empty lift arrived he pushed the bed inside and pressed for the ground floor, watching his father’s gaunt face all the way down.
The lift doors opened and he scanned the busy emergency
floor. The only exits were the patient doors to the waiting room and the double doors to the ambulance ramp. He
skirted the beds and chairs in their block formations where men and women in various states of distress were looked after by kneeling doctors and teams of nurses. He hit the red button to open the ambulance doors and the hiss was loud and made
him flinch.
He told himself to breathe, wheeling the bed past two parked ambulances whose drivers sat and watched him pass and an
empty ambulance at the rear whose driver was chatting to one of the others. Lee cut behind the final ambulance so that he’ d be out of sight and walked backwards down the ramp past the low hedges and concrete barriers until he was on the street. It was only when he turned the corner that he saw the coppers
at his tow truck. One TRG van and three police sedans, lights flashing but sirens off. Lee turned the bed around and kept his shoulders low and went back up the ramp. His father was murmuring now, smacking his lips, clenching his fingers and toes, a sign that he was coming out into pain.
The first ambulance in the line had gone and the second
ambulance was empty. Lee opened the rear doors of the third ambulance and locked the wheels of the bed and looked down
at his father.
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The only way he knew how to support another man’s weight
was the fireman’s carry, but he didn’t want to open his father’s chest wound. He looked at the folded ambulance bed in its
grooves, and unlocked its rear brakes and pulled it out the back. It unfolded as it emerged. Lee kicked on the brakes. He got behind his father and took him under the armpits and
shuffled him over, his father’s eyes opening for a moment
and looking at him. Lee swung his father’s legs over and
didn’t know what to do next. He took a risk and slammed the folding bed against the rear of the ambulance and it folded automatical y and he pushed and hoisted it until the wheels were locked in their grooves. Lee slammed the doors shut and went and climbed in the driver’s side.
The keys were in the ignition.
He put it into drive, pulled out behind the parked ambulance and drove down the ramp. He reached the street, the right lane protected by a concrete barrier. There was an ambulance cap on the seat beside, and he put it on. He had no choice but to drive past his tow truck where coppers were digging around
inside the cab and prying open his tray-box while the darkly clad TRG stood around and watched. Lee ducked his head
as he approached, and picked up the short-wave radio mike
on the dash and pretended to speak into it. One of the tallest TRG officers, toting a pump-action shotgun, unstrapped his
black helmet and slid it from his head.
It was Brad, wiping sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand, looking around the streets for Lee.
The TRG didn’t capture fugitives. They were called in when
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suspects were armed, as Lee was armed. They shot them down.
Lee could hear Frankie’s voice in his head. ‘This is why we don’t isolate ourselves from the institutions of government.
This is why we infiltrate state power and turn it to our own ends.’
Brad lit a cigarette as Lee approached, the officer turning to look at the ambulance, Lee tilting his palm in a gesture of greeting.
One state servant waving to another.
Brad ignored him and spat at his feet.
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24.
The freeway was jammed with late-afternoon commuters,
but Lee figured how to work the flashing lights and drove
the emergency lane, headed south. The sun was moving to
the horizon across the golden river. He didn’t know what to do next, except that as soon as the ambulance was reported
missing, those coppers at the scene would put his father’s
disappearance together with the stolen vehicle and then
every copper in the city would be looking for them, including the TRG.
Lee exited the freeway at Canning Bridge and headed to-
ward Fremantle. It was nearly six o’clock and he remembered the hire-car depot next to the boxing gym on South Street.
He cut the flashing lights and took suburban backstreets
until he reached the industrial area beside the cemetery, and knew that he was close.
The lights were out in the depot office and the length
of chain that crossed the entrance was low to the ground.
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There was traffic behind him but no pedestrians on the
street. He drove the ambulance slowly forward, catching the heavy chain on the front bumper. He revved and pushed, felt the chain resist and the engine whine, and then the chain
snapped at the lock.
He drove into the depot and parked under the carwash.
Opened the back doors of the ambulance and looked for
something resembling a slim jim. He found a steel tongue
depressor in a set of drawers and crawled backwards but
something grabbed his arm. He flinched, but looked down
into his father’s eyes.
‘Son, I wanted you to leave. I want you to leave.’
There was no time to explain. Lee only said, ‘They tried to kill you, at the hospital. Same way they tried to get rid of me.’
That was enough for his father, who pursed his lips and
nodded, closed his eyes.
Lee sidled up to a Budget transit van, looked up the street again and slid in the tongue depressor and heard the lock
click open. He turned, and there was Gerry, the old boxer,
carrying his gloves, a towel around his neck.
Lee ignored the man’s stare. Got inside the van and ripped
off the plastic cowling under the steering wheel, went to
work with his trembling fingers and teeth, stripping back
the plastic sheathing. Joined the wires and heard the engine kick. Worked the copper wires together to form a twist and
backed across the depot to the rear door of the ambulance.
