Lettah's Gift

by Graham Lang

  ‘Where the hell have you been, Brak? I’ve been worried sick about you, man!’

  ‘What’s that, honeybunch?’ Brak says, swaying on his feet.

  ‘I said where the hell have you been?’

  Cracker starts barking at Gator. Brak yells: ‘Cracker! Shuddup!’ The dog cowers. Brak stumbles and nearly falls as he leans over to pat him. ‘I’m sorry, my big puppy. I brought you a friend. You and Gator can be chinas, like Frank and me, hey?’

  ‘Where’ve you been, Brak? Answer me.’

  Brak straightens up. ‘Ag, don’t nag, doll. Frank and me were just celebrating. A couple of beers, that’s all.’

  Reggie glares at me. I stand beside Brak, smiling like a halfwit, holding the crate of beer as though it were an offering. I imagine we make a comical, endearing sight, and that shortly Reggie will drop her feigned outrage and be her normal good-humoured self. Instead, she bursts into tears and runs back into the house.

  Brak looks at me, flummoxed. ‘Now what?’

  He follows her inside and a short while later a shouting match ensues.

  ‘You’re out of control, Brak! I can’t live with it again!’

  Brak laughs plaintively. ‘One night! You won’t even allow me one little night on the town! For Chrissake, Reggie!’

  ‘You know what it leads to. Look at the time! One o’clock in the morning! You’ve just started a new job and you’re already asking to get fired!’

  ‘I can’t help it if my boss asked me to have a couple of beers with him after work. It’s no big deal, doll!’

  ‘No big deal, hey? Look at your hands! Look at your face! You and your bloody fighting. Don’t tell me everything’s okay. You know the score with your drinking. I can’t go through this again!’ She starts sobbing. ‘It’s too much! I knew it wouldn’t last. Fuck you, Brak!’

  I put the crate down on the veranda and walk away, not wanting to listen, wishing I hadn’t come. I stagger over to the gate and try to fix it back on its hinges but it seems buckled beyond repair. I sit in the dirt next to the fence, looking at the house. They are still yelling. The stars above start to whirl; soon the whole damn universe is whirling and wobbling out of kilter. I keel over and retch into the sand.

  Then the yelling spills out of the house. Reggie charges outside, suitcase in hand. She flies down the stairs, stops and screams, ‘Bastard! You promised!’ at Brak standing in the lighted doorway and runs off to her Datsun. She flings the suitcase into the back, reverses out of the carport and tears off down the driveway, gears grating. What she might have thought when the headlights caught me lying in my vomit next to the gate, I shudder to think.

  Brak watches her car disappear into the darkness, then turns and goes inside. After a few minutes he comes stumbling out again with a plastic bowl and a pot that he puts on the back of the Cruiser next to Gator. Gator drinks thirstily from the bowl, then starts to wolf down some food in the pot. Brak watches him as he eats. Cracker creeps out from the shadows and starts growling again. ‘Cut it out, boy,’ Brak says. ‘That’s enough now.’

  As though suddenly remembering me, he yells: ‘Hey, Frank! Where’re you, china?’

  I get unsteadily to my feet and stagger back down the drive to the house. As I appear in the pool of light below the veranda, Brak says: ‘Where you been, china?’

  ‘Evacuating most of my internal organs against your fence.’

  His bleary eyes rest on the vomit stains on my shirt. He laughs. ‘Shit, I thought you Aussies could drink.’

  ‘Not this Aussie. What’s up with Reggie?’

  Brak waves his hand dismissively. ‘Ag, you know women. Fly off the handle about nothing . . . Where’re those beers, man?’

  ‘Christ, Brak. Shouldn’t we be calling it a night?’

  ‘Don’t you start now. Come on, china.’

  He spies the crate I left on the veranda and opens two bottles with his teeth. We drink on the stairs, looking out at the stars. Brak belches after each long swig. My stomach heaves at the taste. Gator has been noisily licking the bottom of the pot, banging it around on the back of the Cruiser. Now he peers over the side and sees Cracker lying on the step next to Brak. The growling and snarling recommences.

