How I Became the Mr. Big of People Smuggling

by Martin Chambers

  Who Arif had been talking to I don’t know. The crew he came in with had all long gone, their vans returned. He had helped out on a second lot a week or so ago but, like me when I first arrived, Palmenter had arranged things so that Arif had minimal contact with them.

  We got to the highway and Palmenter paused at the turn-off. I thought he was going to drop Arif here. Tell him to get out and then leave him in the sweltering sun, tell him to wait for a car, a car that would never come because out here along this road there were only about two cars a year. Arif would spend a long freezing night and then walk all the way back along the track the next day, apologetic and appreciative of exactly how isolated we were.

  Then Palmenter looked at Arif as if he had just realised something, and drove across the highway and along the track to the rubbish pit.

  ‘That’s nonsense, Son. I take a big risk doing this. I don’t have to do this. Everyone else is happy to be here, safe, a new life, a new land. This is the lucky country. If you want a better life, you gotta take risks too. Take a chance.’

  There was something in the way he said the word ‘risks’ and ‘lucky’. He looked up and our eyes met in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Ain’t that right, Son? This is the lucky country and there ain’t no better place to take your chances.’

  It was silent in the van for a few seconds. I think Arif was about to start again, but Palmenter began first, talking more to me that Arif.

  ‘We don’t want whingers. Complainers. You gotta know your place. That’s just the way it is. Anyway, there is nothing wrong with these vans. Ask Spanner. He fixes ’em right up.’

  We pulled up at the rubbish pit and Palmenter got out first, walked around the front to Arif’s door and was standing with his back to us. I thought he was looking out at the horizon, waiting for us, and I was getting out of the back when a shot rang out and I turned back just in time to see Arif’s body slump to the ground.

  I’m not sure what happened next, I thought I froze but somehow I was around the front holding onto the roobar feeling giddy and Palmenter was saying something like ‘we don’t want whingers in this country’ or maybe I only imagined that, like I imagined him saying he couldn’t take the risk of Arif telling the police and was it then or later that he said that he had found out that Arif was a Taliban spy. Taliban for Christ’s sake. Did he think I was stupid?

  Arif’s body lay on the red sand, dark blood seeping out and soaking into the sand. There was a big hole in his chest but his eyes were open as if he were alive and questioning, staring up at the sky. Those same eyes that had looked around at me in the back seat of the van as if to question, ‘Why do you accept it?’

  Palmenter kicked a spray of sand over him. ‘Be gone in a week. Buzzards and dingoes and ants eat him in no time. That’s what happens out here. We don’t like dobbers.’ He threw the keys at me but I missed them and they fell into the sand. My hands were shaking as I picked them up. ‘You drive. Don’t go to pieces on me, Son.’

  I drove back in a daze. Palmenter had to tell me to slow down, and at some point I think I remember him telling me that Arif was Taliban, but that might have been earlier and we might have driven in silence. I had the taste of vomit in my mouth.

  I wondered why he brought me with him. Did he only decide at the last minute? Did I just happen to be walking past at the moment he was taking Arif to the van, or had he deliberately waited until he saw me? Maybe he thought he needed someone with him, and I happened to be the unlucky one. Perhaps initially he was going to leave Arif at the highway and it was only as he went on and on, threatened to tell the police, said he would get the whole group behind him, that Palmenter decided to do what he did.

  I never told anyone about Arif. Not until now. I don’t know if he was the first but I now know he was not the last. It was from about that time that I thought Palmenter changed but it might have been me that changed. I now knew what he was capable of and feared for my life. His comments were aimed at me. I was the only one with him, and Arif was still warm under a kick of sand and he had said it as if he and I were mates agreeing about something, like simply talking about the footy. ‘The Cats will make the finals this year’; ‘We don’t like dobbers’. He was threatening me. I knew too much, I could never leave, because he didn’t trust me. He didn’t trust anyone.

  ‘He was Taliban, Son. Infiltrating son-of-a-bitch.’

