After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

by Unknown

  ‘This is a long-kept tradition, Franko,’ said Stuart, a smile that Frank did not like hardening up his face. ‘See, why do you think we call Pokey Pokey?’

  Frank shrugged. ‘His second name’s Poke?’

  ‘Because he keeps a bar-room fruit machine in his kitchen. That’s right. He uses it like a giant money box – keeps a jar of dollars in the fridge and puts ’em in, all his wages pretty much, they’re all in there.’

  Linus joined in. ‘Few blokes tried to take that machine one night. Pokey got at ’em with a harpoon – right in the arse!’

  Whether or not this was true, it seemed to tickle Linus so much that his laughter turned into a coughing fit and he grinned, tears of choke reddening his eyes.

  ‘So,’ Stuart continued, ‘what Pokey Lotto is, is a kind of syndicate. Each bloke thinks up a bit of a plot, right? A sort of robbery, murder-type scenario, about how to get to the money.’

  ‘Except,’ Bob came in, ‘the idea of the money seems to have flown out the window.’ He raised his eyebrows at Frank. ‘Now, we just plot the best way to murder the bugger!’ They all laughed including Frank, who felt his jaw ache from the strain of it.

  ‘I resent that, Bob,’ said Stuart.

  ‘An’ I do too,’ said Linus. ‘Now. Screwdriver in the eye – fastest way to the brain – won’t know what fucker’s on him.’ Linus passed five dollars to Stuart who folded it carefully and put it in the envelope before writing down on his pad, ‘Linus – Screwdriver in eye.’

  ‘Make it an accident,’ said Bob, ‘late one night at the marina – tap him between the shoulder blades with a forklift. Drop a cargo on top.’

  Each competitor handed over five dollars.

  ‘The end of the month we all vote, an’ the winner gets the envelope,’ explained Stuart. ‘Got any ideas on you, Frank?’

  He felt all eyes on him. He looked at the suggestions on Stuart’s notepad that included past games. The last winner, circled in red said, ‘Alex – contamination of water tank with crapping.’

  ‘Snake in the coin jar. Death adder.’

  Stuart grimaced, impressed.

  It would have been good to be at home with no one else there.

  ‘That’s nice, Frank – good to get back to the original form once in a while.’

  A tall aboriginal man walked to the bar and everyone looked up. It was time to go, but Frank’s body felt sluggish, like it might not have anything to do with him any more. The man put an arm round Pokey’s shoulder and they shook hands. Stuart banged his glass on the table. It reverberated in Frank’s head, made his teeth clench.

  ‘Just what we don’t fuckin’ need,’ growled Stuart. Everyone ignored him apart from Linus, who laughed loudly, like he’d been told a joke. The man at the bar looked over, the white of one eye was bright red. He chewed something slowly and watched as Stuart stood up, holding his hands in fists by his sides. They looked at each other for a few long seconds but then Stuart sat down again and took a gulp from his beer. A hardness was getting into Frank’s back, had wound its way up behind his ears, and his arms twitched of their own accord. He wished Stuart would piss off. Frank drained his drink. He wanted another but if he stood up something bad would happen. The rest of the bar was looking and it made his face itch. The aboriginal went back to talking with Pokey. They both laughed and glanced at Stuart.

  ‘The good old days you wouldn’t get buggers like him in here,’ growled Stuart.

  ‘Go fuck yer’self, mate,’ said Linus.

  ‘Enough, fellas,’ said Bob, not loudly.

  ‘Well,’ said Stuart, shrugging his shoulders and offering his palms up like a man put in an impossible position. No one responded and he downed his drink. ‘Pretty soon this place’ll be more black than white – ’specially if bastards like him keep on mixing it up.’ He nodded towards Pokey. ‘You know that, Frank?’

  Frank felt sweat beading up his face. He should go. He thought of Joyce Mackelly’s face, rubbed grey by a wet thumb, up in the tree branches. He could feel people looking at him, wondering.

