by Tim Winton
I believed him. I couldn’t help myself. What he said gave some shape to the misgivings of my youth, the sense that things were not alright around me. And I felt pity for him, for the trap he’d found his way into, but none of it changed what we’d lived through, my mother and I. It would take another lifetime to forgive him that. Even then I knew it might not be fair to blame him for her cancer but none of me was about to release him from it. From his very posture there at the sink, the quiet, cautious way he handled the pieces that he washed, you could see that he sensed it.
So you’re not curious about the royal commission? I said at last.
They won’t be losing much sleep, he said.
When he had wiped up and put the gear on the spartan shelves we went outside and stood at the edge of the verandah to see the hugeness of the sky and the blizzard of stars upon us. The cold night air had the cypress tang of woodsmoke.
So how did you get off the booze? I asked him.
Went to a meeting in Kal.
Just the one?
Only the one.
And what? I said with a dry little laugh.
It was looking at them, he murmured. The others. They disgusted me.
What, you didn’t feel sympathy?
Any more than you’re feeling now, you mean? No. It was like looking in the mirror and all their whining faces were mine. I’d had enough self-pity.
So?
I was living behind the pub then. The Golden Barrow. Had a donga out the back, called meself a yardman but basically I was an alcoholic sweeping floors for drinks. Came out here, walked it with the dog. And hid. Had a humpy way back off the track. Think I was tryin to work up the nerve to kill meself. Lots of shafts out here, no shortage of means. Spent months plotting and planning. Went mad, I spose. Nobody left alive anymore to tell those tales on me. And then I realized that I’d been six months without a drink. There was none to be had. Woke up one morning, it was winter, and the sun was on this fallen tree, this dead grey tree, and there was steam rising off the dead wood. And I felt . . . new. Had this feeling that the world was inviting me in . . . like, luring me towards something. Life, I dunno.
I didn’t expect it to be beautiful here, I said for no reason other than not knowing what to say. The cold burned my face and, whenever I moved, the chill of my jeans branded my legs.
Just the sight of those bottle stacks outside the old blokes’ huts used to make me thirsty. But it fades.
You read a lot, I see.
Yes. It’s an education. But my eyes are going.
We’ll get you some glasses, I said. What time d’you want to leave? Oh, first thing. Fair enough.
He gave me his bed that night and unrolled a battered swag on the floor in front of the stove where he slept with the dog, each of them snoring quietly through cycles of synchronization, while I lay awake rattled by the smell of his body in the blankets about me and the strangeness of the hut with its animal sounds and sudden silences. I wondered how my mother would receive him, how she would react to the knowledge that he’d salvaged himself, and that she’d found him too late. And when she was gone, what then, what would I do about him? I lay there for hours on the narrow iron bunk like a frightened boy and late in the night I covered my face with the pillow which smelled of him and cried at the thought of my mother.
When I woke, the old man was sitting by the stove, shaved and dressed in the lamplight. It was early morning. His swag was rolled and on his knee was a battered cashbox which he held like a man entrusted.
Fog
LANG PULLED OVE R BY THE CREEK. He parked in a wedge of sunlight between trees and switched off the ignition. He listened to the soughing wind and the static surf of the two-way. The van stank of sweat and puke and Pine-O-Cleen. He hoisted his belt where the handcuffs snagged against the upholstery of the seat. Burrowing in his tunic for an antacid, he looked out across the sodden September paddocks. His mouth was chalky. His guts felt like hell.
On the seat beside him lay the last court summons of the day. Delivering them was work for a junior. It was another slight, a message to pull his head in, and maybe even a way to get him out of town for a while. At least it was time alone, a bit of respite. If he spaced it right he’d be back for the change of shift and home for tea. Ten minutes to himself, no harm in that. Trouble was, there’d been a lot of ten-minute breaks lately and some of those had run to an hour or more. It wasn’t like him. He didn’t used to be this way.
