Even after the last scab healed nothing could put out the fire in his brains. Call it God’s will, or call it facing the ancestor in the face, or call it someone like Kevin knowing darn well that what was in that hole would come looking for him, but he went in anyway. Call it coming face to face with yourself and asking – who are you? Call it trouble too. Uptown people said it was a tragic accident that should never have happened. Norm Phantom took his son home and blamed the Shire Council because they had refused to extend the net to cover his place.
Thinking about trouble always made Norm think of Kevin, and thinking of Kevin made him think of fear, and then he would think of his grandfather’s stories to the bird. Kevin was one you would not bother yourself telling the family’s history to anymore. More! More! And the bird, true to his word, as if he could read Norm Phantom’s mind, had heard more trouble on the way. Now, Norm could hear Kevin coming along the twisting corridor, not only disturbed in the mind, but drunk too, and it was only seven o’clock in the morning.
Norm heard him first, dragging something along the corrugated tin walls of the twisted corridor heading towards the kitchen, then finally, saw Kevin running at him, flashing his knife through the air and screaming like a wounded animal. On this occasion Kevin was wearing a torn T-shirt covered with fat swastikas painted in blood. The T-shirt was the first thing to hit Norm in the eye and the sight of it shocked him more than anything else, even the departure of Elias whom he had just finished watching.
‘Get that thing off,’ Norm barked, ‘before I rip it off of you.’ Norm thought he could get used to anything new in the strange world of Kevin, but this was too much, because if Norm said he hated anything, he hated what the Nazis did to the Jewish people. He had always said it, and Kevin should have known better. Kevin stopped in his tracks with the knife still pointed towards his father’s face, but he looked as though he had received a mortal wound. ‘Why? You ever saw what happened in Germany or Europe? How would you know?’
‘Jesus! You take the bloody cake,’ said Norm, ‘Get that thing off – I am warning you.’
Norm roared out to his household in his booming voice. You could hear him down the road, even Uptown heard him, calling out the names of his daughters, ‘Hey! Girlie, all of you girls. Come out here!’
Norm started to move from the table where he had been sitting with his bird. He wanted the whole house to see Kevin, see what was happening in this day and age, right there in his own home.
‘Come and have a look at your brother. Have you seen anyone dressed like that before, like a bloody Nazi?’
‘You! You!’ Kevin’s spit spluttered everywhere as he looked Norm straight back in the eye, trying to block him with his emaciated body from going back into the house to find his sisters.
‘You’re fucking nothing to me.’ Kevin felt hatred for pity, for pity was what pity gets. He felt betrayed by the family whose honour only he had had the guts to defend. It had been one hell of a night fighting the ‘enemies’. An incident that had begun out on the claypans with a spilt drink, a piece of broken glass picked up and thrust through someone’s hand; a fight that had extended through the bush with spotlights, and the pursuers hunting for the chase, and him escaping like an animal. It had ended outside of the family’s house in the wee hours of three o’clock in the morning.
Why was it that the reputation of homes in Desperance were built on other people’s judgements? Norm asked his family to answer this question. Any passerby could say this or that house was nice because of the way it looked, from out on the road, and be plain wrong about what happens on the inside. Or, they could say the house next door was full of trouble, or that house across the street was full of no-hopers, and no wonder just look at the place. But Norm knew a house made its own life, regardless of the family who chose to live within its walls. Why was it? Ever since the day his house grew to be an eyesore on the landscape, the place felt as though it was always ready for a fight.
Even that night when the white town was trying to intellectualise the behaviour of the local demons and blamed it all on Elias, wondering if he was a harmless bream, or a town-eating piranha, the outsiders in the Pricklebush were making do with their lot in life and attending to family vendettas. And you know what? Their houses never slept. It was not long before the Phantom house pricked up it ears and let out an enormous – ‘What’s that?’ Waking households of mothers and kids on Westside who were sleeping on top of each other, fell back onto their sleeping heaps, when they heard who it was. Only the Phantom household’s ears stayed pricked to listen to the sound of Kevin screaming, running and falling up the road from his pursuers. The men doing the chasing were the self-acclaimed tough guys gang, from the other side of town. Now, they were on Westside territory, hanging out of their mud-encased Toyota Hilux, and staying teasingly on the heels of their victim.
