I rob banks because that’s where the money is. What was she thinking? Buckley’s overwhelming passion, the thing that really made him crack the fat to end all fats, was being the mayor. She’d seen him preening in the role, week in and week out. Every issue of the Herald had him swanning around and pontificating on the prospects of the shire. Hadn’t he swelled like a toad when Black Superman called him Mayor Buckley at the funeral? Kerry grinned widely. Robbing the real estate had been the obvious, lazy approach. If you want to kill a snake, you kill the head, you don’t waste time mutilating the body. She laughed out loud as she accelerated up Nunne Street, with visions of the council chambers burning to scorched bare earth behind her.
On the other side of town, caution was called for: council would definitely have cameras, and it would be on the security patrol’s route. Kerry found a large green industrial bin to park behind, and checked that the bike was invisible from the street. No cars around. No sound of engines, just the sound of the disco off in the distance, echoing over the tin roofs. Careful now, girl. Head down, helmet visor low, walk shoulder-swinging like a man. Find the torch in the side pocket of Donny’s old red schoolbag, cos the fucking visor makes it midnight. Kerry pushed the hard plastic edge of the visor up a bit. Enough to see three metres in front of her. It’ll do. It’ll have to do. Looky there, a security firm card already folded into the front doors to mark their first visit of the night; beautiful. But quickway now, don’t fuck around. Bust the high toilet window, scrape them sharp window fragments out. Helmet tossed deep into the bushes and feed yaself inside, become a brown snake like Pop, travel head first like a skinny person always can. Torch in ya teeth, hands down, down, down now bracing flat on the loo seat: hold my weight ya plastic bastard, hold my weight …
In at last! Inside the council building. Listening, on all fours, over the hammering of her heart. No sirens. Nothing. Adrenaline surging through every cell now, back on the job after how long? Yeah baby! Like riding a bicycle. Never forget. And never forget the thrill, either, the fucking awesome aliveness of stealing back what’s yours.
Getting to her feet in the bathroom, Kerry looked and shied backwards in sudden fright. Ned Kelly was gazing at her from the mirror. A narrow rectangle of her face showed through the black balaclava. She grinned: it was another sign, but a better one this time. Good old Ned, good on ya mate, good on ya digger! Appreciate the support, Unk. But no time to linger. She opened the bathroom door, and soon found herself in the main foyer.
Expecting at any moment to hear sirens and a blaring cop loudspeaker telling her she was F.U.C.K.E.D. fucked, Kerry hopped over the reception counter and began ransacking the open-plan workstations. She flung aside bits and pieces of useless stationery, diaries, pens, USB sticks, a hundred packs of aspirin, photos of council-worker holidays in Bali and Thailand, tampons, gold coins, silver coins. She pocketed a few tens and twenties, but otherwise, to her great dismay, the drawers contained nothing, nothing, nothing. If there was jackshit here for her, she really would torch the fucking joint, truesgod she would. One way or the other Buckley would feel her wrath.
She looked up at the clock on the wall, breathing hard, sweat running from beneath the balaclava onto her neck. How the hell could it be eight-thirty already? She tried another workstation. Locked drawers on this one, much more promising. Kerry fumbled in the red bag, found a flat steel bar and jemmied her way in, the chipboard splintering easily beneath her tool. Ho ho! Bingo, dingo! Two top drawers that were actually tills— But instantly she dropped flat to the carpet, put her hand over the torch beam as a car drove past just on the other side of the massive glass front wall of the building. Don’t be a cop. Don’t be the security patrol. Heart pounding in her dry mouth, the thudding telling the driver: Keep going, keep going.
They did.
She leaped up again, scooping twenties and fifties into the open mouth of her bag until the tills were empty, even of gold coin. Was it enough? She had no idea how long they would need the QC. Every court case she’d ever seen was done and dusted in under half an hour.
Eight forty-five.
Calculate ya risks, girl. Think, think hard! Blue Light Disco, all the Patto cops looking for smuggled vodka and perving on drunken children … she had fifteen minutes at best. Then it would be time to spark up this poxy joint and run like hell.
Bent low, nerves pumped like she was on crank, Kerry made her way over the corridor to the internal council rooms.Would Buckley have stashed the backpack in his office? Could she be that lucky? She took a deep breath at the thought, and kept on going.
