Thought Crimes

by Tim Richards

  Just past a sign that said Timboolya 13, Noel pulled his rig into a decrepit roadhouse and ordered a plate of bacon and eggs.

  ‘Not eating?’

  ‘I’ll eat when I’m there,’ Jon said, hiding his desperate urge to keep moving.

  ‘Know anything about the place?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shithole.’

  ‘So people tell me.’

  The driver had almost polished off his food when the waitress started a conversation about waterskiing. After she repeated the same point about freeing surplus channel-water to top up the lake, Jon excused himself to take some air. Noel followed him outside not long after.

  ‘Nice girl, Tanya … But not half the piece her mum was. Blokes shot their wad at the sight of Tanya’s mum in a wetsuit.’

  With Noel cranking up the engine, Jon thought it a good time to thank him for the lift.

  ‘Least I could do,’ the big man said as he swung the rig off the highway onto a dirt road that carved a narrow path straight into a fierce rising sun.

  ‘I thought Timboolya was on the highway.’

  ‘It is … But there’s something you need to see first.’

  Falling at the last hurdle was a phrase Jon knew. A metaphor for radical disappointment, or cosmic denial. You never kill a man up front; you tease him right to the moment he thinks his worries are over.

  ‘I could grab another lift at the roadhouse.’

  ‘Mate, none of this is about wasting your time.’

  This detour wasn’t designed for rigs. If something half as big came from the other direction, they’d be fucked. That danger didn’t seem to trouble Noel, who gunned the pedal even harder than he had on the highway.

  Finally, that familiar hiss as the brakes did their stuff, and Noel brought the rig to a halt between two scrubby paddocks. Not somewhere you’d pull over to take in the scenery.

  ‘This way.’

  Jon followed the big man without asking, as if everything that might happen had already happened a dozen times over, and resistance was just another humiliation you didn’t need before the moment that ends all indignities.

  ‘Over there. Between those two trees.’

  Under the screaming sun, the tawny paddock married fresh rabbit shit with powdered rabbit shit. Thirty metres short of the trees he’d pointed out, Noel stopped and told Jon to go on.

  Beneath a craggy eucalypt, Jon saw what looked like the charred leftovers of a campsite. Drawing nearer, he saw the lumps were dead crows. A dozen birds lay rotting under the sun. Nearby, propped against the larger of the two trees, was a shrivelled body. Though the face was eaten away, two half-devoured tentacles told Jon that he’d found the man he’d travelled so far to see.

  Jon was standing there, uncertain what to feel, when the big man approached from behind.

  ‘Warned him about the dimmies. The gunk inside might not look like protein, but I figured it was stuff a bloke like him shouldn’t eat …’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘He was going up Timboolya to meet a mate … Guess you’re the mate.’

  Jon was trembling so hard he couldn’t have spoken, even if he’d had something worth saying. He’d travelled seven light years through space, and spent three earth years trapped in this disguise. All that time and energy had gone into tracking Jesno to tell him he could go home. He’d been exonerated, and the key witnesses had been jailed for their perjuries. There’d be a huge compensation pay-out.

  ‘He was my brother … Stubborn as fuck. But good.’

  ‘Yeah. Seemed like a bewt bloke … A real waste … I thought it best to bring him out here. Figured he wouldn’t want just anyone finding him.’

  Noel ambled back to fetch a shovel from the rig, and the men took turns chiselling at the baked ground and lumping dirt on the corpse. Neither said anything.

  Jon wanted to express his gratitude, but didn’t have the words. Thirty minutes in that paddock might have been three hours. Or vice versa. Job done, Jon returned the shovel to the big truckie, who clasped his shoulder.

  ‘Reckon we could both use a beer.’

  ‘Yeah … Shit, yeah.’

  THE DARKEST HEART

  Transmissions from the Darkest Heart

  Even as the only child of Christian parents, Ian Hall never really cared about Jesus. He sometimes drew comfort from the parables, but constancy was the thing. Life was more regular then. Sundays meant church. His parents told him that if you were lonely, or new to town, you could rely on church folk to take you in. They were good people, and the young Ian never questioned his parents’ judgement.

