Origin

by Greg McLean

  ‘Here’s the blood house. C’mon, kid,’ Friar says and drags him out. The mob of station workers tumble out of the vehicles, stretching their arms and legs after the long drive. Jock and Rodge clap Mick on the shoulder as they pass, too hard, and he has to resist glaring at them. Cutter’s getting out of the car in front with Blackall and Cunningham and Mick heads inside before the man sees him.

  ‘Stick wit’ us,’ Mercer says. ‘And don’t fucken start no fights. One in, all in. So you’ll just fuck up everyone’s night.’

  Sawdust covers the floor – to soak up beer and blood, most likely – and paint peels in long strips from the walls. The roof is untreated timber. It looks like the whole thing could collapse at any minute, which doesn’t help Mick’s uneasiness.

  The others make a beeline for the jostling bar and Mick’s drawn along, newly cleaned boots crunching a trail through the sawdust. He’s never been amongst so many people and he holds his breath as he moves through the crush, careful not to knock drinking arms. The noise is overwhelming. The place is filled with blokes, which is a bit disappointing after all the others geeing him up. Maybe they’d just been trying to get the young bucks excited for nothing.

  He passes a corner standing around a small fuzzy television and can see lottery balls rolling past the screen. Each one’s met with a roar and a swill when no one’s number is picked. ‘National Service,’ Opey explains. ‘One lottery you don’t want to win. Least we don’t have to worry about that just yet. I reckon I’d skip out if I got called anyway. You?’

  ‘I got sent here instead.’

  ‘Those were the choices?’

  ‘First shout’s on me,’ Simpson says, as they score a corner near the bar. ‘Ready for a round, Micky?’

  He feels the room closing in on him. ‘Yeah, I’ll have a tugger.’

  ‘A tugger?’ Opey asks. ‘Isn’t that what the abbos call it down south? I thought you said you come from Queensland.’

  ‘I meant a . . . schooner.’ Mick glances at the others.

  ‘The first rule, remember, Opey?’ Blackall says, close enough to hear. ‘You don’t go prying into another man’s business. He says he’s from Queensland, you take his word. Shit, boy. If your father hadn’t begged me . . .’ He smiles at Mick. ‘Know why everyone calls him Opium?’ Mick shrugs – he’d just assumed it was his name. ‘’Cause he’s a slow-moving dope.’ The men laugh and return to their beers.

  Except for Cutter. His gaze lingers and Mick turns away. Fucken beady-eyed git.

  ‘Sorry, Micky,’ Opey says softly.

  ‘Not your fault, Opey,’ Mick replies, watching as Blackall holds court at the bar, the other workers hanging on his every word. ‘Says we’re all equal, no pasts, no difference between us. Can’t tell me there’s no fucken hierarchy.’

  ‘Yeah, but you can’t say it. Thing is Micky – and I should know – you have to learn when to keep your mouth shut. You don’t want Blacky’s foot up yer arse. ’Cause once he’s up there you can’t get him out.’

  It’s not the manager Mick’s pissed about. ‘What’s with that shooter? He got it in for me?’

  ‘Got it in for everyone. Best leave the pruck alone.’

  Mick smiles. Opey grins too, surprising himself.

  He gradually gets used to the crush of noise around him and settles down with Mercer and Simpson and the others as the drinks and stories flow. He even stops looking over at Cutter and Jock and just concentrates on the men next to him and his glass in front of him.

  He’s standing swaying at the bar many drinks later, a stupid grin on his face, when he realizes the other station workers have started disappearing one by one. He tries to count, sure there were more earlier. Then he realises Simpson, who’d been next to him a moment ago, has left.

  ‘Where’d he go?’

  ‘Who?’ Opey asks, halfway through a story. ‘You listening? So I’m on the tractor right, and it’s about four in the morning, stars all above, and I wake up and I’ve gone diagonal straight for this outcrop and I’m shitting meself and grab the controls but —’

  Cutter and Blackall are still standing deep in conversation, but one of the men who’d been with them has gone too. ‘There were four of ’em before. With that tall cunt and Blackall.’

  ‘Jesus, Mick. Don’t call him that. I told you —’

  ‘That’s ’is name.’

