The Big Whatever

by Peter Doyle

  I carefully chopped a small piece off the heroin brick, rewrapped it and put it inside a poly bag, wrapped that in oilskins and gaffer tape, then bagged it up in a heavy-duty fertilizer bag. Packages within packages, until I was sure the precious stuff inside was super watertight. I drove into the ranges, up through the tall timbers, onto the high country, further west to the slopes, and kept driving until I was well west, way out in the flat, low, miserable landscape of inland New South Wales. When I reached a certain town I knew – never mind the name, my little snoopsters – I took a turn down a dirt road. Drove a long way, then took another turnoff. Found the place. It was just a place, kind of random, me following my instincts. But I felt in some way I was being guided there – dig, I wasn’t the most rational gazabo in the country at that point. Anyway, I found the spot, dug the hole, buried the H. Drew my map. Work done. Quick blast, back into the car, drive out. I slept by the side of the road for a few hours, took all but the last skerrick of dope, started driving again before dawn. Back east, the long way round, across the border, over the hills and far away.

  I came to a rundown tropical town. It was a dump. There was no surf, just shitty farm land round about. No natural features to speak of. No hippies, no trendies. Just white trash and blackfellas. It would do nicely: all I wanted was a place warm enough for a detox. Trust me, young ones, you do not want to do your hanging out in a cold climate. I spotted a motel on the edge of town called the Weary Swaggie and checked in. Blowsy old sheila behind the desk barely registered my presence through her Valium haze.

  Back in town, I presented the Croaker’s scripts at the chemist shop. Which just happened to be Cat’s place of business. Yes, I had another reason for choosing this particular dump of a town. I let the Cat know what I intended, told him where I’d be. He did the right thing – threw a few more pills into the bag for good measure, wished me well. I was ready for lift-off. Or splash down. Whatever.

  I’ll spare you the details, my delicate ones. It’s kind of messy. Thumbnail sketch: draw the blinds. Turn on the telly. Lay out the various preparations. Stuff to slow down bodily functions, especially those of the more liquid sort. Opiate substitutes. Muscle relaxants. And sleepers. Plan was, I’d be in la-la land while my body detoxified without me. Surface after twenty-four hours, drop enough stuff to go out for another twenty-four. Until I woke up clean.

  It would all have worked fine, but as the stuff was starting to take hold, the dope draining from the bloodstream, a surprise turn of events. I started shaking. Couldn’t stop. It got worse. I was fitting. Oh shit. I’d heard cold turkey could do that to some people. Never thought I was one of them. I was.

  The fit subsided, but by now Mr Sandman was doing his thing. I was off to the land of Nod, no turning back, with full withdrawal still a little way down the track. And the likelihood of some serious fitting before then. Last thing I remember thinking: I’m going to die.

  I didn’t die, obviously. But plenty happened. The Cat found me on day three, in poor shape. He helped me with a few matters.

  Now, as I write this, tapping away on my old Olympia by the light of my kero lamp, crickets clicking away outside in the dark, mossies hovering around me, I recall only bits and pieces of what went down the next few months. As time passes, more comes back.

  I came through the detoxification. Haven’t used any smack since. Haven’t been back to the buried treasure. I know that for sure. But I don’t know how I got here. I must have fitted some more during the hanging out. And it fucked with my head. Yeah, my children, there’s brain damage. Terrible, right? But maybe it’s a blessing, too. Forgetting.

  This much I know: I split from the motel. Kept my few possessions. Drove inland again. Headed south, baby, behind the sun. I drove, and kept driving.

  At some point I doubled back, then criss-crossed further inland, then back again. Quite unintentionally I described a big hexagram. Or maybe a pentagram. Whatever the fuck. But in that way, without meaning to, I worked up some bad hoodoo, because right there by the highway outside West Wylaong, I came upon the Devil. Standing at the crossroads. Thumbing a ride.

  He was waiting for me, and he knew I’d stop for him, because he picked up his bag, ready to climb aboard, before I even touched the brakes. I stopped, he jumped in. A clear-eyed, fresh-faced young guy, with a pleasant manner, a nice haircut. The face was familiar. Pressed shirt, well-shined shoes. He didn’t fool me.

