Iraqi Icicle

by Bernie Dowling

  ‘I hope you left a few to give to Bill.’ My voice gave away a touch of annoyance, which Mick didn’t respond to.

  ‘He’s got more than enough to get the job done. You didn’t go to track work this morning, Steele?’

  The problem with a conspiracy like the one we had going is that the conspirators will invariably begin to distrust one other.

  ‘Did Bill mention it?’

  ‘Only that you weren’t there, and neither was Mecklam to see his horse work. It looks like he’s putting Rowley up on Saturday. At least, he rode All The Favours in work this morning.’

  You know the rules by now. Brett Rowley is not the real name of the senior jockey most likely to replace Sailor on Mecklam’s horse.

  Rowley and Sailor were bitter rivals, with no exaggeration in the adjective as there might be in a sports report. Both hoops copped substantial fines from a dust-up in the jockeys’ room after they ran first and second in a race a few years back. In dishing out fairly stiff penalties, the stewards remarked that a protest against the winner was the appropriate reaction, rather than fisticuffs. I forget which jockey ran second, but he wanted a little more value for the fine he copped. He looked the chief steward fair in the eye.

  ‘I was lodging my protest,’ he said, and pointed towards another steward, ‘when that bloke pulled me off the bastard before I could land a good one on him.’

  I was told the chief steward could barely stop himself from laughing. He reprimanded the losing jockey for intemperate language, but did not increase his fine. The assailant had, in fact, wanted to lodge a protest against the winner, and his anger was exacerbated by the owners of his losing mount telling him not to. This prompted racecourse rumours that the owners had backed the opposition winner, and were quite happy to see its jockey indulge in roughhouse riding tactics. We racing enthusiasts get tremendous value from this sort of rumour. It adds a whole extra spice to the proceedings. Jockeys can be fiery; whether it’s down to a Napoleon complex or to risking their lives each day at work, I don’t know. A feud between Sailor and Rowley was born that afternoon.

  ‘He’s a good rider, Brett Rowley. Probably on a good sling, too,’ I said. ‘You were only kidding about putting twenty grand on Who Loves Yer Baby, weren’t you, Mick?’

  The young man stroked the stubble on his chin, and thought about it for a while. ‘I’d forgotten about that. I’ll have to go down to the bank. I’ve only got eight or nine grand lying around here.’

  I looked around the lounge room and into the kitchen, glad not to see any cash, or indeed any signs of wealth at all, about the place. ‘Don’t tell me stuff like that, Mick. You’re always leaving your front door open, and you tell me stuff like that.’

  ‘I tell you because I can trust you. You’re the only person who comes in here and doesn’t give me the creeps with their obvious jealousy of my success,’ Mick said.

  ‘I suppose I am jealous, but I’m also totally ignorant of complex statistics. I’ve always presumed that you’d lose the lot one day, and your mates would drop off, and I’d be the only one left for you to bore with tales of past glory. But I don’t want you to lose your dough by some desperado coming around here to bash you over the head for it. I think I’m going to have to take you to the track some time, so you can see that the phrase “gentlemen of the turf” is meant ironically.’

  ‘I’ve never doubted it,’ Mick said. ‘Tell you what, I’ll have a bet with you. If we win on Saturday, I’ll lock my door from then on. If we lose, I won’t have much cash left anyway. Sound fair?’

  When you are eighteen, with thousands of dollars behind you, a unit you own outright, two of the world’s latest model personal computers and an understanding of mathematics way beyond the ken of almost the entire world’s population, you have the right to be confident.

  When you are twenty-one, habitually penniless, own the car you drive as well as the clothes you stand up in, and are involved in a conspiracy you cannot, for the life of you, see working, you are entitled to be a little edgier. Mick set out to ease the pain.

  ‘I meant it about the girl getting ten grand, and your ten grand, too if we win. I’ll have the betting money in fifty-dollar notes on Saturday morning. Fifties are my favourite denomination. The name sounds nice, and they look great, especially when you have a hundred or more. Pile on as much as you can, and bring back an expensive bottle of Irish whiskey and some seafood with avocado, pepper, lemon wedges and fresh bread on Saturday night. And some mushrooms.’

