Yesterday's Dust

by Joy Dettman

  Big as a river gum, he’d been, and as tough. He’d made old bones, that one. One of the black breed who had wanted more.

  He’d wanted more than his half-share of a few small fields in Wales so he’d come out here with his new wife and they’d carved these acres out of a foreign wilderness and named the property Narrawee. Aboriginal or Welsh, Jack didn’t know. Nobody knew now. Nobody had bothered to ask old Samuel while he’d lived.

  He hadn’t been able to read or write when he’d arrived here. Someone else had done the writing, and the spelling. Old Samuel’s tongue used to soften that second syllable, Narrarwee, he used to say.

  ‘Narrarwee,’ Jack whispered. ‘Narrarwee.’

  Old music. Sad music. The townspeople had given the music that old country and western nasal twang, the hard A. Yarra was Yarra after all.

  Whichever way you said it, Narrawee now belonged to Jack. All of his life he’d wanted it. As a four year old he’d wanted it.

  And it was his now. A thousand-acre property, and he didn’t know what to do with it. May’s land, Hargraves Park, was his too, and May’s old house where the manager and his wife lived. All his – or bloody Samuel’s, with his horseshoe scar.

  To my beloved husband for his lifetime.

  He’d been a husband to her, not Sam. He’d been her only husband, her only lover. She had to write Sam’s name on her will. Couldn’t get out of that.

  To my beloved husband for his lifetime.

  She’d made certain that he could never sell her land, and she’d known he wouldn’t sell Narrawee, chop it up into ten-hectare lots for hobby farms. But what the bloody hell was he going to do with it?

  When she was alive the manager had come down once a week, had coffee and scones with May. They’d worked it out between them, rotated their crops, sold their stud cattle and their bull juice. Jack didn’t know a good bull from a bad bull. May had known. She’d had her books. Knew where every spoonful of bull juice had been sent. Poor bloody bulls. No jumping fences and swimming rivers for Narrawee bulls. These poor bastards didn’t know what a flighty heifer was, but they’d impregnated a few.

  He thought of Bessy’s bull rampaging through the paddocks at Mallawindy, and he laughed as he walked to retrieve his glass, his eyes straying to the family graveyard, visible from this window. Much thought had been given to its site, chosen by old Samuel while his Jane lay in an earthen-floored hut, grieving over the loss of a daughter. Only a dream then, this white mansion on the hill.

  Samuel had dug that first small grave in the wood paddock where the trees still stood undisturbed – in the western corner – and he’d planned this room around that graveyard, planned its long windows so his children’s ghosts could wander in at night to play.

  They’d lost three daughters and two sons to diphtheria, but they’d raised the middle son, William. He’d died in his early thirties, and when he was gone, old Samuel had placed all his hopes on the two grandsons. Matthew the beanpole, and John the bastard. Matthew had rolled over and died unwed, so John the bastard, Jack’s father, inherited Narrawee. He’d given his fine lady, Eliza, twin sons in the first year of her marriage. He’d given her VD when they were ten years old.

  Jack had learned hatred early. He’d hated his father.

  His memories of old Samuel were good memories. Maybe he’d loved that snarled greybeard of a man. Big, and smelling of pipe tobacco and rough woollen sweaters, the soft Welsh lilt to his voice, he’d lived on at Narrawee until Jack was six years old.

  You’ll try to buy and sell the world before you’re done, young Jacky Burton, but you won’t ever sell my land, will you?

  No, Pop.

  Land is where we put down our roots, Jacky, and the Burtons need to have their roots well anchored. I transplanted late to this soil, but my roots have grown deep. You fight for this land, laddie. You fight until you die for this land.

  ‘I fought for it, Pop. I fought for it with a bloody bottle in my hand.’ Tears trickled then, trickled for old Samuel, and for May, and for his mother.

  The old man had made his century, plus three, and John the bastard wouldn’t even bury him on his own land. He’d stuck him in the town cemetery.

  Even as a wet-behind-the-ears kid, Jack had known that was wrong. From that day forward, he’d made his mother call him Jacky, because Pop had called him Jacky and because John was his father’s name.

