Ironbark

  I’m so good I scare myself sometimes.

  He looks up at me when the bell rings over the front door and he doesn’t seem overjoyed at having a customer. In fact, he gives the distinct impression he’s about to call the cops. For a moment I think I might have to buy something expensive, just to prove to him that appearances can be deceptive. But I won’t. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. He’d only take my money and still think I wasn’t worth spitting on.

  ‘Morning,’ I say.

  He peers over the top of half-moon specs and mumbles. I hate that. And I’ll bet he’s one of those geezers who constantly complains that young people don’t have any manners anymore. I browse and it’s as I suspected. More junk shop than antique store. I mean, there are one or two items that look fairly old and might be worth some money, but most of it is chipped and stained jugs and rusty toast racks and bilge like that. I check a couple of the price tags and it’s clear that, despite his grumpy appearance, the dude has a well-developed sense of humour.

  I’m tempted to keep on looking around, simply to annoy the bow-tied fossil, but I haven’t got the energy, so I split.

  I stroll up and down the main street a couple of times. I even think about having a cup of coffee in one of the sad cafes, but they’ve got red-checked tablecloths and chintzy curtains that are all frills, so I don’t. It would depress me too much. There’d probably be a rosy-cheeked old dear trying to force homemade apple pie on me and I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions. It’s all so boring that when I get back to the supermarket and see Granddad sitting outside on a bench, I’m almost excited. I swear to God. He’s staring off into the distance, like always, a whole heap of plastic bags at his feet. It looks like he’s in a snowdrift. I plop myself next to him and rummage around in the shopping.

  ‘Got the basic provisions, Gramps?’

  ‘Thought you’d need some meat and veg.’

  Ah, right. Either Granddad doesn’t understand the basic principle that a chef chooses the menu and his own ingredients or he’s worried sick I’m going to feed him sushi or some other ghastly foreign filth. I can’t imagine Granddad would be the kind to suck on raw fish. Sure enough, the bags are full of steak and potatoes, with a few tins of processed meat. I’m guessing if it doesn’t moo, Granddad won’t eat it. Then I spot a little tray of pork chops, so that kicks that theory in the head. I hope he has somewhere chilled to store all this stuff, because I won’t be needing any of it. I’m not going to tell him that, though.

  ‘Cool,’ I say. ‘Just need a couple more items. You wait here and I’ll get them.’

  ‘Are you sure you wanna cook?’ he says. There’s a note of desperation in his voice. ‘I don’t mind, you know.’

  ‘Gramps,’ I say. ‘Trust me. It’s what I was put on this earth to do.’

  That might be an exaggeration, but I do love cooking. I taught myself because I got tired of expensive takeaways and restaurant food. Dad reckons that because he’s got money spilling out of every orifice, there’s no need to use our top-of-the-range stainless steel stove or any of the expensive gadgets littering our kitchen. You know, appliances that look good on the off-chance someone from Better Homes and Gardens drops by for a photo shoot. He is the worst kind of phoney. So I made a point of cooking a few times a week while he was out with business colleagues, flashing the credit card and being sucked up to by a dude in a dodgy tux and a dodgier French accent. At first it was mainly to rough up the pots and pans, give them a few ‘lived-in’ scratches, but, to my amazement, I enjoyed it. I liked discovering how some ingredients merge together to form new tastes. I realised I had a flair for it. And imagination. I’m learning all the time and getting better.

  So I love messing with food.

  I pat Granddad on the back and duck into the supermarket.

  Life can surprise you sometimes. I’m not expecting the supermarket to be any great shakes. I’m willing to bet that packet soups are the red-hot specials, the newfangled idea from the mainland. But they have a deli and everything. What’s more, there are fresh herbs, spices and even a good number of Asian vegetables. I’m staggered, but stock up. The only blip is when I come to pay with my MasterCard. I say it’s my MasterCard, but it’s actually an additional card from Dad’s account. A thousand bucks limit. He doesn’t trust me with anything more, in case I blow it all on wine, women and donations to Greenpeace. He’d be happy enough with the first two, let me tell you. It’s a Gold Card, the kind that tells the world you don’t have to bother with anything so working-class as price tags. The woman at the checkout turns it over a few times as if she’s expecting to see a Monopoly logo on it somewhere. Even when it’s scanned and the bank gives the thumbs up, she wears this expression that she’s been robbed, but can’t quite work out how. It’s a long shot, but I try to get a carton of smokes stuck on the tab. She looks absolutely thrilled when she turns me down, like it’s the one bright spot in an otherwise bleak day.

