by Zane Lovitt
We walked to where our cars were parked. Travis had a VW 1500 station sedan, not new, not old, but a good car. I learned long ago not to judge a man by his wheels. We used our cars as shelter against the cold wind. Travis told me he’d heard about me in Brewer’s gym, where he worked out with some boxers I knew.
‘They say you’re fair dinkum,’ he said.
‘There’s no higher praise.’
‘What would it cost to hire you as a bodyguard for a week? I mean all up – expenses and everything?’
I told him.
‘Phew, that’s steep, but I can manage it, just.
‘Whoa,’ I said. ‘Bodyguarding you against what, exactly?’
‘Who knows? Spiked drinks, assault, accidents. I’ll be the favourite or near enough. The betting’s going to be huge. I’ve heard some whispers, nothing specific, but … shit happens.’
‘You’re talking about a week at Willow Bend?’
‘Right. I’ve hired a caravan. We go down there and train for a week. I need to get used to the atmosphere and the track. D’you know anything about running, apart from what your uncle did?’
‘I ran a bit at school and in the bloody army.’
‘You could appear to be my trainer. Do you good. Get a bit of the flab off, not that there’s that much.’
The idea appealed to me. A holiday in the country. How hard could it be? I told him that I charged a substantial retainer but I’d waive that in return for him paying the expenses. I said I’d judge my total account according to whether he won or lost.
He laughed. ‘Wow, that means I’ll be paying full whack, because I’m a sure thing,’
We shook hands on the arrangement. I didn’t tell him what life had taught me early on – that there’s no such animal as a sure thing.
*
Travis towed the Nova caravan and I drove my own car. I had friends in Braidwood I planned to visit after the Gift had been run. The drive to Willow Creek went smoothly, although traffic thickened up as we got close to the town, with people involved in the agricultural exhibits and sideshows arriving early to set up. It was a small place and, like other towns in the area, had become known for its historical associations, arts and crafts, including a bijou brewery, and cafés and restaurants. As an entrant in the race, Travis got a prime spot in the caravan park. I left the Falcon close by and carried my overnight bag to the Nova.
I was surprised to see that Travis had laid on a couple of beers to welcome me to our temporary home.
‘Last one before the race,’ he said. ‘Dry as a bone from now on, not for you of course.’
‘I’ll make it easy for you,’ I said. ‘I won’t drink in here. Outside will be my business.’
‘Fair enough. Thanks, Cliff.’
He was an easy man to like. Clean and neat in his habits, as I found, sharing a tight space with him. He had a good sense of humour and one of the crucial attributes of likeability: he knew when to talk and when to keep quiet, and especially when to tell a story to complement one of yours and when to shut up and let it ride.
The weather was kind; it can be cold there at that time of the year, but we hit a mild spell that looked like lasting until the big day. After a long time in Sydney I enjoyed the country air. The town was in festive mood and the show got underway with the usual attractions. No boxing tents though, which was something I always missed at city and country shows.
I mentioned this to Travis on our second night as we were having dinner in a café. I was having steak and chips, he was on a salad with no dressing and grilled fish. I had a local red wine, he had mineral water.
‘Did you ever take a glove?’ he asked.
‘I did once, at the Sydney Show, just before I went into the army. Jimmy Sharman Junior’s tent. I’d just started to drink and was a bit pissed and this big blackfella knocked me on my arse. Didn’t last a round, didn’t get the money.’
He’d been getting tense and I thought the story would amuse him but it didn’t. I decided that was a good thing – he didn’t like to hear about losing.
*
Travis handled all the administrative arrangements himself, unlike some of the runners who appeared to have trainer-managers. We trained on the big Willow Creek cricket ground where the story was that Don Bradman was the only man to ever have hit a six. That was as a teenager back in his brief country cricket days.
There were several closely mown strips on the oval that resembled the actual race track. Third time out, very early in the morning, I took my place with a stopwatch while Travis set himself. Something caught my eye and I held up my hand.