  ‘No, not him, I mean —’

  Then Jock’s next to him, stopping on his way back from somewhere. He breathes stink in Mick’s face. ‘You’re next, boy.’ He grins, claps Mick on the shoulder again. ‘Paved the way for ya.’

  Mick frowns but before he can say anything the rabbiter’s pushed his way to the bar.

  ‘What’s he talking about?’ Opey asks.

  Mercer blinks. ‘So you boys don’t know yet? Jesus, what you think we’re here for?’

  But as Mick’s looking around for the others he overhears the usually silent Cutter telling some story of a shedhand they’d played games with when he’d been a shearer, telling the kid to get a left-handed spanner and berating him with every one he brought back until he cried and quit.

  ‘“Spunner”. You hear that?’ Mick says, trying to be discreet but failing with the drink. ‘Fucken Kiwis’re hilarious. How’d they come up with that shit? Spunner. “Sex” insteada “six”. “Ubbos”. Can’t even talk right.” He corrects himself. ‘Cun’t talk right.’

  Opey’s staring at him frozen. Mick grins then follows his gaze to the manager and the station shooter looking at him.

  ‘Shit, Micky,’ Opey says.

  Cutter walks over, his steel frame dwarfing Mick’s. ‘You still fucken on about that, ya mouthy shut? What’d I tell ya?’

  Jock chuckles from the bar. ‘Not a smart move, kid. Maybe we should call you Opium.’

  ‘Ah, get a dog up ya, Jock,’ Mick says, not looking away from Cutter. Jock stops laughing, scowls.

  The other men guffaw and even Blackall smiles from the bar. ‘Kid’s drunk, Cutter. Go get yourself a root and leave it alone.’

  Cutter continues to stare but Mick doesn’t say anything. ‘Not no excuse to me, boy,’ the shooter says eventually, then turns and heads to the back of the pub, fists clenched.

  Mick watches him walk off. ‘What? They got sheep here too?’ he quips, and Cutter looks back. And it’s only that the shooter has opened a path in the crowd that Mick can see through to the table ringed by whores at the back door. A few sit on men’s laps trying to tease free their money while more work the surrounding drinkers. One sees Cutter and smiles like a spider, taking his hand and leading him through the back door. The Kiwi shoots one last glare to Mick as he disappears.

  ‘See, I was trying to tell you —’ Mercer begins, just as Simpson gets back from his turn and grabs Mick’s arm.

  ‘Let’s go, Micky.’

  Mercer takes his other arm. ‘Guess you’ll find out yourself, brutha.’

  There’s a rank smell over the table. The breath of the women a nose-shutting combination of cum and gin. Mick has to be pushed nearer the line-up. Up close, the women’s skin, fresh and soft-looking from the bar, is greasy and pockmarked. Their hair mussed with being forced against pillows and bedheads. Clothing hastily thrown back on. One isn’t even wearing her bra beneath her dirty white summer dress and he can see her fat udders beneath, the mound of her fat stomach.

  ‘Which one?’ the stockman on his left asks, running an eye over the ten or so females lolling about the table. Some look up and smile, but most are beginning to tire this late in the night and can’t be bothered with the act anymore.

  ‘There’s me slops,’ Simpson says and grins at a swarthy-looking girl off to one side. She glances at him sour then away. Simpson blushes. ‘I was a bit quick. Asked for some money off. Took none too kindly.’

  Mick stands frozen, wanting to look away but unable to. One of the prostitutes, a younger girl with dark eyes and honey hair, meets his gaze. There’s a thin scar down one cheekbone but somehow it makes
her even more beautiful, makes the rest of her face stand out.

  ‘That one?’ Mercer says but Simpson shakes his head.

  ‘The poor fella’s terrified. Like we all were. Reckon he needs an experienced hand.’ He beckons an older woman – thirties, maybe forty, face lined with the sun, makeup too thick – and she hefts herself up and fixes a smile as she comes over. Simpson slips her some shillings. ‘Ya owe me one, Micky,’ he says in his ear. ‘Now do yer worst. Make us proud.’

  ‘But —’ he starts to say and the station hand grips him with his vice hand. ‘It’s your first fucken payday. You got that? Have ta prove yourself.’ He shoves him and the woman grabs his arm. Mick glances back at the two men watching and grinning gap-toothed smiles, Opey behind staring at him, the crowd of drinkers laughing and swigging around, and then they push through the door and the noise dampens behind them.