At the far end of the corridor stood a plinth in a low beam of light. It held a small sculpture of Andrew ‘Cracker’ Nunne, noted philanthropist and only son of the first white settler in Durrongo Shire. Kerry paused. Three generations of her family before her had worked for the Nunnes, building their cattle empire for them. This patriarch had been a hard, clever bastard, by all accounts. The sculpture had him wearing an Akubra, arms on his hips, with a coiled stockwhip clasped in his right hand. Yeah, that’d be about right. But it was brass and brass was valuable, even if Cracker Nunne was not. She weighed the statue in her hands. It’d be missed immediately, but Kerry didn’t give a rat’s. It’s not like it was gonna take council all day tomorrow to find out their cash floats were empty. The goonah was going to well and truly hit the Patterson Regional Council fan in spectacular fashion at 9 am, twelve hours from now. Assuming it didn’t explode a lot sooner in a panorama of sirens and flashing lights.
Kerry glanced down the corridor to the offices, and then out at the dark street. Nine-oh-three. Well past time to get the fuck out. The odds of the backpack being here at council, she told herself, were minuscule. And like the song says, the secret to a long life is knowing when it’s time to go. Kerry headed towards the rear door. Before she reached the exit, though, she stopped. Her face drained to grey and her knees weakened and buckled; she groped with an unsteady hand towards the nearest wall.
Standing before her was Grandad Chinky Joe, six foot four in his worn canvas trousers. Her ancestor wore a felt hat over his straight black hair. In his hand was an unlit corncob pipe, like the ones she’d seen in old cartoons as a kid. Seeing what Kerry held, Grandad Chinky Joe frowned. Trembling, she quickly shoved the statue of Nunne down into her bag until he was submerged in the illicit cash there.
Kerry straightened up. She tottered a couple of steps backwards, then took off her balaclava. Her great-grandfather had recognised Old Man Nunne, but would he know her? How could he? And how much English did he have, anyway? Was this Old Man going to growl her now for stealing? It was Aboriginal Law: never take what isn’t yours. Not goods, not time, not dignity, not freedom. Nothing. Stick to your own fire and keep to your own business. But it was their business, what council did on their land. The dugai were the thieves, not her. She was just effecting a few choice personal reparations. If Grandad Chinky Joe knew she was here to protect the island he would understand, Kerry was convinced of that. Didn’t stop her mouth going dry, but. She felt light-headed, as if she might vomit.
‘I’m trying to save Granny’s island,’ she croaked. Grandad Chinky Joe nodded minimally, as though he already knew, and didn’t much care for further explanations. Then the tall figure stepped further inside the corridor, and beckoned her to follow. Feeling the gulf yawning between her and the intoxicating freedom of the back door, Kerry staggered after him. She should have been fleeing as fast as the Harley could take her. But instead she followed the Old Man past a huge portrait of Buckley shaking hands with a conservative prime minister. You sleazy fucker, thought Kerry, wishing she had a knife and forgetting for an instant to be frightened. She could improve the painting Zorro style, slash slash slash.
When Grandad halted, Kerry found herself in front of an imposing steel cupboard bolted to the rear wall of Buckley’s office. Grandad placed his left hand on its smooth grey steel, and gestured at the padlock. Kerry glanced
up at the wall in panic.
Nine-oh-eight. Time’s a-wasting. But what if the backpack was in the cupboard? Her breath caught in her throat.
‘Ngaoi need cash, bungoo, kami!’ she whispered urgently. ‘If there’s yugam bungoo here then ngaio gotta yan, onetime … yan! Yan!’
Grandad looked at her and his words were thoughts.
‘Yugam yan. Yugam yan.’ Don’t go. Not yet. He patted the cupboard like it was a favourite horse.
‘In the cupboard?’ she asked frantically, and he nodded.
Filled with fresh hope of finding the backpack, Kerry got out her jemmy and attacked the padlock. Metal screeched against metal but she was past caring about noise; very soon it wouldn’t matter what Buckley had hidden away behind these closed doors. She had to clear out fast, or she’d be locked up for longer than Allie. But when Kerry finally yanked open the top drawer inside the cupboard she gasped, and forgot all about the backpack. The tray hidden inside the drawer – glass-topped and lined with soft velvet like the ones in museums – was full of very old, carefully preserved relics.
