by Joy Dettman
Diamonds in the Mud
I can’t say if it’s green or just gone mouldy, but it looks alive – sort of like some poisonous mushroom that’s taken root on his head. Its brim comes down to his nose where his chin sort of juts up to meet it; but there’s got to be a mouth under it somewhere I’m thinkin’, ’cause the hat talks to me.
‘How far are ya goin’, mate?’ it says.
‘Balranald,’ I say.
Its crown is level with the window of a vehicle of sorts. A ute, it’s been. Rust red. Mud red. I’m starin’ and I’m thinkin’, probably only the bloody mud holdin’ the rust together, and I’m thinkin’ of the storm what’s threatenin’, and maybe of me own mortality.
I’m standin’ there and I’m starin’ at the hat ’cause there’s no eyes for me to stare at, like, and I’m thinkin’ hard and rubbin’ me jaw. He’s the only wheels that’s answered me thumb in the hour since the cop dropped me ten miles outside of Kerang, and I’m thinkin’ how I wouldn’t’ve been ten bloody miles out of Kerang if we’d’ve left Melbourne yesterday like we were supposed to.
‘Take ya as far as Swan ’ill,’ the hat says.
‘Righto. Ta,’ I say, and I yank the door wide, step up and in, feelin’ for a foothold between coats and papers, toolbox, dog chains, yesterday’s stubbies and last month’s butts.
‘Watch me floor, mate.’
I look down then to the bit of floor space I’ve reclaimed, and there’s daylight underneath me bloody shoe. Quick as a flash I kick his coat over a hole as I see a fossilised sock disappearin’ back to the earth from where it came.
His gears mash and grind, his wheels buck and squeal as a tail-shaft tries to whip those bastards into a team. He kicks the clutch, stomps on the accelerator and somehow gets the crate movin’. She’s doin’ all right too, once she’s in top gear, so I let go of the door handle, sit back and try to wriggle me bum in between the springs and the kapok while propping me heels on a toolbox.
The air is weighty with the stink of live dog, dead socks and buried butts. I’ve lived with the stink of dog and dead socks before but those butts sort of awaken in me memories of that last sweet fag three months ago. We gave it up. We. Not all I’ve given up, neither. Sometimes I think I sold me soul to become half of that We.
Me and me girlfriend are payin’ off a house, and smokes are too bloody expensive, she says – not that she says bloody expensive, just plain expensive, but I can read the bloody all over her face. She’s sort of different to the usual type of chick I’ve mucked round with, sort of talks a bit posh, always coming out with stuff like, ‘The female genitalia should not be used as a curse word, Norman.’
‘Help yourself, mate,’ the hat says, tossing me the pack as he pushes a smoke under his brim. He must’ve found a gap there, ’cause the fag stays where it’s put.
‘Given ’em up,’ I say, handlin’ the weight of the pack, smellin’ it before tossin’ it on the springs between us.
‘I gotta give ’em up too,’ the hat says. ‘Ruinin’ me health. Gettin’ to the stage where I’m coughin’ out lumps of me lungs when I roll out of the sack in the mornin’.
Just so I don’t think he’s talkin’ no lie, he coughs up another lump, hawks it out of the window, and the wind catches it, blows it back and sticks it to the side window. I watch it slide down like a great grey slug down the mud, leavin’ a shiny trail behind it. I watch it until we’re drivin’ into Swan ’ill, which is better for the nervous system than watchin’ the road ahead and watching him trying to stay on it.
He hits the brakes outside Swan ’ill. Nothin’ much happens for a tick, then a back wheel sort of makes a half-hearted grab, and as it grabs he rams the clutch down and grinds her into first.
‘Gotta do a bit of business,’ he says. ‘Least I got ya part of yer ways there.’
‘Yeah. Ta,’ I say.
He drops me in the main street of Swan ’ill where I buy a pie and a Coke before headin’ out on the highway.
Nothin’ is stoppin’ this arvo. A navy Commodore tootles past with a snooty nosed pair of wealthy pensioners in the front. Their back seat’s empty. I’m wearin’ me bike gear, due to the weather, right, but it’s not like I’m one of the Hells Brigade or nuthin’, which don’t stop the old dame from givin’ me a look saved for cockroaches and lice.