Lang had only been in town a year. Ten months, to be exact. It was a plum posting, something to be excited about. A quiet country town on the coast. Pretty harbour, decent school, miles of white beaches. Compared to the strife-torn desert communities he could have faced, it was a gift. But within weeks of his arrival he began to feel uneasy. It wasn’t the town. It was the blokes in the job. Conversations dried up as he came into the crib room. Glances were exchanged. He sensed that there were arrangements and alliances he wasn’t privy to. He wondered if it was his reputation as a bit of a straight arrow. Within months he’d gone from being uneasy to feeling unsafe.
He eased the little flat bottle from between the seat springs, uncapped it in his lap and took a quick belt. It was cheap stuff. He didn’t even like brandy. This was, he told himself, just a temporary thing.
A cow bellowed out of sight. Wattlebirds clacked in the trees around him. It was peaceful here and suddenly warm and for a moment he could believe that all this aggravation would pass, that the sleeplessness, the gut-burning anxiety, the creeping sense of paralysis would work themselves out. Maybe he’d put a few more bits of the puzzle together, find an ally. He just needed one honest copper to watch his back. But the flash of brandy-heat faded and he thought of Carol and the kids. They’d been through enough already. The bastards had got to them, made their point about laying off and staying clear. And that’s what he’d do; there was no alternative. He’d keep his head down, bide his time, and in a year or so apply for a transfer.
The radio spluttered. There was a report of climbers lost out in the ranges. He listened to the two-way traffic as the beginnings of a search took shape. On another frequency the SES volunteers were chatting excitedly. One climber lost, another had raised the alarm. Lang dialled back to his own channel and wedged the bottle under the seat. He knew he wouldn’t be home for dinner. He had the van turned around and was out on the highway before his call-sign came over the air.
It took half an hour to get out amongst the ranges and when he turned into the dirt carpark at the foot of the sheer bluff called The Dial, the sun was gone behind low, threatening cloud, and the vollies were already assembled, still studding their orange overalls in front of the trucks. Lang pulled on his plastic poncho. He stuffed the antacids and the brandy bottle into his tunic and made his way over to join the briefing. Macklin was talking. He and Lang were of the same rank, but Macklin had been here two years and he knew the geography. To that extent, at least, you could trust him.
Lang looked at the map taped to the side of the truck and pulled the hood up over his cap as a misting rain began to fall.
How’s it looking? he asked Macklin as the vollies broke up into task groups.
Pretty straightforward, said Macklin, dragging on his own coat. Couple of hikers. The woman’s over in the truck with the quack. She’s totally hysterical. Far as we can tell, the bloke’s fallen off the first tier. It’s all thickets at the base there. He’s set us a bit of a task.
Any chance of a chopper?
Nup.
I’ll go with the western group.
That’s the plan, Bob. Let’s hope it’s done by dark. I’m cold already.
Lang took a walkie-talkie from the truck and wished he had a decent pair of boots. He joined a chirpy bunch of volunteers as they set out down the long belly of the walk trail. The valley was thick with wandoo and marri and beneath the trees the scrub sprouted tiny darting birds and a blur of insects. The bush smelt tart, peppery. Everything looked blue in the late afternoon light.
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sp; After fifteen minutes the trail swept up towards the broad base of the bluff. There were no trees, just tight mallee heath and low boulders. The trail was good but the going was much tougher on the steep incline, and as the keen and the fit scrambled ahead of him and the wheezers lagged behind, Lang found space enough to consider the deep and tangled thickets beneath the peak. A bloke would take some finding up there; it was a nasty bit of country and there was plenty of it. He wondered how far you’d fall, whether you’d be swallowed, even cushioned, by all that teatree and banksia or if the tight-packed canopy might resist the impact and send you bouncing down the slope to burst like a bag of trash against the first big rock in your path.
He chewed an antacid. Every upward step tightened his hamstrings. Sweat soaked through his shirt and into his tunic and rain dripped from the peak of his cap and ran down his nose.
