‘What’s so funny?’ she asked, grinning along without knowing why.
‘Don’t you remember, sis?’ Ken crumpled the empty UDL can in his fist. ‘That ad?’
‘What ad?’
‘Things go better with Coke.’
‘Aw good go, you’re bloody womba you are.’ Kerry curled her lip but had to laugh too, slipping her hand into Steve’s.
A few steps away, Pretty Mary was still weeping into the current of the river. The next time it floods, Kerry mused, a little bit of Pop will be washed into the slipstream and start a long, slow journey down to the ocean. Ah well, it’s only right. He might not have known exactly where he was from, buggered up by missionary like so many others, but he knew he was a saltwater man, at least. And the borrogura calls us all back in the end, that great mother lode. The moon pulls the ocean and the ocean pulls us and everything is always pulling at everything else whether we know it or not, just like Grandad Chinky Joe insisted to the very end. The dugai can flap their jangs as much as they like, Pretty Mary had reported him saying, but us mob got the law of the land, granddaughter, and that’s that. We’s in everything: the jagun, the trees, the animals, the bulloon. It’s all us, and we’s it too. And don’t ever let the dugai tell ya different. They savages, remember.
‘Coming in?’ Kerry asked, stripping down to her sports bra.
‘Bloody oath,’ said Steve, ripping his singlet off. Kerry stood transfixed. Those sweet, sweet abs. The way his ribcage showed just a tiny little bit, high up above the planes of muscle sloping below and around them. Oh yeah, baby. But Kerry’s enjoyment was short-lived.
‘Eeyah, knock orf!’ Pretty Mary erupted from the water’s edge. ‘No swimming, you moogle lot! The Doctor’s in there, you’ll be shark goonah by this time tomorra!’
Kerry heaved a great sigh. Jesus Christ. Here we go again. Signs and fucking wonders, at every turn.
‘Mum. We swim here all the time.’
‘C’mon, lad,’ said Ken to his son, yanking his T-shirt off over his head. ‘Us mens is right.’ He dived in, surfacing to taunt Kerry with loud pronouncements on the refreshing qualities of the water and the benefits of being a wardham. But Donny sat on the bank and dangled his skinny ankles in the current. He was shame to undress in front of Steve.
‘Don’t Mum me.’ Pretty Mary stubbornly kept on at Kerry. ‘They bin promised that minya and they never got it. You stay outta there, my girl. And Steve, you specially. Ya stay on dry ground if yer know what’s good for ya.’
Steve looked at Pretty Mary in bewilderment, until she explained that being of the shark totem, Ken could safely swim in the river, and his protection would likely extend to his son. She and Kerry, on the other hand, risked being ripped limb from limb. And that went triple for Steve, a whitefella with no protection at all. They had to stay out of the water, she insisted fiercely. A debt of blood is the most serious debt going, and has no time limit.
Steve groaned. Being eaten by a shark seemed preferable to dying of heatstroke.
‘I thought you swam here all the time?’ he muttered unhappily to Kerry.
‘I do. And I reckon it’s a load of horseshit, cos the last time The Doctor got spotted this far upriver was the 2014 floods. But ya can’t tell Mum, eh.’
‘Mmmm, lubbly and cold here, almost too cold,’ Ken taunted from mid-river before duck-diving to the bottom to search for Granny Ava’s long-lost kingplate.
‘Oh, GET FUCKED, BRO!’ Kerry yelled, sprinting to leap and bomb off the highest boulder. She exploded through the surface of the water just as Ken’s glistening silver mullet re-emerged, swamping him and making him choke on a mouthful of river water. Kerry’s laughter rang over the island like a bell.
‘You’ll be sorry!’ Pretty Mary lectured over Ken’s spluttering. Shaking her head at her children, she went and sat in the shade to cheerfully prophesy more disaster. In a move that made Kerry stare, Steve leaned over the rocks to soak his singlet. Then he squeezed the excess over his head, put the singlet back on over his sculptured body, and went to sit and yarn with Pretty Mary.
‘Pussy,’ accused Ken with a last spluttering cough. He shook his hair wildly to make spray fly in all directions. Elvis ran up and down the riverbank, barking orders.
‘And here’s me thinking you was all about culture, bruz,’ Kerry said to Ken. She nodded at Steve. ‘That’s respect, that is.’
‘He don’t believe it, but,’ Ken mocked. ‘He’s just making out. Cos of you.’
