Carpentaria

by Alexis Wright

  When Truthful went with Girlie Norm had remained seated at the kitchen table brooding about the possibilities of life – if only he had his way. He mumbled something about how it felt as though a foul air had departed. ‘What did you say?’ He ordered his mute tongue to speak. He willed the words jammed in his throat to come out of his mouth, roll around the kitchen, roll down into Girlie’s bedroom. He waited for the words to break through, the words saying he wanted to kill Truthful, to put his body parts into a bag and run off as quick as he could to feed him to the sharks, and that was the truth of the matter. He waited while watching his daughters run around the yard picking up what should not be blown away, closing windows and doors, preparing for the dust storm to hit. He could kill the cop, but the words stopped him from doing it.

  Patsy and Janice looked once or twice in the kitchen as they ran around the house. Both knew that if they were not living at home, their father would just sit there, while the wind blew its merry way through the house, taking the lot. He let the house go when they were not around to clean it. He let his daughters sleep with a cop. He let so many things happen. Norm thought they could think whatever they wanted, for it would be a sweet day if all of them got out of his house. The truth was, when Truthful had left the kitchen with Girlie, Norm was incapable of moving. He was immobilised in the glue of his own blood, pinning him like a dead weight to his chair where he wrestled with murder, while the law of the Ten Commandments held his body captive.

  Truthful had left the room mumbling something about reality. He knew the father played his part, second by second, with enormous intrigue and secrecy. He had watched Norm sit at the kitchen table, uninvolved, detached, immorally complicit, thinking he knew about cat-and-mouse games to outsmart a cop.

  Norm’s thoughts on the other hand had been running in a different direction, sifting through the pores of the many different storehouses in his mind. First was the obvious truth of resignation. He would let the white man get what he wanted; wasn’t it always the way with Truthful, growing fat with his own greed, getting whatever he could to gorge himself with? Then, two, he sought someone to tell him it was alright to kill a white man. Where was the Fishman? He knew Mozzie was in town but he still had not come over to see him. He had been half waiting for Mozzie since he heard his cars driving around town. Even now, he was half expecting him to turn up. Mozzie knew how to get to the heart of the matter. He would tell him if he was right about what he felt he should do, play it straight, or play around the back. Well! Why doesn’t he come; he should know something’s up, Norm reasoned, tapping his cup, since he had not gone in search of Mozzie when he hit town like he normally would. Mozzie should realise something was wrong. It seemed that a man could be lying in bed half-dead, waiting for someone to turn up. He had forgotten that Mozzie never came to his place anymore.

  Norm thought Elias’s body was most likely Will’s doing, since the girls would have been correct about that. Norm knew it was not his imagination why the cop, watching like a hawk, was in the house. He recaptured a past scene in the kitchen, seeing Will’s fury exploding, kicking his way out of the house, reversing at breakneck speed back down the road he had just arrived from, and screeching to a halt in a ball of dust, to yell, ‘Watch the cop, man!’ Then, with not a moment to lose, foot dead on the gas – that was Will, and the last time he was ever seen around the traps.

  Will drove off, leaving the family staring at his dust trail. And somehow, maybe it was because there had been no chance to finish the argument, no resolution, no reconciliation, Norm wanted to help the cop to hunt his son down. Norm knew himself to be a naive man, and too intoxicated with his passion for the sea to abandon it at Will’s request. He believed the world would look after itself, infatuatedly, against the odds, because it always did and because the white world cared little about people like Norm Phantom. Norm still pictured him packing and firing his words like bullets, ‘You are wrong, man. You want to take a reality check on the situation, man.’ Norm remembered those words, very insulting, new words around these parts. He frequently had a chance to think about what Will said, so much so he often used his son’s handful of words on others, to be impressive in an argument. This was what memories are made of. Things like Will’s blue ute, left on the outskirts of town heading south. The abandoned car was still there like an ornament on the roadside. A piece of memorabilia, dedicated to the history of the Phantom family, which the father refused to tow home.

