The Wounded Sinner

by Gus Henderson

  ‘Bay-bee! Bay-bee!’

  ‘I god ’im. ’E’s good, ’ey?’

  ‘Auntie!’ Jeanie reached over and took the sleeping toddler from the old woman. ‘You’re walking around. I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Is good me’cin, I tell you!’ Auntie Peggy looked down at her leg and said, ‘Still bid sore, but nilly bedder.’ She spied the supine form of Ben Poulson lying in the dust beside the utility. It was a momentary distraction, dismissed with a shake of her head and a terse ‘Whitefullas, ’ey.’ Then she motioned to Jaylene to pass her the leads, which she secured to the terminal posts of each battery. Ben’s car was still churning away. ‘Okay, girl,’ to Jeanie, ‘you put bebby in ’is seat, an’ stard car.’

  ‘You sure it’s goin’ to work.’

  ‘Wad you talkin’ ’bout. Course it work. Jus’ stard der car.’

  Little Albert woke as he was strapped into his seat. He screwed up his face, ready with a whinge, but he nodded off again, worn out on good times.

  ‘What about Ben?’

  ‘Too big fer dingo t’chew on. Putta blanket on’im.’

  ‘But I hear them, circling.’

  ‘Dat wad dey do. Dey good at it, too.’ She laughed her jiggly laugh. ‘Stard der car, orright?’

  ‘No, I can’t leave Ben here. Not after he came all this way to help us out.’

  ‘Lissen, Blackfullas sleep in der bush allertime. ’E’s a big man. You got bebbies t’look affer. Stard der car, okay?’

  ‘All right, Auntie.’

  The old Landcruiser started in a flurry of coughs and farts. Oily smoke gusted out from the exhaust: an environmental tragedy on four wheels. Jeanie watched as Jaylene and Auntie Peggy readied the ship for its voyage home, disconnecting the leads, closing up the bonnet, and scooping up the kids. Jaylene turned off Ben’s ute and switched off the headlights. She thought of taking the last of Ben’s water. That would have been a dog act.

  They drove past Ben. He was soon swallowed up by the darkness. Fifty metres down the road Auntie Peggy remembered her medicine, left behind in the rush to return to civilisation. Jaylene said she would run and get it. ‘Save turning the car around, Mumma.’ She found the flagon of bush medicine and on the way back passed Ben, asleep, doing his version of a one-man band. A breeze, the first of the night, bustled past, bringing with it a touch of buggery. She reached into the cab and pulled on the headlights.

  TUESDAY

  20

  Morning, still wrapped in a half-light, slowly draining away. Somewhere out over the scarp, the cauldron of the new day was stirring, the fire beneath it stoked by the sun’s strong arms, the bellows of his hot breath blowing through the coals and out upon a rising Perth. Matthew lay in his bed and smoked a cigarette. Then another: ‘I’ve got to give this up,’ he said to himself and coughed like he did every other morning, again and again. He listened, wondering if he had woken his father. All was quiet. ‘Jeez, another steamer!’ He crept out of his room in his underwear and padded down the hallway over the rise and fall of the creaking jarrah boards to the kitchen. It smelled of pizza and garlic bread and over-ripe bananas browning in a bowl on the little table. He put them in the bin and made himself a coffee. Early in the morning the kitchen was the coolest part of the house, but old Sol, that bastard sun, had followed Matthew’s movement and would surely find him there.

  ‘Make a decision, Matthew,’ Jeanie had said. Shit, it was always so easy for her. She never had any problems. He drank the last of his coffee and thought about making another to wash the knot from his stomach. He wished for a solution.

  ‘The world is driven by solutions. That’s why we have problems.’ Reg Bonner emptied the thermos into the small mugs. The Sabina River ran by in a thin, muddy stream, almost noiselessly. About them, the forest dripped with winter rain.

  ‘Dad says you’re a problem.’

  ‘Then I can only guess what the solution will be.’

  ‘I think I know.’

  ‘Know what?’ Vince, in jeans and T-shirt, wandered into the kitchen carrying a burden of woe on a string of sleeplessness. He wrapped his boxy hands around the jug to rate its warmth. They sprang off immediately: ‘Shit! Still hot!’ He made his coffee thick and hoped against hope there would be some cream in the fridge. Sophie always bought cream. Milk would have to do; he was living a make-do life now.