  Jack wiped at his eyes and lifted the glass of whisky, smelt it. He caressed the bottle, full of bottled dreams, and he thought of old Samuel, and he thought of his mother, and he thought of May. Little cheeky-faced May Hargraves.

  She had been an afterthought, born when her parents were old. She’d spent half her life sneaking off to Narrawee. Just a fence separated the two properties.

  She’d come running over with a book one day, on the cover this picture of Camelot rising out of the mists, and she’d named Narrawee her Camelot. She’d had a large dose of wanting more, but she’d had the will to get what she wanted.

  He’d probably loved her when she was four years old. He’d loved her strength, her guts, her fight. Competitive little bugger, she could ride beside him and Sam. Outride them, too, by the time she was twelve. He would have married her. Always thought he would. If his mother hadn’t died, if that diseased mongrel dog –

  ‘If.’

  Life would have been different if his father had been different, but he hadn’t been bloody different.

  Jack had flattened the womanising old bastard the night his mother died, then he’d taken off with his old man’s stash. Eight hundred pounds. It had been a fortune back in those days. He’d had a ball, too, for a few years, gone on the road with a bunch of actors he’d met at the university. He’d been good – made a great Macbeth – and he discovered early he was even better with a few whiskies under his belt to settle the nerves. Then one year they’d taken a play to Mallawindy, and he’d met Ellie of the sunshine hair.

  He’d been planning to take off, run like buggery when he’d got her pregnant, but he’d married her instead. Her old man, eager to get rid of him for months, had no longer been so eager.

  ‘Bloody old Ben Vevers. He only came up to my chin. Bloody bald-headed little two-bit runt with delusions of grandeur.’

  Ellie had been sixteen. He’d blamed her for her youth and for the little bastard she’d produced six months after the wedding. But he’d dressed her in green and brought her home to Narrawee, planning to drag her out of her cow yard.

  She could have grown here. She’d been young enough to educate, but John the bastard had laughed at her country manners and her country voice, and Jack had seen her too well through his father’s and his brother’s eyes. And he’d seen her beside May. That’s what had buggered things up – seeing her beside May, and wanting May. That, and then May marrying that mongrel dog.

  So he’d taken Ellie and her little bastard back to Mallawindy, and punished them for trapping him there. And that was the truth of the matter and there was no getting away from the bloody truth when there was no one else in the bloody house to hear anything different.

  Bloody whingeing little bitch, she’d been. Cold little bitch. Fertile bloody little bitch with her bloody beautiful hair.

  May should have known what she was getting into with Sam, but she swore she hadn’t known. He’d been Jack’s mirror image but they weren’t the same. A crazy bloody partnership, him and May. Sam had liked little kids. Spent a lot of time pissing off overseas, but he’d stayed clean in Narrawee. Jack had threatened to kill him, to feed him to the dogs if he defiled old Samuel Burton’s name in Narrawee.

  ‘Sick bastard.’ He dipped his finger in the whisky, looked at the dripping amber beads and dreamed on.

  He hadn’t touched May in those days. Maybe he’d wanted to, but he hadn’t. Not in those days. That came later. That came after Liza and Sam died. It came when Ann was in the hospital, comatose. May had crawled into his bed one night in Toorak, afraid that Sam’s ghost had followed them there. Sh
e was young enough to have kids, but he hadn’t wanted any more black Burtons. Let the breed die out, May, he’d said.

  He’d used a condom after that first night. Always used a condom – except with Ellie. Condoms were a sin with Ellie, and it had been hard enough to get her to lie down and play dead without coming at her wearing a rubber.

  ‘Bloody brood mare bitch.’

  He lifted his glass, smelling its contents. John the bastard had given the whisky a good nudge. Eliza’s locked door couldn’t keep him out when he’d been at the whisky.

  He pushed the glass from him.

  Ghosts all around him tonight. Ghosts and memories and guilt. Whisky wouldn’t move the bastards, just open more doors, let more of them in.

  Too much heartache. He didn’t need tomorrow’s headache. Carefully then he poured the liquid back into the bottle. He capped it, and took it to the kitchen. Left it on the table with everything else.

  sydney

  Tuesday 18 November

  The whisky bottle, still full, haunted him more than the ghosts these days. He wanted it, but he couldn’t have it here where Harry, the gardener, the bloody manager, or some other busybody might come knocking at his door. He didn’t let any of them in, but they kept on coming.