  Stuart carried on, ‘Fucker was bedded up with one of them. A full-blood as well, not even a bitch he could fuck white.’ There was a feeling like the place had been struck with a tuning fork, a ringing silence, then Linus made a low fast move towards Stuart, but before he reached him Frank had thrown his drink in Stuart’s face and slapped him across the cheek. Stuart fell off his chair and people all over the bar stood up. There was a low roar and Stuart came for Frank, his glass still in his hand. Frank’s fingers tingled from the contact with Stuart’s face, everything slowed down like a playback on the TV.

  I’m going to get it in the face, he thought, just standing there, and I’ll welcome it. Then Pokey was behind Stuart and had him round the throat, and Stuart’s eyes bulged and his face was the purple of plums, green veins on his neck. He dropped the glass and Pokey dragged him to the wall with bear strength, held him up there with his forearm against his throat and shouted, ‘Now just you calm the fuck down!’ Pokey’s face was so close to Stuart’s that they could have kissed. ‘If I hear another squeak out of you that I don’t like that’s it. For good.’

  He took his arm away and Stuart bent over, hacking, a hand up to his throat. Bob slapped Frank on the shoulder and spoke in a voice that was pointedly cheery, ‘Not to worry, mate, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last.’ Stuart limped out of the door, doubled over. ‘He’ll be embarrassed enough about this to pretend it never happened.’

  Pokey and his friend sat back at the bar as if everything were normal; the man raised a glass at Frank and Frank looked away. He’d just wanted to hit someone.

  It was late in the day and the chickens were keeping an eye on him. He went inside and grabbed up the peelings and apple cores from the sink, took them out and flung them to the chooks. They pelted to it like it was roast beef. It was a worry feeding them. He’d bought a bag of chook grit and thrown great fistfuls of the stuff out, but was that enough? He’d shown them where the water was, had set them out a couple of dishes, picked up each hen and wet its beak from the dish, but they just quailed against his shirt and kicked, so he let them go. He found himself hoping he would wake up and they would both be gone, their clipped wings healed, flown away. It was lonely being the person responsible for their well-being. The way they looked at him as he moved about the veranda sometimes made him afraid, how they waited until the last moment to get out of the way of car wheels and seldom looked up at any noise apart from the feed bag. He walked past them, on his way picking up the old brown machete Bob had brought round. He shook it at Mary, said ‘Ar-har’ like a pirate. Mary looked back beadily and made a noise like an old door opening.

  Bob had given him the machete along with a rake and a rusted incinerator. ‘To be honest, mate, I pinched it from here a while back,’ he’d said, planting it in a friendly way in the dirt by his feet. The thing was old and had ugly carvings on the handle, like something you might get on a cheap greetings card, birds and beetles dancing in and out of vine leaves.

  He chopped down an armful of cane, just to get the feel of it. He tore off the thrash, while Kirk and Mary bothered about his feet, picking up bits of leaf and spitting them out again. With a pocket knife he split a stalk down the middle and a line of juice ran out. On that last holiday, with his mum still there, he had sat out by the cane in a tin hip bath of cold water, wearing his undies and his dad’s straw hat. A stem of sugar cane dipped in the water had made a cool sweet cud that he’d filtered through his teeth and spat out, into the water and on to himself. That thick smell of filter mud from nearby farms, richer than molasses, crappy and sweet at the same time. His parents – his dad with his summertime moustache, his mum wearing lemons on her dress – had sat on the steps drinking beer and peeling prawns.

  With a stalk protruding out of his mouth, he took his machete inside to oil up and clean off some of the rust. He’d set it aside on a piece of newspaper when he heard a motor and, looking out of the windo
w, he saw it was Linus with an old brown kelpie panting in the back tray of his truck.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Frank asked.

  The old man smiled. ‘Thought I might as well drop by for a drink.’

  Did you, now, thought Frank. ‘Beer suit ya?’

  ‘She’ll do.’

  Frank fetched a couple and took them out to where Linus had sat himself in the sun on the steps. He didn’t say thank you when Frank handed him the beer, but nodded as if to say well done.

  ‘Just wanted to drop by and make as well you were feeling good about Stuart.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry for causing a scene there,’ said Frank, reddening.

