The Wounded Sinner

by Gus Henderson

  ‘Who’s that man again, Mumma?’ Robyn, ever curious.

  ‘Paddy Hannan.’ She hoped there would be no more questions about the little bronze man and she felt ashamed knowing what she knew now and how she had once thought. That lump of brass in human form had come to represent so much to the non-Indigenous people of the Goldfields. Her people were still recovering. Jeanie steered the group around the statue, almost fearfully. ‘Come on, we’re going to cross the street.’

  ‘We gonna catch a taxi?’ The twins, together.

  ‘Hold Nadine’s hand please, Georgina.’ They crossed the road. The taxi rank was just ahead.

  ‘Where you off to, lady?’ He was a thin lizard of a man leaning against the maxi-cab, having a cigarette and eyeing Jeanie’s mob up and down, a meat market appraisal, a calculation of profit and loss.

  ‘Boulder camp.’

  ‘I’ll take you and the kids and drop you off on the road. She can walk.’ He nodded towards Auntie Peggy.

  ‘Why won’t you take her?’ Jeanie, indignant.

  ‘You don’t have to clean up the cab after they,’ jabbing a nicotined finger in Auntie’s direction, ‘have been inside. The smell upsets my other fares.’

  ‘That’s discrimination!’

  ‘You dumb blacks think you can tell us what to do.’ He got back inside his cab. ‘This is a free country and my bloody cab. You can piss off!’ Jeanie and the others stood on the pavement and watched the driver pull into the traffic in an angry haste. Soon he was sucked into the intestinal workings of modern Kalgoorlie.

  ‘Arsehole!’

  ‘Ooh, Mumma, you said a swear word.’ The kids loved catching her out.

  ‘Sometimes, Georgina, that’s what it needs.’

  Another maxi pulled up into place at the top of the rank. The driver got out. ‘You going to Boulder camp?’

  ‘Yes, if you can take us all?’

  ‘Not a problem.’ He walked around to open the sliding door. ‘I heard what that idiot said. We’re not all like him.’ The kids scrambled in: another adventure. ‘He’s a fool. You people are part of the economy. It would be stupid to knock back every second fare.’

  The door slammed shut. Understanding was left crying on the pavement. A history of slamming doors.

  —

  It is a place largely unannounced and it isn’t signposted as other monuments of Australian culture are. Instead the campsite sits at the end of a rough dirt track tucked in by sad fencing, slack and slanted by the press of years, at the centre of an island of bush clinging to the edge of town. The campsite is bare, save for two small three-sided hovels, some empty 44-gallon drums and a fire-pit. Smaller camps are dotted throughout the bush. People lie or sit and talk back and forth in language, strange creatures risen up from the earth, made from the dust that still clings to them, five-cent pieces in the money bag of a rich nation.

  This is a drinking camp. The people here are unfettered by the restrictions of their home communities. They unwind the traditions and culture of their heritage; they are threads caught on the barbed wire of a different civilisation, gradually coming apart till there is almost nothing left. They swim about in the captivation of the brown bottle. They all partake.

  Auntie Peggy tells the driver not to stop. ‘We jus’ lookin’,’ she says and the mini-bus coasts slowly over the rough and rutted track. Some think the taxi is bringing grog from Boulder and they rise like spirits, thin, dusty spectres craving the succour of pension day. A few stagger towards the cab, hoping it will stop and give them a ride to anywhere, which to them is as good as nowhere. Endlessly drifting, camp to camp, hanging on to the fringe of society’s best dress as it twirls in a dance of innovation and invention, imagination and utter neglect.

  ‘Can’t cure the common cold.’ The cabbie speaks and swings the cab to point back in the direction of town. ‘No hope of curing that, either.’ In the rear-vision mirror he watches as the people disperse back into the scrub. ‘As big a mess of hopelessness as I’ve ever seen. In fact, as big a mess anyone could ever imagine. And it hasn’t improved in the years I’ve been coming out here.’

  ‘You come out here often?’ Jeanie sees the last of the camp disappear from view.

  ‘They’ve got to get their grog in there somehow, poor bastards.’

  The cab motors back into town, bustling through the heat, and the cabbie is looking forward to the end of his shift when he can sit back with a nice, cold beer. Brown-bottle therapy, he calls it.

