by Peter Docker
‘Brother.’
The whispered voice is right in my ear. I don’t know how I don’t pull the trigger. It’s the recognition of the voice in the same moment of the panic-fear gripping me that stops me. Mularabone.
‘Brother. What are you doing?’
He kneels down next to me. ‘Did you see me get up?’ he says.
‘No, I...’
‘Were you sleeping? The Sarge will kill you.’
‘I wasn’t sleeping.’
I look around. The helicopter-sized redbacks are nowhere to be seen. Mularabone is looking at me hard.
‘You fucken better not be.’
‘I had a dream.’
‘You were asleep!’
‘Not a sleeping dream. A waking dream.’
‘What’s going on?’
We look up. The Sarge is there. Neither of us heard him coming.
‘What now?’
‘I had a ... vision.’
‘A what?’
‘I have dreams when I’m awake.’
The Sarge kneels down. He and Mularabone share a look in the darkness.
‘What did you see?’
‘Redback spiders as big as helicopters surrounding our camp. You mob were daddy-long-legs – and you all backed out down the valley and left me here.’
The Sarge turns to Mularabone and they whisper in Language. Then he turns back to me.
‘Daddies kill redbacks, yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘Get the others up. Leave our rolls. Make it look like we’re still here. Ghost camp.’
Mularabone and I nod.
‘Where are your defensive perimeter mines?’
I point with two fingers at the locations. I show The Sarge the clacker attached to the stock of my weapon with two lacky bands. He nods. We move down and wake the others. We quickly pad up our bedrolls with branches cut from the scrub. The Sarge hangs his jacket over a low branch near his bedroll. Then we start to move away down the valley the same way I saw the daddies go. The Sarge comes up to me.
‘In your dream you watched us go.’
I nod.
‘You’re staying. Dig in.’
‘What?’
‘You haven’t got long. Dig in.’
The fear of being left behind in the dream comes crowding back in on me. ‘Sarge?’
‘I’ll stay too,’ says Mularabone.
The Sarge waves him off. ‘Not your dream.’
Mularabone opens his mouth to protest but The Sarge jumps in.
‘We don’t have time. You convince them we’re still here. Icing on the cake. When they start – fire everything. We’ll be coming down behind them for a sweep. Don’t leave your hole.’
Then he is gone, shepherding the rest of the patrol down the valley in the direction I gave him. They’ll go a couple of hundred metres and then hook back around. I grab my short shovel and start to dig. I’m sweating hard in the darkness. I never saw the resolution. Just me abandoned. Is The Sarge punishing me? Does he think I was asleep? The ground is hard. My shovel noises are loud as a bulldozer in my ear. I dig. I’ve seen those new rocket-propelled grenades go off on the range; I don’t wanna be above ground. I thought The Sarge said that this was a training patrol, that there were no Water Board within cooee. I sweat. I dig. Further up the valley I hear an owl hoot. I stop and listen. They’re coming. If they’re not already here. I reckon I’ve got a few minutes. I check my watch. Dawn in an hour. They’ll be taking up fire positions. Aiming at the empty bedrolls, and me. I’ve made enough of a hole to just get my body below ground level. I attach the shovel to my pack and look out. From somewhere up the ridgeline I hear the tiniest of metal clicks. They heard me digging. Soon they’ll send a probe. If they have infra-red they’ll only find one heat signature. Mine. They’ll still want to kill me. I settle into my shallow hole, put my finger on the red switch of the clacker, and wait. My heart seems too fast, my breathing too loud. With my next in-breath I consciously slow down the release.
Out to my right I see some movement. The form is indistinct in the darkness but much closer than I thought. Shit. Inside my mine placements. Gotta go. I raise myself to my knees and take aim.
Crack! Crack!
I fire the double-tap and then drop flat into my shell-scrape. The bush in front of me erupts with firing. I hit the clacker and the anti-pers mines go off with an earth-shattering kerrump! There is half a second of silence and then three or four weapons open up on me again. I’m hugging the earth in the bottom of my hole, holding my weapon above my head and firing like crazy. Up on the ridge to my left the rest of my patrol opens up and within moments the fire coming my way ceases. I hear The Sarge moving them down the hill. The Sarge was right: training, training, training.
I raise my head and look out. The first light is coming now.
‘You right, Conway?’ The Sarge calls from up on the ridge.
‘Yo! Yo-yo!’
Then out to my right flank I hear a distinct whimper. I swing my weapon, and before I know it, I’m running at the sound. The Sarge would tear shreds off me: I should’ve been firing. Right in front of me a Water Board trooper stands up. I stop, and we both prop, looking at each other over our barrels and sights. Jack. I haven’t seen him since my mother...
His body tenses. I take up second pressure on my trigger. We can both hear The Sarge and the rest of my patrol getting closer. Looking into Jack’s eyes is like staring into the chasm of the giant redback spider. Except for that dark wriggling thing in there turning over and over itself like a bucketful of maggots.
Crack! Crack!