  His thumb splint was off and the skin graft looked like what it was, a piece of swollen red bum. His bruises had faded but his bones and his heart still ached and he had to get away, get out of the house or he’d blow his brains out. Had to go some place, drink and kill the pain.

  He telephoned the property manager and told him to do what he liked. ‘I’m taking off. Don’t know where I’m going or when I’ll be back,’ he said, then he slammed the back door and drove away to lose himself in Melbourne.

  He had a new car now, insurance supplied; it handled well. He took the road to Melbourne and, with no place else to go once there, he headed for the Toorak flat. It smelt stale, felt more empty than Narrawee. He left the car in the garage, walked up the road to a bar.

  It didn’t take much to make him feel better. Two beers to prime his throat and two whiskies to wrap a fog around his pain.

  An hour or two spent in the stores had loaded him down with plastic bags, a visit to a licensed supermarket had netted him two bottles, and by five he’d decided he wasn’t going back to the flat.

  A taxi took him to Spencer Street Station where he boarded the night train to Sydney. He sat up all the way, snoring, feeling no pain. A second taxi delivered him to a barber shop, which he left light-headed. He found a hotel he used to know quite well and booked a room for a week in the name of Jack Burton, Mallawindy.

  He was going to drink himself to death, leave a suicide note and spoil Ellie’s bloody fun. That’s what he was going to do. He knew the insurance business well enough to know that they wouldn’t pay up for a suicide.

  Once inside the room he snibbed the door and from one of the plastic bags he took a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, drinking greedily as he began shedding his outer garments.

  Hotel rooms. They’d been home to him and his bottle when Mallawindy and Narrawee had been Hell. No ghosts to haunt him in hotel rooms. No one to see him.

  Only a fly on the wall. It sat rubbing its front feet together thoughtfully. Perhaps it frowned, if flies can frown, as it watched him remove a small packet from one plastic bag.

  Hair dye. Black.

  Jack drank again from his bottle, and with each mouthful the veil of fog wrapping him thickened. He was feeling his way through a pea-souper when he changed his mind about the suicide note.

  He’d go back. That’s what he’d bloody well do. He’d leave a suicide note, but signed by perverted bloody Sam, leave it with Sam’s clothes on Bondi beach, then he’d go back to Mallawindy as Jack. Claim amnesia.

  And the bloody property would be transferred into his name!

  ‘You stupid bastard. Why didn’t you think of that before? Put the kybosh on her $250,000 and get my name on the title.’

  Two small bottles in the packet of dye. He removed them, mixing them carefully, as per the instructions. He shook the mixture, squeezed the liquid onto his remaining hair, read the instructions again. Leave for half an hour.

  Dye trickled to his brow, it dripped to his beard, and the fly on the wall took flight, seeking a better view. It settled on the mirror to observe the combing through of the solution, watching it darken by the second.

  New trousers dragged from a plastic bag. Grey. A white business shirt. He ripped off the plastic and the packaging, he removed the pins from the shirt’s collar, shook it, then spread it lovingly on the bed. And he drank again and he laughed and he thought of Ellie’s disappointment.

  ‘But I promised to buy some new pews for the church, love,’ he mimicked. Laughing then, bent double with it, he dragged new black leather shoes from their box and placed them beside his shirt. The black woollen socks, sealed in plastic, held him up, stopped his laughter. He snarled at the plastic, ripping his way into his pure woollen socks with his teeth, pitching the plastic at the fly on the mirror.

  Jack filled his half-hour with his bottle, sloshing the whisky down, checking its level and the position of the hands on his watch, feeling better by the inch. But as the minute hand crept to the half-hour, Jack’s head nodded to his chest. Tenderly he placed the bottle down, and he lay his head on the pillow. Slept. Slept for four hours.

  ‘Shit,’ he said when he saw the battlefield of black dye on bedspread and pillow. ‘Shit!’ he screamed when he saw his hair.

