The Wounded Sinner

by Gus Henderson

  ‘Oh, Jesus, Mumma! I know what you’re thinkin’. That’s shame, Mumma, real shame.’

  ‘I just want to give Auntie the opportunity …’

  ‘… to be like us?’ Jaylene pushed her chair back in an angry slide. She walked through to the lounge room and gave Auntie Peggy a kiss on the forehead. ‘You’ve still got no idea, have you Mumma?’ And to the old lady: ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  Jaylene stomped off to her room, wrapped up in a volatile mix of hormone, culture and shame that nobody would understand, least of all her mother. She slammed the door for good measure and, in the dark, as she lay on her bed, determined she would never shower again.

  Then she thought of Ben, the dirty bastard, and what he’d made her do and say. After a while she heard her Mumma walk up to her room and soon the house was quiet. Only then, when she was sure the house was sleeping, did she creep across the hall into the bathroom. She scrubbed her body clean under a pelting of hot water: clean, clean, whitefulla clean. Later, as tiredness lost the battle with anxiety, she padded softly through to the back door and out into the night. Still dirty inside, still dirty.

  —

  It was dark, shot through at sharp angles with shafts of soft morning light. Jaylene picked up a box of matches and lit a candle. She had seen it done on the early morning religious shows on television. She hoped it would bring some dignity to the dusty surroundings, and that there, in the early morning hours, on the small square of scrounged carpet, God would see that dancing flame.

  Mumma had said that this was where the Pastor had preached. Jaylene tried to imagine forty years ago, when he delivered his last sermon, the church building filled with people all seeking Jesus, all saying ‘hallelujah, praise the Lord!’ and ‘amen’ and holding up their hands in worship like they did on television. Maybe, she thought, the townspeople had locked and bolted and boarded up the building to keep the spirit closed up inside. Maybe.

  A cross hung off a nail on the back wall. She had fashioned the rough cross out of she-oak branches bound with wire found beside the road and it was crafted with as much purpose as her simple understanding would allow. A bare room, a burning candle, a cross and many questions. Suffer the little children.

  —

  Jaylene walked back home accompanied by bush flies and the orange glow of morning. Rastus waddled out on the back step to greet her. She patted him and went inside.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Just out.’

  ‘You could have let somebody know.’ It’s all about you, thought Jeanie. Shit, what an age!

  ‘I need to talk to you. About Ben.’

  ‘Yes, I know, I’m thinking the same thing. Poor man.’

  ‘Mumma, he …’

  ‘I just can’t believe he came out all that way to help us.’

  ‘Jesus, Mumma! He …’

  ‘Jaylene! I won’t have you constantly taking the Lord’s name in vain. Just because we don’t go to church, doesn’t mean we have to act like heathens!’ Auntie Peggy took no notice. She just busied herself pulling a damper apart. ‘Okay, look, I’m sorry. I was a little worried about Ben. What did you want to say?’

  ‘Nothin’, Mumma! Bloody nothin’!’ And she stormed off, wondering if God really listened at all.

  —

  Ben Poulson was that sick he was surprised he woke up. It was the cold that brought him round, that early morning chill that creeps across the desert floor as an invisible ghost seeking out those without a fire or blanket or those too pissed to care. The previous night floated around in his head as cerebral debris that he tried to gather together into some semblance of order. Alas, it remained a tangle of vague images and events: the piss won again.

  He wondered what he had done to end up here at Barren Hills. It wasn’t until he climbed into the cab and turned the key that the some of the pieces slotted back together. Ben cursed the day women were born and started walking towards the highway.

  —

  They were going nowhere once again. Jaylene might have prayed to get the old ’cruiser started but she just sat on the back steps, deep in thought and bloody surly with it. The younger ones were engrossed in play in the block next door, a world away. Auntie Peggy sat in the passenger seat. She took off her beanie, looked at it, and belted it against the dashboard. Dust flew everywhere and Jeanie thought it a wasted exercise: the old girl carried enough dust to fill a wheat bag.

  Jeanie sighed, ‘Looks like we all stay in Leonora today.’

  ‘Mebby you drive der Commun’ty bus?’ Auntie Peggy wiped her nose with her fingers. Flies, incessant flies, crawled in any accessible orifice.

