Red Can Origami

by Madelaine Dickie

  —I mean being a prick, you know, it isn’t the same as if you were an actual prick …

  Although he is. He’s a lazy prick.

  —If you want to keep your job, I’d shut your mouth right now.

  You retreat to the office, smarting and ashamed.

  Someone’s put up a photo of the exploded stone bust on the Gubinge First Noticeboard page on Facebook. It’s become a dartboard of outraged opinion and spelling mistakes:

  Bloody vandels. Should be ashamed of themselfs. No respect for the settlers that risked life and lim. The coons in this town are outta control.

  That last comment’s erased by administrators. Not long after, all comments on the post are banned.

  Noah doesn’t answer the station phone straight away and you leave a message. He calls back in the afternoon, just as Lucia’s about to take you to the airport.

  —Little Bird.

  —Did you do it?

  There’s a pause. The desk fan skirrs steady.

  —Let’s put it this way, he says. When the White Namibian authorised that equipment to be dumped at Lalinjurra, it damaged one of our sites, right?

  —Right …

  Across the room, from inside the tiny kitchenette, you can feel Jeff’s inflamed eyes on you.

  —Well, he gets away with it every time. Every time, we suffer in silence. Every time, the police side with him. But not this time. He destroys our cultural heritage, we destroy his.

  What a position to be put in! There’s a story in this, but you can’t write about it, because then what will happen to Noah?

  You turn your back, slightly, so Jeff can’t see you murmur,

  —I’ll give you a call when I get back from Perth.

  —Actually, I’m going to be out on country and out of range for a few weeks … But you’ll be at the consent determination, yeah?

  —Maybe …

  Maybe not after today.

  —Well, what about the rodeo? It’s on in August and you can’t miss it. Lucia’ll be covering it for the paper. You should grab a lift with her.

  After promising you’ll try to make it, you hang up. And start worrying. What if the White Namibian guesses it was Noah? What if he’s planning some kind of sadistic revenge? He reminds you of that bloke in Wolf Creek. You used to like the film: thought the concept was smart, the landscapes breathtaking. But now you live up here, you realise the horror in the film is too real. That kind of crazy does exist; it lurks the empty highways, the lunar landscapes of the desert. It lives at De Beer Downs. But anyway, you won’t be the one calling the White Namibian for comment. You’ve got a plane to catch, a horoscope to write.

  The gridded streets of Melbourne, the grey burn of Tokyo, the tangerine potpourri of Kolkata—nothing compares to the aerial view of Gubinge unfolding below you now. Through the plane’s window you can see the spidering turquoise creek, the drapes of white sand and the hot glister of tin roofs.

  You only transited through Perth on the way to Gubinge, never stayed, and notice two hours later, on landing, how even the air smells different, like distant irrigation and agriculture. The taxi driver who takes you into the city is an Aussie just back from working at a detention centre in Papua. He resigned because of malaria; it’s repeating on him, it’s stubborn, it’s shivering in his blood. He says,

  —So what do you do with yourself up there? Wouldn’t think there’d be much work. You a teacher? Nurse?

  —I’m a journalist.

  —A journalist! Better watch what I say then. Telly?

  —Newspaper.

  —And do you like it up there?

  ‘Like’ seems too simple.

  —Sure. What about you? You ever been?

  —No offence, but the best view of Gubinge’s in the rear-view mirror. Too many blackfellas. Heard on the news the other night they’re selling their country for cash to the mining companies. Bloody shame that is. Got all this pristine country with their native title or whatever and they’re just throwing it away. Even the Papuans are smarter than that.

  The taxi glides kerbside outside the headquarters of Gerro Blue. You don’t tip.

  It’s a cave-like room of Widawurl paintings. Poorly lit, with no windows. But the paintings are striking: those mouthless spirits, heads crowned with spears.

  You feel as though you’re awaiting interrogation.