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, Vince.’ Matthew could feel the heat creeping all over him. It was still early. ‘Christ, it’s bloody hot in here! I reckon we head off somewhere. Go down south for the day. At least it will be cooler, there.’ Besides, he thought, problems never got solved in THE WOUNDED SINNER.

  ‘I’d have to see Sophie first.’ He sat down opposite Matthew and sipped his brew. It was Nescafé. At home he had a percolator. And the kitchen chairs didn’t rock. ‘Can we stop at her mum’s place on the way?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll put a load of washin’ on and we’ll get goin’. There’ll be plenty of time for you to see Sophie.’

  ‘What about your dad? Who’s gonna look after him?’

  ‘He’ll come with us.’ Matthew thought for a moment. The wild horses of action reared up at the first hurdle. ‘Hm, he may take some convincing.’

  ‘It would do him good to get out, though.’ Vince pushed his chair back and went to the pantry for cereal. ‘If …’

  ‘If what?’

  ‘If only my dad could get out, if he could …’ he paused, Rice Bubbles in hand, ‘I think about him lying there wishing he was somewhere else.’

  ‘We all wish we were somewhere else, Vince,’ said Matthew. He buttered his toast and sat down in ponder mode. THE WOUNDED SINNER had grabbed Archie in its relentless red brick and shingle grasp and shaken the goodness from him, slowly choking him to death, pulling the spent body down into the footings, into the earth. Maybe Matthew was following, already enmeshed. ‘Yeah, I’ll get him to come.’

  Vince ate his cereal while Matthew went about the business of the laundry. Matthew was right; the morning sun was relentless and beat upon the kitchen, which was unable to repel the heat. Summers seemed so much hotter now. Vince was perplexed, but then he was perplexed by many things. He made another round of coffees and wished he was with Sophie again.

  —

  ‘You can’t make me go anywhere, you know.’ The old man lay in his hospital bed, paper-thin-skinned hands frailly gripping the side-bars in a weak gesture of defiance. ‘It’s abuse of the aged, that’s what it is. You’re an abuser,’ Archie spat out the words on a wheezy spray, ‘and God knows it, too!’ He had exhausted himself. Matthew took no notice. It was what he expected. He busied himself with Archie’s needs and rolled up the remnants of lost dignity in the dirty linen.

  ‘Dad, be reasonable.’ Matthew pushed the wheelchair into the lounge room. ‘Don’t you want to see a little more of the world than the view out that window?’

  ‘Why, Matthew? The world is full of things that I don’t want to see. It’s not my world anymore. It’s disappearing up its own arsehole and sucking everything in with it.’ He peered out through the years of grime, a tainted view of life in Hamblin Street. ‘You know what hurts, Matthew?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t stop it.’

  ‘You don’t have to stop it, Dad.’ He patted Archie’s back. ‘Grandad would have said that you should go with the flow. That change is inevitable.’

  ‘Would he ’ave?’ Archie swung his head around as far as he could. Matthew was there, somewhere. ‘Tell me. You loved him. Why don’t you love me?’

  ‘It’s not my job to love you; it’s my job to look after you.’

  ‘It’s like a Mexican standoff, isn’t it?’ He looked back out the window. ‘What’s going to happen to THE WOUNDED SINNER when I go?’

  Archie got no response other than Matthew saying, ‘I’ve got some washing to hang out. Then we’re going out.’

  —

  Vince Romano felt sick, sick to his stomach. The giant hand of anxiety was squeezing ti
ght his guts, a griping sensation getting worse by the minute. Matthew poured out a large brandy into a Vegemite glass.

  ‘Here, have this. It’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘Oh, jeez, mate, you reckon?’ Vince looked at the spirits, swilled it around in the glass and downed it in a couple of glugs. ‘Err-argh!’

  ‘I didn’t mean you to skol it, ya dingbat! You don’t want to be pissed when you get there.’

  ‘Maybe I should. I’m as nervous as shit!’

  ‘Trust me, you’ll be fine. You said you wanted to go.’

  ‘Now I’m not so sure.’

