Scrublands

by Chris Hammer

  ‘Not Codger, Martin,’ says the constable. ‘Harley Snouch.’

  MARTIN IS BACK IN THE BOOT OF THE MERCEDES IN GAZA. BUT THIS TIME IT’S warm and dark and secure, and somehow it smells good. Outside, a baby is crying, wailing against the injustices of the world, but inside his cocoon Martin feels safe. He turns over, floating in his sleep, when abruptly, without warning, he’s hit in the ribs. He’s awake in a flash, fear coursing, but not before another kick hits him in the stomach. Even with his eyes open, it takes him a second to realise where he is: in bed, a large bed. Mandy is looking at him, laughing.

  ‘What the—?’ he begins, as another blow lands. He pulls back the covers. Between the two of them is a baby, flailing chubby legs.

  Mandy laughs again. ‘Liam. He comes in with me most mornings.’

  Martin rubs his ribs. ‘Christ. He’s got a kick like a mule.’

  ‘That he has.’

  Later, as they eat breakfast at the kitchen table, Martin’s mind reluctantly kicks into gear. He feels wrung out: exhausted from fighting the fire, hazy from all the beer, exhilarated from sleeping with Mandy. He nurses the coffee, savours the muffins, swallows some painkillers to fend off an embryonic hangover. He just wants to sit, enjoy the moment, let his stomach settle, but he can’t prevent the thoughts from coming. ‘Mandy, about last night…’

  ‘Complaints?’

  ‘No. Of course not. Shit no.’ She’s smiling, teasing him. He realises he’s at a disadvantage; the disadvantage of an older man entangled with a beautiful and self-possessed young woman. But he pushes on. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Harley Snouch. I thought you hated him. But last night you seemed grateful that Robbie and I had saved him.’

  Mandy says nothing for a long time. Her eyes grow moist, the tiniest frown creases her forehead. ‘I know. It doesn’t make sense, does it?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘It’s just, sometimes, I wish things were different. Like I dreamt about when I was a girl.’

  ‘Mandy, you’re no longer a girl.’

  ‘I know. What do you think I should do?’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘I think you should leave town. If Snouch did what your mother claimed, he’s no sort of grandfather for your boy. You have Liam to think about.’

  Mandalay Blonde says nothing.

  As soon as Martin leaves the bookstore, the hangover kicks in with a vengeance. He squints into the scolding brightness of Riversend and his head pounds; he steps into the oven of Hay Road and his stomach churns. The town stinks of wood smoke, no longer benevolent. He climbs into his car, parked where he’d left it the day before. Thankfully, it’s sitting in the morning shade of the shop awnings and has cooled overnight. There’s a bottle of water on the front seat. Martin takes a swig. The water feels good in his throat and rebellious in his stomach.

  Back at the Black Dog he stands in the shower, under the streaming water, trying to cleanse himself of the persistent smell of smoke, washing it away with the chlorinated swamp water of Riversend. He tries to wash his hair with the cheap motel shampoo. It takes three attempts to work up a semblance of lather in the bore water. He looks at his hands, unsurprised to see how quickly his fingertips have wrinkled. But somehow, despite the hangover, despite his fatigue, he is feeling more alive than he has for a year. The interview with Robbie, saving Jamie Landers, surviving the fire, sleeping with Mandy. Somehow, in this dried-out town, he can feel his blood beginning to course once again. He dries his face, evaluating what he sees in the mirror. His eyes are bloodshot from the smoke and the grog, but the sun has returned the colour to his face and the stubble covering his budding jowls lends definition to his jawline. He tries smiling, likes what he sees, and smiles for real. Perhaps not the dashing young foreign correspondent of yesteryear, but perhaps not quite a washed-up hack yet. Maybe, just maybe, Mandy’s affection is motivated by more than just gratitude.

  He considers his article, the story he has been commissioned to write: profiling Riversend a year on. He’s thinking he can do better, that it can be more focused. Not just a traumatised town recovering, but a town divided over the memory of its priest, a mass murderer and accused paedophile, yet a man remembered fondly by some. The interview with Robbie Haus-Jones will still be the cornerstone, or at least the first half, and who knows what Fran Landers may volunteer now she has agreed to be interviewed? It’s intriguing: Swift shot five people dead, yet there are still those who say what an admirable guy he was: Codger, the boy at the church, Mandy. And those ready to condemn him, like Harley Snouch and Robbie.