  Mick saw my face contort.

  ‘Not those sort of mushrooms,’ he said. ‘Any other kind of mushrooms, just as a symbol of our success. Or failure.’

  Mick asked if I had found Flick Sailor yet. I replied that I did have a lead, which I would follow up that night. I would ring him the next day with the news. He said not to bother; he was sure she would turn up safe. ‘I reckon it’s like that newspaper article fed to the reporters by Bill Smith, a bluff to keep Sailor’s mind on the job of riding winners, not stable girls. It will have the jockey thinking twice about playing up on the missus, in future, whether she’s preggers or not.’

  Mick’s talk of the captive Flick might have been what dragged my attention to the table on which lay an empty record sleeve of that year’s G0-Betweens’ album Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express.

  Mick had hundreds of albums standing vertically and snugly beside each other on shelving a record-loving cabinet maker built for him. Mick even had air-conditioning installed but only for the records as he decided summer heat was good for people because it sweated out bodily toxins. Protecting the records was the main reason he kept the unit spotless, apart from the bulging ashtrays.

  When I complimented Mick on his record care, he put his palms in the air in a gesture of resignation. ‘They will probably be fucked in the end by the summer humidity and my smoking. I did the best I could.’

  In October of 1986. John Farnham’s Whispering Jack was the first album to be sold as a compact disc as well as on vinyl. Mick and I agreed those silly CDs would never take off.

  Also in 1986, multi-instrumentalist Amanda Brown, who played violin, oboe, guitar and keyboards, joined The G0-Betweens. She also added backing vocals.

  No one likes an over-achiever but Brown added variety to the guitar band. Many hardcore Gobees fans such as myself regard the 1986 line-up of McLennan, Forster, Morrison and Brown, complemented in 1987 by new bass player/ guitarist John Willsteed, as the sublime incarnation of The G0-Betweens.

  I asked Mick if I could listen to the record on his turntable. He unplugged the headphones from the stereo. I expected Liberty Belle but Cliff Richard and the Young Ones were actually spinning. The Go-bees were eclipsed again.

  With the help of a bunch of Pommy undergraduate geeks, Cliff Richard, pop’s longest-surviving Godbothering musician, had returned to the top of the Devil’s charts. Mick and I assisted the unlikely alliance belt out the chorus in which the old pop hand consorted with his socially alienated apprentices to cobble together their own walking talking living cash doll.

  30

  ONE OF MICK’S COMPUTERS buzzed and he went over to check it out. Shaking his head, he returned to his armchair and sat there thinking.

  ‘What do you know about chemistry, Steele?’

  ‘Chemistry?’

  ‘Chemistry.’

  ‘Well Mick, there might possibly be something I know less about than chemistry, but I wouldn’t bet on it.’

  Mick stroked his chin. ‘It seems that psilocybin is an ester of phosphorous. They tried to talk me into doing chemistry on top of my physics in high school, but I resisted. What the fuck would an ester of phosphorous be?’

  ‘Normally, Mick, I would ask why the hell you care. But I can see your interest. All I know about psilocybin is that it gets the druggie punters off their heads on mushies. Pardon me for wondering, but I thought you would know what it’d do to a racehorse before you prescribed it.’

  Mick looked upset. ‘Steady on, Ste
ele, you were the one who came to me with your problem. I just had a hunch, and I’ve been researching on the Internet.’

  ‘The Interwhat?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about, it’s just this system for academics to share data about their research. It’s quite cool, actually, probably has a future.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘I doubt if many Australians have. When I was over in the States buying my personal computers, I ran into a young maths tutor from San Diego State University. He told me six universities across the country had hooked up their computers in a network and academics could swap research over telephone lines. He asked me if I wanted to be in it.’

  ‘Is that legal, tapping into American eggheads’ expensive computers?’