An ochred dhili bag in exactly the same weave Pretty Mary had used for Pop’s ashes. Convict handcuffs, a tag telling of their discovery during the building of the Caledonian River bridge in 1889. A souvenir program from a Nigger Minstrel Show in Casino in 1907. Two big lumps of ochre – one white, one brown – and a curved stone axe head right beside them. And in pride of place in the centre of the tray, one more thing, faintly gleaming. A silver object pinned by a beam of yellow light falling from a carefully positioned globe.
Black velvet underneath the object, glimpsed through several jagged holes.
What?
Kerry fought bravely to hold on to what was real, fought to distinguish atoms from ghosts and whispers. But it was hard, so hard, for she felt all at once as though she had no lungs inside her, and no heart. No substance at all. Whatever she was at her centre had drained away, and her thin gloves clasping the front of the tray were empty sacks. She looked to Grandad Chinky Joe, who gazed down at the kingplate, just once, and then bared his teeth in triumph. The Old Man breathed out onto the glass top of the tray, a long deliberate breath. Faint and trembling, Kerry looked down into the drawer again. She felt as if she was fading fast, observing the scene from afar and on high, floating rapidly away. Was this what it was like to die? Was she even alive? Before she could contemplate her mortality further, she felt her lungs fill with one gigantic intake of breath and her body returned to the room. She was strong now, flesh and blood and guts; she was real. And the object beneath her was real too: she hadn’t imagined it.
A palm-sized crescent moon with a dozen bullet holes, slung on a metal chain, inscribed with the words: King Bobby Saltwater.
Granny Ava’s necklace.
Fearful, Kerry hesitated. She looked to Grandad Chinky Joe, who nodded urgently and gestured at her neck. Take it. Wear it. Kerry picked up the silver crescent, felt the weight of the metal. Somebody, sometime, had attempted repairs – several of the metallic chain links were ordinary iron. She gingerly put her head through the loop and rested the punctured plate on her chest. She touched it warily, wondering if it was the badge of a king or of a slave.
A broad smile spread over Grandad’s face. Then he pointed to the tray and made an emphatic sweep of his arm, speaking several rapid sentences, mostly Bundjalung. The only words Kerry caught were ‘ngaoi’ and ‘wiya’. I give.
It was nine-fifteen. She could hear cars outside, the buzz of traffic building now as parents drifted to the hall. It would be madness to linger but when she went to leave, Grandad blocked her way, insistent she empty the drawer. So Kerry moved fast, grabbing at those things that would fit in her half-full bag – the handcuffs and lumps of ochre, the dhili bag and some quartz pebbles – and shoving them on top of the statue until the bag straps strained. That’ll do. She had to flee. There was no time left to burn the building and now, with Granny’s kingplate around her neck, not the same inclination to, somehow. She had come looking for revenge but was leaving with the most precious object imaginable. For tonight, that was more than enough.
~
Kerry bolted outside, blind and deaf to everything other than the crescent that hung around her neck like a circle of fire. The fingers of her right hand pressed exultantly into the sharp edges of the shotgun holes. As if by clinging to those murderous metal ridges, her fingertips pricked by them, she was holding on to her mother, and her mother, and her mother, binding the generations of Salter women tightly together in one secret act, one secret place. She gave a cry of triumph as she ran to the Harley: this wasn’t just fighting back. Tonight, they were winning.
Kerry flung herself onto the bike, and kicked it to roaring life. As she reached for the throttle she saw red running down her hand, and shivered. More than a century later, and still the kingplate was wet with their blood. Yet Grandad Chinky Joe wanted her to take it. He wouldn’t have shown her otherwise, wouldn’t have come to her tonight. Wouldn’t have beckoned her into the private chamber where four generations of history lay inert behind a locked steel door. The kingplate had saved Granny Ava’s life and in doing so had very nearly marked her death – the glory of stealing it back was worth any risk. It would make an exquisite birthday present for Pretty Mary.
Kerry revved the bike.
She had fat wads of cash in the bag on her back.
She had Old Man Nunne and his bloody stockwhip in there, too.
She had Granny’s Ava’s kingplate around her neck and a clear road home, and when she dropped her wrist, the Harley took to that road like the clappers, as if Hell had opened up behind her.
Chapter Eleven
The smoke penetrated everybody’s clothes and hair. It drifted in a white cloud past the house jack and the stacked timber, and came to rest in a low blanket above Stockmans Creek, just beyond the Marsdens’ back fence. Smoke filled the XD, where Donny sulked, dragged from his computer by an aunt determined that he would see the light of day. Pretty Mary’s clapsticks rattled softly to end the ceremony; as the sticks fell silent, the only sounds were the tinkling creek, the distant crows and the low wheezing of the pregnant Jasmine Marsden.
