True West

by David Whish-Wilson

  and parked in front of a dark-windowed law firm, killed the engine then took a broom and went back around the corner.

  The traffic had started to edge around the broken glass and chunks of the Beetle’s tail-lights. He walked out into the

  traffic and put up a hand and began sweeping glass to the

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  kerb. Then the traffic began to flow. He leaned on the broom and watched it pass.

  The whole rescue took less than three minutes. He reached

  into his pocket to retrieve his pencil stub and drew out four crisp notes. Sophia had stashed two hundred dol ars in his

  pocket. She must’ve gone out while he was asleep.

  Lee went to the pair involved in the accident. There were stil no coppers on the scene. The woman offered him a cigarette, a menthol, which he accepted. The man took away the hankie

  and the small gash on his forehead started to ooze blood.

  ‘It was my fault,’ the young woman said. ‘I put on my

  indicator too late.’

  Some rapport between the two. She put the man’s hankie

  back onto his head. ‘I’m a surgery nurse. That’s going to be fine. No stitches, but keep the pressure on.’

  Lee took out the notebook from his back pocket and flipped

  it open to the first page, the pencil poised.

  He glanced up and there was another tow truck, pulling

  alongside to get a look at him. It was a white Mercedes rig.

  True West Towing decal above a custom-painted Australian

  flag. The tow driver wasn’t much older than Lee, but solid

  and tattooed. Wore a white col ared shirt buttoned to the top.

  Pale skin and a wide face that was giving Lee fish-eyes. Beside him was another man, and a young woman who was looking

  straight ahead. She had short black asymmetrical hair and

  bare arms.

  The driver slung an arm out the window and put his head

  out, slowed to a crawl. Seemed about to say something when

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  they heard the police siren, coming off the freeway north. The tow-truck driver smiled and turned to the wheel, then moved down the road.

  *

  Lee was paid sixty dol ars to tow the Pajero to a panelbeaters on Manning Road, not far from the freeway. He returned and

  towed the Beetle to the same place, after the man in the suit recommended it to the young woman. He’ d paid for her tow,

  and they caught a taxi together into the CBD.

  Lee filled up the Ford at a Canning Highway service station, which ate up twenty dol ars. His father had fitted the truck with long-range tanks in the late ’70s when he was certain

  that war was coming. The truck could cover five hundred

  kilometres of off-road terrain before it needed refilling. Lee’s dad also kept a couple of full jerries in the tray, too, and a locked steel box that contained a shotgun, some pineapple

  grenades and rations to last a week. They’ d buried enough

  rations and weaponry out in the bush to last a year of guerril a warfare. Jack Southern believed that once the invasion came and the cities fel , it’ d be the Knights and others like them who’ d prevail. They trained for survival, and there was no ideology beyond surviving the coming invasion. The shotgun

  was loaded with twelve-gauge pig-shot cartridges, sufficient to blast their way through any kind of conflict situation. Those cartridges were his father’s favourites, because he’ d used them in Vietnam. They weren’t 3 RAR standard issue but he’ d won the shotgun and a box of cartridges from an American in an

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  arm-wrestle, and used them in the stony hil s outside Nui Dat to flush out Vietcong insurgents. One blast, his father said, could disappear a man from his boots to his hat.

  How Lee’s dad got the shotgun and pineapple grenades

  back into Australia was never mentioned, although whenever

  Lee was frightened as a child – afraid of fighting at school, or of diving with sharks, or training with knives and live

  ammunition – his punishment was to sleep for a week with a

  live grenade under his pillow. The pins were bent backwards to make it hard to pul , but Lee didn’t know that, and he didn’t sleep well the first couple of nights. Sometimes his hand would touch the cold iron surface, and once he even awoke with his hand around the grenade like he was clutching a softbal . But by the end of the week he was used to it, and then his father would lead him outside into the dunes and pull the pin and

  toss the grenade into a swale. They’ d lie against the cold drift until the grenade detonated and covered them with sand.

  *

  The sun was heating up, and the air smelled of flowers and

  cut grass from all the people who’ d watered their yards before heading off to work. Lee was parked in the side street off

  Canning Highway listening to the UHF, but was finding it hard to focus. He was pretty certain that the thoughts of his father were insistent because the Knights were coming for him, and he needed to be sharp. They were probably out there now in

  the desert camps, looking for him. They wouldn’t figure on his heading for the city, but there was no way to be sure. Burning 32

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  the plantation was something he’ d started to regret, but in the end, it didn’t matter. They’ d killed his father and wanted to kill him too. Lee knew all their operational matters. He was gone from the fold.

  The smoke from his cigarette drifted out of the cab. There

  was a chitty-chitty scratching about on the truck’s bonnet, stropping its beak on the duco before launching up to snatch a moth that it brought back and munched upon while it looked

  at Lee through the windshield. It had small black eyes, and Lee looked beyond it to an old man in a baggy brown cardigan watering his lawn. Lee’ d been told that the wagtails were

  harbingers of a death in the family, and so he made sure to never look at one directly. His father was missing, presumed dead, but until a body was found, or a wagtail caught his eye, he wasn’t going to accept the truth of what was obvious to

  everyone else.