  ‘Done deal,’ I say to Granddad when I get out. He hasn’t moved as far as I can tell. ‘Just a case of reporting in to the cop shop, stopping off at the bottlo and we’re ready to split the scene.’

  Granddad steers me to this little rinky-dink building just off the main street and behind the supermarket. A thirtysecond walk. There’s a police car parked outside, otherwise you’d never know this was a cop shop. It’s almost quaint. The building is really small. Unless there’s some serious warping of the space–time continuum behind those walls, there’ll be no rows of cells waiting for public wind-breakers, serial disabled-parking villains and sexual abusers of domestic appliances.

  I’ve seen bigger public toilets.

  The front door is locked. I am not kiddin’. And – get this – there’s a hand-printed notice on the door’s top panel. ‘Please ring for assisstence’, with a little arrow pointing to a buzzer on the doorframe in case you’re a complete moron and can’t find it by yourself. I wouldn’t be surprised to see another notice saying the cop shop’s only open on Mondays, Tuesdays and half-days Wednesdays when there’s an ‘r’ in the month.

  I love that. Please ring for assisstence. It’s an emergency, officer. Get me someone who can spell. Quickly.

  Granddad rings. We wait. Good job I’m not slitting his throat because by the time ‘assisstence’ arrives, rigor mortis would’ve set in. Eventually we hear the thump of approaching footsteps. Somewhere a needle is registering 5 on the Richter scale. The door opens and a mountain steps out. I instinctively take a step back.

  The police officer is huge. I don’t mean well-built. I don’t mean stocky. I mean huge. He’s so tall he should have a red, spinning light on his head as a warning to lowflying aircraft. He’s so broad he’s a one-man solar eclipse. He’s got snow drifts on his shoulders. He’s . . .

  Trust me, if he toppled onto you, they’d have to peel you off the bitumen. I risk neck strain and scan the mountain’s summit. There’s a lumpy head up there, and teeth arranged in what seems to be a smile. You probably don’t want to know this, but my bowels loosen slightly.

  ‘G’day, Richie,’ says Granddad. ‘How are you?’

  ‘G’day, old-timer,’ says the colossus. ‘Never better. Never better.’

  I worry slightly about someone who apparently still uses the term ‘old-timer’. I thought no one said that outside of fifty-year-old American films.

  ‘This here’s my grandson. I reckon you’ve been expecting him.’

  ‘Sure have. Sure have.’ I’m beginning to think this guy says everything twice. ‘Welcome, young fella. Put it there.’

  This huge ham of a fist hovers around my abdomen. I transfer the shopping bags into one hand, put out the other and shake his. His grip is firm, but not too strong. That’s a relief because if he had a mind to, this guy could leave me with a soggy stump full of splintered bone. As it is, my hand disappears entirely in his. I check him out as we shake. I know I’ve already mentioned it, but he really is big. It’s not the kind of bigness you see wandering around shopping cen
tres either; you know, the huge gut hanging over the belt, all wobble butt and multiple chins. This guy is solid muscle. His uniform, which probably had to be made specially, since I doubt he fits regulation sizes, is tight with the strain of keeping it all in. Listen, if I was recruiting a team member for tug o’ war, I wouldn’t pass him over, that’s all I’m saying.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ he says, releasing my hand and stepping to one side. Granddad goes in to the cop shop and I follow.

  There is a small foyer and a counter, but it doesn’t have a grill or anything. In Melbourne they’ve got all these security measures, like ceiling-to-counter mesh screens and push-button keypads on all the doors. Worried, I suppose, that someone will jump over the counter and do serious damage. But this is Snoozeville, Tasmania, and I doubt anyone in the area is young enough to actually be able to jump the counter. Even if they could, they wouldn’t want to come up against Richie on the other side. Take it from me, you’d be jumping back quick smart if you knew what was good for you.

