The Lucky Galah

by Tracy Sorensen

  Back in her own house, Linda notes that the laundry floor is cool under her bare feet. As Jo naps, she takes a book in there, stretching her bare legs over the concrete. Sometimes she takes a spontaneous little nap herself, leaning against the wall, letting her head loll, a little line of drool escaping from the corner of her mouth. She is bored and under-challenged, but at the same time she does not feel moved to spend any more hours than necessary playing tennis or being on various committees (she has so far resisted overtures from the kindergarten committee and the repertory club). She begins to spend more hours in the laundry than she would care to admit. Sometimes her washing machine is silent; sometimes it is industriously grinding through Marjorie’s sheets.

  ***

  Kevin Kelly swings off the road to the One Mile Jetty, following a sandy side-track through the scrub to the ruined meatworks where the Dogger lives. He admires the Dogger’s Land Rover as he gets out of his own decrepit vehicle.

  ‘Ya there, mate?’ he calls, studying the cat pelts hanging from wire stretched from one crumbling concrete wall to another. He waits. After a long interval there is a groan from somewhere inside.

  ‘Time to get up!’ yells Kevin to the walls, and listens.

  Abandoned before it was even finished, the meatworks was always a ruin. Designed to be an abattoir and packing factory, it failed because the sheep hereabouts were grown for wool, not meat, and the investors hadn’t done their homework. It had been – momentarily – an impressive, empty edifice. Townspeople quickly raided it for anything useful: floorboards, copper pipes, glass windows. Now the roofless shell is the Dogger’s home. He sews cat pelts together to make soft rugs.

  The Dogger appears, filthy and possibly bloodied, although these patches could have been caused by red dirt staining sweat and spilt beer. His shirt is hanging open, revealing scars from a long-ago stoush. He is still a little drunk from the night before.

  ‘You’re looking flash,’ says Kevin Kelly. ‘Why did you go to all the trouble?’

  ‘Do me best,’ says the Dogger. He is carrying his rifle. He is ready for action, whatever it may be. He nods courteously, without making eye contact, in the direction of Marjorie and the shadows of little kiddies in Kevin’s car. He hops lightly into the Land Rover and starts it up.

  The two vehicles set off in convoy in the direction of Shark Bay.

  The Dogger drives with his rifle on the seat beside him. He makes appearances before the magistrate from time to time for drinking, swearing and fighting. When these incidents are reported in the local newspaper, they insist on using his given name (William) and he is described as being of No Fixed Address, even though his true address is perfectly well known.

  The Dogger is the son of a man who came to Port Badminton to get away from complications that had piled up elsewhere. He lived, angry and penniless, in a shack in the scrub, aided by a woman he’d beaten into submission. One day his own dogs mauled his children. The little girl died but the boy survived, leaving great scars running across his chest and around to his back. The man shot the dogs and a few days later shot himself. The boy and his mother lived on in the shack. He went to school in bare feet and used his father’s gun to shoot rabbits for dinner.

  The Dogger is practical by necessity but his soul is Tortured and Philosophical. He is not oblivious to the fact that some creatures are lucky and some are not, and that this can change at the drop of a hat. He admires the beauty of low-hanging stars in the night sky and the intelligence in the eye of a mother dingo. He shoots her, but not without regret.

  The Dogger enjoyed his first shred of simple good luck when he was nineteen years old and won a government contract to trap and shoot the dingoes. When he told his mother the news she wept for joy over her bottle of Yalumba port. A stroke had left one side of her body limp; not long afterwards she died. ‘She died happy,’ the Dogger tells himself when he thinks of his mother. He avoids thinking about his father and sister, although they sometimes visit him in nightmares.

  The Dogger makes his main living as a dingo trapper but he will also shoot rabbits and kangaroos that can be surrendered for bounty (both are considered pests) or sold for meat straight from his Land Rover in the main street. When it was still open for business, he’d sometimes be called up to work at the whaling station for a few hours, shooting at the sharks that could reduce tethered whales to skeletons within hours.