  Archie’s holey-concertina voice wheezed out from the wheelchair: ‘If I were you, I’d go in there and let her know you want to work things through, whatever the problem.’ He continued to look out the window. ‘And tell her that you love her.’

  ‘You’re perhaps not the best person to be giving advice, Dad.’

  ‘Your mother was a difficult woman. I did my best in trying circumstances. We still loved each other, you know, in our own way.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, now.’ Matthew walked over to Archie’s wheelchair and pulled him back into the middle of the lounge. ‘We’ll get you in the car, Dad. You get his bag, Vince.’

  ‘It’s in,’ he said and looking at Archie, ‘and now I’ll try and make you as comfortable as possible in the back seat.’

  ‘God! Strapped into the back of a small truck against my will. How comfortable will that be?’ Archie spluttered.

  ‘C’mon, Dad, you’re always saying this generation is too soft.’ He manoeuvred the wheelchair through the front door. ‘You’ll be just fine in the back.’

  ‘Then you sit in the back!’ he wheezed. ‘What will I be able to see from there, you cruel bastard? Oh, God, where is my freedom!’

  ‘Shit, Dad, first you didn’t want to go and now you want your freedom,’ said an exasperated Matthew. ‘You can sit in the front on the way down and in the back on the way up again.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  Matthew left Archie and Vince at the top of the stairs and went inside to lock up. Vince looked at the old man, trying to work him out, for despite his gears being rusty, they were still meshing, the shaft still turning.

  ‘What are you glaring at?’ Archie whistled and tweeted out the words.

  ‘Nothing, Mr Andrews.’ He reddened.

  ‘You know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I sometimes wish I was his age,’ Archie’s eyes motioned in Matthew’s direction. ‘Freedom seems to be such a contentious thing as you get older. You lose your autonomy, don’t you think?’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Control! I find it so hard to maintain any control.’

  Vince stared out towards the hills, or where he imagined the hills to be, those being mostly hidden by the industry of human habitation. He was worried by Archie’s statement and he imagined himself in a small plane, its engine blown, spiralling downward. There were no parachutes.

  —

  Mother Schettino was a robust woman, broad at the back and weighed down at the front with a pendulous bust that drooped in a tired fashion towards her waist. She didn’t preserve her own fruit, make tomato paste or have garlic strung around the kitchen as potent, grey vines; she was born a Larkins, daughter of the stationmaster at Midlands for whom pizza was always going to be dangerously exotic.

  ‘It’s early, Vince. If you’d called first, I could have told you she wasn’t here.’ Ruth Schettino leaned on the doorway, a washed-out flannel wrap not doing its job over blue silk pyjamas, the size an unknown quantity. ‘I can’t ask you in. I have a man-friend inside.’ She gave Vince a wink.

  ‘That’s okay, I’ve got mates in the car.’ Vince was not a sophisticated man. In the morning heat he sweated out simplicity but there was plenty there. ‘Where’s she gone?’

  ‘Dunno. She said she was going to Deanne’s place and then, jeez, I don’t know. Maybe into town somewhere.’

  ‘What’s goin’ on, Mrs S?’

  ‘She won’t tell me, Vince. That’s the truth. But she loves you, I know that much.’

  ‘Then why? I … I just don’t understand.’ Sweat dripped onto the pocket-handkerchief porch, just room for one: men with problems would have to go elsewhere.

  Ruth watched him walk back to the twin-cab. She hated lying to him and wished she could cut his brother’s balls out.

  —

  They stopped at a service station somewhere near Armadale where Vince filled up the twin-cab and went inside to pay. Matthew got into the driver’s seat and fiddled, first with the air-conditioner and then with the radio. He pushed and pulled every knob, desperate for both cool air and sound other than the less-than-dulcet crooning of Vince Romano.

  ‘What are you trying to do?’ Archie twisted his head towards his son.

  ‘Just fixin’ stuff that needs to work!’

  ‘Like you fixed your car, you and your ding mate.’ Archie coughed out the last few words. ‘Fixed it so well some Abos are driving around town in it. Christ!’

  Vince walked over to the car and Matthew got in the back. He closed his door on a cloud of murderous thoughts that hung around as the twin-cab was once more heading south. They passed through Byford and, as they left the 80 zone, they noticed an old, blue Ford, up on blocks, bonnet open and stripped of everything easily carted away. It may have been Matthew’s car.