  —

  Jeanie pulled into the servo, topped up the diesel, and got the man to put air in the tyre. She signed the book, said ‘See ya,’ and slipped out onto the road home.

  ‘Why did you take me there, to Boulder camp?’

  ‘You need t’see dat.’

  ‘I’ve read about it in the paper. Some things you don’t need to see.’

  ‘Wad you feel? Shame?’

  ‘Yes, shame.’

  ‘Orright, dose are your peeble. You feelin’ whitefulla shame or blackfulla shame? Nebber der same, dose words. Nebber der same.’

  Jeanie pushed forward in her seat and said nothing. Auntie had made her point and Jeanie felt its flint tip pierce her heart. She looked out the window as the Broad Arrow sped past on the left, the cemetery on the right: history so clearly defined.

  Soon the bus left the mines behind and it drove on through the sparse woodland and scrub into a land of Dingo Dreaming and bleached bones.

  —

  Rastus lay at Jaylene’s feet under the kitchen table, snoring. Once he would have felt Jaylene’s fear and hurt, they were so close, but now, in his twilight years, those intimate, innate senses drifted further away, like the elusive bungarra, never to be caught again. Jaylene rubbed his belly with her foot and he farted, an old wind instrument, his own tired orchestra.

  The telephone rang. ‘It’s Grandad, darling. Your mumma home yet?’

  ‘No, Grandad. I need …’

  ‘Auntie Frances is leaving London as soon as she can. Grandma is holding on till she can see you all again. You know, you’re so lucky to have your youth.’

  ‘Grandad, listen, I need to talk …’

  ‘I don’t know why your mumma hasn’t got a mobile. Can you tell her to get down here as soon as possible?’

  Resigned: ‘Yes, Grandad.’

  ‘Good. See you soon, all right?’

  Jaylene sat for a while lost in the sound of her own thoughts churning away inside her head. A car pulled up in the driveway. She heard a door slam and the soft scrunching of feet on gravel. A voice: ‘Anybody there?’

  ‘Lisbeth? How did you find me?’

  ‘Phoned the motel. Young Bill’s a wealth of information. Can I come in? I don’t look real good.’ She was right. She stood bent over at the bottom of the back steps. Her face was a mess of colours, of early bruise and trickles of blood merging with the futility of make-up, her head abuzz with bush flies and foul thoughts.

  ‘Here, I’ll help you up.’ She did and brought Lisbeth into the kitchen, where she sat gingerly onto a hard-arse wooden chair. Jaylene went to the bathroom for antiseptic and cotton balls and painless healing magic. She looked but there wasn’t any of the last. Maybe it was something only mothers were supposed to have.

  Jaylene mixed a little of the Dettol with water in a stainless dish and began dabbling at Lisbeth’s broken face. Her left eye was now almost completely closed like some ripe, exotic fruit and lips threatening to go the same way. Gingerly she touched at places on her scalp, her hair now bottle-blonde and blood, fresh scrapes upon the scars of past battles. She didn’t resemble Lisbeth Curtis-Browne at all; Betty Hill, victim of much abuse, sat in the chair.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Bloody pistol jammed, didn’t it?’ Truth was she just never had the guts to pull the trigger and, like the animal he was, Ben Poulson sensed her apprehension. It only took him a second to pounce.

  ‘What … what if he comes here?’

  ‘No, he won’t come bac
k. He’s on his way to somewhere else but he won’t be back here. Once the bastard has been flushed out, he always finds another town to worm his way into.’ She smacked her fat lips together. ‘Won’t be puttin’ lipstick on these for a while.’

  ‘Keep still. I think this one might need a stitch.’

  ‘Just pull it together with a bandaid.’

  ‘Jeez, don’t you think we ought to go to the police and just tell them everything.’

  ‘What? They’re not going to believe you and they’ll arrest me. Besides, this is what I do. One day it might have a different ending.’

  ‘That you’ll end up shooting him?’

  ‘Either that or that he’ll end up wanting me again.’