‘Left! Left!’
‘Now Right! Riiiight! Hold that fucking thing still, you moron.’ The yellow beam from the kangaroo spotter jerked all over the countryside, picking up images of Kevin staccato, then in slow motion.
‘What are we going to do with him boys?’ Over and over again they repeated the question.
They almost ran him over but somehow, the part of his brain which deals with flight functioned sufficiently enough to steer him out of the way.
Then, suddenly, someone shouted – ‘Feed him to Abilene.’
This loaded thought caused momentary silence.
‘Yeah! Let’s feed his bony little arse to Abiiiilene.’
As soon as they reached hearing distance of Norm Phantom’s house, they started wolf-whistling and shouting to each other, ‘Noooorm. Say sweet dreams to Kevin and Abiiilene. Oink! Oink!’ They laughed at the silliness of each other’s jokes.
Panic set in – Kevin dreaded the name Abilene. They knew, he knew, that everybody in Number One house knew about Abilene. Abilene was more than a nightmare. She haunted the eroded riverbank eating herring, where the river runs out to the sea. A true, live wild pig whose grossly overgrown, black hairy body and a head filled with brown, rotting teeth, roamed with her legend across the whole length and breadth of the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Abilene was a merciless killer, hunting down local men fishing on the riverbank. The story was told to little boys by their grannies to make them be good, how the animal lived forever, and was everywhere, grunting, stalking and hunting down the local men on a pitch-black night.
The story continued to be told. Even if it was hearsay. It also had a reality, since living people had actually seen her, amidst the stark, naked proof of flattened grass where carcasses of cattle were found, or half submerged in the running water. Nearby, fencing was destroyed and witnessed: Ever seen the wire stacked up neat on the side of the road like that before?
There was talk that Norm Phantom was the only person alive who had really seen her, although he never said so. But why would he? Rumours spread from Eastside accused Norm of having trained the pig to kill people. Joseph Midnight said Norm Phantom used the pig to attack people he disliked. Like! Norm never liked Uncle, who owned that Hilux those young men were now driving after Kevin. When he was killed, the Toyota was found in the bush with the car radio playing country and western music for the mess and what have you of poor Uncle’s remains spread all over the place. Made you sick to see it. Joseph started these rumours even though he and Norm were equally related to Uncle. ‘Nobody can prove it, but one day, Norm Phantom, people are going to see you for what you are. You are the devil incarnate. A very bad man. You just wait and see.’ This was Uncle’s Aunty. When she became a widow, she went bustling down to Westside, throwing her weight around in traumatic grief. She told Norm Phantom off – to his face.
The Toyota sat in Joseph Midnight’s backyard for months, even after it was smoked. Nobody wanted to touch it again. For a long time, nobody would even look at the vehicle. Now the boys drove it around. Vendetta, vendetta, such a strange word for the Gulf.
The fracas coming off a
combination of the jumbled voices of wild men pitching for trouble, making pig noises, and the Toyota’s distinctive revving, was reverberating from corrugated-iron clad wall to wall in Norm’s house, down through the long curving corridor which resembled the shape of a cochlea inside an ear.
Inside this ear the sound grew louder as it travelled, jumping the puddles of water seeping under the tin, just as Norm said it would, in the unfolding years of the house he had designed to have its own built-in alarm system. He mentioned to his wife no less than a thousand reasons justifying his security device. She called the unwieldy construction a trap for fleas, crawling around in the hair of rats, whose eggs had fallen with the dust from the ceiling. At various points along the partly roofed corridor, rooms had been erected as the need arose in the family and trashed when called for as well.