  ‘Don’t you have to be … ?’

  ‘Look at you! Wad you t’ink you are? Is fer all blackfulla!’

  ‘But I don’t have a licence.’

  ‘Tell ’em you god licence, okay?’ Auntie Peggy noticed the apprehension in Jeanie’s face. ‘Okay, I tell ’em. Mebby bedder dat way, ’ey?’

  ‘Oh, these flies are terrible!’

  ‘Flies’re like peeble; plenny ebrywhere. Only bad ’uns ’noy you. Less go ged der bus.’

  Little Albert, Nadine and the twins were engaged in some form of domestic play. Jeanie called out that she was walking into town and would be back soon. They didn’t hear and didn’t care and were happy in their make-believe realm. Jeanie walked away convinced of their well-being. Kids were safer in Leonora than any other place on earth.

  Jaylene went inside to her bed and cried her eyes out.

  —

  The local wags called it the ‘Wongai wagon’. It sat in a parking bay, its lower half smothered with mud from the last good rain. On the sides was the Leonora District Aboriginal Corporation emblem, a kangaroo and a man with a spear (the man stood straight and tall, the raised spear pointed towards the kangaroo, which looked worried). One tyre was slowly sinking into the asphalt and the rest would struggle to meet legal requirements. Jeanie thought she heard it sighing. It dripped oil like it had been stabbed in the guts and it pooled in a black mess under the belly of the motor: the bus had seen better days.

  ‘So, ya gotta licence?’ Glenda Harding, corporation secretary, looked across at Jeanie. If humans came in 57 varieties, Glenda would be it. She had skin the colour of a three-hour tan that, at 9.30 in the morning under a tin roof with no air-conditioning, positively glistened. She’d tell you, though, that she was fully black, and feisty with it. That’s all that counted here.

  ‘Course she gotta licence! Why you t’ink we’re ’ere?’

  ‘Jeez, Auntie Peggy, settle down. Sorry, Jeanie, had to ask.

  You gotta sign the book. I had it here a while ago.’ Glenda rummaged around the desk: a honey-coloured red-combed bantam scratching for grubs. ‘Here it is.’ Also, from within the pile of paperwork on the desk, she found a pen.

  Jeanie dated the first column then signed in the adjoining column that was headed OUT. The next column was titled JOB DESCRIPTION. Jeanie hesitated.

  ‘Just put “Bega run”.’

  ‘Oh, Bega Garnbirringu, the health clinic?’

  ‘Look out there.’ Glenda waved her arm out in the direction of the street. A rough dozen or so of people from The Community and other parts of town had gathered outside on the pavement, some sitting against the wall, legs straight out, some just milling about, smoking. Voices rose and fell in a constant chattering of strange desert music. ‘We’ve got no driver. All these people need to go to the clinic or into Kal.’

  ‘But we have a hospital here. Can’t they go to the hospital?’

  Glenda gave Jeanie a dismissive look and said, tersely, ‘No.’

  ‘Wouldn’t making them go to the hospital here be cheaper?’

  ‘Yes, in a purely economic sense, it would be cheaper, Jeanie. We’re not talking economics, though. We’re talking people.’ She looked hard at Jeanie. ‘I guess the reality is you’ve never lived a black life.’ Glenda took back the pen and dropped it on the desk. ‘Look, you’ve been
out here, what, fourteen years?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you come out here for? Why’d you come back to Leonora?’

  ‘Well, basically, I came out here to help the kids. I just wanted to help.’ That was partially true. Jeanie wanted to say that the spiritual connectedness to the land of the Dingo Dreaming had pulled her back, tugging at her constantly until, over the last few days, it became irresistible. She was part of the Stolen Generation, brought up in a different environment, a different culture. Belonging here was never going to be easy. Most people thought she had lived a fortunate life. She fought ceaselessly against the attraction to her roots but was glad Matthew had persuaded her, against her better judgment, to pull up stocks and journey into the relatively unknown. ‘I wanted to give something back. I wanted to be part of this community.’

  ‘See these people.’ Glenda motioned towards the collection of the local Wongai standing around the bus. ‘The walypala have dispossessed these people of everything but their souls, and they’re working on that. We’ve had glorified lives, you and me.’ She handed Jeanie the keys. ‘You’ve got a full tank. We have an account at Boulder Shell. Know the place?’ Jeanie nodded. ‘Pump up the tyre at Kelso’s.’ The local BP. ‘You’ll have to do it again when you get to Kal.’