  And yet Martin can’t get a grip on it; he has no idea what caused the priest to turn homicidal. Had it been a psychotic episode, or had it been an attempt to silence those about to accuse him of abusing children, or had it been something entirely different? A gregarious young man, popular and giving of himself. Who also liked shooting, drinking and smoking dope. And, according to the award-winning piece by D’Arcy Defoe, a man who abused children. Defoe might take the occasional liberty, but he wasn’t about to make up something like that. It must have been well sourced. So, a young man living a lie. Yet neither Mandy nor Codger nor Luke believes the accusation. What then? Why did Byron Swift say: ‘Harley Snouch knows everything’ just before Robbie shot him? What did Harley Snouch know? If Snouch knew about the priest’s abusive behaviour, why shoot his five accusers, then with his final words point the policeman towards the old man? None of it makes sense.

  Martin looks at his watch: nine-thirty in the morning, the whole day ahead of him. His mind is alive, but his hangover is becoming oppressive and his fatigue is rising in pace with the temperature. He swallows two painkillers and climbs into bed, knowing he needs to rest.

  He wakes at eleven feeling marginally better, but the day is feeling increasingly worse. Outside the wind is low, too mild to fan an outbreak of fire, but it’s just as hot, just as dry, just as smoke-filled. The cloud from the Scrublands fire is being fanned across the town, yet it provides no shade, no filter: the sun’s heat feels more intense, not less. The car is hot and stifling when he climbs in, despite being parked in the shade of the motel’s carport. He drives back onto the highway, turns left and drives the length of the main street, where the smattering of shops have opened for their twice-weekly trade. He smiles at the bookstore as he passes, before steering up across the long bridge.

  Ten minutes later, he gets to the turn-off where the fire crew gathered the day before. The dirt track winds off north-west into the bush, past a motley collection of mailboxes. To the right of the track, the bush is black and smouldering, to the left it is largely untouched. This is where the firefighters controlled the flank of the fire. He stops the car, takes some photos with his phone, then resumes his journey.

  Soon, the bush is burnt out on both sides of the track, and he wonders if it’s wise to be out here alone; he tries to reassure himself that there’s nothing left to burn. The smoke is all around him, swirling. The night before, at the club, someone told him that the mulga scrub could smoulder for weeks, even months, that the roots could burn away underground with little sign of it above ground. The only thing that would put the fire out once and for all would be soaking rain and plenty of it. Martin glances up at the pallid sky; the Second Coming seems more likely than a cloudburst. The fire has stripped the woodlands of any vestiges of shade; black stumps stand smoking, devoid of foliage.

  He reaches the cattle grid. One pole stands untouched, the bleached skull intact. The other pole is nothing but a blackened stump, skull nowhere to be seen. He realises this is the way to Codger’s place—he’s taken a wrong turn—but he climbs out to photograph the crossing. The smell hits him immediately; a barbecue gone wrong. He sees what he didn’t see from the car: cattle carcasses trapped against the fence line, burnt and bloating in the sun, flies swarming. He walks towards them, thinking to sanitise the pile of death by photographing it, but his
stomach revolts and he throws up into the sand and ash. He retreats towards the car, vomits again, and climbs back into his air-conditioned sanctuary. He rinses his mouth with water from the bottle, spits out the door, executes a three-point turn with great care, not wanting to get stuck here, of all places. His headache, subdued by the sleep at the Black Dog, is back and insistent.

  He locates the fork in the road that leads to Snouch’s place, Springfields. He drives slowly, carefully, along the track Robbie had navigated at such speed less than twenty-four hours before. There is evidence of the progress of the fire crew that extricated them; a fallen tree chainsawed and dragged from the road. The landscape is monochromatic: black stumps, grey smoke, white ash. Even the sky, with its wash of smoke, is more grey than blue.

  Martin arrives at Snouch’s homestead, or what remains of it. Off to the right are the embankments of the dam and a metal machinery shed, unaffected by the maelstrom, but elsewhere is a scene of devastation. He parks close by the burnt-out carcasses of the police four-wheel drive and Snouch’s old Holden, its charred chassis still held aloft by a jack. The house is a smoking ruin: the stone steps stand, as do three brick chimneys, their fireplaces exposed to the elements. The brick and stone walls largely remain, testament to their solidity, although some sections have crumbled and collapsed. A scene from a war.