  The chitty-chitty danced and nodded its head and flew away

  so fast that when Lee blinked it was gone. Lee glanced in his side-mirror and drew his forearm off the window-rail just as a tyre iron smashed on the steel. Lee shrank back, turned and raised both legs and slammed them into the face of the man

  going for the passenger door. Lee swung and aimed for the

  driver’s door, but it was open, and two arms grasped his legs and began to drag him out of the cab. He kicked hard, but

  there were hands on his throat from the passenger side and he was yanked from the cab, hitting his head on the way down.

  The kerb caught his back and knocked the wind out of him.

  He tried to roll over so that he could crawl under the truck, 33

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  but the grip on his legs was strong. He saw the boot just before it struck his face. He got his hands up to ward off the next kick but that just meant his hand was smashed onto his nose, and then blood burst from his face and began to run into his eyes.

  He got both hands on the ground, and managed to grasp the

  front wheel and put his shoulder against it, taking another boot against his neck before launching his feet backwards and letting go of the tyre. His momentum took him over onto the toppled man, and he grabbed two fistfuls of cock and bal s and squeezed until he heard the wail, then rolled off and ducked the next kick aimed at his head. The world slowed down now, as he knew that it would, as it always did. He dived and sank an elbow into the side of the prostrate man’s head, and then he rolled into an awkward crouch, and when the other man came

  at him again he launched off to the side and caught him with a stiff-arm to the th
roat. Now they were all on the ground, and there was the tyre iron, and they were all getting up, and he leapt for the Ford and reached under the seat and pulled out the Luger. He didn’t have time to turn the safety off but pointed it at them. The only movement was the water burbling out of the old man’s hose. Lee clipped the safety off, took a gulp of air then kicked the tyre iron away. It was the same two men from the tow truck who’ d given him fish-eyes near

  the freeway. The larger one in the shirtsleeves now spattered with Lee’s blood was retching with ball-ache, while the other gasped for breath from his bruised windpipe. The buzzing in Lee’s head was building. He felt himself start to fade into the red and he took another gulp of air to calm himself. The man 34

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  across the road had dropped the hose and run inside; now it was snaking about and spraying the front-door screen.

  Their tow truck was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Give me your wallets.’

  They looked at him like he was stupid. He felt a surge of

  adrenalin and he was floating again and they saw the gun rise and reached for their back pockets at the same time.

  ‘Drop ’em on the ground.’

  He waved the Luger down the street. ‘Now fuck off.’

  They didn’t need to be told. Lee turned his back on the

  sound of their footsteps, then scooped up the wallets. He did a lap of the truck, lifting up the number plates on their hinges.

  He snapped back the safety on the pistol and tossed in the

  wallets, got behind the wheel of the Ford. Out the corner of his eye he saw the chitty-chitty bird on the verge across the street and he nodded his head without looking at it and put the truck into gear.

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  4.

  Lee assessed the damage as he drove down Canning Highway.

  Peeling off his t-shirt, he wiped his eyes clear of blood, making a smeary death mask of his face. He reached for his water bottle and tipped it over his head. His eyes stung but at least the next swipe with the t-shirt removed the pooled red around his eyes, even as it made clear the damage to his nose. He wiped the thicker blood from his nostrils but it continued to ooze.

  His heart was beating fast, and he tried to breathe slowly to allow his body’s natural painkillers to replace the chemicals of fight and flight. There was a blackening gash on the bridge of his nose, which was askew. He held the t-shirt against his nose and applied pressure and looked into his eyes and saw that

  his pupils were dilated with shock. He began to concentrate again on his breathing, focussing on the details he’ d scanned during the attack – the Celtic cross tattoo on the forearm of the bigger man, the small gold ring in his right ear and his bright blue eyes. The same crew cut as the thinner man, who 36

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  had the same tattoo on his neck, tattoos on his knuckles that Lee hadn’t been able to read. They both wore the same white cotton shirt with red and blue lines on its col ar. The same brown workboots.

  Lee removed the t-shirt from his face and the blood had

  stopped flowing from his nose. He wiped his face clean,

  snorted up the blood and hawked it out the window.

  He was going to have to reset his nose. It was going to hurt.

  He looked instead at the bushfires burning in the hil s, the muzzy brown haze to the north spreading from a roiling cloud of smoke that rose into the sky as far as he could see. The sun to his left was a glowing red orb. He began to pass fleabag motels and guessed that he was near the airport. He chose one at random and indicated across the lane of incoming traffic.

  He pulled into the cracked bitumen carpark and killed the

  engine, tipped the rest of the water over his face and watched it drain onto his shoulders.

