I feel the eruption of sweat on my forehead, it’s thick as slag and runs into my eyes but I blink it away. I wish he wouldn’t stand behind my shoulder, I can smell it, the stink of barbarity rising up from my shirt. He looks down my arm to the point of the gun and he says you can only fear what you don’t know, and the thing is you do know; you know who your enemy is and that he’s out to get you.
Funny:
Wasn’t that long ago the enemy was Mr Drake, only he wasn’t a black silhouette at a firing range, he was another suited bastard pulled up in a LandCruiser.
Australia gone wrong:
When Drake arrives that first time we see the camera crews unrolling their cables and don’t know if they’re here for us or the Kooris, but probably it’s for both. In towns like this there’s not much difference. Usually they give us a good feed or a bit of cash. Sometimes they’re buying our unemployment statistics, sometimes our alcohol problems. A beaten wife, armed robbery, arson. There was the time the garbage wasn’t collected, and once we even pretended to be a town up north so they didn’t have to send their crews that far.
Soon enough we realise they’re here for Mr Drake. Some stories have heroes in them and it’s good to have a hero here in our town for once. Mum says maybe he’ll be able to clean up our streets.
The opportunity:
The cameras get a good shot of Drake when he announces our town as the recipient of a new pilot program. We know all about pilot programs. He says he’s gonna save outback Australia and we’re the first stop because pilot programs have always been so successful in our town, like when they brought in Opal Fuel to stop the sniffing, that worked all right, enough to get some success stories for the TV. A few people start laughing ’n’ shit because everybody knows it worked right up until we cottoned on that you could use the Opal fuel to drive to the city to buy real petrol, but Johnsy doesn’t even have time to make a smart-arse crack before Drake has moved on.
He says what’s your best resource, come on you know the answer, and when we clearly don’t he tells us our best resource is bush tucker. The rest of us look confused, even the Kooris, but Johnsy says yeah our favourite bush tucker is McDonald’s, two all-beef patties lettuce cheese pickled onions, and everybody laughs except Drake.
Drake just takes a deep breath. Think about it he says, and goes all dreamy like he’s having a vision. Or a stroke. This whole country’s a farm, the kangaroo has more muscle than a ballet dancer’s thighs. Hunting is nature’s way of controlling animal populations he says, and he points to the rubbish littering our kerbsides, so when he talks about vermin being a problem I don’t know if he’s talking about us or the kangaroos.
Nature does all the work, all you need to do is go in and harvest the resources. He says the answer’s been here all along; to fix the disenfranchised you just have to make a franchise.
I see it then:
Maybe it’s the detox but probably really it’s the cameras making me self-conscious, like maybe we should have tidied the house before the world dropped by. The school windows boarded up and the bus stop that’s been set on fire so often they’ve left it standing as a black metal frame. The smashed up telephone booth with scorched plexiglass windows. Burnt out car shells and a motorbike frame that’s been melted into the shape of a pretzel. The town smells like a barbecue around the stacks, and when the wind picks up it gives me that weird feeling of being hungry and full at the same time, like I just ate a horse.
This one’s got schtick:
Perry says next thing they’ll be trying to can witchetty grubs, he’s allowed to say shit like that, he’s a Koori. Don’t trust that Drake he says, but Drake says he can do what the government can’t, all it takes is cooperation and corporate know-how. Truth is I’ve been detoxing for two weeks by then and I wanna be saved. Drake’s so pumped by the future he holds his hands up and says we’re gonna build a factory so big you can see it from the moon!
That’s when he sees me smiling. I don’t know why but I am, and he puts his hand on my shoulder and I’m still smiling like an idiot, I can’t help it. That means jobs that means better living conditions it means opportunity, and a future for your kids, and by then he has his arm around my shoulder like he wants to adopt me.
Profits go into the common good he says, you’re going to have a thriving town, the Middle of Nowhere will be known as Somewhere from now on.
Arse-on:
I’ve been detoxing for two weeks but I still wonder if he has real petrol in his LandCruiser and reckon this would be a good opportunity to unscrew the cap to find out. Sure enough I see Johnsy has slipped away and is doing just that. Except he’s not sniffing anything. He’s got a rag shoved into the port and the flames have started crawling out. Drake doesn’t turn around for the sound of the flames, which is just like sheets flapping on a clothes line. Drake doesn’t notice until the camera has turned away and naturally he follows it, just in time to see his car go up with a WHOOMP.
You have a what?:
A job, I tell them. No shit Sherlock, I get to hold a gun. I feel cheap as soon as I say it but it’s too late to take it back. Johnsy just about pisses himself laughin’, for real, until I start making a list of the things I’m gonna buy. A pool, a car, a stereo, a wide-screen TV.
A house for me mum.
Working man:
Another fire goes up, it kind of flares like a match-head then subsides. Judging from here I think it might be Mr Argosteen’s banana lounge, serves him right for not putting it in his shed. I got pretty good on the firing range but it’s different out here in the open for my first proper shift. I watch the small fires get closer. The new bin they put in out the front of the store, the old couch Crazy Meyers left in front of his house, and maybe that one’s just somebody’s pizza box in the gutter, looks small enough from here, but still the main street is lit up like an airport runway. You could land a plane in it and that’s how I know they’ll be here soon.