  There are a couple of chairs along one wall and a few posters featuring random missing persons. But it’s the wall opposite the counter that’s the real eye-catcher. I put down my bags to get a better look.

  There are dozens of framed photographs, and they are all of Richie. I nearly burst out laughing, but manage to keep it in. I can’t imagine old Rich would be too amused to see me take a quick scan of his gallery and then wet myself amid gales of laughter. Just a wild guess, you understand, even though he seems like an amiable giant on first acquaintance. But it’s hard not to react.

  He’s chopping wood.

  In every single photo, he’s chopping wood. Well, okay, in a couple he seems to be sawing wood, but wood features prominently, that’s for sure. Wood and Richie. Richie and Wood. It’s a marriage made in heaven, it seems. And the other recurring photographic motif is shorts, a singlet and muscles the size of basketballs.

  It is incredibly impressive and unbelievably crap.

  A hand lands on my shoulder and multiple bones consider going the stress fracture route.

  ‘Ah, you’ve noticed my collection,’ says Richie. Noticed? It would be hard to miss since it covers the entire wall. What I like, though, is that they’re on the wall opposite the counter, presumably so man-mountain can check himself out when business is slow. Like all the time. ‘That’s my little hobby. Woodchopping.’

  ‘More than a hobby, Richie,’ chips in Granddad in this brownnosey voice. ‘You’re out on the mountain practising every spare moment you’ve got. And you’ve won how many titles?’

  Richie grins and points to a photograph showing him and another colossus with their arms around each other. ‘Not as many as I would have if this guy hadn’t been around. Do you know who this is? Do you?’

  I realise the question is directed at me. I can’t understand why, since there’s no reason on God’s sweet earth why I would recognise any dude with an axe and muscles the size of punching bags, unless he was a homicidal maniac in a well-known horror flick.

  ‘Give me a clue,’ I say.

  ‘How about the greatest woodchopper of all time? One of the greatest athletes the world has ever seen? Over one hundred and eighty world titles and more than a thousand championship wins? An Australian icon. A legend. A legend.’

  ‘Ricky Ponting?’ I say, but I suspect you couldn’t find this guy’s sense of humour with a compass and a road map.

  ‘David Foster,’ says Richie, confirming my suspicions and clapping me on the back with one hand. Actually that does hurt. ‘The great David Foster.’ He sighs, and for a moment I think he’s going to wipe away a tear. ‘Doesn’t live far from here, you know,’ he continues. ‘You should see his place. It’s a shrine to woodchopping. Has all his cups and trophies and ribbons from thousands of events all over the world. It’s amazing. It’s amazing.’

  ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘I’ll definitely go see that. Later in my stay. I wouldn’t want to get the highlight over with first, ’cos everything that follows would just be an anticlimax. And my doctor has told me not to get over-excited. Not to get over-excited.’

  As soon as I say it, I feel ashamed. I’m being too smart for my own good. Just because the guy’s a cop and a bit slow doesn’t give me the right to mock him. It nearly gives me the right to mock him . . .

  Richie gives a little laugh, but I catch his eyes and they aren’t smiling, let alone laughing. There’s a glint that some might call steely. It occurs to me that old Rich is a strong candidate for the position of worst-kind-of-enemy-to-make-in-a-small-town. Even without that consideration, I feel bad. I want to apologise for being an excellent facsimile of a horse’s rear end. But I don’t know how to frame the words, so I keep quiet.

  ‘Well, you come on through here with me, young fella,’ he says and opens up a door next to the counter. I step through to a short corridor. ‘We just need to do some paperwork. Shouldn’t take long.’ Granddad looks like he’s going to follow us, but Richie points to a chair in the foyer. I catch a glimpse of Gramps sitting as the door clicks shut and the cop and I are alone in the corridor. Richie leans back against the closed door and folds his arms across the slab of his chest. He stares down at me and he isn’t smiling. There’s no expression at all on his face. He stands there for what seems like minutes, but is probably only twenty seconds.

  ‘What?’ I say and open my arms to emphasise the point.

  Eventually, he takes his weight off the door, unfolds his arms and points down the corridor behind me.

  ‘End door on the right,’ he says.

  ‘Look . . .’ I say.