  “I’ll beat you yet, you craven swine,” I said.

  He chuckled merrily, started whistling a show tune I couldn’t quite place.

  “For all that fancy get-up, you smell like what you are,” I said.

  He stopped whistling.

  I said “Tell Barry . . .” But I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “Tell him whatever you like,” I muttered.

  We drove on for a while in silence, then I pulled up at the next crossroads. He turned to me and smiled. He had no eyes, just cold empty space in there. He nodded and got out.

  I said it was the Devil, but I realised then it wasn’t the Man himself, just an emissary. The Devil’s flunky. The Devil’s roadie. The Devil’s booking agent. Something like that.

  Kept driving, it felt like a long time. Wandering Aengus, Flying Dutchman, Ghost Rider in the Sky kind of thing. But maybe it was just a few days.

  Driving along out there one night, Nat King Cole came on the radio, slow and sad, crooning about what a mess he’d made of things, how wrong he’d been. How his heart had gone bad. He’d forgotten to eat and sleep and pray. The road sped beneath me, the headlights opening up a circus tent out front as Nat just kept it coming. He cried a little bit, when first he learned the truth. But don’t blame it on his heart, just blame it on his youth. A bit of static and the radio went off again, the little light behind the panel faded out. Dig, my young seers, that old beast hadn’t worked in forever. Had come good for that one song. I pulled the car over, got out. Big empty sky. Big empty everything. I’d been listening to heaven’s radio. I knew I’d be forgiven. Not yet, quite, but sometime.

  I don’t know how I came across the Old Cunt. These bush towns and dusty farms are riddled with weirdos, fugitives, perverts, vagabonds, wetbrains and the like. If they keep to themselves and stay out of sight, no one worries too much. And to tell the truth, there’s not that much difference between them and the supposedly upright ruddy-faced squarehead country party squatter baron chamber of commerce country women’s association stock and station moleskin-wearing Cessna-flying polo-playing moron fucks who run things out here. It’s just a matter of who’s in control and who isn’t.

  My guess is, I knocked on the Old Cunt’s door and he picked me as a walking numbskull. Thought to himself, he’ll do nicely as a Man Friday. I’m not sure what me getting my marbles back will do for our employer-employee relationship. Him having to pay me and all. We’ll see.

  Since I snapped out of it, I’ve had a look around the district. Even during my long blackout there must’ve been some sort of reasoning going on: because I know this place. I’ve got history here. Way back. You know the place I mean, Johnny? I told you all about it. Remember? When I was a cowboy out on the western plains? The dwarfs? The cowgirls? Come-a cow cow yippee! Mel the Geek? Relax and don’t pry, little ones – a secret authorial message to my old compadre there.

  It’s flat nothing out here. Flies and crows, cow shit and dead ground. Grey trees, dry river beds. Squawking cockatoos. Buildings falling down. There’s a dopey bush town not that far away, with an ugly Catholic church (what is it with the Micks and their fucking architecture?), a Masonic hall, a few stupid shops, and a boredom that’s palpable. Also a few retard locals, given to drinking and shooting roos, and touching up their kids, probably. The blackfellas have their knowledge and their magic, but they’ve been hounded to the edges and beyond, and they’re keeping it to themselves.

  It’s the bardo out here. But it’s right for me. I had some dues to pay, and I’m paying them.

  It’s been maybe six months si
nce I came off the shit in the rat motel. I began writing this the day after my memory started coming back, and I’ve been working on it three solid months.

  Everything I’ve written here is true. More or less. Allowing for a certain poetic license, you understand. You’ve got to do that. But it’s true in the important sense.

  Some of what’s here you alert students of villainy will already know from news stories, magazine articles, TV shows, even perhaps that shitty series the Fop eventually wrote in the Daily Earth News. But hearken, my young seekers, there’s plenty here that is not known to a living soul but me. And now you, of course. As for the places and dates, they’re mostly accurate. And the characters are all real, even if I had to rearrange their faces, give them all another name. Well, rearrange some faces, give some of them a new name. Maybe not all. License, dig?

