The Wounded Sinner

by Gus Henderson

  ‘Sure, we’re in no hurry.’

  ‘Thank the Lord!’ said Matthew from the back seat and Archie slept on.

  —

  They stopped at Pinjarra in a parking bay overlooking the Murray River. Archie woke up complaining that he had pissed himself and Matthew knew they should have stopped sooner. The old man wore incontinence underwear on Matthew’s insistence, and accepted it as a concession to the ageing process, where the unexpected and the unnatural often combined. Matthew lifted Archie out of the front seat and into the wheelchair. He grabbed Archie’s bag and they headed off to the toilets.

  Vince walked over to the railing and peered down into the river. In reality, it was nothing more than a creek, a thin ribbon of muddy water twisting through scrub and fallen branches on its way to the coast. He watched small birds diving in and out of the foliage, after insects, he guessed, and was amazed at their industry. Then he thought about his heritage, his people, the old country and the new. They would all have drunk from streams like this, at one stage or another. Wherever they settled, the Italians were called to the task – no, born to the task – of working the land for all it was worth. The great curling finger of destiny ever beckoning, drawing them on, men, women and children, to wrestle with the frequent heartlessness of nature, most times to win.

  But Leo was right, he was only a greaser. Vince drew his talent from a very shallow stream indeed. He thought that each time he drank, he tasted mud.

  ‘Beautiful place, isn’t it?’ Matthew wheeled Archie over to the railing and waxed lyrical through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

  ‘Don’t give me that crap.’ As Archie spoke, his glasses wobbled around on his face, the bridge of his nose unable to offer any support at all. ‘Full of mosquitoes and leeches. No bloody romance in that trickle of shit!’

  Vince stared down to where the river lazed about in still pools and channels and thought the old bloke may be right.

  —

  ‘You’re going to have to tell him.’ Ruth Schettino sat at the kitchen table. She took a drag of her cigarette and blew smoke into the air. ‘God, what a mess!’

  ‘Please, Mum, do you have to smoke? Where are your patches?’

  ‘Believe me, girl, I need to smoke at a time like this. Did you think I enjoyed lying to Vince?’ She stood up and reached into the open kitchen pantry, drawing out a bottle of brandy from among the condiments.

  ‘You can’t be serious, Mum. It’s not even ten.’

  Ruth poured out a good measure into her teacup. ‘You’ll want some, too.’

  ‘You’ve got to be kiddin’, aren’t you?’ Sophie placed her hand over her cup. Her mother nudged it aside with the lip of the bottle.

  ‘One won’t hurt you, will it? Deanne’s got Lukey for the day.’ Ruth slurped a nip or two into Sophie’s cup and plonked the bottle on the table. ‘And besides, we’ve got some talking to do; a little lubrication will help.’

  It was Sophie’s turn to stand. She grabbed the bottle by its neck and walked it over to the pantry, settling it back into place beside the sauce bottle. They seemed to complement each other. ‘You’ve gotta understand, Mum, it was a little lubrication that got me into this mess. I’ve gotta be sober to get out of it.’ She fanned the smoke away from her face. ‘Shit, Mum, you’ve got some bad habits.’

  ‘So have you, girl, so have you.’

  ‘That’s hardly fair!’

  ‘You tell me what’s fair then. Your bloody father leaving me to bring up you kids alone. Was that fair? Shit, what did I do to deserve that, you tell me?’ Enzo Schettino, face down in fresh concrete, dead at thirty-five.

  ‘Do you still miss him, Mum?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She stubbed her cigarette out in a saucer and the last of the smoke rose up in thin strands. ‘It’s such a strange thing, this missing business. I don’t think I had the time.’ She reached for another cigarette then thought better of it. ‘But he was the only man I ever had, your Dad.’ Ruth sipped from her cup and rinsed down the lie.

  ‘Oh, I know where this is headed and you better not go there, Mum.’

  ‘Look, it was different for us in our day. We had morals and that.’

  ‘That’s crap, Mum! Are you sayin’ I don’t have morals?’

  ‘The proof of the puddin’, girl.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be helpin’ me.’ She put her head in her hands. ‘I just don’t know what to do. I feel like such a fool.’