  Jeanie walked out towards the bus under a clear blue sky. Moments later Glenda emerged from the office and called after her. ‘Jeanie! Jeanie. Wait, I’m sorry. They don’t go to the hospital because they’re scared. For them it’s a place of dying. They think that once they go in, they’ll never come out. So they go to the clinic, instead.’

  Trust and distrust. Jeanie wondered if she was part of the problem or the solution, or if she was part of anything at all. Yet they followed her, that ragged straggle of Wongai, onto the bus and they could have been strange visitors from another planet, and that thought made her sad.

  —

  Lisbeth Curtis-Browne had made assumptions. She had unfolded a map of Western Australia and imagined that Leonora was a lean, Spartan place, all dry heat and dust and people scratching out a living, their hopes hanging on the price of gold and nickel, as uncertain as the rain in those parts: lonely people more than likely, too. Her rudimentary knowledge of the Goldfields told her it was a place of few pretentions. By its very nature it was a spare place, lacking the colours and vibrancy a city-dweller attaches to life, and lean with it. Yes, it was a lean place. Peering out through the curtains of her motel window, she thought she had assumed right.

  Yesterday, the Prospector train had brought her as far as Kalgoorlie. As she alighted at the station, she was overwhelmed by the heat. It seized her quickly, squeezing her with hot, dry hands, almost taking her breath away. Welcome to Kal. She caught a taxi that took her to the rental place, where she hired a four-wheel drive. At a little before 3pm, she left the busy little city behind and headed for Leonora.

  ‘Will you be staying long?’

  ‘Just two nights.’ She signed the register.

  ‘You’re the only one in, tonight. Middle of the week, we don’t get too many.’

  ‘I’d like to eat in my room. Can I order something?’ ‘You mean like room service?’ He was a simple man who smelled like foreign sausage.

  ‘Yes, I’ll make it worth your while.’ At fifty she had left attractiveness far behind her but she was still a woman and guessed white women with ample cleavages were a rare thing in these parts. She may have been right, but tonight she was offering money.

  ‘Aw, that won’t be a problem Mrs Curtis-Browne. I’ll bring you something from the hotel. You want beer as well? I’ll just add it to your bill.’

  ‘That would be fine, ah …’

  ‘Bill, Bill Kelso. Mum and Dad run the servo and this motel.’ Bill was twenty-something, teeth like Phar Lap and being a desk clerk in the back of Woop-Woop was probably stretching the limits of his capabilities.

  ‘Well, Bill, I’m here incognito.’ She saw his lack of understanding. ‘You know, no one needs to know I’m here. I’m going to surprise someone.’

  ‘Who is it? I know everybody in town. Is it Dad?’

  ‘No, I’m not going to say. This has got to be a real surprise, okay?’ She leaned over the desk. ‘If you had a problem with your car air-conditioning, who would you take it to?’

  ‘Ben Poulson! He can fix anything. Got his card here you can have.’

  ‘Thanks, Bill.’

  Lisbeth slept well. When she woke, she pulled back the curtain, looking at life, Leonora-style, the casualness of a small bush town. She noticed lots of Aboriginal people, sauntering, soaking up the morning sun like dark lizards. To herself: ‘Ben would not be impressed. Well, it won’t worry him for much longer.’

  —

  It took Ben an hour and a half to walk to the highway. Lord, he was crook with it, heaving up his innards before he had left Barren Hills behind. He had finished his water with the passing of the second kilometre and he flung the empty container into the scrub on the air of another foul oath. The sun had sat up in the sky as usual and normally they had got on pretty good together. Today, though, it seemed to be mocking him, and there was nothing he could do about it. That warranted a curse, as well.

  The Isuzu pantech pulled up to a stop and the driver stuck his thick head out of the window. ‘Jeez, Ben, is it hot out there?’ It was a stupid question from a person not particularly noted for his mental prowess.

  ‘Well, what do you friggin’ think, Frank?’ Ben slammed the door shut. ‘Where’s your water bottle?’ He was dry enough to drink battery acid.