  Cathy. Oh, brother. Cathy. Everything I said about her is true. But there was more to her, more than I could write, and no one has aired it. When Cathy said she was doing the dope thing for “our side,” that wasn’t shit. She bankrolled a string of child-minding co-ops in inner Melbourne, set up a refuge for runaway kids too, got guitar players to come down, teach the kids to strum and pick. Got Denise and her mates to run writing classes. Introduced a bunch of people to one another, set up a newsletter for down and outs. Her politics were genuine, and whatever she did, however fucked-up, there was always an element of higher purpose in it. No one knew how much useful stuff she was behind, because she didn’t broadcast her involvement.

  I could go on. No one in that scene had the vision or drive or ambition that she had. She was a crazy chick all right, was Cathy. A true revolutionary. Nothing that’s been written has given her the credit she deserves. Denise, the ‘heiress revolutionary,’ was a sweet chick, sure. But Cathy was the real Ned Kelly, Frankie Gardiner, Jesse James and Che Guevara of our push. And, facing facts, maybe the love of my life. But she’s gone, comrades.

  Johnny Malone. Billy. Whatever. Old comrade. I left you in the lurch. In hock to the Big Man, the Greeks, some crime czar creep or other. I hope this tale reaches you. If so, I know the question you’re asking. Answer: Yeah, this is me, right enough. Brother, you want proof that this is good old you-know-who? All right then: I know about the Skull Cave. Maybe you’re there right now.

  A quick explanation, my rabidly curious young hepcats. My old comrade “Johnny Malone” has a secret hideaway right in the guts of Sydney. No one knows where, not even me. It’s his own personal Batcave, Weddin Mountains, Sherwood Forest, Hole in the Wall, Mount Olympus, bunker beneath the chancellery. All I know is a Chinaman is involved. He’s always been pally with the celestials. That good enough for you, “Johnny”?

  Me, I’m here in my hideout. Hiding in plain view, you might say. I’m not going anywhere. It’s late. Very still outside. I’m all alone at midnight, when the lamps are burning low. I can hear a mutt barking somewhere miles away. I listen hard, I pay attention, I keep a close watch on this heart of mine. I’m developing my pictures. My mind a dark room.

  So dig, brother, I want to make it right between us. I’ve done my time, and I want out of here.

  But Barry is out there somewhere too. I can feel him. Circling.

  So I’m here. I’m holding. Waiting. Got my treasure map. Got some money. Got my gun. Come and get me, Billy. We have business to conclude.

  I drove a semi-double that Sunday. You get the cab for 24 hours, but only pay in for a single shift. The low pay-in is supposed to compensate for Sundays being so quiet. A little known fact about Sydney taxi driving: Sundays are a motza. No drunks. Little traffic. So more than half the Sydney cab fleet was off the road that day, and my competition was mainly students and new drivers. Plus Steve was radio operating. It should’ve been a good one.

  But I was too restless to get on the wavelength. I didn’t bother calling on radio jobs I could’ve won, drove past street hails without stopping. I was thinking about the book. And what it meant. Or what it maybe meant. I’d pull over and flick through it, then drive off again.

  After a while things picked up. Woollahra to Balmain, Balmain to Paddo, Paddo to Kirribilli, North Sydney to Randwick – most of the trips were like that, along contour lines of roughly equal income. Every half-good cabbie becomes an expert on how the different bits of Sydney fit together, and if you hit the right currents, you’re laughing. By midday I was on one of those magic chains, each job bringing me perfectly to where the next was waiting, another fare on board before you’ve finished handing the change to the last. You see a hail standing on the corner, you know exactly where they’re going, sometimes even the street, the building, before they’ve opened their mouth. Occasionally – it doesn’t seem possible, but it happens – you know exactly what they’re going to say: you recite it in your head before they speak, then nod to yourself when they say it.

