Carpentaria (41 page)

In the end there was great relief to hear Bruiser and Truthful had arrived. They heard Bruiser’s mango-green reconditioned Valiant’s powerful engine groaning up along the patch of bitumen road outside the Shire Council office like some kind of suffering mud creature, until it gave up the ghost on the footpath outside the Council lawns. Bruiser, Levi’s-jeaned and check-shirted, looked hot under the collar when he got out of the car. He surveyed the assembled crowd with a quick glance to see who was missing. It did not take long before the bell was silenced. Bruiser quickly donned the mantle of his Lordship the Mayor, and with a few great strides in his moccasins, went straight across to Valance and squeezed the town clerk’s wrists until they cracked. Shocked by the pain, Valance immediately came out of his trance. ‘He won’t be doing that again for a while, let’s hope,’ Bruiser said.

‘My mate here,’ Bruiser said, patting Truthful on the shoulder. ‘He knows what to do, and he will be doing it directly, straight after this meeting is finished. There will be no mucking about getting the cops up from down South. We got our own policeman right here, who knows us, knows what we want, and knows this town doesn’t want to be mucked about. Not like in the past, about all of them unsolved deaths around the bush here.

‘What did those police that they sent up from down South somewhere, know what to do? They don’t know us. Did they look like they knew us, or were even bothered to ask us what we think, and we live here all the time? No, they just went around wasting taxpayers’ money, made a right monkey of themselves, and whoosh! Where did they go? We looked around and found ourselves sitting here like we always have because? Because we belong here.

‘They had gone off, no goodbyes, thanks for the hospitality or anything. They just got back into their chartered planes, and flew off, and that was the last we heard of them. And what did we get out of it? Sleepless nights wondering if we’s going to be murdered in our own beds, wondering if we are going to wake up in the morning, or whether we might be dead. You right mate? A penny for them?’ Bruiser turned to check on Valance. There were coughs and silly grins in the audience.

‘We found the evidence, darn right we did,’ Bruiser continued, pausing to slap Truthful on the shoulder again. Truthful nodded. Valance looked up from his seat with interest. The townsfolk sighed relief. ‘Poor old Gordie and his wretched soul, parts of which would be being digested by camp dogs but for the strangest coincidence,’ Bruiser rattled on as though talking about a normal day, flicking the switch occasionally for good measure, to throw in a bit of the fanciful the locals loved to hear. ‘But you know what? There were rainbows appearing across the sky through the clouds.’ Something miraculous seemed to have happened, because one of the rainbows actually ended directly over the spot where they had found Gordie. Even Bruiser took on an angelic face when he pointed out the phenomenon. The crowd turned around, craning their necks to look in the direction Bruiser was pointing, looking over the roofs of houses, to the outskirts of town, amongst the ruby saltbush on the side of the muddy track. Multiple rainbows were fairly common in the wide skies of the flat lands.

‘See! Gordie was going straight to heaven. God sent him a rainbow to walk on for only God knows where Desperance is. You know where the good folk live, don’t you Lord? But for God’s sake! What! Listen! There was more to it. God was telling me what to do, God was telling me he will punish the wicked. Thank you Lord, I said, but we already know who did it Lord. We know for sure, and we will make sure they don’t get away with it. So after we finish talking, we are going to go straight there and arrest the little buggers. Well! Goodbye then, Gordie ya big long streak, we will always remember you. Pray for us Gordie.’

At this point Bruiser, sticking to his script, shut his mouth. He looked into the crowd with feigned innocence on his face. He searched the eyes for non-believers of the Christian faith. There had to be someone. Where? Where? Who was it going to be this time? Instead, to Valance’s astonishment, people started babbling all of their hidden prayers, praying loudly for Gordie. And Bruiser, whose scarred face usually gave him the impression of being a descendant from aliens, now looked different too. Valance was at a loss to understand what he had done to his face. He began to see what others were already seeing; it was like looking at a holy man.

‘Hush now folks,’ Bruiser finally spoke, repeating his request over and over, until he regained the full attention of the meeting. ‘Save your prayers for later folks, we have got a lotta hard work to do here first. First, we need to get organised with putting some men together, because we are going to arrest those little petrol sniffers who did this to Gordie, too right we are. Whose names we got coming now?’