  ‘Move!’ he snaps. Now, I know I said I was in the wrong, being smart and all that, but here I am trying to apologise and he’s not interested. He rumbles down the corridor, and I have to scuttle to avoid being run over. It’d have the same effect as falling under a steamroller, I reckon.

  I scramble into the room just in the lead. There’s a desk, one chair, a filing cabinet and a window with a view of an empty car park. I consider snagging the one chair, but even I know this wouldn’t be a wise move, so I stand and wait while Richie eases himself into the leather wing-back. There’s a lot of creaking and the sounds of dispirited springs doing their best to cope. Richie leans back in the chair, to more groans and creaks, and puts a foot on the desk. His boots are the size of lifeboats.

  He looks at me. I look back. The silence stretches.

  Look, I know what he’s trying to do – I’ve seen enough American cop shows – but it’s really unnerving and I find myself shifting weight from foot to foot. My mouth is dry and I get this compulsion to break the heavy silence. I know I shouldn’t. I know I should wait it out. But the pressure is too much.

  ‘I’m sorry I was a bit smart out there,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to give offence. I apologise.’ I’m pleased there’s no tremor in my voice.

  Richie doesn’t say anything. Absolutely nothing. He’s looking right through me, even though he doesn’t take his eyes from mine. He pulls a pencil from the top pocket of his uniform and taps it against his front teeth. There’s no other sound except for the tapping of wood on enamel and the distant surf of my heart. I clear my throat and he obviously thinks I’m going to say something else because he puts his right hand up in the stop position. Actually, I wasn’t going to say anything. I was just checking to see if my brain was still in charge of my body.

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ he says and his voice is so quiet I have to strain to hear. ‘Do you?’

  I have no idea if this is a question he seriously expects me to answer. I’m tempted to say, ‘Yes,’ but I swallow it before it has the chance to come out. Again, I know I should let the silence work for me. But I’m gutless. I can’t ignore a question, so I shake my head. I’m such a loser.

  ‘I think you reckon you’re a real tough guy. A real tough guy.’

  I can feel my head starting to shake a ‘no’ again, but luckily I stop it in time. I want to keep some self-esteem. He continues in the same l
ow voice.

  ‘Yeah. You come here from Melbourne. Think you’re the city hotshot and we’re just a bunch of ignorant inbreeds. Is that it, mate? Is that what you’re thinking?’

  I’m doing better now, because my head doesn’t budge. I keep my eyes on his.

  ‘So much better than us. Well, I’ve got your details here, mate.’ Richie takes his foot off the table and turns his eyes away from me for the first time since he sat. He sorts through a pile of papers on the crowded desk, picks up a thin manila folder, and flips it open. ‘Quite a record you’ve got, mate. A few cautions for assault. Like to use those fists of yours, do you?’

  ‘Hey, dude . . .’

  He uses his fists, then. Well, one. It slams onto the desk and cuts me off. Richie’s voice, though, doesn’t go up even a notch in volume.

  ‘And then you moved up into another weight division, didn’t you? Busting up that fast food restaurant, terrorising customers.’ He whistles. ‘Quite the little temper. Yes, indeed. So. Let’s see what the Melbourne justice system thought about that, shall we?’ He makes a big deal of turning over a few pages. ‘Oh, yes. Here we are. Probation.’ He makes his tone of voice sound surprised. ‘You must be a criminal with friends in high places. All that . . . mayhem. And you scored probation. Of course, maybe your dad coughing up thirty thousand dollars in damages, maybe bucks into back pockets, might have helped. Not to mention the “expert witnesses” he paid for.’ You can hear the quotation marks in his voice. ‘What was that, young fella?’

  The words are as regular as a metronome in my head. It’s cool. It’s cool. It’s okay. You’re okay. It’s cool. I realise my lips are moving. That I’m mumbling the words out loud. I shake my head, but I can’t stop my lips moving.

  ‘Yes, the expert witnesses,’ he continues. ‘Shrinks who testified that you suffer from “Intermittent Explosive Disorder”.’ He laughs. ‘I love that. “You suffer”. You suffer. Poor thing. Well, we couldn’t lock up a victim, could we? No. Send ’em on holiday. Send ’em to Tasmania, to a place full of decent law-abiding families. Send ’em to stay with their old granddad.’