The rain is pourin’ down. I stop under a tree and start thinkin’ this trip is sort of turnin’ into a bloody nightmare. Maybe somethin’ doesn’t want me in Balranald, I’m thinkin’, maybe fate, like me best mate, is tryin’ to turn me head for home. I mean, who needs a weddin’ and a house half a city away from ya job? Who needs a bloody job? I didn’t used to – or not till she started talkin’ houses, I didn’t. As me mate said when the cops dragged him off to the lockup, ‘There’s got to be more to life than pussyfootin’ around a sheila who had to go and get herself born in bloody Balranald.’
I’m standin’, thinkin’, water drippin’ down me neck, thinkin’ of his words and his bike which the cops confiscated, and I’m sort of lookin’ back at Swan ’ill, when what comes rattlin’ down the road but the hat and his rust bucket.
‘How far are you goin’, mate?’ he says.
‘Still Balranald,’ I say, lookin’ at the mouldy hat and searchin’ for the eyes I know he must’ve had underneath it someplace.
‘You’re the second bloke I picked up what’s goin’ to Balranald today. What’s the bloody drawcard in bloody Balranald?’
‘Me weddin’.’
‘Can take ya as far as Tooleybuc.’
I never heard of Tooleybuc. ‘Is it on me way?’ I ask.
‘Only way to go, mate,’ he says.
I yank the door open and climb in – don’t make the mistake of lookin’ for no floor space this time. I gotta admit, I’m sorta pleased to be out of the rain. It’s pourin’ down – washing his windscreen – which I can do without, so I sit back and close me eyes, sniffing at the odour of me leathers, now addin’ a sort a familiar wet cow stink to the dog, the dead socks, and the sweet stale scent of the fags.
He lights up a smoke a ’course. Offers me the pack.
‘Gave it up three months back,’ I say.
‘I’m off ’em after today. Bloody things are killin’ me,’ he says.
He has three cigarettes before we get to the Tooleybuc turn-off.
‘Do you live in Tooleybuc, mate?’ I ask.
‘Me? Na. I knew a bloke once what did,’ he says.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Bastard married me sister, then pissed off with the sheila what worked at the Tooleybuc pub.’
‘Yeah?’
I take a long hard look at the hat. Say what you like, there’s no denyin’ family – not that I can see his face, but I’m thinkin’, I couldn’t rightly blame any poor bastard married to his sister for pissin’ off with a barmaid.
‘I’m pickin’ up a new dog in Tooleybuc. S’posed to meet him there at twelve.’
‘Ya runnin’ late,’ I say, checkin’ me watch me girlfriend gave me for Christmas. I used to own a good one – one of them novelty ones with a naked chick on the face. Amazin’ what the hands could make her do. Me girlfriend didn’t like it, said it was sexist. I’m thinkin’ of it now and I’m smilin’, not listenin’ to the hat.
We drive across a bridge. Welcome to New South Wales, it says. Christ, I’m finally interstate, I’m thinkin’.
‘We’re here,’ he says. ‘Gotta pick up me dog.’
‘Where’s here?’
‘Tooleybuc. Nice little town. They got the pokies now. Place has gone ahead since they got the pokies.’
‘Yeah?’ I say, lookin’ for Tooleybuc and wonderin’ where it’s gone ahead to, and where it was before the pokies arrived, then he sort of does his no-synchro change-down and we slide to a halt in the gutter out the front of the pub.
‘Havin’ a beer, mate?’
I rub me jaw and think long on that one. I need one real bad, I’m dehydrating fast due to the do me mates f
lung for me – which lasted twenty-four hours longer than it should’ve done – but I’m thinkin’ of me girlfriend who’ll be starting to panic, and of the cop who only let me go on account of me weddin’.
I shake me head. ‘I better keep goin’. Gotta be in Balranald by six or me girlfriend’s gunna be sending out the cavalry.’
‘Ya got another thirty-odd miles.’
‘What’s that in kilometres?’
‘Christ knows.’
‘Righto,’ I say. ‘Thanks for the lift.’
‘See ya, mate,’ the hat says.
‘Yeah,’ I say, but I’m thinkin’, not if I see you first, mate.
Rain’s pourin’. Every time I step off the bitumen I sink down to the top of me boots. Hardly a decent tree to shelter under so it’s not much use shelterin’. I keep walkin’.
I’m gettin’ cold feet in more ways than one. Me boots are leakin’; they weren’t never made for walkin’, and I’m thinkin’ of the bike I used to ride, which I sort of inherited from one of me mother’s old boyfriends. He left it with her to look after when they locked him up a few years back. He gets out soon. That’s why I let me girlfriend talk me into buyin’ a house out past Dandenong – which is a hundred light years away from West Melbourne.