  Martin walks the perimeter. There is an iron stove towards the rear, in the kitchen where Martin, Robbie and Snouch made their initial stand, but anything that isn’t steel or stone or brick has been incinerated. Pieces of curled and twisted corrugated-iron roofing lie scattered about, some inside the confines of the ruin, some distributed randomly around the yard, the confetti of the apocalypse. There is the sound of the wind and the rattling of corrugated iron; apart from that the day is silent.

  ‘Snouch?’ yells Martin, walking back towards the machinery shed.

  He finds him inside, spanner in hand, leaning into the innards of an old Mercedes, its bonnet up. The car is at least forty years old, but its deep blue paint is in good repair. The tyres are flat.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’ Snouch straightens, hand feeling his lower back as he stretches.

  ‘How are you?’ asks Martin.

  ‘Pretty fucking ordinary, to tell you the truth. Got any water on you?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure.’ Martin goes to his car, returns with three large bottles of mineral water, gives them to Snouch.

  ‘Thanks,’ says Snouch, opening a bottle and slugging down half of it. ‘Thanks. That’s better. Dam’s full of ash.’

  ‘Nice car.’

  ‘Will be if I can get it going.’

  ‘How long since you’ve driven it?’

  ‘Dunno. Thirty years. It was my father’s. He died five years ago.’

  ‘Well, you’ll need help then. Battery will be shot. It’ll need new engine oil, same for the gearbox and diff, I’d imagine. New tyres.’

  ‘Yeah. I know. I was just killing time. Waiting for someone to show up. Don’t have any tobacco, do you?’

  ‘No. Don’t smoke.’

  ‘No one fucken does anymore.’

  The two men move away from the car. Snouch sits on the rim of a tractor tyre; Martin pulls up an old wooden fruit crate. Snouch takes another slug of water. He’s still wearing the clothes he was wearing the day before and reeks of smoke and body odour. His face is blackened and grimy, his eyes red and streaked. He looks awful.

  ‘Thanks for coming out.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Martin again wonders how old Snouch is; it’s difficult to determine. He looks like he’s in his sixties, but fighting the fire he’d moved with the assurance of a much younger man.

  ‘What will you do now?’ Martin asks.

  ‘Dunno. Camp out until the insurance comes through.’

  ‘You’re insured?’

  ‘Yeah. Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Yeah, it does.’

  An old vagrant, an alcoholic, reputedly a former felon, cast out by the townspeople. Who lives in a beautiful old homestead, well maintained and insured, who drives a beaten-up old Holden but has a Merc in the machinery shed. Martin looks around him. The shed is no dusty relic. There’s a workbench, with tools mounted on a shadow board. Some are old and rusting, but others look well used and well cared for.

  ‘The house, Snouch—your house—it was really something.’

  ‘Yeah. Gone now, though.’

  ‘It was your family’s?’

  Snouch contemplates Martin, takes a swig of water and responds. ‘That’s right. Springfields. Settled in the 1840s. House built in the 1880s. Built to last. It was vacant when I got back here; I’ve been restoring it. My fault it’s gone. Should have cleared the trees back further. Might still be standing.’

  ‘Is this where you grew up?’

  ‘Some. Here and Geelong.’

  ‘But why keep it? Why not sell, move on?’

  ‘Why should I? It’s what I have left. What I had left. All I had to pass on.’

  ‘Pass on? To whom?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  Instead of answering, Martin broaches the issue he came here to discuss. ‘Last night, at the club, I was talking to Robbie Haus-Jones. He was pretty drunk.’

  ‘Can’t blame him for that. Wouldn’t mind getting a skinful myself. All the grog went up in the fire. Probably what blew the roof off.’

  ‘He recounted what happened the day Byron Swift died. His last words, before Robbie shot him: “Harley Snouch knows everything.”’

  ‘Yeah, so the coppers claim.’

  ‘What did he mean by it?’