  By dint of evenings spent at the Port Hotel, the Dogger is sometimes drawn into miscellaneous schemes that require the services of a good, straight shooter. The current plan is for a man to waterski from Useless Loop at the bottom end of Shark Bay to Port Badminton at the top, a distance of some ten miles. The scheme has grown under its own momentum as the list of those desiring to be in on it expands. The plan is to tow three speedboats by road down to the Loop. Various other vehicles will follow, containing the Dogger, two other shooters, various fishermen and a posse of tracking station men. The main boat will drag the skier, and the other two boats will form a protective flotilla containing a shooter each to pick off any circling sharks. As only one person can be the skier, names are put into a hat. As this is the lucky period of Evan Johnson’s life, it was his name drawn from the hat.

  The participants head for the Loop. Men and women are nervous, children excited. The wind starts to pick up before they are halfway there.

  When they arrive, the children tumble out of the cars and soon discover that the buildings of Shark Bay are made of millions of tiny white angel-wing shells. The shells, compacted together underground over thousands of years, are quarried and used like bricks. The main street is paved with a different shell: pearl shells brought in by the pearling luggers. It’s a marine fairyland. The children run down to the water to wait for the dolphins that sometimes come to frolic in the shallows.

  The dolphins fail to arrive, so the little tribe of fun-seekers begins to search through the seaweed for worms. If they put the worms in the water, they reason, they may be able to attract the dolphins.

  The wind continues to pick up. The seas get heavier. Evan attaches the big wooden waterskis to his feet nonchalantly, but his heart is pounding. Rain begins to squall and drum down on his head as he rises up out of the sea on the end of his rope. He can only see the boat in front of him intermittently between the giant waves. Visibility is particularly poor because his horn-rimmed glasses are back on the beach under Linda’s care.

  Soon, he is being dragged along underwater. He hears the crack of a gun and loses his grip on the rope. He floats in the water in his yellow life jacket, squinting, thinking about sharks. Then a boat is beside him and he is, mercifully, hauled from the water. ‘We’re calling it off!’ yells the Dogger, rifle in his hand. ‘Oh, are you?’ says Evan, as if surprised and disappointed.

  Within a short time, everyone is in the local pub, discussing the operation. It would have gone off perfectly, they all agree, except for bad luck with the weather.

  One day, they’ll have another go.

  Evan and Linda Johnson drive back to Port Badminton in silence. While the conversation in the pub at Useless Loop was full of bravado, it is impossible to keep it up now that they are alone in the EH Holden, in driving wind and rain, sliding all over the muddy road. They miss a fence post by inches. Linda’s right foot involuntarily presses down on an imaginary brake. Evan finds this irritating, but says nothing. Jo sleeps on the blue vinyl seat in the back, sliding around but not waking up.

  When they get off the dirt and onto the thin strip of bitumen down the centre of the North West Coastal Highway, their minds relax away from a united focus on the road ahead and go off in different directions.

  Evan’s mind goes back to the moment he heard the gunshot and let go of the rope. As he let go of the rope, it was as if he were letting go of life itself. He replays the terror of it. Worse, there is the flavour of premonition about it, a flavour he cannot get out of his mouth. It is as if Time dr
ew back the curtains for just a moment, giving a glimpse of itself, like the moment Gypsy Rose Lee offers a glimpse of her nakedness in a quick flash before the curtains close again. But unlike the glimpse of a naked Natalie Wood, which was very pleasant (was she wearing a body stocking?), this glimpse of naked Time is very nasty. A leering thing. But if he says nothing, if he can just hang on to the steering wheel, this moment will pass, and everything will right itself.

  Linda’s thoughts, on the other hand, return to the sight of the scars across the Dogger’s chest and back as he carried his rifle past the beach towel territory she had made for Jo and herself. She watched him wade out to the waiting speedboat, put his rifle in first, then leap over the side in a light, precise movement.

