Sweet One

by Peter Docker

  You whitefullas afraid of the dark?

  Who you calling white? I’m a black camel.

  There is a group of about a dozen young community kids also wandering in the dark. They’re on the west side, the cops with torches on the east, and they move at the same speed, as though balancing out the presence of the policemen with their shadowy movement. Sweet One shakes his head.

  What? whispers Smokey, as though annoyed with his brother.

  Would you want to grow up here, Coorda?

  Smokey looks at Sweet One. He doesn’t get it. They both grew up in a place like this.

  They’re on their country, Bruz, Smokey says.

  I see lost people. Ghosts.

  I see soldiers.

  Sweet One looks at the kids moving in the darkness. He knows Smokey is right. They are exactly the type of kids the Taliban would recruit: desperately poor, desperately short of meaning, completely uneducated, unpoliticised, full of disaffection for the system that put them here, and left out of everything. Sweet One shakes off the thought. Soldiers fight. Soldiers die.

  In the tin building beyond the bough-shade, they see the light from a fire spill out through the open doorway. The two cops with torches select a vector that will bring them straight to where Smokey and Sweet One are standing. The group of kids place themselves between the cops and the soldiers in the dark. One of the kids, a girl, starts yelling at the cops.

  Eh! P’liceman! You can’t come here!

  Women’s business! Go away, you men!

  Women’s business! Women’s business here!

  Smokey takes up a position at the corner of the house facing the cops. He slips out the revolver that he took from that loan shark dog and holds it down by his side. One of the cops shines his torch into the face of the girl doing the yelling. She is about thirteen, with wild blonde-tipped hair. She doesn’t flinch from the harsh light on her face. She stares back at the copper beyond the torch with a clear challenge in her eyes. The two police officers have no will for a confrontation. Especially not any cultural kind of thing. Smokey and Sweet One watch the two cops with their torches swing away, and head back towards their lit-up white tent and throbbing generator. The soldiers get up and move to the corrugated iron building. Sweet One gives a low whistle from just outside the doorway. Smokey glances back to see Queenie step into the doorway, and motion Sweet One inside.

  Smokey looks back to the cops. He dreams of rushing into the lit-up tent, and shooting them all down. They wouldn’t know what hit em. Maybe some of them would be those racist bastards from the airport that were doing the dirty-boong talk. Mort didn’t count on the Colonel stepping in taking Smokey’s side. The Colonel is married to a beautiful Malaysian woman, from his time when he was posted to Butterworth as a young officer. So Mort had to take a different route, and got at him through Mel. Smokey’s mind goes to Mel. He realises he hasn’t thought about her in a good long time. He closes his eyes for a moment, and can almost see her magnificent breasts. Oh, the joy to be had.

  A girl aged about twelve comes out of the house and slips past Smokey without looking at him. She crosses the open ground and meets up with the group of youths who were circling to balance out the patrolling cops, and they talk. She leaves the group, and they divide into three smaller units and take up positions at spaced intervals between the police tent and Smokey. Smokey smiles.

  Soldiers, he whispers to himself.

  Moments later the girl comes back to Smokey.

  Uncle, come inside.

  Smokey slips the pistol into his belt at the small of his back, and follows the girl into the community house. She leads him straight into the main room, and then goes off and sits with a group of women on a mattress to one side. The mob have torn up the floor in the centre and built a fireplace. Sweet One is sitting there with Queenie, and the Old Bloke with the wooden leg. Sweet One motions him to sit. Smokey sits next to the fire, which has two large goannas cooking on it.

  Jeez, Smokey, your aftershave is strong, says Queenie.

  Eau du camel, says Smokey settling himself in.

  I love your skin tone. Always knew you were a black man.

  I’m just a whitefulla pretending. You gotta smoke?

  Those things will fucken kill ya, Queenie and Sweet One say at exactly the same time.