There are two shots fired from behind me. The Sarge won’t take prisoners. I lower my weapon. In another thirty seconds it’ll be out of my hands. Jack glares at me, and this time there is a flicker of something more distinctive in his eye – like all the maggots have formed into one being, and I see the flash of the tail of something that was on the surface, flicking as the unknown thing dives down to the depths. He turns, and disappears into the scrub. I squat down. My breathing is ragged. In a moment, The Sarge is standing over me.
‘C’mon Conway. Gotta go.’
The others are fanned out and facing outwards into the scrub, on high alert for a counterattack, each with three or four confiscated weapons slung over their shoulders. I get up and dust myself off.
‘You hit?’
‘Nah.’
We move off. My hands are still shaking.
Ten: Watchin the Footy with Me Mates
We’re watching telly. Me and the other Water Board troopers. I look around to see us all lounging around in uniform. My mates and me. We’re drinkin beer. I’m drinkin beer. On the piss with me mates. Maybe my brain has forgotten that soon my body will get sick. Or maybe my body has forgotten that soon my brain will get sick. That the disease will grow like a living shadow within me. The other troopers around me, me mates, they seem to know. They know the grog road and walk down it as steady as pelting rain. Their heads are up, but slightly too high from the arrogance, and never held straight on, always at an angle, from the crazy mix of guilt, lies, greed and righteousness. These troopers walking. Walking in the rain of alcohol in my brain. I know the grog dreaming. We all do.
On the telly is the footy. Maybe we’re walking to the footy. We would be if we weren’t slumped on a couch. I’m more slumped than the others. The drugs they’ve injected me with keep me down here like a long-necked turtle curled up in my shell. I look from the beer at the end of my arm to the 3D images in front of the wall. Footy. Brown-skinned players with flashy skills flowing across the faraway green of the MCG.
‘That’s real grass,’ comments one of me mates.
‘Bullfuckenshit!’ retorts another.
‘It is!’
‘Whadda they water it with, Banzoil?’
Laughter.
‘Euuagh!’ I add (to which they’ve got no answer).
The camera suddenly goes tight on the only white player. Me mates all get excited. He�
��s the first Djenga for twenty years to play for Collingwood! The fullas all marvel at him. Toast him. Yell their hopes and dreams into the 3D picture in front of us. I hear myself laughing and I don’t know why. Even here, in my drug-dulled state, wearing the Water Board uniform, there is something else. I know this is a lie. That the heart of the grog dreaming is about lies. About self-delusion. I’m not a trooper. I never played footy. I don’t drink grog. Before the Water Board there was no grog here for a hundred years. That old grog will smash me to bits. Will destroy me and all the possibilities of me, and my children, and my children’s children.
One of me mates slaps my back. I look down at the brown bottle of beer in my hand. That hand is so far away. So totally foreign to me. Like it’s in a different culture. I concentrate and the bottle slowly begins to travel up towards my face. I fix my eyes on the bottle as though breaking the stare would destroy the levitation trick. As it comes close I see it is too high, I’ve lined it up to my eyes not my mouth. I adjust the thought and down it comes and clatters into my teeth. My front teeth.
At least I’ve still got them, this thought says from a tiny lost corner of my mind. The cold beer tips down my throat and the bottle is travelling back again, until my arm is extended and it is fucken miles away. I don’t remember giving the order to move the bottle away again. There is some kind of spring-loaded thing going on. I stare at the brown bottle in my hand, as though I’ll wear it down, and it will confess its allegiance through my withering glare.
From somewhere outside of me I think I hear Mularabone. I can’t tell if he’s laughing or weeping. Then I know for sure it is Mularabone; something in my reaching drunkenness finds something good and strong to hold onto. I can’t tell if I’m laughing or weeping. I know for sure it is Mularabone. He is straining a scream through a grunt as the pain flashes through his body. Fuck! He must be close. Real close. The cell next door.
My sloppy grin is lopsided and fake. I notice that I’m dribbling beer and spit on my trooper’s uniform. I concentrate on the mouth of the beer bottle. As I gaze at it, it becomes Mularabone’s eye. Pupils wildly dilated but still fiery bright. The eye winks at me. That wink fills me with strength. Like I’ve been injected with it. And I know what I’m talking about; I’ve been injected with a lot of shit lately. My muscles tingle as they come alive and stand by. I shift my gaze to my fist. I balance the bottle on the arm of the couch and change my grip to an underhand one. It’s like watching grass grow, watching my hand change grip. I turn to the trooper next to me. He laughs and takes a swig from his beer. But the grog gives me a power too. I know that. A power pushing me to the strength of chaos and havoc. I’ve got to open myself to the grog power.
I remember my intact front teeth, and bite down hard on my bottom lip without warning, without giving myself a chance to think about it and back out. I bite down hard until my skin splits and the blood mixes with my beer dribble, and the pain gives me enough cut-through-clarity to see myself as a warrior again. I flash on my grog warrior and smash the bottle into the trooper’s face. The other bottle smashes too and he reels backwards, his face a mask of blood and glass. Something hits me from behind. I swing around and slash at the other trooper with the shattered beer bottle in my hand. It hacks into the flesh of his cheek and he screams. Adrenalin is coursing through me now, waking me up. An alarm is sounding all around us. Something else hits me. Glass, beer and blood run down my neck. I turn to confront a third trooper. He smiles at me. I lunge at him, going straight for his throat. We both make contact with our bottles and he goes down. The side of my head feels ripped open. I’m really waking up now. They haven’t given me pain for a few days; it’s new and fresh. I’m shouting something. I don’t know what. Then it filters through.