‘Hold it!’
‘What?’
I’d noticed a different colour in the grass about halfway down the strip as the light caught it. We inspected the spot and saw that the turf had been disturbed and there was a soft patch that would subside when a speedy foot hit it.
‘Told you,’ Travis said. ‘You’ve got good eyes.’
We relocated. There was plenty of room on the oval and I inspected the ground carefully from then on. We fell into the routine of me setting off as a mock front marker and him having to catch me, which he did easily at first and less easily a bit later as I got into the swing of it.
‘That Bradman story’s bullshit,’ Travis said the night before the first heat. ‘I could hit a fucking six there off the right ball.’
‘Easy, mate,’ I said. ‘A bit of a temperamental edge’s a good thing, but don’t go sour.’
He grinned. ‘Fuck you. How’d you go after five days without a drink?’
‘Not too good.’
We were sitting under the caravan canopy drinking coffee. Travis was toey but yawning, after a hard day’s training. I was fresh after a swim in the river. Suddenly there was an odd noise, a grinding sound. I jumped up in time to catch one of the aluminium rods that supported the heavy canopy as it collapsed towards where Travis was sitting.
‘Jesus! Those fuckers,’ Travis snarled.
Together we inspected the damage. Two of the rods had been partly sawn through, leaving sharp edges. If they had caught Travis on the way down…
‘See what I mean?’ he said.
*
The bookies were there in strength, offering all kinds of odds on who’d make the final and the placings in the heats. I put ten bucks on Travis to win the Gift, but as he’d won his first heat and came a close second in the next, he was sure to start at a short price, if not as favourite. Although his slot as a back marker would have a bearing.
I wondered about that second placing. From having worked with him and watched other runners I was pretty sure he’d eased up in the heat and I asked him about it.
‘I fucked up,’ he said. ‘Meant to come in third but that bugger Jacko Philips must’ve had the same idea and edged me out. Would have looked too obvious to really slow up and fourth was death.’
‘This is to get better odds, is it? Are you betting?’
‘Me? No. Can’t afford it. I was angling for a lighter penalty but it didn’t work. I’m off five yards.’
‘Can you make that up?’
‘Blood-oath I can. Put a few bucks on me, mate.’
‘I have already, but I thought you weren’t quite as sharp in our last session as you had been.’
He tapped the side of his nose. ‘I told that journo who interviewed me I was tapering and he bought it. But … you know, there’s eyes everywhere in this game and stopwatches in pockets.’
‘I’ve heard of swimmers tapering but I didn’t think it applied to sprinters.’
‘It doesn’t.’
‘Did you tell the journo about me?’
He grinned. ‘Just a bit. For colour.’
‘And I thought boxing was dodgy.’
‘This is the dodgiest, maybe along with the dogs. That’s one of the reasons this could
be its last gasp.’
*
The day of the race the local paper carried a story about Travis and how his bodyguard had averted several suspicious ‘incidents’. His odds shortened so that he became virtually unbackable and odds on the other runners became correspondingly generous. I wasn’t happy about the publicity, especially as it carried a photograph of me I hadn’t been aware had been taken. I wished Travis luck and picked an unobtrusive spot to watch the race from.
The day was perfect and the crowd was large and noisy. The white-painted track lines stood out against the shaved-down green grass. In keeping with the traditional theme, the starter and other officials were decked out in nineteenth-century costume and there was a tape at the finish rather than the modern finishing line apparatus.
A 100-metre sprint by top athletes, even on a grass surface, is over in under ten seconds. Travis was on his back mark in the middle lane. He was quick out of the blocks and shot away, crouched initially and only coming upright as his speed increased. He was in the lead at the halfway point but Philips, the man who’d out-foxed him to take third place in the heat, hauled him in and beat him by a matter of inches.
I consoled Travis as we walked back to the caravan after the ceremony.
