by Chris Hammer
‘Well, just what sort of guy Reverend Swift was.’
‘Byron. He told us to call him by his first name. He was awesome. He looked out for us kids, stopped the big kids from bullying us. Got us to do shit together. Taught us how to be friends. We’d go down there, across the road to the weir, go swimming, camping, light campfires. A couple of times he hired a bus, took us to Bellington, to the water park or go-karting. Paid for it himself. And he taught us cool stuff. How to light fires without matches, how to track animals, what to do if you are bitten by a snake. All the stuff my old man could never be fucked doing. And we played sport: footy, cricket, basketball. He wasn’t like other grown-ups.’
‘And the policeman, Constable Haus-Jones? He helped out too, didn’t he?’
‘Yeah. But I don’t think he really gave a shit about us kids.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The big kids said he had the hots for Byron.’
Martin smiles, despite himself. ‘What do you reckon?’
‘Nah. They’re full of shit.’
‘You obviously thought a lot of Reverend Swift. And he must have thought a lot of you. Tell me, did he ever…’
‘Oh, shit. Here we go. Not like the other reporters? Bullshit. Here’s the bit where you ask if he ever touched me. Or if he asked me to touch him. Whether he showed me his dick, or asked me to kiss it. Or if he ever fucked me in the arse. Well, fuck you. You news people, and the teachers, and the fucking cops and even me own mum. No, he never did any of those things. Not to me, not to anyone else. I was a kid. I was twelve. I didn’t even know what those things were, that they even existed. And then you come along, you know-it-all adults, and want to know whether he did this or did that. And he was dead, fucking shot dead, and none of you gave a shit about that. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.’ The boy has tears in his eyes and tears on his cheeks. ‘And you come here, right where he was killed, and ask me again? You know something? You’re a cunt, Martin Scarsden.’ The boy stands and runs off, across the road, past the trees and up the levee, before disappearing down the embankment towards the river.
‘Shit,’ says Martin. He sips his coffee, but it no longer tastes so good.
MARTIN SITS IN HIS ROOM AT THE BLACK DOG AND ASKS HIMSELF WHAT THE fuck he is up to. He’s all too aware that his editor, Max Fuller, his old friend and mentor, has gone out on a limb to give him this assignment, that there are plenty back in the newsroom who reckon he isn’t up to it. And now he’s doing his best to prove them right. It’s a straightforward assignment: how is the town coping? More in the writing than in the reporting, right up his alley. But instead of asking the barman at the club, or the woman at the op shop, or chasing down the real estate agent, all he’s done is talk to a criminal in a wine saloon, lust over a bookstore keeper still mourning her mother and traumatise an already traumatised kid. And count gunshots like some half-baked conspiracy theorist on a grassy knoll. What a fucking joke.
He walks into the bathroom and takes a piss. The urine is bright yellow as it streams into the bowl. Dehydrated, thinks Martin. No bloody wonder; wandering around town like Sherlock Holmes instead of doing his day job, seizing this chance Max has orchestrated for him. He washes his hands, splashes water onto his face, regards his reflection in the mirror. His eyes look puffy and bloodshot from lack of sleep, the nascent sunburn unable to disguise his skin’s underlying pallor; there’s a general sagginess to his flesh, revealing the first suggestion of jowls. Forty years old and looking older, the handsome pants man left behind somewhere in the Middle East. Mandy Blonde must be laughing herself sick. How miserable, how pathetic. The kid was right: he is a cunt.
He decides he’s had enough. He’s not up to it. Not anymore. Not up to another three nights fighting insomnia in the Black Dog, not up to another three days wading around in the grief and trauma of an entire town, stirring it up. For what purpose? A nicely written piece for the fleeting entertainment of the suburbs; a nicely written piece likely to go off like a grenade among the denizens of Riversend just as they’re finally putting their lives back together. By which time he would be long gone, back in Sydney, well clear of local distress, being congratulated by colleagues, getting one of those proforma herograms from management. He thinks again of the boy, seeking solace on the church steps, sent running, crying, down to the empty riverbed. By him. But enough. Time to leave. Time to find something else to do between here and oblivion.