  Ruth nodded her head and took down a slug of spirits. She was a fool, too, all those years ago for falling pregnant and having to marry Enzo Schettino.

  —

  The smell of the fire was so strong it almost burned a hole right through him. It always brought back memories of his dad. Always. Vince swallowed down a lump in his throat and focussed on the road.

  ‘Bushfire out the back of Collie, I reckon. Might be closer. Won’t affect us, though. Just a bit of smoke haze.’ Matthew gazed out towards the hills, tinder-dry and fuelled-up and not too beautiful to burn. ‘Jeez, what a day to be fightin’ a fire.’

  ‘Bloody hot in here, as well,’ cried Archie. ‘My throat!’

  ‘Okay, Dad, we’ll stop at Yuna servo.’ It was called Yuna in the old days. He didn’t know what it was called now, but he hoped it was still doing its thing. ‘We’ll fuel up and get some grog. Think we all deserve a drink. Except you, Dad. Sorry.’

  ‘You’re not sorry at all.’ Archie wheezed out his words from the depths of the front seat. He seemed to have somehow compressed to half his size. ‘You never want me to have any fun. God, a bloody stubby of beer couldn’t hurt me.’ Yuna was just around the left-hand bend. Vince took it at 70 clicks; the dozen cars that were caught behind him were no doubt pleased to see him pull into the service station.

  ‘Wrong, Dad. The doctor said it was not good for you to have a beer, or any alcohol, for that matter.’

  ‘Well, Vince gave me a couple of glasses last night and I’m still bloody alive,’ wheeze, ‘so I want a bloody beer.’ He was about all worn out and he just sat there, thin arms flopped beside him, like some spindly marionette with the strings cut.

  The twin-cab slid in beside a bowser and stopped.

  Matthew glared. ‘Is that right, Vince?’

  Vince shrugged his shoulders and offered up his palms in a silent, guilty gesture. For a moment the others stared at him. The cab was hot, the air still and dripping tension in thick, honeyed drops. Then Matthew said, ‘How about you and I go in and get some beer?’

  Vince topped up the tank and walked disconsolately across the driveway in the direction of the cashier. Archie watched him go and he smiled a contented smile.

  23

  Jeanie steered the old Coaster out onto the road and pointed it towards Kalgoorlie. Ben’s workshop passed by on the right. She saw him sitting under the shade of the old tree. The shed, however, remained unopened and probably uninterested. Jeanie hoped he would go home and sleep, poor man. Once out of town, Jeanie pushed the speed up to a hundred. The bus ran surprisingly well. It clunked a little through the gears but once it was in top, it hummed across the tar.

  Jaylene had refused to come, even to open her door, and Jeanie hoped that the transition to adolescence might be easier with the younger children. They sat along the back seat, singing and playing games. The older passengers talked among themselves in their strange language and laughed out loud the richness of their culture.

  ‘What are they saying, Auntie?’

  ‘Dey sayin’ dose kids nebber shuddup.’ Auntie Peggy laughed, too, and Jeanie thought she saw through poverty to happiness, but she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure about anything.

  ‘Gee, I don’t know, Matty. Leonora’s a long way from Cottesloe.’

  ‘We can’t keep living with our parents. Mine are driving me crazy. Anyway, think of what you can give back to your people.’

  ‘It’s a big ask, Matty.’

  But Jeanie did it. On their way they passed through Reality where the pig’s wing
s were clipped and young boys with spindly legs just kicking a bloody football earned ten times more a year than she did. She knew Matthew didn’t recognise the place for what it was and they drove on until they stopped at Menzies for fuel. Jeanie looked about the sorry little town and said, ‘There’s not much here.’ There wasn’t much of anything that side of Kalgoorlie.

  The bus left Menzies, that stubborn hanging-by-a-thread town, as thin as Gormley’s Lake Ballard statues. Another hundred kilometres to go and the wheels on the bus were still going round and round.

  —

  Ben Poulson sat in the shade outside his shed and watched the bus drive past through a miasmic hangover that would last all day. He drank Coke: maybe even too crook for a beer. Maybe. For a while he just sat there, steaming in the morning heat, under his hat and wrapped up in his leathery bushman’s hide lately coated with an alcoholic sallowness. His hands shook; his head ached. But above all, he was angry. In his mind he patched together pieces of the previous night and he determined he would make those bitches pay. Then he threw down the can of Coke and walked over to the pub.