  ‘The Internet is so new that they haven’t decided what’s legal and what’s illegal. Anyway, this tutor loaded all the protocols on to the hard drives of the computers I bought and put a back-up on floppies for me.’

  ‘Computers have floppies?’

  ‘Yair, a floppy disk. Here, I’ll show you.’

  ‘Whoa, Mick, I don’t want to see your floppy disk! And I definitely don’t want to see you put it in a computer.’

  Muttering something about primary school humour, Mick moved over to the kitchen sink. On went the electric jug. He looked in my direction and pointed to a glass jar of instant coffee. I nodded acceptance of his offer and asked him how he could tap into this internet system as it was way over in America.

  ‘I phone internationally and talk to these other computers using a device called a modem. I let Bradley – that’s the tutor’s name – know what time period I want to use the Internet. He’s not sure yet whether we can both be on at the same time, so it’s better to be safe than sorry. The American Defense Department developed the system, way back in the fifties I think, which eventually grew into the Internet. If the Internet system is built similarly to the military version, those computers would be programmed to be pretty paranoid about who is using them.’

  ‘So how many Australians would be playing with this Internet thingo?’

  ‘I could be the only one. Like I said, they’ve just hooked up the network.’

  ‘But what about our Defence Department?’

  ‘You kidding? Why would the Yanks share their most sophisticated intelligence-gathering tool with us?’

  ‘But they’re letting their universities have it?’

  ‘Yair, a few of the warriors and eggheads must be buddies on some research projects, I guess. Anyway, I’ve been using the Internet for a while now, and no secret service agent has belted on my door yet.’

  ‘That’s good to know. So what has this Internet been telling you about what happens when you mix magic mushies and a racehorse?’

  ‘Not much, to be honest. Psilocybin is a compound of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and phosphorous. In humans, it works on the brain and creates changes in mood and thinking patterns, as well as illusions and hallucinations.’

  ‘We have both seen or listened to most of that, but what will it do to a horse?’

  ‘That I don’t know. It’s not physically toxic, so my guess about the horse not dropping dead or throwing a huge fit on us is probably true. It might affect a horse’s brain, too. I have some sympathy for the view that psilocybin makes you think more clearly. Maybe Who Loves Yer Baby will decide that winning the Brisbane Handicap is the right thing to do.’

  The jug shrilled its boiling message and I waited for Mick to continue while he made the coffees, but he was done talking for a while.

  ‘That’s it?’ I asked. ‘It’s not gunna physically make him run faster, but it might make him think he should run faster? Maybe Baby will start tacking self-improvement mantras to his stable door.’

  Mick handed me a coffee as I shook my head at the hopelessness of our enterprise. He dismissed my concerns. ‘Think about it, Steele. Even if the dope detectives know about psilocybin, they would scarcely bother testing for it.’

  ‘Because only crazy people like us would risk jail by giving it to a horse.’

  ‘Exactly. You should be happy I came up with an unorthodox experiment. I keep coming back to the fact that we’re mainly risking only my money, though I’d feel a lot better if Felicity Smith was safe from her father. He could end up a most disappointed man if the drugs don’t do the trick.’

  ‘I’m still working on finding Flick. You didn’t discover how psilocybin actually works on the brain? That might give us at least a little insight into what might happen to a horse.’

  ‘I read a couple of medical papers on it, but it was totally beyond me. They might as well be written in a foreign language. I can call the papers up on the Internet if you want to have a look, Steele.’

  I declined, telling Mick I had never used a computer before and was quite happy to remain a virgin in the field. To tell the truth, if maths whizz Mick couldn’t understand the medical lingo, I doubted if I would fare any better.

  Mick was not offended. ‘Anyway, I want your opinion on the Salem witch trials.’

  ‘How’d we get onto the Salem witch trials?’

  ‘Through the Internet. You research one topic, and it leads you on to others. What do you know about Salem, Steele?’

  ‘Isn’t that the place in America where they tied young women to a dunking machine, and dunked them three times? If they drowned, they weren’t witches. If they didn’t drown, then they were witches and they were burnt to death instead.’

