Hard to describe the stink. Like a fishtank that hasn’t been cleaned in a long while. Sometimes in the height of summer there’ll be a whiff of an old storm drain, the city’s rotten guts, and it comes close to that.
Radioing in for the dustoff, then picking his teeth and jawbone out of the dirt, like he was still going to need them. Crazy thinking. Contagious.
Hiss and stink of piss hitting hot metal, only way to cool the gun barrel.
Souvenirs: Small china duck. Chain of three-and-a-half links. Woman’s tortoiseshell comb. Dream of her face at the window. Don’t ask.
Finch: You got twenty dong?
Papa: Yeah but if I wanted it to disappear I’ll go for a stroll in Vung Tau and let a girl get her hand in me pocket.
They’d Medivaced him out in time but there wasn’t much left to work with. That handful of teeth and jawbone—what happened to that? Remember someone saying to put them in an envelope and post it to Johnny Gorton. Nah, Gorton got his face fucked up when he was RAAF. Send it All the Way to LBJ.
Blokes losing it over weird shit. Driving over guys in APCs without batting an eyelid, or joking after Finch tripped a jumping jack. For me next trick … But Reed didn’t want to say goodbye to his weaselly little pet. Sooking and chucking stones as it rippled off into the jungle.
Coming home to The Price Is Right and I Started a Joke. Coming home to Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh.
All those months spent charging sandbags screaming Nog, screaming Gook. Then Simon says, Game’s over now, son. Simon says, Get ya shit and shake hands, boys.
The first hot shower. Couldn’t leave. Even after the water went tepid. Tetch rapping on the door: knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock. Mum? I reckon he’s died in there. Could’ve. It was that good.
Smack was like that. The long, hot bath of it.
Wasn’t like he ever bit anyone, just a big kitten really. But the whiny civvies. So that was that, he had to go. To the zoo, poor fella. Hell, rather shoot him than send him to the zoo.
My Lai all over the papers. Calley striding across the front page on his way to Fort Benning. How can you say you didn’t know? Foxy in the front bar, speaking into his pint. Well, that’s well and truly fucked us. Tarred us all with the same ugly brush.
Taxi driving, two months. Wouldn’t have been so bad except for all the bleeding penitents. Like piloting a confession booth on wheels. The things I’ve seen, the things I’ve done … Boo friggen hoo.
Word got around that one of the new recruits—drunk as a skunk after a boozer—goes down and liberates Kepala. That was the word: liberate. No zoo for you! No zoo for you! Don’t know if it’s a true story but it’s a good story.
Blonde on St Kilda Beach, high summer. She smelled like a dead thing down there, but did her anyway, it’d been that long. Shaking the sand out of a shoe back at the rooming house and wondering when the clap might set in.
Bricklaying. Three weeks.
Coming to on the floor with a neck ache and half a belt. Should’ve bought an RM Williams. Nothing to do but laugh. And wear a scarf for the next fortnight; never mind it’s the middle of a heatwave. Looked like a fag trying to look like John Wayne.
Repat, six weeks. Crossword puzzles. Breadboard for Mum.
TPI, you Nasho muppet? What’d you see we didn’t see?
The way people’s eyes lit up for Long Tan but stayed dull as dishrags at the mention of Coral-Balmoral. Might as well be talking about a law firm. Stopped talking.
Airless furnace of the projection booth. Trapped up there and all the time the sound like great wings. Funny, couldn’t do it nowadays. Would start sweating at the stairs. But there was something about it then. Bossless. Godlike. Looking down on all those silly buggers, cramming Jaffas into the black pits of mouths, laughing popcorn at the big screen.
Saw her running up the steps of the Capitol with her sister. Can’t even remember what the film was. Gone with the Wind? Goodbye, Mr Chips? Just looking down through the bio-box porthole for the back of her braided head, nearly missing the cue marks.
Smell of her clean hair. Like something from childhood. Something unreachable. Her pointy, kittenish face, before parts of it started to fall.
Passenger seat of the Corvette. Twenty years old and they’d given her that flashy car. A good lot of miles already clocked up on it but still. Stubble catching on the see-through stuff of her underwear. Said she liked that: manly. Biting through that flimsy mesh to taste her, slick, salty like the sea. She laughed: Do you know how much these cost?