  I doubted it. And anyway, did that matter?

  Trust is a funny thing. Some people say you have to give it out before you get it back. I say it is more like the air we breathe and we need it to stay alive, and sometimes a breeze simply blows it all away and some disease of distrust infects everyone and you have to look out for yourself. Suddenly I didn’t know who I could trust. Were they all in on it? Charles? Simms? Cookie? Even Spanner?

  I hid in my room and slunk between the canteen at mealtimes and my room or my work. I hardly talked to anyone. I couldn’t sleep properly. I would wake in the middle of the night, not from a dream, not nightmares as such, just all of a sudden I would wake and lie there terrified, suddenly aware of something I couldn’t name, like something more that my subconscious knew and was trying to tell me. I tried smoking some of Cookie’s crop but that made it worse. I’d smoke myself to a stupor and then wake hours later gripped by fear.

  Palmenter came and went as usual and the times he was gone it was a relief, but I knew he could be back anytime. I didn’t trust myself. If I talked with Spanner or Cookie I was sure to blab about Palmenter shooting Arif. I thought if I said anything to anyone, Palmenter was sure to find out and then I’d be out in the pit too. I did the only thing I could do. I busied myself in work.

  Despite all the things that happened, life on the station was mostly dull routine. Between the imports or musters we had all the stuff of keeping the place going. I had fences to fix, particularly around the waterholes where we pumped water for the stock up to a trough, and fenced the waterhole to keep the stock out. The pumps were solar-powered and frequently broke down, and it was my job to check them, weekly for the closer ones and monthly out along the boundary. I’d have to arrange with Spanner for a van and Palmenter would release only enough fuel for the trip. Cookie made up a supply pack. I enjoyed those trips away, camping out under the stars. Maybe I could have done a runner, nursed the fuel and got as far as the roadhouse, but that was the only road out and my luck would be I’d run into Palmenter on his way in.

  Charles taught me to drive the grader and we used it to fix some of the tracks that had been washed away in the wet. That was fun. I didn’t mind being with Charles. He was so difficult to understand and because of that I had to concentrate and that meant I wasn’t likely to say anything stupid. I suspect he found me equally as difficult, but we talked anyway, a sort of laughing parallel conversation, him saying stuff and me too back at him, most likely nothing to do with what either of us are talking about, but I think he was mostly laughing at me and my attempts to drive that thing. The grader was too big for the job. I could have put it into gear and driven a complete straight line back to Melbourne, flattening everything in the way. Except maybe Uluru. I would have driven up and over Uluru leaving a scrape mark that would be my legacy in this world. My escape would have been at half a kilometre an hour and would take thirty-five and a half weeks. Don’t laugh. I worked it out. It is three thousand kilometres as the crow flies and that is two hundred and fifty days or thirty-five and a half weeks. I imagined Cookie would do the catering. We would all escape. Cookie, Spanner and me. But how do you cover a track like that?

  And Palmenter would not need that track to follow us. He seemed to have the ability to appear out of nowhere, to have overheard conversations, to know what you were thinking.

  To keep myself busy I did extra things. I repainted some of the dongas. Spanner had Simms repainting the vans so I borrowed some paint and redid my room. Then I did the next, and so on. It was better than thinking about things, although with painting it is easy to start thinking
. You have to keep concentrating on the job, all the little details, and make sure you don’t start thinking again.

  Cookie had his drugs. Spanner his shed and car parts and beer. I became like them and soon I was finding small pleasure in my tasks.

  I took over the running of the vegetable garden. I redirected all the pipes from the water tower and made it semi-automatic. There is so much sunlight up there and the soil is fertile, all it needs is water and things grow. Cookie reckoned his herb garden was the best it had ever been and that this was the most potent crop he had ever had. Shame that he was the only one smoking it. Simms or Charles might have had some or maybe he gave some to the girls when they were there. I doubt it. I now understood the joke he had made when I first met him. Community garden. This was no community. This was the hopeless refuge of misfits and unfortunates.