At a boulder the size of a beached whale, Lang rested a moment and looked back down to the carpark where two more police vehicles were pulling in. Young fellas, he thought, dragged in early for the evening shift. Beyond the little beige clearing of the carpark, the land stretched away blue in the distance. The surrounding peaks were headless in the mist. It was beautiful up here, and if it hadn’t been for the hiss and squawk of the walkie-talkie, it would have been peaceful too. At the foot of the bluff Lang bunched the searchers up the best he could on the steep, narrow trail. Above them The Dial rose in a series of granite extrusions whose peaks were obscured now by rainy mist. As Lang stood there waiting for stragglers and to-ing and fro-ing with Macklin on the air, the sky seemed to lower itself even further and the light grew dimmer. He broke the searchers up into pairs and told them to work ten yards apart across the ground immediately below the bluff and to meet back here in one hour. But with them all strung up and down the track in single file it was a case of Chinese whispers and he wasn’t sure how clear he’d made himself. He was anxious about the poor light, the lack of time, the ambulance that still hadn’t arrived.
Lang had a feeling about this bloke who’d fallen. He could picture him cannoning down, bouncing across the thicket below them, so while the vollies fanned out enthusiastically he picked his way back down the incline a distance and was just about to make a sweep when he was joined by a latecomer in a fancy parka. The girl was eighteen or so and obviously no SES volunteer.
She introduced herself but he didn’t really hear the name because he’d already seen the camera slung from her neck. Just his luck, a journalist, and a cadet at that. She was trying to seem nonchalant but she couldn’t disguise her excitement. He let himself be quizzed briefly, and with his job voice on he explained his hunch about the faller. He spelt the word trajectory without being asked and before she had much of a chance to get it all down in shorthand he plunged into the spiky thicket and got on with it.
From the outset the going was tough and it just got worse. Soon they were no longer walking but swimming through vegetation. Lang felt staked and whipped at every turn. His cheeks stung, he lost his footing. He tried hurling himself against snarls of foliage that resisted him. He began to worm his way through at an angle like a man in a stadium mob.
When the vegetation stood taller than him he navigated by the looming shadow of the bluff overhead. They’d long lost sight of other searchers and now there was no one within earshot. Lang grew anxious but he didn’t want to unnerve the girl. She was green enough to press on trustingly. He knew he should turn back but he couldn’t make himself. He was goaded on by the girl’s presence. It wasn’t about her being young and pretty. He didn’t even think of her notebook and camera. It was about proving something. To her, to himself. That he was a policeman, someone you could trust. Head down, conscious of her panting behind him, he pressed on.
Eventually the thicket was too dense to move through unless they got down on all-fours and crawled. Lang was overheated. His mouth was scummy and he wished he’d brought water. He looked for something that might bear his weight if he climbed up to gauge their position. But no branch would hold him and he couldn’t find a stone to climb. The girl watched him scramble to get his head above the canopy.
Give me a leg up, she said. See if that gets me high enough.
Lang got down on one knee and felt the damp litter soak through his trousers as the girl stepped up. She knocked his cap off in her struggle for balance and wound up gripping whiplike boughs above her. Her tennis shoes slid off his leg.
They each gave a sheepish laugh.
I could get up on your shoulders, she said.
It was an awkward prospect but he brushed off his trousers and squatted for her. She didn’t weigh much but his back and thighs strained as he hoisted her up. He held her calves as delicately as he could and did his best to turn a slow circle for her. He was conscious of her thighs against his ears. He told her to look for the track behind them, for orange overalls or any telltale movement, but she said she saw nothing, only bush. As he lowered her to the ground he lost his balance and they pitched over together. There was a nasty clunk as something spilled out onto the rocks and at first Lang thought of the brandy bottle. He was relieved to see that it was only the walkie-talkie. But his relief was only momentary. The radio looked okay but he couldn’t raise Macklin or anyone else on it. There was only static. He sat back with his gut churning, and saw that the girl’s face was cut. It wasn’t much more than a scrape but she’d dabbed at it already and was looking, appalled, at the little smear of blood on her fingertips.