  —

  Betty Hill/Lisbeth Curtis-Browne drove away, probably already planning her next move. She would be in Perth tomorrow, headscarf and oversized sunglasses covering the worst of her injuries. A bus would drop her off outside her cluttered Homeswest duplex, where she would consider those fine lines between pleasure and pain, love and hate, and life and death. Life and death, life or death, she would wonder. She would roll the bottle of pills around in her hands. Again and again and …

  28

  It was the middle of the afternoon. The sea breeze had swung in earlier than usual, skimming across the bay and pushing the heat away as it came. It blew in over Yoganup Park, a basic playground of simple activities, perhaps reminding people that life need not be so sophisticated, so complicated. But it was.

  ‘Can someone take me to see the water?’ A series of chirrups.

  ‘It’s time we headed off, Dad. We’ll do it next time.’

  ‘There won’t be a next time for me!’

  Vince and Matthew exchanged looks. ‘Okay, I think there’s a little jetty down that way a bit.’ Matthew pointed diagonally across the park. ‘We’ll get cleaned up here, okay?’

  ‘Matty, what’ll we do with the leftovers?’ A few burnt snags and a couple of buns and Vince, forever wondering.

  ‘Well, if I were Jesus, I could feed half this town. But I’m not so we’ll just chuck it.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be so …’

  ‘Sacrilegious? It was just a joke, mate.’

  ‘Yeah. God has feelings, too, you know.’

  ‘He’s big enough to handle it.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘What is the point, Vince?’ He tipped the snags and buns into the bin. ‘Just tell me what the point is.’

  ‘You should be more respectful, that’s all. God deserves respect.’

  ‘Respect? For what, Vince, for what? Look at us. The dying, the unloved, and me, well, my life is just one big shitty problem. How’s He working in our lives?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe He’s working through us.’

  ‘How’s that?’ Matthew glanced at Archie, waiting to be pushed across the park. ‘Don’t go freakin’ me out with that spiritual stuff, Vince. If it’s happening, it’s not because the planets have aligned or anything.’

  ‘But sometimes things happen that defy logical explanation.’

  ‘You reckon, Grandad? Like zombies and stuff?’

  ‘The world has an insatiable appetite for things supernatural.’

  ‘Dad says it’s mumbo or something.’

  ‘Ah, mumbo-jumbo. He’s entitled to his opinion, of course. But let me warn you; discount the influence of God at your peril. Many smart fools have died wondering.’

  Matthew began scraping the plate clean and he cursed himself for being himself. At that moment he considered the simpleness of Vince’s faith. He called after him, ‘Look, sorry, you’re probably right, mate,’ but couldn’t understand why he had said it.

  —

  ‘I haven’t seen the ocean this close, in I don’t know how many years.’ From the top of the boat ramp Archie looked out over the bay and beyond. ‘Out there’s India and Madagascar and Africa, I reckon.’ Archie attempted to move his arm in a broad sweep from Cape Naturaliste to the Bunbury light-house. It was a feeble effort but Vince got the picture.

  ‘Nonno used to say you’ve just got to keep chasing the horizon.’ Until that moment, Vince had never understood.

  ‘I’m too old for that shit. Take me down and let me put my feet in the water. At least I can say I’ve started.’ So Vince took off Archie’s slippers and wheeled him slowly down the slope until the cool fingers of the bay’s shallow edge rubbed over Archie’s feet. He closed his eyes, the grip of the water around his ankles brought back memories of his childhood, magical days on the Swan in skiffs and dinghies. Always that river drew you to itself. Even in Guildford there was something about its water, the estuarine merging with the skinny stream that leaked down from the hills. ‘We always played in the river as kids. I mean, living at THE WOUNDED SINNER, you were only a few streets away. All the neighbourhood children would play there, then. Maybe they still do.’

  ‘It must have been great for Matthew growing up there in that house.’

  ‘Should have been but it … it was a difficult time. I drank too much, lost too many jobs and squandered what money we had. At one stage it looked like we would have to sell THE WOUNDED SINNER. Rosalie and I should never have had a child and I guess we made him pay, poor bastard.’

  ‘Why did you? Why did you have a child?’

  ‘For THE WOUNDED SINNER, of course!’ He pointed down to his feet with a single wobbly finger. ‘Pull me out. It’s starting to get cold. Global warming, my arse; water was warmer when I was a kid.’

  ‘Your feet’ll dry off in a minute.’

