The Wounded Sinner

by Gus Henderson

  One day Betty would kill him. Till then it was a matter of keeping one step ahead. Another town, another façade, all the time on guard, but hey, all women were dangerous. That’s why men had to keep on top, to have that control. The system worked better that way. Shit, he should have killed her. And that little black bitch, Jaylene. Ruined everything. Every plan he had made for her mother. Yeah, he should make Jaylene pay, too.

  Ben thought he would head to Perth and lie low for a while. Lick his wounds and find a safe haven. He would get Squire to sell his gear and set his affairs in order. Should get organised. Should get Jaylene.

  He found a stubby on the floor of the cab and ripped off the cap: ‘Ah, breakfast.’

  He knew Betty would be on her way home. The dust would have settled. Time enough to get some clothes together and take care of Jaylene. Then he would leave that flea-hole of a place behind. Find someplace new, thank the Lord for that. The utility bounced out of the scrub and hit the long snake of road that would take him back to Leonora.

  —

  ‘I know you kids won’t mind not going to school today. Grandma is sick so we’re going to Perth to see her, okay?’

  Robyn responded with an automated ‘Okay,’ perhaps speaking on behalf of the others, who were lost in the world of morning television, Milo and Vegemite toast. But Jeanie knew the kids loved their Grandmother. She would sit them around the polished-wood table and serve them afternoon tea in proper matching cups and saucers. The teapot, fat and heavy under a knitted cosy, never seemed to empty and the kids always said there was some magic there. Perhaps there was.

  Eight-thirty. She would give Ben a call, see what his plans were for the morning. Maybe, if she said the right thing … Shame, girl, for thinking those sorts of thoughts, and she blushed the blackfulla blush, castigating herself and catching hold of reality. She just wanted her car fixed. She didn’t think Ben could fix Matthew as well.

  ‘Hello, Jeanie.’ Ben answered. He would play the game.

  ‘How did you know it was me?’

  ‘Comes up on the screen. Matthew should really let you have one.’

  ‘He worries about brain tumours. ’Nough said.’

  ‘So how’s the car goin’?’

  ‘Won’t turn over. It’s just dead.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll be around soon. Sounds like the battery’s not being charged. I’ve got a spare alternator in the shed. You may as well have it. I won’t be taking any of that with me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m movin’ on. I’m goin’ to find greener pastures.’

  ‘Oh, Ben, I was …’ Even over the telephone she caught herself blushing, again.

  ‘Thinkin’ we’d look good together in a bed? Jeanie, you are one hot woman but I’ve got to have a change of scenery. I might head up north somewhere. It’s what guys like me do.’

  ‘But why?’ There was no reply. Jeanie realised Ben had already hung up.

  ‘Who was on the phone, Mumma?’ Jaylene had emerged from her room and stood at the sink rinsing out her cup.

  ‘Ben. He’s coming over to fix the car.’ She was still speaking as Jaylene rushed out the back door and disappeared down the side of the house. ‘Then, he says, he’s leaving for good,’ she shouted after her and wondered whatever had got into that girl.

  33

  Vince took the stairs two steps at a time. He stood at the door and pressed the red button twice. Through the glass he could see Nurse Helen pushing a tray of those things necessary to sustain life in that place. In that context, she was a god. She would come to the door when she was ready.

  It opened, eventually. ‘Ah, young Mr Romano, you’re a bit early.’ Helen smiled and let Vince pass. ‘Don’t be too long.’

  ‘Just five minutes.’ He thought he felt the air go chill. Death was ever-present in places such as this, constantly stalking. When he looked back, Helen was busy writing up a chart. Imagination swam among the murky waters of beliefs and superstitions. Vince crossed himself to be safe. He stepped into his father’s room. Mr Bronski’s bed was empty, his space was stripped bare and silent. Mr Bronski, it seemed, had ‘buggered off’ into eternity. Death, however, is never satisfied.

  Vince looked down at his father, into the grey wash of his face, at the vacant, half-closed eyes and pale lips whose colour leaked out a little more each day into the drain of spent life. He thought his father couldn’t hear him, but he would say the words anyway. It’s what his father would want him to do.