  The Fishman was in town but where was he? Words were like water sweeping by, taking the memories of Will away. Well! Will was never a proper son. Norm sneered at the oncoming storm; if Girlie did not kill the cop soon, then he might just about do it himself. He pictured the two of them, he and Truthful, out at sea. ‘Would you want to go fishing tonight son?’ It could easily happen – an accident. He had taken Truthful out enough, though not far, never too far, because he judged a man’s seaworthiness, what he was worth out there. The trips inside the shallow water line, not journeys, were far enough to get him off his back about fishing, time enough to give Girlie a chance. He could have taken Truthful twelve hours out to sea to find the body of Elias, and just as they both looked down in the water and saw the body lying on top of a shallow undersea ridge, it would be then that Truthful would stand up in the rocking boat to get a closer look, saying, ‘Where? Where? Keep it steady,’ and these would be his last words before he fell, after he had leant too far over the side, just as Norm leant across to pull him back, the boat unbalanced on Truthful’s side, just as they were floating on top of the groper’s den. Unfortunately, things happened too fast, the cop was drowning at sea, dropping quickly into the depths with the heavy force of his overweight body, fully clothed in uniform, his mouth open in the absolute shock at seeing passing pictures of himself drowning. Truthful would think someone else was holding a slide show of his death, click, clap, and Norm saw himself, many hours later, stricken with regret, apologising to Girlie. Norm had finally relented to the kind sea, and he was unable to reach down far enough into the water to bring Truthful back.

  He opened the kitchen door again to let in the fresh air of the dust storm, so he could look at the wind flying past. He was waiting for that tall, skinny man with the untidy rat-coloured hair to come along. Gordie had inherited the tin combat hat that had once belonged to the madman Nicoli Finn, before he was found belly up and picked at by every fish in the bay, way out in the low tide. The ladies of Desperance said Nicoli died fighting like a soldier. The few witnesses attending the annual picnic day had watched Finn in his final encounter, but said afterwards, even though they had talked about what they could do, and had even decided to take a closer look, they decided to keep walking along the beach kicking the seashells out of the way so as to appear as though they were not watching his birds. At the wake they said: He was pretty particular about his birds you know. The witnesses said Finn was fighting the hawks which kept diving at him, diving out of an ordinary blue sky, just like missiles. Someone remembered remarking at the time while Finn was doing his work: This is what the war must have looked like. The old maidens attending the picnic could only imagine what took place in a war, just as they wondered to which unfortunate battle in what corner of the globe their knitted socks and blankets for the national war effort had been dispatched long ago.

  Officially, he was doing his own business, and the maidens said they were not to get involved in someone else’s affairs, even if they should have, for it would have been improper to interfere in a man’s work, and they had grown fearful that if they had interfered, they could have done nothing to prevent the attack, and what if the hawks started attacking them? Saving Finn was a job for the police, they remarked without offence. What was being asked of them was a job a decent wife would do if Finn had been sensible enough to acquire one. Well! He was dead now and useless to anyone.

  After Finn died and Elias left, poor Gordie inherited the mantle of neighbourhood watch. Gordie was magnificent. You could watch him, always with
a compass swinging around his neck, and a hammer in his hand, in case he had to tack down the net. If he did not have these things, then you would have to think something was wrong, something was out of order. Gordie forgot nothing. He was good at his job. The best. When he became the official watchman for the town he taught himself to walk fast, first by running, then gradually slowing the running until he got it down to a trot, and from a trot, to a fast walk. Had to. He had to circumnavigate the town every three hours come rain, storm or nothing. And be better than Finn, who had a background in surveillance.

  With the storm under way and Truthful ensconced out of sight in a tryst with Girlie, Norm waited for the moment Gordie would appear, striding his way across the horizon. He had seen him pass earlier in the night. The cloud cover was heavy, hiding the light of the moon, but the white dog had groaned in its sleep when it heard the passerby crackle the stubble grass underfoot. More intently, Norm watched again at midnight when the clouds had lifted and the moonlight shone like a torch. He watched for Gordie’s eyes on the prowl.