  Smokey puts his hand out and the Old Bloke shakes it, his touch as light as a brush with a freshly shed snakeskin. Smokey can see that Queenie has been weeping. The Old Bloke fishes into his pocket, and pulls out a near-full pouch of Champion Ruby. Smokey takes the yellow pouch, rolls himself a fat one, picks up a burning stick from the fire, and lights it. He looks up as he is sucking in the smoke to see that the others are looking at the blood seeping through the sleeves of both his forearms. He exhales into the fire and shrugs; what can I say?

  The Old Bloke speaks in Language to the women over on the mattress, and one of them gets up and goes into another room. The Old Bloke grins, and uses both hands to lift up his ex-table leg appendage, and place it back down in a more comfortable position. The woman comes back in from the other room. She squats near Smokey, and without looking at his face, motions for his forearms to be presented to her.

  What’s this? Secret blackfulla herb?

  Iodine, the woman says.

  Smokey puts the smoke to his lips, and rolls up both sleeves. Sweet One is looking at him. He looks down; shame job, proper.

  Oh, Smokey, exclaims Queenie.

  They all know what self-inflicted wounds look like, seen them too many times. The woman swabs the wounds. Then she places her hand on Smokey’s shoulder. Squeezes him gently.

  Thank you, Brother, she says, almost in a whisper.

  She goes back over and sits with the other women on the mattress. Only now does Smokey notice that they are weaving baskets out of grass. One of them makes a comment in Language, and they all laugh. Smokey smiles, and smokes. He’s not sure what was said – but he knows the tone, and knows this mob. South of the border, for sure.

  You got admirers, Brother, confirms Sweet One.

  Wha’d she say?

  She said, ‘I’ll make him bleed – that kind!’ says Queenie with a flourish, and the whole room bursts into laughter.

  One of the laughs from the group of women on the mattress makes Smokey look over there. He sees the owner of the laugh, a young woman that he doesn’t recall, wearing a big woollen beanie. The young woman is smiling at him with teeth that he knows from somewhere. Then she whips the beanie off her head with a flourish, and Izzy’s blonde curls spill out like a billy boiling over. The other women on the mattress are watching Smokey’s reaction, and their quick laughter flies around the room like a raucous mob of cockatoos. She gets up, and he watches her cross the fire-lit room. Smokey drags on his cigarette. Izzy sits next to him. She smiles.

  Pretend-Mel – we have to stop meeting like this, says Smokey.

  Look at this, we’ve gotten to where all white people want to be – we’re finally black!

  Everyone laughs. Just then, the same girl who ushered Smokey inside comes in and speaks quietly to Queenie. Queenie talks to Sweet One, who stands. Smokey gets up too.

  What is it? asks Izzy.

  We have to go outside, says Smokey.

  What’s going on?

  Mother-in-law.

  Smokey and Sweet One help the Old Bloke to his feet, and they all leave, with Izzy following. Izzy notices that there are no other men left in the room.

  Outside, they go over to the bough-shade, and sit. Izzy squats next to Smokey. They see a small group of old women make their way into the building.

  Queenie’s mother is here, says Smokey.

  Smokey is looking over to the police tent. Sweet One never looks in Izzy’s direction.

  Don’t you like her?

  We can’t talk to her. Taboo.

  Izzy digests this. Smokey smokes.

  Are you Queenie’s husband? she asks Smokey.

  Sweet One glances over.

  N
ot me – him! says Smokey with a smile.

  Izzy looks to Sweet One. His eyes are down.

  Is Queenie taking advice from the old ladies?

  Izzy tries to get a look at Sweet One’s face – but he always seems to be looking away. Sweet One and Smokey look at the ground. The stars are coming out strong now.

  Did I say something wrong?

  You didn’t tell her? Sweet One asks Smokey.

  The men are all looking off into the distance.

  The senior women are coming to her, says Smokey quietly.

  Sweet One and the Old Bloke talk quietly in desert language. Smokey finishes his smoke. Izzy absorbs this. She looks down at her charcoal-covered hands. Nothing is how she expected it to be.

  You wanna go for a walk? asks Smokey.

  Sure, says Izzy, and they both get up.