  We also had tomatoes, lettuce, pumpkins, eggplant, beans climbing the fences, chilli, capsicum. Lots of stuff. We ate well. Later when I took over, I got some chooks and we had fresh eggs. I planted fruit trees, and the oranges and grapefruit did well. But for now I was hiding in the garden to avoid the others and to not talk about Arif.

  Palmenter had given me some admin work that I took to do in the canteen. We quite often got to speak but never of anything other than instructions and answers. A few days after Arif, he told me to do a rubbish run. Out at the pit I scouted around the area, unsure of the exact spot, but there was no sign of Arif’s body. He had been swallowed by the red earth. Gone. Buried by someone or eaten by ants and animals – it did not matter. I am sure Palmenter deliberately sent me out there so I’d see there was no trace of Arif and know exactly how much my body would be seen by others if he chose. Not at all.

  Soon after that I was given a room at the side of the back verandah where I did some of the bookkeeping and that was the first time he mentioned I could become more useful to him, that he needed someone to take on more responsibility around the place.

  Not on your life, I thought.

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  My new job was simply sorting invoices and delivery dockets and stuff like that, but at least it put me nearer the girls and I could often hear them inside the house. The floor creaking, a door opening or closing, occasional laughter that was as rare and as cool as rain. I did wonder if Margaret was in some way their Palmenter, if she kept a watchful eye on them and that they could only ever partially relax, and only ever if she were away. If they were sitting on the verandah I would sneak a look out at them through my half open door, or walk past pretending I had to get something from a file, but since Lucy I wasn’t interested in anything other than to look and maybe catch a bit of their conversation. Their voices were gentle and soft like dew on a harsh landscape. They seemed muted, half person, half automaton. Suppressed I’d say now. Scared. Like me. Sometimes, if I knew both Palmenter and Margaret were away I’d sit in my office trying to summon up the courage to say something directly to them. Hello. Or a smile. But then I’d remember Arif and my heart would race and I’d get back to work.

  Slowly my memories faded. Too soon it was another muster and the place was full and busy again and I didn’t have time to remember even if I wanted to. Cars and vans came and went, the chopper flew in and out several times a day. At the cattle yards, trucks loaded and shook the earth as they drove out behind Spanner’s shed on one of the roads I had graded. Each time I was fearful that it would collapse, fearful that then Palmenter would notice me again. Then Simms and I went out to shoot a bullock and butcher it to bring home steaks for the end-of-muster party and I found myself a wretched mess, shaking and sweating and Simms had to take over from me. The way the bullock fell, the way it folded under itself and then lay down to rest, eyes open looking out at the big sky, the way the earth stained with blood. I couldn’t bear it. I told Simms I was ill and when we got back to the station I hid in my room waiting for the dread to pass.

  8

  It was about this time that we built the barbecue. I can’t remember who first had the idea or even if we discussed it together, perhaps it was Charles who started it by bringing up some bricks. It was difficult to get anything we wanted into the station quickly or officially but we could get Charles to collect building materials from Melbourne. Each time he trucked the vans up, he would pick up things. On trips over several months he got a few bricks or the odd bag of cement, from different building sites each time, so it was all free. He also had a credit card for fuel and food but because I was checking the accounts I allowed him to spend a bit on timber and shadecloth. I knew Palmenter wouldn’t notice. This was how we got our brick barbecue.

  It was how the bicycle thing started too. One time Charles turned up with an old bike he had picked up from the streetside where it had been left as part of a council clean-up.

  ‘Hey Charles, where you get that old bike from? I hope you didn’t pay much. Whatever you paid, I think they seen you coming.’

  ‘No pay nothing. I pick it up from rubbish heap. You want I can get you one?’

  ‘Nah. Where am I gunna ride round here?’

