Stanley, in his turn, was dumbfounded that Gerry could then befriend someone like me—an ally of the very forces that had turned Queensland so rotten for so long. He refused to be in the same room with me, but Gerry didn’t seem to mind. Defeated radical, defeated establishment, Gerry apparently couldn’t see much of a difference.
Which was why, possibly, that when it came to Stanley’s biggest protest of his Highwood days, Gerry sent me to cover the story. This time Stanley’s cause was the last thing his friends from the old era would have imagined. It was gun control. He was fighting against gun control. The federal government, faced with a massacre of terrible scale by a lone man with a semi-automatic rifle in Tasmania, had decided enough was enough and was setting out to reform the gun laws. And Stanley, his house racked with lethal weapons of all types, and no longer capable of trusting any sort of government, no matter what its intentions, saw one last battle that couldn’t be lost. He sent in a cheque to take out a full-page ad in the Herald, declaring revolution and rallying all gun-bearing townsfolk to the barricades.
Gerry read it over with a sigh. ‘Go out there and see him, George. Calm the poor old bastard down. I can’t print this.’
‘Me?!’ I said, horrified. ‘He’d shoot me on sight.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. It would hardly help his argument, would it?’
‘Gerry, he hates me. From his point of view I’m part of the whole problem.’
‘That’s what I mean. Talk about old times with him. Get his mind off it, make him see this gun thing isn’t so bad, that it was far worse in the old days, the police state and all that. Hell, you two have lots to talk about. I’ve always thought so. Tell him you’ll do a story on him if he wants. He can make his point, but I’m not gonna print this. It’d start a bloody riot.’
And so I drove out there.
Stanley’s property was to the west of town. The road was gravel all the way, climbing up towards the high edge of the escarpment. Near town farms lined the road, dairy cattle grazed in cleared fields, but the further I went the more tangled the hills became, and the bush closed in. Most of it had been logged at least once before, and here and there were stark quarries of naked rock. There were fewer houses, fewer signs of farming. I crossed creeks that in heavy rain would block the way, climbed up the sides of gullies where moisture gleamed on stony walls. And finally the road dwindled to two ruts of dirt that picked their way around the hillsides, bisected by clumps of rock that knocked against the bottom of my car. It was a track that only one vehicle ever used, and that vehicle was Stanley’s old Toyota four wheel drive, because his property was the end of the line. Only ten miles, but it took me something close to an hour to cover the distance.
I came to a gate strung between two tree stumps. The gate was laden with signs, jagged black letters painted on sheets of old fibro. No Trespassing. Beware of Dogs. Shut This Gate Behind You. And one that was presumably fresher than the others. Owner Armed and Will Protect Property.
Not exactly welcoming.
I got out and opened the gate, then drove through and was careful to stop again, close the gate behind me. From there it was one last steep, rattling climb before the track levelled out onto a small shelf on the hillside. To the right the land dropped away into a deep gully, its floor an impenetrable mass of trees and vines. Ahead the hills climbed into a high ridge, densely forested, that rose to the southern rim of the escarpment. And to the left was a parcel of level land, partially cleared, upon which Stanley had built his homestead. It was a world enclosed by sky and mountains and trees, into which the sun would shine for only a few hours a day, and there was no other sign of habitation in the valley. Only Stanley and his dogs.
The house itself was built of grey cement bricks roofed with corrugated iron, and for all the years that Stanley had been there, it did not quite look finished. Piles of bricks and a cement mixer waited at one end, and for a verandah a few sheets of tarpaulin had been stretched from the eaves to some nearby trees. Still, it was sizeable and looked neatly built, and under the tarpaulins were arranged comfortable armchairs, a large wooden table and a brick barbecue. Up behind the house was a water tank, several small sheds, and finally a low structure that I took to be the kennels. Even before I turned the car off, I could hear the dogs barking. I waited in the car until Stanley emerged from the house. It seemed safer to assume that if any of the dogs were roaming, they would at least not attack without his command. Nor, I was relieved to notice, was he carrying a gun.