At the counter, the proprietor is unsympathetic. ‘Sorry, love. No refunds. We’re like the Hotel California. You can check out, but you can never leave.’ She laughs at her own joke. Martin doesn’t.
‘Okay, I won’t check out, but I am leaving.’ He takes the key back off the counter. ‘I’ll post it to you. Don’t let anyone into my room.’
‘Your choice. Send us the key by the end of next week or it’s another fifty off your credit card. Have a good drive.’ Her smile is as convincing as her hair colour.
Outside, the sun is overhead, slamming down like a hammer on the anvil of the car park. Just like when he arrived the day before, except today a gusty wind has come up, blowing hot air, bellows-like, in from the desert. Thankfully, the hire car is in the shade of the carport. Martin loads his overnight bag into the boot, pops his daypack on the back seat with the remaining bottles of mineral water, takes a long swig out of the bottle he’s already opened and places it on the passenger seat.
He starts the car, drives to the edge of the highway. He doesn’t know where he’s going. He’s made no flight booking, made no calls to Max Fuller or anyone else. But he’s not staying, that’s the main thing. On a whim, he turns right, heading towards Bellington and the Murray. There will be coffee and phone reception and internet. And a river with water in it.
The road is dead straight and deserted, save for the roadkill deposited by last night’s trucks. He watches in fascination in his rear-view mirror as the bottoms of the receding wheat silos begin to dissolve in the heat haze, leaving only their upper halves to float eerily in the sky. Martin stops the car, steps out. The mirage is still there. He takes a final snap with his phone. Riversend disappearing up itself.
He’s just getting the car back up to speed when the ute appears from nowhere. One moment he’s alone—earth, sky, road and nothing else—the next moment there is the blaring of a horn. He jerks involuntarily, almost leaves the road. Then the ute is alongside, the bare buttocks of some yob stuck out the passenger-side window not two metres away, accompanied by raucous laughter and screeched profanities. He brakes, and the ute accelerates away, fingers gesturing obscenely from both driver and passenger sides. There’s a red P-plate on the back of the vehicle.
‘Shit,’ mutters Martin, feeling shaken by the suddenness of the incident. He considers pulling over, but continues on his way. Out here, there’s not a lot of difference between sitting in a stationary car and one doing a hundred and ten kilometres an hour. In his mind he constructs the event as a narrative, rehearsing it, as if still intending to write his piece.
The ute has dissolved into the liquid distance and he’s once again isolated on the flat and featureless plain. He searches it for a dark line of trees, but Riversend’s river is too far behind him and the Murray is still more than half an hour away. There is nothing but stunted saltbush, dirt and the flatness. The car is alone on the highway, speeding from the illusory past to the insubstantial future. He feels as if he is aloft, orbiting a revolving earth. Deliberately he embraces the illusion, persuading his mind that it’s not the car that is moving, but the earth spinning underneath its wheels. For a long moment the illusion holds but it’s brought to an abrupt halt by a rapidly approaching curve in the highway. Back in control, Martin slows ever so slightly and navigates the bend, speeding past a woman waving her arms frantically beside a red car on the verge.
He hits the brakes; the car takes forever to slow. He makes a U-turn, speeds back to the woman. She races across to him as he stops, lowers his window. It’s Fran Landers, the woman from the general
store. ‘Help me,’ she gasps. ‘Help them. They’ve crashed. Over there.’
Martin is out of the car, quickly taking in the situation. It’s the ute. It’s failed the bend, coming off the outside. It’s a hundred metres away across the field. Martin runs through the gap it’s ploughed through the roadside fence.
There is something crumpled on the ground up ahead. A person. Not moving. A young man, pants still around his knees, thrown clear when the ute rolled. The angle of his neck tells the story. Dead. Martin hears the gasp of Fran Landers behind him.
‘C’mon,’ he says.
They sprint the remaining distance to the ute. It’s standing right way up on its wheels, facing back towards the highway, but the windscreen is missing and the roof is partially caved in. In the driver’s seat, unconscious, with blood seeping from a gash across his scalp, a young man is slumped forward onto a deflated airbag. His face is white and his lips are blue.