The air bristled. Everyone knew what Bruiser was referring to. It was plain easy to reminisce the kind of yesterday antics of Will Phantom: arsonist, stirrer, troublemaker, cars running up and down the street in the middle of the night. So much trouble, fights and what have you, all because one person kept telling the world he did not want the mine to be built. The very building they were sitting in front of, the beautiful new Council offices, had replaced the one they all reckoned he burnt down. Someone had to have done it. It could not have burnt down by itself. Happily for everyone, the good neighbour mine came to the rescue. It honoured its word: said it was going to donate a brand-new building when it got the green light on Native title problems. They had Will Phantom to blame for that too. Well! It looked as though something like that was stirring its ugly head about race relations again.

‘Ya gotta nip it in the bud this time, ya hear me, ya honour?’

‘We aren’t gonna put up with that same trouble. Turning everyone inside out.’

‘No,’ Bruiser was the first to agree. ‘Just like I said. We will do it differently this time, won’t we?’

Everyone knew of those little petrol sniffers living in fortresses of abandoned car bodies. The window smashers. There was a whole group of them moving from one car body to another. Just recently, some had moved to a car abandoned by the Fishman mob lying right next to the path that Gordie used. It had been stripped down to nothing. They were the ones who spray-painted graffiti on tin fences around town,
Petrol Sniffers
Don’t
Die
. You just had to read it and say –
Who were they
kidding?
Everybody knew who they were. They knew because the boys had broken into their properties and stolen things and nothing happened to stop it. They knew because petrol had been taken out of their cars on such a regular basis, big, fat padlocks had to be welded onto the petrol tanks, because nothing was done to stop it. The whole town had to become fastidious about locking up: car doors, doors to their houses, everything of value locked up for security against petrol sniffers, and still nothing was done about it.

Everyone had seen these boys walking about town, speeded up on petrol fumes and looking like zombies, walking straight past people as though they did not exist, sometimes with their little girls in tow, initiated by older boys on petrol as well. Disgusting skin and bone creatures who looked like nobody fed them. Or was it right like Valance kept saying: petrol was the only thing that kept the hunger away?

‘How did you know it was them?’ Valance asked, still nursing his wrists, wading against the tide.

Bruiser, whose motto had always been
Hit first, talk later
, glared at Valance, hoping he would get the message to shut his bloody mouth up. If only Valance had been a drinking man, Bruiser had always thought, once again regretting the Council’s choice of recruiting another Southerner to the job. Two minutes in town and he had something to say about everything. The man had been driving him crazy ever since. Down the pub it would have been different. He would have settled the matter of a man like Valance wanting to be a control freak, quick smart, and afterwards, he would be broken in about how to get things done in the Gulf. He regretted not having broken his bloody hand or bashed his teeth in: one thing or the other. He reminded himself to do the latter first opportunity, but not now. This was a delicate matter, except, if Valance pushed too far, Bruiser wondered whether he would be able to stop himself.

‘How come we know? What are you saying Valance? How do you think we go about making accusations? I’ll tell you something Valance, and listen good because I am not going to repeat myself about this stuff. This is not a Council meeting Valance, where we are sitting around on our arses pushing paper about like we got nothing better to do with our time.

‘This is about real people who get out there and they get the job done. Maybe some people need to get out of their air-conditioned offices once in a while. Like the rest of us in the heat of the day. But hey! Wait a minute. Valance, are you trying to tell me something like I think you are thinking: that I am making little fibs to tell people? You think people are stupid or something? If you are accusing me, you better get out with it Valance. Let’s stop beating around the bush because I will tell you something, I haven’t got time for frigging around. You know what I should be doing right now? Getting a thousand head of cattle to ship to Asia by Tuesday. I’ve got no time on my hands I can tell you, to sit around pondering, who bloody did it.’

The townsfolk were in awe about the enormity of Bruiser’s life. ‘Man! A thousand head of cattle. Those cattle on the road now, Bruiser?’

Valance interrupted: a nervous response which had momentarily overtaken him. ‘No! How do you know it was them? That’s all I am asking.’