  ‘Are you all right, Dad? I need to talk to you.’

  Old Eddie lay there, silent and still.

  ‘It’s about me and Sophie. Things don’t seem to be goin’ too good.’

  The air-conditioner hummed. Vince looked out the window and the world spun past in a blur, too fast for him.

  ‘I need you to tell me it’s gonna be okay.’ Vince bent down, a little closer. He breathed in the silence of shaving cream and antiseptic. ‘But you’d pro’bly say to just get on with it. To battle on and make the most of it. I guess you’d be right, this time.’

  ‘I miss you, Dad. You know,’ and he giggled a little and then felt foolish, ‘some of your advice was really crap. Sometimes when you said it was gonna be okay, it really turned to shit. But I just loved hearing you say it was gonna be okay. I want you to know that.’

  Helen came into the room and started to make up the vacant bed. She was not quite officious but clinically devoted to her patients, cruelly dragging as much out of their lives as was possible. Vince knew his time was up.

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’ Vince bent down and kissed the old man’s forehead. He heard the lap of the water from far off and tasted salt.

  —

  Matthew was sitting out on the veranda, sipping tea and wondering why he wasn’t dying for a cigarette. Delores joined him in the other chair. Someone had found a milk crate to double as a coffee table. It held mugs in a wobbly fashion. Delores put hers down carefully and, from her cigarette packet, extracted a smoke. She placed it between her lips and lit it with a Bic. Matthew watched her every move.

  ‘So what’s up with the old bloke?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I cleaned him up and got him dressed. He was just so …’ she searched for the right word, ‘compliant.’

  ‘You reckon maybe he’s getting his affairs in order?’

  ‘Dunno. I saw this movie once where aliens entered the bodies of the humans. What do you reckon?’

  ‘Could only be an improvement, I guess.’ He rubbed his hands together, then clapped them and, finally, wiggled his fingers. Not smoking was a whole new experience. ‘I’m going to clean out the storeroom.’

  ‘Don’t know whether the old bloke would like that? You know he considers that room sort of sacred.’

  ‘Needs to be done. I need to be doing something.’

  ‘I don’t like it when you blokes start acting strange. Maybe the aliens have landed.’ She flicked her butt into the wilderness that was once a garden. ‘Time for Archie’s morning tea. Plenty of time to do the cleaning-out when he’s gone. Besides, you should ask the old man first.’

  ‘Dad doesn’t believe in change.’ Matthew watched her walk away. He needed to be doing something.

  —

  It was a strange feeling to be knocking on your own door, a feeling of disempowerment, but Vince didn’t know much about that. After a fifteen second eternity, Sophie answered and beckoned him inside. ‘Hello, Vince.’ He smelled the burned-toast smell of the coffee-maker, on the coffee table a banana cake from Coles, sliced up, on a plate. They sat on either side in large, black leather recliners, looking like small children. He wasn’t hungry.

  ‘I’ve made some coffee. Would you like some?’

  ‘That’d be nice.’ Vince wondered how far nice could stretch. ‘You want me to get it?’

  ‘No, I’ll do it. I’ve got some cream.’

  Sophie busied herself in the kitchen. Vince heard the clinking of cups, the fridge door ope
ning and closing, coffee being stirred. She returned with the two mugs on a tray. Vince’s guts rumbled about, roiling audibly, upset at being contained. They would have to wait.

  His hand shook as he took up his coffee. Last time he was this nervous he was standing outside the headmaster’s office. Someone had called him a ding. ‘Fighting again, Mr Romano?’ Again, he thought, he had done nothing wrong.

  ‘There’s no easy way to say this, Vince.’

  ‘What’s goin’on? Is it about Leo?’

  ‘It’s about lots of things.’

  ‘Is Leo trying it on again? I thought once we got married he’d leave you alone.’

  ‘Vince, this is hard.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Leo and I, um, have had an affair.’ Sophie bit her lip with her top teeth.

  The long blade of realisation pierced Vince under the bottom rib and shot up into his heart. ‘I don’t believe it. Tell me it’s crap!’

  ‘It’s true, Vince. I’m sorry. But it’s over, now.’