  But Spanner fixed it up and gave it a new coat of bright red paint and soon we all wanted one. Next trip Charles returned with several bikes. Most of them ended up on the gene pool but Spanner salvaged bits and turned out three that he repainted. One bright red, one yellow, and one matt black. These three remained ownerless, the only rule being that if you got a flat tyre or if anything broke you took responsibility to get it fixed. I used one to keep fit, riding a circuit around the station houses. Each circuit took a bit over three minutes but the fastest ever circuit was ridden, of all people, by Simms, who clocked one minute thirty-five.

  But that was much later. I was telling you about the barbecue. It took almost the whole year to cart up enough material, or rather, we kept adding to it over the year, so it took shape slowly. Everything was trucked up by Charles except what we could scrounge from the gene pool, like the big metal cooking plate that Spanner cut from the steel of a grader blade. The plate had a slight curve to it, enough to drain the fat that would spill over the side and onto the fire. If you wanted the fire to flare up a bit you let the fat drip like that, or you could slide a lever to divert it into a tin. Mostly it was Spanner who did the construction but over the year we all did our share, adding little features and ideas. Spanner had it so the plate could tilt either forward or backward, to give you some temperature control and Cookie loved it. Not only did it barbecue meat exceptionally well but he could do stir-fry and flatbreads and all sorts of things on it.

  It was magnificent. We built it under the water tower. We brick-paved an area and built a pergola out from under, so the area had shade if you wanted it. We had tables and chairs and a whole long bench on one side, a sink, running water direct from the tank above, and the barbecue. The barbecue area grew in the same way a garden grows, slowly. Or rather, it evolved. Each muster Charles would arrive with the truck and as we unloaded the vans we would eagerly anticipate what he had managed to find for us. One time he arrived with a Metters No. 1 stove, one of those old wood-fired stoves like my grandma had in her kitchen. We built that into the barbecue, with its own chimney. There was a storage area for wood between, and a curved part of wall running behind that, sort of enclosing between the chimneys, with an alcove and shelf where we had a statue.

  The statue was life-size, as tall as a real person, and was of a naked woman holding a jug. It was solid cement and arrived, as usual, with Charles.

  ‘How did you get that?’

  ‘Oh, I was driving along, and it, how they say? It fell off a truck.’

  ‘Then how did you lift it onto your truck? And why isn’t it damaged? I think if it fell off a truck it would be broken.’

  ‘Oh, I think it was landing on something. Lifting it on by myself was very difficult, but I am strong,’ he said evasively. Charles was developing the larrikin Aussie sense of humour. He stood a little Van Damme pose and flexed his biceps. Ripples. He was not as thin as Simms but he
was no weightlifter and there was no way someone didn’t help him to steal it. We were all very proud of this statue and it was given centre place in the barbecue back piece.

  The barbecue area only stopped growing when Charles arrived one time with some beanbags. Somehow, we discovered that these fitted perfectly on the tray of Bitsy so we would load up with beer and food and head out to the river flats where the bloodwoods were old and dry, because with the brick barbecue came the need to collect firewood. So we had a great excuse to spend the day out – Simms, Charles, Cookie, Spanner and I. Once Cookie even persuaded Margaret to let the girls come with us.

  There was an area of woodlands to the east, beyond the creekbed and past the bluff, flood plains where bloodwood trees grew quickly and died just as quickly each wet season. We drove Bitsy around, smashing over sticks and dead trees, and breaking them into fire-sized pieces by driving back and forth over them. As we drank more beer our enthusiasm for destruction grew and we would knock over a few extra ‘for next time’. We would stack the branches up over the top of Bitsy and tie the lot down with a long rope that went up over and then back to itself underneath the car. Often on the way back the rope would snag on something and we’d have to retie the lot. But efficiency wasn’t our aim.

  The after-muster parties became centred around the barbecue. There was no way Palmenter did not notice the slow build of that thing. I think it must have been about six months before the main part was done and we could start using it, but we kept adding and adding and it was the second Christmas when the statue came. Palmenter never said a thing. Never. Early on we thought he would ask what we were doing and tell us to tear it down. Later, when it was obvious what it was, he might have said something. Like he liked it. Or well done. Or even that he didn’t like it. Nothing.