Sweet One

by Peter Docker

  Izzy glances over to see two young men sitting on some huge tyres. Their faces are inflamed, and their eyes and nose stream strange-coloured dribble. They nod their heads and move their bodies as though they are listening to music that no one else can hear.

  Sniffers, confirms Queenie.

  Queenie can see the cut-off Coke cans in their hands.

  A woman gets up from the closest fire, and comes over to Queenie. They converse in Language. Izzy listens. She has heard her share of foreign tongues, but there is nothing on the planet even close to the age of this language – with this mob Izzy is still struggling to tell where one word ends and another begins. Then the woman turns, and goes back to sit with her relatives. They are quiet, with heads down, or staring off into empty space.

  I wanted you to meet this Old Fulla. Another grandfather for me. His older brother was the elder who died in the prison van. My cousin tells me no one can talk right now. The Old Fulla is troubled. He went to the police this morning to make a complaint about his granddaughter being raped by a taxi driver. They told him to fuck off. He is shame. Doesn’t know what to do.

  There is one Senior Man sitting off by himself. He has his shirt off, and is tapping two boomerangs and singing quietly. He looks like the loneliest black man in the world.

  We can’t talk to him. He is the boss for this place, says Queenie, and indicates the mine with her lips.

  What’s he doing?

  Queenie listens for a moment.

  He is composing a song, or singing one from a recent dream. Each truckload of ore is another truckload of his story being carted away. He wants to know where they are taking his story, his dirt.

  Queenie listens some more.

  He feels like he is being eaten alive, and soon he will have no flesh, no story left. When it is all gone, he will die, she says matter-of-factly.

  Izzy follows Queenie as she walks over to the furthest fire. Here there are another group of people in cast-off clothing. They are all drinking the white and red cans of Emu Export lager. Many of the group still have caked white clay in their hair, and on their faces.

  They put on a big dance yesterday. Got paid in cash.

  Who’d they dance for?

  WMC board members were in town.

  Several of the drinkers get up and come over to Queenie and Izzy. They crowd in close to Izzy. She is instantly reminded of the personal space issue in the Middle East. The English journos especially used to struggle with their space being invaded so much, with the Arab blokes always trying to get closer to them. Izzy understood how they felt; she always had to work at it. She thought the trick was to remind herself that there are no absolutes, and that all cultures have different personal space rules.

  Who im gudia djidja?

  Iz-Izzy, says Queenie.

  Ij-Ijjy, everyone repeats.

  Everyone wants to shake her hand, and touch her on the arms and shoulders.

  Ij-Ijjy – ju gotim jubacku?

  Izzy fishes out her menthols and opens the packet. There are five people around her, and they all take two. She puts the last one to her lips, and lights it up. They all get a light off her. They lead Izzy over and sit her in the circle by the fire. Everyone is pretty drunk. There are still a couple of unopened white boxes of beer just behind the older man. It’s gonna be a big day. Izzy sits and smokes as the discussion in Language goes on all around her. Two of the older ladies come over and touch her tight blonde curls. One of the ladies shoves a young man aside and sits next to her.

  Dorothy, she announces.

  Izzy.

  They shake hands, the old lady’s touch as light as an emu feather.

  Which dance did you do?

  Old man emu, says Dorothy. It’s a dance about men taking responsibility for children. Look after your chicks! she says with a flourish to the older man sitting across from her.

  He laughs back.

  He your husband?

  Boyfriend, Dorothy answers, and they both cackle again.

  I got nother wife, too, the older man fires back.

  Dorothy laughs. They all drink. Izzy smokes. One of the young men jumps up. He shouts something to the old bloke, and then starts to do a swaying stamping dance with his can of Emu Export lager held out from his body the way a priest might hold a chalice. Izzy looks to Queenie.

  He said, I’ll give you emu dance – Emu Export dance!

  The young lad sure can move. Everyone claps out a rhythm and he finishes with a big flourish, and drinks from his can. They all laugh. Izzy notices the younger women all have children on their hips or in their laps. They drink and smoke and juggle their kids effortlessly. The kids look tired and hungry – but resigned. There is no food, and no beds.