  ‘No, you’re only sorry I snatched the job to be closer to you.’

  ‘That’s not true, Vince. I love you but Leo has a way of manipulating everybody and everything.’

  ‘He bought you!’

  Sophie bowed her head and collected her thoughts. ‘Maybe you’re right, Vince. I guess, in a way, he did.’

  The lights came on for Vince. Flogging his guts out in the desert for three years in a job Leo had got for him, only seeing his family one week in six. His family … ‘What about Lukey?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Is he mine?’

  Sophie didn’t answer but just stared down into the separated cream churning in her coffee. Vince stared at a photo of ‘his’ son grinning at the beach and broke out in a sweat. Silence crackled between them.

  The door of his own house hit him on the arse on his way out and he raced down to the toilet at the shopping centre.

  —

  Matthew and Delores sat outside on the veranda chairs. They were in the shade but it was disappearing by the minute.

  ‘So where’s Vince gone?’ Delores flicked the packet of smokes in Matthew’s direction. He shook his head. ‘Good onya, Matty. Wish I had the guts to do it.’

  ‘Yeah, I think I’m gonna beat it this time.’ He stared ahead, out past the hedge and into the never-endingness of his gonna-dos, dying for a smoke.

  ‘So, where’s Vince gone?’

  ‘Oh, he left earlier this morning. He’s got some crap to contend with.’ Matthew, nonchalant.

  ‘Don’t we all?’

  ‘What crap do you contend with, Delores?’ Cigarette smoke wafted into his nostrils, enticing, alluring, tempting. His craving was intense. ‘You’re by yourself, can do what you want, when you please and are living as close to freedom as I can imagine.’

  ‘Boy, you’ve got to stop living inside your head.’ She puffed out angry grey wisps of smoke and jabbed her cigaretted hand at Matthew. ‘Have you any idea of loneliness? I’m stuck in that house by myself. I lie in bed thinking how wonderful it would be to share it with my lover, my partner, my soul-mate, but you know what, I’ve only got me. I can’t make love to a television.’

  ‘Jeez, Delores, no need to get all hormonal with me!’

  ‘Hormonal!’ Her voice quavered. ‘This isn’t about hormones, this is about … shit, you’ll never understand!’ She flung her smoke off the veranda into the mass of unkempt grass. She stood to go. Matthew reached out and took her arm and for a moment she struggled before sitting down once again.

  ‘Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it?’

  She broke free. ‘You’re an Andrews; you couldn’t fix shit!’

  Delores got up and walked inside. Matthew wished he had a cigarette.

  —

  Archie dozed in his chair. He dreamed that he was going away on a long trip. It may have been by train but dreams are hazy things. The porter kept asking him if he had his bags. ‘You need to be ready, sir. We’re leaving soon.’ Archie wasn’t sure that he had packed everything.

  —

  Matthew could hear dishes rattling around in the sink, Delores working out her frustrations on cheap Woolies’ china and stainless cutlery, no doubt from China. What a world, he mused, and how vast the difference from those glory days of Nathaniel Andrews, the original wounded sinner. Of course, past generations have embellished the story and entwined it around …

  He sat quietly for a moment, thinking of cause and effect, thinking about Nathaniel’s bitter legacy of egoist paternalism. Archie may have been right in questioning his part in the continuation of the Andrews prickhood. Successive generations had grown up under the glass nameplate bearing the title THE WOUNDED SINNER, and reacted to their world as Nathaniel Andrews had done in his. It had to stop; whether it was a curse or not, it had to stop.

  Reg Bonner, Matthew’s maternal grandfather, had fought to bring about change in Matthew’s life and now it was beginning to make some sense. He had been dragging the tin cans of folly and complacency behind him for so long he had no longer heard the noise. Until now.

  Delores finished the washing up. It sat in the drainer and would be dry in ten minutes. Shit, it was hot. She made a cup of tea and walked up the hallway. The house hummed with the sound of electric fans working tirelessly, yet ineffectively, to cool down the demon heat. In the winter it would be too cold. Modern man would always be in a state of discontent.