‘I’m not your mate.
‘I’m not your mate.
‘I’m not your fucken mate!’
The white footballer is tackled heavily and drops the ball. I take a half step away from the screaming crowd and the blurry shape of a trooper blocks my way. He is saying something to me but I can’t make out what it is. He is reaching out to me with his electric shock baton. Right as the end touches me, I place my hand on his shoulder as if we were old mates helping each other to stand up during a big session on the grog. He hits the shock button and the charge travels through me to him, sending him flying backwards out the door. I bend down and grab the baton from his grip.
‘Ya can give it out – but ya can’t fucken take it!’
I stand swaying in the doorway looking out into the brilliant sunshine. The trooper lies on his back. His skin is blistering and he is screaming and trying to roll over. I turn back into the cell. There are helmets and gloves hanging by the door. I jam a helmet down on my head, shouting away the pain from the helmet going over the wound. I grab some gloves. A trooper staggers towards me with a beer in one hand. I whack him with a shock from the ES baton and he goes flying. I grab his near-full beer, and lift the UVP visor to drain the bottle. I pull on the gloves. Outside there are weapons firing. I step over the screaming, writhing trooper. I can feel that grog surging through my veins. A trooper steps out of the cell next door. He throws a weapon to his shoulder and fires. I look to where he is firing to see a figure in Water Board fatigues running towards the gate that opens to the dam. I know that run. Mularabone. I crack the trooper with the ES baton, and he goes down. I grab his weapon and pull off his helmet.
‘Burn, ya dog!’
My mouth seems to have a life of its own. No wonder Jack is so full of hate if he drinks grog every day.
Mularabone is at the gate. He is fast. I take aim and fire a long burst at the guard tower. I must’ve hit something because there is no more fire from there. Mularabone is through the gate designed to stop vehicles from the outside, and he is running for the dam. I’m laughing and dribbling. Blood is running down my neck from the wound under my helmet. I grab a spare mag from the downed trooper and rake the vehicle parked near the gate with fire. The troopers seem confused. I’m laughing and firing. I’m running towards the gate and firing at any trooper I see. Mularabone does not slow his pace until he is out on the concrete of the dam. There are two troopers out there on the dam. They are momentarily unsure. Mularabone and I are in Water Board uniforms. Jack’s great plan to play with our minds. I aim and fire, and one of the troopers falls. I’m shouting at the troopers:
‘Youse are weak as fucken piss!’
Mularabone launches himself off the top of the dam, and does a perfect swan dive into the deep water below. I’m laughing.
‘Good dive, brother!’
A massive electric shock smashes through my body. I fall to my knees; the weapon thuds softly into the red soil in front of me.
Eleven: Keepings Off
I’m being flattened against a hard metal wall – but there’s something different about it as well, something indefinable, a duality giving it a web-like quality. The water is relentlessly pushing me into the wall. I try to remember the secret chant of the weaver. I’m inside something. Something unknowable.
The grog power seems to have left me. Like the tide has gone out too fast, leaving me stranded in a shallow rock pool and easy prey. Whatever the true nature of the grog dreaming is – I know I was born to it. That’s what the uncles meant by telling me about my father. Did I already know this? Before the Water Board there was no grog here.
I’ve got no intel for Jack. Intel is just an excuse. He’d torture me anyway. He’s a prisoner of his own hate. All I’ve gotta do is hang on. He can’t kill me. Someone above his head is looking for me. The uncles were so certain. Maybe his madness will blow itself out. Maybe he’ll get bored. Just gotta hang on.
There is a torrent of water smashing into my face. I try to shake it off but it is coming from outside of me and I can’t. The stream of water travels down my body, buffeting my arms and torso. It seems like only moments ago I was in the dry heat of the desert and now here I am with all this water. My hand automatically goes to protect my genitals
but not fast enough and the pain stabs up into my belly as hard and unforgiving as a bayonet. I get my hand across and the torrent is in my face again. A big flap of skin and flesh has peeled away from my head. I’m like a spindly eucalypt shedding bark. My hand pushes it back into place against the wall of water. The screaming stream hits my exposed balls again. My hands go back to my groin and the stream hits my head. This game goes on forever. Like big kids keeping the ball off the littlies, the troopers never get sick of it. I try one hand over each spot. It’s a little better. But not much. They laugh.
Ghost of History: Welcome to Country
I’m swimming in water. Smashed around by its power. In its power. I’m becoming water. Maybe returning to my proper state. In the blackness I’m reaching out to my extremities, my flesh, to soften and open to the spirit of the water. This water is from a place. A specific place. A place anchored in time and space.