  Evan and Linda are married because Evan, uncharacteristically, did not give the matter careful thought. He is meticulous about his work, undertakes rigorous research before buying an item such as a refrigerator or car, and takes great care of personal items, categorising and labelling them and knowing where they are. He still has the same pencils he had as an eight-year-old, worn and sharpened down almost to nubs. He still has the article from Hobbies Illustrated – cut out when he was eleven years old – giving instructions for making a crystal set teapot radio. It didn’t occur to him to apply this sort of care to his choice of a wife. He felt himself at a loss in this regard and grateful to Linda for taking the situation in hand. He considers himself very lucky to have a wife so attractive and competent. She cooks and cleans and writes letters on behalf of the family, even the ones to his own parents and siblings. She buys his clothes for him, breaking new socks out of cellophane and adding the old ones to the rag bag, all without discussion. He finds her changing moods, contradictory opinions and propensity for aimless chitchat a mystery, and quite often irritating, but has been reassured by Reader’s Digest that all of this is normal in the fairer sex.

  The marriage of Evan and Linda is like a Venn diagram, two overlapping circles. There’s the part in the middle they share, which at first is quite large. This has already begun to narrow down as the two circles move away from each other. Technical information and practical details regarding the Moon Race take up most of the rest of Evan’s side of the Venn diagram. He does not share these things with Linda, except in the broadest detail. There are also shadowy memories that can’t be spoken about because they are unnamed, like the feeling of being loomed over by an ominous chest of drawers. On Linda’s side of the diagram there is a grave sense that she has married the wrong man, or perhaps shouldn’t have married at all, or perhaps it would be better to go back to Melbourne and pursue an education, somehow, or visit the Dogger at the meatworks and abandon herself to sexual intercourse on his soft rug of cat fur, or run screaming, naked, up and down Clam Street until she is taken away to a cool, restful sanatorium in the Swiss Alps.

  The windscreen wipers swish and smear. Linda allows herself to indulge in the olfactory memory of the Dogger’s armpit.

  Evan, she notes, seems to have no smell. Even in the heat of Port Badminton, he is a person whose body odour rarely registers. As an animal, he is neutral to other animals. He causes no hackles to rise, no female animals to come running over. He is not sexless. He would appear to be normal sexually. But he has himself no sexual scent, or very little.

  At first Linda had no idea that this was a problem. In recent years she has been occupied by Jo, and starting a new life, and then the thrill of getting out of Melbourne and living in a place where the sun bakes off mould and anything damp. But the day came when she was there at the tennis court, waiting her turn, reading the letters page of The Women’s Weekly. What can I do? writes Worried Housewife. I have no desire to sleep with my husband. Linda took her eyes from the page, watched the ball go back and forth. Then she took a breath and read the answer: You must continue to pretend. Linda read this carefully a few times. Then she casually turned the page, as if the word PRETEND had not been lit up in neon lights. She looked up at Evan, playing tennis like any other husband. He was leaping, arching, delivering a smashing serve. What has this man to do with me? How did I get here?

  She looks at other couples. They have a connection with each other that seems bodily, organic, that Linda doesn’t feel.

  SIX

  Bumping around in the shadows

  Sweat is running out of Dr Harry Baumgarten’s springy black hair and down his forehead. His eyes are keen; he does not need glasses. The author of The Wonderful World of Australian Insects, he is on his way to Port Badminton’s agricultural research station to study the adult banana weevil. As he drives, he looks out for birds, because he is also a keen amateur ornithologist. In fact, his publisher has asked if he would write a follow-up book to be called The Wonderful World of Australian Birds. He is considering this request.

  Harry is unusual among Australian men in that he prefers sandals, unlike his peers, who stick to long socks and closed shoes. He likes to air his feet when it’s hot, and believes this helps prevent fungal diseases. He drinks espresso coffee made in a little Italian percolator and seeks out controversial or banned books on the premise that if a book is banned, it is probably interesting. A couple of years back, he read Manning Clark’s Meeting Soviet Man and got into a terrible row at a dinner party after he quoted from it.

  While his expertise is in the tiny details – the tiniest secretions of chemical, the tiniest thickness of hair or wing – he also likes to think about the big picture and is not at all afraid of bombast. Where his peers observe social convention in matters of religion, sex and politics – that is, to consider them private, almost like toilet habits – Harry likes to plunge in and draw people out. Sometimes, in doing this, he will come up against a great wall of . . . nothing. He will speak his mind, eloquently and at some length, only to find blankness in the eyes of his companions because they are still thinking, or suspicious, or surprised or offended. What he’d love is a feisty, exploratory, fearless response, but he is in the wrong circles – possibly the wrong continent – for that.