  Linus shrugged. ‘Caused less of a scene than I was about to. Sometimes you wanna stab the idiot in the guts. He’s not such a bad bloke, though, not really. We go back a bit.’ Linus settled himself back on his elbows, face to the sun. ‘Wife left him a couple of years back – left him with the two kids. Snot-nosed little buggers they’ve turned out to be – not surprising, though. He was only a kid himself. Anyway, he likes to get het up – you could swap Stephanie for every bugger’s name he gets mad at. She’s had no contact with those kids, Stuart neither.’

  ‘Jeeze, I’m sorry, I shoulda left it alone.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. Like I said, you say those things one too many times in the wrong place, someone’ll put your eyes out – worse. He needs telling now an’ again. Stop that violence before it gets out of his mouth.’ The old dog started to bark. Frank could see its hackles were up and one of its eyes – the one that wasn’t already clouded over – showed the white.

  ‘Eleanor! Shuddup!’ belted Linus in a voice that made the dog sit down and then stand up again.

  Keen to change the subject Frank said, ‘Been thinking I might get a pup. Be glad of the company.’

  ‘What? These bastards not enough for you, eh?’ he said, pointing his bottle at Mary who looked stonily back. Frank laughed.

  ‘Nah, mate,’ said Linus, ‘can’t have a dog out here – won’t work. Too much snakes or somethin’. Have a look at Eleanor there – she doesn’t like the place. Won’t get down outta that tray. She won’t drink the water here, won’t take the meat. You ask Haydon about it – he’ll tell ya. He went through three pups before they called it a day. One old dog too. They just keep going off. Might be there’s something in that cane or that bush. If there is, he sure likes a dog now and again.’ Eleanor whined, but with a sharp look from Linus she was quiet again.

  ‘Well, what about those two?’ asked Frank, pointing at the chickens who were now looking at Eleanor.

  Linus drained his beer. ‘Chooks are fine. They get up in the trees. Goats are good too – I’ve seen people around here keep a goat or two. They’ve got horns, I suppose. Mad bastards anyways, with their yellow eyes, give me the willies.’ He banged down his bottle. ‘Anyway, hoot hoot, off I go.’ And he hefted himself up with the help of the post that held up the veranda. For a moment it felt like the place might collapse but in the end it was okay and Frank waved Linus off. He found himself alone again and tried not to look at the sugar cane.

  10

  ‘Hell, it’s only natural,’ Flood said. ‘You hunt the beast, you kill it, you take the horns.’

  There was a pause while he pulled a small piece of food from the back of his mouth and sucked his finger clean of it. He was evidently happy with the food at the compound, the bully beef and potatoes.

  ‘I heard one guy takes the heads – bleaches them out. Prob’ly be worth something when this is all over.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be able to lug around a sackful of heads,’ said Cray, who was propped against a tree, with a pad of paper and a pencil stub.

  ‘Bullshit.’ Flood spat and it landed heavily in the bracken. ‘Anyway, I’m starting a little collection of my own.’ He tried to catch Leon’s eye but Leon looked away and pretended he was listening to something else. ‘I’m gonna to take the trigger fingers.’

  ‘You’re full of shit, Flood.’ Cray shifted so that he was turned away from him.

  Flood chuckled, then drew hard on his cigarette, the orange tip glowed bright enough to light up the sticky little mouth it poked from. As he exhaled he let out a few more humps and giggles, then looked away.

  Leon busied himself with picking out the heavy green mud from the grooves of his boot with a twig. He started shaping mud round twigs, using it like modelling clay. It wouldn’t hold together that well when it was dry, so he kept it small. His father had made a sugar model of him when he was born, made it the right size so that it fitted with the wedding figures from their cake. When he’d been about five, his father had taken the baby down out of the bell jar to show him. It was in a cradle that rocked when you nudged at it. A blue striped blanket came up to his chin and his pink fingers clutched at the edge of it, minute dots of white for fingernails. The cradle fitted right in the middle of his palm, the size of a sugared almond. When the shop bell rang and his father went to serve a customer, Leon had simply popped it into his mouth, without even really thinking about it. The sugar had been old, but it was still sweet, and when he took it out of his mouth again the colours had all run and the thing looked a mess. His mother walked in just in time to see the baby go back into his mouth and her scream brought his father running.

  ‘What in hell?’

  Leon kept his mouth closed over the baby.

