it on days like these.’ He looked out into the backyard. Jaylene was busy divvying out the chips and sausages to her brood. She caught Ben’s eyes. Gotcha! ‘She’s a smart kid, that girl.’
‘Jaylene? Yeah, she’s sharp. Too sharp for her own good.’ Jeanie poured the tea through a Tupperware strainer, a gift from somebody’s party in Kalgoorlie, years ago. The rest of her containers were somewhere at large, in the forever of children’s play. ‘She’s growing up so fast.’
‘I’m nearly as big as you!’ Jeanie rushed to keep up.
‘Only nearly. Besides, I’m older so I’ll always be bigger.’ Frances carried the beach bag: THINGS GO BETTER WITH COKE, but neither of the girls had ever touched a drop. They wore floppy hats and slip-slop-slapped; Frances burned so easily. A pale English rose, her father said, and he questioned the Admiralty’s decision to send its tiny wooden ships afar so many years before, bringing white people to a black land.
Ahead, traffic motored back and forth on Marine Parade; beyond that, a shimmering of ocean. ‘I can see the water,’ cried Frances. Mr O’Leary’s shop with the PAUL’s signs rose up: compelling ogre of old, red brick and fretted mortar with blank, dead-eyed windows at the front.
The girls peered into the ice-cream freezer. ‘We’ve got enough for Paddle Pops, Jeanie. Which one do you want?’
‘Banana!’ Jeanie thought there was something richly exotic about bananas; she didn’t know they were grown in Carnarvon. They took their choices to where Mr O’Leary leaned on his palms, propped up by the wooden countertop. He always had a slightly dishevelled appearance, creased and unwashed, stained by a misspent life and Champion Ruby. A form guide lay near his right hand and the shop echoed with the nasal description of some distant horse race.
‘Two Paddle Pops, is it?’ He bent a bit closer and Jeanie could smell his odour, an alliance of the pungent sweat and sweet tobacco.
Frances dug into the beach bag and pulled out her purse. She placed two dollars on the counter and waited for Mr O’Leary to take the money. But he didn’t take it. He just moved from behind the counter and closed and locked the front door.
‘I’ve got a surprise for you girls!’
‘Sorry, Ben, what did you say? I just drifted off for a minute.’
‘Those kids. They seem to cope okay with their dad away so often.’
‘Well, kids are so resilient, aren’t they?’
Ben never answered. He didn’t know. Just took another sip of tea and imagined himself in bed with Jeanie Bayona.
—
Ben Poulson drove off down the road, bits of shit rattling about in the back of his ute, oxy bottles clanking together, chiming like bells in the huge cathedral of the outback. Jeanie had thanked him for coming: a handshake and a smile and don’t look him in the eye, you stupid bitch.
She checked on the kids. They were in the shade at the back of the house. Jaylene had them performing, singing along and acting out to songs from her CD player: Usher, Akon and Snoop Dogg. After all, it was a genetic thing, Jeanie’s foster-father would say, it was in the blood. All Aboriginal people could act, he’d say, especially the children. Maybe the adults, too. Maybe.
‘I’m going in for a shower, Jaylene. I won’t be a minute.’
Jaylene glanced up. Even in the heat of the day, Jeanie felt the glare; she felt it burn like a hard slap: ‘why, are you dirty?’
‘Did you say something, Jaylene?’
‘What?’ She turned down the volume. Grudgingly.
‘I said, “Did you say something?”’
‘No, Mumma!’
Jeanie swore, dragged her head back inside and let the plastic strips fall once more into place, ensuring the flies could not escape. They moved about through the air almost unceasingly, stopping only to feed and crap, alive long enough to be a nuisance. Jeanie watched as two cockroaches scurried up the kitchen wall, above the stove. She reminded herself to buy fresh baits, but really it was a losing battle. It was as if something had died in the house.
She stripped off the cotton outer layer of her otherness and stood naked, richly brown, and plump from the goodness of the lands, before the bathroom mirror. Her yellowed palms rubbed over the glass, that silvered mystery, over the fly-specks and foamy flecks, as if to test its substance. If she dived through, what world would she encounter, and the people, what would they say to her, being just a little black girl?