  Fortunately, this is offset by his knack for finding something interesting wherever he goes. He might find that the middle-aged wife of a colleague is practising the Japanese tea ceremony, or that there is an unusual variant of moth or meltingly delicious freshly boiled mangrove crabs. He enjoys making small improvements to his systems of work and lifestyle. For example, he has perfected a way of keeping a cabbage fresh and edible for weeks in the desert without refrigeration (wrap it in damp newspaper and keep it in the shade). In other words, he is slightly eccentric, but in ways that don’t, on the whole, bother others. He is thus able to slip through the social net of conformity and invigorate his fellow human beings. At a backyard barbecue, for example, he might bring out a bottle with a stick insect in it, attracting the attention of men, women and children alike.

  When he is not in the field, Harry lives alone in a flat in Perth, with views of the Swan River. In the lavatory there, he has a framed print of a Picasso nude in which there is something going in or coming out of every orifice. When he has people to dinner he might give them Hungarian goulash with Spanish wine and olives. He is known to have smoked weed and travelled across Europe. When he is in a good mood, he can be thrilling company.

  When he arrives in Port Badminton, a frisson goes through the tracker community, to which he naturally gravitates. Wives are keen to invite him to dinner parties. They go hunting for stuffed olives and attach coloured cocktail onions to toothpicks. They’re trying to match the standard set by Linda Johnson, who, it is said, hosted a dinner party that was elegant yet relaxed, with conversation both wide-ranging and intimate.

  ***

  The supermarket doors glide apart as we approach. Momentarily, I see Lizzie and me, reflected in the glass. We go down the usual aisles, Lizzie laying in supplies in case we have to stay indoors for a couple of days as the cyclone goes over. Tea-leaves, a tin of evaporated milk, a bag of birdseed, a loaf of white bread, a knob o
f pale pink sausage called polony. Tomato sauce. It is clear others have been doing the same: the tomato sauce is getting low. The girl at the cash register, in accordance with her training, says brightly, ‘How are you today?’ Lizzie ignores this but I politely raise and lower my white crest. The girl says, ‘Hello, cocky,’ and puts the things into two plastic bags. Lizzie hooks her leathery forearms through the handles.

  Back out on the footpath, she settles the bags at her feet and organises herself a cigarette.

  I think about my reflection in the glass doors. It always surprises me, how small I am. How birdlike.

  I think about how, all those years ago, Harry Baumgarten hunkered down beside my cage and had a good look at me. It was, perhaps, the only time in my entire captivity that I was seen for what I truly am: a bird. An animal with wings made for flying, a beak made for crushing wild grass seed, a cloaca made for laying eggs. Dr Harry Baumgarten honoured my Avian Self.

  We pass the Port Hotel, glance in. There’s a big crowd in there, urgent, making sure they have enough liquor or beer or wine to carry them through the storm.

  Dish: Stand by. Incoming rueful thoughts Harry Baumgarten.

  Galah: Where is he?

  Dish: Anthill country, Northern Territory.

  Harry Baumgarten: It’s strange to think that I hardly knew Evan Johnson, the man who – as a thought, a stab of discomfort – would accompany me through the rest of my life. I first saw him at a dinner party at his own house in Port Badminton.

  He seemed friendly, contained, straightforward. He shook hands, offered a beer. He introduced his wife, who waved across the room as she swept a small child off to bed. We ate crackers and drank Emu Bitter as we waited for the others. I was early.

  Later, I learned that Evan’s father ran a successful hardware shop in Caulfield, Melbourne. His mother played the piano and hosted regular card games. There were five ladies who came to the house, week in, week out, year in, year out. These ladies would burst into gales of laughter, incomprehensible to Evan and his brothers. Evan busied himself over little projects such as the creation of a crystal radio set in an old teapot for his mother. The first time Linda visited the Johnson family home, Evan showed off the teapot. His face in that moment was the face of a child, proud of his achievements.