  After twenty minutes of skimming your phone and avoiding eye contact with the Widawurls, two people enter the room. The woman introduces herself as Mandy, the Head of Public Relations. You disliked her on the phone, disliked her tone in the email and dislike her even more in person. Her eyes are tenanted with suspicion and she’s got a head of corkscrew curls that start grey and brighten to blonde. Next to her is a portly man, maybe twenty years her senior and wearing a suit that smells of nicotine, Old Spice and beef vindaloo. His forehead’s scored with stress.

  —David Turner, Deputy CEO.

  Verbal résumés are swapped to a bassline of traffic, then David gets to the point.

  —A lot of the facts in your article were taken out of context. Mandy?

  Mandy flips you a sheaf of glossily packaged rhetoric. You thumb through a brochure, remark,

  —With respect, a bulldozer branded Gerro Blue has disturbed an Aboriginal massacre site. It seems your company is operating on Burrika country without an exploration licence. I don’t think I was taking anything out of context. I was doing my job.

  Mandy lifts eyebrows, says coolly,

  —For starters, we’re not aware of any massacre site, there’s nothing formally registered …

  David makes a phlegmy warning sound in his throat and Mandy falls silent.

  —We’re working in the best interests of the community. We take Aboriginal engagement very seriously. In simple terms, once an exploration licence is granted, should we then find a significant deposit, we’ll apply for a mining lease, move into production, there’ll be jobs, there’ll be hope, there’ll be a real way to break the cycle of poverty up there.

  David kills a call coming through on his phone.

  —But that’s not why we brought you here. We understand you’ve got a strong relationship with Burrika, and we think you’d be a perfect fit for our company. We’d like to offer you a two-year contract working as our Aboriginal liaison officer. We need a good journo and, given your fluency in Japanese, there might also be other opportunities with our parent company, Orangefields, down the track. Your salary will be double what you’re on now. Despite the issues with this particular article …

  He taps the folder in front of him with a hairy finger,

  —You write well and you’re much too smart to be working in a northern backwater for someone like Jeff.

  You’re stunned.

  —There’ll be travel. You’ll be based in Gubinge and obviously our head offices are in Perth and Tokyo … But there’s no need to answer now. Mandy will be in touch with you first thing next week to outline the entire package. We hope you have a pleasant night in the city. And we hope you enjoy the suite.

  The lipless Widawurls have no answer either.

  Plans for the afternoon could involve buying a new pair of high heels, eating pad thai, downing a strong piccolo latte—there’s nowhere in Gubinge where you can buy a brew without burnt milk—then maybe ordering a margarita. Not a pizza, and not frozen.

  But the jostle of people and traffic is overwhelming. You’re struck by the way the buildings cut the light in vertical oblongs of sky and shadow, and the air, a crisp blue, snaps cold with Indian Ocean salt. You experience a kind of vertigo, not unlike the first time you visited Tokyo, and after wandering down Perth’s pedestrian mall, you give up on the heels, Thai, coffee and cocktails, and fixate instead on reaching your hotel in one piece.

  The suite’s on the tenth floor. There’s a complimentary bottle of Veuve Clicquot on the sideboard with a personal note from the Gerro Blue CEO, Yuma Watanabe. You’re about to ditch the note and bust open the bubbles when something catches y
our eye. Along the right-hand side of the page, next to the cursory English words of welcome, is a vertical stream of kanji and hiragana. It takes you a while to unpick and you have to go online to identify a couple of the kanji characters. It’s a haiku by the poet Kijiro called ‘Chain-Mail’.

  A chestnut dropped in. A goldfish rose to drink. Their widening rings of water interlink.

  What to make of that? You curl into an armchair big enough for two. Through the windows, the winding blue of the Swan River is bituminised black. The Clicquot cork pops in a dry amethyst smoke.

  On double your current salary you would only have to work for a few years, then you could get out. By the end of it, you’d have a house deposit, you’d be set up. And it would be awesome, wouldn’t it? The travel, the restaurants, working across languages, seeing how things really happened on the inside. Better you, with your olive-green heart, than someone else. Nuclear energy itself doesn’t bother you: it’s argued that it’s a much cleaner alternative to coal …

  You pour a glass, fill the jacuzzi and play Melody Gardot from your phone. Why would they employ a kartiya as their Aboriginal liaison officer? And how would Lucia and Noah take it, if you told them you were working for the enemy? You haven’t even been game to tell Lucia about the forensics report. And you don’t think you will. You feel shithouse about taking those bones from country, shithouse for calling the police about the White Namibian. So many ways to go wrong, so many ways to insult and demean.