‘What happened?’ I said.
‘Fucking cramp at the eighty-metre mark. Shit happens.’
Travis appeared crestfallen and I gave him a substantial discount on my fee. He wrote me a cheque and we shook hands. I packed up my stuff and headed off to my car for the drive to Braidwood. When I got there I found the battery had gone flat and it took me a while to find someone with jumper leads to get it started. Then I realised I’d forgotten to pack The Playmaker, the Tom Keneally novel I’d been enjoying .
I left the Falcon ticking over to charge the battery and headed back to the caravan in the gathering gloom. I approached from the rear and heard voices as I got close. Travis and another man were sitting under the repaired canopy and I heard the pop of beer cans.
Well, why not? I thought. Camaraderie among athletes.
I was about to step up when I heard Travis give a self-satisfied laugh. ‘Would you believe, Jacko, I got ten-to-one on you and I had fifteen hundred down.’
‘Shit, that means with half of the purse as agreed, you’ve finished up ahead of what you’d have got if you won.’
Travis laughed again. ‘Right, but you never can tell. It was going to one of us and this made sure we both won. And you’ve got the glory, mate. I’ve pulled this stunt or something like it before but I reckon this was my last chance.’
‘What about that minder? Good touch, the effect on the odds and that, but he didn’t suss you?’
‘I thought he might be onto me at one point, after the heat, but he let it slide. The accident sucked him in. He loved being part of a big sports scene. An athletics tragic is what he is.’
I stood there, seething, in the gathering darkness. I wanted to go in and flatten the pair of them but Travis was right. I’d let myself be seduced by the ambience, the atmospherics.
Fuck them both, I thought, and went back to my car.
*
The cheque bounced of course, but I had a good time with my people on their Braidwood farm. And his scheme didn’t benefit Travis. The caravan jack-knifed on him at a bend on his way back and it and the VW went over a very long drop. It took two days to find the site and winch Travis up. From the state of the body they said he must have died instantly. That was lucky.
Peter Corris
The Mango Tree
After thirty years, the only thing Sergeant Crotty still liked about being a policeman was the time he spent getting paid for not being one.
He calculated all the possible ways to earn leave. He worked all the public holidays and the late shifts. He took all the after-hours callouts, even when he had to find a payphone and make the calls himself: the anonymous informant reporting kids in cars was reliable standby. An hour to drive out there, an hour to tool around some of the back roads and an hour to drive back. Peace. Quiet. Away from her.
So far, his personal best was scoring three and a half months of leave in one year. He had spent hours on those long quiet night shifts diligently working out rates, pro ratas, allowances and time-in-lieu. There had been nothing else to do.
Murra at night was a peaceful place. A small coastal town balanced between a muddy river and a steep, dark beach studded with rocks. It was not a destination for holidaymakers: they drove further north to Coffs, or pulled off the highway a few hours south at Port. In fact, they only ever caused Crotty problems if they managed to jam themselves under a truck somewhere on the highway that joined the two towns. Not that he minded – a fatal was good for a few hours overtime, looking after the scene until the detectives arrived from the north or the south, depending on which side of the bridge the incident occurred.
Surfers found no joy in Murra. The breaks on both sides of the Murra River mouth were ordinary; the abrupt shore drew waves up late, high and mean. The damage done to body and board by the rocks beneath the foam deterred most surfers after one session. And if it didn’t, Sergeant Crotty could extend the unwelcome with dark looks at bald tyres and the threat of a ticket for unroadworthiness.
There was fishing, for those brave and lucky enough to make it through the river mouth. Happily for Crotty, Murra had dropped off the senior brigade’s caravanning itinerary after four pensioners flipped their tinnie one bright morning half a decade ago. Three days later the rip deposited a single body well down the coast – the others must have wound up feeding fish instead of catching them. These days, those few retirees who did come for a rest on the banks of the Murra contented themselves with catching twitchy flatheads among the mangroves in the upper reaches of the river. Sometimes Crotty joined them, piloting a small boat he’d bought cheap in an estate sale. He wasn’t much interested in fish but he had a big esky and he kept it brimming with home brew. Best of all she hated it and never came.