  Once he saw Gordie was heading back towards town again, marching on a track through the salty marshes near the beach, Norm listened for the startled sea birds squawking as he approached their nests. He quickly gathered his sea gear together. Matching the extraordinary quietness of the night bird in the blackness outside hopping past the house, he moved past the bedrooms of his sleeping family. Truthful snored peacefully. Norm paused outside Girlie’s room before continuing to the fishroom. He returned, carrying his fishing tackle, then paused once more to see Kevin, still sleeping.

  Outside the house he picked up Elias, and along with his gear and fishing tackle, swung the body over his shoulder. He moved off towards where his little aluminium boat was moored in the shallows, where the murmuring sea with its incoming tide kissed the shoreline. An owl was speaking to the night. These were the only sounds. With the thought of going on a long ocean trip after being on land so long, Norm felt light-headed, but he packed the boat and was ready to leave within minutes. ‘We’ll go together, just like old times,’ Norm told Elias, as he pushed the boat further out on the water. Repeatedly he told himself it was the right thing to do. He was not too old. He could still do the journey.

  He had taken Elias to the gropers’ place in the middle of the sea before, and had been surprised that Elias already knew of it. The gropers started to rise in the water all around the boat, mingling closer and closer than they had ever done in all of the years Norm had gone on this pilgrimage. Norm had been sure that there was communication between the fish and Elias. Then, he saw the gentlest expression on Elias’s face as he looked up from the water. It was a child’s face, smiling at the look of Norm’s concern. Elias turned back and slapped his hands under the water.

  Hundreds of the big gropers surged towards the boat, until in the moment when they looked like colliding, the fish had pulled away, creating a foaming sea in their wake as they sank back into the depths of the ocean. Norm had often thought about what happened that day. It was the memory which had come flooding back to him as he sat at the kitchen table, ready to destroy the world around him. The memory fought off the devils until Norm saw what Elias had wanted. Elias had come back to tell Norm to take him home.

  Norm knew if he mapped the route well, he would reach this spirit world, where the congregations of the great gropers journeying from the sky to the sea were gathered. The gropers would wait for Norm before they moved on, far away under the sea, before returning to the sea of stars, at the season’s end. He was still feeling annoyed about the girls burning the fish. The coral trout belonged to Elias’s spirit and rightfully, they should accompany the dead man on this journey into the spirit world. Having to take Elias away without his belongings did not prepare him well for this other world. He knew it was the wrong thing, if Elias went without his fish. He cursed. The wind that had been ready waiting for him died and there was an incredible stillness. It had to be a sign, as though the wind had refused to take them, Norm thought. So there he was, standing out there in the water in the middle of the night, sweat running down his face, all that work for nothing.

  Norm trudged barefoot back up the beach, back towards the house to collect the old fish. He felt like a fanatic, a madman, searching for a precision that did not exist in his terrible obsession with fish. He realised he was out of time halfway up to the house, but he kept going, dodging around the back of several piles of driftwood, almost crawling along on his belly so that Gordie would not detect his movements. He expected Gordie would turn up at any second, he could picture the long, lanky streak running almost, coming in to check.

  As he retraced his steps inside the house, he knew he now had only minutes to leave in order to follow the course he had charted for himself. He knew if he set sail any later, the seas would be giving the wrong signals, the tides would be wrong, he would not be able to recalibrate, and after that, whatever he did would bring him further askew.

  The white dog, happy he had returned, was following excitedly behind him. He thought he had disturbed Kevin, but the lad was just talking in his sleep, talking to Will. Norm knew it would not be long before Kevin was up and about. Truthful was still in a deep sleep – it would be so easy to smother him. He reached up and pulled down about six of the silver fish and four coral trout that were hanging from the ceiling, and put them into the bags that had come with Elias.

  Norm threw the bag of fish into the boat and pulled the boat out to deeper waters, just as he had watched Elias do on the day he had set off, leaving Desperance for good. The coolness of the water was refreshing on his skin after working in the humidity of the hot night. He set course by the star of the fishermen that was setting low in the northern horizon. Then he climbed on board and started rowing away as the cloud cover again returned blackness to the remaining night.