  We have to go, says Queenie, and points with her lips.

  Izzy looks over to the direction of the Railway Yard Camp on the outskirts of Big Rock. There are a lot of people there milling around, as a police divvy van drives in.

  They’ll be here next.

  People jump up to say goodbye. Dorothy holds Izzy’s hand lightly and has to be persuaded by Queenie to let her go. They walk quickly back to the Landie without hurrying, jump in, and drive out. Izzy is already composing her next blog in her mind. Out near the gate there are two people asleep on the rocky ground in some patchy shade. The old lady in the wheelchair watches them leave with steady eyes.

  Equal

  The taxi pulls off the bitumen highway and onto the red dirt side road. Dust billows out behind the dirty white station wagon as the driver flies along the dirt track. The country is reflected in the panels of the driver’s cheap sunnies. He glances again into his mirror at the three black girls sitting in the back. They all wear oversize T-shirts and long colourful shapeless basketball shorts. He is thinking about those bar girls in Bangkok with their tight singlets and figure-hugging miniskirts. With those Thai girls you know exactly what you are getting, what shape of breast, what creaminess of thigh. With these desert girls there is no way of knowing. You have to develop a feeling for what might lie beneath. The one in the corner with the frizzy hair definitely has more weight in the front of her T-shirt than the others. And she has a lovely mouth. None of them has spoken a word since town. He picked them up not far from the drinking spot down near the creek. He can smell that they’ve been drinking, which in a way is better. He’s definitely been drinking. They might fight a bit but he’ll get what he wants.

  After another twenty minutes of driving, the taxi negotiates a long sweeping left-hander, and comes to a line of low sandhills stretching off to the horizon, running east to west. There is a small clump of bush on the side of the dirt road. The taxi pulls up and parks in the meagre shade. The driver switches off the engine. He takes off his sunnies and swings in his seat to face the three girls. He looks directly at the frizzy-haired girl.

  You got money?

  The girls are all looking down. No one makes any attempt to speak.

  You!

  He points a bony finger at the frizzy-haired girl.

  The rest – get out! Go on! Fuck off!

  The doors open and two girls get out. The driver reaches back, grabs the remaining girl by the forearm, and hauls her into the front seat. She makes no sound. He puts his hand up under her Lakers T-shirt and grabs a breast. They are much bigger than he thought. She tries to push his hand away, and he slaps her hard across the face. He quickly pulls down his trackie dacks. She squirms. He holds her hard by the breast.

  Come on, you little black bitch, let me see them!

  He yanks the T-shirt up over her head. Outside the taxi, the other two girls hang in the far end of the shade. They look back at the taxi without looking. The driver grabs the girl’s head, and forces her facedown into his lap. She knows the fight is useless. This is the way of things.

  On top of the last sandhill before the shade, Smokey watches through his field glasses. Under his breath he is swearing a litany of abuse. He gets to his feet and moves quickly down the sandhill to the road just
travelled by the taxi. Smokey is abusing himself, as well. He had to see if the story was true. Izzy could have made up any old shit in her blog. Even if she is on-side. Her father was a cop and SAS. She is coming at this story from both sides. Now he knows to treat her other blogs seriously. Plenty more grist for the mill. Now he knows the story is true, he is shitty with himself for not being down there. He didn’t consider how it would make him feel. He grabs the planks with nails hammered into them, and drags them out onto the dirt road. His under-the-breath swearing does not abate for a moment. He lies back down by the side of the road. He takes out his big knife and cuts himself on the forearm to bleed out some of his contained rage. He watches the blood burst from his skin and flow out of the cut, dripping into the red dirt, and forming little balls. His blood and the dirt are the same colour.

  Is that how this land came to be red? All the blood!

  The soil is iron-rich. So is blood. His face is screwed with some emotion he can’t grasp. He is starting to edge towards understanding the men he fought in Afghanistan; how different the fight is, how much more complex, when you are in your own country. When the fight has nothing to do with a country. And all to do with the country. Maybe this is how they feel. Does Afghanistan really exist? Each man can vouch for his own tribe – but the country? Does Australia really exist?