‘Jamie!’ gasps Fran. ‘My God. It’s Jamie. It’s my son.’
Martin reaches through the missing window, feeling for a pulse, finding one.
‘Don’t touch him,’ Fran shrieks. ‘His spine. Don’t move him. For God’s sake, don’t move him! You’ll cripple him.’
Martin ignores her. She screams as he reaches in, places one hand under the boy’s chin, another supporting the back of his head, and gently tilts the head back against the headrest, allows the mouth to fall open. He puts his fingers into the open mouth, wishing the woman would stop screaming, and pulls the tongue forward from where it has lodged. It comes loose, with a wet pop, like a cork from a bottle, followed by an awful rattling gasp as the youth resumes breathing. Martin leans back from the window and stands up. Some muscle in his back is in spasm and he stretches. The woman is silent, no longer frantic, no longer moving. A single tear escapes her right eye, runs down her cheek and drips onto the parched earth. She’s staring at Martin.
‘Your son,’ he says.
She looks away from him then, towards her son. The colour is coming back into his face, the blue lips growing pink again. She regards her boy, reaches in, dabs at his bleeding brow.
‘Will he be okay?’ she asks.
‘I’d say so. He’ll live. But we need to get help. I’ll drive back to Riversend. They can call Bellington. You stay here. Look after your son. If he comes round, and he can move, then he can get out and lie down. Give him water, but nothing to eat. If he’s still unconscious, place a wet towel over his head. Keep him in the shade if you can.’
Martin walks back, checks the other boy to make sure, but the young man remains resolutely dead. There’s a bad smell and the flies are gathering. Back at the highway, Martin checks inside the red car. On the back seat there is a reflective windshield protector, glistening foil decorated with Disney characters. He pulls it out, walks back, and drapes Mickey and Goofy over the body. Even the dead deserve shade. He uses his phone to take a picture of the scene.
The services club is almost, but not quite empty. There’s a barman, not Errol, a different bloke; Martin, sitting at the bar drinking a schooner of light beer; and a couple sitting at a table sharing a carafe of house white while they put away a feed of Asian. Martin notes absent-mindedly that they’re eating with knives and forks. Is there some invisible border, a latter-day Goyder’s Line, beyond which chopsticks are prohibited and knives and forks mandated?
Robbie Haus-Jones walks in, still in uniform. The two men shake hands.
‘How you doing?’ asks the constable.
‘Been better. Any news on the boy?’
‘Yeah, he’ll be fine. In hospital in Bellington for observation. Bruising from the seatbelt, mild concussion and a couple of cracked ribs, but nothing permanent.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Quick thinking by you. Fran Landers told me all about it. How did you know what to do?’
‘Hostile environment training. Did it before I went to the Middle East. It’s one of the few things I remember from the training, people asphyxiating in accidents. Can I get you a drink?’
‘Yeah, thanks, I could do with one. I’ll have a Carlton.’
Martin orders the beer.
‘I’ll need to get a formal statement from you in the next day or two. No hurry. Fran’s statement pretty much covers it all.’
‘No problem. Who was the dead kid?’
‘Allen Newkirk. Local lad.’
‘Newkirk? Not related to Alf and Thom?’
‘Alf’s son. He was at St James with his dad and the others on the day. He was sitting in the car next to Gerry Torlini. Saw it all. Got covered in gore. Fucked him up completely. Never got over it. I’ve been out at the farm, breaking the news to his mum.’
‘Jesus. How did she take it?’
‘How do you reckon? She’s coming apart. Her husband dies at St James and Allen survives, then ends up dead in a mindless car accident. How fucked is that? Still, it would have been worse if you weren’t there.’
‘Then how come I feel so lousy?’
The cop has no answer to that and the two men sit quietly for a few minutes, drinking their beers. It’s the young officer who breaks the silence. ‘I read some of the reports about what happened to you in the Middle East. It sounds awful.’
‘It was.’
‘What happened?’
Perhaps it’s the alcohol, perhaps it’s the events of the day, but to Martin’s surprise, he finds himself answering.
