—Brentley, and Fulton.
—Hey! The old Greenvale cop’s son?
—Yes!
—Fuck, mate. You’ve grown, sport!
—Um … thanks.
—Got any cigarettes? pipes in Fulton.
The old farmer fishes a crumpled bag of Drum tobacco from his baggy jeans pocket. He has those old-man hips which disturb me. Old people’s hips get higher and more bony or something as they age.
—What you boys doing out here? he asks, watching Fulton trying to roll a cigarette. His faded blue farmer eyes twinkle in the late-afternoon light.
—We started out on a canoe trip, I say: twelve of us, my old man leading, and we wrecked on a bough sticking out of the water. We lost all our supplies. The old man told us to find you and ask for help getting to Lucky Downs.
—Pretty lucky blokes, I reckon, he grunts: You can die out here in a matter of hours. If the snakes didn’t get ya, the yowies woulda.
Fulton’s eyes widen.
Davidson leads us a couple hundred metres through the trees and we climb into a Nissan four by four. Pretty soon we get out of the scrub and roar along a dirt road towards the highway. About half an hour later he drops us at the gates of Lucky Downs homestead and we walk over the cattle grid to the farmhouse.
The night has fully crept in now. No lights on in the house as we approach. I hammer on the front door. The whole property has an eerie darkness. I try the door and it opens right up, and we stumble about trying to find the light switch, but then I remember this house runs on generator power. Fulton finds the kitchen and opens the fridge. A gust of cold air blows out but no light comes on.
—Must run on gas? I say.
—Huh? Fulton says, cramming a chicken leg into his mouth.
We fumble around in the dark and go out onto the veranda at the back of the house. The veranda must measure at least a hundred metres, and, unlike the whole damn town, which feels smaller now I’ve grown, it still looks as huge as it did all those years ago. We sit out there with the moon as our only light until at some point I doze off on one of the big couches, listening to Fulton complain about wanting a cigarette.
A dream of Billie-Jean. She runs from me and screams in terror. I keep chasing her, pleading, please listen to me, please – but I can only roar, and this frustrates me, so I bellow louder. I chase her across a rapidly flowing wider-than-the-world river, and she falls in and drowns. I kneel on the bank as the vast body of water speeds away my doomed Ophelia, to the estuaries and the mangroves and the ocean beyond. I stand to roar again and throw myself into the depths, to go with her to a cold dark death. Then I see myself reflected in the water. Nine feet tall, covered in orange gory hair and uglier than Sin herself. I stand there, a weeping yowie.
I awake with a start, unsure of my bearings. Dawn galahs, a splatter against evening’s retreating skirts, a single frosted wing arcing in the morningblue. Jasmine on the trellis. A curlew down there on the lawn putting on a show in the dew, like a pastoral Othello.
Fulton has his mouth hanging open, with this sinusy-sounding snore gurgling out. I go along the veranda and into the kitchen, where I spy a telephone. I call my mother. She doesn’t sound amused as I tell her the story.
—Lucky you didn’t die! she says in her early-morning voice.
—Yeah, lucky.
I stand, looking out the window. The house has a grass airstrip at the front, and a clattering of black cockatoos lift off, screeching like a fighter jet. Mum says down the line:
—Go into the office and see if you can find any cash. Write a note and tell them what happened and that you borrowed money. Get back into town and see if you and Fulton can catch a bus to Townsville.
I hang up the phone and go down the hall, back out on the veranda, past Fulton, who still snores all sinusy-sounding, and try the door of the office. It has a sign on it that reads Office in Old-West-style writing. Thankfully it opens right up. The desk has a chaos of papers on it, along with bitten-looking pens and rubber bands and an antique-looking black telephone. I rifle through the drawers and find a tin with Petty Cash written on it in black Nikko. I count a thousand bucks in there, in fifties and twenties. I take sixty bucks and write a note telling the whole story in as few words as possible, before signing off with: I borrowed forty bucks – best, Brentley.