But he wasn’t pleased to see me.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he said.
He looked as angry at the world as I’d been told he felt. Fifty years old, perhaps, but short and wiry, dressed only in ragged pants, the hair on his chest tufting white. His head was nearly bald and his square black-rimmed glasses were spattered with paint. His face seemed to be all bone—a passionate face, hard and intelligent, and perhaps a little crazed. No wonder he’d scared the life out of the authorities in the old days. They knew, as politicians had always known through the ages, that a man who looked like that, so lean and hungry, could never be trusted to keep his mouth shut or play the game right.
I leaned out the car window. ‘Gerry sent me,’ I said. ‘To get your side of the story.’
‘He’s got my side of the story.’
‘He’s not sure it’s legal to print something that incites citizens to actual violence against the state.’
‘That’s the one right we do have! A government living in fear of its people is the only government that might actually listen to them. History proves it time and time again.’
Beyond the house, the dogs were barking ceaselessly.
‘I don’t disagree, but surely there are other ways to say it. If we could run it as a story, as an observation, rather than as a declaration of war . . . I mean, there are some people around who get a kick out of shooting things just for the sake of it, politics or no politics, and if you get them all fired up, well, people could get hurt.’
‘Can’t help taking the official side, can you?’
I got very serious. ‘Trust me, Stanley, I have no more love or faith in governments than you do. And I should know, I’ve seen them from the inside.’
He stared at me a moment, then turned and faced the kennels. ‘Be silent!’ And all the dogs stopped in mid-bark. He turned back to me, smiling coldly. ‘You can get out of your car now if you want. I only let them loose at night, when I’m asleep.’
And so I interviewed him. We went inside and he showed me around his house. It was surprisingly well appointed. The floor was only polished concrete and the walls of brick, but there were rugs everywhere, wall hangings and paintings and four or five large bookshelves, all crammed. The furniture was sturdy and warm, there was a large open fireplace and a wood stove and lots of candles and kerosene lamps. He had a generator out in a shed which he ran for several hours a day to keep the freezer and the hot water going, but there was no electric lighting, no television, and no phone. He would have preferred a solar panel to the generator, but his little valley didn’t get enough sunlight to make it feasible. Otherwise there were a couple of bedrooms, an office that was overflowing with magazines and journals and one manual typewriter, and finally, taking up one wall of the living room, his gun collection.
I knew nothing about guns, had never even touched one in my life, but I took photos as he posed before them and pointed out various makes and models of rifle. There were twenty at least, some of them apparently quite rare and expensive.
‘They bring these new laws in,’ he said, pointing, ‘and I’ll have to surrender this one, and this one, and all of these. All they’ll leave me with is a twenty-two or something. If I’m lucky. Even then I’d have to join a gun club, and build some sort of safe to store it in. What would be the bloody point?’
‘Do you actually use all these guns?’
‘I shoot a bit. You get feral cats up here, wild dogs that come around and fight with my pack—so
, yeah, you need a gun for the vermin. And I got some targets set up about the place. It’s a skill, you don’t just stand there and blaze away.’
‘And that sign on your gate?’
He considered the guns. ‘When I first got here I had the drug squad busting down the door at all hours and they could have done any damn thing they liked. They already had, back in Brisbane. For all I knew, one of those nights they might have just popped me and been done with it. Who would have stopped them? So I got the dogs, and I started getting guns. I’d had enough.’
‘And now?’
‘You think those times won’t come round again? Queensland is permanently fucked, believe me. We got more Nazis in this state than Hitler did.’
‘A few lunatics . . .’
‘For now.’
‘But it’s precisely those people who are most dead set against gun control, just like you.’
‘Exactly. You want them to be the only ones with guns? Because law or no law, they’re gonna keep theirs. So I’m gonna keep mine.’
I jotted notes in my pad. I didn’t understand him at all.
‘What will you do if the laws get passed? Will you give the guns up?’