Come on guys, I say, when I finally see them heading this way. I’m protecting a pretty big patch of vacant land, maybe Drake thinks somebody’s gonna come along and steal it, god knows that happens. Nobody steals it tonight but Johnsy says they paying you to do this, bro? I nod my head and put my hand on my gun.
The boys laugh and I say come on, guys. They step back when I walk towards them and then they cross to the middle of the block which is so enormous I can’t see them anymore. I can smell it but, when someone takes a dump out there, I can smell it for a long time after they’ve gone.
Us and them:
When the gun cracks and I see the hole I’ve put into the black silhouette as it comes around that corner I can smell the warm metal and I forget he’s there. I lift the gun to my face til I’m nosing it like an animal, the warm stench of hot chemicals it emits.
Drake puts his hand on the barrel and lowers it from my dog nose, looking at me like he’s maybe having second thoughts, but he says they’ll see me working and they’ll wanna fix their lives because I’m setting a good example, they’ll be building us a factory in no time, and then he goes back to knowing your enemy. The black silhouette is every bastard who ever let me skip school, who trashed the bus stop shelters, and burnt the library.
If you let them fail they’re gonna drag you down with ’em, whose side are you on?
Fair point:
They start building the factory, notice I say They and not Us. Of course Mr Argosteen brings it up at the next town meeting. Drake explains we’re a work in progress so they’ve been granted special access to the Refugee Work Groups Initiative, the point being that the Refugee Work Groups Initiative can build the thing faster than we can burn it down. He says so far when they look down at us from the moon our town looks like a body covered in cigarette burns, and points at the scorched pockmarks on the dirt road.
We can’t argue with that.
Slabs:
Even though I’m in uniform there’s not much to protect so I sit on the slab with the boys. We’re drinking stubbies
and writing our names in piss. Johnsy stands up with his snake sticking out and says I’m making myself a signatory of the board.
Uluru took millions of years to form but once the slab has dried the factory goes up practically overnight. We don’t realise how big it is until the white cladding is on and the whole town seems shrunken beside a giant white wall of panels that make it look like a super-sized drive-in screen. By late afternoon it throws such a long shadow it’s like nightfall has arrived three hours early.
When can we get our new houses:
That’s what we ask at the next town meeting, because they’re building new houses behind a wall on the other side of the factory. They built the wall before they started building the new houses. Drake says it’s to keep the menace out, to keep you safe. But when will they let us in? Johnsy asks, and someone calls out never, you’re the menace.
The common good:
The common good will benefit eventually but for now profits are reinvested in the company. This is standard practice Drake explains, which I suppose covers why his LandCruiser has become a Mercedes four-wheel drive. He explains that rarely do companies make any profit in their first year, or three, but after that the stakeholders start to see their money come in. I tell you what for now if you’re in a hurry we’ll give you the opportunity to sell your shares for profit, how much profit well not very much at this early stage.
Let the peasants eat cake:
We go to the ATM on a Thursday it’s the first thing we do. The others need to get their dole money, only this time there’s no dole. We knock on the bank door but they won’t open, can’t blame them really, there are at least twelve of us, maybe twenty, and the bank employee points next door.
Turns out it’s our new income dispensary, they tell us a pilot program has been introduced to combat our endemic drug problem, i.e. to stop us spending our money on drugs they’re not gonna let us have any money. Even me, though I’m a working man, they pay me in food vouchers. I’m allowed among other things three kilos of apples.
We all head to the store with our vouchers, even though we’re not that kind of hungry. All there is are green peaches so I say can I have these, but Mr Argosteen says no you can’t buy peaches with an apple voucher, that’s not how it’s done. I pick up my flour ’n’ eggs ’n’ sugar and we stand out the front and ask each other what are we s’posed to make with this?
Graffiti:
Come on guys, don’t make me shoot you I say, I even wave my gun but they just laugh and take aerosol cans out of their pockets. They make marks with huge sweeping arm movements but you can’t see much from beyond the fence, so I just let them be, because anyway Drake never gets this close to the back of the factory in his Mercedes four-wheel drive.
I can tell they’re edgy though, even after they’ve inhaled the thinners. It’s the smell of the meat since production started, it’s got everybody a bit edgy. It’s nothing great I mean it’s probably broiled in huge vats, but meat is meat and it’s making dingoes hang out on the edge of town in huge packs that fight in broad daylight.
Town meeting:
As the town Good Example I say maybe you can give everybody jobs now eh, maybe you can let us move into the new town behind the wall where the streets are clean and we can buy our houses with what we earn.
Drake looks at me a bit surprised and then he says no can do. He turns to everybody and says it’s good news, he has an announcement. He’s cut a deal with the government, in return for our promise not to close the factory and move production over to Indonesia where the labour is cheap. He says he’s established the region as a Free Trade Zone, the first in Australia, and filled the new houses up with temporary migrant labour. All profits will be distributed for the common good, it’s very good news indeed.