The banner that read Hey Hey LBJ, and the rest. People marching under it. A woman with a very red, very pretty mouth opened it and said
I am confident the majority of the Australian people will continue to give their support to this policy and will want us to make a measured contribution
Opened it and said two words.
Apple picking in Bathurst. Mangoes in Dimbulah. Oranges in Mildura. Huntsmen the size of hubcaps. But Tetch there, the whole season. Shouting pints at the longest bar in the world, sliding them along the sleek dark varnish with his butchered hands. Face cracking readily into a grin, Glad you came along. Glad you’re here.
Child. Killers.
Her father standing tall on the verandah. Looked like Burt Lancaster, planted there with his feet apart, arms folded. You go with him, Evvie, and you’re cut off. Watching her walk down the white gravel drive, swinging her big red leather suitcase into the boot of the Corvette.
Cassette tape of Pachelbel’s Canon and her simple summer dress. Sprig of jasmine pinned into her hair, and two brandies at the Young and Jackson. Said that was all she wanted, anyway. Still a game to her, all of it.
Would’ve thought twice about letting a dog kip in that house. As long as there’s a lemon tree, she goes. A lemon tree, and she’s apples.
Mind does weird things, trying to distract itself. A bitten tongue or a hummed note. Smoke thrown. Don’t look.
A darkness there was no climbing out of. Fists sinking deep into mud walls. But then the dream ended and it was her body that was so soft.
Tried to leave, get back into repat. Couldn’t hurt her from there. Didn’t she get it? What the distance was for. But she’d always turn up at the clinic like she was dressed for a party, for high tea. Stockings and everything, red on her lips.
Smoking out front of the hospital when Lani was born. Smoking out front of a different hospital when Ruby was born. All these women in the house. Always wanted a boy, a little mate. Someone to teach how to … Don’t know. Teach him something. Useful.
Walking out one night after a blue. Ev locking herself in the bedroom. Again. Made it to Pyalong in four hours, then it started pissing down. Lit smokes to keep warm under the bridge and there she was, the poor mutt, some sight—bits of collie and red kelpie all mongreled up, skinny in her soaked fur and jumping with fleas. Carried her home tucked under the jacket. Probably caught some of her vermin.
Stepping through the door just as everyone was sitting down to Weet-Bix. Where’ve you been? Out tumbles Belle, on cue, ta-dah. Dad, she pongs! says Ru, but she’s squeezing the wretched thing so hard it can hardly get a yip out. Best thing to happen to that little mongrel. That was something. To be someone’s best thing.
Q: How many Vietnam veterans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Khe Sanh on the radio. On the stereo and jukebox. Over the loudspeakers at the supermarket when all a man wants to do is buy a loaf of Tip Top and beat the traffic home before the storm breaks. Even the check-out girl singing along. Asked her, Know where Khe Sanh is, love? Nope. At least somebody was making a buck off that mess.
Tacking posters over holes in the walls for the rental inspection. Smarmy realo maggot: You’re not s’posed to hang pictures. Could’ve put his head through the wall.
A: How would you know, arsehole? You weren’t there.
Like a little
kid—couldn’t sleep with the blinds closed. Still can’t sleep with the blinds closed.
This old digger, in repat. Strange bird they called Clarrie Cryptic, part of the furniture. Decades in that joint, just doing the crosswords from the paper and being flirty to the nurses. Giving them that Laurence Olivier kind of cheek. Dapper, that’s what you might call him. Stern part down the left side of his snowy old head. A bit like Ev’s old man, without the pole up the arse.
Got recruited, after a fashion. Calling one of the quacks a reprobate.
Know some big words, do you mate? That was Clarrie. Magpie-eyed, waving his paper over his head.
Can’t do them things.
Them things? Don’t act the grunt. You’re in here to think differently, aren’t you?
You don’t scare me. So sweet, the first time, first real bad night she’d been there for. Almost dumb enough to believe her. But then the words changed their meaning. Sneaky little shits. You don’t scare me. Meaning: she was scared alright. White-knuckle scared, hand wrapped round a kitchen knife. Go on then. Do it. Do it. Fucking Do. It. Woman.
Seven letters: Go grabbing Italian smoker in South-East Asia.
Tried to quit a hundred times. Whenever they jacked up the price on a pouch of Port Royal. Made it to nearly a fortnight once, all going beaut. Then Ru jumped out from behind a door, Boo! Just lost it then.