  Brak yells: ‘Hey! That’s enough! Shuddup!’

  ‘What are you going to do about them?’ I ask.

  ‘Ag, they’ll get used to each other. I’ll keep Gator tied up for a while.’ He jabs Cracker with his boot. ‘I’m scared he’ll make mincemeat of this poor idiot. Hey, Crackerjack? Won’t that be sad?’

  Cracker looks up at him with doe eyes, his tail thumping against the step. Brak scratches his ears. ‘Don’t worry, boy, you’re still my number one.’

  We drink and smoke, flicking our cigarette butts out into the yard. I seem to have reached an odd point where I’m drinking myself sober, whereas Brak’s voice has become increasingly slurred and incoherent. He gazes out at the dark bush. Dark swellings on his face, dried blood in his beard. Skinned knuckles. He starts that awful teeth-grinding. ‘Ja, bloody women,’ he mutters, shaking his head. ‘Can never figure them out. Different fucking species.’

  ‘Where did Reggie go?’

  ‘Dunno. She’s got some friends in town. I couldn’t give a shit.’

  ‘Maybe we should call it a night –’

  ‘For Chrissake, Frank! I said don’t start. How’s your beer?’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  Brak opens another beer for himself. He laughs. ‘Shit, that Jervis is a bloody reprobate, hey? Wonder how his head’s gonna feel tomorrow.’

  ‘A question we might well ask ourselves.’

  ‘Too late, cat’s out the bag and the horse has bolted.’ He laughs and slaps me on the back. ‘Amazing, hey? How we’ve just slotted together again. Like those Que Que days were yesterday.’

  I nod, though it hasn’t been quite so seamless for me.

  ‘You’re my best china, Frank. I mean it. I reckon your first friends are always the best friends.’

  The prospect of a drunken sentimental journey down memory lane at this time of the morning fills me with dread. I wonder about his other friends. Why do he and Reggie seem so alone in the world? I think of my own tiny social circle back in Australia – my family, a few acquaintances from my teaching days, those footloose hippy lovers – and realise Brak is not alone among the friendless. Not that it’s bothered me before.

  Exhausted from a long, tumultuous day, Gator has fallen asleep on the back of the Cruiser. His snores are interrupted by occasional little yelps.

  Brak laughs. ‘Probably dreaming he’s still chained to that pole at the workshop. What do you dream about, Frank?’

  ‘Dream about?’

  ‘Ja, other than big-breasted women.’

  ‘I wish. Lately, I seem to have this recurring dream that I have a wife. A wife with no face. Always leaves me feeling like I’ve lost everything.’

  Brak takes a deep drag on his cigarette. ‘How’re things with whatshername – Clara?’

  ‘I’m too old for her.’

  ‘Bullshit. Either you click or you don’t. Fuck-all to do with age.’

  ‘Ja, well, what will be will be.’

  I realise I have unconsciously readopted the word ja into my vocabulary. How much else of this place have I reclaimed? We sit there listening to a jackal yapping in the darkness. Brak grinds his teeth. He pulls the case of beers closer and, before I can decline, opens a bottle and hands it to me. ‘What a pleasure, hey? Drinking with your oldest china.’

  ‘What do you dream about?’

  Brak takes a deep swig and sighs. ‘Oh fuck, I dunno. Big-breasted women mostly. Nah . . . sometimes I dream about my folks. Me and my old man buggering around with cars. Remember that racing car we built? The Silver Bullet – fucking unreal, hey?’ He laughs wistfully
. ‘Best old man any kid could want. My mom too. Dreamt once I was sitting next to her, playing this massive fucking piano. Size of a damn house. Playing some complicated tune together. She’d lean over and kiss me on the cheek when I got it right . . .’

  His voice falters. He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. He is quiet for a while, then continues in a choked voice: ‘And I always wake up feeling shit because it’s all gone. Nothing left. No family, no kids, nothing. Alone in the fucking universe.’

  ‘You’ve got Reggie.’

  ‘She’s gone too, china.’

  ‘Come on, Brak. She’ll be back. She worships you, man!’

  ‘Fuck her. I don’t wanna talk about her.’