I kept his bike boots. Mum reckons he paid a fortune for ’em. He got took. The bastards have rubbed both me heels so raw. I don’t know which foot to limp on, but I keep limpin’, sort of lookin’ back over me shoulder more frequent, and thinkin’ of how I shouldn’t’ve sold his bike. It was her fault, her naggin’ that made me sell it. They can wear ya down with their naggin’.
‘I can’t wear me nice clothes on the bike, Norman. Cars are more comfortable, Norman.’
More comfortable for her! We bought an old Falcon on Saturday and she took it on Sunday and drove it up to bloody Balranald to help her mother organise the weddin’!
I start thinkin’ of the head of hair I used to have, before I let her cut it off – after she’d tossed me mother’s old boyfriend’s snake-skin headband in the Salvo bin.
Old Samson lost his strength with his hair, but my best mate reckons I lost me bloody brains with mine, ’cause the next thing I do, I go out and get a job, see, get the first one I go for too – which only proved me girlfriend right again.
‘No one’s goin’ to employ you with that hair, Norman,’ she’d say.
So she’s got me workin’, bringin’ in nearly as much dough as her, and it gets so I can afford a packet of fags whenever I want one, so she makes me give ’em up and start payin’ off a three bedroom house that I can’t bloody afford and don’t want neither. Who needs more than one bedroom at a time, any rate.
I’m mud in her hands, I’m thinkin’. She’s got me on the potter’s wheel. She’s reformin’ me into some bloody sensitive new age guy. She’s hired me a grey suit and a frilly pink shirt that will match her ugly bridesmaids. I’m a snag for a Balranald bag, and I can’t even have a drag on a bloody fag.
Oh shit, I’m thinkin’, what am I gunna do? Oh Christ, I’m thinkin’, what I wouldn’t give for a drag on a fag right now. A whole packet of fags. I’d chain-smoke me way to Balranald. A packet of fifty. I’d smoke one a kilometre. A good smoke can last ten minutes. I reckon if them runners can do a mile under four minutes then I can limp a kilometre in ten. I start doin’ some multiplyin’ and subtractin’ as I limp on.
The light is fadin’ real fast. The sky’s lookin’ like someone’s took to it with a greasy mop, formerly used for cow-yard duty. It looks sort of green, sort of eerie. I feel like I’m the last poor bastard left on the earth. Maybe I am. Maybe the world ended and I’m the lone survivor. I look round me, wonderin’ if they’ve got dingoes out this way, and wonderin’ if dingoes hunt in the rain, and how hungry they might be. I look at me watch, change me rucksack to the other shoulder, take a match from me pocket and start chewin’ on it, pretendin’ it’s a fag.
It’s gettin’ close to five o’clock. I reckon I can pulp this match, usin’ no hands, in ten minutes. I start steppin’ it out, gnawin’ on me match and spittin’ out the splinters, but there’s no joy in eatin’ bloody matches.
I haven’t seen a car since I left Tooleybuc. There’s no signs nowhere. I’m limpin’ down the middle of the bitumen, thinkin’ I’m gunna be late. I’m gunna be late for a very important bloody date.
Then I hear him coming up behind me. He’s weavin’ all over the road, and if he’s got any headlights, they must be covered in mud. Then he brakes. The wheels swerve at me and I’m a goner. I jump back off the bitumen and the mud comes up to me knees.
‘How far you goin’, mate?’ the hat says.
‘Bloody Balranald, you crazy bastard,’ I yell, sinkin’ down deeper.
‘Every bastard on the road’s goin’ to Balranald today.’
‘You goin’ there this bloody time?’ I yell.
‘Just picked up me new dog. Goin’ piggin’ with Groover Powers and Murph Lawton. Ya know ’em?’
‘I don’t bloody know no one. Me bloody girlfriend comes from bloody Balranald.’
‘Got a girlfriend, eh? What’s her name?’
‘Mary bloody Lamb.’
Shit! That name sends shudders through me frame. What sane parents with the name of Lamb would call a daughter Mary? Me best mate, who at six thirty this bloody evenin’ was supposed to be me best man in a hired grey suit and pink frilly shirt but who is now languishing in the bloody Kerang lock-up sleeping it off in bloody comfort while I stand here knee deep in mud, always calls her Hadda Little. And Jesus does it nark her.
‘Are you gettin in, mate, or lookin’ for pneumonia?’
‘Might as well. Only one better way to commit bloody suicide.’
‘Watch me floor,’ he warns.