When Ev got sick. Her beautiful hair falling out. Alopecia, like the name for some exotic breed of horse. But it just meant she hid what was left under a yellow babushka scarf and looked twenty years older. Thought it would be better. Calmer, you know.
Rooming house. Fitzroy Street. The place all full of flyspot and damp ghosts. Finch in the corner, grinning with what was left of his jaw. Hey Jackrabbit. You got twenty dong?
Payphone and Ev singing drunk down the line, Street boy …
Remember Lani as a tiny kid. Nervous little thing. Pick her up and she’d be trembling, throwing up when someone so much as raised their voice.
Hey Ev, what’s wrong with this kid? She crook or what?
Alopecian horses. Could just about see them, running golden-syrup circles round the yard. Something her father would’ve put his money into. The kind of life she should have stayed put in.
Oh, you wonder do you? You really wonder what’s wrong? Bloody mystery, is it?
Repat, only a week or so that time. Fella wandering around a bit frantic with this little bundle of sticks in a pot of dry dirt saying not to worry, not to worry, he could save it. He propped it under a busted rain gutter to catch the runoff and within the week it was showing green. New growth; wasn’t he so proud.
Eleven letters: Eddie’s limbo worsened back from war.
Shrink said to buy a diary, said write it all down. Wrote: It was hot, and we were sick of survival biscuits. NCOs assured us that the biscuits would survive, even if we didn’t. The photographs we kept on us fell to bits cause of all the rain and all the sweat. Then tore out the first page and gave the diary to Ru for scribbling in.
Future. Couldn’t get a handle on it. Nights when the future was only what the headlights could pick up, and no further.
You. Are. Going. To. Make. It. Up. To. These. Girls. You. Are. Going. To. Make. It. Up. To. Us. Believe you me.
Just wanted to take her somewhere. Nice. Away from it all. Got it almost good. Almost perfect. The caravan, the Yarra Yarra where it’s still crystal, before it starts flowing arse up. Not a soul around. The girls on their own holiday at Stell’s. Waking up Ev with tea and scotch oats cooked on the Sterno. Lying in late, remembering each other. Almost something good enough to point back to and say, Now wasn’t that something. Fat lazy river slapping at its banks and riddled with glinting trout.
Just that last part with the car running out of petrol, things sliding off the rails. Fighting in the sick light of the Mobil, knocking a chips display over, people staring. Sir, you’ll have to—yeah fucken yeah. But almost, almost.
Ru wanting help with her grade three geography project. A hundred fucked-out, sucked-out countries they could’ve given her. Why that one? Drew it from a hat, she says. What’s the weather like? Staple foods? How do you say hello?
How should I know?
They’d teach a four-year-old to pull the pin. Wire him up then say, Now you go over there and say hello to those big funny-looking men. And so you just wouldn’t
Let me repeat, in simple terms
A kid would totter right out onto the range and you just wouldn’t
Let me repeat, in simple terms
Seven letters. Incontinent men suffering memory loss.
You just wouldn’t know.
Remember standing in the doorway watching the girls sleep. Please be okay. Please be okay. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.
A roll of half-shot 35mm coiled up like a viper in the camera. Eleven years in the bottom of the duffel, coiled up like that. Couldn’t trust it. Couldn’t even remember what was on it. Might’ve been temples and rubber trees. Pictures in the clouds, guys slouching under slouch hats, just lying round bored brainless. Village kids, drowsy buffalo. Skinny girls in dark rooms and silk underwear. Remember the weight of the Minolta, the leather strap getting sticky in the humidity. And Reed helping to thread the film onto the tiny white toothy wheels. Just not what was shot on it.
Found it lying there on the kitchen table. Careful lettering, greylead lines showing through red and yellow texta. Population. Staple Foods. Drawings of a bowl of rice, noodles, a skeleton fish. The words for hello. The words for goodbye. From 1956 to 1975 there was a war there and my dad was in it. The mosquitoes were awful, and he missed home. Took it out into the backyard before she woke up for school.
Oh, that was low, you bully. Even for you that was low …
Welcome Home, temazepam! Welcome Home, Valium! Welcome Home, clozapine! That’s a parade. Wave your own bloody flag.