I go back to the kitchen and stick the note on the refrigerator at eye level, under a horseshoe-shaped magnet. On top of the fridge I spy a pack of Marlboro cigarettes. Over by the stove next to the coffee pot I find some matches. I linger a bit, trying to decide if I want coffee. I do. I hunt around and find a tin that has Coffee written on it in green enamel. I put a couple of scoops in and turn on the gas. Milk in the fridge, fresh from the cow too, I bet.
I sit out on the veranda sipping coffee and blowing smoke rings at Fulton until his nose twitches and he springs awake. He snatches the pack of Marlboro out of my hand and has one lit and half-smoked before I stop laughing. We walk around the farm, hoping we’ll run into someone who can drive us into town. No one – not in the sheds, nor in the huge workshop. We go down to the orchard where years ago Albatross lived with his family in a shed among the mandarin and tamarind trees. Seasons of fallen leaves buckle the roof. The bus Trossy used to sleep in has gone. We peer into the shed. Only cold shadows and the scuffing sounds of rats on the beams. Around the front of the farm we find a Toyota Land Cruiser. I clamber in. Sure enough, the keys dangle from the ignition.
—Let’s drive into town and get the fuck outta here, I say to Fulton, the first thing either of us has said in an hour.
—You don’t have your licence! he protests when the engine comes alive: We can’t steal this truck, man!
I sit ignoring him, with the engine idling, to see where the needle of the petrol indicator stops.
—Half-full … awesome. Let’s bail, man!
Fulton shrugs and jumps in the passenger seat.
—I didn’t know you could drive stick! he says as I shift into second.
—My old man taught me to drive one of these exact trucks, years ago when I lived out here, in case he got fucked up out in the bush and I had to drive for help.
—Man, cool, says Fulton as we clang over the cattle grid onto the dirt road.
At the Shell on the edge of Greenvale I go in to talk to the man behind the counter. I explain the whole story to him. My parents and the family from Lucky Downs go way back and I will leave the Toyota with him and catch a bus to Townsville. I’ve left a note at the homestead which explains everything. The counter dude laughs at me and says we’ll have to wait an eternity for a bus out here. He goes on to say we have a snowman’s chance in Hades of getting a truck to take us, too, because since the mine shut down hardly any rigs come through here.
—You’ll die of old age waitin out there, city kid, he says.
I do this kind of mental shrug as the wind, stenched with hot diesel and sump oil, blasts my face.
Fulton has never hitched in his life. We stand in the dirt outside the Shell and watch road trains roar by like machines of the apocalypse in clouds of red and ochre dust. None of them even glance at us standing out here, by the lonely servo on the highway to nowhere.
—One of the trucks’ll pass through Townsville for sure, dude, I say: Someone has to stop to fuel up or piss or something.
A few hours pass. By now Fulton stands on a hill of cigarette butts.
—Gonna go and buy cigs, he grunts.
I join him, for a fresh Coke and some air-conditioning. As we come out of the store, a double-decker triple-trailer Mack truck hisses up to the diesel bowser. A hundred cattle kick the sides. This scaly little dude jumps out and lands on Fulton, all distracted skinning his fresh pack.
—Gotta spare durrie? he says, picking up his cap from when Fulton’s flailing arm knocked it off.
Fulton gives him a cigarette. I wand
er over.
—Hey, mate, you passing through Townsville, by any chance?
—You boys need a lift?
—Would appreciate it.
Fulton nods his frizzy head.
We cram into the sleeping box behind the driver and get under way. The passenger seat has a huge cassette player on it and the dude keeps flipping U2’s new tape over and over. He munches on a burned roadside burger and drives with two fingers as he wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. A slice of beetroot drops out of the burger onto his lap. He spends a good thirty seconds fussing around with his shorts, ignoring the road.
—How many cattle in back? I shout over ‘Angel of Harlem’.
—Dunno, mate, he yells: We measure shit in tonnes. This whole rig, head of cattle included, tops out at one-eighty tonne!
His face reflected in the windscreen looks proud. I look at the speedometer: a hundred and eighty tonnes travelling at a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour. I light another cigarette from the butt of my last. The mattress in here feels damp and the sleeping bag looks stiff. I chain-smoke to cover the sweat stench. Fulton also chain-smokes and dry retches occasionally. We listen to U2’s Rattle and Hum all the way back from Greenvale.