  True to their word, his mother and father made welcome any strangers who showed up at their church. They would often invite whole families home to dinner.

  The Watsons weren’t strangers so much as returned missionaries. They’d attended the local church before the Halls moved into the area, and had been overseas so long that few people remembered them. Naturally, Ian’s parents asked the Watsons to stay until they found somewhere to live.

  There were two children, Helen and Duncan. Ian was expected to be friendly with Duncan, a boy of his age, twelve or thirteen. And he clearly recalled his father saying that missionaries were the most special people there were. The Watsons had dedicated their lives to civilising African natives, which made them saints, according to Ian’s parents.

  Ian Hall would take his first impression of this family to the grave. Just off the boat from Capetown, they were death painted yellow, and his mother’s mouth fell open when the Watsons got out of the cab. They could have been stepping out of a funeral parlour advertisement.

  With the visiting adults sleeping in the spare bedroom, Ian shared the sunroom with Duncan so that Helen could have Ian’s room to herself. Despite her pallor, there was something about Helen Watson and her deepset eyes that stirred Ian. She had carrotred hair, and a pretty smile. A powerful ambience. When later examining three snapshots from that time, Ian found it difficult to understand this attraction. The faded prints suggested that the youngest Watsons should have been on a saline drip.

  At first, none of the guests spoke except the mother, and her sentences lacked a connecting thread. Mrs Watson was all over the shop. A comment about the price of lamb in Nairobi would be followed by elliptical remarks about her feet. But if husband and children were fazed by this, they kept any embarrassment hidden behind their death masks.

  Deeming this to be a special occasion, Cheryl Hall had cooked roast lamb for dinner, and the first time Mr Watson spoke was to say grace. This was by far the most rambling grace Ian ever sat through, and he felt for his dad when Mr Watson pronounced that grace should always be said prior to the carving of meat. Graham Hall liked to get his knife-work done before the plates were taken to the table. Not a huge issue – Ian’s father never took issue with guests, not even when they misquoted scripture – but this had to impact on his pride.

  After dinner, the three kids were sent to play ping-pong in the garage. While Ian was never more than socially proficient at the game, Duncan was tragic. Not that lack of hand–eye co-ordination perturbed Duncan. Nothing troubled the boy’s confidence.

  As the languid Helen sat to one side, gazing into space, Ian asked what countries they’d lived in.

  Duncan said that in Africa, the idea of countries was meaningless. They’d spent the last six years living among the Mgombi. You couldn’t convert the Mgombi to Christianity. You had to bargain with them. Everything was a trade-off. They’d agree to be Christian for one day a week, or one day a month, so long as you gave them what they wanted.

  ‘What did they want?’

  Reacting as if this was the most outrageous question imaginable, Duncan shrieked, doubling-up so abruptly that he couldn’t serve. He finally tossed his bat to his sister, who plucked it from the air left-handed, like a natural. While Duncan giggled, Helen took his place at the table.

  ‘They were Christian for one day a week if we agreed to be like them the rest
of the time,’ Helen said.

  After that, Helen barely spoke except to announce the score. More adept than her brother, she occasionally let rip with a big forehand, but talk wasn’t her thing. This hardly mattered, with Duncan dominating conversation from the sidelines, tossing out comments as he flipped through old Life magazines. Every now and then, he held up a photograph of a woman in a swimsuit and asked the ping-pongers to admire her figure. Duncan used a native term which Ian, from the lasciviousness of the boy’s tone, soon took to be a coarse word for breasts.

  When Ian asked if Mrs Watson preached, Duncan was disdainful.

  ‘Women never preach to men. They have nothing to teach them.’

  Still rallying, Helen betrayed not the slightest hint of insult.

  ‘Besides,’ Duncan said, ‘it should be obvious that mother’s had a nervous breakdown.’

  Although Ian had heard the phrase ‘nervous breakdown’, he had no idea what it meant. Gary Schultz’s mother had been through several nervous breakdowns. When Ian asked Gary about this, he was told that Gary’s mother couldn’t cope with married life because she was a nymphomaniac, which hardly clarified the issue.