  You step into the jacuzzi, one foot at a time, then sink down, until the bath bubbles frost your eyelashes. It’s exquisite. Exquisitely lonely.

  The fishing club’s in an open-air heritage building with three-sixty-degree balconies and views: bay at the front, a knife line of ocean at the back, and plenty of pandanus in between. There’s a piano and a strict thongs-only policy. Ash is on the front balcony with a couple of blokes in blue singlets and salt-dry beards. He jumps up when he sees you.

  —I didn’t think you’d come! Keith, Emmet, meet Ava. Keith and I teach together at the TAFE and Emmet runs fishing tours to the islands.

  It’s good to be back. In the tropical torpor of late afternoon, everyone’s sweating, even under the industrial-sized fans. People stare at you, not in judgement, but with open curiosity, as if they might recognise you from the school or the gym or Tuesday night netball. No-one’s got botox, or hair extensions, or nose jobs, or is even wearing makeup. With beer in hand you relax back and listen to the slow spinning of tall tales.

  Ash’s saying the TAFE has finally realised it hasn’t given any of its staff cultural awareness training. Keith told Debbie, the managing director, to stick her training up her hole.

  —Cultural awareness training? Sweetheart, I live with a blackfella! I’ve lived with her for twenty years! My kids are Aboriginal. You wanna run cultural awareness training? Then you should come over to my camp for a weekend. I’ll fucken give you cultural awareness!

  The conversation whirls on and you’re happy to simply listen and laugh. You were surprised when Ash asked you to join them for a drink.

  —No hard feelings? he says, when Keith’s gone for a piss and Emmet’s gone for more beer.

  —No hard feelings, you agree, and you’re grateful.

  The intensity of your day job has meant that while you’ve met nearly everyone in town, you haven’t got any close friends other than Ash and maybe Lucia.

  When the boys get back, you all clear an inch off your schooners and then Emmet says Sea Rescue called him last week. A chopper had gone down near the mouth of one of those rivers to the north. Engine trouble. None of the tourists on board were hurt, only stuck. The thing was, they were in a tricky spot. Not in the blue water, but at the edge of a bruising gulf of whirlpools.

  —Whole boats have disappeared there, he says. Hit those whirlpools on the wrong tide with engine trouble and you can forget about it. Crocs’ll finish you before you drown.

  —Fuck.

  Emmet continues, tells you the tide was okay and the wind was light and he did the pick-up without dramas. The start of the trip home was magic. In the late afternoon sun, with those cliffs on the water, it was like the prow was gliding through watermelon sugar. He took a long drink of cold water from a bottle.

  Then he looked over his shoulder.

  Swollen above the river was a violent, wet-season storm, the kind that skip Gubinge and completely flatten the surrounding communities.

  —The sky’s blacker than a cow’s guts and there’s this lightning. Fucken purple lightning. The tourists lose their shit, huddle on the floor of the tinny with their heads in their arms. I have another swig from the water bottle, trying to think, which is pretty fucken hard, with the pilot pacing up and down, swearing at me …

  He describes how quickly the surface of those muddy, salty gulfs can change, how black rapids are kicked up in minutes.

  —I used to be a surfer, Emmet says. When the storm hit, it was four foot, no joke, not a fraction smaller. I’ve surfed waves like that in the Ments!

  —So what happened?

  Emmet says he drank more water, trying to calm himself, trying to think. He gave the pilot an old bait bucket and got him bailing, ignoring the tourists, who were now moaning worse than the wind. He finished off his water.

  And then he realised he had to piss.

  —I didn’t want to piss myself. I mean, I could have, I could have stood there and just pissed. But the chopper pilot was only a metre away, and you know what those blokes are like.

  You sure do. Freshly shaven. Starched white shirts that would put the Italians to shame. Cute crew cuts.