—I’d love to go see them in Brisbane in October, Fulton says as we pass the Welcome to Townsville, Capital of North Queensland sign.
I’ve seen that sign a thousand times in the last few years. I think of my last trip to Brisbane and the sad-face Billie-Jean gave as I pulled out of the train station. Now, a year and a half later, not a single letter. Chicks confuse their animal passions for romantic notions. I’ve travelled the thirteen hundred ks between Townsville and Brisbane so many times I don’t know if I can do it again. Do I like U2 enough? Will I see Billie-Jean again if I do go? Maybe I’ll just go anyway and not look for Billie-Jean. I might run right into her. I wonder how many people live in Brisbane? At least a million, probably more. What chance do I have of bumping into her?
—Sounds like a good idea, I say.
—Huh?
—U2 … Let’s do it.
—Fuck, dude, I said that twenty minutes ago. I reckon the tickets’ll cost.
—How much, ya reckon?
—Dunno … At least sixty bucks?
—So we have five months to get enough cash to get to Brisbane and buy U2 tickets.
—What about accommodation? Fulton says.
—What about it? I say: You worry about your destination when you get there.
—What about planning it before we go? Sounds smarter to me!
—Doesn’t sound like much of an adventure.
—I doubt my parents will let me go if we don’t have someplace to stay.
Both the truck driver and I laugh at Fulton.
The truck driver drops us at a Shell on the outskirts of Townsville. I call home. My mother and both my sisters laugh pretty hard at me lasting only one day on the river before we crashed our canoe. I refuse to talk to them – until the old man gets home and relays the rest of his adventure.
4
I run into Maz on the street and he tells me that Reuben travelled with the skinheads clear down to Melbourne but had to come back because the DSS cancelled his dole cheque. He has a room at a flophouse in the city, opposite the cinemas. I knock on a dozen doors before Reuben opens up. He looks leaner and more hungry than he did when he sped off.
I go with him to reapply for his dole cheque. He stands there arguing with the chick behind the counter. A woman brushes by and sticks a card up on the job board with a thumbtack:
Wanted: House Keepers
The Four Seasons Floating Hotel
Apply at Counter
I take the card before she turns away from the board. I fill out a bunch of papers. The Floating Hotel opened a year or so ago. Basically they anchored a pontoon out in the John Brewer Reef and built a hotel on it. Well, actually, they built the hotel in Singapore – I remember reading it in the newspaper. They shipped it to Australia. Five storeys high, with genius engineering. Permanently anchored at one end, but they can lift anchor at the other, so if a cyclone hits it out there in the open ocean, the hotel can rotate three-sixty degrees with the wind and the tide and not capsize.
The place gets mentioned in the news all the time. Environmentalists went mental when someone leaked that getting the hotel into the reef lagoon required the cropping of coral bommies. Then the four-hundred-passenger catamaran they intended to ferry guests out there with caught fire, on her maiden voyage too! Then, before the hotel even opened, a cyclone smashed it. I think the tennis-court pontoon sank, or something. The bloke who built it also built an artificial island, not far from the hotel, called Fantasy Island. The whole thing went down in another cyclone. Lots of cyclones and storms out there in the middle of the ocean. Then, to top everything off, some divers found an old navy ammunition dump from World War Two sunk out there, about five ks from the hotel. Also, police, or customs, or something like that, keep raiding the place for drugs. A five-storey Ritz floating seventy kilometres out in the ocean: it sounds so close yet so far away, like science fiction.
——
Dad looks real surprised when I land a job on the Floating Hotel. He says he hasn’t abandoned all hope for my future now. I will live there on a seven-day rotating shift.
I fly in a helicopter for the first time, getting taken out to the reef. I fucken hate helicopters. Rich power-tripping bastards fly helicopters. Oh, look at me, in my fucken helicopter, flying up here above all you plebeians.