  Most regular drivers are doing their one trip, going from A to B, but you’ve been pushing it for five or six hours and by then it’s like the other cars are going at half speed. You slide into gaps in traffic before they’ve fully opened up. You don’t need to look in the rearview half the time because you know where every car is and where they’re going to be next. You have this larger sense of how the whole city is, where people are headed, where they’re bunched up or thinned out. And even if you end up somewhere thin, the thread doesn’t break – you’ll find the one stray fare, or snag the only radio job to come out of that area the whole day, the magic one which takes you right back into the thick of it. Everything is moving in a huge swirl, and you’re just riding the currents, following invisible pathways. The passengers sense it too, know you’re going to get them there fast and safe. More tips, fewer grumps.

  In the taxi game it’s called “running hot,” and when it’s like that you don’t stop for a drink or a stretch for fear of breaking the thread. But at one thirty Steve called me in. “Car 370 still on this channel?”

  “Here basey.”

  “Message for you. Says, ‘Ring Fred.’ Got it, drive?”

  “Yeah, roger.”

  I stopped at a public phone. Slaney picked up after two rings. “Thought you might be still at mass,” he said.

  “What have you got?”

  “Mister sociable. Your commo mate.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The Vice Squad have an interest.”

  “Old news.”

  “Wait a bit. So does the Drug Squad. Your mate’s selling a pamphlet about how to grow pot.”

  “It’s a free country,” I said.

  “Newest agricultural science, apparently. Explains in easy-to-follow steps how you can cross-breed a better strain, then remove the male seedlings so the females try extra hard. Produces a stronger drug. The superintendent found a copy in his daughter’s bedroom. She’s a schoolkid. So they’re planning on popping in there very soon. Tomorrow even. Druggies and vice together. They seem to think they can nail him over this one.

  “Okay. Not sure what I can do with that.”

  “This is where you having the right contacts pays off. The drug boys are still mates of mine. North Bondi Surf Club. They’ll hold off if I ask them nicely. So what do you want? Do I ask them?”

  “Hell, let me think. I’ll ring you back.”

  A girl I didn’t recognise behind the counter. The R. Crumb hippie girl called out from the rear of the shop, “He’s at lunch.”

  “Where?”

  “The Tai Yuen, probably.”

  I headed for the door, stopped, then went back to the counter.

  “You got a pamphlet about dope growing? Something about cross-breeding, removing the males?”

  She looked at me warily. “You’re Bill, right?”

  My turn to be wary. “Yeah.”

  “I know you.” She smiled. Leaned forward and pointed to her left. “That’d be the sensimilla book. Very popular. Back of that stand over there, in the Drugs and Counterculture section.”

  I went to where she’d pointed, scanned the shelf. Willi
am Burroughs, Carlos Castenada, Thomas De Quincey, something called Opium and the Romantic Imagination, a book on Keyline farming. At the end, a big stack of booklets. Grow Your Own.

  I picked up a copy. The girl was watching me. I held it up to her. She gave a thumbs-up and I took it to the counter.

  “How do you know me?” I asked.

  “I’m a friend of Terry and Anna’s.”

  A head. She’d figured – guessed or been told – I was in the business.

  I pulled out two bucks to pay, but she shook her head with a knowing smile. “On the house.”

  Gould was sitting alone at a table in a dark, chintzy corner of the Tai Yuen. He had a foreign newspaper, Italian, open in front of him, and was eating short soup. Mostly with his fingers.

  “They’ll give you a spoon if you ask nicely,” I said as I sat down opposite him.

  He grunted and continued eating.

  “About that book,” I said.

  He shrugged.

  “I know you published it. I need to know how you got hold of it.”

  He looked up at me. “How did you get it?”

  A question I’d been asking myself. “Never mind. I got it, that’s all that matters. So?”

  “So what?” Barely hiding the sneer now.

  “I can help you, Bob. But first you’ve got to help me.”

  “How would you help me?” With a slight emphasis that said it all.

  I shrugged. “Find out.”

  He looked at me for a few seconds. “All right. What’s the news?”

  “Nope. You first.”

  He sighed. “A kid came to the shop a year ago. Skinny, longhaired, a bit druggy-looking. He gave me the typed manuscript to read.”

  “Why you?”

  “He said because I publish Zap Comix.”

  “Publish?”

  “Re-appropriate. Bootleg. Whatever. The kid said the manuscript might be in my line. I had a look. There was something there, but it needed editing, some rewriting.”