Pretty Mary beamed as she turned to her clients. When she had discovered that Jasmine was not only having a little girl but was also turning thirty-five, the same age as Donna, Pretty Mary had grown sentimental, and lowered her normal fee by fifty dollars.
‘You won’t have no more trouble,’ she reassured Jasmine, who was sucking on a blue asthma inhaler. ‘I’ve explained ya not here to make trouble or to disrespect the country.’ Pretty Mary laid green gum leaves against the wooden stumps of the shack. ‘Our Pop’s been visiting you, that’s all. My father-in-law, God rest him. Wanting to see who’s here now he’s passed.’
‘Thanks so much, Aunt Mary,’ said Jasmine, grateful, as her coughing eased. ‘Now we might get some sleep at last.’
Two waark in the paddock across the road flapped their wings at the scene, helpless with laughter. Pretty Mary shot a warning glare at her totemic siblings through the thick smoke haze, but it did no good. Proper cheeky, them crows. She resolved to growl them if they got any louder.
‘We want to do some creek regen once the house is fixed,’ Ryan Marsden offered, looking proudly over their ragged five acres. They had put in mangoes and paw paws, a chook pen was underway, and a new fence made from old pallets now alerted the wallabies to the presence of the veggie garden. With Mount Monk only two paddocks away and the creek burbling beside the house, it was a lovely spot for a young family to dream about the future. Or would have been, if not for the poltergeist.
The spirit world had been causing all manner of difficulties for the Marsdens. They would lie rigid in bed until the early hours of the morning, hearing the groans and murmurs of the poltergeist echoing around them. Their marriage, already severely tested by the shock discovery of a massive termite in
festation in the stumps and beams, frayed further with every sleepless night. Now Ryan put an exhausted arm around his wife, hoping her optimism was warranted.
‘Ya replacing the stumps – good. If ya gonna do something, may’s well do it properly, eh?’ Pretty Mary gestured in approval at a dozen concrete beams lying beside the stacked timber. She had decided she liked the Marsdens. They had their heads screwed on right. ‘Pop’s not angry with youse,’ she went on, lighting up a fag from the coals in the smoking drum. ‘Just having a good old dorrie at what youse are up to. You might have seen the story about him in the paper a while back? Pop Owen Addison?’
Ryan confirmed that they had indeed seen pictures of the teenage Pop holding a large boxing trophy, and another photo of him, much older, with the eyepatch he took to wearing after moving to town, where a puckered Goorie eye socket was cause for consternation.
‘Queensland junior champion he was. Silver Gloves,’ Pretty Mary skited, stashing her clapsticks in a Crazy Clark’s bag and folding it into her brown vinyl handbag. ‘During the war. He did the lot: boxing, rodeo, timber-cutter, stockman. Gang foreman for years. Ended up elected to ATSIC, would ya believe? That’s how we got our place, see. Bank manager turned nice as pie when he seen them pay slips …’
Decades later, Pretty Mary was still agog at the three miracles of Pop’s middle age. His sudden elevation to ATSIC Councillor, with a jaw-dropping salary that they had at first assumed was an accounting error; then the invitation for Pop to go sit in an air-conditioned office with his Grade Three education and discuss the complexities of a mortgage with Matty Nunne’s brother Russell. And the third, culminating miracle: the house on Mount Monk Road itself. A place of their own that no mission manager could waltz into in search of lice or dust or dissent. A house where a person could plant a tree and not be told that it was the wrong tree, or in the wrong place, or that he had to rip it out because permission had not first been sought from the cow-cockie’s missus. A home where a family could be raised, free of the awful fear of being moved on when the work dried up or the dugai goodwill had drained away. The house had come too late for her Mum’s generation, booted from island to mission and then back again. But for Pop and Charlie and Pretty Mary, there had been a brief window in the nineties when the miracle of home ownership had become possible. If he had sometimes pissed in the sink after a night on the turps, if he’d given her a sore jang more than once, if he’d made the young lives of Ken and Donna something of a misery, Pretty Mary would never, ever forget to praise Pop’s name for walking bravely into the Commonwealth Bank that day and making their home a reality.
Too Much Lip Page 16