  ‘THE WOUNDED SINNER’s been in the family for four generations. Matthew will make it five. It stands for so much.’ The wheelchair swung around and Vince pushed up the slope. It was easier than he had ever imagined, the weightlessness of impending death.

  ‘And everything else in the world is changing.’

  ‘But THE WOUNDED SINNER will stand there in Andrews’ hands.’ The words rattled out without conviction. ‘But you know, he’s living with a darkie, and that will never do. He doesn’t see things the way I do, the way Andrews have always seen things. It all depends on Matthew.’ They reached the top of the boat ramp. The sun smacked across their backs and they chased their shadows back to the twin-cab, a futile pursuit.

  Vince thought to himself: ‘No, old fella, it all depends on you.’

  —

  Matthew and Vince stood leaning against the ute. Time for a smoke. Matthew opened a new packet, his last he hoped, and for a fleeting moment thought about throwing the lot into the bin. Almost. He lit up.

  ‘So what are you going to do, Vince? About Sophie?’

  ‘There’s gotta be a public phone around here somewhere. I’ll ring her from there.’

  ‘That’s not the right thing to do.’

  ‘Look, I know you mean well, but I’m not into playing all these mind games. I’m not as clever as you think I am. I’m just better off keeping things simple.’

  ‘So, what do you think she’s up to?’ Matthew coughed and hawked up a gollop of phlegm and looked at his cigarette with disdain.

  ‘Dunno. I’ll find out soon enough. It’s prob’ly me working away so much. That’s why I quit.’

  ‘You snatched it?’

  ‘Yeah. I decided to get a job closer to home. It’s no biggie.’

  Matthew brought his hand up to his forehead. ‘Why didn’t you say something before?’

  ‘You might’ve thought I was a bludger.’

  ‘You told Sophie?’

  ‘Course I did. Rang her from Murrin. I tell her everything.’

  ‘Oh.’ The gears in Matthew’s head began to mesh and he wondered about his own relationship: he would ring Jeanie tonight. Matthew threw down his cigarette: ‘Let’s go make this phone call, Vince.’

  —

  There were public phones across from the post office. Vince nosed the twin-cab into a spot in the shopping centre car park and got out to make his call. He said nothing as he went, his present lot
weighing heavily on shoulders.

  ‘He seems to be handling it pretty well, all things considered.’ Matthew nodded towards the departing Vince. ‘I couldn’t imagine myself in that situation.’ He sat in the back seat of the ute, smoking.

  ‘What situation’s that?’ Archie’s voice was barely audible.

  ‘You know, a problem with the missus.’ Matthew coughed; shit, I gotta quit!

  ‘Poor bastard. You reckon it’s another fella?’

  ‘Shouldn’t speculate but I reckon you’d know if it was another bloke.’

  ‘Reckon? What if it was you?’ Archie cocked an eyebrow.

  ‘Look, it would never happen to me. Jeanie’s got it pretty sweet.’ Another puff, another cough. ‘Okay, of course it happens but society gets carried away with all that crap on Neighbours. Most women are pretty satisfied with their lot, you know.’ Matthew dropped his cigarette, half-smoked, out the window.

  ‘Trouble is, Matty, you don’t know most women.’

  —

  Ruth Schettino had woken briefly, enough time for the girls to put her to bed. She wanted more brandy at first and cursed those close to her for no particular reason. In the end, though, she had offered up little resistance and she lay on her bed snoring, building up a good head of steam in the heat of the afternoon.

  The phone call had come and gone. Vince and Sophie would meet the next morning at ten, at their place. Deanne would look after Luke. From that point on, though, the outcome would be anyone’s guess.

  29

  ‘You don’ ’ave t’ change yer life, jus’ godda change yer tinkin’.’ Auntie Peggy stared ahead as the bus chugged onwards into the low scrubby landscape of the desert fringe. ‘Lods a blackfullas lib in der whitefulla world but dere ’eart is still blackfulla. Dey be t’gedder, but diff’rent.’

  ‘You mean they coexist despite their differences.’

  ‘Waddever. You godda find a place t’put yer ’eart. Dat’s end a story, orright.’

  ‘No, that’s not the end of the story. What happened to my father? My mother? What about the accident?’

  ‘Accident! Dat walypala bastard Forrester. Dat waltji bus’ness!’