  His mother had tears in her eyes and a hand over her mouth. ‘He’s eating his baby self,’ she whispered. They stared at him in silence. He blinked.

  His father’s face went red, then he laughed loudly so the place echoed. ‘Well, then, I suppose that’s fine,’ he said. ‘Taste good, does he?’

  Leon nodded, his mother stared and his father went back to the front of the shop, still giggling, saying over and over, ‘My word. My word, my word. There’s sugar in the blood for you.’

  The mud baby that Leon made, sitting in the damp shade of a rubber tree, was in swaddling, no arms or legs, just a little blackish-greenish grub, with two seeds from a split pod of some kind for eyes. With a grass stalk he put in details – eyelashes, a smile, a triangle nose and circles for cheeks. He put it in a strong patch of sunlight on the root of the tree and left it to bake. Cray was oiling the handle of a machete. He held it up to show Leon and passed it to him, so that he could see that on the wooden handle were all kinds of carvings, birds and leaves of minute detail.

  ‘For the wife,’ Cray explained, ‘she wanted something’d be good in the garden – we got this fireweed and bramble problem. Got this old promise to sort it out when I get back.’

  Leon felt the weight of it in his hands. ‘’Sa keen handle – where’d you find it?’

  ‘Took it off a Cong. Shot him in the throat and took his knife.’

  He held Leon’s gaze for a moment before pulling hard on his cigarette and looking down at the ground. ‘Carved those things meself.’

  Leon nodded. ‘She’s a beaut.’ Some sort of bird laughed loudly. ‘Really nice. You work on wood back home?’

  Cray looked up again, squinting and nodded. ‘Mainly I make rocking chairs.’

  Leon carried on nodding and handed back the blade. ‘Funny place, this.’

  ‘That is the fucking truth, mate.’

  When it was time to move on, he checked on the mud baby and found it had dried a shade lighter. Stupid to want to take it. But he wrapped it carefully in a fat leaf anyway. It’d fall to pieces. He put it into a zippered pocket and shifted his pack on to his back, careful not to knock it. He shook his head at himself and made off after Cray.

  In the night, along with the things that loped in the undergrowth, the tide of mosquitoes and biting beetles that hissed and whined around Leon’s ears, there was the sound of heaving. Someone was sick and in between the cries of the man Leon could hear a neighing, a rucking up of earth with claws like something rejoicing in the sound. He pulled his soft cap over his ears and curled in a tight ball, the butt of his gun poking at him like the cold
nose of an animal.

  When the sun came up, it was Flood who lay chalkily under his netting, an orange crust round his mouth, to be lifted out with his malaria. Leon breathed shallowly. Of all the bastards to get sick.

  ‘That means you get the gun, old matey,’ said Pete, planting the thing at his feet. ‘Clive’s your second.’ He passed over the extra rounds and felt the machine gun heavy in his hands. It was like he’d never held one, never trained with the rest of them. To kill a man. To kill thirty men. All at once. There was a moan from Flood and he felt anger rising in him. Couldn’t the bastard just live with it? It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that the arsehole was faking it. Better to pretend to be sick than shoot yourself in the foot. But he saw a greenness in Flood’s skin where the jungle had crept into his blood and was pushing out of his pores. He stood with his new gun, his back to the section, not looking at anyone, trying not to think.

  They waited for the sound of blades in the air.

  ‘By the time we set out, it might all’ve been over,’ Leon said to Cray, who had slid himself down the trunk of a tree and was unwrapping a barley sugar. He offered one to Leon, and when he refused Cray insisted, tapping the thing on Leon’s boot.

  ‘Yep, but. If we set out now, we might all be dead in five hours’ time.’

  ‘How do you reckon we’re any less likely all to be dead if we wait?’

  ‘Nup – it’s lore. It’s like – I can picture myself saying to my son in a few years – however long it takes till a kid’ll understand these things – I can see it – I’m sat there with my wife round a feed of whiting and there’s a beer in my hand. Lena’s wearing this flower print dress she’s got – couldn’t fit into it last time I saw her – too big with bub. And I’m telling the boy about it. Telling him how to survive something like that.’

  Cray tapped his helmet with another barley sugar. ‘Got to just think yourself safe, then no fucker’ll touch you.’