  But the half-bottle of Jack Daniel’s was beside his bed. He washed his mouth out with a worthy mouthful, then two more, and he made his careful way to the bathroom where he showered and washed his hair until the water ran clean – as per the instructions.

  The fly braved the steam to laugh; Jack didn’t laugh when he saw himself in the mirror. His hair was black. Dead flat black. It jutted out from his head in tufts, and his beard had a one-inch stripe down one side, from sideburns to mouth. One of his eyebrows was black, one side of his face a purple grey.

  ‘A man looks like something out of a bloody Frankenstein movie.’

  He closed his eyes, flattening his hair with his hands, and he looked again. He scrubbed at his face and eyebrow with hotel soap, and the soap got in his eye, and it cried. He took up his razor, scraping away his beard, and his face, protected from the sun too long was baby pink. He attacked his piebald moustache, squinting around the razor as he worked.

  His bottle now forgotten, he showered again and he washed his hair with hotel soap, roughly towelling it dry, hoping some of the black might rub off.

  The hotel towel remained clean but his hair felt like barbed wire.

  ‘Holy bloody jumping Jesus Christ. You look ratshit, you stupid bastard.’

  Slowly he dressed in his grey sports trousers. A little tight at the waist. His white shirt, his black socks and shoes were on and as he bent to tie his shoelaces, his trousers attempted to dissect him. But they looked good; looking down at them, they looked good. Looking down at himself, he felt like Jack again. His feet looked like Jack’s, felt like Jack’s. The bloody shoe was pressing on his little toe.

  He drank from his bottle again, then walked to the mirror, his eyes partly closed. He shrugged his shoulders back and stole a fast glance at his reflection. And he didn’t look so bloody good. One eyebrow cut in two by his red scar, the other brow a stubble of black in a purple-grey birthmarked brow.

  He combed his hair forward. He combed it back. He wet it and combed it again, but hair given its freedom to stand on end hadn’t refused the opportunity, and the fly now perched on the mirror saw what Jack could see. It flew off to hide its eyes behind the drapes.

  A dye-stained hand ran over his smooth face and dye-stained fingernails played with his baby-pink chin. Nervous strokes.

  ‘You look like a bloody madman.’

  Slowly then he walked away from the mirror, kicking his jeans and casual shirt, his denim jacket, kicking the plastic bags. He lit a cig
arette, puffing on it nervously, the ash falling onto the floor with everything else. He was hungry. He’d been planning to go to a restaurant, eat a decent meal, be young again, be Jack again.

  ‘Stupid bastard.’

  He couldn’t go out looking like this. Couldn’t leave the bloody room looking like this! For an hour he sat on his bed until his stomach forced him to pick up the telephone and call room service.

  He ordered the roast of the day and coffee. A pot of coffee. He needed a bloody coffee. May had got him addicted to the shit.

  The towel was wrapped around his head when he opened the door. No tip. Just a snatch for the tray, and a smart door close.

  In the early evening he hit his bed and slept well, but when he awoke at six a.m. with a mouth like the bottom of a bird cage and a head like the inside of a European wasps’ nest, he picked up his inch of whisky and pitched it at the fly on the wall, watched while whisky trickled.

  What he saw that morning in the bathroom mirror sobered him. An ugly black-headed old bastard wearing Samuel Burton’s new scars looked back at him. Wherever he went, those scars would go with him. How was Jack going to explain them?

  ‘Bloody sympathy scars?’ Wet, his hair looked bad. Dry, slept on, it was a disaster. Nothing for it but to take to his head with his razor, shave it smooth. ‘Got you, you crawling little bastards,’ he said to the lice. ‘Try living on a bloody billiard ball. And don’t bother moving south either.’ The razor moved south and the eyebrows were gone.

  He looked at the dye-stained bed and decided to do a runner, got as far as packing up his plastic bags, as far as the taxi rank before realising the hotel would send the bill to Mallawindy.

  ‘Stupid brainless bastard,’ he snarled, and he walked back, paid his bill with Sam’s plastic.

  That afternoon Jack took a room at an unlicensed motel that had clean sheets and a television set, a good supply of coffee and a comfortable chair. Bill Dooley, he wrote on the registration form. Goondiwindi, he wrote.