  ‘Don’t say a word, Dad!’

  At that, Archie let out a wheezy laugh as best he could and would have slapped his knee if he’d been able. The outing may not be as bad as he thought.

  21

  Auntie Peggy had woken early. Her foot seemed to have healed completely and she made the short curly walk from Jeanie’s house to Popeye’s and back without even a limp. The twins had gone with her to bring back ’roo stew for breakfast; the others slept on, the hot, little fibro house leaking out the sounds of slumber.

  Rastus lay slug-like in the kitchen. He made the passage from the world of dreams to that of reality long enough time to bark out an acknowledgement of the twins’ return before slipping back into sleep. Perhaps the aroma of Popeye’s stew added to the fields of his imagination: the sleek black hunter, fleet of foot, chasing down a kangaroo. Rastus smiled a doggie smile. Ah, the scent of victory!

  Auntie Peggy had carried back a big aluminium pot of questionable hygiene with wonky handles and streaked down the sides with layers of brown drips. It was covered with a small hessian bag of unknown origin: the smell of both the hessian and the stew together was an olfactory reminder of a different age. Robyn thought it ‘smelled funny’.

  ‘You wait, girl.’ Auntie Peggy put it on the stove, removed the hessian and lit the gas. ‘Taste real good, dis.’ She looked at the twins. ‘Need som’one t’stir.’

  The ensuing battle for the wooden spoon woke the rest of the household. Jeanie wandered out in T-shirt and undies. Nadine turned on the television, hoping for cartoons: the morning show would have to do. Little Albert needed his nappy changed: Lord, why did you make babies smell so bad? Jeanie called to Jaylene, ‘Bring me a nappy, then do cuppas, please.’ No answer. ‘Jaylene, wake up, girl.’ Nothing. ‘Jaylene.’

  She stood in Jaylene’s doorway. Her bed was empty.

  —

  She sat for some time on a mullocky hill at the back of the township, looking down at the huddle of homes and businesses that made up Leonora. The sky was just beginning to glow with the approach of morning and the stars, so bright an hour before, were fading from sight: the changing face of eternity. She spoke out into its vastness and her words fell away into space. Such was the disappointment of silence.

  Jaylene stood and rubbed the cold from her arms. She began walking in an arc behind the sleeping houses and over the track that connected The Community to town. Ahead was a brace of old buildings, fenced for every occasion, keeping out nothing. In a town of more refinement, of more sophistication, those buildings would have seemed
oddly out of place. Here, though, they sat on the main road, wrapped up in insecure hoardings as if saved for a future purpose in another, more prosperous, era.

  She pulled herself through the fence of the brick building closest to town. Sheets of corrugated tin covered the windows and back door, the latter held firm with a padlocked sliding bolt: ‘That’ll keep the bastards out!’ Six months ago she had bought a lock at a Kalgoorlie hardware store: ‘Whatever are you going to do with that, girl?’ her mother had said. Jaylene didn’t say. She had also discreetly borrowed Mr Pascoe’s boltcutters, and now in the half-light she took the key from her pocket and opened the lock.

  —

  It was just before midnight when Jeanie had pulled up the driveway and into the backyard. Georgina, Nadine and Little Albert had slept most of the way home. Jaylene had carried Nadine inside while Georgina protested angrily about being woken. She would have happily spent the night in the Landcruiser; everything had to be an adventure! Jeanie put Little Albert into his bed and then put the kettle on. She needed a cuppa, even at that late hour. There followed the jiggling of tea bags and the tinkle of stirring. Auntie Peggy nestled down into the couch; an old Fred Astaire movie had caught her eye. Jeanie and Jaylene sat around the kitchen table. Weariness had pulled up a chair as well.

  ‘How about we head into Kal in the morning?’ Jeanie took a tentative sip of her tea: shit, too hot. ‘Bet you haven’t been down there for a while, Auntie?’ Auntie didn’t seem to hear; whitefulla dancing amazed her. Jeanie looked across at Jaylene. ‘What do you think, girl?’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’

  ‘We can all go op-shopping. Get some new clothes. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Auntie?’