  ‘Mother’s touched,’ Helen said.

  Ian had never known language to be so dangerously unpredictable. Everything Duncan and his sister said was loaded with unpleasantness or darkness. The Watsons relished elliptical communication.

  Ian regained serve just as his father called them to come inside. When Duncan reached the back door, he told Mr Hall that the two players would be in shortly. Ian was in control. He might never have a better chance to put Helen away.

  ‘Did you make many native friends?’ Ian asked after winning the final point.

  ‘Just Duncan,’ she said.

  The adults had been sipping sherry in the living room. Ian remembered his dad asking the Watsons if they had any slides of Africa. Graham Hall was a slideshow fanatic. He’d recently bought an expensive German projector that took one hundred slides in a circular carousel.

  ‘We’ve got too many slides,’ Mrs Watson said. ‘Hundreds.’

  Ian’s mother hankered for exotica. ‘We wouldn’t have to see them all,’ she said. ‘But we’d love to see some.’

  ‘No,’ Mr Watson said. ‘They’re not suitable.’

  Cheryl Hall was disappointed. Her sophistication had been questioned. She tried again, but the missionary was insistent.

  ‘Too many big toosas,’ Duncan ventured.

  Toosa was the term Duncan had used in the garage, and Ian was astonished that he could speak so frankly in front of his missionary parents. But Mrs Watson was hardly one for niceties herself.

  ‘Toosa is the Mgombi word for tit,’ she told Graham Hall, whose face formed an expression usually reserved for elephants crashing through the ceiling.

  ‘Quite,’ Mr Watson said, before gently placing a hand on his wife’s shoulder. ‘We’re all tired. It’s been a day.’

  Sweet Jesus

  Duncan wanted to know what books Ian read. Even if he hadn’t heard of the books Ian named, he disparaged them. He had a rare skinniness to match his yellow complexion. While changing into striped pyjamas, Duncan faced away from Ian, who was troubled to note the prominence of his ribcage, and the boniness of his arse.

  When Duncan’s mother came in to wish the boys a good night’s sleep, she kissed her son fully on the lips. That was shocking enough, but Mrs Watson then pressed her lips to Ian’s with the same intensity. Mothers didn’t kiss like that, and his mother would have been livid if she’d seen Mrs Watson’s kiss.

  After Ian’s dad came in to turn off the main light, Duncan began to speak of things no church friend had ever spoken about in his company.

  ‘My parents will hate it here,’ Duncan said.

  ‘In Australia?’

  ‘No, here. Sharing the same bed. They disgust each other.’

  Ian wanted to ask why, but was scared of being dragged down to Duncan’s level. He felt like a knight locked in a battle with evil, and Duncan’s evil was all the more potent because he had a peculiar charm. Ian had never met anyone with so much self-assurance.

  ‘I used to drink a cordial made from spider poison,’ Duncan announced. ‘It makes you convulse like mad, and sick for days. But when you recover, you fear nothing. The poison deadens the part of the brain that generates fear, and you become fearless.’

  Ian wanted to make a case for fear, but this urge was interrupted by a strange moaning. At first, he thought it was Duncan trying to get on his nerves. Then he realised the sounds were coming from his own room, where Helen was sleeping. An odd rise and fall, repeated, like a song or incantation, only more heartfelt.

  ‘Is that Helen?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘It’s her prayer-song. She’s sung it ever since she was taken by the chief of the Mgombi.’

  ‘Kidnapped?’

  ‘You’re such a baby,’ Duncan snapped. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

  By now jack of Duncan’s smugness, Ian called him a skinny little creep. He was so stupid, he’d never heard of Rock Hudson or Mary Tyler Moore.

  A long silence was punctuated only by Helen’s regular moans. Then Duncan snapped on a reading lamp. The boy’s skin looked even more ghoulish in the concentrated half-light, and he grinned like a madman’s apprentice.