  —

  Young Bill Kelso brought her breakfast at 9:30. ‘Just leave it at the door,’ she had said, and she watched through a sliver of window as he walked back to the office, scratching his arse as he went. She let the curtain fall back into place, opened the door and quickly drew the tray into the room. He may have cooked it himself and she had fleet visions of the boy simultaneously preparing food while engaged in some of the gross actions peculiar to males. The tray remained untouched despite her hunger.

  She picked up her make-up bag and moved through into the bathroom, lining up her potions and lotions on the glass shelf above the sink. The mirror told no lies. There was work to be done. She took off her robe, hung it on the hook behind the door and stood there naked. Clothes would cover the scars on her body, make-up would mask the damage to her face but each morning she took inventory of her suffering, weighing it, counting its cost and estimating suitable retribution. To her, Betty Hill, it always equalled death.

  It took time to make herself look like an average middle-aged blonde, to become Lisbeth Curtis-Browne once more. She had honed her skills through necessity, that she could live and work among other people, without the constant stares, comments and questions. It was all a means to an end, really. Tomorrow it would be over.

  —

  Mumma had yelled at her as she was leaving: ‘If you’re not coming with us to Kal, you can take yourself to school!’ And a final angry volley of words: ‘I don’t know what’s got into you but it better be gone by the time we get home.’ Doors slammed but there was no return of fire. Jaylene just lay on her bed for some time, crying, thinking, crying, thinking, crying. Thinking maybe … Damn, what good is a father eight hundred kilometres away? The phone rang out loud from the kitchen. She reached it in four or five strides.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, darling, it’s Grandad. Is your mother there?’

  ‘Grandad, I was just going to ring you. I needed to tell you some …’

  ‘I need to speak to your mother.’

  ‘Mumma’s gone to Kal for the day. Grandad, I …’

  ‘Look, Grandma’s very sick. I’ve just got back from the hospital. She’s in a bad way. I rang the school but they said you were all at home. Has she got a mobile yet?’

  ‘No, Dad still won’t let her have one.’

  There was silence on the line for a few moments, then, ‘Your father makes some really bad decisions at times. Get your mother to call me as soon as she gets back, okay.’

  ‘But, Grandad, I …’ He had hung up.

  Jaylene placed the phone back into its cradle and the house was once more full of emptiness.

  —

  ‘Jeez, Ben, you look like shit! Whad ya do, sleep in the bush all night?’ Squire just meant it as a jest, a casual colloquial observation of Ben’s appearance. Yet he hit the proverbial right on the head: Ben had slept in the bush all night and he did look like shit. Squire kept on, ‘You been wrestling pigs or something?’ He laughed at Ben’s expense, but as a drinker himself, he knew there were few drinking men who had never lost their pants in Memphis.

  Ben said nothing. He kept his head low, his thoughts to himself. Squire set down a stubby, its top off, the coldness of its innards rising up as a frosty steam. Alcohol is alluring in its presentation; Ben’s old mother used to say it was Satan in a bottle. Maybe she was right.

  ‘You gonna drink that or are you waiting for it to get warm?’ Squire, a little offended.

  ‘Piss off, Squire! Tell Chooky to bring me out a coffee.’ Ben pushed the stubby away. Just a bit. He would let it air for a while.

  A short time later, Chooky appeared with a cup of coffee, complete with a folded napkin, a glass of water and two Panadol, all neatly arranged on a tray. The cook set it down and sauntered back to the kitchen.

  ‘Worth his weight in gold, old Chooky.’ Squire sipped lemon, lime and bitters from a five-ounce glass.

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘No, he’s like you.’ Squire took another sip. ‘Indispensable. You know, a town couldn’t operate without a Ben Poulson. You’re an essential service. Like me, too, I guess. Shit, we make the world go round.’ Another sip. ‘Here in the bush, anyway.’ Squire laughed and went about his business. A Tuesday: he wouldn’t be washing too many glasses today.