‘I was based in Jerusalem, but every now and then I’d go into the Gaza Strip. Part of the job. The Israelis have cut it off, built a wall around it. Israelis aren’t allowed in; most of the Palestinians aren’t allowed out. But foreign journalists, aid agencies, diplomats and the like can get access. From time to time the Israelis will shell the place or launch a strike from a helicopter or F16, but it’s not as dangerous as you might think. Not most of the time.
‘I’d been in there for three days when it all went pear-shaped. There’d been some sort of riot at a prison on the West Bank, over near Jericho, where the Israelis had locked up some hardcore radicals. To the Israelis they were terrorists; to the Palestinians they were political prisoners. You know the story. Anyway, the Israelis sent in the army and half-a-dozen Palestinians were killed before order was restored. Gaza ignited. I was interviewing an official in Gaza City when my driver interrupted, said we had to go. We were heading for Erez, the border crossing back into Israel, in his old Mercedes. I saw militia on the streets, knew the situation was volatile. The driver got a call; there was a roadblock ahead. He pulled off, drove in among some buildings. He thought he might be able to get around the roadblock, but we decided I should get into the boot of the car, just to be on the safe side. So I got in. He was going down back alleys and tracks, and I was getting bumped around something awful, feeling carsick. And then we stopped. It was muffled, but I could hear the driver talking in Arabic. Then someone was yelling, there were a couple of shots, a quick burst from an AK. I just about shat myself. I heard the driver yelling, ‘Okay, okay.’ I think he was trying to let me know he was alive, but I could hear the voices fading. He was being led away somewhere—to someone in authority, I hoped, where he might be able to sort it. He was well connected, a member of an influential clan. Perhaps he would be able to pay a bribe or call in a favour or simply convince them to let him go on his way. It all depended on the men with the guns, what clan they belonged to and where their loyalties lay.’
Martin pauses, takes a slug of his beer.
‘What happened next?’ asks Robbie Haus-Jones.
‘Nothing happened next. That was the problem. I was in the car boot for three days and nights, not knowing what would happen to me. I figured they weren’t about to shoot me, but you never know. I could be held hostage. It’s happened before. And as time went by, it occurred to me that something might have happened to the driver and no one knew I was there. That was the worst moment: realising that I could die there, in the boot of the car, from starvation. I had water—we always carri
ed bottled water in the boot—and it was winter, so cold at night and not so hot during the day. It’s possible I could have lasted weeks.’
‘Another drink?’ asks Robbie.
‘Sure.’
The policeman orders two more beers. ‘So how did you get out?’
‘Eventually, the driver came back. Jumped in the car, drove off. Went somewhere safer and opened the boot. He had a bandage on his head. He asked if I was okay, said he thought we should still try to get to Erez, but that I had to stay in the boot. It seemed to take forever. When we got there, he opened the boot a fraction, asked for all my cash and my passport. Then he closed the boot again. It must have been an hour at least, then we were driving again, just a short distance. He got the car as close to the Palestinian end of the crossing as possible and opened the boot, got me out and to the gate as quickly as he could. My legs were cramping, so he was practically carrying me. You can imagine what I smelt like. The guards gave me my passport, nodded me through. The driver helped me down the tunnel—it’s this long walkway, hundreds of metres, covered in boarding and corrugated iron. Usually there are people coming and going, but that day it was empty. We were almost to the Israeli checkpoint, halfway along, when a voice came over a loudspeaker telling the driver to stop, saying I needed to come the rest of the way by myself. They made me go through the usual full-body scans, despite my distress. Anyway, I finally got through and the Israelis put me in a little golf buggy thing and drove me to their end of the tunnel. They let me shower, gave me food, clean clothes. They asked me what had happened, so I told them. Then they released me to the care of an Australian diplomat and I was free.’
‘I remember the story. I saw you on the news.’
‘Yeah. I got shit-canned for that. Can you believe it? I gave an interview to the ABC correspondent, a mate of mine. My foreign editor was furious, wanted to know why I hadn’t kept it all for the paper. Terrific, hey?’