  ‘Got some Coke, here. Do you drink Coke?’ Frank carted odds and sods from Kalgoorlie to Leinster and back and all points in between. He called himself KWIK’N’EASY and the wags on the route thought it could be an apt description of an effective laxative, for Frank often gave people the shits. They also laughed at him but, like shooting a camel at ten paces, he was an easy target. He handed over the Coke: ‘I’ve already drunk some.’

  Ben didn’t care. He thought he was beyond caring. Life right now couldn’t get any worse. Frank drove him back to Barren Hills and they got the ute going.

  No, life could only get better.

  22

  Vince sensed it early as the twin-cab motored south on Albany Highway. It was carried on the gentle breeze of the past, a sweet scent of memory, part olfactory, part cerebral, that brought with it the smell of burning wood. Vince had never been to the ‘old country’. To him, it was a faraway place of his imaginings and his nonno’s stories, a long way from the seeming endlessness of suburban Perth rushing by. Here and there were what remained of market gardens, given over to rust and weeds and signs that told of pending subdivisions. Once, the earth had been worked there into neat rows of cabbages and lettuce by men like his nonno. Vince drifted again, on the whiff of nostalgia, to another place and pictured his grandfather, sometime between the wars, in peasant dress, treading dusty lanes and milking fat cows. The smoke from hearth fires puffed out into the countryside, a pleasing savour to Benedict, the patron saint of most things agrarian. Vince smelled it now, the memories of Rottnest, when his nonno would sit like a king in the shade of the porch and talk with people as they sauntered past, and Nonna, in the kitchen with the girls, doing what they did best. Out the back the young men, Eddie and his brother, Carmello, worked the barbeque: much laughter and the smell of wood burning.

  The twin-cab headed south through the sprawl of the suburbs and into the countryside where the traffic thinned considerably. They soon left Byford behind and Vince was again content to cruise on ninety. Everything else was passing them at speed. Hot air whooshed in and around the cab, not quite cooling but moving nonetheless. Shirts stuck to spines, throats grew drier by the minute. No one spoke and that was always a dangerous vacuum. Vince started tapping the steering wheel; Matthew was afraid he was going to start singing.

  ‘We may not be on Rotto but we can still have a barbeque.’

  ‘What was that?’ Matthew had got hi
s smokes out. Vince would have to stop soon.

  ‘We used to go on holidays to Rotto. Always had barbies. Dad would cook in his Speedos, fat spittin’ out everywhere. Mum always yelling for him to be careful that he didn’t cook the wrong sausage.’

  Matthew laughed. ‘So you’re saying we should have gone to Rotto.’

  ‘Nah, I only thought about it now. But we could still have a barbie.’

  ‘Okay, Vince, we’ll have a barbie.’

  Vince smelled the wood burning.

  —

  ‘It affects the kids, you know.’

  ‘What’s that, Vince?’ Their voices blew around the cab as scraps of noise buffeted by the wind sucked in through the windows. Vince wound his up again. Matthew was experiencing strange emotions of late. He was genuinely glad of Vince’s company, regardless of the fact he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Matthew put it down to the change of life, whatever that may have been.

  ‘I’m saying that what we do as parents affects the kids.’ Almost shouting.

  ‘You’re worried about your young bloke, aren’t you?’ Matthew turned his head to the side and looked at his father, asleep, like a frail bird, in his seatbelt. ‘We all suffer trauma throughout our lives, mate. We survive by dealing with it, not hiding from it. That’s what I reckon, anyway. He’ll be all right.’

  ‘What was it like for you?’

  ‘I was brought up in combat-mode, always waiting for the next bomb to go off.’ Matthew was quiet for a minute. He listened to the music of the wind and the hum of the tyres on the road. ‘I’m doing my best not to go the way of all the Andrews. And there was the house, of course.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I always thought the bloody thing was cursed. Well, that’s what my grandad reckoned, anyway, and I guess I played with that idea in my formative years.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I mean, as I grew up.’

  ‘Oh.’ Vince wondered for a moment. ‘Well, is it true?’

  ‘What, that the house is cursed? I think THE WOUNDED SINNER is just brick and slate, Vince. It can be different things to different people but it can’t be cursed, surely?’ An open question. He got out a cigarette. ‘Can we stop for a smoke?’