‘So, did you see Mr O’Leary hurt Frances?’ The detective was large and pink faced. Even on a summer’s day he wore a suit and tie.
‘He kept pulling her by the arm. We were crying.’
‘And he took Frances into the bedroom. Tell me what you saw.’ He typed away, two-fingered and deliberate. It was not his forte, typing, or interviewing kids. But he’d spent time in Laverton, years before and, by his own admission, understood the natives.
‘He didn’t do anything to Frances, just asked us if we wanted to play with his silly dolls.’
‘The big blow-up ones with the hats? He made Frances play with them?’
‘Frances was going all floppy and breathing funny. Is she going to be all right?’ Jeanie really wanted her foster-father there. She was used to his protection and providence and kindly gentle words. Now, he was at the hospital with Frances. Resources can only stretch so far, even in the abundance of Western Australia.
‘Yeah, it’s what the doctors call “shock”.’ He finished his typing with a satisfied flourish. ‘Hey, young lady, I’ve got to say, you speak very good English. How about we get you an ice-cream, eh?’
No one ever asked what happened to Jeanie. She stepped back through the mirror and thought, kids are pretty resilient.
3
From the footpath, it seemed an unremarkable house. In front, a hedge grew pressed against and through and over a grey wood-and-wire fence that had long since surrendered to the weight and power of those lilli pillis that almost consumed it. Yet, by some miracle, the gateposts remained almost upright, though the gate no longer swung freely in the neat measured arc of earlier times, when Victoria was still Queen and society played at elegance and decency in Sunday best and battledress. Now it seemed content to sit half-opened, wedged against the path, rust-frozen in mid-swing, too worn out to go further and too old to care. Through the gate and above the hedge, a house could be glimpsed, standing forlornly in chafed red-brick and stone, topped with slate and idle chimneys thrusting skyward: a sad impotence. A short, buckled concrete path led up to a shaded veranda with two cane chairs in a state of disrepair, resting on tessellated tiles. On either side of the front door was a pair of windows, nailed shut, on each the hard, dry skin of white paint peeled away, a little more each day. The putty, too, had fallen off in places so that in times of wind and storm the panes would rattle in their frames, glass teeth in shrunken gums. At the left of the door at eye-level, in water-damaged mirrored glass and gilt capitals
, hung a nameplate bearing the words THE WOUNDED sINNER, and no small amount of mystery.
—
Archie Andrews was no longer a strong man. The hands that once stretched the chains, hammered in pegs, and humped levels and theodolites over the ruggedness of Western Australia were now almost useless extensions of a wasted body. They struggled with the ordinary tasks of the everyday, managing a brief, shaking grasp at life as it whisked by, while trying to fend off Death’s barbs. Archie, however, knew he was a wounded man, and one day soon those frail hands, wrapped in a thin, dry, translucency, would ward off the black horseman no longer.
‘I can’t get the curtain across!’ He sat in his wheelchair at the sitting room window.
‘You got it across yesterday.’ Delores Symonds, Archie’s carer, spoke with enough firmness to make her point. She heard him curse, and watched as he lifted his right hand weakly to the hem of the curtain and pull it aside. ‘There, wasn’t so hard, was it?’
‘Put a pin in it! To hold it so I don’t have to keep pulling it across.’ Wheeze. All the time, a wheeze.
‘It’s exercise, Archie. The doctor said you needed exercise, didn’t he?’
‘Bloody ding! What would he know?’
‘Dr Bargwanna is a good doctor. And it’s a British name. English or Scottish, I think.’
‘Listen to it. Sound it out. It’s positively bloody tribal! Barg … wan … na. God, what a world!’
‘Whatever, Archie, I’m going out to the kitchen. You okay, here?’
Archie wasn’t listening. There was movement outside, past the green bulk of the lilli pilli hedge and the rusty wire and scrolled metal gate. He brought one spectacled eye closer to the triangular chink of windowpane, the glass made before his birth, machine-drawn and full of imperfections. It only ever afforded a distorted view.
The Wounded Sinner Page 2