  Izzy chooses a path out through the end of the bough-shade, with Smokey following. She glances back at Sweet One, sitting there with his head bowed. This is her chance to talk to him. Why did they bring her out here if not to talk? But Sweet One has this aura around him that is impossible to broach. He might as well be Frankenstein’s monster drifting away from her on an ice sheet for all the chance there is to speak. And Smokey is leading her away.

  Near the end of the bough-shade there is a young woman that Izzy didn’t notice before. She has a child in her lap. The child stares off into the distance, and his little head can hardly stay upright. The young mother helps right his head each time with slender fingers. The child dribbles and is slack-jawed. His little face doesn’t look right. When they have gone a little way away, Izzy turns to Smokey.

  What was wrong with the child? Izzy asks quietly.

  FAS, says Smokey without his lips coming apart.

  Izzy can hear him grinding his teeth.

  What is it?

  Foetal alcohol syndrome, he spits.

  Izzy has to fight herself to stop her head from turning back to look.

  From drinking whilst pregnant?

  If the child is a girl child, when she is born all her eggs are tainted by it. The grog doesn’t just disable the child, it kills that genetic line forever. It’s fucking chemical warfare.

  They walk slowly away from the police tent, until they are over the other side near where the camels are sleeping.

  You gonna blog this? Smokey says.

  You read my blog?

  Wouldn’t miss it. My favourites are the taxi driver rave, and the loan shark rave.

  Izzy takes this in. They wander up to a sleeping camel.

  They smell like you, says Izzy.

  Sweet, isn’t it?

  Izzy takes out her menthols.

  How can you smoke menthols?

  Stops people botting.

  Smokey takes one.

  Not out here.

  They smile and light up.

  My first smoke was a menthol, says Smokey.

  Mine too. From your mum?

  Yep.

  You throw up?

  Yep.

  They smoke.

  Izzy, can I hold your hand?

  She looks at him in the dark, then reaches out and takes his hand. A small sound involuntarily escapes his lips. His hand settles into hers. They seem to fit. He takes a last drag, then stubs the smoke out.

  Queenie say anything to you about me? he asks.

  She said you fullas took a wrong turn.

  We were at this airfield in Iraq. In the north. They were unloading pallet-loads of cash for the warlords. We’d fought the warlords hard just to get there. We had two wounded, one critical, and we’d killed a lot of people. And they were unloading money as if it were groceries being airlifted to save a hungry community. Soon after we were in Afghanistan. That big firefight, losing the chopper, and back home was Psalm Island. Yeah, we took a wrong turn.

  A camel grunts loudly.

  He says you’re bullshitting, says Izzy.

  He was agreeing with me – you know nothing about camels.

  Sea of Tears

  Izzy opens her hand and lets her new sports bag drop onto the floorboards. Her body still feels like she is rattling around in the Troopie all the bone-jarring diesel-whining way into town. Her muscles are jelly from the ride, and her joints are no longer a tight fit. The others in the vehicle seemed to sleep – but she had Smokey’s stories rattling around her, and the memory of him holding her hand like a little boy. She rubs her eyes. They feel puffy and sore. Izzy takes in her room at the Desert Inn. She tries to have a thought but there is nothing there. She drops her new BlackBerry on the bed. She wanders over to the little table beneath the TV hanging from the wall as if it were a painting. There is a brochure on the table with the title The Last Great Frontier. The other one there is headed Family-Run Hotel. She goes into the ensuite. In the mirror above the basin she catches sight of a woman she barely recognises. Why is her chin up in the air? Does she think she’s better than all this? Better than me? The woman in the mirror suddenly starts weeping. Izzy wants to comfort her but she can’t seem to move. Her arms aren’t working – so how can she reach out to the weeping woman? Izzy watches the fat tears rolling down the face of the blonde woman in the mirror. Why is she crying? That came from nowhere. At least her chin is dropped. Not so uppity now, girl.

  Izzy gets bored with watching the blonde woman in the mirror weeping, and she wanders back out into the room. Now she can feel her own bottom lip contracting and curling with the emotion. But what emotion? What is this thing? She wants to go to the bar fridge and have a drink. She wants to light up a menthol. But her arms still aren’t working.