‘Well, good. Least he makes a fucking effort. I don’t see Savannah here,’ Kerry said, rolling onto her back and ignoring Ken’s tedious need to be better than every other male around. A better pub fighter. A better culture man. Or just a better fucking idiot. But even Ken’s dickheadery wasn’t going to spoil this swim for her. The water was too glorious; their triumph in busting through Buckley’s fence was too perfect.
She gazed at the shining river bend. No houses. No noise, other than Elvis. No whitefellas. This was the Australia she yearned for, the green sanctuary of the island with its palms and figs and wattles. The hoop pine proud in its place casting its deep shadow. She was suddenly overwhelmed by a longing that they could turn back time; set up camp and live together on the island, fish and yarn and laugh themselves silly over nothing like they had in her youth. But no good. Ken would be whinging after the first night, wondering who won the seventh at Wangaratta. Donny would simply lie down and die without his computer and even she liked the comforts of home, truth be told. They were soft, her generation, soft and spoilt. At seventeen she’d thought she was shit hot after them first sneaks in Coolie, running amok in Burleigh and Surfers. Surviving her first stretch in BWCC the year after, but nah, gammon. She woke up to that thug life bullshit real fast.
Tough wasn’t scraping by on petty crime or winning street fights or even going to the lockup. Tough was not relying on the white man for anything. Like Granny Ava and Grandad Joe, dodging the mish life to live on what they grew and hunted and earned. Slaving as a stockman and a domestic, yeah, but managing by a minor miracle to do it for wages, not under the whip hand of a god-bothering priest or mission boss. Tough was Granny Ava, big belly full to busting with the only child she ever got to keep. Shot in the back and swimming a freezing river with only a chain around her neck for protection. Pop too, in his own way, the old bastard. He had his faults, but he was staunch. And that’s what graves are for, the realisation dawned on Kerry. They distilled your family history. They took what your ancestors did and who they were and gave it to you in one place, so you could go there and think about their lives and learn the lessons you needed to learn in order to keep on going. Inspired, Kerry swam over to the island. She leaned down and touched the rich dark earth of the riverbank with her right palm. Her fingers were the exact colour of the soil, and they blended into it as though they were raised tracks made by some mysterious passing creature. The months to come would need the strength of Granny Ava and Grandad Chinky Joe, and then some, if the river bend was to be protected. I promise you both, Kerry said silently. I promise to try and save it.
‘My daughter should be here,’ exclaimed Pretty Mary sorrowfully, not expecting any answer since there was none to be had. She bent to wash her face and hands in the current, then stood with river water streaming down her arms and cheeks. The wet rocks beneath her glistened black and shining. The old lady gazed down where fish darted and shimmered as the slanting sunlight hit their scales. When she looked back up her jaw was set. She’s switched, Kerry saw in surprise from the far side of the river. She’s like she was years ago, before Granny Ruth died. Pretty Mary clapped her hands together loudly. Once, twice, three times. Then she put her hands to her mouth and cooeed. The intense call reverberated across the water and through the trees on the island, then died away to a deep and solemn silence. Even Elvis quieted down. Everyone waited. Then Pretty Mary – the old Pretty Mary – put her hands on her hips
and turned her attention to the living. In the river, Ken and Kerry trod water, watching her.
‘Listen up, youfla. Pop’s at rest here now. We’re done with Sorry Business. And that means we gotta step up and finish this blooming jail nonsense, ya hear?’
‘Bloody oath,’ said Ken.
‘Only what I’ve been telling ya for weeks,’ responded Kerry.
‘I’m in,’ said Steve, sitting in the shade of the gums.
‘Me too,’ said Donny, leaning on the car.
‘Right,’ said Pretty Mary. ‘Let’s get cracking then, and go do something about it.’
As Kerry climbed out, Steve offered her his strong right hand, and she clasped it willingly. He hauled her up onto the bank, then kissed the top of her head before throwing his arm around her wet shoulders.
‘Definitely whipped,’ Ken teased him as they headed to the car, but Steve was too happy to care.
From its branch high above the clan, a kookaburra sat, watching in silence. Nobody but it saw the slender dark shape cruising slowly upriver towards Granny Ava’s tree, the tip of one pointed fin just breaking the surface.