Gerry stood at the rear doors, glancing at Lee’s father.
Lee nodded to him but his voice was hard. ‘You don’t
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wanna get involved here, Mr Tracker.’
‘Too late for that. It’s all over the radio.’
Three teenage Noongar boys that Lee recognised from the
gym cut across the depot carpark and stood behind them,
watching. Gerry hoisted a thumb in the direction of the gym.
‘Come on, get movin. Nothin to see here. I’ll be down in a
minute.’
Gerry dropped his gloves and took one side of the ambulance bed and Lee took the other. Together, they carried the bed
across to the transit van, without dropping the legs.
Lee shut the rear doors.
‘You got money?’ Gerry asked.
‘Yeah, I got money.’
‘You got medicine? He’s gonna need it.’
Lee shook his head and they climbed into the ambulance
and began emptying the coloured plastic drawers in the side wal s onto a blanket between them. Lee balled the pile of
syringes and bandages and ampoules up in his fist and they
got out together.
‘Get goin. I’ll park the meat wagon round the back. Won’t
be found until tomorrow.’
Lee put out his hand, and the other man shook it, then
moved away. Lee got in the van and put it in gear. As
he pulled to the road and indicated left, he watched Gerry climb into the ambulance and drive it round the corner and out of sight.
*
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They spent the night parked in another rental car depot in
Welshpool, surrounded by factories, trucking stations and
abandoned silos. Lee put up the blanket to separate the cab from the rear bay. He held up each of the ampoules to the
streetlight and tried to work out what was useful. His father drifted in and out of consciousness and each time he awoke
he tried to get up and Lee held him down. Just before dawn
he awoke and his eyes were clear with pain. Lee was ready
with a syringe full of pethidine which he injected into his father’s thigh. He watched the relief come over his father’s face, although this time he stayed awake, insisted on holding Lee’s forearm, squeezing as he squeezed out the words.
‘I got a mate. He’s a medic from Nam. Lives in the hil s over there in Jarrahdale. He’ll take me in.’
‘Dad, we got to run. Far away as possible.’
Lee’s father smiled weakly. ‘That’s what they’re expectin. Al this shit about the dead Governor, they’ll be checkin roads out of Perth. Better to hide in plain sight. Then you run.’
Lee shook his head. He didn’t want to tell his father about the Governor, not yet. ‘We run, together.’
The laugh that his father attempted got strangled in a
gurgling wheeze. ‘Damn bullet tore through one of my lungs.
Went straight out the back. But no, son. I’m gonna talk now, and you’re gonna listen.’
Jack Southern paused, caught the look on Lee’s face.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
Lee looked away, looked back. ‘Nothing. Kinslow tried to
get into my head, told me some things.’
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Now it was Jack Southern’s turn to look away. He wiped a
hand over his eyes, notched his brow. ‘Wel , you said it. Tried to get into your head. Why I protected you from those people.
Kinslow’s always been a snake. Always had ambitions. Not
surprising he’s gone into politics. You can’t believe a word that –’
‘Dad … stop.’
Lee’s father did as he was told. Closed his eyes, then opened them again. Opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it. Gave Lee a weak nod.
‘What Kinslow told me about you in Vietnam. It’s true, isn’t it? You took a scalpel to yourself. You were sick. They sent you home.’
Jack Southern was silent for a long while, staring back at
Lee, hurt in his eyes.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Lee asked. ‘What else didn’t you
tell me?’
‘Ok … Enough.’ Jack Southern’s voice dropped to a whisper.
It wasn’t clear whether he was speaking to himself, or to Lee, who leaned in.
‘Son, you’ve been loyal to me, but I’ve been bad for you.
Locked up these past months, I had to straighten my head.’
‘You’re bleedin again.’
It was true. A bloom of fresh blood was spreading out from
the rust circle of dried blood at his father’s breast, looked like a flower opening its petals.
‘Listen to what I’m sayin.’
‘I am. I want to know.’
‘You’re a good son, and you’re gonna make a fine man. But
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I’ve never been straight with you. Now you’re ready to know the truth, and that’s good. Some things I got to tell you, in case things don’t work out for me. First, is that I know where your mother is. You go to her – she’ll take you in. She never did run off and abandon you, like I said. I made her leave. She didn’t like the way things was headed, the way I was when I got back from Nam. I put a gun to her head and made her leave, son,
told her never to return or make contact again, or I’ d hunt her down. I wanted you for myself. I wanted to make you safe from what’s comin. I wanted to make you into what I wanted
to make myself. And I did.’
Lee tried to take back his arm, but his father gripped with a surprising strength.
‘I don’t blame you, son. You’re gonna hate me for that, and more. That’s on me.’