  She sinks down onto the floor next to the bed and watches as the tears fall between her legs and make little puddles on the polished floorboards. Her BlackBerry rings on the bed behind her head. She doesn’t make any move. She sits and concentrates on trying to control her bottom lip. Her top lip is taut now too, as if she’s just been slapped. Her eyes feel sore and red. Can you feel red? Is red an emotion or a sensation? Her mind is swimming with the red soil, Xavier’s bright blood, and her tears forming a mythical inland sea between her legs. Her eyelids squeeze themselves shut but this doesn’t stop the tears. They keep coming unabated, like there is a crack in the dam to her soul.

  Soon the tears are filling the room all around her. She is lifted up and floats on her back on the calm salty tear sea in her room at the Desert Inn, The Last Great Frontier.

  Her stomach has contracted into a hard little ball from lack of use. Her chest labours to put air into her lungs. She has to force herself to breathe. If she doesn’t breathe she will die. And there is no meaning in death. Meaning resides with the living. Josh told her that. It seems like a lifetime ago, sitting in that bunker near the mortars, watching the sun slowly set beyond those sharp Chora Valley hills.

  Izzy’s head bumps against the plastic corner of the air conditioning unit set high up the wall. The sea of tears is still rising. Her tear-wet clothes cling to her. She pushes off the unit with her hands. Shit, this is a lot of tears. She keeps herself away from the ceiling fan, turning slowly in the centre of the room, with little sculling movements of her hands.

  She tries to bring them into her mind: the dead. But nothing comes. Teddy and Phil are just a blur of uniforms and short hair. She can remember promising Teddy that she’d look him up in Darwin. She can remember the knot in her guts as she admitted to herself that she was lying. Josh’s laugh floats around the room with her for a moment, and then is gone. She remembers Larry’s shaking fingers. She hears Xavier translating the song in the car for her, sees him walking out of the bush with the other men, painted-up and on black-man business. She sees him sitting on the chair in the sea container, covered in welts and burns. And Mort. She sees Mort laughing in the early opener. She sees him naked below her, and feels the contained power in his scarred-up body. But Mort is not dead. From her sea of tears she tries to picture him in his sea of American dollars. How could she fuck Mort? Mort. Mort the killer. Josh was still alive then. Jos
h told her not to wait. Josh was always a better person than her. Josh the laugher. Josh the shooter.

  There is a heavy scraping sound, and the door flies open. The sea of tears rushes out of the room. Mort stands there like Moses, impervious to the power of the ocean of tears. It is like she dreamed him here by thinking about him. Izzy lands with a clunk back on the floorboards near the bed. She looks up. Mort is wearing a black polo shirt with the old Blackwater bear-claw logo on the left breast. She can see the bottom of his black leather weapon holster over his jeans.

  Izzy?

  What do you want, Mort?

  Why don’t you go home, Izzy?

  Why don’t you?

  I am.

  Silence.

  Come on, Izzy.

  Have you come to kill me, Mort?

  I thought we...

  No.

  Silence.

  I don’t know why you’re still alive, Mort.

  Mort stares in at her sitting on the floor. She looks up at him, still drenched by the sea of tears, and holds his gaze effortlessly.

  After a long, long time, he turns, and is gone.

  Main Target

  The Police Commissioner gets out of the Toyota LC200 and settles his peaked cap onto his almost-shaved head. He has the Deputy Commissioner in tow, and two steps behind them is Macca in a suit and tie. The Commissioner gets to the door, and Constable Slopken holds it open for him.

  The Commissioner glares at Slopken who is clumsily trying to come to attention as he holds the door.

  Inside, the station is crowded with cops. Detectives in slacks and shirts, TRG boys in black overalls, and police in blue uniforms. Everyone is bristling with weaponry. There is so much loud talking that they could be in a bar back in Baal. Everyone comes to attention as the Commissioner moves through the room and the chat dries up.