  The narrow hallway is cold and stinks of must. He closes his throat to it as the matronly woman leads him past sounds of muffled grunting and beds squeaking to the last room. A scrawled ‘7’ is handwritten on the white-painted wood. ‘Ya got good mates,’ the woman says to him in a husky voice, too close to his ear, then opens the door.

  There’s a stain in the middle of the messy sheets on the single bed and he stands staring at it. She purses her lips at his gaze. ‘Fine, I’ll change it,’ she says and grabs another frayed sheet from a stack beside the small sink, strips the mattress. ‘You wash up,’ she says, nodding to the tap. ‘I’ll get this ready.’

  The room’s barely big enough for them both to stand in, the white stone walls wet with cold and the overhanging light casting a low yellow haze to everything. He watches her back ripple as she works, fat rubbing around her bra strap, a weariness in her shoulders, then goes to the taps.

  ‘It’s alright, son,’ the woman says as he stands at the sink and grips it tight. ‘Ya won’t have to wonder anymore. It’ll clear your head, you’ll see. Just think of the bulls on your farm. As natural as that.’ She hands him a small square of plastic. ‘Here. You know how to put that on? I’ll help if you want. Won’t even charge extra.’

  He stands looking at the packet, throat gone dry and tight. He can hear her undressing, sighing as she slips off her dress. The springs creak as she leans back. ‘It’s okay,’ she says behind him, trying to be soft, comforting. ‘I’ll guide you in, son.’

  ‘I’m not your son.’ The packet sits heavy in his hand.

  She doesn’t say anything at first. ‘Well, of course you’re not. I was just trying to . . . You haven’t even got your shorts off yet.’

  He looks to the door.

  ‘Everyone’s nervous the first time. That’s why they gave you to me.’ He hears the mattress creak and he tenses in case she’s getting up. But she’s just propping back on her elbows. ‘Now I told you I’d help you put that on. Come here.’ Still he doesn’t move. ‘Look, we only got so long.’ The impatience is starting to creep into her voice. ‘For Pete’s sake, son — boy, just come over here. Sit on the bed. Don’t be scared.’

  ‘Don’t call me chicken,’ he says, some anger in his voice now.

  ‘I didn’t,’ she says, confused. He looks to the door again but his feet are planted. He should run, should escape this place. It wasn’t his choice to do this. He didn’t pay the whore. He didn’t put himself in this situation. It was the others who forced him, she who chose this life. None of this is his fault. She mistakes his inaction for a game, starts to play along. ‘Okay, you’re not a chicken. Then prove you’re not.’ Her voice harsher than she means, her scorn for men after a lifetime of whoring slipping out in this one sentence, and he turns, his vision darkening.

  She’s propped on the bed, her body bare and white, breasts hanging over either side of her ribcage, stretch-marked with childbirth, legs open, one knee raised. Her eyes on his, smiling. ‘That’s better,’ she says in her mother tone and pats the bed. ‘Prove to me.’

  The tangled hair between her legs like a dark seething hatch of spiders he’d once seen up in the corner of the shed. Like a memory from even longer ago crushed deep inside him. He can smell her from here. Heady, earthy, too real. He can’t move.

  She laughs and glances down. ‘Nothing to be scared of. Look.’ She spreads the hair, reveals the smooth lips within, the wound at the heart of her, and then he’s stumbling for the door, the buried memory rising like bile in his throat.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asks, coming after him. ‘I’m not giving back the money! Not for some poofter!’

  Some of the doors bang open as he runs past and a man steps out holding up his pants. Mick slams him with his shoulder as he passes, hoping it wasn’t Cutter.

  ‘Ya limp dick!’ the woman shouts.

  Mick bangs through the hall door back into the pub and stands for a moment trying to catch his breath. There’s laughter at the table behind him, as the prostitute’s already changed and come out on his heels to tell the others the young buck couldn’t perform. The women’s gloating faces with bared teeth, shrill laughing, harpy like. Only the girl with the faded scar doesn’t laugh, her forehead creased with concern.

  When he reaches the bar the farmhands beam and clap him on the back. He glances at the table of women still laughing at him, hopes the word doesn’t spread and they can just leave this place.