‘Tell him, Bruiser. He’s got a right to know, I suppose,’ another voice strung out of the meeting. The silence of consensus followed, and chastened Bruiser who continued directing his speech to Valance, in a tone which suggested he was talking to an idiot.

‘One of them little black bastards left his red thong behind right there on the spot, that’s what, and whoever it fits, or whoever we find walking around with only one thong on his feet – Well! You work it out. Number two. Another one left his cap behind. He was in such a hurry, rushing off, and it don’t belong to anyone either because it belongs to one of Mozzie’s boys. It’s got the kid’s name written on it. What a shame the father don’t stay around town and be a real father for a change. That’s the proof of it and we found another thong left behind as well. Well! We not going to wait around for the CIB, or any other Southern copper to come up here and fail his duty to this town, like last time when that smart-arse Will Phantom ran amok, remember that? Burnt down half the bloody town and got away with it. Lack of evidence still makes my blood boil: Lack of evidence. Bullshit.’

Trailing off his speech by making a fist into his open palm, Bruiser felt he had said everything that needed to be said, and looked across at Truthful standing beside him for support.

The crowd grew noisier. Neighbours spoke to one another across the rows of plastic chairs in approving terms of Bruiser’s no-nonsense course of action. All of the men and their big boys volunteered to spend the rest of the day hunting down every petrol sniffer in sight. Bruiser was quick to rein in the stampede for the man-hunt. ‘Whoa, hold on boys. We got to get a grip on this thing first, hold your horses, hang tight to your seats there for a minute. The Constable here has to do some checking first off. Go for it Constable E’Strange.’

‘Alright! Alright! Settle down everybody,’ Truthful took over. ‘We all know a very serious crime has been committed and we have to make sure we follow the letter of the law because I don’t want to fill the jail up with the wrong people, and I don’t want to be arresting you folk because you are upset neither. We, you and I: it is our responsibility to see justice is done and done correctly. So, let’s be calm now.

‘First off, we are only after three boys at the moment, there could have been more, but we got to go by the evidence, and we got the evidence like the Mayor just told you. We know who we got to go and find, young Tristrum Fishman and his brother Luke.’

Voices in the crowd interrupted Truthful, calling out that these kids should have been hung, drawn and quartered a long time ago. For two little boys, they certainly had a bad reputation in Uptown. Someone speaking loudly, told Truthful to fix the little bastards this time. One woman added her voice to civic duty: ‘This time lock the little mongrels up so they can never get out, and throw away the key while you are at it.’

All that said, Truthful continued. This part troubled him. ‘The other boy we have to find is,’ stopping mid-sentence to take a deep breath, before he said the name, ‘Aaron Ho Kum.’ That raised a few eyebrows, and complete silence. Nobody wanted to call out about the parents now, like they were doing a minute ago.

A penny for your thoughts now, big, righteous Uptown. Every person sitting there knew who these boys were, even if they were not considered the property of the town itself. Hinterland, edge people was where the petrol sniffers came from. From the camps somewhere where the blackfellas lived, because you do not get this kind of trouble from the sons of Uptown, except…Except there was a question mark on Aaron Ho Kum. Those two Fishman boys belonged to Mrs Angel Day. She goes and has them one after the other, after she leaves her real family high and dry to fend for themselves in the Pricklebush. Oh! Yes, she was the one, everyone knew her: a real tart. And where was she today
? I say she’s lying flat on her back hmm! hmm! legs spread doing you know what.
Too busy to spare a few minutes to come down to the Council
lawns like everybody else and get involved with civic duty.

‘She don’t look after them boys does she?’ the white lady folk were whispering loudly to one another, ‘No, she can’t be bothered. She just lets them run loose.’

No one looked in the direction of the barman, Lloydie Smith. Everyone knew he was the so-called father of Aaron Ho Kum, even though he had never publicly acknowledged the mother. Well! Radar was what radar was. There had been talk when that child was born. Everyone had been dead keen to have a gander at it, to see if it was white, and she had only been half a kid herself at the time. The scandal of it, no one thought having a baby to the barman would mean she was destined to live Uptown. When that turned out to be the case, she just wrapped that kid up, summer time and all, so nobody could see it.