‘Fat chance. I’ll bury them somewhere off in the bush. And good luck if they wanna search up in those hills.’
‘And what would you say to all the victims of shooting deaths in the country? What would you say to their families?’
‘Welcome to the fucking real world. I didn’t hear any of them offering to help when I was being crucified.’
We would never be friends.
But Gerry printed the article and not long afterwards the new gun laws were passed anyway, and Stanley refused to surrender a single cartridge. Graham took a couple of police out to his place, but the guns had disappeared from the wall, and Graham knew there was no point combing the scrub for them. Stanley blithely stated that he’d destroyed them all and was happily abiding by the law. Of course, his distant neighbours still heard him firing rounds at various times of the day or night, hundreds at a time it seemed, till it sounded like combat, so it was safely assumed that somewhere up in the hills, Stanley was still fighting his war.
Where better, then, for May and I to retreat?
On the run, as we were, from one of the very enemies who had sent Stanley into exile in the first place.
FORTY-FOUR
The plan had been to reach Highwood by early afternoon.
That was the plan, but I’d forgotten about life with alcohol. It was already beyond noon when I woke suddenly, aching and ill, and from there we never really caught up with the day.
I squinted at the daylight, confused. Then I lurched out of bed and got to the phone. There was no way to call Stanley direct, so instead I called Gerry at the newspaper office.
‘George,’ he said, ‘I heard about Marvin. It’s been in the city papers. Who’d have thought he could do something like that to Charlie? I mean, I know he was rotten and all, but . . .’
I was rubbing my eyes. It was hard to think straight. Empty wine bottles were everywhere. ‘He didn’t do anything, Gerry, but it’s a long story. The thing is I need to get out of sight for a while. I was thinking of Stanley’s place.’
‘Why? What have you got to do with any of it?’
‘I know Marvin didn’t do anything, and no one is supposed to know that, that’s the problem. And right now I don’t want to be seeing the police either.’
‘As bad as that?’
‘As bad as that.’
‘So what do you want me to do?’
‘Go out and see if Stanley is home. Tell him I need to stay there for a while. He won’t like the idea, but his place is perfect.’
Gerry sounded doubtful. ‘Why would Stanley want to get involved with your problems?’
‘Just make sure he’s home and that he knows we’re coming. I can explain the rest when I see him. He’ll help. Not because he likes me, but because he hates other people even more.’
‘We? Who’s we?’
‘It’s me and a friend. And, Gerry, don’t tell a soul about this. I don’t want anyone in Highwood to know we’re there.’
There was a pause. ‘George, I’ve had a few calls from Emily. She’s been trying to reach you for the last couple of days. She’s worried, especially since this Marvin thing.’
But when I thought of Emily, something in me quailed. I had no idea how I could explain things to her, not without going through all the ancient history I’d never wanted her to know. And then there was May. How could I ever explain May?
‘No. Not even Emily. I’m sorry, Gerry, I’ll get to her eventually, but not yet.’
‘Okay, if that’s the way you want it.’
We got off the phone. May was standing in the bedroom doorway, her hair tangled and some of the old curls emerging defiantly . . . a memory of the younger May that jarred with her face, so much older, and tired.
‘Get packed,’ I said.
But then we had to wait for almost three hours, until Gerry called back. We sat at the kitchen table, not speaking, watching the clock on the wall tick around. There was no more alcohol in the house, nothing to dull the hangover or to alleviate the deepening depression that I’d learned years before was actually a chemical thing, the symptoms of withdrawal. I needed another drink. I listened constantly for the sound of a car in the drive, for footsteps in the gravel outside, but there was nothing. Maybe they’d never find us here, no matter how hard they looked, but I could never be sure. May felt it too. She’d withdrawn into herself a little. We both had. She was right. In the old days we’d always been in hiding of a sort, from Charlie, but this was different. There was no excitement in this, no spice of betrayal. This was a trapped, suffocating sensation, with no conclusion in sight.