These features combined to make Murra the best posting Sergeant Stan Crotty had ever had.
It should have made him happy.
It didn’t.
Anger was a way of life. He’d forgotten what it felt like not to burn. He hated the job. Accumulating those hours he could not work and still get paid was a victory, but it barely diluted the anger.
Those of his colleagues who turned their mind to him thought Crotty the laziest policeman they’d ever known, and would have been astounded to know just how diligent he was in maintaining the dystopia he’d created for himself in Murra. Crotty had no illusions about his abilities, but he was dogged. And he’d taken the time to learn about the things that mattered to him. And now it was paying off.
He’d earned an assortment of leave – annual, long service, special – that would deliver him to the day he would leave permanently. That was in two years, five months and three days. A Tuesday.
Not for Stan Crotty the option of cashing in his entitlements, adding to a lump sum or rolling it over. No. He’d take every hour of leave he could, at half-pay, and only when he’d used up every drop would he officially retire. Until then, he planned to sit in his subsidised rental unit, with its view of the river mouth and the reef, brew his beer and ignore her. He calculated he could spend eighteen months without answering a phone, wearing a uniform, attending a call, or talking to a member of the public. And there was nothing they could do about it. He’d checked.
He imagined their fury and it warmed him.
What happened after, when it would be just him and her and they’d have to find somewhere else to live, he tried not to think about. When he did, it was a hot wind whistling through the flames of his rage…
Until that day, he’d go on much as he had. Friday nights were the best: a quick run through town before the game started, just to show his face. Then he’d call in that he was heading to Upper Murra on a report of
kids in cars and he’d be out of radio contact. After that it was home along the back roads, parking in the garage and pulling down the door.
He kept a radio on the table by his chair, next to his beer, just in case. If anyone above the rank of Sergeant was hunting him up, he’d know. Beer in hand he’d settle into his chair and scratch his balls through his red nylon shorts.
Crotty didn’t see her anymore. He noticed the cracks in the linoleum floor but he didn’t see her sitting at the kitchen table. As the referee blew his whistle Sergeant Crotty wondered if he could have them pay for new lino. He made a mental note to look up the regulations about it tomorrow. There’d have to be a form somewhere.
*
Win watched her husband scratch his balls. A serpent of disgust slid through her bowels.
Her wet, sticky eyes gazed at the man she had lived with for more than thirty years. With his large head and veined skin, there was no trace left of the boy he’d been at eighteen: tall, silent, big-boned and ginger-haired, fresh from the wheat field. He’d carried huge bags without raising a sweat, arms like pink hairy hams. She remembered how their strength had excited her, how his big square hands had fumbled her, his nervousness inferred as tenderness. It had been an illusion.
Herself, she’d been the daughter of a local cop, which meant a childhood of itinerancy as one posting followed another. One dusty town bleeding into the next across the far west of New South Wales until, in her early teens, they’d hit the outskirts of a city. Only a couple of years there before they were transferred again. She’d eventually turned up in his town, a speck in the wheat belt, with all the knowledge two years in a suburb and a few evenings in a panel van at the drive-in could confer. Stan’s initial hesitancy had been followed by a burst of instinct, of force that had felt manly to her after the tinkering of boys.
She thought she knew what she was getting.
She did not.
Win watched him. Bolted upright to his chair, glaring at the TV. The farm boy long gone. Now with the bright bitterness of hindsight she didn’t think that boy ever really existed but in her own silly, scattered head. His strength had come from rage even then. But a young man’s rage, full of potential, lacking only the direction she could supply. These days she still saw an angry man, purple cobwebs in his nose and cheeks. The fists still threatened.