  ‘Jesus, Steele, where did that all come from? They hung these witches, actually, and most of them weren’t young women. Some were men; one poor bloke got pressed to death before they could extract a confession.’

  ‘Buddha, Mick, don’t tell me what those ancient coppers used to press him to death. I wonder if they were skiting about it in the pub later, after a coroner’s verdict of accidental death.’ I put on my best take of a deep-voiced copper: ‘Pressed to death; they couldn’t prove a thing. I never left a bookmark on him.’

  Mick smiled and continued his history lesson. ‘From most accounts, three young girls sparked the hanging spree. Less than thirty people were hung, but it went down as an important event in history. It spooked me when I read about it on the Internet.’

  I was a little miffed that my understanding of Salem witchcraft was so wide of the mark, and I hoped to end the meandering discussion. ‘What has this got to do with magic mushies?’

  ‘It’s like this. Some academics reckon the girls who started acting strangely and naming adults as witches had eaten ergot from contaminated bread. Ergot comes from a fungus; it acts much like LSD or psilocybin.’

  Mick Clarence had my attention. It wasn’t useful information, but it was certainly entertaining.

  ‘So these girls flip out, Mick, and the stiffs start asking them questions, and they grass some adults they know. The stiffs try the adults and hang a motza of them. That’s what went down?’

  ‘Pretty much, Steele.’

  ‘And some folks reckon the girls were tripping, and that’s what started the whole unfortunate train of events.’

  ‘Pretty much. What do you think, Steele?’

  ‘I hope I think a lot better than some of the professional thinkers running around the place. If the kids were tripping, then their parents must have been tripping on the bad bread too. I’d say the kids were busted for having a good time. The boss stiffs were having bummer trips themselves, and decided to hang some of their neighbours. I don’t know what happened in the middle, but the kids probably just told their elders what they thought they wanted to hear.’

  ‘Brilliant, Steele. What poetry! The authorities are having bad trips, so they get their tripping kids to rat out some harmless adults. I did read a theory that adult accusers of other witches could have been eating the ergot. It seems most of the accusers lived on the western side of the river. It rained more there, which could have nourished the fungus that produced ergot.’

  ‘I never did quite trust those Westie
s, Mick, at least the lot that run around on the loose in Brisbane.’

  Mick rolled his eyes upwards to indicate that I was stretching a comparison, but he turned the conversation back a few centuries to pay me a compliment. ‘I’ve read about the possibility of the accusers freaking out, but you’re the first I’ve found to suggest that the judges could have been out of it, too, Steele.’

  I gave a theory. ‘Well, maybe the judges lived west of the river too. Also they risked their corn and rye futures dropping through the floor if it got out that heathen witches were running riot up and down and round and round their town. Compound that with some bad acid, and the judges’ brains could have been short-circuiting something fierce. I’d bet that the judges who called the shots in court 400 years ago were just like ours today.’

  ‘It’s a good theory, Steele.’

  ‘So that’s what you think happened, Mick?’

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I think some authoritarian pricks spoofed themselves when they saw peasants being hung. Your version’s much better, Steele, but life is rarely so poetic, even in a perverse way. Adults are just fucked, Steele.’

  He picked up the empty mugs and went to the kitchen to boil the jug again.

  31

  MICK RETURNED with more coffee. He put down a slim book, placed my coffee mug on top and pushed the book towards me. I read the title: The Crucible.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a play, by Arthur Miller. You might like to read it.’

  ‘And why would I want to do that?’

  ‘You look like the sort of bloke who’s seen plays.’

  ‘I’ve never been to a play in my life. No one goes to plays. I doubt if I’ll ever see a play.’

  ‘It’s about the Salem witch trials.’

  I was vaguely interested. ‘Oh yair? It looks brand new. Where’d you get it??’

  ‘I got a bloke to get it for me yesterday, after I read about it on the Internet.’

  ‘What the bloody hell is this Internet all about? First, you’re looking up magic mushies, then you’re on about psilocybin, then it’s witch trials and now it’s a play.’