  Snouch breathes in deeply through his nose, lips compressed, clearly annoyed, before answering. ‘No fucken idea. I’ve been over it a thousand times with the filth, with that fat fuck Walker from Bellington and with the Sydney dicks. No fucken idea. Did me no favours though, I can tell you that much for free. Cops investigating me for interfering with kids, of all things. Took ages for them to believe I was innocent and didn’t have the foggiest what Swift meant.’

  ‘You knew him, though—Reverend Swift?’

  ‘Yeah, a bit. Like I told you the other day in the saloon.’

  ‘So why would he implicate you like that, say you knew everything?’

  ‘Dunno. Spent the past year thinking about it. Still don’t have a clue.’

  Martin ponders that for a moment. He’s not making much progress. ‘Okay, so what did you tell the cops? How did you get them off your back?’

  Snouch laughs at that. ‘You don’t know much about coppers, do you, Hemingway?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘They get paid to solve crimes and catch crims. But in this case, the crime was solved and the crim was dead. Case closed.’

  ‘Case closed? A massacre of five people?’

  ‘Sure. The coroner will still want to know the ins and outs of a cat’s arse, but not the coppers. They don’t give a shit. Case closed. The fucker’s dead, shot through the heart by the town sheriff. High Noon.’

  Martin regards Snouch’s face. It looks ravaged, covered in ash and grime, his eyes bloodshot and watery. But when he looks down at the man’s hands, resting in his lap, Martin sees that they are perfectly still. Not a tremor to be seen. ‘Harley, tell me something: is Mandy Blonde your daughter?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe she is.’

  ‘She thinks so.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. That’s what her mother told her. Katherine claimed that I raped her and young Mandalay was the result. It’s horseshit, all of it, but you can’t blame the girl for believing her mother.’

  ‘If she’s not your daughter, why are you holding this place in trust for her?’

  Something passes over Snouch’s eyes—pain, perhaps?—and he closes them for a moment. When he opens them, Martin can see sadness written there.

  ‘None of your business, son.’

  ‘But you fixed the place up. I saw it. It was magnificent. Why would you do that if you didn’t care?’


  ‘Jesus H. Christ. I got you wrong. You’re not Hemingway, you’re Sigmund fucken Freud.’

  ‘And if she’s not your daughter, why are you stalking her?’

  ‘Stalking her? Is that what she said?’

  ‘Said you spy on her from the wine saloon.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Well, is that right? Why would you do that if she wasn’t your daughter?’

  ‘You’re the psychoanalyst, Sigmund—you tell me.’ Snouch looks directly at him, challenging him to respond.

  ‘Okay, Harley, here’s what I think. I think you are a profoundly sad and twisted old fuck. And I think from here on in you can stop perving at her from the saloon and give the girl a chance. Got it?’

  Snouch’s first response is anger, Martin can see it flashing in his eyes; enough for Martin to fear, for just a moment, that the old man may lash out. But the anger vanishes almost as quickly as it appeared and the intensity fades. Snouch nods his assent. Martin feels good for a moment, his threatening tone vindicated, at least until he sees the tears well in the old man’s eyes and spill over, tracing clear lines through his soot-coated cheeks.

  Martin shakes his head, stands to leave. ‘Shit, Harley. Give it a break. I’ll bring some grog out for you tomorrow. You don’t have to cry. If she’s not your daughter, you should just leave her in peace.’

  ‘That’s not it. That’s not why I watch her.’

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Because she’s the spitting image of her mother.’

  ‘Katherine?’

  ‘Yes, Katherine.’

  Martin is lost for words. Either Snouch is an innocent man yearning for his lost love, or a guilty man overcome with what he has wrought. Martin looks long and hard and finds himself unable to divine the cause of Snouch’s tears. Yet he knows full well that Snouch and Mandy can’t both be telling the truth about her conception.

  MARTIN STOPS BY THE BOOKSTORE ON HIS WAY BACK THROUGH TOWN, BUT THE GON OUT, BACKSON sign is on the door, so he continues on his way, turning right at the T-junction, past the fire station, the wheat silos and the Black Dog, accelerating as he heads out of town onto the long flat plain between Riversend and Bellington. The car seems to enjoy the straight empty road, no longer constrained by the speed limits of Riversend or the rutted tracks of the Scrublands. Martin pushes it up to a hundred and twenty-five kilometres an hour, well above the limit. Who’s to know? Who’s to care?