Finally the phone rang and it was Gerry.
He said, ‘Stanley will meet you here at the office.’
‘The office? I wanted to go straight out to his property.’
‘He’s not convinced, George. And besides, he’s gotta come into town today for supplies.’
‘Someone will see us if we just roll up the main street.’
‘You don’t have to. Just park round the back. No one will notice. By the time you arrive I’ll be the only one here. And it’s not as if the whole town is on the lookout for you, George. Why would they be?’
I considered it. We’d have to pass through Highwood either way, and a quick detour to the lane behind the newspaper office would hardly make it worse. We wouldn’t be in my car, we’d be in May’s, with its tinted windows. And it was getting too late to argue. I didn’t want to spend another night in Brisbane.
‘Okay.’
We were in the car and on our way, with May behind the wheel. We stole through the western suburbs, and on the city outskirts we stopped at a suburban mall and stocked up on food. It was already a big enough favour that I was expecting of Stanley. I could hardly demand he feed us as well. In the supermarket I found myself watching the aisles, studying the other shoppers warily. It was paranoia, another reason to get away. We visited a bottle shop as well, bought cartons of beer, bottles of wine. We didn’t speak about why. But if May and I were going to bury ourselves in the safety of Stanley’s place, then there would inevitably come a long dark night sometime, with no one there but each other and nothing to do but wait . . . and after what we’d already done, what was there to discuss, what defences were left? All the rules were in abeyance.
We stacked the food in the car and got back on the freeway, passed Ipswich, out onto the Cunningham Highway. Away south and west the mountains rose in sharp blue lines. There were no clouds today, no haze. It wasn’t as hot either, and anyway, the heat was different out here. It wasn’t caught sweltering between street frontage and footpaths and a river that barely flowed. Instead it baked off the ground and rose to an open sky. And as Brisbane fell behind I felt the tension in me uncoil minimally and the hangover fade, with the speed of the car, the breadth of the countrysid
e, the presence of May beside me. We came to the turn-off and the road sign, just as I had that night ten years earlier. Highwood, it said. From a newly formed habit I looked back at the highway as we turned. No one followed, and the bitumen rolled away behind us, empty and clean.
‘You know,’ said May, ‘maybe this is right. This feels better. We’re out in the open, we can breathe.’ She smiled at me. ‘All my life I’ve been stuck in the city. I can’t even remember when I last saw the stars properly.’
I agreed. The sprawl of Brisbane, all its problems and memories, could only be a quagmire for the two of us. This was better. Much better. I pointed at a notch in the line of the mountains.
‘That’s where we’re heading,’ I said.
But the light was already fading by the time we hit the foothills. May steered the car up the winding road as I tilted my head out the window. Dusk was falling beneath the trees, and it was much cooler here after the warm day below. I smelled earth and rotting leaves. Birds called in long mournful notes. And when we broached the last rise the forest closed in darkly, as it always did, and in moments I saw the rutted track that led off to the substation. I caught a glimpse of grey steel, the top of an electricity tower, the wires marching away towards the mountains’ rim, and abruptly I was remembering everything. The cold concrete floor and the pale frigidity of Charlie’s skin. I knew who was responsible for it all now. Somewhere down in Brisbane they were still searching, and sooner or later they would find out we were gone, and then . . .
We cleared the trees and Highwood approached. The western ridges flung deep shadows over the valley. A tractor hurried homewards across a paddock, and in another field cattle huddled outside a milking shed. I wound up my window against the air, and to hide my face behind the tinted glass. This was no casual homecoming. Then we were on the outskirts of town. There were cars moving on the streets, people in their yards, lights switching on in houses . . . but no one lifted a head to so much as watch us go by. We turned into a small lane that ran behind the main street. Halfway along was a large fenced yard that formed the back of the Highwood Herald building. There was a shed beyond the fence, for parking cars. Gerry’s was already there, alongside a muddy Toyota four wheel drive. We pulled in and parked beside the others, and May switched off the engine.
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