  —Now, Ava, I can’t usually slip my dick into a water bottle, but by this time it was freezing, there was this sideways rain coming in … So I slip it in and I’m pissing, feeling that nice warmth of the piss, when suddenly my dick swells up. And I go to pull it out, but I can’t! It’s stuck. My fucken dick’s stuck in the bottle!

  —Jesus! What did you do?

  —What do you think? Got the pilot to help me pull it out …

  A few beers later, Ash walks you back to your car. The earth crackles with old shells. He asks,

  —So, work been good?

  —Yeah, alright. I actually just got back from Perth.

  —What for?

  —Gerro Blue offered me a job.

  Ash’s features darken, harden. He snaps,

  —Well, what did you tell them?

  —Told ’em to stick it. Need a lift?

  You’re a beer too deep to drive, but you’ll risk it.

  —Was gunna walk but, yeah, a lift would be sweet. Thanks.

  Jeff warms a paw around a takeaway coffee and steers with his free hand onto the highway. The site of the native title consent determination is a couple of hundred kilometres away and you’re surprised he’s letting you come. His foot finds the accelerator. The gauge clips one-thirty. You manage to draft a couple of stories on your lappy before you get carsick.

  At last the car turns onto a dirt track bordered by burnt knots of buffel grass. A wetland comes into view: strange wintery blues and fistfuls of morning gold in the boabs. Two grey nomads are peering through binoculars at a nest of finches. Jeff slows and winds down the window.

  —G’day.

  The man lowers his binoculars.

  —Howdy.

  —You see anyone coming down this track this morning?

  —Hundreds of them, says the woman. If you’re after a quiet spot for a picnic, you should go somewhere else.

  —Dunno who they are, adds the man. But we’ve been coming here for thirty years and we’ve never seen any of them.

  —Let’s just hope they have toilets, the woman adds with a scowl.

  Of course there are toilets, ten portaloos. There are also enough Hiluxes and troopies to shoot a Toyota advertisement. The camp chairs around the fire pits are empty and everyone’s already gathered on a rise overlooking the lagoon. A very old man sits cross-legged on the earth and sings. White ochre
stresses the lines of his cheeks and chest. A group of men stand behind him, rigid-backed, painted up to dance. Noah’s among them but in body only; he’s concentrating on some distant, inward point.

  To the right of the dancers, a row of lawyers sweat in court dress. In the city the black robes are dignified, but here on country they’re absurd, insultingly colonial.

  The old man’s first song finishes, and the men fan out and begin to dance: a trim of dust at knee height, sweat-smudged ochre, the clap sticks’ murmur. Some of the men have bellies that swing as they dance. Not Noah, with his station-hard abs. Tribal cicatrices follow the contours of his chest.

  When it’s over, a flock of whistling ducks erupt from the wetland. There’s a collective aspiration, but no applause.

  Madge moves toward the microphone, gold hoops glinting, a leopard-patterned headscarf wrapping her hair. Across the crowd, Lucia catches your eye and grins.

  —Justice Clancy, I just wanted to say that many of the old people who started this claim are now missing. Our old people expect us to look after country and to grow up our kids so they can look after country too.

  Approval lifts from the crowd.

  —This isn’t something that the government needs to do, or the schools need to do. This is the responsibility of the Burrika people. And I believe we are ready for this. I would also like to thank the Land Council for their support.

  Madge takes her seat to loud applause from Mandy, Liam—the bloke you and Ash went fishing with—and a Japanese man, who you guess must be Yuma Watanabe, Gerro Blue’s CEO. Watanabe’s tall, maybe thirty-five, with full lips and an open, intelligent face.

  Another woman’s up, gripping the microphone, voice cracking with distress.

  —My name’s Norma Juniper. My father’s a Burrika man. He was born in the desert at a jila called Mulangee. My mother’s country is saltwater country thattaway.

  Norma gestures with her lips to the north.

  —What I want to say for myself is that my mother’s country, ’ee bin sold for a bauxite mine.

  Norma raises a finger and points directly at Mandy.