  A steady rain fell while Norm rowed into the tide racing over the seagrass meadows of the flat sea. Once again, his thoughts turned to the Fishman not coming to see him. In the darkness, he felt Elias’s presence, sitting at the end of the boat, looking at him, as he usually did on their way out fishing in the good old days. Before the kids grew up, before the madam of the house caused her trouble, and the Fishman came and went as he pleased.

  ‘You remember that, Elias?’ he said, speaking softly, as though the dead man had been listening to his thoughts. This had never happened before in the ups and downs of the in-between years. ‘Fishman always came around, didn’t he Elias?’ There was no answer, and Norm rowed, hissing his story in the rain, ‘Despite the sheer irresponsibility of it all, she drove off with him.’ He remembered both of them, Mozzie and Angel, huddled like a couple of teenagers, in the huge expanse of the back seat of the main man’s flash car, driven by the membership.

  ‘It ended for me on the day she ran off with the Fishman, Elias,’ Norm said on the forward lift of the oars. ‘28 January, 1988,’ swinging the oars back. ‘You know why I remember it?’ Swoosh. ‘It was precisely four p.m.’ Swish. This was the time of day when he most vividly felt a loss of heart. ‘It was a hot, hot day to remember.’ The hot wind had been blowing it was true. He had circled the date in green on the calendar, and fourteen years later, the same calendar with the Snowy Mountains stream picture remained on the wall as a reminder to the family.

  ‘No, you are wrong,’ Elias’s deadpan voice came back through the night, the way he usually spoke to Norm while they were fishing, back to back to each other, waiting for a bite. Elias had never budged from his belief that it was a different day. The 27th day in January 1988. It was ten a.m. A hot bugger of a day. Angel was walking, her shift made of some fine material, he did not know what, clinging against the front of her body as she walked in the hot air. The wind was that hot it made your blood boil. Piles of rubbish at the tip had combusted into roaring fires. People were fainting in their houses in the middle of the morning. Oxygen was draining from the atmosphere.

  Everyone was perishing for rain. There were people who were too
breathless to speak, but Angel had spoken to him. She said in her dismissive, flat voice, in her usual manner of speaking to the likes of Elias, men who did not stir her feelings in the right way, that Norm was already down looking at the boats. Elias had argued that he too, would always remember that day because he had marked it on his own calendar. It had a picture of two galahs sitting on a perch, screeching at each other. He had kept the picture because it reminded him of the occasion. Norm remembered seeing her thin frame of a body in that dress, walking in the mist along the track through the wastelands, heading towards the rubbish dump. He refused to believe Elias. He argued vehemently that in January of that year, high tide was at precisely four p.m. in the afternoon, the same as the day Angel left, so this was why Elias had to be mistaken. The argument lasted for days on the sea. This was fishing with Elias. He rowed on.

  Devoid of blue, a strangely coloured creature was man, the intruder, who ventured at his own risk into these faraway, watery domains of the ocean…

  It was a long journey Norm Phantom had set upon into a world that by day belonged to the luminescence of the ocean and above, to the open skies, and by night, to the spirits who had always haunted this world. They say this faraway place belonged to the untamed spirits of fishes, women and sea creatures. This was the realm of mischievous winds and other kinds of haughty souls from above. Who goes there? the quiet wind asked. The following wind answered. It said there came a man of pain and another, who looked disinterestedly at the world as though it did not exist.

  The sea wind following Norm along in his little boat was a spirit of intemperate disposition, who woefully blew little gusty breezes for days and passed through the night playing nocturnes that droned over the waves, or else, left, running away from the toiling seafarer in its wantonness, searching for a wild idea on the other side of the world. On those days of hot calm, the air was heavy with a humid clamminess that drove Norm half crazy. Everything on the boat felt damp. As he rowed on, looking back at Elias all day long, he started to detect a grey mould growing over the dead man’s face. With no escape from the sight of Elias’s face, he watched for the spread of new patches of mould advancing over his friend’s body.