  ‘What happened to the air-conditioner?’ Archie called out weakly from his chair. He sat there, head slumped forward, baby bird-like, but not strong enough to leave the nest. One day soon the hands of Death would help him out.

  Delores put her tea down on the hallstand. She walked in beside him. His singlet seemed three sizes too big: already it needed changing, wringing wet with a fine slurry of Weetbix, tea, sweat and drool. Poor old bugger needed some new ones. ‘The man’s coming tomorrow.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’ She turned the radio on for him: Howard Sattler.

  ‘No, turn him off. I don’t want to hear him today.’ And then, as she turned to leave the room: ‘I had a dream.’

  ‘What dream, Archie?’

  ‘I think … I think I was going on a train.’ He paused for a moment and gazed out into the future. It was a bit foggy past the station; he couldn’t see far. ‘I wanted to get on but I wasn’t ready … I didn’t have my bags.’

  ‘Oh, Archie,’ she intoned, ‘don’t be worried. We are just here if you need anything, all right?’ Delores moved over to Archie and wiped his brow. Even though he was a queer old bird, he still moved her to compassion. Perhaps that’s why she stayed on to care for him: his ability to elicit some humanness from her, as hard as she thought she was.

  34

  Squire stood at the bar, polishing glasses. He’d seen it in a movie once, those old bartenders of the Wild West saloons, hot breath, steam and dirty aprons, working away at imaginary smudges. Hygiene was not a high priority then. Not like it was nowadays, thought Squire, who breathed on the glass and continued polishing. He wanted to look the part; the tourists loved that sort of thing, he was sure.

  Ben finished his meal and pushed the plate towards the back of the bar. He dragged his stubby into the vacant space where that frosty, brown glass bottle became once more to Ben an object of great reverence, an idol of cultural significance. May the gods of beer be praised, thought Ben, for they created all things alcoholic and made beer the focus of the nation. He stared at it for a few seconds and drank it down in a gulp.

  ‘Slid down beautifully, Squire.’

  ‘You going again?’

  ‘Nope, I’m on my way.’ He placed a set of keys on the counter. ‘House and shed, okay?’

  ‘Jesus, mate, it’s not gonna be the same without you.’ He checked the glass and placed it in the tray below the counter. ‘I always thought that Jeanie Bayona was one of the good blacks,’ he paused, ‘if you know what I mean.’ He gave
Ben a sleazy, sly wink. Ben knew. ‘Imagine having that cheeky little bitch Jaylene for a daughter. Bad apples don’t fall far from the tree, do they?’

  ‘Yeah, she was all over me, the little slut … you know.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I could tell by the way she walks around that she’s ready for it. She’s underage but I doubt anyone would raise Cain over it, seein’ she’s just a nigger.’ He munched on a chip from the remains of Ben’s meal. ‘Dunno why you don’t report it.’

  ‘Clarkey’s the only one who’d understand. There’s not a lot of people in town who think the way we do.’ Ben was standing next to his stool, poking away at nothing. ‘Anyway, the little tart has ruined me.’

  ‘Surely you could just ignore it, mate. She only got to shake her bits at you.’

  ‘Yeah, but I can’t stay here and have all those do-gooders thinkin’ I may have led her on. It would get out sooner or later.’

  ‘Shit, that’s just damn distasteful!’ Squire walked away to the coolroom and returned to slap a carton of stubbies on the bar. ‘Take these with you with my compliments.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks. Anyway, I’m off now. You know what to do?’

  ‘Sell what I can and make her life shit.’

  ‘You know, I wonder how many more good men she’s gonna bring down? See ya, Squire.’

  They shook hands and he left the pub. Squire would waste no time in spreading the word. That’s what he did best. Ben stowed his grog and sat in the driver’s seat, thinkin’ of this, thinkin’ of that. There was plenty of work up north. His mother always said he should give something back. He intended to do just that.

  —

  It was a dead-still day. Jaylene’s thin legs skittered over the paths and roads and verges of pea gravel and tufted grasses. She stopped at Tower Street, the main road, and saw Ben’s ute parked in the shade beside the pub. She spat in that direction, as contemptuous a ball she could muster, and satisfied that it was, she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and headed off once more.