It takes about an hour up here in the heliosphere, coptering across the ocean. In the deep of the Coral Sea we see a shoal of sharks. Then the water fades to a calm blue shallow lagoon, an oasis in the sea, oceanic beasts circling its edges. Bellies of coral push out of the depths and then the hotel comes into view. It looks like a ship below us at first, but as the helicopter drops altitude and we hover barely above the water, the feat of engineering looms on the horizon of nowhere. It resembles a ship that has flipped over, a five-storey keel jutting into the sky. People on the tennis-court pontoon playing a game. The sun gleams off sunbathers stretched out on the three-sixty-degree deck. We pass over, people on the roof looking up. The roof has rows of huts on it, clothes on lines. Behind the hotel we drop down to a helipad floating in liquid sky. Hundreds of schools of fish flash in the blue.
——
I don’t get much chance to write here on the Floating Hotel. Twelve-hour shifts: 06.00–18.00. I feel exhausted but have struck it rich. I pay a small percentage of my wage for board and food. I get three meals a day, canteen style, huge meals, all you can eat. I end up with eight hundred bucks, for seven days’ work! I have to look after an entire floor of the hotel. It has thirty-five twin-share rooms and five doubles. The place hops with activity, always helicopters and catamarans coming in, private yachts sometimes. Hundreds of business guests and tourists. The majority of guests come here for corporate stuff, outside of regular holidays, which see the place fill up with mostly curious Aussies. The corporates come from Japan. No better tippers exist than the Japanese. Every morning under every pillow I find a packet of Japanese Mild Seven cigarettes and a five-dollar note. On top of that, the amount of stuff guests leave behind when they go astounds me. It makes it bearable that, for twelve hours a day, seven days a week, I change come-covered sheets and scrub shit out of toilets.
My locker in our room teems with half-drunk bottles of every alcohol imaginable, hundreds of packets of cigarettes, and a wad of five-dollar bills thick as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s forearm. I have to share with three other dudes. The room has two double-decker beds, a locker each, and a door off the back that leads to a narrow shower with a toilet. We live on the roof I saw with the clothes on the lines when I first flew over in the helicopter. I share with a dude named Sam – a tall dude, basketball tall – a guy named Ben, who amuses himself by keeping an album full of
photos of turds in toilet bowls, and an older South Sea islander bloke named Phil. Phil smokes a fuckload of weed, all day, all night. Walking into our room will get you high.
We all work under this neurotic fascist named Patti. Patti keeps a collection of amusing things left behind by guests. Like this huge black rubber dildo she claims a couple in their seventies left in a bedside drawer. That makes her bearable. I find it hard to put up with this older Italian woman named Maria, my one-up – she screams in my face if I use the pink fucken spray instead of the purple fucken spray.
Some days, if the hotel has few guests or I finish my rooms extra quick, I have to polish the mirrors on the ceiling of the main foyer. I use this thing that looks like a Muppet head on a long stick. I stand up on the first floor, leaning out over the reception desk, rubbing the mirrors. This extremely cute blonde named Cali works at the reception desk.
——
When I return for my seven days off, and I get my land legs back, I look up Reuben and shout him to a good time.
—Let me get this straight: you get paid, free cigarettes, free piss, wads of tips and you work with hot chicks? Reuben intones as I give him a handful of fives from my massive roll.
—Yeah.
—Groovy.
—I spend my days up to my elbows in shit, though … but if I get drunk before breakfast, the days roll by.
—You have any of those bottles of Sambuca you mentioned?
—Nah. Security checks our bags as we leave. Can’t take alcohol off the hotel. Something to do with customs.
—I heard the place has gone bankrupt?
——
The hotel has a bar, down in the boiler room. It has portholes like an imaginary submarine, because real submarines don’t have portholes. I go every night. Most people who work there either forget I haven’t yet turned eighteen, or they don’t care. Staff drinks cost one dollar. I drink hundreds of vodka and oranges. So much that it comes out of my pores the next morning. Cali hangs out in the boiler room too, but I find her so damn attractive I can’t bring myself to try to chat her up.
Scoundrel Days Page 12