  ‘That’s the grog talking. She’s the best thing that ever happened to you. That’s what you said the other night.’

  ‘Fuck her!’

  Brak slips into a reverie, grinding his teeth and nodding his head. Over in the Cruiser, Gator snores away. Brak’s eyes close; he breathes deeply, noisily, through his boxer’s nose. For a moment, I think he has nodded off but then he starts talking in a low mumble, as though to himself.

  ‘I also have a recurring dream. I wish it would go away, but it doesn’t. Always the same shit dream.’ A long, tremulous sigh. ‘It’s a helluva thing, you know. A helluva thing to have blood on your hands. To have taken life. You can never know till you’ve done it yourself. I killed a lot of people, Frank. A lot of people, and I feel fuck-all about most of them. Most of them were terrorists, Mugabe’s boys. I feel fuck-all about them. It was war. Us against them. I hated those bastards then and I hate them now. Can’t help it. Especially now, when I look at the fuck-up they’ve made of this place. But some of the people were innocent. Ordinary munts. Sometimes women and children. Usually they got caught in the crossfire, it wasn’t deliberate. I never deliberately aimed a weapon at any civilian – I can swear to that. I accept that I killed innocent people. I feel shit about it but I don’t blame myself. My army unit was just a killing machine. Towards the end of the war we were thrown into battle every fucking day, sometimes three times a day. Kill, kill, kill. Stonking gooks. That’s all we were wired to do. I believed in what I was doing and I was always with other guys when we killed. And the war machine condoned it. Awarded me a fucking Bronze Cross. We were all cogs in the machine. We did what we had to do.’

  Brak takes a drag on his cigarette and flicks the butt out across the driveway. ‘Reggie hates it when I flick stompies into the garden. Reckons it’s uncouth . . .’ He laughs. ‘Ja, where was I?’

  ‘You were talking about killing . . . about blame.’

  He lights another cigarette. ‘Blame . . . the point I was making is that in war responsibility for killing rests with the machine, not the men. In every situation I was in the decision whether to kill or not to kill was made for me by the machine. Every situation except one. There was one time where I was on my own and the choice was mine. No one else. We hit this terrorist camp in the mountains along the Mozambique border. Big bunch of gooks, about sixty of them. This was towards the end of the war when the bastards were pouring in from Mozambique. I was part of a stopper group. Our job was to nail the ones who escaped the main assault. All goes well. Camp gets hit. Gooks get stonked. We lie in wait across a small valley, their only escape route. All of a sudden, this pathetic bunch of terrified terrorists comes balekering out of the killing ground towards us. They were desperate. Heavy firefight. Bullets fucking everywhere. One of them manages to break through our line and I chase after him down this valley. Thick bush. The fucker’s wounded and I’m following his blood spoor.’

  He drinks and sighs. ‘Ja, this is the shit part. Hunting is intuition. Instinct. I find the fucker hiding in some bushes next to a stream. I almost walk right past him, but then I sense him watching me; I turn and lock eyes with him, and he knows he’s fucked. He’s lost his rifle, unarmed. If he had a gun I probably wouldn’t be here telling you this story. He’s been shot through the leg, his pants are drenched in blood. Barefoot, his clothes are rags. A pathetic sight, man. I’ve got my gun on him and he starts cowering, absolutely terrified. Starts begging. Please, baas. Please, sir. Please, master. Please don’t kill me. He crawls to me on his hands and knees, begging, begging. Please, master, don’t kill me. He says some weird shit. I am my father’s son. I am my mother’s son. Please don’t kill them. And I had the choice. The power over life and death. I was no longer protected by the machine – the decision was mine. I could’ve walked away. Could’ve taken him prisoner. But I didn’t. I shot him. Shot him between the eyes, so close it burned his skin. Blew the back of his head off. That was my choice. That was the power I exercised. When he hit the ground like a sack of meat, I knew it would haunt me. And it does. I hate closing my eyes at night because I know he’s waiting for me. Waiting for me to follow him down that valley of death. Waiting for me to find him there under that fucking bush. I see him there begging on his knees. I am my father’s son. I am my mother’s son. Please don’t kill them. Fuck . . .’