So no jobs, he says, unless you’re willing to accept below-award wages, and when Perry says he guesses that’d be okay for starters, Mr Drake says it’s not possible, you’re Australian citizens, it’s against the law for us to pay you less than the award.
Say cheese:
The camera’s installed not long after production begins I see it that night when I start my shift. It’s suspended above the bolted side door but there’s enough light from the town that I can see it follow me as I pace the wall.
When the boys turn up Johnsy spots the camera right away and does a bit of a tap dance. The camera stays on me and I think maybe it’s a dummy put there to scare us, but when I step towards the fence it follows.
Come on, don’t get me in trouble, Johnsy, I say. I can smell my own sweat in the hot air. I try to pin my arms to my side to stop it from wafting over to the boys, not that they’d notice, half of them haven’t showered anyway.
Johnsy turns to the camera and curtseys. The camera is watching me and when they walk away I stand a bit taller because for all Drake knows I just protected the factory, which is protecting my town and our future and that makes me an asset.
The monolith:
Looks spectacular at sunrise and sunset. The white walls pick up the reflection of the red earth so that the world looks molten, lifts the dirt right up into the sky. It was designed by a famous architect I don’t know who, and he made them cut down all of the trees so that it could mirror the empty red landscape. Like we need more empty red landscape. But it’s popular with the media and on every news channel, and then tourists with their cameras. The tourists are a nuisance until somebody sets up a photography site out on the highway, I don’t know who. Everybody who takes a photo from the photography site gets a perfect shot, hundreds of perfect shots all over the internet, Johnsy showed me on his phone. You wouldn’t know the factory sits right at the edge of town. If you look at it from that angle it’s like we’re not even here.
CG Pty Ltd:
I say remember how Perry used to go out and bring home a giant roo and set it up on a spit in the town centre? And of course Johnsy remembers, he says bush tucker, so I say let’s go hunting, I have a gun.
We borrow Perry’s ute and we pass the dingo pack on the way out of town. I make a decision to feed them entrails when we get back.
We’re ten kilometres out when I tell the officer I have a firearm permit, he’s pulled us over in a dramatic cloud of dust. That’s no good he says, hunting’s been privatised, there’s a moratorium on hunting roos. All roos within a 500 kilometre radius belong to CommonGoodProprietaryLimited.
But how are we s’posed to get any meat? Johnsy asks, and the officer tells him he should get a job, and then like every-self-respecting-body else he can buy his kangaroo in a can, all profits fed back into the common good.
The all-seeing eye:
I don’t like the camera, it makes me think Mr Drake is watching every minute of the long night, like when the dingo pack edges closer Mr Drake is watching. Come on I say to the dingo as the leader steps closer, so close I can see the manginess of his coat even in the dim light. Don’t make me shoot you I say, come on puppy, but the dingo steps closer again and the pack stays back. I can see them pacing, I can see the leader calculating how hard it would be for ten of them to bring me down, all of this while the camera’s trained on me. I turn my head and see its nozzle inside the bubble.
Shit, I say as the leader’s teeth are exposed in a snarl and it lowers its front legs ready for a lunge, as though it could get into the fucking building once it’s dropped me anyway. It emits a low growl, the pack gets antsy, and just as it goes to leap I put a bullet right between its eyes. It smacks to the ground and I barely hear the others yelp as they take off, the shot is so loud, resounding along the white wall and out into nowhere.
The enemy:
That’s fucked Johnsy says, walking out of the shadow and dropping a crowbar onto the ground. How’s that even s’posed to help the common good he says, the animal was just hungry, he’s just following his instincts to the smell of food.
Then the boys step out of the shadows and this time Perry is with them, this time the whole town it looks like, the old town not the new
one. Perry picks up Johnsy’s crowbar and hands it back to him. I’m still holding my gun and the camera is still watching me so I lift it to where it’s more visible, but then I lower it again when I hear canine howling coming from our empty streets.
They were just hungry Perry says, and on cue my tummy rumbles, in sympathy or hunger or what I don’t know. That’s when I wonder if Mr Drake is really watching, and if he can hear Johnsy when he says remember what Drake’s always telling you, bro. You know who the enemy is, and he’s out to get you.
I point the gun quicker than I can have the realisation that I’ve never actually seen the enemy’s face. I look at the crowd and their crowbars and turn to the camera. It’d take less than a second for a bullet to hit its target, but I bet if he plays it back in slow motion it’d be pretty cool to watch it leaving the barrel and heading straight towards the lens.
About the author
Christine Fontana is a Melbourne-based writer and artist of sorts, whose day job is in aged care. ‘The Common Good’ embodies her interest in the surreptitious but pervasive and often aggressive nature of contemporary corporate and political infrastructures, particularly in their trickle-down effect. She’s won a humble number of literary awards and has exhibited as a finalist in a few award exhibitions, which makes being locked away in a chamber making things up a little more worthwhile.
The Flat Screen
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Hope: An Anthology Page 9