Lee had kept himself awake through the night, despite the
fatigue, the adrenalin leaking out and weighing him down.
Now he felt the familiar surge of anger that his father had taught him to turn into clarity and action.
But behind it was something else, unexpected, the return
of a feeling that he’ d long thought abandoned, and it felt like sadness and it spoke in his mother’s voice.
‘What else? What else you got to tell me?’
His father closed his eyes and nodded, the spitefulness in
Lee’s voice some kind of reassurance to him. ‘You got Abo
blood, Lee. My grandma. Our camp off the Thundel ara
Track? We got roots there goin right back beyond my grandpa Donal Southern.’
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Lee didn’t know what to say. Everything his father was
telling him was a surprise, and not a surprise. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Same reason my dad didn’t tell me. Your great-grandpa
Donal took your grandpa Vernon into town. They never
spoke about it. Vernon was pale-skinned and he could pass as a white. There was nothin good in them days bein an Abo, and if Donal wanted to keep his son, he had to say that Vernon was white. Donal’s black wife had died so there was no proof it was any different. It was your mother who asked Vernon one day, and he told her straight up. I didn’t know. That’s how I found out. It was part of the problems between us, in the end. Part of me wanting her away from you.’
Lee spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Anythin else? Is there
anything else? What about Vietnam? The Knights?’
His father’s breathing was settling, his fingers went limp on Lee’s arm. ‘Another time, Lee. There’s nothing else I want to say now, except that I’m sorry. Get me a pen. You’ve got to write those addresses.’
Lee took down the addresses of the medic and his mother
and sat beside his father, watching his chest rise and fal , listening to the freight traffic on the highway as the light came over the hil s.
Lee climbed into the driver’s seat and drew up a syringe-
full of pethidine and stabbed it in his thigh, felt the warmth flush through him, much like the sunlight now filling out the darkness in the parking lot, sketching details into the shadow.
He looked at his watch, and connected the ignition wires.
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Flicked through the UBD until he found the right map. Pulled out of the parking lot and turned toward the hil s.
*
The medic lived on a north-facing hil side behind a stand of she-oak, the wind whispering through the green needles in
the higher branches as Lee guided the van up the hil . The
dirt track was guttered and potholed, the red earth edged
with dried streams. Like most of his father’s Vietnam mates, the medic lived at the end of a long drive, wanted to hear the sound of anyone coming to meet him.
It took Lee three minutes to reach the rammed-earth house,
built into the hil side, the tin roof catching the morning glare.
A low stone wall circled the house like a rampart. Three
kangaroo dogs strained at their ropes beside the garage.
Lee saw movement behind the tinted window at the front
door. He backed up the van to the house and climbed out, his hands in the air.
He knew the dril .
The medic cracked the flyscreen, a short man whose eyes
g
linted behind a mop of grey hair.
‘I’m Lee Southern. I got my father here, who needs some
attention.’
The medic looked past Lee’s shoulder, down the track.
‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t followed. The van is fresh stolen.’
The medic left the doorway, leaning something behind the
jamb. He wore tracksuit pants and ugg boots with gaffer tape on the toes, a faded blue singlet.
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‘I been expecting you since I saw the news. I got everything ready inside.’
Lee opened the van’s rear doors and they carried out the
trolley, kicked down the legs, wheeled it along a corridor into a spare room with a tiled floor and wal s. A laundry basin and a hose. A drain in the corner.
Nothing else except a refrigerator and a kerosene heater
that the medic turned to maximum.
Lee returned with the blanket full of medicine, laid it on
the floor next to the trolley-bed. The medic glanced at it and nodded. ‘I got everything we need here, sonny. From those
pinhole eyes of yours, I reckon you’ d best take some of that for yourself.’
Lee picked up a handful of the glass ampoules and pil
bottles and put them in his hat, followed the medic out the front door. The medic walked down the side of the van and
went into his garage and came back with a Stanley knife.
‘You start peeling off those decals. I’ll be back in a sec.’
Lee did as he was told, peeling off the foot-high Budget
Rent a Car decals on the sides of the van, the stickers on the rear window. The medic returned with two number plates and
an unopened envelope.
‘Peel off the rego on the front window, replace it with this.
These plates and rego match.’
The medic knelt and began unscrewing the licence plates
while Lee peeled off the rego from the front windscreen,
replacing it with the brand new registration in the envelope.
According to the licence papers, the rego belonged to a Mr
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Terrence Daly who resided at the medic’s address, and was
made out for an ’83 Holden Commodore.
The medic stood with the stolen plates and tossed the
screwdriver in his hand, looking over his work. ‘Unless you’re caught speeding or make a copper suspicious at a roadblock, this’ll pass muster. Those plates and rego are legit, for just this purpose.’
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