  Brak scuffs at some dried mud on the step with the heel of his boot. He wipes his eyes with his sleeve. ‘I must seem like a bloody freak to you, hey? You were lucky, Frank. It could’ve been you sitting here telling me the same fucking story. You could’ve been one of us. You never had to carry the weight of this stuff, china.’

  ‘I’ve no illusions about that, Brak. Believe me.’

  He takes a huge swig of beer, almost draining the bottle. ‘I don’t blame Reggie for fucking off. It’s like I fell off a cliff a long time ago and never stopped falling. I’m falling inside. Can’t stop falling.’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t know what to say. This is out of my league.’

  ‘Nothing to say. Reggie reckons I should go to a shrink.’

  ‘Maybe you should.’

  ‘Nothing anybody can say can bring me back to that moment when the choice was mine.’

  A wave of tiredness overwhelms me. I put my bottle down on the step, unable to drink any more, unable to respond intelligently. Like everything else in this place, Brak’s story is beyond me. I’m moved by the dreadful pathos of it, by the excruciating angst in his voice – yet it’s also the oldest story in existence: young men marching off to war, sacrificing their bodies and souls for noble and ignoble causes, learning the value of life by destroying it, finding wisdom always in hindsight, in the terrible aftermath. Brak’s story is not the first of its kind, nor will it be the last. Still, I feel deeply unworthy of making such judgements. There is a fatalistic conviction that, as a man, I have no right to talk of such matters because I have not learned life by destroying it. Men only acquire substance and wisdom through rites of destruction. We build by tearing down.

  ‘You once sent me a photo of you and some army mates. There was a corpse in the background – just the legs showing. Barefoot, bloody trousers. Was that the same incident? Was that the man you shot?’

  Brak shrugs and shakes his head. ‘There were a lot of photos and a lot of corpses. Might’ve been. I don’t remember sending you any photo.’

  ‘Reggie’s right, you need to talk to somebody about this.’

  ‘I’m talking to you.’

  ‘A professional. Someone who can stop you falling.’

  ‘No one can stop me falling.’

  Brak takes another two beers from the crate.

  ‘Not for me, Brak. Please, I really can’t manage any more.’

  He opens one bottle with his teeth and spits the cap down the stairs. ‘Suit yourself. All the more for me.’

  I look at my watch. ‘Come on, let’s crash. It’ll be daylight soon.’

  ‘You’re like an old woman!’

  ‘You’ve got work tomorrow, Brak. Don’t you think –’

  Brak waves me away. ‘Jesus Christ! Quit nagging. Fuck off and crash if you want to!�
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  I glance at him, sitting there grinding his teeth. I get up and pat him on the shoulder. He grunts but doesn’t look up. I go inside to the spare room. I manage to pull off my trousers and shoes before collapsing on the bed. The room begins to whirl. I pass out, gripping the spinning mattress.

  The wife I never had lies unconscious on a hospital bed. I sit beside her, caressing her forehead. Huge red rubber tubes protrude from her abdomen. They pulse and bubble through a colossal machine next to the bed. Through an open window, I can see, far below, a great ploughed field. A winter sky swarming with crows. Our tribe of kids charges about the field on horses, wild savages attacking each other, their war whoops barely audible above the noise of the machine. My wife is naked. She smells like fresh flowers as I lean over her. At last I can see her face. She is beautiful, yet she seems ancient; her skin has the craquelured texture of an old painting. She babbles away in her sleep, her words lost amid the clanking and hissing of the machine.

  Sirens. Down below, police cars and an ambulance converge on the field. One of the kids lies on his back. The top half. The lower half is still seated astride his horse, which canters around in circles. The other kids watch from a distance as the cops and the ambulancemen stand there, perplexed.

  Brak’s shouting wrenches me from sleep. It takes me a while to register where I am. In the darkness I can just make out the water stain on the ceiling resembling a flaccid flower. The curtains are open; outside there is a pale strip of dawn light along the horizon. Brak is lurching around the house calling for Reggie. Heavy stumbling. Loud thumps against the walls. The crash of furniture. His voice an anguished bray.