  Finally, he hears the taxi start up again. He swears again, going into his long prayer of nonstop aimless profanity. In a minute or so the white station wagon comes barrelling around the corner, and straight onto his planks. Every tyre is pierced, and the car slips this way and that in the red dust until it comes to a sliding halt, two hundred metres down the track. Smokey gets up from his hiding place with the little blood and dust balls, and walks deliberately down the middle of the dirt road towards the motionless taxi. The taxi driver sees him in his rear-view mirror, and climbs out of the vehicle, grabbing the tyre lever from under his seat.

  Got a flat, mate?

  The driver is taking Smokey in. Smokey is in fatigues, boots, is wearing a backpack, and has a pistol in his belt.

  Who the fuck are you? stammers out the taxi driver.

  How old do you reckon she is?

  The driver looks around. There is no one else. He notices the blood dripping from two cuts on Smokey’s forearm. Something crazy is going on.

  Mate, if you wanna fuck one of those black sluts, I can hook you up.

  Smokey looks down to notice a single drop of his blood fall and splatter in the dust at his feet.

  They love it, mate. And they are hot, too. And tight. They fucken love it.

  Do they? Is that why you slapped her? Do they love that, too?

  They had no money. They know the rules.

  The rules?

  Smokey shakes his head slowly, as if he is having trouble understanding what the driver said.

  Who the fuck are you?

  I’ve got a rule for you. For every action – there is an equal and opposite reaction. Although, I do admit, there has been much discussion between a colleague and myself recently, regarding the notion of ‘equal’. Anyway, the point is, there’s a motherfucken reaction to shit happening.

  What?

  Smokey reaches into his backpack and pulls out a huge black dildo. He holds it up to the taxi driver so he can get a good look at it. Smokey does his best Crocodile Dundee:

  ‘Now that’s a cock!’

  The taxi driver grips his tyre lever and glances back at the car. Maybe he could make it to the radio there.

  Drop the tyre lever.

  Make me.

  The driver has hardly got the ‘me’ out when Smokey crosses the space between them and cracks him on the side of the head with the dildo. The tyre lever starts to come up, when a jarring pain up high in his shoulder causes the driver’s whole hand to go numb, and his fingers to open, and let the tyre lever drop. Smokey knocks his knees from behind, and the driver finds himself on his knees with Smokey behind him, holding him by the hair. Smokey drops down and clamps the driver’s face in a headlock, and shoves the big black dildo down his throat. The driver fights and gags but Smokey doesn’t let up until the big black dildo is almost all the way down the man’s gullet. The driver tries to grab at the end to pull it out with his one hand that still works. He is chopped again to the neck, and searing numbness claims his other arm. He is trying to breathe but now there is no way to get air in past the huge plastic rubber thing in his throat. He looks up to Smokey. Smokey smiles down.

  You must be loving this, you little slut!

  He lets the driver go. The man falls forward into the dust where he writhes for a while and then is still. Smokey searches the body and the car. He takes the cash from his pocket and all his ID. He turns and tracks back up the hill to break his little camp. Got a bit of a walk ahead now.

  The Company Tit

  Izzy stands on the balcony of the Shamrock Albion and looks out over Burt Street. This is why she got them to move her upstairs. She likes to look down on the street. It’s quiet. The media are all staying in hotels in downtown Baal. The extra army and police are billeted out, or staying in temporary accommodation at the Cheetham Street barracks. She only needed one stroll through town to see all the news crews milling around like bees with no flowers to know that there is no story there. She is thinking about the Senior Man singing about his story being carted away by the truckload. Just like in Kandahar, Izzy is wondering what she is doing here.