Chapter Nine
‘Another hit?’ Steve lifted the steaming jug off a tiny stove hidden beneath the reception desk. Kerry shook her head. Steve’s coffee made her head spin, and she wanted to test out some gym equipment. It was a lifetime since she’d been a teenager pumping iron at BWCC. She quickly pushed away the thoughts of Allie that followed on from ‘BWCC’ and plonked onto the vinyl seat of the lat pulldown machine. She grasped the chrome bar above her head. Muscle memory told Kerry exactly how her back and neck and arms would feel under the strain of the weights.
‘Bit wider,’ Steve said, coming to stand behind her with his hands lightly on her shoulders. He placed her palms a couple of centimetres further from the centre of the bar, and adjusted the peg. ‘Now, nice steady pull. Easy does it.’
Kerry’s cheeks bulged but the bar barely trembled. Steve frowned and fiddled with the weight stack.
‘That’s forty kay gee now,’ he said. ‘Try again.’ Kerry did, with the same result. She let go of the bar, puffing heavily, and rubbed at her right shoulder. When they swapped places, Steve slid the weight up and down its rail with ease. He shrugged, baffled, as Kerry failed for a third time to bring the bar down.
‘Do you want to try thirty kilos?’ he asked, already bending to alter the weights a second time. ‘Or twenty?’
‘Thirty kilos is less than what Lub Lub weighs,’ said Kerry scornfully.
‘You have to lose the ego,’ Steve advised with a small smile. ‘Start where you are and work from there.’
‘Okay, okay.’ Kerry heaved ferociously at the adjusted bar only to have it come plummeting down in a rush. She swivelled in her seat and pinned Steve with a suspicious glare.
‘Might be cos I moved this?’ he grinned, gleefully showing her the steel safety pin that had been locking the weights securely in place.
‘Bastard,’ Kerry accused, abandoning the machine to chase Steve around the enormous room. He dodged and feinted like a footy champion, leaping from the sofa bed to behind the reception desk and all around the weight stations, until Kerry realised that she was never going to catch him. She stood winded in front of a poster advertising 8 am Boot Camp.
‘You’ll keep. I’d better let ya get ready for Root Camp, anyway,’ she informed him loftily, heading for the ladies. Steve watched her arse rise and fall in nylon shorts as she walked away, and checked his watch: 7.19 am.
‘I might have to join you,’ he said, following her in, and stripping off his boxers.
‘Oh, hello sailor,’ she laughed, seeing that he was already hard. ‘This’ll be quick …’
‘Plenty of time,’ he assured her, stepping into the shower cubicle, where Kerry was already gleaming wet beneath the spray. He began to lather her up and down with shower gel. The white bubbles contrasted with her skin, running in narrow rivulets down her tautly muscled runner’s thighs. Kerry smiled. She reached one hand down to fondle his cock, gently sliding the loose, thin skin over the hard shaft. The one clear bonus of fucking cisboys. Steve closed his eyes and sighed with pleasure.
‘Turn around,’ he told her, running foamy hands over her breasts and down down down past her abs to the front of her thighs. He pressed in even closer. At the back of her neck where a tattooed dolphin swam beneath her hair, Steve first began to nibble and then to nip hard at her neck. Kerry braced her hands against the clear shower panels. She slowly began to bounce her hips in time with Steve’s gently probing fingers. When she was moaning without knowing that she was, and when the world had shrunk to the water falling down on her and what was happening in and around her junoo, Steve slid wetly inside her from behind and began to thrust. He gripped the top of the cubicle hard with his free left hand and steadily fingered Kerry until she felt a great shuddering wave begin to surge through her – just as the first client of the morning pulled in to the car park.
‘Hurry up! Get out!’ she urged him sixty seconds later. Steve needed to maintain the pretence that he wasn’t living illegally in the gym. He snatched up his clothes, half tripping on the wet tiles, and scrambled into the men’s change room just in the nick of time. Soon customers began to stream in. Working stiffs, Kerry observed, who needed to fit the gym in at 8 am so they could sell the rest of their lives to capitalist bullshit. Quite a few were soccer mums coming to perve on the instructor. Occupational hazard, Steve had said when he’d first shown Kerry the gym, and seemed secretly disappointed when she roared with laughter, giving zero fucks about soccer mums. Piqued, he’d asked Kerry that night about Allie for the second time. ‘Just an old fuckbuddy,’ Kerry had brushed him off, and something in her answer told Steve not to ask any more questions.