When the sounds of their brother’s terror raced through the corridor with increasing amplification like the pain of an ear infection, the Phantom sisters appeared out of total darkness, from various exit points, like witches spouting steam. They walked out to the front yard together with six or eight dogs running in all directions and barking their heads off, including Norm’s old white one called Dallas. It was showdown time. Other families gathered up their flocks, and listened while they hid in their houses.
‘Have the first shot.’
‘No you. You first bitch!’
‘No, I give it to you first. Go ahead. Have the first shot. Then I’ll kill you.’ That was Girlie, youngest of the three Phantom sisters, just three years older than Kevin, skinny as a bacon rasher, with bright yellow dyed hair in rollers and dressed in a cotton nightie, always minding how she looked, just like her Mother. Girlie was standing in the middle of the road in the middle of the night, aiming her rifle. She was blocking the Toyota, the jeaned and Bob Marley T-shirted, gammon Rasta men from the prickly bush ghettos of Eastside, their own cousins mind you, all armed with iron rods and one or two rifles aimed straight back at her.
The other two sisters, more heavily built, always pregnant Janice, and always flogged Patsy, stood behind Girlie. Everyone said these two girls were deadset – just like Inso and Donny. Standing behind Girlie, in Nike shorts and Ed Simpson T-shirts, each held their iron bar gripped between both hands.
‘Come on dog, or second thought: worse than a dog. You hear what I am saying? You are worse than a fucking mangy crap dog following around sluts on heat all night long with your diseased pricks dragging through your legs on the fucking dirt. Shoot first. Go on drunken men who fuck dead women. Have the first shot because then I want to kill you dead, so I can watch the crows eat your useless body in the morning.’
The man Girlie challenged to the duel was her own womanising ex, her own cousin Noelie whom she was currently saying she was off with for good this time, in their off-again, on-again relationship. Goodness knows how they had managed to spawn four reasonable-mannered children over a decade to date. The Toyota, resurrected from Uncle’s demise, was so loaded down with the weight of Aunty’s rumours, the axles almost touched the ground.
Noelie, a tall young man with a big ego and minimal good looks lost prematurely to liquor, glared at Girlie with her rifle aimed at his temple. ‘Who you kidding Girlie,’ he yelled back up the road, still not able to work out if his Girlie wanted him back dead or alive. But what did it matter: Girlie was not the only fish biting in the sea. ‘Why don’t you come over and see your bloody kids sometimes you useless moll,’ he quipped. He bit his lip about her obsession with mickey mouse courses which had taken her mind off of his interests. All she talked about was TAFE this and TAFE that. And how she was getting herself a proper education that the useless primary school had not given her.
Girlie did not respond. She had handed over his children when he had demanded it but she was not prepared to give up her opportunities. Her ticket out of this dump of a town. Norm agreed, telling her to be done with the gene pool from what he called that scum from over there. ‘You made mistakes, more than most people Girlie, now put it behind you.’
‘Stop wasting your time and get your black ass over to my Dad’s place and do something with your kids for a change.’
Noelie had forgotten Kevin, who had run stumbling into the yard and then disappeared into the darkness. But, after a few moments, he decided Girlie didn’t look like she was in the mood for a quick one, which was what she was worth now he had the Hilux. He knew she wasn’t worth taking on along with her two sumo-wrestler looking sisters, not when he and his mates were cold plain sober. He liked the look of Girlie though, and thought it wouldn’t take much to get into her pants. But it could wait for another night. He would come alone, carrying a carton of grog to impress her with. ‘You win doll,’ he said and backed off, waving the others back, until they had all tumbled into the vehicle.
The Toyota threw a wheelie and a spray of mud hit the women. ‘Fuck you,’ Girlie screamed. She took aim and fired the rifle. The bullets sprayed off the sides of the vehicle. Janice and Patsy did a Chubby Checker twist then, noticing their dirtied clothes, they decided to go on the warpath. They screamed like wild women, and were soon chasing the vehicle as it swerved up the road in the slippery mud with dogs barking at the wheels. The big women slammed their iron bars on the side of the heavenly blue-painted vehicle, until it gained on them, and headed off back up the road towards town.