  And then Cutter’s walking towards them from the back, hitching his pants, his mouth curled in a smile, and of course that’s who Mick bashed into. ‘Here he is,’ he hollers and thumps Mick on the shoulder. Like driving a fence post into the ground. Mick doesn’t look at him, face flushed. Don’t show them anything. But it’s too late for that. ‘Ran at the sight of her, did ya?’ Silence from the others as Cutter nods over to Blackall. ‘Na, we won’t call this one Opium, Blacky,’ he says. ‘We’ll call this one Scareda’cunt.’

  They guffaw and head to the bar for a post-shag beer. The others stand awkwardly, but then Opey has to be dragged backstage for his own go, while the rest join Cutter at the bar and Mick stands alone in the sea of drinkers.

  2

  Erebli, Central Queensland,

  Eight Years Earlier

  When he returned from the lake without his sister he expected the beating.

  He always lived in fear of disappointing his father in some way: not using the pump correctly, or leaving the door to the skinning shed open, wagging school. Whatever it was that’d set his father off, he’d hear the footsteps first then his shadow would loom over him and before he could tense himself the blow would whack into his ear. He’d sprawl on the ground and then his father would be over him spread-stanced, looping down heavy fists, rasping through gritted teeth: ‘That’s for breaking that bowl, ya little bastard. Didn’t think I’d notice, did ya?’ He’d be left to pick himself up and return to his homework or the dishes, or whatever he was doing, lesson firmly learnt.

  But this wouldn’t be like all those other times. This time he wanted it, deserved it.

  His father was at his car by the broken windmill in the front yard, bonnet raised, changing the carbie or something. He’d straightened, cricking his back, wiped his hands of oil and then stared at him, seeing the tears in his eyes. ‘What is it, boy?’ The anger instant.

  A little later, Mick had lain in the dirt, ears ringing, a bubble of blood pillowing out from his mouth across the ground. A fly stuck in it like quicksand, buzzed helplessly. He could only distantly hear as his father raged, kicking in the door of the car then grabbing an iron bar and slamming it against the dunny. The narrow building almost shuddered off its foundations. The whole time he was yelling Why? Why did you take her? And Mick thought he was talking to him and tried to tell him again about the man, even though his mouth was plastered to the ground and wouldn’t work properly. And then those big shoes were in front of him and he shut his eyes, thinking now.

  His father grabbed him, hauled him up. But all he said was, ‘Chickenshit little cunt. You shoulda saved her’, and Mick’s tears dried on his cheeks as if slapp
ed out of him.

  Then his father threw him down again and stumbled away, roaring at the world and the sky, and his mother tottered from the porch on her elephant legs, crying Oh God, oh God, her eyes bloodshot with drink and grief, and she scooped him up and dragged him inside. They’d sat at the table as she wailed and he’d lain limp in her arms, deadened against her heaving breast, unable to cry anymore.

  His father had to be restrained after stalking down the main street red-eyed with an axe, hollering for his daughter. It took four men to hold him until the law could come. They only let him out of the cells after they’d sat Mick down and asked him again and again what happened to his sister. He told them best as he could about the man stopping in the big black car – a Cadillac he thought, like the one driven by that swarthy bloke who’d nearly hit their ute that time, when his father had grabbed his rifle and told the cunt to go back where he came from. He told them how the man had come back for them at the lake – for her – but then his mind shut down and he couldn’t speak anymore and they’d wrapped him in a blanket and stood back with their concerned, outraged faces and organised search parties.

  His father was let out of lockup and Mick had stood in the middle of the station, trembling – even with all the policemen around – as the man came to him. But his father didn’t look at him as he walked past, his haggard face like some barely recognisable pained creature, and Mick followed quickly on his heels. They went to the lake road, where the stone-faced men were nodding at the fresh tyre tracks on the ground and Mick had followed silently as they dredged the swimming hole. The newspapermen had tried to talk to him but his father had answered instead, voice brittle and bare. When Mick had started shaking uncontrollably his father took him home.

  His sister’s body was found only a couple of days later in the mineshaft near the lake. She would’ve been found sooner if everyone hadn’t been scouring the rest of the state for the man in the black Cadillac. Even though the news had reached as far as Brisbane and Sydney, she was just half a mile away the whole time.