‘Ya picked up my shirt so I’m stealing yours,’ Kerry yelled as she left.
‘Bloody thieving blackfellas,’ he teased from the men’s. ‘Nothing’s safe from you lot!’
‘Well, you will go and put it on my land, pal.’
Kerry was already astride the Harley, smirking behind her visor, when a white ute followed by a flash red sports car arrived. If working a straight job meant you could afford the latest Mazda6, it had something going for it. Not enough to tempt her into an office – if such a chance even existed – but something. She kicked the Hog to life and roared away to a Centrelink appointment in Murwillumbah. It was time to give them overfed mothers a tune-up. Black Superman had put his hand in his pocket for the funeral in the end – and just as well. If it was left to the bureaucrats Pop would still be lying in the morgue with a five-thousand-dollar pawn tag on his big black toe. Kerry had a long and impressive history of professional thievery behind her, true, but stealing her grandfather’s corpse from the secure cold room of the Patto Funeral Home was beyond even her.
~
Ken and Savannah stood shoulder to shoulder blocking the front stairs of the council building. Like the rest of the protesters, Ken was holding a placard that read NO NEW JAIL: JUSTICE REINVESTMENT NOW! Unlike the others, he had zero commitment to the principles of non-violent resistance informing the rally; he was considering instead what it would mean to knock Jim Buckley’s teeth down his snivelling gammon white throat. Beside him, Savannah ground a smoke out on the footpath and then kicked the butt symbolically towards the council offices. Pack of elite wankers.
‘Shame, police state!’ yelled a dreadlocked seventy-year-old anarchist, as a cop car slowed and then drove up onto the footpath beside Ken. Three dozen pairs of angry eyes locked onto the vehicle and the men inside.
‘How they hanging, Kenny?’ asked Senior Sergeant Luke Chin, sticking an elbow out the window of his paddy wagon. ‘Not gonna give us any drama are ya, mate?’ he asked pointedly as he scoped out the assorted lunatics, blackfellas and socialists who had been attracted by Ken’s hand-lettered flyers.
‘I didn’t start th
is fight,’ replied Ken. ‘Jim Buckley did. He’d steal the eyes out of a blind cockie’s head, the corrupt prick.’
‘Well, let’s try and keep it all legal, mate,’ said Luke. ‘And I’ll see ya at the pool comp Thursday.’
‘Ya still owe us the entry fee from last week,’ Ken reminded Luke, who had been skilfully avoiding paying his debts since he played with Ken in the Patto under-seventeens.
‘Shout ya a pie?’ Luke offered, putting the paddy wagon into first gear.
‘Make it two. Steak and mushroom,’ Ken said. ‘And get us plenty of sauce too, ya cheap bastard.’
Luke pretended he hadn’t heard this jibe, and drove away from what passed for dissent in Patterson to park in the shadow of the Unknown Soldier, opposite the Sugarloaf Bakery. He squinted up at the statue bowing its head sorrowfully over its inverted rifle. Unlike most small country towns, Patterson hadn’t had an Unknown Soldier until 1980, the year Zayan Damali took a triple dose of mushrooms at a Channon dance party, and applied for a regional arts grant while still high as a kite. The bronze ANZAC he’d sculpted was exactly three millimetres broader in the nose and fuller in the lips than standard, and had been bothering white Patterson ever since. Luke grinned, winked at the Soldier, and went inside the Sugarloaf.
‘Let’s link arms,’ suggested a pregnant hippy, back at the demonstration. Everyone agreed that this would be a brilliant display of their solidarity against the prison industrial complex, and would make a top photo in the local rag to boot. When the councillors turned up several minutes later, the protest stood as an immovable barrier. The sole beleaguered Green was allowed through with approving backslaps; the other six councillors were forced, to the sound of booing and jeers, to detour through the rear. The linked protesters weren’t able to shuffle quite quickly enough to prevent their democratically elected reps getting inside but Ken broke free. In a move reminiscent of his days with the Brisbane Bullets, he abandoned his placard to make up fifty metres in seconds. It was too late though: the politicians had already fled inside and locked the back door. Ken stormed back around the front to stand in the public gallery with Savannah and the others. The Green did his best, but it took less than fifteen minutes for Jim Buckley’s DA to pass. When Ken saw the mayor smile in triumph, his blood pressure shot through the roof.
Too Much Lip Page 14