‘What bloody floor?’ I say as I crank the door open and look at a dog big enough to make two of me. I’m no giant, but I don’t communicate with kneecaps neither. Any rate, I’m aware by now that it’s no use goin’ in feet first on account of no floor. It takes me two attempts to get half me bum on the seat on account of the dog’s pushin’ harder than me. I make it on the second try, and sort of lift up, drag the door shut and sidle up to the dog.
It growls.
‘Is she related to the Wakool Lambs?’ the hat says.
‘Who? What?’
The dog’s snarlin’. His head is bigger than mine. He’s a white and brindle bastard and I’m not feelin’ lucky.
‘Ya sheila?’
‘I dunno.’
I’m tryin’ to find the end of the seatbelt. Not for safety, but attemptin’ to take some stress off the door that I’m sort of half sittin’ on, but the dog’s sittin’ on the seatbelt and its teeth are six inches long. It’s shovin’ ’em in me face.
I give up. I sit on the door handle.
‘Hope she’s not related to the Wakool Lambs. Never heard a good word said about that nest of wowsers.’
‘War? Coal?’ Supplyin’ coal for wars might mean cash. I’m interested.
The hat waves an arm. ‘I been piggin’ out there. Do any piggin’, mate?’
‘Yeah. Around West Melbourne.’
‘Bloody Melbourne. I knew a bloke who got took to Melbourne fer a operation once. He never come back.’
‘Yeah. I know a poor bastard who tried to get to Balranald one day. Nobody ever heard from him again neither,’ I say, but I’m still thinkin’ coal and war and wowsers, which, if you put ’em all together, could add up to big money. ‘Those Lambs,’ I say nonchalantly, ‘I s’pose they made a bit of dough out of the war – with their coal?’
‘Dunno nuthin’ about coal. Knew a bloke what was gunna marry one of ’em once, though. Grab us some fags out of that toolbox, will ya.’
I open the toolbox, which is devoid of tools. There’s a shirt, old socks, dog collars, a dead loaf of bread, bullets and, down the bottom, an unopened carton of fags.
I rip it open, my fingers remembering how. I pass him the pack.
He push
es a smoke under his hat, lights it. ‘Help yourself,’ he offers.
‘Gave ’em up three months back, didn’t I?’
‘I gotta give ’em up. Coughin’ me guts out.’
For five minutes the cabin shakes with his coughin’ and his hawkin’ and his dog barkin’ while he rides the centre of the bitumen. The land is flat. The crate is wound up and we’re flyin’.
‘Ah, bugger that cough,’ he says. ‘Lift the lid on a stubby for us, will ya, mate. There’s a sixpack at your feet somewhere. Help yaself.’
I help him and myself to a stubby, still thinkin’ about the bloke who was gunna marry one of the Lambs, and I’m sinkin’ me stubby like it’s the last one I’m ever gunna sink, which mightn’t be too far from wrong neither, after tonight. But I gotta find out about that poor insane bastard who was hitching up with a Lamb, so I say, ‘So what happened to him?’
He hawks one more time while I’m tryin’ to look for his eyes under his hat. He’s jugglin’ a beer in one hand, a smoke in the other and the dog must’ve seen somethin’ on the road, ’cause he makes a dive across the hat an’ knocks the wheel.
We hit the side of the bitumen and the wheels sink down in the mud. The hat belts the dog in the jaw with his stubby, heaves on the steerin’ wheel, and the bloody car rolls, don’t it? I wake up lyin’ face down in the mud, me rucksack on me head. I think me neck’s broke, so I try to roll to the side and take me last breath of air, and me rucksack slides off me head. I lift up me chin and in the last of the daylight I see this heap of rust, sort of like wrapped round a lone tree. And I see his ugly bloody dog hangin’ by its collar from a low branch. It’s dead and I don’t care.
I crawl then. I’m too scared to stand in case I can’t, too scared to wipe the mud from my eyes in case it’s blood, so I crawl on me hands and knees. I’m half blind in one eye and can’t see outa the other and I’m turnin’ the clean country air blue with female genitalia sexist curse words. I’m just crawlin’ and I’m spittin’ mud and curses.
Then the pile of rust starts talkin’ my language. I crawl up to where I recognise broken glass twinklin’ like diamonds in the mud, and I’m thinkin’ there can’t be nothin’ alive in there, but what’s in there is lettin’ go with some language that I never heard put better, so I pull meself up and I see the hat jammed between the steerin’ wheel and the tree, sort of wrapped around with rust.