… a consequence of alcohol and tobacco consumption and of the stresses of the Vietnam War (some of them peculiar to that war) …
Sweating all the way to the chemist, guts twisted up. But the old guy just shakes his head and hands over an envelope of blanks. Twenty-four frames of nothingness. Guess it wasn’t wound on properly. Walked back out into the shopping centre carpark and there it all was, sudden. True magic, alright. Like a slide reel behind the eyes. Foxy drinking from a boot after losing a bet. Reed’s mongoose going to town on a hunk of cheese. The B-52 crater, water at the bottom stained to red muck. Counted forty-two. Then the bulldozers came and covered it all over.
Repat, four weeks. Leatherwork. Birdhouse.
Trying to say sorry with objects. Evelyn: stockings. Tetch: cigarettes (tailors ’cause he makes an embarrassment of rollies). Lani: fuck knows. Ru: those weird horror books she likes. Too old for them now, Ev says later. Good try though.
Hitting a wombat just outside Blackwood, driving the girls up to visit Mum.
Dad? Dad! We’ve gotta go back. Even if it’s dead, we’ve gotta check the pouch.
Wombats don’t have pouches, possum chops.
They do. Turn around. We’ve gotta go back and check.
Can’t stop. They got claws like razors. A sick one’ll rip you to bits.
Go on then. Fucken look then: skinny arms still reaching out to someone. Black cotton pyjamas ripped open at the stomach. You gonna check what he had in that basket?
Can we not and say we did?
Jesus, I’ll do it. Reed holding up—what was it that time? A chook. A frag. A tin of rice. Don’t remember.
When you think of happiness, what picture do you have in your mind?
You already asked that one.
But you declined to answer.
Ev backed up against the door. Lani nine years old and getting in between. Already, that look in her eyes, her hands making sharp little fists. Hate you, hate you. Thought: Yeah me t
oo, love, me too.
Brighton Beach like a carnival. Fried sugar and vinegar smells floating from food vans down to the shore, thickening the salt air. Little kids belting around barefoot, spraying up the powdery sand, belonging to no-one, it seems. Huddle of Scots or fake-Scots all arms-thrown-round-shoulders and Auld Lang Syne, but it’s just past ten—still a couple of hours to go yet. Past this.
Payphone outside the yacht club. Could call her. Say, Happy New Year’s, baby. Then what?
Waiting for the city to explode. Counting down, so it can’t creep up. Gatling guns and red mines. Like the rain drumming the car roof, all those things that are lost forever, all those things that can’t ever be good again. Watching the sky turn dusty yellow, trapping the light and spreading it out above the beach like an old blanket. Smothering.
Out here years ago, when both the girls were tiny. A day where nobody could’ve told just by looking. Where anybody would’ve looked and thought: Family. Sandwiches still cool in their foil, red fizz and icy beer. Hot chips, Ev licking salty oil from her fingers. Wading out past the breakers with Ruby and Lani, one hanging off each arm. Showing them how to somersault, out there where the water was over their heads. Gimme your foot then, and them clambering up to be launched skyward, hup-hup-hup!
Ev walking out along the breakwall, pale cotton skirt whipping round her legs, shading the sun from her eyes with a forearm. Mum! Come in. But she’s smiling and shaking her head because no, she’s turning gold. Turning twenty. As if there has never been one bad year. That close. That life other people are living, right there within shouting distance. Then cupping her hands around her mouth and calling out across the water, Alright, you three …
Calls us in. Us. Calls us home.
IV. Flight Mode
fake snow caught in her hair, like festive dandruff. Lani ruffles it out. Tender Prey on the portable stereo, skipping on a scratch. Half out of her clothes, these red licks all down her legs from doubling up on Will’s Honda, in a skirt too short to shield her from the whipping scrub. Now it looks like she’s been belted a few rounds with the iron cord. But that was years ago, the iron cord. Lately it’s fists if it’s anything, if her mother can gather the energy, though most of the fight has gone out of her these past few weeks. Something’s up; now she’s sleeping later, flipping out less. No more screaming through Lani’s locked bedroom door. No more being dragged out of bed by a handful of her hair at four a.m., because the dishes haven’t been done or the rubbish hasn’t been wheeled to the roadside. If Evelyn’s got a problem, she takes it to the rabbits, out of earshot. Muttering like a madwoman while the pink-eyed bunnies blink back at her from their pokey hutch. Lani could just about hug them.
Loving, Faithful Animal Page 6