  This story has hunted her down and called her out. She wrote the truth about Big Bill, but it was never published. She waited, and got another shot at it. The truth. Or closer to it. Now there is another kind of truth, the kind of truth that is waiting in the desert, waiting to ambush and kill all those who couldn’t be fucked doing their jobs properly to keep the Old Man in the prison transport alive. Surely they deserve what’s coming? They have already sanctioned killing. Izzy is thinking about the slow-motion destruction she witnessed with the drinkers in the Old Tyre Camp. Give the people grog – might as well just take them out and shoot them. A lot less messy. A lot cheaper. Izzy butts out her smoke. It is tasting like shit. Her BlackBerry goes off: ‘Ace of Spades’.

  Mister Foster.

  Izzy. How is life in the Wild West frontier?

  Westie, wild, and with a lot of frontiness.

  You’re back in the game, officially. I want a front-page feature on my desk by yesterday morning.

  They haven’t said anything to me yet.

  The lackey will be on his way.

  Foster hangs up. Right on cue, Mort drives up in his big new Holden, and parks right below her.

  Ah, the lackey, Izzy says to herself with a smile.

  Mort gets out and looks up. Izzy can see that he has her laptop.

  Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your hair! he calls.

  My underarm hair is almost long enough.

  Gone native, have we? I’ll take the stairs.

  Izzy goes in and opens the door to her room. Moments later, Mort comes bounding into her room. Izzy takes her laptop from him.

  I spose you copied everything?

  I thought they went over it with you.

  Going through a lady’s laptop, it’s like rummaging through my handbag.

  A lady?

  Smart-arse!

  She takes a swing at him with the laptop, which he artfully ducks.

  Vodka and menthols, that’s all that’s in your handbag.

  What’s in yours: Desert Eagle gas-auto forty-four Magnum?

  Bigger room than downstairs.

  Back on the company tit.

  What you got for me? asks Mort.

  He’s systematically wiping out everyone who had a hand in the death of the Old Man in the prisoner transport vehicle.

  Oh, come off it, Izzy.

  Mort picks up Izzy’s phone from the dresser.

  Oi, says Izzy, and grabs it from him. You’ve heard everything I’ve said anyway.

  And read your blogs. Very imaginative.

  What
can I say? Girl’s gotta write. Do you know how hard it is to blog from your phone?

  They read like you’re on their side.

  Your boss told me there are no sides anymore.

  Who?

  Silver Hair.

  He’s not my boss.

  Izzy hears that slight tone change in Mort’s voice.

  Tell me about BlackCu, she says quietly.

  Mort looks at her like he is looking over a gun sight, cool, calm.

  Where did you hear that?

  Surprisingly, I have contacts.

  Mort crosses to the door.

  You haven’t given me anything, he says.

  I know who the next victims will be.

  I’m arranging teams to be with the JP in Somerset, and the police.

  Bremmer and Mapleton: the two dees at Baal who didn’t separate the GPL4 suspects after the suspicious death, and before the interviews. Did not follow any correct procedures. The GPL4 crew spent three hours in the same room, with their supervisor, getting their stories straight.

  That was after the fact, dismisses Mort.

  He’s not a fucking lawyer, Mort.

  Where do they find these people? Do the police here recruit from clown school?

  They have a blind spot, says Izzy.

  A black spot, says Mort.

  Is that what BlackCu is? A black spot?

  A black hole, says Mort, and his eyes blaze.

  Mort grabs his phone, shakes out a smoke, and steps onto the wooden balcony. Izzy plugs her laptop in and switches it on. She opens up a new document, and starts to type.

  Revolution

  Izzy looks up from her keyboard. Her fingers are stiff. She wriggles them to get the blood flowing. After Mort left she showered and changed into her running gear, but found herself at the keyboard. Girl’s gotta write. She hits SEND. She gets up and paces. The room feels like a cell. She pulls out her BlackBerry and opens her photo gallery. There is Big Bill lying in a pool of his own blood. There are the bloated forms of Howell and Stockbow. There is Captain Trim Beard lying facedown with his head off on a strange angle, his black eye from the Hoover Bar still visible. The room is too small to pace in. She grabs her room key and heads down to the street. Out in front of the Shamrock Albion she lights up a menthol cigarette. Night is falling.