It’s orright, he murmured. Rest a moment and we’ll leg it back to the track. What’d you say your name was again, love?
Marie, she said.
Like Maori? he said. As opposed to Maree?
I spose. Yeah. Are we okay?
Well, we haven’t found anybody. But we haven’t lost ourselves, if that’s what you mean. We’ll have to shut down and try at first light.
This stuff, she said, tilting her head at the tangled mass of stems and branches, it’s kind of claustrophobic.
Lang considered offering her his hanky to swab the blood but the state of it was enough to give him pause. She wiped the blood off on her corduroys.
Did you hear that?
A bird, he murmured.
Don’t think so.
Lang listened. It was a sobbing sound.
That’s a human, she said.
I doubt it.
Listen!
Lang wondered if it was the girl’s insistence that changed things but the noise began to sound human. It was close by and downhill. He tried Macklin again and got nothing back. It was very late in the day. He figured they had less than an hour’s light left.
We’ll have a look, he said. We’ll crawl down.
Here, she said, offering him a plastic water bottle.
She was a pretty kid, probably the daughter of a proud cow-cocky or clergyman. She had thick brown hair and an upturned nose and her eyes were bright with excitement. All her clothes seemed new, especially the parka. Even after all this exertion she smelled of Cool Charm. She had a generous mouth but right now, in such a situation, she didn’t know quite how to arrange it. There was something of the school prefect about her which amused him. She was the sort of girl who was out of his league when he was a boy but who would not be beyond his son. Maybe Vic would bring home girls like Marie before long.
He drank a little water and thought of the brandy in his tunic. When she took the water bottle back she wiped the neck with the heel of her palm the way she must have learnt in the playground. Her hands were shaking.
You might get front page, he said.
She smiled gamely and drank.
On all-fours, pressed into the stony litter by the gnarled arches of scrub, Lang led her down the steep incline, pausing intermittently to listen for that noise. But now he heard nothing.
His pants were ruined and his uniform cap long gone when they came upon the climber upside down against a lichen-furred rock the size of a headstone. His legs were so far awry that Lang knew at once they wer
e broken. He was already dragging the bloke down onto flatter ground before the girl had a chance to register the find. The climber and the girl cried out at more or less the same moment and Lang found himself laughing. As the girl crawled up beside him he pulled off his poncho and covered the bloke who seemed to have lost consciousness. She pulled the camera from its case and quickly took a photo. Lang was stunned by the flash. It altered his mood like a slap across the chops.
Is he alive? she said.
Yes, he muttered angrily. Shoot first, he thought, and ask questions – you’ll go far, love.
Now what? she asked, a little chastened.
Lang felt the bloke’s pulse but it was hard to distinguish from his own. He scrambled up the rock to get a view of the mountain and saw the long grey slope completely transformed by mist. Most of The Dial was gone now and the horizon seemed to begin a yard above the scrub. He let out a piercing coo-ee but it was like shouting into bedclothes. He couldn’t even see the carpark now. He slid back down beside Marie and the injured hiker.
You want to stay with him or scuttle back out to the track? he asked. Even if it’s dark when you find the trail it’ll be easy enough to follow it back down to the others. Just leave something out, your bottle or your camera or something to mark the spot.
No, she said, looking suddenly horrified. No, no, I couldn’t find it. Look, it’s nearly dark – I couldn’t find it.
Think of the story, he said, trying to sound kinder than he felt.
No, I can’t.
He considered things a while, hoping the silence might give her the chance to find some courage and change her mind. But she avoided his gaze and said nothing.
Well, can you stay here while I go? he asked. We can’t carry him. His legs are buggered and without a stretcher we’ll be dragging him under the scrub by his arms. Marie, we’ve gotta get some other people up here.