  *

  The motel room was a painted breezeblock chamber with no

  windows, which stank of feet. The bed was made but there were curly black hairs on the pillow. Lee retrieved his swag from the truck, together with the Luger, a change of clothes and his first-aid kit. The desk jockey hadn’t made any comment about Lee’s rapidly swelling face and bare torso, just took the twenty dol ars and handed over the key. Lee knew the story – the guy’s pupils were dilated and his hair was gauzy on his dehydrated skul . Even as he talked, his jaw was set with an amphetamine lock. Lee had 37

  DAVID WHISH-WILSON

  interrupted him cleaning the office with a vacuum cleaner, even though the carpet was spotless.

  The mirror over the bathroom sink was the only clean

  surface in the room. Lee’s eyes were already retreating behind the swelling that would soon blacken. He unspooled a wad

  of toilet paper and laid out the bandages and threaded the

  cotton through the stitching hook. The septum bone on the

  top of his nose where it became cartilage was skewed to the right. There was no easy way to do it. He ran the tap and took out the sink plug, then stood there for a while summoning

  the will to take his nose in a pinch-grip and before he knew it he was grabbing his nose between finger and thumb and

  crunching it into place. His nose began to bleed darkened

  clots, and then the blood was bright red. It dripped into the sink and he drew up running water and washed the blood off

  his face. The bones were back in alignment and he splashed his face and the mirror and the tiled wall that ran pink into the drain at his feet. He leaned over the sink and let the blood flow from his nose onto his mouth and chin. He took up the needle and thread, and beyond pain now, dug the hook through the

  torn flesh on the bridge of his nose. He pulled it taut until the knot bit and then he hooked it three more times, pulled the seam and tied it off. He hadn’t breathed through the minute it took to apply the stitches, and now he cut off the remaining thread, wiped away the tears in his eyes and splashed his face clean. He poured iodine onto the cut and winced and swore

  at the sting. He pushed the wad of toilet paper up into his nostrils, tilted back his head and walked out of the bathroom.

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  He fell down onto the swag, his head inclined over the back of his pillow as the blood drained into his throat. He smoked a cigarette with a shaky hand, and when his nerves were steady he reached into his duffel and drew out the letter.

  Lee was careful not to get any blood on the letter. He

  scissored two fingers into the pink envelope with balloons

  floating on a streamer in one corner and a five-cent stamp in the other, postmarked Bicton. He drew out the letter that was written across three sheets of the same pink paper, with the same blue balloons in one corner. Lee knew the words by heart but he looked at the pages anyway, just to see Emma’s writing.

  He would recognise those big rounded letters anywhere,

  especial y the way she twirled the y’s and g’s. She wrote in a pale blue pen that matched the colour of the balloons, and

  despite the fact that the pages were unlined, her words didn’t drift or run over the edges but continued in long sentences that awoke the sound of her voice in his head. She was writing to tell him that they’ d found a rental place on the south side of the river, and that she was going to a Catholic girls school.

  Her uniform was a dark blue blazer with a light blue crest

  and dark stockings and skirt. She had to wear the uniform on the way to school and on the way back. The other girls were ok although they were pretty spoilt. None of them smoked

  pot and when they drank they danced for a while then keeled over. She missed hanging out with Lee at the drive-in. She

  missed his face. But she didn’t miss Geraldton and would

  never go back.

  Emma didn’t need to mention why, and he could tell that

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  she was forcing herself to be cheerful behind the pen that had dug into the paper. She said that she wished he’ d write. She signed her name and
added three x’s. It was the signature and the three kisses that he returned to, time and again. You could see smudge marks where his fingers framed the page, on

  account of the hundreds of times he’ d stared at those words and those kisses.

  But he’ d never written back.

  Long ago he’ d decided to go one better, and visit her instead.

  Lee wasn’t fit to visit anyone now, at least for a couple of weeks until his face improved. Emma’s father had never liked him, and the sight of his mangled face would confirm his

  reasons for not wanting the two of them within a hundred

  miles of each other.

  One of the first things that Emma’s father had asked Lee was how his parents met. It was an odd question, and Lee hadn’t been able to answer, because his father had always claimed

  that Lee’s mother moved in with him the day he knocked

  her father down with a left hook in the red dirt yard of her Mullewa home. The man was a wife-beater who ogled his own

  daughter. The older man had gone and gotten his rifle, which he aimed at Lee’s father’s head while his daughter packed her bags. It didn’t worry Lee’s father – he ignored the man whose head was bleeding into his blue col ared shirt. They drove into the setting sun in Lee’s father’s FJ Holden ute, and according to him, Mandy King had kissed his ear because final y she was free.

  The plan was for Lee’s face to heal, then to save money for a 40

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  surfboard. Whether Emma’s father liked it or not, he intended to invite her down to the Margaret River surf breaks that he’ d only seen in mags – sculpted cold-water waves with barrels big enough that you could dance in. There was probably a school holiday coming soon. He didn’t want to interrupt Emma’s year twelve studies. She was going to be something – there wasn’t any doubt about that.

  Lee folded the sheets careful y because the paper-folds were starting to wear. He put the pages into the envelope and tried to drop the letter back into his duffel bag but missed, and it fell onto the carpet beside his head.