  Ben swigged down the pills with the water. ‘I’m taking my coffee at the window. Too much crap at the bar.’ So he moved down to sit at the table with a view of the street. Black people, white people, some busy, some just taking up space. Then he saw Jaylene Andrews walking off towards the Police Station. He started to sweat.

  —

  There is nothing urbane about Leonora, no elegance, no refinement, though once in the past it pressed for those credentials. And tourists would look foolish seeking such; it is unashamedly an outback town. Those passing through there might seek out the essence of the bush. They might seek out fragments of poem and prose they read as a child; they might seek out a more glorious past and often they do not appreciate what they find. Expectation is the bastard child of imagination. They will find Leonora is a no-nonsense, dirt-under-your-nails town, a resolute town, a town of battlers, for it has seen good times and bad and survived in a landscape littered with the heroic dead. Ah, the ghastly figure of Mining Death, raking along an empty seam, takes no prisoners.

  The Kelsos were under no illusions when they arrived in Leonora as the new owners of the service station/motel combine. They knew it rode on the fluctuating wave of the price of gold and nickel. There would be times of plenty, times of want. And they weren’t there to make millions of dollars; they had already done that in Perth. They just sought the solitude of the desert edges, a life of blue skies and red sands, a place to work and then retire. They hadn’t counted on Bill showing up.

  ‘Hey, Jaylene! Lookin’ good,’ he shouted across the road.

  ‘You’re a lizard, Bill.’ She yelled back.

  ‘Ha! Where ya goin’?’

  ‘Japan!’

  ‘You idjit, you’re goin’ the wrong way.’

  She let a council truck pass and crossed over the road to the motel. Bill was sitting on a chair in the shade near the office door. His father took the bookings from the service station but Bill liked to sit there, just in case. He liked Jaylene. Liked her a lot. She understood that he was different and didn’t tease him like the other kids did. He interpreted her superficial interest for what it wasn’t and was forever trying to work the processes of heterosexual engagement in his favour. He lacked the necessary social skills to swim among his peers; that said, the pools in outback towns were very shallow affairs. Jaylene sat down on the concrete step beside him.

  ‘Where were you goin’?’ He pulled out a packet of Drum from his jeans’ pocket, hoping it might impress her. ‘Betcha goin’ to the Police Station.’ Next came the paper, then a substantial wad of tobacco. ‘Constable Clarke is there
this morning. You know he doesn’t like your people.’ Bill worked the makings around between his index fingers and thumbs until, satisfied with the rolling, he moved the gummed edge across his tongue and sealed it down.

  ‘Whadya think?’ It was fat at one end, thin at the other and lumpy in the guts.

  ‘I think it’s disgusting.’ She made a face, gave her head a shake from side to side. Bill had been leafing through some of his father’s old magazines. He had seen the advertisements in which real men in cowboy hats rode horses, drove fast sports cars and attracted beautiful women; they all smoked Drum. ‘I don’t think you need to smoke, Bill. Dad smokes and it’s gross.’

  ‘Aw, I’m not gonna smoke it. I just want to look cool.’ He stuck the thin end into his mouth and rolled it into the corner. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Like a dork, Bill.’

  ‘Do I?’ He took the cigarette from his mouth, gave it the once over as if it was a fine Havana cigar, and tossed it out into the yard. ‘Shit, I suck at everything.’ He picked tobacco strands off his tongue. ‘Tastes ’orrible, ’ey?’

  ‘Yeah, I bet it does. You reckon Constable Clarke’s on this morning?’

  ‘Yeah. Been watchin’.’ He closed his eyes for a few moments as if deep in thought. ‘You in trouble, Jaylene?’

  ‘No, why would you say that?’

  ‘Cos I seen Ben Poulson watchin’ ya walkin’ down the road. Stood at the door of the pub. He was watchin’ ya, he was.’

  Jaylene’s eyes widened. She said, ‘Gotta go, Bill,’ and without another word scuttled away across the main road.

  Lisbeth Curtis-Browne had heard enough. She closed her door and waited until Bill had gone back into the office. The young girl, Jaylene, had hurried off past the Police Station and turned left at the first intersection. Lisbeth followed, crossing the road at a touristy pace. On reaching the intersection, she peered down the length of the street and watched as Jaylene walked past the last few houses into a patch of scrub and disappeared.