  Approaching Ian’s bed, Duncan stood smirking for a moment before dropping his pyjamas to reveal a lurid penis gourd. This cone was seven, maybe eight inches long, hooped in bold red and yellow paint, and tapered to a fine point.

  ‘Touch it. It won’t hurt … I call it Sweet Jesus.’

  Without hesitating, Ian placed his hand under the cone and let it rest on his palm. Heavy as a plaster cast, the arrangement seemed remarkably permanent.

  ‘How do you piss?’

  ‘You insert a straw.’

  The boy explained that both he and his sister were initiates. It was part of their parents’ trade-off with the Mgombi. Duncan’s description made it sound like a genitals-for-Jesus deal.

  ‘Does Helen have one of those things on her whisser?’ Ian asked.

  ‘Of course not. Hers is different.’

  Duncan Watson returned to bed and turned off the lamp, as if everything that needed saying had been said.

  Ian remembered being terrified that the Watsons would mention these practices to his parents, that his family would be contaminated in some way. He’d seen zombie films on television, but none scared him half so much as Duncan’s shrill voice spearing out of the darkness.

  ‘Jesus knew everything God had in mind. It was a suicide pact. Worse than that, the form of suicide Jesus chose was designed to make his friends feel worse than shit for not having loved him or his father enough.’

  ‘But Jesus returned from the dead to prove his love for mankind,’ Ian protested.

  ‘No, you’re wrong. He came back to turn his disciples into emotional slaves. The Mgombi don’t read or write, but they see right through Jesus … When we asked our parents about Australia, they said we could be sure that we were Australians because we were uncomplicated. But neither of us feels uncomplicated.’

  Silence. And then Duncan began to laugh so convulsively that he had to drive his face into the pillow. That must have been enough to send him to sleep. After a short time, the darkness belonged to Helen and her painful song.

  At breakfast, the Watsons were vibrant as their hosts were shellshocked. Though Ian never discussed this matter with his parents, he suspected that they had been through an ordeal similar to his own.

  Mrs Watson insisted on cooking breakfast. In fact, cooking was a misnomer. Her fried eggs were heated to a point just beyond transparency. Ian couldn’t muster the courage to tackle one, but Duncan and Helen forked their yolks enthusiastically.

  Mr Watson mustn’t have taken breakfast, because Ian recalled him jamming tobacco into his pipe while his wife launched into a long, irrational monologue
. In all likelihood, Ian stared at the crotch of Mr Watson’s trousers, looking for a hidden cone. He’d expected the Watsons to stay indefinitely, but they left later that morning. Ian was never so relieved to see a taxi. His parents dashed to find the Watsons’ heavy luggage and cart it to the front gate.

  Ian was frightened that Mrs Watson might try to kiss him as she had the previous evening, but instead she rubbed his scalp and told him he’d need to eat hearty breakfasts if he was going to become a warrior for Jesus. Without saying a word to anyone, Duncan hopped straight into the back seat of the taxi, but Helen stood silently by the open door.

  In Ian’s last memory of the red-headed Helen, she was standing by the open door of the cab, dressed in a fashion twenty years behind the times. He’d hoped that she might smile at him and say goodbye, but the image that remained was of Helen scratching her genitals through the pleats of a tartan skirt.

  The Darkness Transmitted

  Things were never the same after the Watsons’ visit. All questions were deflected. Even now, if Ian were to ask his elderly parents what had become of the missionaries, they’d pretend not to remember them. At the time, his mother said Mr Watson had been offered a parish in western New South Wales.

  In the following months, the Hall family’s involvement with the church diminished. They attended services every third or fourth Sunday. No reason was ever given for this change. The family still prayed, and his dad still said grace, but Ian recalled him getting into a heated argument with a church elder after an evening service. Graham Hall now insisted that evangelism was immoral. Everyone had to take responsibility for finding their own way to God.

  Increasingly, their Sundays were spent on picnics, visiting relatives, or driving to the display homes springing up everywhere in the newly treeless suburbs of the outer east. Having been taught that good people make do, the young man saw his parents become obsessed with labour-saving appliances. His was the first family in the area to own a dishwasher.