‘Why you sitting around, man? Why don’t you go and fight? Stick up for the family, man,’ Kevin was at the back of the house goading Norm who wanted no part of it. A man was old now. He had been sitting in the darkness enjoying the night. The cloud cover had broken and a bright new moon shone down with so much light he could see his own hand.
It had been the perfect opportunity to read the future across the entire sky. He knew if he could sit for the rest of the night, examining the constellations of stars travelling across the sky road on their journey to the spirit world which wandering souls must reach by dawn, he would be able to read and decipher the messages. But he could not concentrate. Not because of the noise around the front. It was something different that forced him to stop what he was doing. He could not bear to hear the distinctive motor of the Toyota crying of other people’s sorrows, screaming at him to come around, and have a look. He sat there, stony faced, not hearing a thing.
When Girlie heard her brother screaming loudly around the back of the house, pestering her father, her blood still pumping with the adrenalin rush from the fight on the road with Noelie, she switched. She wanted to kill Kevin now. As far as she was concerned, a strike at Noelie could just as well have been a blow at Kevin. She stomped around the back of the house, saying she wished the accident had finished him off. ‘You are nothing but a pest to the family Kevin.’ She started jabbing Kevin in his skinny back, ‘Fight me if you want to fight, you useless bastard.’
A crazy look of madness made his face twitch uncontrollably. He was not far from a convulsing fit where he would totally lose himself in a world that had overwhelmed his brain. When he reached this point in his madness, it disabled whatever skerrick of common sense he might have had even to save himself. She knew she only had to jab him hard once, to send him off into this state of paralysis. She threw herself onto his stick body, while Janice and Patsy grabbed his arms. Each of them took turns hurling him through the house until they reached his room and forced him onto his bed. Whenever he tried to get up he was knocked back onto it again. Finally, he collapsed into unconsciousness.
‘Well! He’s either asleep or dead,’ Patsy remarked, and the three nodded agreement, feeling relieved that they had restored some order to their lives. ‘Lucky we are here,’ Girlie said, and Janice grunted as she was apt to do, rather than getting involved in longwinded talking. Tiredness returned, and each went back to their separate parts of the compound to tend to the children who luckily had slept through all of the noise. The night turned quiet again except for the frogs croaking on top of a mud pile every fifty centimetres, for hundreds of kilometres, around the Gulf of
Carpentaria.
Chapter 5
Mozzie Fishman
From out of the dust storm the Fishman drove home.
A long line of battered old cars heavily coated in the red-earth dust of the dry country crawled wearily behind him, leaving in their wake a haze of petrol fumes and dust. The red ochre spectacle belonged to Big Mozzie Fishman’s never-ending travelling cavalcade of religious zealots, which once again was heading home, bringing a major Law ceremony over the State border.
Bearers of the feared secret Law ceremony, these one hundred men were holy pilgrims of the Aboriginal world. Their convoy continued an ancient religious crusade along the spiritual travelling road of the great ancestor, whose journey continues to span the entire continent and is older than time itself. They come and go, surrounded in a red cloud of mystery, travelling along roads where the only sound is the ghostly intermittent chime of a single distant bell, ringing out of the ground, echoing throughout the bushland.
The long dusty convoy, passing through the pristine environment of the northern interior, seemed to have risen out of the earth. There it goes. A simple other-worldly in appearance crusade, that looked as though it belonged to some enchanted agelessness touched by a holy hand.
In the thirty-car procession, moving, eating, sleeping, living in second-hand Falcon sedans and Holden station wagons of 1980s vintage, travelled men of every adult age were covered with days and months of dust. They breathed so close to the earth, the night might have mistaken them for the spirits of the dead. On the spiritual road, which was indeed hard and bumpy, the life of these vehicles had been refashioned many times over. In an astonishing modern-day miracle of recycling by those spiritual men of Fishman’s convoy who had artisan hands and the minds of genius, using tools and parts found only in nature, all of these vehicles survived over thousands of kilometres of the country’s hardest rock and gravel.
Carpentaria Page 12